As some GOP presidential contenders and their surrogates launched an all out attack on Romney for being immoral in his business practices and out-of-touch with main street voters, his poll numbers plunged. The strategy was effective, at least short-term, on many levels. Romney lost support. The crux of his appeal (the business guy who creates jobs) was attacked at its core. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson cut a $5M check to Gingrich’s PAC Newt Gingrich’s PAC, presumably inspired  by a newly found chink in Mitt Romney’s armor.

Ron Paul has suggested that Republicans tone down the rhetoric and remember their free enterprise roots. Newt Gingrich has signaled that perhaps he went too far but only because the strategy may be painting himself as anti free market not because he thinks the attacks aren’t accurate or deserved. Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman have called on Gingrich and Perry to lay off the attacks out of fear the Republican party will appear as being opposed to capitalism. Yet the pro-Gingrich PAC is moving ahead to air the anti-Romney documentary in South Carolina and Mitt Romney can expect a no-holds-barred strategy on this topic from the Obama campaign machine should he become the Republican nominee.

How does Romney beat the rap that he doesn’t relate to normal people and that he’s just a cold-hearted opportunist? The best thing he can do doesn’t involve his business experience but rather his Mormon faith. The same Mormon faith from which he should shy away, according to conventional political wisdom. Mitt Romney should speak openly about how being a Mormon demonstrates his compassion for and understanding of regular people.

Mitt Romney served for 13 years as an unpaid leader of his local Mormon congregation. For five years he was known as Bishop Romney to a ward (Mormon equivalent of a Catholic parish) of probably 300-500 people. He served for eight years as Stake President, the presiding official, also unpaid, over a group of about one dozen wards. Being a Mormon Bishop is about as humanizing an experience as anyone could have.  I speak on this subject as a lifelong Mormon who has witnessed first hand the functions of Mormon lay clergy. The local leadership structure of the centrally organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is identical worldwide. I’ve had dozens of bishops over the years living in six cities across three U.S. states. I also met several bishops while living in Venezuela for two years. Recently, I worked as a close aide to two bishops, a position that Mormons call Executive Secretary. While all bishops were, of course, as different as you would expect their personalities and life experiences to make them, the functions of Mormon bishops are ubiquitous across time and geography. So I speak with confidence about what Mormon bishops do and, therefore, what Mitt Romney would have experienced as a bishop.

Bishops in the Church are responsible for the spiritual and physical welfare of their flock. Bishop Romney would have been directly involved in providing the poor with assistance in the form of food, paying utility and medical bills or covering their house payments during periods of unemployment or other financial distress. Mormon bishops meet one-on-one with indigent church members and discuss ways the church could help by covering short-term financial needs as part of a plan to work towards self-reliance. In other words, Mitt Romney met privately with poor people, would personally assess their immediate needs and then he would secure food and/or give them a check to help pay the bills. Every bishop I’ve known would also offer encouraging words meant to restore hope. No cameras present. No reporters. Just a man volunteering his time late into the evening and a downtrodden congregant trying to work out a tough situation together. This is the story most Mormons have seen in their bishops.

Romney likely also played the role of marriage counselor, dispute resolver and service project coordinator. Mormon bishops notoriously receive phone calls at work and at all hours during weekends and late into the night whenever a church member is in the hospital, or when someone is suddenly homeless after being evicted from their apartment or when a death has occurred. Romney would have had the responsibility to speak at every funeral, visit every sick person, help every unemployed church member find a job and meet with every teenager around their birthday just to check in. Bishop Romney would have attended weekly Sunday morning church leadership meetings, likely starting around 6:00 am along with other local church leaders where they would talk about how to help specific families and individuals who were struggling.

