Blogger Stories

Blogger Stories: Nadia Muna Gil

Nadia Muna Gil stepped off the tried and true path to follow her passion. She left a well-paying job, at a prestigious Wall Street firm, to pursue cheese blogging and education full-time. The Cheesaholics Anonymous, blog is more than a blog about cheese .. it is also a woman's dream to tell the world about artisan cheesemakers.

Blogger Story Teller: Nadia Muna Gil, Cheesaholics Anonymous

Hi my name is Nadia and I am a cheesaholic.

This is different from a casual cheese eater, which to me suggests someone who gets his or her cheese once a week on a burger. I write for the cheese-obsessed, the caseophiles, and the queso-heads of this world. My commitment to telling the world about cheese was so strong that I quit a well-paying job at a prestigious Wall Street firm to pursue cheese writing and education full time. I’m curd-obsessed, and loving it.

I started off soliciting cheese questions from friends and family and answered one a week. Initially, I just covering the basics – how do I store cheese at home? Can I still eat cheese if I’m lactose intolerant? After a couple of months of the weekly post I felt the need to write more. So I developed profiles of cheesemakers and cheese shops, and threw in some recipes and kitchen tips (and my very own mac’n’cheese recipe!).

Blogger Stories: J. D. Matthews

Blogger Stories brings to you the guy who invented podcasting .. J.D. Matthew. But it was J. D.'s American Idol interviews that set his blog buzzing in the blogospshere and out with mentions in USA Today, TV Guide, Reality TV Magazine and more.

Blogger Story Teller: J.D. Matthew, Musical Ramblings

Okay, so Ann Handley invented blogging, but I am here and now claiming podcasting as my invention, thank you very much, Mr. Gore. 

I knew I wanted to be a DJ from the EARLY days (Fridays) and I've been performing since I was a zygote.  My cousin and I would sit around with a dual tape deck and a microphone, and we'd record our voices making commentary and talking about these "new" songs we'd heard (probably Journey or something current with the 80's) and then we'd play them. I have hours and hours of tapes like that.  You don't want to know how many tapes I have of myself as an ACTUAL disc jock.  I make narcissism look like bad self-esteem.

Blogger stories... Hmm... let me see.  Okay, here goes.

I'm J.D. Matthews, a worn-out disc jock and social worker trying to turn things around and get a job in the journalism field.  I write Musical Ramblings more or less every day.  It's one of my main passions.  It's the first thing I check when I wake up, and the last
thing I check before going to sleep.  Feel free to email me your shrink's number.

Blogger Stories: Bob Walsh

Bob Walsh is a journalist-turned-programmer-turned blogger. His blog that caught the attention of Apress and started Bob on a new career .. and turned him into an author of a popular technology book.

Blogger Story Teller: Bob Walsh, ToDoOrElse; MyMicroISV

Back in October 2004 I started blogging as way to keep in touch with my beta testers of a commercial app I was writing to break free of being a corporate contract programmer.

At first, my posts were about my product, but a funny thing started to happen: I could not help but post about the underlying Big Problem that inspired me to slave away trying to write this application: getting things things done in a world that day by day seem to spin faster and faster, with ever more to do.

I started getting comments and trackbacks as I wrote more about ways of Getting Things Done, and then caught a lucky break: my posts convinced the editors at Apress in March 2005 to take a chance on doing a different kind of book for them, basically a business book for programmers who wanted to start their own self-funded startups, but were struggling with all the non-code business/branding/web site stuff.

Blogger Stories: Kim Klaver

Kim Klaver is a self proclaimed blog addict. Not only is she having fun with her successful blog, but blogs have provided Kim with with a community of like minded people where she can share and brainstorm ideas. For a small business owner that type of interaction is priceless.

Blogger Story Teller: Kim Klaver, New School of Network Marketing

My blog story ... My blog's just over a year old.  I didn't "get" blogging at first, but once I got started, I became addicted. Yep, addicted to putting down thoughts each day; addicted to reading ever more stuff so I could report on it and discuss it with others. Addicted to the comments.

My readership has gone from like 30 to close to 1k people per day now. It's just a trip! My readers want non-traditional tips on how to do their home based businesses - mostly network marketing. So my blog has become an international classroom for a community of people who have a business of their own they want to maintain and grow.

I research everything from the Harvard Business Review to the fun South Park stories to pass on to my readers.  A recent post was entitled, "If drug dealers make so much money, why are they still living with their mothers?"

Blogger Stories: Ann Handley

Blogger Stories welcomes the person who invented Blogging. And No it was not Al Gore. It was Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer & Keeper of the Blog at MarketingProfs & MarketingProfs Daily Fix!

Blogger Story Teller: Ann Handley MarketingProfs, MarketingProfs Daily Fix

How I Invented Blogging

When I was a kid growing up in the '70s, and my parents' friends would ask me the inevitable question, "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I would look them square in the eye and say definitively, "I want to be a blogger."

Well, that's not entirely true. I did go through a period, when I was about 8 or 9, of wanting to be a vet, until my mother pointed out the inherent limitations of a veterinarian who accepted appointments only with cute, healthy dogs under a year old. That, and I was rather shy—so I never actually looked an adult square in the eye. Truth be told, I never spoke to them, either.

But other than that brief diversion—I had always wanted to be a blogger. In fact, I invented blogging. It's just that it took 30 years for the technology to catch up with my vision. So while I waited, I spent hours every day writing. But unlike my friends who kept diaries stashed under their beds, I needed an audience. I needed interaction, feedback, community.

