Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers is an award-winning marketing expert who was recently named one of the Top 50 Marketing Thought Leaders over the age of 50 by Brand Quarterly magazine, which was all over Twitter by @fionavesey and @kenthuffman.

Winning this award was a great honor and they gave me this cool image to share with you.

I consider marketing awards to be the Good Housekeeping Seal for a marketing agency like Find New Customers. which is perhaps the best name of all agencies, because we are not named by a person’s name or a dog, but rather what every company needs - new customers.

Just visit Find New Customers to set up your free 15 minute call with this award-winning marketing expert.

We also explain why we stopped looking for a top marketing job and instead focused on growing our own company, Find New Customers, with our new business partners later in this post. I hope you take some time to read this great post.

Jeff has won many marketing awards, including the SLMA Top 50 Sales Lead Management three years in a row, but not 2014.

I congratulate the winners of this award in 2014, especially Matt Heinz and Steve Gershick, who are good friends of mine.

Need help with marketing? Just visit Find New Customers to sign up for your free 15 minute phone call.  If we can help a company in Russia with marketing, we can help you too.

The Business Marketing Association is coming to Tampa Bay soon and it will have great speakers thanks to its founder Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers, I know so many top speakers thanks to Marketing Made Simple TV, the online TV show I created and hosted for a long time, like

• Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute
• Beth Comstock,CMO of General Electric
• Jeffrey Hayzlett, Keynote speaker and TV host of a show on Bloomberg TV called “C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzett”
• Daniel Pink,  New York Times best-selling author
• plus my good friend, Paul Dunay, our first speaker.

You obviously know a lot about marketing if you have won all these marketing awards and have a world class network like I do,  but it really means nothing to most people.

I understand that, and I get so many rejection letters, and job search is a complete waste of time - even for a top marketing expert like me, you still get rejection emails because there are too many clueless hiring people out there who are looking for someone who held the same job for a competitor.

Why send out resumes that never work, no matter how good they are? Despite a great resume and a superb video entitled Meet your new Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Ogden created by my son - nothing ever gets done - so it’s time to throw in the towel.

This is why when I was in the hospital and I had lots of time to think, I said aloud “Why am I waiting for someone to help me? Let me take control of my own destiny.”

That decision meant my focus is on growing my business Find New Customers. That is why I partnered with Likeable Local and the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce too, because i needed two things to grow my business:

1. Strong social media marketing product to offer here in Tampa/St. Petersburg to the massive medical industry (Likeable Local)
2. Way to meet business leaders here in Tampa/St. Petersburg (St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce)

Considering that I get rejections from companies all the time, like Slack.com, I am more happy than ever that I took control of my own destiny by partnering with these companies, so I can say this to the nice folks at Slack.com, “I don’t care.”

I don’t care because of my conversation with myself in the hospital. I told Nolan at Slack,com what I had decided and he emailed me “Sounds great and best of luck.”  However, when you take control of your own destiny, luck is off the table. No luck is needed.

Luck did not tell me I needed great business partners to give me a strong product to offer and to meet local business leaders. Those were decisions made by the President of Find New Customers, because that’s exactly what Find New Customers needed to grow the business in 2015 and we are ready right now to crank up Likeable Local early in 2015.

The Medical Story

This photo shows the “halo” I wore in the hospital for 9 weeks.  Despite the fact I wore it 24 hours a day and I could not take a shower or put my head on a pillow, I never once complained or stopped smiling, which resulted in rave reviews and a very popular story on the Importance of Attitude on the Salesforce.com blog.  And as a former dead man, you simply don’t worry about anything anymore. This recent holiday season I was simply glad to be alive, because I’m a medical miracle.

The neurosurgeon Dr. Delgado told me “People DO NOT recover from the kind of fall you took, but you did. You truly are a medical miracle.” That gave me my slogan “Never Give Up. Never Surrender.”

Something good has to come from this, like becoming a motivational speaker,  so others can become medical miracles like me.

If I can become a medical miracle, why can’t others do the same thing? My biggest goal for 2015 is becoming a keynote speaker, because i love talking on stage in front of large groups of people. The Washington Post reported recently that public speaking is the #1 fear in America, but not me. It’s not fear. It’s fun.

Who would be better on stage for you - a typical speaker or a living, breathing zombie like this person who was a former dead man like me? Keynote speaking is about telling stories and I have one of the very best stories ever.

Other facts of interest

According to WordPress, SEO is built in and every post is saying “Hello Google.” Nice to met you Google.

Did you know this blog dates back to December 17, 2005?  That is 9  years of blogging. Holy Crap!

If you want to contact this marketing expert and keynote speaker, send an email to jeff L ogden at gmail,com.

What do you think? We love to read your comments (No SPAM please) and these who share on social media too, especially Rebecca in Sweden who shares everything on Google Plus for me.  Thank you!

 This is my motto now:

Grow your own business and depend on no one.