Remarkablogger is only one year old. Last year, at the beginning of 2008, I rebranded this gig as Remarkablogger. That’s when I got serious and stuck with it. A year later, people talk about me in the same breath as Darren, Chris, or Brian (though I do not hold a candle to any of them). I don’t say that to brag, but to teach.

If I can do it, and do it in a highly competitive field, then you can, too. One of my favorite sayings is that we all start at the same place: the beginnning. What we do with ourselves is up to us. We decide we’re going to learn, to practice, to plan, to execute, to use our imagination, to get back up after we fall, and to stay the course. I can write all the blog posts I want. I can say do this, do that, but if you don’t decide for yourself ahead of time that you’re going to do these things, it doesn’t matter what I say.

Have you ever noticed how some people can take any kind of “system” or program designed to show how to improve business or marketing and make it work for them, while others can’t succeed no matter what kind of help they get? I think you know where I’m going with this: it doesn’t have jack to do with the “system”. Don’t get me wrong, good help is good help, and I plan on creating my share of it, but good help in the face of a bad attitude is pearls before swine.

The internet marketing system that succeeds or fails is the one between your ears.

There are great coaches, and millions of people love basketball. Only a tiny handful of them will ever play for the NBA. What is the difference between those that make it and the rest? Nothing that isn’t under the control of every person who can walk and dribble a ball.

I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.

~ Michael Jordan

The difference is what it takes to be able to fail over and over and over and freakin’ over again… until you succeed.

We watch TV shows and movies all the time where the hero never gives up and wins the day. We cheer and live through the hero vicariously, and then in our real lives, we give up at the first sign of adversity. We take one approach to a problem and then give up when it doesn’t work. We don’t deliberately exercise our imaginations. We aren’t willing to spend money to make money because we already believe we’re going to fail. We don’t try to figure out our own shortcomings and strengths and try to work around them or through them.

And then we think some guy with a few thousand subscribers on a blog is somehow just lucky or somehow, magically, in a different class than we are.

Guess what? This year, you will have the best excuse ever to fail: recession! You be my guest. I’m going to have my best year ever, and so are my clients and my friends. 2009 is going to be my year.

It can be a great year for you, too. There are two sides to the game: there’s the inner game, and the outer game. If you don’t get your inner game right, your outer game will consist of hollow tactics with no soul. They will crumble and fall apart in your hands even as you try to build with them. You’ve got to take care of the “inner blogger” before the “outer blogger” will succeed.

Now is the time. 2009 is the year to make it happen. You will always wish you had started sooner, so begin now. Stay with me in 2009–I got some good stuff coming. Addressing the “inner blogger” is only part of it.

Happy New Year!