“Do you think I’m weird?”
“Definitely.”
“No, man, seriously. Am I weird?”
“Yeah, but so what. Everybody’s weird.” – Stand by Me
Life.
You’re late for work one day. Your car breaks down. You get fired. You find unexpected money somewhere. Someone surprises you with a gift. You surprise yourself with your own integrity. You stand up for a weakling. You get punched in the face in front of thousands of people, maybe even for standing up for a weakling. You make a great new friend. You lose a friend. You fall in love. You get dumped flat out. You discover a new author that changes your world. You discover you can actually cook. You enjoy a long span of great health and vitality. You puke your guts out. You get really hungover and vow to never drink again. You drink again. You take your first vacation in years and end up wishing you were back at home, being productive. A secret admirer leaves flowers on your doorstep.
Life.
Don’t think too hard about it. You can drive yourself nuts and get awfully introverted trying to find why these particular bells are tolling for you.
Funny thing is, I’m not so sure there’s anything profound to figure out anyway.
These are the rewards and payments for living life.
Play hard. Get hurt. Fall in love and get your heart broken. Make some money with your own good work. Take a chance and fail. Be ethical, even when it’s uncool and people call you “sissypants.”
You’re alive.
Consulting Case Study: How $19,000 becomes invisible
Question: If you were about to flush $19,000 down the drain, would you know it?
The question up there is a serious one. If there were a division of your company that brought in roughly $19,000 a month, would you keep it going? Shut it down? Would you even know it was pulling in that amount of money?
I would hope so, but on a recent consult I found the same old huge glaring omission that I find with pretty much any individual or business person I talk to. I tell you, I’m about to hire a guy to carve these into stone tablets for me. Or one of those chainsaw artists. He can carve up my couch to read:
- Some people have no clue how their business is really doing.
- Some people have no clue how to keep and use stats.
- Usually these are the same people.
Stats? We don’t need no stinking stats!
I can tell you from first-hand experience exactly what happens pretty much any time you ask an individual or business person for his stats.
“Show me your stats, please,” you say.
“….,” says the guy.
“You know,” you say again, after a long pause, “statistics.”
“Statistics?” says the guy.
“Yeah, stats you know. Up. Down. Sideways. Graph paper sort of thing.”
“Oh, yeah. We don’t really have time for that here,” he says, all puffed up with pride.
“Totally,” you say, “I understand. Must be pretty time consuming walking around with that paper bag over your head.”
Read the rest →
Disclaimer: The next sentence contains the “f” word.
This post is fucking brilliant.
There is a gigantic and almost universal mistake being made by salesmen, website owners, bloggers, ad men, affiliate marketers and probably even vegetables and fish. It’s going on right now in the world of business.
Here’s a little scenario. At the end of it is a question which you should answer as honestly as possible because it highlights this common confusion.
Scenario: You’re a coffee salesman and you sell the best coffee ever. Gandhi himself drinks urns of it, and even the Anti-Coffee Coalition gave you a testimonial that reads, “Coffee is the fruit of Satan’s loins, but damn this is good stuff!”
Now, there’s a dude named Biff. He looooves coffee. He lives on the other side of the world from you, has never heard of you, doesn’t know you have a website, doesn’t know you sell coffee, doesn’t know your phone number and doesn’t care because he gets his coffee fix from the cafe down the street.
Now here’s the question:
Is Biff your potential customer?
Read the rest →
Promote : to help or encourage to exist or flourish
When you think of promotion do you automatically start thinking about advertising, posters or banner ads? Perhaps you think of sending out 1,000 pieces of direct mail or physically knocking on doors. Or maybe that hairy naked dude who stands on the street corner downtown talking religion.
Those things are promotion in a sense, yes, but that’s also sort of a shallow view of it and lacks an incredibly important element. And this element, let me tell you, can make you sick amounts of money and teach you that promotion can be done anywhere and always. Actually, scratch that “can”. You ARE engaged in promoting always and everywhere.
Promotion is making something known AND well thought of.
People tend to think promotion is just getting the word out, but is not enough. The word has to be acting to your benefit.
Promotion has to further your cause, not just garner attention. Any freak can get in the newspaper, but not every freak is doing real promotion.
Read the rest →
“Thanks for the offer, but I really just want to make it on my own steam.”
Have you ever heard that one before?
Better yet, have you ever felt like that or maybe even said it yourself? Ever feel that maybe you’d be abusing a relationship if you used it for a business connection?
It’s time to disabuse ourselves of this idea.
I say milk every connection, every network and every opportunity that comes your way.
You have to pay your dues.
This is true. Honestly, I think it is, and you’ll see what I mean in a sec. I’m not just trying to contradict myself.
The thing is that the cliche is not even slightly applicable when you’re confronted with the opportunity to network and really use your connections. People who think you’re taking the easy way out or having life handed to you are missing one very vital truth:
Paying your dues is done way before opportunity starts knocking or people take notice of you.
Read the rest →
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Finally...a book on freelancing that's not just about taxes, client acquisition and time management.