More of the crap that’s in my head. But no nachos today.
This post continues Friday’s report about how I’m getting a head tune-up. Oh, and I should mention that after putting up that post and writing about Tony Robbins in the tags, Tony’s marketing director started following me on Twitter. This appears to be a coincidence, but now I’m all nervous because I think Tony Robbins is awesome and I’m hoping that if this woman reads my blog, she’ll have a sense of humor because not too long ago I introduced an irrational fear that Tony suggested eating babies and the public relations melee that ensued. Then I searched for that Family Guy episode where Peter sees Tony at a book signing and Tony goes, “TONY ROBBINS HUNGRY!” and eats him like a snake, but couldn’t find it. (WORD! Here it is. DM’d to me by a cool fan.) By the way, I saw Big League Chew at the grocery store the other day. Who knew they still made that stuff?
So anyway, today is Monday and I didn’t used to be like Garfield with the Monday hating, but it’s raining and crappy out and I have to write about non-funny stuff today and I’m like a stereotype, with not being into it being the beginning of a new week. This is common recently. But I’ve learned something. Tim taught me that maybe it’s best if I didn’t try to do the mental “homework” he assigned me until I cheer up some throughout the course of the day. Which is kind of a relief, because this means I get to feel slightly less douchebaggy when it’s first-thing the morning. Slightly.
See, my “homework” was composed of two main things:
1. Set some new anchors
2. Visualize
An “anchor” is a stimulus that makes you think of a certain thing or makes you feel a certain way. Most anchors get set unintentionally. A sound or smell might make you feel comfortable, nostalgic, excited, or afraid. Like, I can’t listen to Social Distortion’s White Heat album without thinking of this deli I used to work at, feeling all happy and at home, and, consequently, thinking about people urinating in the sink.
So to get me feeling all up and confident at will, Tim has me consciously setting anchors linked to good, empowering emotional states like excitement or optimism or whatever. If you can anchor successfully, it gives you a great tool to deal with the less-exciting or less-fun times of life. You just fire off an anchor and then boom, you’re in a better place.
The way you set an anchor is, you create a nice, strong, positive emotional state on your own and then you do something unique to “anchor” it so you can recall that state later. I chose to anchor by pulling on my left earlobe.
You may think this sounds ridiculous, but you’re wrong. It actually looks ridiculous.
And it’s hard, because if you’re in “the Mondays,” you feel like your own worst critic. You know how there are people who are all chipper in the morning, and there are also people who hate the chipper people and want them dead? Try to do this process at the wrong time and you become both of those people.
You’re like, Ya-hoo! And then you’re like, Jackass.
Last Monday, I dragged ass out of bed. Was feeling all Garfieldy. Sat down at my desk and realized I was supposed to do my Tim work. So I stand up, walk around my desk, close my door lest any children or wives wake up early, and proceed halfheartedly to get excited.
“Woo,” I’d say. And then I’d kind of pump my fist.
No excitement. You can’t anchor until you’re all worked up, so I’d try harder. Maybe I’d kind of jump up and down a little.
“Woo.”
And this deeper part of me is like, Sit down, asshole.
That’s when Tim suggested waiting until I was more awake, maybe a bit more alive and happy. Then try to get excited or confident or whatever. Then set the anchors. You know, when you’re not half dead.
After this, I’m supposed to visualize. I’m better at this part. So I’ll sit there and picture being nowhere near Cleveland. Maybe it’s winter, but it’s still warm. I’m sitting on a deck outside of my new bedroom in this cool house in North Carolina in the morning, looking out over a lake. Maybe there are robots in the garage. Cool ones — not that sexy one from Rocky IV that Paulie got all hot for. Maybe like Number Five from Short Circuit, but the evil Number Fives that were all angry and shot lasers. Except that if they’re those kind of robots they’d probably rebel and kill me. So check that. No robots. Visualizing no robots. Robot-free and at peace.
And then maybe later in the day I’d try to set some anchors. But I’d do it quietly, because by then my mother-in-law is sometimes out in the other room watching the baby and you know it has to sound like some kind of bizarre sex ritual going on in my office.
“Woo!” Then pull the earlobe.
Jumping up and down!! Excited!! Then pull the earlobe.
Excited!!! Earlobe.
Yeah, laugh now. You won’t be laughing when I’m driving my killer robot along the Outer Banks, asshole.
I’m still mad as hell, but maybe less mad, and I’m still not going to take it anymore, but fortunately Tim Brownson is helping me out with the mad part and that fun anxiety I sometimes have. And also, I like nachos.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how I was mad as hell, and pretty reticent about taking it anymore. I decided then and there that the only way out of my situation (and on to superstardom, ahem) was to start being what I’m supposed to be, which is a writer. I was going to have to write my ass off, to be smart about that ass-off writing, to be funny and engaging while my ass was seceding, and to write in sufficient quality and volume so as to assure that my ass was indeed completely off and free to act independently. Seemed to make sense.
