You know what’s awesome? BlogWorld. You know what’s even more awesome than BlogWorld? Riding a levitating, air-breathing shark into BlogWorld. But since nobody has yet engineered a shark for me, let’s stick with plain old sharkless BlogWorld, which is still pretty cool

You may know that last year, for the Los Angeles event, I took over as MC and Big Cheese and King Daddy Bazooka in charge of their Virtual Ticket program, which is the way for you to get all of BlogWorld (and more) from home, in case you can’t be there live. What you probably don’t know yet is that we’ve made it even cooler this year. And since I am the guy who’s running the thing, I am of course going to tell you all about it on my blog.

And here’s why you care. Here’s why this is something that matters to you:

We did some informal research — and by that, I mean that we didn’t do any research at all but did eat some Hot Pockets — and realized that although most people out there in the blogging, podcasting, and web TV worlds know that the BlogWorld events exist, a lot of those people (maybe including you?) don’t really think they can go. And I get it. Attending BlogWorld, live and in person, is second to none. I’ve picked up the best stuff by meeting new people at events and getting new ideas, and BlogWorld is three days of nothing but that, wall to wall.

But if you can’t travel to New York, Los Angeles, or Vegas to attend, you think you’re fucked.

And so you sit at home, and you hear about all this fun and amazing BlogWorld stuff going on, and you think about how you wish it was in the realm of possibility that you could go, but you can’t afford the travel and the time away from home, and so you go, “Oh, woe is me, I am fucked, and now I’m going to eat Hot Pockets and think about how some day, I’ll be able to go.”

And so we said, “How can we help those many, many people sitting at home with Hot Pockets, totally bummed out because they can’t attend BlogWorld? How can we make BlogWorld accessible for people who can’t find the time or the money to travel?”

And that’s how the Virtual Ticket was born.

What is the Virtual Ticket?

Simply put, the BlogWorld Virtual Ticket is a way for you to “attend” BlogWorld on your own schedule, without leaving your home.

There are over 100 sessions (check out the session lineup!) at BlogWorld this June, and we’re going to record them. You’ll get the speaker’s A/V presentation and their voice, and you’ll be able to watch that video or download the MP3 of the audio to listen anywhere. It won’t be live, but it’ll only take us about a week to have all of those sessions up there for you, and then you can go through the sessions whenever you want, over and over again if you so desire.

You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to find a babysitter or a dogsitter. If you don’t have the money for a plane ticket or a hotel, that’s no problem.

But there’s more to it than that. Because when I came on board last year, I asked how we could replace as much of the “feel of being there” as possible so that Virtual Ticket attendees would get not just the event’s content but also some of the experience as well, and we came up with some ideas — behind the scenes interviews, social media interaction, and so on.

But this year, we’re kicking it up a notch.

This year, we’re giving you a bunch of stuff every day, almost as it happens. This year, June 5-7 won’t be the time during which you hear about people attending BlogWorld and feel left out and jealous. This year, you’ll get in on some of the action, too.

What we added

It’s not really feasible to try and stream anything from the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, but honestly, we wouldn’t want to stream the sessions live even if we could.

If we streamed everything, you’d lose one significant advantage of attending virtually — the fact that when you’re virtual, you never miss anything because two sessions you’d like to see are happening live at the exact same time. When you’re virtual, you can watch ALL of the sessions that were simultaneous at the live event, whereas the live attendees had to choose one and only one to attend.

For the same reasons, we didn’t want to stream any of our extras. But on the flip side, last year we waited until the end of the event to add ANYTHING, and the downside to that was that the Virtual Ticket attendees didn’t feel like they were part of the live event at all. They’d watch tweets about Chris Brogan holding the event center hostage (I won’t say that this happened, but I also won’t deny it because it’s funnier to not deny it) and would sigh and say, “Virtual attendance is cool and all, but I kind of wish someone would record some of the big happenings — including Chris Brogan possibly holding the event center hostage — so that I could participate and follow along.”

So this year, we’re doing “dailies.”

(That’s not “dallies,” as in “dilly-dallying along.” It’s the plural form of “daily.” We’re borrowing from the film industry, where at the end of the day you review what you shot that day… your “dailies.”)

What the dailies are are audio interviews and updates that we’ll record and then post — wait for it — every day during the live event. So when Chris Brogan takes the event center hostage this year, we’ll interview him to get his hostage demands. Then, the next day, we’ll have an interview with BlogWorld CEO Rick Calvert about how they didn’t want to have those sharpshooters dart Chris and throw a net over him and haul him off for heavy doses of tranquilizers, but how else were they going to get him to deliver his keynote?

So you can follow along with what’s going on in New York, see.

And in the event that there are no major hostage incidents whatsoever (booooo-ring!), we’ll get you interviews and happenings, and post THOSE each evening.

We’ll give you a written update each night. We’ll record a bunch of other interviews, these ones on video, with different people than we talk to for the dailies, getting their “bonus material” and secret tips, and we’ll have those ready when the session recordings are all finished and posted (about a week after BlogWorld ends). We’ll tweet. We’ll share photos.

We know we can’t really make you feel like you’re there. I won’t insult you by saying that getting the Virtual Ticket is just like being there.

But if you can’t be there, the Virtual Ticket is as close as we can get.

And you’ll get all that bonus stuff, too… stuff that live attendees won’t get.

And you’ll be able to watch all of the sessions, even if they happened at the same time, because you can watch whenever you want.

Arguably, it’s much MORE content than you could ever get live, which is why so many live BlogWorld attendees choose to add the Virtual Ticket to their registration — so that when they get home, they can watch what they missed.

Value: Baked into the Virtual Ticket just like fake and questionable ham is baked into that Hot Pocket you’re eating

The Virtual Ticket normally costs $347. Through the end of the day on Tuesday, May 15th, you can get it for $100 off, for only $247.

You can sign up here.

Aaaaaand, if you use promo code “Virtual10” (without the quotes) when you check out, you can save 10% off of even THAT amount.

But what if you’re going to be there live, at the actual BlogWorld event? Well, if you’re going to BlogWorld live, it normally costs $97 to add the Virtual Ticket to your registration so that you’ll get all of the session recordings and all of the bonus material and interviews, available for you to review when you get home.

But if you want to add the VT to your registration before the end of tomorrow, it’s only $47. That’s a stupidly low price for over a hundred hours of material.

