"Did you bring your best today?". When was the last time you heard this during one of your countless meetings? If you heard it recently, then hit the skip button on your reader because this post is not for you.

Marketing has problems. We all know that. What we do to fix them is even more perplexing, as we tend to complicate the living soul of every small problem we come face to face with. How? Well, for starters, with meetings.

The usual routine gets reborn: be on time, sit down, chat about how hot or cold the weather is with the person next to you. Shut up. The meeting director just stepped in. "Good morning sir/ma'am!".

Aren't you already bored by now? I sure am.

Why don't we approach the same situation with the energy and enthusiasm we all feel when attending a summitt? You know, that rush we all share when we get ready to meet new people, sew new connections, leave with a better understanding of who we are and where we should go.

There are also agendas at summitts, but the variation is that we have no idea how the topic will be handled by the speaker. It could suck. It could blow our minds. Oh, what would it be! The excitement of finding out is what keeps us down on our seats.

We can try adding a little of the summitt ingredients at our next meeting just by following these 3 simple rules:

1. Assign a topic to each person. Make it public by sharing their name in the agenda. But give it a twist: if it's a topic very well known by Maria but no so much by Steven, voila. Give it to Steven and encourage him to make it memorable.

2. Create the title "Meeting Coordinator" and have that person organize the whole meeting. Why so many people jump in to be the president of a Party Committee? Because humans like to organize things. Just take a peek at your Google Calendar! Organizing freak, a marketer's long-lost nickname.

Also, have the coordinator think about a simple menu of food items to bring to the meeting. I mean, summitt. Pastry? Drinks? Nurture creativity. Simplicity is key but this is the one area that no organizer should ever fail at. After all, we could be attending the most interesting conference of our lives but we all dream of "When is the break?".

3. Start with an activity. Don't complicate it, and please stay away from the "How was you all's weekend?". Google "meeting activities". Spice it up.

Stop being a robot. This is a summitt, not a meeting. Any other ideas? (And no, you do not have to raise your hand.)

Twitter. Facebook. Email. Meeting. Google Reader. Phone call. Fax. Repeat.

How many of us make this our daily routine? Yet somehow when we look at the clock we fool ourselves by wondering where time has gone.

When do we sit down and create something new? How many times a day you actually come face to face with yourself and say: "The next two hours are open for my creativity."?

It is not turning off the computer. Or silencing the phone. Or taping a piece of paper to the door saying "Silence Please".

It is finally realizing that to be successful in the time we have on this world, we need to create something new, every day, for the rest of our days.

You can easily write on your agenda "Learn something new". After all, that is what we have been programmed to do.

But what about switching gears and right below it add "Create something new". It does not have to be tangible. For all I care, it can be a new scribble on the back cover of the same agenda. That's new. Write down the date beside it. You made it through the day.

We need to stop curating time, for it is the most valuable assett both you and I have. 

[pic credit: s.o.f.t.]

Someone gives you $10 to buy groceries. Would you spend $9 on just one item?

As this tweet by Robert Scoble points out us, marketers usually forget to be mindful about aligning our spending with our objectives. With so many low-cost ways to advertise at our disposal on this day and age we still opt for the easiest and most conventional. These tools, by default, follow rules and policies of yesteryear; and because of it, eat up our budgets and time.

For the monthly price this company pays to advertise on this billboard, wouldn't you agree it makes more sense to:

1. Have an employee working at least part-time connecting on a one-on-one basis with customers through Facebook and Twitter?
2. Send a promotional item to 100 of our best customers thanking them for your business, therefore refreshing brand awareness?
3. Or simply saving the money to invest later while brainstorming on new out-of-the-box ideas?

What other things can you think of doing with this budget?

Me? I just prefer the idea of buying 10 items of $1 each when grocery shopping.