I’m developed like film, yo
Life has been frustrating lately. You’ll know that if you read my rant. (And by “you,” I also mean my closest friends and family, because I apparently forgot that this blog auto-posts to my personal Facebook profile. Nothing like all of your buddies knowing your darkest financial secrets.)
But things could be a lot worse than “frustrating.” The definition of “frustration” that I’m using here is wanting something that hasn’t happened yet. YET. That implies that it’s coming, but it’s taking its sweet-ass time. Probably checking the coin slots of vending machines for loose change and playing Rack-O with my grandmother, who I call “D.D.” Which is actually pretty cool of it, because D.D. is a hell of a lot of fun and I’m not able to get out to California to play Rack-O with her as much as I’d like.
But yeah, remember that “yet.” And you may have a “yet” too, if you’re feeling frustrated. It’s good to keep that in mind.
Honestly, this is a pretty cool time for me. Because of the impending “yet.”
I’ve got the whole IttyBiz thing going on (there will be a second post and video posted over there later today, by the way — check that out fo sho), and I’ll be chatting this afternoon with someone else (I don’t know if I’m allowed to mention who) that I’m very excited about meeting. And I’ve got this group of informal mentors who keep advising me to do things that, so far, have not resulted in bodily harm. It’s pretty cool.
It’s as if I was lying in pieces somewhere and this team of people came up and started kicking at me thoughtfully, and then they were all like, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology” and so then they used internet ninja superpowers to turn me into Steve Austin and now every time I go anywhere, I make this loud sound effect that’s like B-B-B-B-B-B-BWAAAAAAAAA or something, except when you hear it in your head, think robot rather than sheep, even though the line between the two is a thin one.
So, during all of this, I approached Tim Brownson because when you’re frustrated and feeling like the Six Million Dollar Man, it’s best to seek out an English guy. As a bonus, it turns out that Tim is a life coach. Seemingly a pretty good one.
“Tim,” I wrote. “I’m feeling really bogged down lately. I have a thousand things to do, I’m mad, I’m frustrated, sometimes I’m scared, and I think you’re the guy to help me. Let’s talk regularly for long periods of time and you can help me solve some of my challenges. Oh, except that I don’t want to pay you.”
And he was like, “Did you actually write that to me, or are you just making it up as you write this blog post?”
And I was like, “I’m totally just making it up right now. It frees me from having to be accurate. I can even make you say ‘poppycock’ if I want to. I’m that powerful.”
And he was like, “I never say ‘poppycock.’ ”
And I was like, “HAHAHAHAHAHA FUCKER.”
Honestly, though, we worked this thing out where I’m going to write a bit about what we’re doing and he’s going to help me get a little bit of perspective and maybe reprogram some of the bad connections I’ve made in my head. I don’t have a lot to say about it yet because we’ve just started, but I will say I’m excited. I like being coached. I believe in it.
I have some homework to do for Tim today. It’s a bit of values work. I’m supposed to indicate some of my core values (things I want), which are absolutely going to include “freedom” and “peace.” Then I’m supposed to pick some of my “away” values (things I don’t want), which are things like “couscous” and “Paula Abdul.”
“Tim,” I said. “I have a million things to do, and you’re giving me homework. I don’t have time to do all of this.”
And he’s like, “It’s not true that you don’t have the time. Anything you think you don’t have the time for, you’re choosing not to make a priority.”
And I’m like, “Don’t make me make you say ‘poppycock’ again.”
But I’ll make it a priority. It’s not really going to take me long to do, and it’s totally going to be worth it because I need the clarity like Jewel needs new teeth.
So, see? It’s already working.
Honestly, I’m really into self-development stuff. I’ve listened to a billion motivational speakers’ programs. I’ve done quite a bit with the Sedona Method, which I wholeheartedly recommend because it’s a great on-the-spot method of quickly getting rid of negative emotion NOW, right in the moment. I even saw Tony Robbins live, and was surprised to find out that Tony swears now. It’s strange. You see that giant head and those giant teeth and you think it’s going to be like getting cheerleading lessons from a 7-foot Boy Scout (do I smell a chance to say WEBELOS again?), but then he says “shit” and you’re like, “Did Tony Robbins just say ’shit?’ ” and then maybe if you’re shrewd, you realize that Tony is doing one of those “pattern interrupt” things to jar you out of your preconceptions, and then you start to realize that anything goes in a pattern interrupt situation and you maybe get a little scared, and then you’re like, “Did Tony Robbins just say, ‘Eat babies?’ ” and the person next to you says, “No, he said, ‘Who’s from Chicago?’ ” but you’re freaked out enough that you’re like B-B-B-B-B-B-BWAAAAAAAAA time to see who’s in Conference Room B.