(Side note: I’m actually pissed about how low that price is. I’m not kidding. As VT guy, I’m paid to make as much on the Virtual Ticket as possible. I told the BWE people, “That’s too damn low!” But they’d already published it and wouldn’t budge. A knife fight broke out. If we hadn’t been distracted by Chris Brogan taking a nearby event hostage, we’d never have resolved it.)

If you want to join us in the Virtual Ticket, of which I am your master of ceremonies or grand poobah or whatever, just go here. Don’t forget to use the “Virtual10” promo code to save 10%, and be sure to do it before the end of the 15th if you want to save $100.

(If you’re attending live and want to ADD the Virtual Ticket, just email BlogWorld registration and tell them you want to add the VT to your registration.)

So… look.

Going to BlogWorld is awesome. I highly, highly recommend going if you can.

But if you’re one of the thousands and thousands of bloggers, podcasters, and web TV producers who have watched BlogWorld happen in the past and wished you could be there but couldn’t, this is your chance.

Join us virtually. And eat whatever kind of Hot Pockets you want during the sessions.

—

THE THING I’VE SAID BEFORE BUT WHICH WARRANTS A FINAL NOTE: The $100 early bird discount on the Virtual Ticket ends at the end of the day on May 15th. That’s tomorrow as I publish this post. If you want in, register now, before the discount ends.

So I launched a podcast.

Teeeeechnically, it’s not true that I launched a podcast; I guess it’s more accurate to say that Sean Platt, Dave Wright, and I launched a podcast. But I’m the guy with the mixer and the recorder and the knowledge of how it all works, so without me it’s just the two of them talking to their computers, not even connected via Skype, and wondering why nothing is happening. (And just between us, I’m fairly sure that’s what was going on before I entered the mix. Dave: “So I feel that XYZ.” Sean: [sleeping hundreds of miles away] “.” Dave: “WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER ME?”)

Our new podcast is The Self Publishing Podcast with Johnny, Sean, and Dave. It’s all about how to get your work published in the age of eBooks and Kindle and actually make some money at it — because you CAN do that today, and it’s a mindblowing time to be a writer. You CAN actually make money as an author — even of fiction! — without being Stephen King or (as Dave says it) DEAN FUCKIN KOONTZ.

(And speaking of Dave, his obsession with goths who may or may not be pissing on trees rears its ugly head more than once, after which a melee inevitably ensues.)

You should check it out if you’re at all interested in getting something published — be it fiction, nonfiction, or grotesque elf porn.

Here’s the official podcast description, from iTunes. (Side note: We’re already ranked #1 for “self publishing,” proving either that we’re awesome, that there’s no competition, or that nobody is interested in self-publishing):

Want to get your words out into the world without contending with agents, publishers, or any of the other gatekeepers in traditional publishing? There’s never been a better time to become a writer, and to be in charge of your own destiny rather than jumping through hoops to please the Powers that Be. Self-publishing ninjas David Wright and Sean Platt — who have manufactured a publishing machine around Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform — join popular blogger and author Johnny B. Truant to explore everything related to getting published in today’s new DIY digital publishing frontier. This isn’t artsy talk… we’re business guys with no-BS strategies to help you make self-publishing a rewarding reality. Submit your questions at SelfPublishingPodcast.com!

We’ve got two very different perspectives on self publishing on the podcast, which is part of what makes it interesting… and applicable for just about any type of writer.

Sean and Dave (who are basically one person; I call them “Seave” or “Daan” or “Brangelina”) have built a very complex, very prolific machine around their own writing, enabling them to write and publish as their full-time jobs. I, on the other hand, am stepping into publishing much more slowly. I have one bona-fide novel, one short story, one humor collection, and a handful of experimental small titles that began life as posts on my blog. I do NOT have a complex, prolific machine. I’m a guy who has another business, and who gets a kick out of the idea that I can actually write and sell real books while using my marketing mojo to drive new readers to them.

Need tips on how to format your book? No problem.

Need marketing advice? We’ve got it.

Need ideas on how to create book covers, info on how to use free promos to drive sales, pricing tips, or anything else? We’re your guys.

Come on over and check us out our awesome new Self Publishing Podcast. It’s dandy good fun. (And really, it’s fun even if you don’t give a shit about self-publishing. There is much tomfoolery.)

Oh, and also: You can ask us questions! It’s way cool. We’ve got a call-in number right on the homepage. Call with your questions about self-publishing and we’ll play your question and then answer it on the show if we can. Just like a real radio show, as if we were professionals or something.

We’re pretty psyched about this new venture. Join us, will you?

NOTE: If you’re interested in Chris’s new book The $100 Startup, you can get it right now as part of the Only72 sale. Short version: For $100 total, you get the book plus over $1000 worth of the best online education products from people you know… including me. Check it out here. 

A while ago, Chris Guillebeau and I did a back-and-forth email interview. It was pretty cool and fit both Chris’s schedule and my sense of laziness. I’d email him a question, he’d email back an answer, and it’d go on like that forever with very casual effort. It was awesome.

Now, with Chris’s new book The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future due to release on May 8th, we decided to do it again. Here we go:

JOHNNY: Why do you think the idea “I need money to start a business” is so persistent even in the internet age? Am I just such a salty old internet dog at this point that I think that everyone knows you can start one very inexpensively, even free?

CHRIS: You may be a salty internet dog, but I can think of two other reasons that also apply:

a) Lots of people genuinely don’t know what’s involved in starting a business, so there’s a perception that it simply must take money.

b) Believing that something is impossible due to lack of resources is a good excuse for not doing it. And we all like excuses.

JOHNNY: What do you tell people about failure? In my experience, people are going to fail a few times before they get it right, but that’s a hard lesson to really internalize. Most of the people I see fail and then quit… whereas if they’d tried and failed a second time, then tried a third, maybe they would have blown something out of the water.

CHRIS: I tell them that failure is overrated. Yeah, it’s true that most of us are going to fail at various things, and that’s fine and normal. As you say, the important thing is persistence. But instead of failing, isn’t it also possible that you could succeed right off the bat? Instead of accepting failure as a prerequisite to success, why not focus on success right from the beginning?

JOHNNY: Okay, so one of the things this book does is to remove a key excuse from people who claim they’d like to start a business. Once that excuse is gone, do most people have the skills they’ll actually need to start that business? Is that something that’s really part most people’s makeup, or is there a certain type of person who can do this?

CHRIS: A key principle of the $100 Startup model is that the skills you already have are all you need. Forget about going back to business school (keep the $60k in tuition and send Johnny B. Truant a pair of Vibram toe socks as a thank-you).

