It. Was. Amazing!

And, since one of my health and fitness goals is to increase my average running pace to be 9’30″ per mile, seeing my 10-mile run today clock in at 9’27″ was outstanding, and really showed me that I can achieve that long-term goal with further training, so I consistently run that fast – or even faster.

So, why was today so awesome? I’m not 100% sure, but I’ve got a few ideas.

• My May Squat Challenge has increased the strength in my legs and glutes
• My cardio cross-training with TurboFire has improved my endurance hugely
• Daily stretches have helped improve my muscle fibers and agility
• Only running one day a week has allowed my legs to rest and rejuvenate
• Daily Shakeology shakes for lunch have helped my body and muscles recover easily and increased energy
• The joint supplements I started taking last week have helped my knees and joints not be as sore
• Yesterday’s lunch of bread and wine, followed by frozen yogurt gave me the carbs and sugar I needed to push through the distance and kick my run’s butt today

Even if the reason were all, some or none of the above, I am incredibly pleased with my run today. My summer goals seem to be within reach as long as I stay dedicated.

And now, I’m going to spend the rest of the day resting my legs so I can continue on the path to success.

• Look at exercise as a pleasure and a privilege, not a burden or chore. Think positively about the changes regular exercise will produce. Rather than obsessing about your next meal, get excited about your next workout!
• Focus on short-term fitness goals with an emphasis on completing daily exercise.
• Work to take your exercise to new levels of intensity.
• Make it your goal to do some form of exercise 6 or 7 days a week. If some days you exercise once in the morning and once in the evening, even better! If you’re eating right, exercise will fuel your energy level!
• Create an exercise schedule the day before instead of leaving it to chance or waiting to “find” the time. If the last three Presidents of the United States can make time to work out every day, you can make time too!
• Enjoy contributing to the health of others by having a partner or friends to exercise with, as well as recruiting others who want to feel better and have more energy. Have a neighbor who’s sitting on the porch every morning when you walk by? Ask him or her to join you on your walk!
• Avoid monotony by taking up new forms of exercising, or using things that keep you motivated and inspired, like new shoes or great music.
• Invest in the right tools—good shoes, a portable MP3 player or iPod^®, fitness equipment, a new series of tapes, etc.
• Subscribe to fitness magazines to keep focused on health as an overall way of life.
• Eat well-balanced meals and remember that excess calories, even if they’re from food that’s fat free and high in protein, will turn to excess weight. No matter what the latest fad diet says, extra calories equal extra weight!
• Limit caffeine and exposure to even secondhand smoke.
• Keep a water bottle with you at all times and drink from it often. Water should always be your drink of choice. To kick things up every once in a while, try adding lemon, lime, cucumber, or a few berries to liven up the flavor without adding significant calories.
• Stick with eating plans you can maintain indefinitely. Remember that no matter how hard you’re working out, if you’re consuming too many calories, you’ll never see the muscles that lie beneath layers of fatty tissue.
• Keep a daily log of what you’re actually eating. This includes every time you grab a handful of chips here or eat the crust of your kid’s sandwich there, and ALL of your snacking.
• Enjoy an occasional (once a week) “unhealthy” treat, but never an unhealthy week or unhealthy vacation.
• If your diet is unbalanced, take daily vitamin and mineral supplements for total health.
• Don’t compare your body to others’. Instead, work to be your personal best.
• Move beyond the boundaries of weight loss and into total fitness. Measure success by the way your clothes fit, not some number on a scale.
• Get adequate amounts of sleep, but remember that people who exercise regularly fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly.
• Limit alcohol intake to special occasions.

Why? Because I live in Arizona, and starting a couple weeks ago, it is much too hot to run long distances outside at anytime other than at  5am. And in July, 5am will still be 95 degrees, so I won’t be running outside at all. So how am I going to improve my speed and strength for running when I can’t run outside?

With a dedicated, detailed cardio conditioning and sports-specific strength training regimen, intermixed with short runs to build speed each week.

