I have had this theory, which is not earth-shattering, but it’s been buzzing around like an aimless fly looking for a lovely place to land. Today I found a great spot.

Maslow tells us that we’re needy. We require basic daily sustenance needs (food, sleep, sex, etc.) met first before we can move on to filling voids of friendship, self-worth and many other “non-survival” needs like my fav, creativity. If you review Maslow’s hierarchy, I’m guessing that I’m somewhere in between his “Esteem” and “Self-Actualization” buckets. Reinvention, here I come. Or, mid-life crisis? I really don’t care about the label, it’s the mindshift and behavior that is pulling me towards change.

So, here’s my theory . . . over the past few years I’ve become increasingly annoyed, discouraged and trapped. Everything in this modern world is so easily abundant that it has become painfully empty. If I want a steak dinner, I can have it brought to my house in about 20 minutes. If my favorite pair of shoes look a little worn, I can get another pair in under a day. If I don’t like my house, I can sell it in a few weeks. (Okay, I may not get top dollar but I can still unload it and move on whenever I want). There is very little in my life that is created by me from my own hands. I didn’t kill the cow (for the steak dinner or the shoes) and I didn’t build the house. Easy come, easier to go.

The abundance of just about everything seeming endless. Have you seen your options for gum lately? Who knew there were so many recipes for chewable spearmint. We no longer function in what I call “survival mode” because the fallout from the Industrial Revolution has handed us everything we could ever want on a platter. So, because we are not killing our own chickens and building our own outhouses, we need to replace this time with something. The main replacements are entertainment and buying stuff: stuff we don’t need, stuff we think we need and stuff we’re told we need. The problem with filling our time with things brought in from external creation is that someone else’s heart and soul has framed that creation. Our hierarchical needs of achievement (no matter how small) — respect, creativity, spontaneity, self-esteem and even morality — are being imported from mass produced promises of happiness. Very little originates from within. The result is that our higher levels are not being met and suddenly we’re wandering around aimlessly, like flies looking to land, confused about why we’re unhappy and unsatisfied.

Like I said, this theory is not earth shattering. I’m sure there are tons of philosophers beyond Maslow that have culled this out into a much more scientific and extensive way.

But today, a lot of what I felt was missing from my theory (however small of a theory it is) got a total shot in the ass. Today, I met Patricia Martin. Patricia Martin has been conducting research over the past few years about cultural shifts. She believes we are not just in a state of flux. We are renaissancing. Well, that’s my morphed term, but the basic core idea is that, just like da Vinci and Michelangelo, we are moving cultural needs to the top of the list. The old civilization, as we know it, is dying. In its place is a shift in relevance. We have been disconnecting from the things that make us feel relevant for so long that it is moving us towards an end. An end to complacency, an end to numbness, an end to static civilization as we know it. Patricia has seen that, when you are faced with an end (she actually uses death as a term) and impending trauma, your creativity is heightened. So, from the current state of disconnection comes the scrambling to become connected. In that effort, we create. Our focus shifts from “being” or just existing to creating with the ultimate goal of living in beauty, placing aestheticism as the highest value and gaining pleasure from all things that make us feel relevant.

Our Gen Yers are 80 million strong. Gen Xers (that’s me, at 37, right smack in the middle) are only 48 million and Baby Boomers are still kickin’ around at nearly 75 million. The younger set are driving this renaissance, there’s no doubt. They don’t want to work 9to5. They don’t want a daily grind. But, they do want to have a job that is meaningful and vital to society. They understand Maslov’s top tier hierarchical needs and are hell bent on meeting them and, not just for themselves, but for all of us.

If we are in a cultural renaissance, this affects everything we do in business and marketing. As Patricia argues, how do you market to groups that refuse to be bucketed into segments? One of my group88 members is a cardiac pediatrician who is starting an ecommerce website for physicians in private practice. I have a friend whose passion is racing cars but you’d never know of his talents in the kitchen. There are engineers who are fond of painting water colors. I’m a career gal who is learning to play the drums and last year made my own jam Amish-style. How the heck do you choose to market to these people who have disparate and varying interests? As a culture we are shifting from the goal of “having stuff” to “doing stuff.” Selling to doers is much harder than selling to hoarders.

Patricia has a few ideas on selling in a cultural renaissance but I have yet to read her book so I will refrain from espousing on more theory. One thing that did stick with me in her discussion today, however, is that we need to pay attention to the rebellion of consumers. Don’t label them or put them into buckets. Don’t create segments for them to hopefully fall into or attempt to categorize them in ways that you see fit. They will rebel, become annoyed, and your business will die.

But dying is not a bad thing. Because, as we now know from renaissancing, a little death is required for rebirth.