However, sometimes you need to undertake a process of skill transformation—learning to apply those skills in a different way. For example, Brandon Pearce was an engineer by day and a music teacher by night. He noticed that keeping up with student scheduling and billing was a pain in the ass. Most music teachers want to teach; not worry about administrative details. Using his engineering background, Brandon built Music Teacher’s Helper, an online system to take care of all the administrative aspects of the business. Almost as an afterthought, he offered it to other music teachers. The platform took off and quickly grew to a steady base of customers and more than $30,000 in monthly income.

JOHNNY: That’s pretty interesting and makes total sense. Do you think there’s anything a person can do to develop their “thinking outside the normal nine dots” muscle, so that those good ideas become visible? If you don’t open yourself to doing stuff that’s different, weird, or outside of what you’re used to, I can see a lot of great ideas like that hiding in plain sight.

CHRIS: Sure, you can do something that most of us could be better at anyway: listen more, and begin observing. Notice things wherever you go. Is there something you want to do or have that you can’t find anywhere? Maybe you’re not the only one who wants it. What’s missing at the restaurant? What’s one thing they could do better?

When you start paying attention, you’ll begin to spot more of those ideas that have been hiding in plain sight.

–

This is really just a teaser… just the first part of our exchange. Keep watching the blog, because our discussion continues…

Remember, if you want to get Chris’s book as part of the Only72 sale, be sure to do it before the sale ends early Thursday. (And yes, that’s an affiliate link. Duh.)

I don’t eat before 3pm. It’s a strategy called “intermittent fasting,” and I do it every day.

There are a lot of reasons for intermittent fasting (many relating to body composition and hormone normalization), but for me, as an insulin-dependent diabetic, it also results in fantastic blood sugar stability. I don’t have to figure out how what I eat will affect my blood sugar because I’m not eating. And, as a bonus, not stopping to eat allows me to work through the most productive part of my day without being distracted.

But there’s one other reason I fast, and one other reason I like doing it.

It gives me the opportunity to make a difficult and unpopular choice.

The problem is choice

Humans — and Americans in particular — just won’t shut the fuck up about choice. Give us more options! More channels! More colors! More open hours and more variety of inventory! Give us more service levels, more ways to connect! And we’ll get bitchy about it, too. It’s our right to have choice! Don’t you dare try and take our choice away! This is why Wal-Mart thrives. It’s hard to resist a store that has everything, for cheap, and is always open.

We devour choices. We want more, and more, and more, and more. If we can’t currently do or have something, it only increases our desire to do or have it.

And so, responding to both market demand and their own sense of wanting more choices, people innovate. They create something new, crack a code, solve a mystery… and once they’ve solved it, that becomes one more choice that’s available to everyone.

You didn’t used to be able to split atoms to create electric power. Now you can.

You didn’t used to be able to get in touch with anyone, anywhere, anytime and from anywhere, for dirt cheap. Now you can.

You didn’t used to be able to sit on the couch and be entertained nonstop, for days and weeks on end, while pizza was delivered right to your door. You didn’t used to be able to get so much great-tasting (but nutritionally deadly) food for so cheap, so fast. You didn’t used to be able to conduct your life without any physical exertion.

But now you can.

We’ve got all the choice in the world nowadays, and the buffet of choices available to us is only expanding.

We can choose whatever we want, whenever we want it.

And we’re choosing such stupid, stupid shit.

Dig your own grave

You’re poor. You have zero prospects. You’re having trouble finding enough money to survive, literally. Your kids are starving. Maybe your spouse has medical issues you can’t afford to treat.

And some guy in a red suit (who may or may not be George Burns) comes up to you and says, “Okay. I’ll give you more than enough money to be set forever. All you need to do is to use a hatchet to cut off one of your fingers.”

Maybe you take it. Maybe you don’t. If you decline the offer, you’re taking the risk that your whole family will die in the gutter. If you accept it, you’re going to have to do something extraordinarily unpleasant.

But the mental fuckery is where this scenario really hurts.

If you take the offer, as you’re wielding the hatchet, you’ll be wondering if there was another way out. Could you have found a job? Could you have gotten an inheritance? Could you have written a blockbuster book while you were homeless, like J.K. Rowling did?

But if you decline the offer, if your kids start to get sick, you’ll wonder if you should have taken it. How bad could it have been? One quick strike and it’s over, and then you’re set forever. You might feel guilty, like you chose your own comfort over them. You’ll feel selfish, and cowardly.

Ironically, the only scenario where there’s no regret and no real downside is to have not been given the choice at all.

Today, tempting choices are everywhere. Some improve our lives, but many are slowly killing us. And sometimes we’ll wish that we’d never been given the option.

It was a lot easier to exercise when there was no choice, when you had to walk from one place to another, hunt the deer, build your house, split the wood for the fire. Now, you can choose to do none of that, and you can eat every meal at McDonald’s for dirt cheap.

It was a lot easier to get kids to read when there were no video games or TV.

It was a lot easier to experience quiet and calm when you couldn’t be called anywhere 24/7, when you couldn’t pull your phone out of your pocket five times every hour to check email or Twitter or Facebook.

It was a lot easier to disappear for a while when it was still possible to get lost.

Maybe sometimes, when your phone is ringing over and over, when the traffic is at its worst, when you feel like a video zombie and your kids won’t stop bothering you about the latest fad that seems to be advertised around the clock, maybe in a few of those moments you kind of wish you’d lived back in the “good old days” that your grandparents are always pining for.

But really, we could still do things the hard way — the “good old days” way — even now.

We could raise our own livestock and grow our own plants. We could live without TV or any other kind of screen. We could eschew all cellular phones. We could even be Amish, and not even use electricity or drive cars.

But we’d have to choose to do it. We’d have to know what was available in terms of convenience and pleasure and hedonism and instant gratification… and we’d have to turn our backs on it, willfully and deliberately. And that’s very, very hard.

Now: Am I saying we should be Amish, that the modern world is bad and evil? Not at all.

I have a smartphone and an iPad. I wouldn’t be alive without the healthcare advances that make my diabetes a mere inconvenience. Sometimes I check my email too often, but I’m still glad to have it, to have the internet at my fingers.

But there has to be a line somewhere, and nobody knows where it is.

My generation is the first to have a lower standard of living than our parents’, because we spend so much more than we make. My kids’ generation is the first that’s expected to have a shorter lifespan than their parents’, because they eat like hell and don’t move much. Most people don’t enjoy what they do all day. Depression is high. Alienation is high. Health is low. All because of things we’re choosing to do — things we never had the option to do until only recently.