As a huge fan of the Beachbody workout programs, and a Beachbody coach, I’ve been able to try and complete some of the best fitness programs available today. My favorite, as I’ve said before, is Insanity. And last year, Insanity helped me improve my running speed and endurance pretty nicely. This year, however, I want to increase my endurance and speed even more.

I’ve created a TurboFire/Insanity hybrid workout to follow for the first part of the summer. The cardio conditioning effects of TurboFire will help improve my endurance on my runs, and the strength and plyometrics training of Insanity will help with speed. Additionally, starting in August, I’ll be completing the Insanity: Asylum workout program as it is solely dedicated to sports-specific strength training. I am beyond excited to try Asylum, as I think it’ll be the icing on the summer marathon training cake.

Runners benefit a lot from cross-training opportunities, especially those related to sports-specific endurance and agility drills. I’ll be sharing my results here as the summer goes on, and counting down the days until the weather cools down and the running portion of my marathon training can begin.

As it turns out, Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro, a French restaurant located in Scottsdale, AZ, had requested help from Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares show. During the filming of this episode, however, the owners apparently went ballistic, the Scottsdale police department had to be called, and Ramsay walked away from the restaurant – a first in the show’s 82 episodes.

The episode aired on Friday night, and since then, Amy’s Baking Co. has been bombarded with negative reviews and comments across many social media sites including Yelp, Facebook, Reddit and more.

And in order to combat the negative reviews, Amy’s Baking Co. has started posting the most ridiculous posts on their Facebook page. Enjoy the below screenshot:

So here’s the thing – companies: when someone says something bad about your company online, do not lose your mind and post ridiculous stuff on your Facebook account yelling at your customers. Do the following:

1. Respond to the person making the comment

2. Thank them for their eedback

3. Ask that they contact you via your website or through an email address so you can address the situation appropriately

4. Follow up with the person making the comments to ensure they are satisfied

5. Publish an acknowledgement post, along with an apology if appropriate, on your social media spaces to show that you are aware of the negative situation and are working to address it to keep your customers happy.

6. Work to solve the issues – and do not blame others

These tips will ensure you’re keeping your business running smoothly in the face of potential disaster, and will allow your  customers to see that you care about them and the services you offer.

So really, Amy’s Baking Co., while you’re providing us with some rather humorous posts and updates, you really need to get it together to save your business.

The reasons behind this are simple – if you plan out your meals a couple days, a week or a month in advance, you have control over your calorie and nutrient intake. You will be able to plan how much protein, fat and carbs you’ll be consuming each day, and adjust your meals to fill holes in your menu. If you want more protein, plan on it. If you want more carbs, plan on it. Then, follow these meal plans each and every day. This way, you’ll be less inclined to make unhealthy, spur of the moment, food choices, and you’ll more easily stick to your diet.

The same theory holds true for scheduling your workouts as well. If you make time and plan on a workout, you’re more likely to complete a workout that day. Don’t just say “I’ll workout at night before I go to bed, once I’ve got all my stuff done for the day,” because really, that won’t happen very often. You’ll always have more things going on, or you’ll be too tired. So make time. Plan to get up 30 minutes earlier in the morning for a workout. Or stop at the gym on the way home from work. Plan your workouts, create a workout schedule, and stick with it.

Soon, these plans – creating a healthy weekly menu and scheduling your workouts – will become habits. And creating healthy habits is the best way to create and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Below, you’ll see a sample of a normal weekday workout and meal plan that I follow, and that has led me to great results and more healthy habits:

4:30am – Wakeup

4:45am – TurboFire HIIT 25 and Stretch 10

6:00am – Breakfast: Fiber One cereal, almond milk, vitamins and whole food supplements

7:00am – 1 cup of coffee

9:00am – Snack: Fiber One 90 calorie bar and an apple

12noon – Lunch: Shakeology vegan chocolate flavor  mixed with almond milk and a tablespoon of organic peanut butter

3:00pm – Snack: Chobani plain Greek yogurt

6:00pm – Dinner: Salmon filet, grilled asparagus and a spinach salad with olive oil and balsamic

9:00pm – Snack: 3 dark chocolate Hershey’s kisses

This is how I break down my workouts and meals every single day, and it really works. If I need to swap out things to accommodate treats, or if I’m more hungry one day than another, I’ll adjust as needed, usually adding in another healthy treat, such as granola, along the way.