Next up: I bought one of those Bluetooth headsets for my cell phone because I want to use my cell as my main office phone, and I suspect that I look like a douchebag when I’m wearing it. I’ll be talking to Tim on Tuesday. I really need to ask about that.
P.S: This guy started following me on Twitter just after I posted my Douchebag Marketing post. What does it mean, universe?
I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!
Man, folks, I’m so sorry to follow up one serious post with a second serious post. I swear I’ll be funnier next time. But I promised that I was going to come out from behind the curtain a bit and act like a real person. I promised I would say what’s on my mind.
And the fact is that right now I am so incredibly pissed off, and afraid, and generally on the edge of my seat because I feel like something is supposed to happen — is in fact overdue to happen — but it just won’t. I’m so frustrated.
Let me tell you my deep, dark secret.
I am in such an incredibly shitty financial situation right now. It’s like a bottomless pit, and the only way out of it is to become exactly the person I’m supposed to be in the first place. Which is ironic, and appropriate, and really irritating because it’s just not happening. Or rather, it’s happening, but too slowly. Or rather, maybe it’s happening pretty quickly, but I just don’t know because the whole “becoming” process is still very young.
But the point is that every month I pay the bills, and every month I scrap for jobs doing stuff I don’t even like doing (okay, don’t get me wrong… it’s good work, but it’s not what I’m supposed to be doing) and every month I have this giant monster at my heels that demands this huge sum of money in addition to the regular bills.
Called real estate.
I own a bunch of real estate in Cleveland. It’s not bad for what it is (which is “Cleveland real estate”), but I bought it for too much and bought it too fast then the market fell like a brick and I’ve got all of this shit that keeps being vacant and keeps needing repairs and keeps scaring the living shit out of me. Every month, I have to write a check to cover the shortfall. Never do the rents totally cover the expenses. I can’t sell it right now, and some of it I’d have to pay to get rid of. I feel like I got screwed by a fast-talking agent, but who signed the paperwork? Me, that’s who.
I got myself into this, and the only way out is to become the writer I always said I’d become. Really.
And a little bit of backstory on that:
Nine years ago, working a job that was stealing my soul, I started having panic attacks. While I was in the midst of what used to be the most frightening months of my life, I started writing a novel about the college life I had been missing. It was called The Bialy Pimps and was about a revolt in a bagel deli. (You know, something we can all relate to. And by the way, a “bialy” is a type of bagel.)
This never did get published. I want to publish it still someday, but for now, I just sort of “have it.” (It’s actually still awesome. I just read some of it yesterday and laughed my ass off.)
But anyway, while I was writing it, I thought, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing.” My dad played psychologist and told me that great art comes from pain. I don’t know if my novel was great art, but it was pretty fucking funny and was born during a lot of pain.
I finished the book. Got out of the job. And then, I couldn’t write anymore. Seriously; I tried several more times to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING creative. Short stories. Countless attempts at second novels. Nothing would come, because I had gotten comfortable in a new routine, writing nonfiction magazine articles and building websites. My dad kept bothering me to keep trying to write. I tried but couldn’t. Eventually I gave up.
And I had been so certain I was supposed to be a writer. I had it all figured out; I would picture it in my head and think of how my days would go and it all felt so right. It would be so, so awesome. There was this shitty little TV show on at the time that nobody saw and that only lasted like three episodes called Stark Raving Mad. It starred Tony Shaloub as an obsessive-compulsive writer (maybe it was the inspiration for Monk?) and there was this one episode where his assistant or whoever screwed up his OCD routine and he was like “NO, first I get the paper THEN I buy my muffin THEN a cup of coffee THEN I lick the lamppost and THEN I write” or some shit. And it’s not like I’m all OCD but it struck something in me and I thought, “I could see myself having that routine. Minus the lamppost.”