Since that time, a few things have happened along that path of no-ass writing. I somehow conned Naomi of IttyBiz into believing that it made sense for me to keep writing a column on her blog. I launched two new sites of my own: The Diabetic Weightlifter and Learn To Be Your Own VA. (I used the same theme on both because duplication makes things easier and I figured the chances of their audiences overlapping was pretty slim. How many diabetics do you know who are lifting fanatics as well as blog enthusiasts? Just me? Yeah, that’s what I thought.)
The latter of those new sites has been quite an initial success. (The former was always going to be a slow play.) I also wrote an e-book on how to launch a stand-alone blog cheap, fast, and easy. I started a weekly webinar series. I’ve got ins toward possibly writing guest posts on some pretty damn huge blogs. The humor writing has been slower-going, but it’s on deck. I mean, I still want to serialize my bagel deli book online, and let’s not forget that parenthood book I keep mentioning I’m working on.
So, a whole lot of activity. A whole lot of exposure and momentum. Not a lot of money yet — but some… and hey, April’s barely halfway over. As a whole, things are moving in the right direction. Which, by the way, absolutely doesn’t stop me from still freaking out from time to time.
Enter my new friend Tim Brownson.
Tim is a life coach and all-around cool guy who I started working with about a month ago. His thing is working on the root beliefs that underlie our actions, and the general “mental stuff” that we get hung up on when we’re pursuing our goals.
You may be like, “Why would I work on my beliefs if I want to succeed? I should work on my actions. You’re dumb. You’re an idiot, Johnny. I’ll bet you pee your pants all the time, you big dumb idiot.”
And then I’d give you a flying roundhouse kick to the back of the head because dude, beliefs are everything. If you don’t believe, deep down, that you can do something, you won’t be able to take the action necessary to do it right. And if you believe you’ll never succeed in business or that you’re a failure or that you’ll always be poor… well, you’re right. And if you don’t believe me, try not changing anything under the hood of your own brain, and then go through a lifetime and see if it works out for you, you big dumb pants-peeing idiot.
So yeah, working on beliefs. Which isn’t something you can do well on your own, which is why Tim is helping me out. He’s the one who knows his shit. (I mean, I know shit, but that’s literal shit and is of limited value in this context.)
We started looking first at my values. He’s got this process where he asks me a series of questions and I get all confused and in the end we get this list of things I really value and a list of things I really don’t want. This all happens deep, deep down, so if I act in a way that violates my values, it’s going to fuck me up. The idea is to make sure that you’re moving in the direction of what you actually want. For years, I moved toward what I thought I wanted. Remember my job counting fruit flies? Um… that wouldn’t have happened if I had done this process first.
So Tim gets all of these answers out of me and then gives me a list.
Tops among my values was “family.” Below that was “freedom,” then “happiness.” Leading my “moving-away values” (things I want to avoid) were “ill health,” “death,” and “anxiety/worry.” The idea here was to figure out whether the direction I was going in my life and career meshed well with my core values. The fruit fly job would not have passed this test. It took me away from my family, limited my freedom, and did not generate happiness. When the panic attacks set in, I got ill health and a lot of anxiety, including worry about death. So yeah, that couldn’t possibly have been a worse job for me. Duh.
Since my current plan moves me toward more family time and more freedom and happiness, it fits. As a bonus, this same plan interestingly causes me neither ill health nor death (and definitely reduces worry), so that means that I passed. Luckily. Because it would have sucked to find out that I should be an accountant or something, or that I should return to counting fruit flies.
Hmm…
You know what? I’m realizing that this post is already pretty long, but I have a lot more to say on this topic. So, I’m going to unceremoniously end here and continue this train of thought in a few days. If you’re not as into self-development as I am, feel free to head over to Wikipedia and replace entire pages of text with photos of penises. But man, I hope that fits your values, because otherwise you should really come back here and read more about how to feel better and get more out of your life, you big pants-peeing jerk. Dumb, urinating, and posting dongs on wikis is no way to go through life, son.
aWeber vs. iContact, and why you need a mailing list.
Pop quiz, hotshot: What’s the one thing that every single internet business has?
Answer: The bomb explodes if the bus goes under 60 miles per hour, but fortunately Keanu Reeves saves the day.
Actually, the answer is that they all have email lists. Hotshot.
Why? Because while people may forget to check websites regularly or may wander away from your stuff, they do check their email. You can wait for people to come to you to find out what you have to say, or you can email them a little nudge… or, putting it more accurately, you can serve good information up to them where they live and breathe. Posting something to your website is like putting a flier for your garage sale at the office water cooler and hoping people come by and pick one up. Email marketing is like calling everyone in the office and telling them about that sale personally.