Create your daily schedule similar to the above and plan your meals and workout schedule. In just a few short weeks, you’ll see improvements in your overall health and fitness, and your energy levels will have increased as well. And a couple weeks after that, these plans will have formed into healthier habits, which will keep you healthy into the future.

This week, I started drinking Shakeology every day for lunch. I was able to purchase the mixed pack of packets – 12 vegan Tropical Strawberry flavored and 12 vegan Chocolate flavored – and have been mixing them with almond milk as much lunch each day.

I had tried Shakeology a couple years ago, but at that time I wasn’t into drinking shakes and smoothies as meal replacements and health supplements, so I quickly gave up. I was excited to try Shakeology again and see what differences were made in the flavors, as well as in my appreciation for the shake itself.

Initially, I had mixed reviews on the flavors. My Beachbody Coach told me that they had enhanced the vegan flavors to taste more “healthy” and I definitely understood what she meant by that when I tried the Chocolate flavor on Monday. It tasted like chocolate, but also a little grassy, if that makes any sense. However, the next day I mixed in some peanut butter, and it tasted AMAZING. I could have had five shakes in one day, it was so good.

The vegan Tropical Strawberry flavor – oh my goodness – is simply incredible. The fruitiness of the flavor is just outstanding, and you don’t need to mix in anything to enjoy drinking it. That will definitely be one of my favorites for a long time, I think.

Shakeology is touted as the healthiest meal of the day, and though I’ve only been drinking it daily for three days, I’m looking forward to experiencing the health benefits the shake says it’ll provide, including:

• Improved digestion and regularity
• Increased energy
• Reduced cravings
• Lost weight (though my main goals aren’t about losing weight anymore, as much as they are to maintain my health and fitness levels)

Shakeology has a ridiculous amount of super healthy ingredients in it to help your body more easily flush out toxins and also help your body absorb more nutrients. The overall effects of this are supposed to be pretty fantastic.

I’m really excited to see how the next few weeks end up while drinking Shakeology everyday!

If you want to join me on a month-long exploration of Shakeology, buy a bag and give it a try!

Are you a 21st century brand? You are if you deliver a connected experience for empowered consumers, according to David Cooperstein, vice president and principal analyst of Forrester Research. Cooperstein discussed the attributes of successful 21st century brands at the iCrossing CMO SummitMay 3.

Cooperstein kicked off his presentation by showing key data points on how consumers use online media: there are 133 billion searches on Google per month, 400 million tweets sent per day on Twitter, and more 33 million streams per day on Hulu.  Audiences online are much larger than traditional television audiences, and even larger than traditional print audiences.  Consequently, brands that embrace new media and digital marketing can experience a greater volume of success.

But how does a brand succeed in the digital age? You start by taking a look at the changing activities and desires of your consumers. Cooperstein built off Tom Daly’s earlier CMO Summit presentation on building mobile connectedness for Coca-Cola, stating that Forrester has witnessed a significant mobile mind shift. This shift has made it so consumers expect that any desired information or service is available, on any appropriate device, in context, at the moment of need. So-called perpetually connected consumers – those who have at least three online devices, who go online at least three times per day, from at least three different places – thrive off of convenience and building shared experiences.

Because of the desire for perpetual connectedness, brands need to shift their perceptions of traditional marketing and focus more strongly on improving the consumer experience. Consumers drive the strategic direction of the brand and want to feel pride in the brands with which they interact. The greater amount of pride felt by a brand, the greater the chance the consumer will share those experiences.

How do brands manage this shift and become a more connected, 21^st century brand?  Cooperstein shared three steps:

• Steer the organization toward your brand’s North Star. A brand’s North Star is its guiding principle. This North Star needs to be honest, strategic, inspirational, and concise. In order to successfully navigate toward the North Star, marketers must lead the brand internally. They must inspire the organization and rally the culture around the brand. Marketers must communicate the brand’s North Star to guide internal and external strategy, while providing guidelines for a consistent brand experience.