But, no. The creative writing wouldn’t come. I kept writing articles and building websites.
Then I bought this real estate. Then it got bad. Then worse. And then the economy collapsed. This fucking economy that I keep trying to tell myself doesn’t need to be happening happened, and things got a LOT worse.
I remember sitting in the same chair I’m sitting in now, and it’s not like I’m all religious, but I do believe in God, and I said, “What should I do?” Not like a plea of desperation or whatever but like maybe he’d give me a nudge. And what came into my mind was this: I realized I had all of these old newsletters I used to email out that were just sitting there, and I realized that I had the novel, and it was like, “I should start a blog. I should try to make a living selling and using what I have.”
That was about six months ago. I’ve got some readers, and it’s cool, and I’m making connections, and that’s cool. But I still don’t make money being Johnny B. online, and still I do these websites and I still write magazine articles, and every month I fight to make enough money doing it… and every month, I have to write that fucking check for my failing real estate empire. And it’s often a large check.
And then I panic for a while.
I was paying the bills today and something snapped. It dawned on me that I’ve had it. That I’m not going to take it anymore. It dawned on me that I’m so tired, so terribly, terribly tired. I’m tired of being afraid. I’m tired of worrying all the time. I’m tired of doing my regular job and prospecting for even more regular job work as well as writing this blog and trying to make money online and trying to network and be funny and wait for something to go, and work and work and work, and worry and worry and worry.
I’m not despairing here. I don’t do despair, or at least, I don’t do it for long. I get pissed. And right now, I’m so pissed that it has to be this way. I’m so, so pissed at this current situation and am going to find a way to change it if it kills me. I’m going to find a way to be the writer I’m supposed to be, making my living being funny and interesting and creative. I’m going to do it, somehow, some way… and I’m going to do it so well that I’m going to buy my way out of this mess I’m in.
I’m so, so mad.
I fucking hate real estate. HATE it. Eventually I’ll write a book that they’ll stock next to Robert Kiyosaki’s books, and it will be called Why Real Estate is a Big Fat Ugly Whore That Should Be Beaten With a Club and the subhead will be Not That Whores Should Be Beaten With Clubs, but Real Estate is Such a Giant Whore That I’ll Make an Exception, and Also it Should be Drowned in Lye.
I hate being afraid to get the mail. I hate seeing email from certain people (property managers, insurance people) and being afraid to open it. I hate that I’m nervous when my wife goes downstairs into her office because that’s where she does the paperwork and pays the business bills. I hate these stupid little Post-Its she sticks on things to tell me how much extra money the fucking real estate business needs this month. I hate thinking about houses. I hate thinking about taxes, bills, money in general; I hate it when I see a real estate book on my shelf and I hate how I cringe when I’m playing this Bingo-like game with my son and the “house” tile comes up. I hate envelopes in the mail, and particularly the ripping sound of mail being opened. I hate credit cards, lines of credits, and banks. I hate this pile of shit on my floor that I’m supposed to get around to handling. I hate the city offices, the water department, the electric company… all of it.
I hate that my solution so far is to go out and stump for more of this work that I don’t want to do. I hate that to solve the problem in the short term, I seek more of what I shouldn’t be doing with my life.
I hate going in to see my kids at night and feeling bad when I see them lying peacefully asleep, because I worry every day that it’s all going to fall apart.
I HATE IT. I HATE FEELING LIKE A VICTIM.
And I know I’m not the only one. I think this is the emotion of the times: Fear. Like a giant test of faith. Like something that will serve us if we can just heed its message and act. If we’ll just take this fucking economy by the balls and say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
This is all a very long-winded way of saying that this is WHY I’m working with Naomi of IttyBiz. Because halfway through writing this post, I realized that it sounded familiar.
It sounded like her page about Online Business School. Which was my very, very first contact with Naomi. Someone (I think it might have been @kt_writes on Twitter? Not sure) linked to that page and said, “I’m not ashamed to say this made me cry.” So I read it. And became an IttyBiz fan. And bought the Online Business School product. And am using it now. And you will watch me as I use it, which is the reason for all of this recent turbulence around here.
Somehow, some way, I’m going to make my living writing and doing fun shit online. Because I’m too mad to let anything else continue.
Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you’re mad. If so, I feel your pain – oh, do I feel it. Maybe you’ll try to do what I’m doing. Maybe you’ll follow along, and we’ll see just how well that Online Business School really works.
Again, sorry for the rant. Funny next time.
Heeeeere’s Johnny!
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Johnny B. Truant.
Yeah, yeah, you’re saying. You already know me. Well, that’s what I thought, too, but it’s not the truth. The truth is that you don’t actually know me if you only know me through this blog. What you read here is a mere slice of my full personality. What you know is a selective character sketch. What you know, honestly but unintentionally, has become a persona.
You don’t actually know Johnny. You know “blog Johnny.”
See, I always wanted to be funny. So I tried to be funny as I wrote this blog, and I think I often succeeded. But in trying to be funny all the time, I pretended that certain things in my life didn’t exist. For instance, blog Johnny was far too flippant to worry about things. Blog Johnny couldn’t be sensitive or introspective. Blog Johnny couldn’t run a business, because business isn’t usually very funny unless it’s a weasel importing business, and even then it’s only funny if they wear little outfits. No, none of this fit blog Johnny. And it didn’t fit the site.
Well, the time has come for you to meet the real Johnny, with all of his many facets. I promise he will still be funny.
(By the way, don’t worry. I still plan to write mainly about dumb stories and dick jokes. But I’d also like permission to acknowledge that I am indeed a real person with a full life, rather than just the funny guy who exists for the length of time it takes you to read one of my off-the-wall posts.)
So today, I’m taking the apple off … except that I’m going to keep the avatar in the long run because I like it too much to give it up permanently. Kindly ignore the mixed signals.
So here are some things you might not know about me:
• I work as a freelance magazine writer and website developer. It’s a good job and has many great advantages over a normal job, but it’s not what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.
• I’m a type 1 diabetic and have been since 13 days before my 13th birthday. It’s an affliction that doesn’t affect me in the least other than the ritual it requires.
• I’m a very serious weightlifter. This plus the point above makes for an interesting combination, because most people expect a diabetic to be somehow feeble or tentative. I’m neither. I hate when people make excuses, so I don’t either.
• I’m also pretty entrepreneurial. If I were to put my goals in a nutshell, I want to be a funny writer as my sole occupation while increasing my standard of living. That either means I have to turn “funny writer” into a profitable occupation or make enough money in a different non-time-consuming way to allow me to be that funny writer for free.
That last one is actually a pretty central thing in my life right now, and it consumes what feels like 90% of my thoughts.
Ah. The key point emerges. At this point, you should hop over to IttyBiz and read today’s post, which I wrote, to see where this is going. Go ahead. I’ll wait here while you read it.
—
See, I kept wondering: Can Johnny B. Truant blog for IttyBiz about learning to make money online? Will doing so confuse his brand as a mindlessly funny guy? I mean, there are funny sports guys. Is it possible to be a funny business guy? A guy who also writes about his kids, his college roommates, his foibles learning German, and his fights with other bloggers?
Is it possible to learn, grow, and develop personally… and still get people leaving comments saying that they spit coffee on their keyboards while reading?
I don’t know. We’ll find out.
To bring this full circle, check out my new About page and let me know what you think. I’m making this up as I go along, and I think it will be good, but I don’t know. See, Naomi pointed out something interesting to me. My site is called “The Economy Isn’t Happening.” I chose that name because I wanted to stop thinking about the economy, which was on everyone’s mind, and stick my head in the sand with some laughter instead. But it sort of fits with the IttyBiz project too, doesn’t it? Like, maybe it also means that you can make your own economy? That the bad economy doesn’t have to be happening for you, either, if you make a serious effort to invest in yourself and take the world by the nuts?
Meh. It’s way to early for me to start getting all philosophical. I’m going to go think up some fart jokes and stories about monkeys. Monkeys are fucking hilarious.
Douchebag marketing
EDITOR’S NOTE (That’s me. Sometimes I call my self “Editor” or “Fluffy”): This was originally intended to be a guest post on IttyBiz, but it is no longer needed there for a reason that is actually incredibly awesome but which I’m not going to tell you about yet. But I still think it’s pretty funny, so I’m offering it to you as a bonus.