My pals Sonny and Kara Parlin have launched Sparrow Lounge, a site to showcase their amazing photography. The below pic of yours truly was taken in Hartford by Sonny.

Along with a sharp eye for perspective and in-the-moment portraits, Sonny and Kara are doing some amazing post-processing work. The work showcased on Sparrow Lounge is phenomenal.

Equally as awesome as their work is the lightening speed awareness Sonny and Kara are receiving via flickr. Within one day of posting the “Dreaming of Infinity” pic, Sonny received a two-page list of comments. Some spammers were among them but quite a few were either “love it” comments or “can I post this on my site?” questions. Sonny also joined the CT Meetup for flickr so he could hang with other photophiles.

This is a great example of social media turning the corner. flickr is a soc media granddaddy, for sure, but for many it’s still an online photo album. But, while kids and moms are posting photos for the heck of it, photographers are getting discovered and connections are being made.

If you have been one of those folks wondering what usefulness social media would ever have beyond a water cooler chat, get yourself on flickr. For the mainstream, flickr and other soc media giants are finally beyond the honeymoon stage. One of the biggest reasons for this is volume. With typically 5,000+ uploads per minute, flickr’s flurry of activity is more than just photos and comments. It’s art, laughter, friendship, innovation, intensity, transparency, discovery, and, for some, opportunity.

It’s not about “how” can I get successful but “how successful can I get?”

This week I attended two girl power networking events, both discovered while rummaging through MeetUp.com. Although hosted in the organizer’s home, each event was very different. The first was The Professional Women’s Lunchtime Collaborative in Springfield, Mass., a small group of business indies who gather once a month with a purpose. Each month a member takes the wheel and presents a project or challenge for the group to nosh on. I like this approach. We bring our lunches, get to know each other in small bits and do our best to stay on topic.

The second event was a wine and chocolate half-social, half-networking evening. About 20 gals and one unsuspecting guy (don’t worry, we went easy on him) gathered in a very cozy fireplaced family room. The group is the Western Mass. sect of eWomenNetwork. This is atypical of their monthly meet ups which are usually a paid-speaker-dinner event. The flow of this event was possibly too casual, as discussions drifted here and there, but I didn’t mind. We kept topics to 90% business and the ideas flowed plenty regarding marketing, staying motivated and looking for new avenues to grow business.

Both events confirmed a gut feeling that I’ve had for several months now: women are itchy. Today’s professional women are energetic, smart and eager to suss out new opportunities. We’re competitive and supportive all at once. Business networking has really grown up and we all recognize the value in creating communities that have direct and indirect impact on our business.

I believe the focus for women succeeding in business is finally shifting from isolated big strides to a multitude of smaller but more effective leaps. In the early days of my career I worked with several women who were still living in the residuals of vigilante feminists. Don’t misunderstand me here – I am a huge proponent of competition and empowerment. I also believe competition is at its best when it coexists with mutual respect and support.

With the long-time career women I encountered in the 1990s, fear of not getting ahead was the driver and an expectation of suppression was a natural response. They were still “fighting the good fight” but their fight was not of 1970s and 1980s solidarity. Their fight had moved from “the man” to protecting their hard won territory against the younger women who were looking for mentorship and empowerment. It was a weird time. My views of this time were possibly skewed because I was green and new to office politics but I doubt this is the case since I see a definite change these days.

We are beyond the 1990s confusion of “every woman for herself while pretending to stick together.” Today, it’s not an either/or situation. In the U.S., it’s not about conquering territory and making a claim anymore. Now is the time for action where the focus is not reaction but impact.

The opportunities now open to everyone in business is causing an itch. I can literally see it in people at the networking events – they’re jumping out of their skins. The breadth of opportunity is immense. It’s not about “how” can I get successful but “how successful can I get?” Moms take time off to hang with their kids and then they float into business whenever the opportunity strikes. I met a woman the other night who quit her job last summer and is just now thinking about getting another one, if the right one comes along. The organizer of the eWomenNetwork group home schools her six kids, yet finds time to help build a community of professionals who are focused on motivating and philanthropic business practice.

Man or woman in business, it’s time to scratch that itch. I want 2008 to be defined by action. Your actions should result in success for your business and for others in your community. Big or small, the actions we take to improve the business environment for others will always have great rewards for our own growth and success.

Predicting what 2008 will bring is tricky business. It’s an election year, housing is moving on from sellers-market denial, credit card debt continues to eat away at our economic stability, the U.S. dollar has seen better days, old media continues to fight the once-good fight while new media prepares for all-out infiltration and conglomerate air time is continually consumed by the Writer’s Guild strike and Britney Smears instead of our troops.