It’s as if someone handed us a gun and said, “Use this if you’d like to take away your pain.”

But we didn’t realize it was a gun. We thought it was ice cream.

Progress

Humans are good at persistent curiosity. Give us enough time, and we’ll figure out how to do almost anything.

Not that long ago, the idea of human flight was ridiculous. Unthinkable. But people kept at it, and today you can get from New York to London in an afternoon, while being served pretzels and charged excessive baggage fees.

It wasn’t that long ago that we learned DNA even existed, but once we did, it took no time to start moving things around to create disease-resistant crops and smart bacteria that would do our bidding. You can even have your pets cloned. Got a great dog and want to have him forever? You can. You just have to start over after each lifetime ends… unless you’d like to have two of him at once, which I suppose you could do too.

Today, billions of dollars are going into figuring out how to interface electronic circuits with human brains. Ostensibly it’s about solving medical issues, like helping paralyzed people walk, but you know the commercial sector sees the promise there, too. What if you could operate your TV or your computer with your mind? What if you could drive a car truly hands-free? What if you could call Frank simply by thinking at him?

I figure teleportation is right around the corner. Pretty soon everywhere will be just a few steps away. Going from New York to London will take seconds. It’ll be awesome. We’ll be able to attend every event and will never be able to back out. So what if your boss’s daughter’s bridal shower is at the same time as your kid’s Christmas play? Just pop over for ten minutes. And if the office needs you for a half hour in the middle of your honeymoon, no big deal, because it’s so easy.

I don’t want to have some of these options.

I like that I have the best reason of all (“It’s not possible”) for not doing certain things I don’t want to do. I like that I won’t have to decide whether to accept some Faustian bargains because they can’t currently be made.

Keep my avenues closed. Restrict my options. Tell me what to do. It’s cool to be forced to do something, at a certain point.

But Pandora’s Xbox can’t be closed once it’s open. Once a choice is out there, it’s out there. Nobody’s going to deny you that option. Except for you.

We as a culture seem to say, “We can do that? Awesome! Add it to my inventory of options. Choice is good.”

But it’s time to stop being choice whores. It’s time to stop doing things just because we can.

Opt out

For a while there, Burger King was giving out free cinnamon rolls with every order. It’s as if they were trying to fatten up their customers. Like they were being instructed by their alien overlords to get us ready for a bloody harvest.

Most people took the cinnamon rolls and ate them. And why not? They were free. They smelled and tasted good. The fact that it was an unwise choice didn’t cross most people’s minds.

But it can cross yours.

You can look at something that’s available, and free, and easy, and enticing, and decide to let it go if it doesn’t suit you. You can opt out. People will think you’re nuts if you do this. “But they’re free,” they’ll will say, as if that’s all that matters.

It’s not all that matters. We need to stop living by default and start paying some fucking attention.

Start to look for things that are freely and easily available to you right now, but that you might do better without.

Maybe you check your smartphone too much but you don’t want to get rid of it. So, turn off the 3G or 4G connectivity and use it only when you’re near a wi-fi signal. Now… it’ll be tempting to cheat. You could easily turn it back on and surf Facebook from the beach, and it wouldn’t cost you a cent. But resist the urge.

There are programs that will block internet access from your computer for whatever time periods you set. If you spend too much time online, get one and use it. The only way to break through and get your access back would be to re-boot… and you could, and that would let you IM with your buddy in Seattle about nothing and Tweet about that sandwich you just ate. But don’t. Have some restraint.

Get rid of those fucking donuts and cigarettes. They’re free to keep, but just because something is available doesn’t mean you should say yes to it.

You’ve got nonstop entertainment on TV, but if your family dynamic is suffering, turn it off.

You paid for that giant plate of onion rings, but if you’re full, stop.

There’s an elevator in your building, but if you’re trying to get into better shape, don’t use it.

You’re opting out of something that has been offered to you when you do these things, and people will think it’s nuts.

But it’s there! they’ll say. But it’s free!

One day, someone’s going to offer free arsenic with the Quarter Pounder meal and everyone’s going to eat it because hey, it’s free.

It’s time we stop acting like we need to “get our money’s worth” from everything, everywhere, all the time.

Try suffering

You’re being controlled.

Don’t worry; it’s human nature. We’re social animals, and conformity is baked into our cores, so don’t go feeling bad about being a puppet sometimes… but yeah, it’s true. Other people’s opinions and arguments are controlling some of what you do, say, and think.

You just need to figure out which parts they are. And that involves a bit of suffering.

Choosing to do something unpleasant is the only way to be sure you’re making a choice that is truly your own. Easy, pleasurable choices aren’t like that. Choices that feel good are the ones you can easily fall into, be funneled into, or be brainwashed into.

But the ugly decisions are all you.

Ever wonder why monks spend weeks at a time doing nothing but meditating or chanting?

Ever wonder why anyone would take a vow of silence?

Ever wonder why the minimalist movement is so strong today?

Ever wonder why people go off on vision quests, walkabouts, or become hermits who live in the woods?

Those are all choices to do something difficult and uncomfortable. They are all choices that go against the way the “normal” world operates, creating friction. They’re a way of saying, “Fuck you, world. I’m not going to participate in your bullshit.”

Political prisoners sometimes go on hunger strikes. To a lot of people, this looks dumb. Nobody is going to care if they starve themselves. But it’s not about anyone else caring. It’s about showing themselves that they can’t be owned. It’s Kunta Kinte refusing to say his name was Toby.

Personally, I fast every day because I’d rather eat Pop Tarts, and because Kellogg’s would rather I eat Pop Tarts. Kellogg’s has a lot of commercials showing me how great Pop Tarts are. They also show my kids how great they are. My kids watch those ads and ask for Pop Tarts.

I fast every day because I’d rather eat Pop Tarts, and because Kellogg’s would rather I eat Pop Tarts. And fuck Kellogg’s.

I fast every day because I choose to.

It’s my choice to make, and mine alone.

Deprive yourself

Look at how you’re living. Ask yourself if it could be better. Ask yourself if there are any voluntary but dumb things that are getting in between you and what you want, in between how you are and how you want to be.

Look at everything around you — what you do, how you think, what you consume, how you respond — as if it were a room filled with objects. Ask yourself if the room is too crowded. Ask yourself if you can move around, or if you feel walled in. Ask yourself if, in this room, you feel like you can breathe.

Your choices filled that room.