Up until now, many political pundits familiar with Romney’s pastoral background have said the potential downside for him is too great if the conversation turns to Mitt’s Mormonism. As the Los Angeles times reported, all of this “is something that most Americans would admire,” said David Campbell, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, who is Mormon. “But if he begins to talk about his service, then it would open up all the other questions about his religion.” Romney may need to take his chances that the upside to his Mormon story is now greater than downside risks among evangelicals and liberals who, as groups, view Mormonism negatively. If the key voting block in any general elections, independents, gets turned off by Mitt’s Bain story he’ll need to to show a softer, more compassionate side. The presumptive Republican nominee loses if the focus of the election shifts from a referendum on President Obama and the economy to accusations, however false they may be, of Mitt Romney’s so-called brand of “vulture capitalism.”

Governor Romney recently said that people aren’t voting for a pastor-in-chief. That’s true. Most Americans don’t expect their president to lead the Sunday sermon. But when voters are saturated by the job-killer-in-chief message they might want to hear more about Mitt Romney’s years as the gentle pastor.

Whose fault is it? Doh, it’s mine.

I am glad Lance pointed the spotlight right back at us voters on this major issue. Usually, I believe that the body politic is culpable for many of the ills of its political world. Who else voted these people into office? The demand from constituents for money and services doesn’t balance well with the concern of government overspending. We want everything for nothing.

The currency of politics

That said, I think the solution to this money in politics issue has a lot to do with politicians and less so with voters. Sure, we select the people who govern over us but these officials lack one specific trait that is keeping the money in politics problem from getting solved. They are not willing to fall on their own sword for the good of the whole. Power is the currency of politics. Money is only a means to acquire political power. Politicians who have the political power to effect change in this arena have that power because they are good at getting the money. They’re in a pickle.

Expecting a politician to cut off his or her means for acquiring political power because it would be good for the whole is like expecting Wal-Mart to stop accepting money for purchases in its stores because they’re hurting society with all of that revenue they’re generating. Uhhh…not going to happen. Likewise, when politicians are faced with doing anything that would undermine their power they just can’t do it and expect to stay in the game.

Fall on thy sword

That’s why we should be looking for politicians that truly don’t care about staying in the game. Could Wal-Mart change the world by providing health care benefits to all part-time employees, requiring suppliers to use best green manufacturing practices, forcing China to dramatically improve human rights conditions in order to be a trade and labor partner and paying middle-class wages to all of its employees? Of course it would change the world. The impact would be incredible. Then once they ran through their cash reserves they’d go out of business. President Obama recently told Diane Sawyer that he would “rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” Who knows where he’ll go with that but to me that looks like the beginning of willingness to fall on one’s own sword for the good of the whole. Better to do what is right and lose political currency even if it means leaving the game.

Learned: Slow down to speed up. I’ve learned this before but there must be some loose ends in my memory synapses. I recently made some staffing changes and in my haste to get them rolled out I failed to completely loop in all of the people directly impacted. Now I’m cleaning up my mess. One day slower is sounding pretty good right now.

New: the iPad photo flip orientation is geek candy. The iPad video demos this  at the 3:12 mark. Say you’re looking at a photo and want to show it to a friend in front of you. Just flip the iPad end-over-end so that the display is now facing your friend. The software flips the photo into the right orientation. (Okay, so you could just spin the screen around on a vertical axis but that just isn’t as cool). I’d love to be a fly on a wall in the product development meetings at Apple. “Duuuude, that is sooo cool!”

Fire in the hole…

Something Learned: There are no guarantees in email marketing. Two weeks ago an email send was wildly successful. A week later an email send to the same list doesn’t perform nearly as well. The difference? Email #2 has a subject line that pops and the theme is centered around how to get a $1500 tax credit. Sounds terrible, right? Well, there’s a fine line between an email subject line that grabs attention and one that gets  an eye-roll and marked as junk by users. I’m returning to useful content and away from salesy marketing speak. Lesson learned email world.

Something New: LinkTrust has a per-call tracking feature on their affiliate management platform. This was news to me even if it isn’t new. What isn’t news or new is that pay-per-call served online will be a huge growth area for local advertising. Online marketers have scale and reach, consumers want to qualify and then connect directly with providers and SMBs want their phone to ring.

