Hey Matt -

I'm really glad the pep talk phone call made a difference.  I received a similar type chat with Sugar Rae at ses nyc before venturing on my own.

Some of the other best advice I've received included:

"they want to hear what you have to say - they want you to succeed" (in regards to speaking on seo from Jeff Liebert aka webwork at wmw)

"the older the link the sweeter the juice" - jim b.

'...conditional redirects..." - greg b and dax

'google is not the government...' michael g

I'm sure there's a whole bunch more from many of the really good folks in our industry.

I would also put in a second vote for "do it effing now"...really great inspirational (and very true) post.

I didn't honestly read more much more than the title, and sub-headings, but it makes me very sad when seo and criminal are even in the same sentence, let alone when I know two of the people in the body of the article to be people I would trust very very much to make good life decisions.  I think allowing seo and criminal to appear in the same sentence, is the essence of why seo has always had a marketing problem.

It's discsussions like this, why I decided it was probably best if I didn't write things for the "seo community" much anymore.  Topics like this really make me want to rebrand "what I do", even though I've always been PROUD to be an seo (little less so, when I read things like this).