How many were truly your choices, and how many were made by default? Did you get a smartphone because “why not”? Did you take the cable TV package upgrade because it was only ten dollars more? Do you Supersize It as a knee-jerk reaction? Do you want that new gadget because you actually need and will use it, or because it’s “the newest whiz-bang version”? (You really need to ask this one if you had an iPad 2 and bought the new iPad to replace it.)

Are you going out tonight because others are going, and you figure “what the hell”?

Do you ever find yourself watching a TV show simply because you never turned off the TV when the previous show ended?

Do you take the cinnamon rolls because they’re free, or finish your huge meal because you paid for it and don’t want to “waste” it?

Now, at this point, I want to clarify something:

Eat the fucking rolls if you want. Seriously. Just don’t do it because they’re free. Do it because you want them.

Check your cell phone all the time if the urge strikes you. But don’t do it out of nervous habit, like a smoker twiddling his thumbs while waiting for a smoke break.

Make your own decisions, and know what you’re getting when you make them.

And if your decision-making muscle is weak, if you’re more often than not at the whim of the normal and the accepted? Then try some self denial, to build that muscle.

• Desire something and don’t buy it.
• Stop checking your email.
• Put yourself on a budget — not to save money, but to see what it feels like.
• Fast, and learn to appreciate hunger. (And learn that it won’t kill you.)
• Experiment with sleep.
• Take a sabbatical.
• Take an ice-cold shower.
• Turn off your TV.
• Take an internet holiday.
• Go somewhere remote and live there for a while, totally unplugged.
• Do something that hurts, something that pushes you to your edge.

Not everything that is offered to you is something that you should accept. Get used to sitting in front of life’s buffet, picking and consciously choosing only the best of all that’s offered.

If you don’t, if you aren’t careful, you’ll be like diners at a Golden Corral, stuffing yourself with everything until you waddle out sick and disgusted.

Get used to being offered something, and saying no to it.

The world, more and more and more and more, is conspiring to give you exactly what you want.

Fight back.

Do something that sucks.

This blog can be a downer. I talk about how you will inevitably fail along the path to getting what you want, how doing great things requires a lot of hard work, and how there is no blueprint or map that will tell you where to go or what to do. It’s like being kicked in the face by WordPress.

You can call this stuff tough love, but what it’s really supposed to be is a reality check. See, most people have a really warped view of the way things actually work.

For example:

• Most people think that successful people don’t fail. So if you fail, that means you’ve fucked up. It’s over, and you should quit.
• Most people think that people who have what they want are geniuses, and everything is simple and straightforward for geniuses. So if something you’re doing is really hard and giving you a ton of trouble, that means you’ve fucked up. It’s over, and you should quit.

The people you admire aren’t geniuses. The people you admire don’t always know what they’re doing. The people you admire are scared shitless and frustrated and lost and angry and can’t make things work and feel bad for themselves from time to time.They also fail constantly — including while you’ve been admiring how successful they are.

What makes awesome people stand out isn’t their inherent awesomeness. It’s their ability to deal successfully with all of life’s inevitable shittiness. If someone is where you want to be, the difference between you and that person is not that they haven’t had turds thrown at them by life. It’s they’ve learned how to face those turds with courage and aplomb.

How have they learned that, you ask? What do they do to get through the suck, you ask? Why do I keep asking questions on your behalf, you ask?

The list below is a start. Here are 34 ways to keep your chin up while life is pelting you with bricks.

1. Do something

See how nonspecific that is? That’s intentional. Just do something. It’ll get your mind off the suck, and build momentum to get out of it. The worst thing you can do is to wallow.

2. Wallow

Okay, so sometimes it’s all right to wallow for a bit. I’m adding this one mainly for Type A’s who won’t ALLOW that wallowing bullshit and insist on pressing through and pretending there’s no problem. Go ahead and feel shitty, but set a timer. (Not kidding about the timer.)

3. Do nothing

Sometimes things need time to settle. It’s easy for driven people to keep pushing and banging their head against a wall, trying to FORCE something to work. Sometimes that’s just being resistant, and you should knock it off.

4. Ask for help

You’d be surprised how willing your true friends will be to help you if they’re able, and you shouldn’t be afraid to ask if you’re not constantly bugging them for things in a lopsided way.

5. Ask for advice

There’s a caveat on this one, and it’s to ask for advice, not ask someone to tell you what to do. There’s a difference. Advice is another bit of data — ideally from someone who’s been through the particular bit of suck you’re in currently — that you can weigh and consciously decide if you want to accept or not. Allowing someone to tell you what to do is surrendering your volition. Don’t do the latter.

6. Reframe it as a challenge, or a test of your mettle

You’re going to have to deal with the shit that happens to you regardless of how you frame it in your mind, so why not frame it as something that you get to kick the ass of — the kind of thing you’d be proud to brag about having overcome when it’s all done? Or look at it as a puzzle to solve. Seeing as you have to go through it anyway, either of those choices sound better to me than bitching and whining.

7. Tell your success story in advance

I did this when I was going through some seriously bad crap a few years ago. I know it sounds corny, but I imagined myself a few years later, looking back on the shitty times and telling friends (or a crowd of fans, what the hell) how much it sucked at the time, but how I never lost faith and kept going, and how things changed for the better in the weeks, months, and years followed. Everyone loves a good “rising from the ashes” story, so go ahead and write yours now.

8. Recognize that you’re in a necessary part of a great tale

The problem with a good rising from the ashes story is that you have to first be in ashes. Ashes FUCKING SUCK. That’s why it’s so awesome when people rise from them. Got it? If you want the great story and great victory later, you MUST start in a really shitty situation. You are building your amazing success story right now, and living out a necessary part of that story. Try to see that. It can help.

9. Lie and go into denial

Tony Robbins talks about a visualization technique where you look at something bad that just happened and mentally scramble the event in your mind so that it doesn’t feel so heavy. I think that’s interesting, but a simpler idea might be to just lie to yourself about it — whatever it takes to get you to stop reliving a failure over and over and over. I think we all know the limit here – the place you should STOP lying and being in denial — so don’t be an asshole when using this one.

10. Hang out with amazing people

I wrote a whole post about this a while back. Your life is the average of the people you hang out with, so hang out with people you’d like to be like… even if “hanging out” just means reading/watching/participating in their stuff.

