Nate Riggs: Social Business Strategies; communication, social web strategies, & passion in Columbus, Ohio.

I’ve been under the gun and didn’t plan on posting today, but Kathy reminded me of something very important: We all start somewhere.

Here’s her comment on one of my very early posts as a blogger:

Hi Nate,

My brother (Carl Burckhardt) mentioned your first posts, and how they were quite different from your posts today. So I went around to a few prominent bloggers (Chris B, Brian, Darren, you, etc.) I know of and checked their first 10+ posts. It was refreshing to see you didn’t all start with what I see today. Gives me hope that I may one day be as recognized as you and your peers.

Thanks for keeping these posts up for us to see where/how you started, and thanks for the laugh with this one.

Happy blogging!

Thank you, Kathy.  I’m humbled.  I really look up to all the bloggers you’ve mentioned in the comment.  I can tell you’re passionate about this.  In truth, that’s the winning formula, and you will be recognized.  Just keep going.

The post Kathy commented on is entitled Ahh, Forget Sex.  It’s about a funny experience I had years ago with one of our family’s foreign exchange students.  Juan and my family have remained close over the years.  It still makes me laugh, but you probably had to be there in the moment to really giggle.

Memory Lane
If you want to see something really funny, my first experience blogging was writing for a corporate blog.  I can’t believe it’s still up.  Don’t ever forget that stuff lives on the web forever and, in this case, on Google.  Yikes, it’s bad.  Really bad.  What’s even worse is that I was getting paid to write it as part of my marketing duties.  Hell, I don’t get paid to blog now.  How’s that for irony?  We all start somewhere.

When I first started blogging, it was disaster.  I remembering spending hours trying to come up with things to write about, and then even more hours actually writing the content.  Each post was nerve-racking and, at times, I wanted to give up.  I know now that it was probably my Lizard Brain trying to keep me from doing things that made me uncomfortable. (Thanks again, Seth.)  I remember thinking “I’ll never be a copywriter.  I just don’t have what it takes.”

Some of you have even been reading since my first iteration of this blog on Blogger.  If that’s you, thank you.  Your endurance is absolutely appreciated.

The Secret to Better
If you want to get better at something, be passionate about it.  If you’re passionate, then practice becomes a pleasure.  Learn to look forward to practicing.  Practice all the time.  If you can get to that point, everything else will fall into place.  Your passion is a gift to the community, and people will notice.  Passion is contagious…

What do you practice?