HelpHive is a home services professionals referral network for consumers. They incorporate standard directory-style features like business profiles, ratings, reviews, etc. But the unique feature is that community members can see if people they trust in the community have referred home service pros like plumbers and painters. It’s great know that a roofing contractor has 4.4 stars. It’s even better to know that a co-worker and a cousin recommend him.

Ideas4All says they are building the global brain. Users post ideas and problems and on which community members can vote (good/bad) and collaborate.

PolicyPitch is kind of like the Ideas4All for the world of public policy and grassroots organizations. Local policies and ideas are voted and commented on. Users then use the site to share their idea with their network, raise money and manage volunteers and campaigns.

Yext is a directory of SMB’s. Nothing new there. Their innovation targets the businesses advertising on Yext and its distribution partners. Yext has pay-per-action platform where phone calls from consumers are recorded, transcribed, analyzed and then delivered to the Yext advertiser’s inbox. The advertiser only pays for calls that the platform determines to be relevant. Yext’s Co-Founder and CEO recently presented recently at TechCrunch50.

MeritBuilder is coming out of obscurity at a good time for job seekers. At MeritBuilder users can manage their personal brand by sending and receiving kudos and logging professional accomplishments. The result is portable personal brand that you can share with prospective employers or new bosses. A leg up in this tough job market should be well received.

It has been things like bringing on big clients with big coverage and big budgets; innovation that leverages existing deal flow and existing clients to repackage products or create new ones; landing page optimization/testing; etc.

The common denominator has been utilizing what we have. I’m becoming a big believer in the power of looking for the gold nuggets that are already within reach. Rather than building a dam, diverting water to a potential gold field and panning for a few precious flakes.

I know my neighborhood pretty well and I keep finding gold in my backyard. I’m sticking close to home.

2. Don’t delegate the delivery of bad news. The best way to communicate that you understand that you’re giving bad news is to do it yourself. If you’re not there, something else is more important. Similarly, don’t minimize the impact bad news has on people. You may have worked through all the business justifications in your head and on your spreadsheet but that doesn’t make the bad news suck any less for the people receiving it.

3. Ask people to sacrifice. It’s inspiring to see people rally around a common cause. When everybody is sharing the burden (i.e. pay cuts across the board) the coming-togetherness will happen (that is, unless, your employees don’t like you or their jobs – see #5).

4. Get back to work. If you’re a good leader most people will follow your example. Our mothers were right; an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Get busy and get your teams busy – you and they will feel better.

5. Be a good leader before you need to be a good leader. Treating people with respect, being transparent, being the example, being consistent…all the hallmarks of good leadership will pay you back in spades when it’s crunch time and you need the team on your side. You REALLY need your team with you when times are tough. Anybody could make money when the economy was on steroids – even bosses who had employees who loathed them. Try hitting a homerun because the economy sucks and you have to when your employees don’t like working for you. Just like you should save money for a rainy day, good leaders are good in the up times so that they can be good in bad times too.

I was skeptical of how much I would enjoy a full day of lock, stock commercialism at SeaWorld. Watching my son grin ear-to-ear as he saw sea turtles for the first time or when he played in the water fountain and kept screaming repeatedly out of excitement…that was a lot of fun.

My favorite post so far is about an article entitled “12 Ways SEO is Like Bacon.” Where else will I find multiple loves of my life?

1. Married.
2. Tickets to the Obama swearing in ceremony (That just happened yesterday – the getting part, that is. The asking happened a few days after the election. The waiting part happened in between).
3. A raise (There was a lot of working hard that happened before this one. I didn’t mosey into my boss’s office, kick up my feet and say “Hey, times are tough at home. I need more money.” I’ve been on the receiving end of that rationale before believe it or not).
4. The biggest sale I’ve ever closed.
5. The smallest sale I’ve ever closed.
6. Every sale in between.
7. Every sale I’ll ever close in the future.
8. Married. (moved to #1 after feedback from my wife).
9. A killer upgrade at the THE Hotel at Mandalay Bay.
10. A spot as a columnist in a local business periodical.
11. A big partnership after getting flat out rejected several times.
12. A lower interest rate on my mortgage.