11. Learn the Sedona Method

This is a bit touchy-feely, but it very seriously helped me when I was dealing with some crap circa 2008. Psychologist Carl Jung said that “What we resist persists,” so The Sedona Method is about learning to accept fear and panic so that you can let them go, rather than trying to bury negative emotions… and hence causing them to stick around 24/7.

12. Refuse to be a whiny douchebag

Go ahead and accept (#11) and possibly wallow in your misery for a short while (#2), but then knock it the fuck off before it reaches the point where you’re whining constantly about how things suck. Nobody likes a whiny douchebag.

13. Be positive

I don’t care who you are or what’s going on, there is always something good and exciting and fun in your world. We’re predisposed to pay attention to bad stuff, which is why we tend to be aware of whose house was broken into rather than all of the houses that didn’t get broken into, and aware of the starving children way more than the ones who aren’t starving. So go ahead and face reality, but face REALITY rather than your distorted view of it. Stop thinking everything is going wrong when in fact only one thing is going wrong.

14. Be lucky

There have been studies that show that positive people are luckier than negative people. Why? Positive people see opportunities because they are looking for opportunities. Negative people see shit because they are looking for shit. So start looking for what you want, and you might just find it.

15. Read, watch, or listen to something inspirational

I don’t watch the news or visit news websites or anything like that, because I don’t want my head filled with the filtered out “worst of the world” on a daily basis. In my opinion, what news programs do is akin to sifting the clumps out of kitty litter and showing them all to you. “Hey, here’s some bad shit that happened!” Instead, seek out good shit and fill your head with that instead.

16. Follow inspirational people

So, do you know about The Badass Project? Learn about it.

17. Drop your excuses

See above.

18. But don’t beat yourself up

All species of “get up off your ass and make it happen!” are a double-edged sword. We all do have limits, and while you should push them, expecting sheer will to lead to immediate success — and feeling bad if that steel will falters — is a recipe for disaster. Remember where this all started: Successful people are not always successful. What sometimes makes the difference is not the will to keep going, but the will to try again.

19. Do something crazy

Sometimes stupid, outrageous forms of escape are okay when used with moderation. If you decide to try skydiving as a way of shaking things up and distracting yourself while things suck, I’m not going to judge.

20. Realize that you’re not the only one

Dude, you are SO not the only one. I don’t care what you’re going through, you are NOT the only one. This is especially true if your problems are financial. If you want to find someone else who’s got financial problems right now, throw a rock. Just knowing you aren’t the only one can help shift your mindset.

21. Get a bit of perspective

People hate this one, but it’s valid for a whole lot of situations that seem incredibly dire to the person going through it. If your business just failed, try to remember that other people are dying, or that other people’s children are dying. If you’re dying, try to remember that other people are dying alone or in more painful ways. (NOTE: perspective doesn’t invalidate what you’re going through. The message here is similar to seeing the positive (#13). It’s not about anyone, yourself included, saying, “Toughen up; your problems are tiny.”)

22. Go all in

Some situations are so totally fucked that you might as well just stop holding back and go all in. Meaning: If that business of yours is going to implode either way, you might as well try crazy shit that a sane person would stay away from because it would cause the business to implode. Sometimes that crazy, desperate stuff can yield amazing results. If you have nothing to lose, I say go for it. (Come to think of it, that’s what happened in my novel. You should read it for inspiration, and also because it’s fucking hilarious. Go ahead; you know you want to.)

23. Think of financial problems as minimalism

Are you so broke that you can’t buy anything, are selling everything, and are about to lose your house? Well, Google for “minimalism blogs” and you’ll find a crapload of people who are trying to achieve those things. They are aspiring to the end result that you are so afraid of. Think about it. With some mental gymnastics, this can begin to look like being “ruined” so much that you develop six-pack abs.

24. Find people who will comfort you

Nothing wrong with seeking some comfort. Just be careful about over-relying on this one and of slipping into #12 above.

25. Find people who will make you feel like shit

Watch this video for the full story on “success through feeling like shit,” courtesy of Julien Smith. The short version is that you can often use pain to drive you.

26. Be grateful for adversity

As in #25 above, it’s a good idea to remember that awesome things often require shitty things as a catalyst. In my own case, I was doing fine before my current business, trolling along at a things-are-okay-but-not-great job involving freelance web development and magazine writing. I could have kept doing that forever, doing okay but not great, and almost certainly would have if things hadn’t gotten really shitty for me around 2008. My current business and life (which is amazing) would not have come into being if things in my life hadn’t gotten bad enough to force me into changing. Without the pain, I wouldn’t be where I am.

27. Beat something up

This one is probably for the testosterone crowd. I have a heavy bag in my basement, and most of the time I use it for fitness purposes, but every once in a while it takes some punishment due to something frustrating that’s happened to me. I’ve also played Rock Band drums particularly aggressively for the same reason. It can help.

28. Exercise or take a walk

Suitable for both masculine and feminine types. You don’t even have to go hard; just get moving.

29. Create something

If you’re in business, start a product. If you’re a writer, write. If you’re a painter, paint. Just begin something, and keep working on it. If it’s good, keep working. Standing still and creating nothing is not going to help you.

30. Write it out

I write a journal sometimes, but it’s not a “dear diary” journal. It’s closer to talking aloud to myself, and working out problems that way, never worrying about maintaining a narrative or a clear chain of thought (some people call this “free writing.”) I almost never go back to read old journal entries because once I’ve written them, they’ve done their job. Try it sometime.

31. Talk it out with yourself

If you’re better aloud than in print, try this instead of (or in addition to) #30. There’s probably some scientific principle at work here, like giving your subconscious thought process a voice, but I just know it can yield some surprisingly good ideas.

32. Talk it out with someone else

Just watch out for #12 again.

33. Do something wrong

If you need instant results, ask yourself what you can do NOW, TODAY. If you don’t think you can do anything, then shake up your assumptions by trying to do it wrong. Take business for an example: Do you need cashflow and have nothing to sell? Then do it backward, and sell it first. Most of us feel that every result we’re trying to achieve must go through certain steps: First this, then this, then this. Doing it “wrong” will cause you to question those steps, and focus more on the result than the process.

34. Help someone else

There are three great things about this one. First, focusing on someone else’s issues will distract you from your own. Second, you’re helping someone else and that’s pretty awesome of you. But third, there’s a seriously beneficial psychological effect that happens when you help solve ANY problem, even if it’s not yours. There’s probably a more gentle way to put this, but I think of it as “Big Man Syndrome.” If you can look at someone else’s problem (any problem) and think, “Pshaw! You call that a problem? I can handle that easily!” you’ll start to feel like a Big Man. (You can feel like a Big Man regardless of gender, BTW.) And by being the Big Man for someone else, you’ll be more likely to approach your own issues with your chest out and chin up.

