Ok, that’s not true. You can’t really buy a true following of fans, tribe members…whatever you want to call them. Followers can be enticed but they can’t be bought. There’s a really, really normal guy named Jon Acuff who has a killer job working for Dave Ramsey, writes great books and has about 15,000 fans on Facebook. For the record he walked by me a few weeks ago when I was in Nashville at Ramsey headquarters but I’ve never talked to the guy. Anyway, Jon is a really, really normal guy. He’s got gifts for sure but he’s a normal guy. So what makes Jon Acuff so freakin’ special that he’s got 15k fans on Facebook, has three books and a dream job at Ramsey?

Jon ships. Yup. Jon makes stuff like blog posts, videos on YouTube and books. Jon also makes change by using social media and he talks about it in this video.

I invited Jon to be on my Linchpin Podcast and I hope he can make it because he creates things. He doesn’t wait for permission. He takes initiative. Jon inspires me because he didn’t buy his following, he earned it.

You can’t buy a following but you can care. You can add your gifts to the world. I’m inspired by Jon but not in the way I’m inspired by a movie. I get inspired by movies but then I don’t do jack. Thanks for being normal and for being special and for creating things that matter. I’m doing the same in part b/c of other “normal” guys like you.