• Redefine how you deliver the brand experience. Because of the ever-changing perceptions and desires of consumers, successful brand marketers will be the ones who present their brand experience is a new way. Marketers must first focus on building a message that tells a story, and then take action to match that story and purposefully engage the consumer. Finally, all products must deliver on your new values, your North Star, to ensure an honest interaction with the brand.

• New traits strengthen the brand and serve the needs of empowered consumers. The 21^st century consumer has taken the brand to a new land that can no longer be reached by traditional competitive positioning and shareholder gain alone. Brands now need to create a roadmap – using Forrester’s Brand Compass – to navigate their brand to become trusted (being more transparent and accountable); remarkable (disrupting the market in a way that is worthy of conversation); unmistakable (creating unique experiences); and essential (being irreplaceable in the lives of your customers). Developing those four traits will strengthen the brand pillars that support consumers’ new expectations of brands.

By finding your strategic direction, delivering a brand experience that engages your consumers, and strengthening your brand to serve the needs of these empowered consumers, your marketing moments will lead to deeper connections. And you will achieve greater success as a 21^st century brand.

Dana Notman is a senior natural search strategist at iCrossing

The first two weeks of this workout plan will take me through a speedy round of TurboFire – the exciting, energetic, intense cardio-conditioning workout program. The program is led by Chalene Johnson, who is just a fireball of energy, and really fun with workout with.

I started the first day of the program last night, and completed Day 2 this morning. I was surprised by how much I sweat during the workouts! I wasn’t expecting it to be so challenging. However, it was a hell of a lot of fun! The dancing and kick-boxing and moving and jumping and wiggling is just what the excitement I wanted to experience.

Some of the moves will take a little getting used to, as the steps are quick and the movements all flow together. But after a couple more days, I know I’ll have the majority of the moves down and will know how to keep up with Chalene and the rest of the awesome workout team.

After my two weeks of TurboFire, I’ll be alternating between TurboFire, Insanity, and short runs on the treadmill (or outside of the heat stays away). However, before I move into the Insanity-TurboFire hybrid workout, I’ll give a more detailed review of TurboFire for you all to enjoy!

And, if you want to jump in with me, order now and we can workout together!

Tom Daly of Coca-Cola would like to see you use a mobile phone in one hand to put a Coke in the other. At the iCrossing CMO SummitMay 3, Daly, the group director of mobile and search at Coca-Cola, shared how Coca-Cola is using mobile marketing to put the brand within arm’s reach of consumers.

“We have some big, hairy, audacious goals,” stated Daly, referring to Coca-Cola’s ambition to double the company’s sales by 2020. And mobile marketing is the key to achieving that goal. There are many more mobile users in the world than people who buy Coke every day. Daly wants to inspire consumers to use their mobile phones to increase Coke sales around the globe.

“Mobile is the closest you can get to your consumer these days aside from bringing the product directly to their lips,” Daly asserted.

According to Daly, the key to creating connected moments with the mobile consumer is to understand how mobile can fuel impulse transactions. Daly shared how Coca-Cola learned from seeing individuals quickly and impulsively donate to the Red Cross for the Haiti Relief Fund via text message once they were connected to the cause. Those insights allowed Coke to understand that consumers can and will make impulse purchases via mobile if they are connected to that brand.

And Coke is an impulse purchase.

Making it easier for consumers to buy Cokes means ensuring that the transaction process is as frictionless as possible. There are fewer and fewer people carrying cash these days, and, because of that, sales of small purchases requiring a cash transaction are falling. With 60-percent of small purchase transactions expected to be made through mobile within the next five years, Daly and Coca-Cola will be focusing on enabling payments made through a mobile wallet for these impulse purchases.

With iCrossing’s help, Coca-Cola is now developing its mobile strategy to connect with consumers directly. Some of their tactics Coke will leverage include using apps, mobile video, location-based services and SMS texts (“Text is not sexy, but it works”). With these tactics, Coke will most definitely be within arm’s reach of the consumer, and be incorporated in the consumer’s mobile moments.