Armageddon? Not yet. As far as I can tell, turmoil breeds panic for the timid and intrigue for everyone else. The business climate, depending on the business, is at once volatile and filled with opportunity. I see the upcoming two years as less of an end to a decade than a precursor to the incredible shifts that will take place beginning in 2010. Virtual living and working will cause person-to-person business to make room for better online practices and philosophies. To be truly successful in the Web 2.whatever, businesses must synergize online and offline activities. Your business’ relationships, revenue and mojo depend on it. Enough about the decade, let’s just focus on 2008 for now.

Below are WallFly’s top three predictions for the upcoming year. I have to admit they are a mix of prediction and hope. Maybe I should have called them “Business-Fulfilling Prophecies” instead?

Recession Schmession

Smart companies will improve relationships, not business plans.

I’m not suggesting you avoid streamlining. We’re all making measured decisions with our cash flow. Just last week I considered not sending out a business mailer for the holiday season. Instead I opted to spend less money at Panera and wait until the new year to hit Staples.

Move your numbers around all you want but if you’re not taking time out to do the following, you are losing ground with clients: a) connecting with your clients on a regular basis (phone, mail, email or events) to increase opportunity for more interaction b) learning when, why and how your current clients interact with you, and applying that knowledge to improving your value and c) feeding your positioning with a menu of competitive activity, impending growth and your customer’s changing climate.

We all know that getting a client takes double the effort versus convincing a happy client to stay, so why do companies continue to neglect clients in the off-season of interaction? Think about your best personal relationships and what makes them tick. Making someone happy in a relationship 90% of the time requires improving their life every day (i.e., taking out the garbage) versus buying an expensive gift one day out of the year (i.e., buying an iPhone). Next time you consider dumping all of your marketing dollars into a big trade show, think about the low-budget things you can do to reach out to clients throughout the year: start a monthly newsletter, make quality control phone calls, talk about how other clients benefit from you, make in-person annual visits or even send out a short quarterly email that shares info on upcoming developments.

Ecomm Grows Up

Utility will emerge from 80 gazillion social media apps.

I’ve seen some pretty useless Facebook applications - from starting a virtual snowball fight to getting hugged by a zombie. How do these strides in web development improve your business? They won’t. But they will change the way users interact with the web and that’s what you need notice. Once users start expecting things from the online world, they want it from everyone - a streamlined user experience, content that takes into account context and a site that understands the concept of easy.

The massive amount of activity taking place among developers for Facebook and now Google’s universal app platform will both increase the size of our kids’ behinds as they play less soccer (or play more virtual soccer) and generate technologies that users will want to see everywhere. If you have a website, start paying attention to the activities happening online. You don’t have to apply them all but you have to understand how it will affect your clients. I’ve advised some clients to skip blogging because it didn’t make sense for them. It’s not about jumping on the latest, new technology - it’s about understanding how all new technology is driving the way we do business.

Marketing Gets Stuck

New media will drive marketing. The stories that stick, win.

I was wondering when some smart marketing guy would take Chris Anderson’s Long Tail and extend it by applying it to branding. The smart marketing guy is Mohammed Iqbal and the essay is The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication, as found on ChangeThis.

One-hit wonders are not only increasingly rare in this climate of targeted success, aiming for them is the same as denying the tastes of various music fans. We are a culture of choice and highly personal demand. One size does not fit all and this philosophy applies to both your products or service and your brand position.

I recently discovered this in my research for finding a market for a Connecticut coworking space, Group88, that I will help manage in 2008. Some of the area professionals liked the idea of getting out of their home-based office to meet with other folks while others had no need for networking at all (I think there’s always a need for networking but I’m partial to the practice). You can’t be all things to all people so don’t even try. You can, however, choose the primary values of your positioning that appeals to your variety of customers. Using new media channels to test an idea and then kill it or expand it will yield higher results than picking one thing and crossing your fingers that it will stick. Don’t egg your basket - add crates and buckets and other things to put all your eggs into.

Understand that online marketing is both science and art. Here are some specific points of interest for all businesses, whether you are high e-commerce or a brick-and-mortar that needs online presence:

Start Conversations
What type of email is opened the most – newsletters, promotions, ads? None of the above. Emails with the highest open rate are transactional. Confirming sign-ups, receipts for purchase and delivering passwords are considered transactional. While you have these eyeballs at the ready, why not promote something and get them engaged further?

No Dumping
Once you start a conversation, keep it going. If you are going to send people to your website from a direct mail piece or advertising, make sure they find themselves on a landing page or can easily continue the conversation you started. Don’t make them work for something that should be instantly gratifying. If you want to capture their information before they can get what you promised, get their name and email. Later on you can build more information on them.