Why do you need an email list? Because email marketing works.
Let me tell you a little story: I got on an email list a while ago when I visited some well-known guy’s website. I didn’t use the info he sent me, but I DO get his tons of worthless shitty spammy emails. The guy sends me stuff CONSTANTLY for crap that I honestly doubt he knows anything about. I think he just signs up to be an affiliate for the newest piece of shit and then blasts it out to his list, making phat cash as even a tiny fraction of his huge subscriber list buys it.
Yet, I’m still on the list because I’m far, far too lazy to click the link and opt out. And every once in a while, he’ll send me something with a catchy subject line and I’ll open it. And these emails? They’re catchy. I often come pretty close to clicking on the links.
So if email can be this powerful for internet dicks, just imagine what you could do with a good reputation and a bit of selective integrity.
I have two email lists, both of which are through iContact. I send my The Economy Isn’t Happening newsletter (which is hilarious, and studies show that if you’re not on that mailing list, dwarves may eat your face) and I send mailings for this site. The latter is not a newsletter; I just want to tell those folks about webinars and free reports and new products and stuff.
I do the first newsletter because I want people to keep reading me and keep coming back to my blog. And I send to y’all on the list for this site because you’re busy folks (except for one guy; you know who you are) and you might forget to check the site for updates.
If you don’t abuse your list and if you give them good info, you’ll have a nice, pre-screened pool of potential readers, customers, whatever.
So yeah, you really do need a list if you want to do business online. I recommend two email services, both of which I use every week. The first is iContact, as already mentioned. The second is aWeber, which is pretty much the industry standard for businesses bigger than my pissant empire. I use aWeber for client accounts, because their operations are more sophistimocated than mine.
My ten-cent breakdown of each is below. No, this summary isn’t perfect. No, it’s not hard and fast. No, I’m not going to listen if some smartasses yell at me for over-generalizing. But I try to keep things simple here, so I’m going to do my best to boil it down and make the choice easier:
• If you have relatively few opt-in forms and lists like me and pretty much “just want to mail shit to folks,” use iContact. It’s way easy, it’s way cheap ($9.99 a month for up to 500-person lists and not much more expensive for even huge lists), and they have a 15-day free trial. iContact also does not require your subscribers to double-opt in*. That’s another huge reason I like it. This is a great all-around mailing service. And yes, they also have autoresponders.**
• If you have a lot of lists, a lot of forms, are generally a complicated marketer, or if you want to integrate with a shopping cart, use aWeber. Really, aWeber has become the industry standard. They have a ton more features, a ton more customizability, and integrate easily with a shopping cart — meaning that if someone buys from you through something like KickStartCart (a 1shoppingcart private label), you can get that person on your mailing list. (Technically, some mailing capability exists in KickStartCart, but your more robust stuff is in aWeber.) The biggest downsides? It’s a little bit more expensive, and they do require your subscribers to double-opt-in… even if you’re importing a list from another mailing service that people have already double-opted-into. Try this little maneuver and you’ll lose half of your list. Enjoy that, by the way.
If you think you’ll eventually need aWeber, start there now. Moving is a major whore.
I’ll be covering a lot of this in my free webinar this Monday. Be sure to sign up if you’d like to attend!
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* Double opt-in means that you join a list by filling out a website form, but then must also click a link in an email to confirm that you actually want to be on the list. (If you import the list, double opt-in means that all of the people imported will get an email saying, “Hey, you want into this list again?” Wisdom says that double opt-in gives you a higher-quality list, because people have to REALLY want in.
However, personally, I like to think that your average person isn’t totally retarded. We’re all adults here. If you opt in once, I don’t think you need to opt in again. This is the equivalent of saying “Are you sure?” to your subscribers. It’s also the equivalent of that fancy Pepperidge Farm bread that still isn’t open after you open it. However, in defense of the double opt-in, it does at least cut down on spam — people signing up folks who aren’t themselves. But, hell. Small potatoes.
** Autoresponder = automated email. People use autoresponders most often to send a series of emails following an event, like a purchase. Maybe you want to send them a thank-you-for-your-purchase email right away (day 0), but then want to try to upsell those people on another product on days 7 and 30. An autoresponder would send those upsell emails to your people automatically.
Video of the 4/13/09 webinar on blog themes
Took me a while to get this right, but here’s the video of Monday’s webinar. (In the lower-right corner of the video is a “show full screen” button. Consider using that.)
The sound sucks in places because I didn’t know how close to be to the mic, but I’ll do better next time. Same for video quality.
Be sure to visit the individual webinar’s page for topics and resources.
Enjoy!
