Give or take?

After my recent post “ experts don’t cold call”, I had an interesting comment from a friend. He defended cold calling to a degree, and ended with “ you have to start somewhere when you’re new”. I agree with that, but you have a choice when you’re new: you can choose to give of yourself, or you can choose to steal the attention of others.

As I look back over the 13 years of GreenMellen, we’ve never resorted to cold call, spam emails, or any of that foolishness. When things were slow, our reaction was to give more away and it’s worked amazingly well.

• We’ve hosted a free monthly Meetup for more than a decade now. In the early days, we even did it twice a month. We met lots of folks, shared lots of advice, and they’ve been fantastic.
• I’ve also attended hundreds of other Meetups. Spending time being led by folks like Kathy Drewien, and her incredible ability to match those in need with those that can help, created dozens of wonderful relationships for me.
• I’ve volunteered with dozens of organizations. I’ve spent a good bit of time with groups like KBA, NCBA and ANA, and tons of time with WordCamp Atlanta.
• I’ve published over 1400 posts on my blog, and as a team there are nearly 800 posts on the GreenMellen blog, all with free tips, ideas and advice for others to use.
• I had a few paid courses for a…