Remember: Everyone goes through things that suck. Everyone is afraid, feels lost, panics, gets frustrated, and needs love and support. Everyone feels worthless and alone sometimes. Nobody who has achieved what you want is immune to any of it, so you don’t have to be immune to it either.

Now go out and stay awesome.

You know how sometimes you read blogs and wonder if the blogger is telling the truth because everything they write makes it look as if everything goes perfectly for them all the time? Well, I hope to break through some of that perception with this post.

Here’s the story:

A little while ago, I released my novel The Bialy Pimps from the purgatory of my closet, where it had been languishing since I’d finished writing it twelve years earlier. I self-published it on Amazon’s Kindle platform, and celebrated its debut by doing a promotion that allowed anyone to get it for free. A bunch of you (you awesome people with excellent taste, you) snagged it. And a bunch of you wondered why, after spending all that time and effort on a novel, I’d simply give it away.

The full reasoning behind my debuting the book for free is here, but the short version is this:

1. Although nobody is totally sure how Amazon’s ranking algorithm works, one thing that seems clear is that a lot of activity will help your book rise in the overall rankings. I wanted to generate a lot of activity — more activity than I could generate by charging for the book — in the hopes that when the free period ended, The Bialy Pimps would be ranked well and would have impressed Amazon’s algorithm with my general awesomeness. Ideally, in addition to Amazon saying, “Dude, you’re awesome!” sales to people who didn’t already know me would start to happen on their own because Amazon would feel compelled to share the awesomeness by telling customers about me.

2. At the same time and maybe a little contradictorily, it was intended to be sort of a soft launch, going mainly to the fine people who read this blog, are on my list, or are one degree removed from either. I purposely didn’t do a BIG LAUNCH like a lot of authors do, which I’ll explain if you keep reading. In other words, the limited scope of this launch was intentional, and subsequent phases are still to come.

3. But even with that said, you hear stories where one free promo rockets someone to bestsellerdom, which ruin everyone’s day by setting unrealistic expectations of grandeur.

So here’s what actually happened, in real and sometimes embarrassing numbers, with no punches pulled.

My book release, by the numbers

The results of this initial release have been a mixed bag. In some ways, the first push was incredibly gratifying because people have had great things to say about the book, both in reviews and via Twitter and email. But in other ways it’s not been gratifying at all, because the numbers started off okay and then went downhill fast.

All probably totally normal, expected, and even planned-for… but not as much fun as unrealistic explosive growth would have been.

So without further ado, here’s what happened during those first few days and up to the present.

Tuesday, February 14th

Evening: I uploaded the final Kindle-formatted file to Amazon and then set the free promo to begin the next day.

Wednesday, February 15th

6:15am: I sent the first emails and put up the first blog post and sent the first tweets announcing the promo.

The book had been free for 4-5 hours by this time, but I’d had no downloads yet. This was a good indication that nothing was going to “catch” on its own and that the only people who found the book would be people I sent to it. From what I hear, this isn’t typical. Usually you can do a free promo, tell nobody, and people will start to download it. This happens because your book is already “in the system,” and Amazon has gotten it into their various algorithms. My book was so new, it wasn’t in the system or on anyone’s radar. This wouldn’t be a leveraged endeavor. This would be pushing a boulder on my own, with no help from physics.

6:15pm: After 12 hours, I had 444 downloads. Not bad but not ridiculous like some of the stories you hear from people whose books aren’t brand new and who catch a spark somehow or another. At this point, I was ranked #436 among all free downloads and #19 in humor.

11pm: 546 downloads, #420 in free, and #18 in humor.

Thursday, February 16th

6:30am: After my first 24 hours, I had 618 downloads and was ranked #500 in free and #19 in humor.

8:15am: 638 downloads, #422 free, #16 humor.

At this point, I began to realize how fragile the rankings are. My goal was to get into the top 100 free, and (spoiler alert!) the highest that I saw was #356, which happened on Thursday afternoon. But what I actually noticed about the rankings was that I’d have an hour with a smaller amount of downloads and the ranking would drop precipitously… followed by a good hour and a subsequent rise. You’ll drive yourself nuts watching it. I surely did.

2:30pm: 811 downloads, #378 free, #17 humor. This was the first time I noticed that I’d broken above #400 free.

7:30pm: 900 downloads, #382 free, #21 humor.

I’d crossed 1000 downloads by bedtime, but was also back below #400 in the free rankings. The promo only had a few hours left, due to end somewhere around midnight Pacific time.

Friday, February 17

Once the free promo was over, I woke up to get my total. During the free promo, 1025 people had downloaded the book from Amazon.com. I was also now ranked at #167,170 on the overall Kindle paid list. From what I understand, this ranking means pretty much nothing when a book is so new, but it was still amusing.

From what I’ve seen, heard, and read, any bump in paid sales that you’re going to get (if you get one) will start to show up a few days later. Nonetheless, I was prepared to accept worldwide bestsellerdom by noon. Hey, anything’s possible.

The way things actually went on Friday was a bit less impressive.

I got my first “borrow” at just after noon on Friday. Borrowing is a feature of KDP Select, the program into which I’d enrolled The Bialy Pimps in order to be able to do the free promo. Basically, people who are members of Amazon Prime can “borrow” your book for free within certain restrictions, and “return” it whenever they want. You do get paid for borrows, but it’s typically not as much as a sale. So in my case, with my book priced at $3.99, I get $2.79 for each sale. Borrows vary by month, but chances are I’ll get something closer to $1.70 for each.

I then got my first actual sale about a half hour later. Hooray!

By 3:15pm, my Amazon ranking had jumped up over 100,000 places, to #57,252 on the overall paid list. This sort of proved that rankings don’t mean much 1) when books are new and/or 2) when your rank sucks so badly. Could be either or both.

It’s probably also worth noting that at this point, those groupings of “people who bought this book also bought this” or “similar titles” that you normally see below Amazon listings were not yet showing up on my page — further suggestions that my book wasn’t really seasoned in the Amazon system and that it might have been smarter to wait on the free promo until it was. Given that I wasn’t totally in the system yet, it sort of felt like I’d generated a bunch of momentum that couldn’t go anywhere because the cables weren’t hooked up to the battery yet.

At 5pm, I had had no more sales or borrows and no customer reviews. Still, my rank was up to #36,313.