Blogger Stories: Dave Armano

When David Armano came out of the virtual blogger closet little did he know that in a few short months he would find himself participating in a global community. In addition to his thought provoking business blog Logic+Emotion, David recently launched Bloggers Anonymous - a parody about bloggers. This blog sometimes strikes too close to home!

Blogger Story Teller: David Armano, Logic+Emotion, Bloggers Anonymous

When I think back to my pre-blog days, I think I have always been a “closet blogger”.  Co-workers would harass me about the multiple e-mails I would send out daily pointing out cool and interesting things happening within the interactive marketing industry. 

What I came to realize was that most of them really didn’t care—they weren’t the right audience.  Years later, I started reading blogs and I would think to myself, “holy crap—there’s so much good information out there—so many smart people”. It was at this time that I started getting the “blog bug”.

February of 2006 is when I launched Logic+Emotion.  I had know idea what the hell I was doing.  I’m basically a nobody—and I’m trying to get people to listen to me?  What was I thinking?? But then a funny thing happened on the way to the blogosphere...

Blogger Story: Kalyn Denny

When Kalyn Denny, Kalyn's Kitchen, blogs she is incorporating not 1 not 2 but 3 of passions: writing, recipes and photography! In fact, Kalyn is having such a great time blogging that she's exploring ways to turn blogs into a second career when she retires.

Blogger Story Teller: Kalyn Denny, Kalyn's Kitchen

Writing a food blog is the job I've been training for all my life.  For as long as I can remember I've been passionate about food, writing, and photography.  I've indulged those passions in various ways through the years but none has connected the dots as well as the food blog does.

I got started writing a blog in a way that wouldn't give a hint of what a creative outlet it turned out to be for me.  In the summer of 2004 I was happily living my life when a man I had dated 23 years earlier came to a meeting in Utah and stopped by my house for a visit.  I had put on some weight in the years since I knew him, and had slowly grown used to being heavier, but I had been thinking  about losing weight. 

It wasn't until he walked into my house that I realized how much I hated being fat.  (For the record he had gained 50 pounds himself, so that wasn't it.)

Blogger Stories: Pamela Slim

Pamela Slim's story is proof postive that bloggers are indeed the friendliest people. From email exchanges with Guy Kawasaki’ to links from Tom  Peters, in a flash her blog, Escape from Cubicle Nation, had 20,000 hits, lots of link love (500+) and the start of relationships with people from over the world. The experience gave her the extra courage to realize she could make another dream come true .. her own business.

Blogger Story Teller: Pamela Slim, Escape from Cubicle Nation

While pushing my son in his stroller around my neighborhood a few weeks ago, I reflected on the ten years I had been a consultant to large corporations.  In the last few years, I had seen a level of misery among employees that was so profound that I decided to get out of that work altogether and focus on coaching and developing entrepreneurs.

But I still had so much to say to the management that seemed oblivious to the true feelings of their employees.  I started to fantasize about delivering a keynote speech to a room packed with CXO-level executives.  My son must have noticed that I started pushing him faster and faster the more I thought about the presentation, until I was almost jogging home. 

As soon as I got him down for a nap, I sat down and wrote “An Open Letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs Across the Corporate World.” The original version had four main ways that I thought leadership needed to radically change or risk losing great employees.  A few nights later at about 10:30pm, I was reading respected entrepreneur and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki’s blog and I thought he might be interested in the post. 

So I sent him an email, never expecting to hear back from him.  Thirty minutes later he responded and asked if I would be willing to add six more points, to create more substance to the post.  I got right on it, and sent the final version to him at 1:30am.

Blogger Stories: Nedra Weinreich

Don't think you have the time to blog? That was Nedra Weinreich thought too. Now she looks at every thing through bloggers' eyes .. “that would make a great blog post!” Yup,  Nedra has caught the blog bug. However, for Nedra, the heart of blogging is being a part of powererful force for social change.

Blogger Story Teller: Nedra Weinreich, Spare Change

A year ago, I would have never expected to be a blogger. I don’t have time. I don’t like baring my thoughts to strangers. I didn’t know if I would have enough interesting new things to say to publish on a regular basis.  I didn’t know if people would even want to read what I had to say.  So, what changed?

Back in December, Craig Lefebvre (the first social marketer to start a blog, as far as I know) asked me to expand some of my comments on the Social Marketing Listserv (about health and social issues in entertainment programming) into a guest post on his blog. After that, I found myself thinking “that would make a great blog post” whenever I read an interesting news item or had a marketing insight.  Eventually I got the bug and started up my own blog at the end of January.

Blogger Stories: Michele Lessirard

Telling stories is what Michele Lessirad loves to do. Her tales are told using the stars, the sun and symbols. Quite often the stories on her blog touch someone's heart and in turn, help them cope with life's challenges.

Blogger Story Teller: Michele Lessirard, The New Moon Journal

Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon in the DaVinci Code studies the codes and symbols to unlock the mystery. How do I unlock the codes and follow my own mystery? I have been a student of symbols and the feminine mysteries for over 15 years.

I started blogging to share this experience with others of like mind and heart. Astrology is a sacred language of symbols and metaphors that connects heaven with earth. Following this mystery I dance through the doorway of the new moon each month sharing that experience with others through stories and insights.

Most times my own personal journey is integrated into the stories I share. This month's story New Moon in Gemini-find your own shades of grey relates to bigotry and the energy of "growing up in a home that hates". There was such a drive to share this piece, bring it into the light. And this is what the new moon experience is about for me. Embodying astrology and writing about it, wherever it takes me.