blog.bradjward.com

I earned my evangelism wings.

// March 12th, 2008 // Apple, Brad's Life, Mac

One thing I’ve always wondered… how someone becomes an ‘evangelist’. No, not this evangelist. This one.

For some people, it’s an actual job (do a quick search on LinkedIn and you’ll find 39 of these people). For some, it’s a badge of honor. For some, it’s self-appointed. For others, it’s earned over time. Others might say it’s when others start calling you such. For me, never really sure. Is it just a buzz word? Is it truly something to be honored and respected? Sure, I have a great knack for ‘evangelizing’ products and showing the benefits to everyone. I’ll admit it. I’ve shown people something and totally sold them on it before, and they might not have needed it. You could say I am a Garmin GPS evangelist, or an Apple evangelist, or a Nikon evangelist, or even an evangelist about my job, if you’ve ever talked to me about that stuff. I know of at least 5 that have been purchased as a direct result of me talking about them.

So anyways, back to the point. I’ve always wanted to consider myself an ‘evangelist’ for certain things I am passionate about, but never really known how to go about saying that I am.

Enter Guy Kawasaki. He started the Apple Evangelist movement. Extremely impressive, extremely bright man. He is considered the father of evangelism marketing. Now he runs a VC firm and recently launched a new site, www.alltop.com. It takes ‘all the top’ blogs/news sites/etc and lists RSS feeds of them. (GotShoo? — Maybe you could sell him grittr.com?) And Matt and I were extremely honored to find out that he included our startup site, BlogHighEd, another GotShoo? Production, in the education section. Unfortunately, we were at the very bottom. So I checked the FAQ, and it said to send a very persuasive email to the info@alltop.com account if you thought you should be higher. So I did. And sure enough, Guy Kawasaki himself emailed me back within 2 hours to tell me to check again. And now, here we are above the fold.

So we got to emailing back and forth throughout the day, talking about the site, some criticism it had received, etc. At some point I tell him how respected he is (as if he doesn’t kn0w), and that sometimes a story like that makes you wonder if there is a “I should have thought of that” motive behind it. Then, at some point, I get this email back:

Whoa.  He called me an evangelist.  The evangelist of all evangelists just evangelized me.  What does that mean?  No salary increase.  No instant fame or recognition.  No special abilities (that I know of).  Just a recognition of what I am passionate about, and how I can use that talent.

He said he wants to put my letter on his blog as well, so that would be pretty cool.  Hope I don’t have any typos, haha!

It’s always awesome to see how personable these huge, famous, millionaires are when you just chat with them.  Everyone is human, and everyone can do it.

I’m going to do something big too. Some day.  And it won’t conflict with my family time.  That’s the word I hope to keep. That’s what I’ll evangelize. Career and family can co-exist, I’m sure of it.