As a completely connected brand that understands how to incorporate itself into the mobile moments that matter to its customers and the world, Coca-Cola is a shining example of marketing in the moment at the iCrossing CMO SUmmit

Dana Notman is a senior natural search strategist for iCrossing

“Safe is the new risky in marketing,” asserted iCrossing Chief Creative Officer Pat Stern during his May 2 presentation at the iCrossing CMO Summit. To build connected brands in a world of always-on consumers, CMOs should take calculated risks, learn, and innovate, according to Stern.

He began his presentation by sharing a formula for managing marketing opportunities and processes. According to the “70-20-10” rule, 70 percent of your marketing resources should go toward activities that you know will work; 20 percent should go toward innovating from that 70 percent; and 10 should go toward risk taking, or “swinging for the fences.” Gone are the days of taking major risks and hoping for the best. Digital marketers should take calculated risks to learn how to create experiences that connect with customers in different ways.

Stern gave detailed tips to guide marketing experimentation and innovation, including:

• Listen closely to your customers. Consumers have certain expectations, and sometimes technology can’t meet those expectations. To meet their own needs, Innovative consumers will create their own experiences and their own interactions with your products and your brand. Stern shared an example from the era of audiocassette tapes: innovative consumers used to create mix tapes consisting of their own musical experience by editing together their own versions of songs and albums. Had record labels been paying attention to this activity, they would have understood the need for technology to help create unique musical experiences. Consequently, the way in which we listen to music now could have been drastically different, or much more advanced. The answers to consumer problems are there – you, as a marketer, just need to be willing to dig for it.

• Swing for the fences. According to the “70-20-10” rule, 10 percent of your marketing efforts should be used for experimenting with something completely new. That 10 percent is a calculated risk based on your ability to listen and learn from consumers, and discover what else may make them connect more strongly with your brand. By taking risk, no matter the outcome, you’ll learn something important. And that knowledge will help you hone your skill and master your technique.

• Average is no longer good enough. Some brands used to focus on providing average products to average people. However, consumers have a lot of choices these days, and “average” won’t cut it. Not only do consumers want extraordinary products, but they want to be thought of as extraordinary too. Consumers deal with choice by developing tunnel vision. Marketers need to find ways to break through that tunnel vision with something remarkable, unique, and exciting. Taking risks to be extraordinary or trying new brand messaging or a different brand experience, can wake consumers from their tunnel vision daze — and encourage them to engage with your brand in a new way.

• Change your frame of reference. As consumers change the way they engage with brands, the traditional marketing funnel needs to change as well. New media has increased the amount of touchpoints and messaging channels that brands can leverage to better connect with customers in real time. Although new media presents opportunities for marketers, new media also presents challenges. According to Stern, the solution is to change your frame of reference and modify your interactions as needed. Be willing to deviate from the traditional marketing funnel and target not only your customers but also influencers. Not everyone who interacts with your brand is persuadable, but consumers do have networks of their own friends who may be willing to try out new products. By encouraging interaction at a variety of levels, you can see an increase in brand engagement.

• Understand your value exchange.  What are you offering that brings value to your customers? Stern, when referencing Judy Christa-Cathey‘s discussion of the “Hamptonality Moments” campaign, stated that Hampton isn’t selling a clean bed and a hot breakfast for its customers. Hampton is selling a value exchange that connects the experiences shared at Hampton Hotels with individuals who are persuadable and who will want to engage with Hampton – either online or in one of their hotels. The risk of sharing experiences versus sharing products is a big one — but one that allowed Hampton to connect with customers on an open and honest level, which is a value that many hold in high regard.

Stern counseled iCrossing CMO Summit attendees to just “do good work” by taking risks and connecting with customers. In order to do good work, take your brand values, combine them with your business needs, and connect with your consumers’ needs. The intersection of those three elements will inform your strategy for taking a calculated risk. When it comes to taking risks with your brand, understanding what your influencers want, what they expect, and what they are willing to learn about can help guide your experimentation in a way that is less risky and more rewarding. Success can be yours with the right risks and the right innovation.

– Dana Notman is a senior natural search strategist at iCrossing