Connect With Opt-ins Only
The more you send out emails that get hard-bounced, get put on black lists or avoid protocol (such as neglecting to put your company name in the “from” line or not using a dedicated URL in a campaign delivered by a sales management platform), the more you will be seen as less legit by search engines.

Some great resources for email and web marketing include:

Tamara Gielen – I met Tamara at a conference in Miami - she has great info on the latest in email and marketing trends on her blog, Be Relevant! at: http://www.b2bemailmarketing.com

TheEmailWars.com – eROI is a company that is focused on email marketing and this blog is the better of their four. It showcases best and worst examples of email campaigns and creatives.

Jakob Nielsen – the king of online usability, has a great article on “writing articles not blogs”: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html

Bazaarblog – Produced by a marketing firm, this blog has some great info on word-of-mouth strategies, ecommerce strategies and marketing.

Small Stuff – The latest manifesto on ChangeThis talks about “microtrends.” Yes, we all know about the growth of niche and the longtail but this interestingly takes it one step further and suggests that there is a lot of power in 1% that is being overlooked: http://www.changethis.com/38.01.JustOne

Social Networking is Coming For You – Businesses who don’t understand why Facebook and online community building will affect the future, will be left in the dust. Remember the days when email was primarily for chain letters and jokes? Now it’s a marketing tool. Younger generations are building social networking beyond trend and into lifestyle and work function. All the young techies are trying to figure out a catchy Facebook app like this: www.lemonade.com. It may not directly affect your business right now but understanding its impact will keep you open to opportunities when presented.

Word of Mouth – I’ve been a BzzAgent for several years now. As an agent, I spread the word on products and services that I like to friends and family and earn points for spending time talking about other people’s stuff. Recently, they launched the Frog Pond where agents spread the word on websites and online promos. WOM is strategically tricky stuff. I think this avenue will do well with agents like me who live off the laptop: http://www.bzzagent.com/frog/FrogPond.do

Back in “the day” when I was young-er and living in NYC, I was lucky enough to be a part of a group of friends that became like family to me. We were all in our mid to late 20s, making our way together through first career mishaps, crazy bosses, jackass men and a city that wouldn’t let us quit. We’ve all since split and moved to California, Ireland, New Jersey, Staten Island and Connecticut but there was one night in Port Chester, NY that we’ll never forget.

Somehow we fell into partying with this group of guys who were relentless at promoting themselves. This was the early days of mass email and these guys latched on - building lists of people that they could email write-ups about their weekend adventures and announcements about upcoming gatherings. At the time, retro ’70s was huge in NYC so these guys decided to have a Boogie Nights party. For me and my girls, it was like a message from the glittery gods of platform shoes and feathered hair.

We spent HOURS. We shopped out our costumes at Salvation Armies and cheap discount stores, we bought loud make-up and talked endlessly about what look each of us could carry off. The highlight of our make-ready was studying the blue eyeshadow of William H. Macy’s wife in Boogie Nights as she got jiggy with a guy who was not William H. Macy. We actually paused the scene so we could replicate the look. When the pause ended, we rewinded and paused again.

When felt boogied up enough, we jumped on a train out of the city to Port Chester where we anxiously talked about what everyone else would be dressed as or who would be there and how awesome the night ahead was sure to be. It seemed like days since we started getting ready. The time had come to shake it down.

Arriving at the train station, the host picked us up and provided many compliments on our presentation and effort. We didn’t seem to notice that he was sans Boogie Nights apparel. We were dying to jump right into the festivities. Walking into the house, I was pretty sure I could feel my wispy feathered do go limp as we entered into nothing. No balloons. No streamers. No people. Well, there were some people but they were all huddled in a side room watching a football game. Not one of them in polyester or blue eyeshadow.

They didn’t stay in that room long. We had arrived and we were ready to party. It took a while but we got that group off their butts and made a heck of a boogie out of that night. We have the pictures to prove it.

I think the best marketers and business strategists can take a page out of the Boogie Nights’ book. These days, so much effort is spent mapping and measuring and mulling over promotional strategies that will garner X, Y, Z penetration and deliver A, B, C results. We spend more time trying to control the outcome of a product or company than actively living in the goodtimes and pitfalls that happen every day. When you live in the moment, you are agile and aware. You can recognize opportunities that you may have missed by looking at tomorrow.

If my pals and I knew that we’d show up to a blah party that night in Port Chester, we would’ve done something else. But we didn’t. Instead we spent too much money on ourselves, too much paste on our face and too much time giving each other belly laughs. The result wasn’t showing up to a disappointing party. We were the party and, today, friends for life.