I rarely - hmm, now that I ponder I do believe I have never - actually posted a blog post about well a blog post. But this one my friends was just too darn good and inspiring not to share. “Why Every Monday Matters” appeared this morning (a Monday of course) on Fast Company’s website.

Written by Shawn Parr, CEO of San-Diego based Bulldog Drummond, the heartbeat of the post was a recap of an interview with Matt Emerzian, co-founder and co-author of Every Monday Matters - 52 Ways to Make a Significant Difference. The mission of Every Monday Matters (EMM) is to communicate that it is the plain, simple, ordinary individual — either acting alone or together with others — who can change the world.

Primarily through grassroots efforts, K-12 educational curriculum and Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Engagement initiatives, EMM promotes the fact that people have the power. People matter.

The one comment that Matt made that really resonated with me: ”If you want to feel better about yourself and your life, stop focusing on yourself.” He also shared some excellent advice for anyone wanting to start a new business:

For me it is all about passion. I have a passion that burns inside of me so bright that it has allowed me to get through things I never thought I could do. Even with all of my education, my MBA and my work experience, it seems like nothing really prepared me for the ride I have been on. The learning curve has been steep at every corner and it is only through my passion, and the passion of an amazing team of people, that has allowed us to do it. So, if you don’t have passion for your idea, don’t even start it— just walk away.

Click here to read the entire Why Every Monday Matters blog post — particularly if your Monday has not gotten off to a fabulous start. Make your Monday matter mates. And, enjoy the post.

I had to put on my big girl panties today, suck it up and make a very difficult decision. I was asked to be a business coach for a nonprofit participating in the Social Enterprise Venture Competition hosted by Academies for Social Entrepreneurship. As a mentor, you are asked to coach one organization in the preparation required to deliver an Angel-style screening presentation.

Being a competitive Martin — one has to be most competitive when one of 6 successful children — I was convinced that the lucky nonprofit that I would mentor would of course take the big prize and get the $50K in seed money to start their social enterprise. Yip, I was excited!

My challenge today was that I had clients who needed to be taken care of before I darted off tomorrow to visit with other clients in Maui and New York – you see, my personal philosophy is, to be a blazingly successful marketing consultant, you must always exceed client expectations – and I knew that if I went to the 3 hour orientation this afternoon in the OC, I would not be putting them first. So with a very heavy heart, I informed the wonderful lady, Betsy Densmore, who founded the Academies for Social Entrepreneurship, that I would not be able to take part in her amazing program. The timing simply wasn’t right.

I’m a huge believer in giving back and indeed am starting my own nonprofit, Hope Xchange, to do just that. Like a couple of other like-minded gals at Cause Communications and Conscious Capital, I am now donating part of my consulting profits to get Hope Xchange up and running because I want to do something with my life that outlasts it. Don’t we all?

I did feel a wee bit better about this decision, albeit not much, when I decided to post front and center on my home page this morning the following:

Before we get down to business, first things first. Let’s take a moment to focus on making notorious war criminal, Joseph Kony, famous before we switch gears and make ourselves and our businesses famous. Please consider joining me and hundreds (and, hopefully soon, millions) of other people around the world to make him more famous than Angelina Jolie in 2012, specifically on April 20.

If you believe as I do that young children should not be kidnapped, given a gun, forced to murder their own families and to mutiliate their own people, please join me at Kony 2012 and do what you can to help bring justice for our invisible children. And, if you haven’t already done so, please take 30 minutes out and watch the Kony 2012 Youtube Video. I know we are all busy but after watching this video I think you will understand why I feel so passionately that addressing this global crisis must simply be our first priority and must simply come first.

Ok, let’s now switch gears and get back to the matter at hand and why you are visiting my website: let’s talk about your business, best practices for building a sound and sustainable online marketing foundation to elevate your brand and to increase your revenue by relevance (which is also relevant to me because the more we make, the more we can give back).

Here’s the conflict – how do you balance your desire to give back with your desire to be a successful consultant? When you find yourselves in pickles like this, what do you do?