The people who read my blog — and there are at least two of them, and I have a suspicion that neither are my parents — know me as a lot of things. They know me as a guy who’s a bit off the wall. They know me as an irresponsible dickhead who refuses to watch the news. For a while, they knew me as Robert Goulet. What those people don’t know me as — and this is a bit of a shame, really — is a marketing genius.
This is somewhat due to the fact that I underplay the business aspect of the Johnny B. Truant empire.
But it is mainly due to the fact that I am not a marketing genius.
The truth? I don’t know what the hell I’m doing most of the time. I go to IttyBiz and Marcia Hoeck for my marketing, and I have the instructions of a few mentors who either feel sorry for me or are trying to sabotage me or both. I don’t have a plan. I just sort of try to be funny and hope that people will come running toward me with stacks of money in their hands. But so far, this has only happened once or twice.
And all of this despite the fact that my own mother is in fact the marketing genius that I am not. When I used to go out for the night, she’d tell me, “Be home by midnight, drive carefully, and mind the integrity of your brand. And whatever you do, don’t use Brush Script when you’re spec’ing fonts.”
But how do you market “being funny”? That’s my constant quandary. Do I have a value proposition? And if so, how do I sell it? I sort of have a value proposition. If I’m competent, I make you laugh. That way, you’re happy when you go elsewhere and buy Cheetos and beer.
So I decided to outline an action plan.
1. Package funny into a product.
I took a bunch of my material, made it super-awesome (and that’s EVEN MORE super-awesome than it already was, if you can imagine that) and made it into a book. I put one of my dogs on the cover. My dogs are both hilarious, so I chose the one that bit my friend Gretchen. I did this even though I knew this would mean the loss of at least one sale (to Gretchen) and possibly more (to her fan club and/or lawyers).
2. Offer this product for sale.
3. ?
4. Profit.
Unfortunately, this didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I am able to keep up with the volume of orders I receive. I do not yet own a Hummer. I haven’t been on Oprah even ONCE.
After a fair amount of introspection and booze (just kidding — I barely drink; it was actually introspection and horse tranquilizers), I decided to add even more depth to step 3 above.
Agents.
I already knew all about querying, which is the process of sending letters to literary agents so that they’ll send you a rejection letter. I’d done it circa 1999, when I wrote a novel that the back of my closet is currently reading and laughing its ass off at. So I asked for some referrals, and several very funny people gave me the names of agents that they probably don’t know at all, and actually just pulled from a hat to fuck with me.
To round things out, I did some research on my own. People tell me I’m kind of like David Sedaris, if David Sedaris were taller, straight, offended by the Jonas Brothers, and lived in Ohio. So I Googled “David Sedaris agent” and discovered that he’s represented by the Steven Barclay Agency. So I added them to my list.
“Dear Agent,” I wrote. “I am funny. Please give me a lot of phat cash so that I can stop writing about human resources and buy an iced-out grill with which to woo slutty bitches.”
Xerox. Stamp. Mail. Celebratory latte.
Life went on. I continued the casual marketing strategy I already had in place, which consisted of writing my blog, posting it to Facebook, and shooting out Mitch-Hedburg-like lines (and occasionally just Mitch Hedburg lines) on Twitter. Two weeks later, the Steven Barclay Agency was the first to respond.
I eagerly opened the letter and read:
Rejection. Again. And for no tangible reason whatsoever. My dislike for agency return addresses came back, refreshing repressed memories of 1999’s rejection festival. I wondered if I should not have revised step 3. I returned it to its original form and stared at it, curious as to what it still needed.
3. ?
Should I send press releases? Teach monkeys to type? I figured the latter was a long shot as far as publicity was concerned, but would save me a shitload of time as long as they didn’t throw feces all over my office, which they almost certainly would.
Create fliers? In Garamond, with the title of my book written in a nice Brush Script?
No. Not that. Anything but that.
I still have not yet figured out step 3. I keep asking people if they know Oprah, and so far nobody has been willing to introduce me. The monkey training ended in disaster. Several agent queries are still out there, waiting to insult me. I continue to write my blog. I continue to solicit advice, to brainstorm new projects. Sometimes I eat Fiddle Faddle. I actually have the IttyBiz Online Business School but haven’t had the time to get through a lot of it yet. I have resolved to make it a priority in the coming week.
Perhaps Naomi figured out how to tame the monkeys. That would help, from a branding standpoint.