By the end of Friday, day one after the free period, I’d sold a whole four copies and had had one borrow, and my meaningless ranking was up to #22,086. This is the high life!

Saturday, February 18

Saturday was my “banner” day, with ironic quotes being very intentional.

I woke up to find that four copies had sold overnight and that my ranking was up to #17,910. I then had six more sales by 6pm and was up to #11,144. I also had gotten another borrow.

Alas, I didn’t crack the top 10,000. I ended the night at #18,284. By this point I’d also gathered six reviews, all of which were five stars. Aces.

Sunday, February 19

On Sunday, those lists of “customers also bought” that I mentioned had been missing finally began showing up on my page, indicating that I was at least making my way into the Amazon machine.

It was nice to see the fine folks whose work appeared in those lists on my page — people like Seth Godin and Julien Smith. So I went over to a few of those pages (not just the big names, but the smaller ones too) and tried to see if *I* was showing up on THEIR “also-bought” lists. This was, unsurprisingly, not the case. So nobody was really being sent my way from the algorithm yet.

Joanna Penn told me that she’s seen that it takes around three months for Amazon to really get you into their guts and start sending out emails to people who bought similar titles, suggesting they give yours a try. I guess I’ll see soon if that happens for me.

As of Sunday morning, I’d had a grand total of 15 sales and 2 borrows since the free period ended and was ranked #20,757. It all seemed quite random.

I wasn’t exactly raking in the sales, and this, if I’m honest, was a bummer. I told the world and told myself that all that mattered was to ship the book, but it was around Sunday that I realized I’d secretly been hoping for a lot of post-promo sales. Which was ridiculous, given that I’d intentionally not done a lot of the things that might bring about a surge…. but more on that later.

I sold nothing on Sunday. I just watched my rank drop all day, bottoming out around #35,000 by nighttime.

Monday, February 20 and beyond

I got another two purchases on Monday and had got a few more reviews, now up to eight 5-star reviews. My rank neared #50,000.

By Wednesday, I had a total of 18 books sold and two borrowed. It was pretty clear by this point that although the first week hardly determines the success of a book (especially without a big launch effort), the big surge wasn’t going to happen.

At the end of February, I’d sold 31 copies.

As of right now, I’ve sold three more copies in March and have had two borrows. My ranking hovers around #100,000, give or take. A few sales in quick succession will bump it up tens of thousands of places, proving further that ranks this low don’t mean a lot.

So…

Is this a success or a failure?

It’s neither.

It would have been great to see a big surge in sales after a free promo, but that was really just dreaming. Hell, it wasn’t even part of my plan, which I’ll go into in a minute. The first push was supposed to get the book into the hands of the people who were most predisposed to like it, review it favorably, and tell their friends about it. The first push was supposed to be about priming the pump so that when I do a later push, I’ll look impressive to the people who have no idea who I am.

So I guess it was kind of a success. I guess I’m happy that I, mostly by myself, could interest 1025 people, in under two days, in downloading a book that I wrote — especially given the fact that nobody knows me as a writer of fiction. I’m happy with my reviews, which now total fourteen — all of which are 5-stars. I’m really happy with the feedback I’m getting. People are saying it’s hilarious and poignant at the same time, which was what I was going for. People are saying it recalled their own fond memories, that it took them back to a cherished place. People are saying that it riveted them, kept them up late reading. This is all very good.

But I don’t know how much it helped my rankings. If I’d simply put the book on sale and not had a promo at all (free or a push for paid sales), would it be selling as it is now? Maybe.

But I still think the initial free promo is a good idea, and here’s why:

1. As I’ve already mentioned, it gets the book into the hands of people who are most likely to enjoy it. An anonymous push is a mixed bag. I can’t guarantee that any of my readers will like it, but they’re far more likely to enjoy it than a random person. This means good initial word of mouth, etc.

2. It’s a way to get good reviews. Reviews matter for two reasons. One, they seem to factor into the Amazon algorithm over the long haul, meaning that books with better reviews from verified purchasers are more likely to rise in the rankings and/or be promoted by Amazon. The second reason reviews matter is for social proof. New visitors will want to see that others enjoyed the book before they buy it.

(Side note: This might be a good place to say that if you got the book and enjoyed it, it’d be HOT if you’d click here and give me a review on Amazon.)

3. It’s a cool thing to do for your friends and fans. Look, I could have launched the book at $3.99 out the gate and I’m sure I could have gotten at least 500 or so buyers pretty fast. The good thing about that is that I have loyal readers I know would buy the book. The bad thing is that it’s my loyal readers who would have to buy the book. Then, when I offered it for free later, who gets it free? People I don’t know. What if those people are assholes? Do I really want my friends to have to pay and give it away free to assholes? That’s intolerable.

4. It’s a good karmic move. This goes hand-in-hand with #3 above. People like receiving gifts, and I just gave 1025 of my friends a gift. That’s going to generate some goodwill, I’d guess.

Now, does that mean I did it totally correctly? I doubt it. I don’t really like the impression I get that all of the free momentum was wasted because the book was so new to Amazon. I don’t know if this would make a difference, but a smarter move might have been to release the book on Amazon, say nothing about it, and just let it sit there on sale for a month or two or three… and THEN do the free promo. Maybe that would give it more teeth.

Here’s why I think there’s some truth to this, and to the theory that “seasoning” in Amazon probably really does matter at least for Kindle n00bs such as myself.

How I’m outselling myself

Check this out.

If you recognize that Kindle title, you get a gold star because it’s the same as this blog post. It’s up in the Kindle store because I took the advice of my friend Sean Platt and repurposed some of my blog material for Kindle so that i can reach a different audience.

Now, here’s what’s interesting:

The Kindle version of “The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You” sells about one a day on average, and has been for the past two months. This despite the fact that I don’t have it advertised anywhere, that I’ve never told anyone about it other than anecdotally, and that it still doesn’t have a single review.

Just in case you’re not engaged here, let me spell it out:

My novel, which I poured my heart into, which represents some of my best work, which has nothing but stellar reviews, and which I promoted heavily and was downloaded by over a thousand people in two days is being outsold by a brief piece that is freely available on my blog, which doesn’t have a single review, and which I’ve never, ever promoted.

This is obnoxious. But it’s also encouraging in a way, because the fact that none of the sales are my doing means that the only reason anyone is finding it must be because Amazon is promoting it via “customers also bought” or “Amazon recommends” or whatever.

In other words, this kind of proves that Joanna was right. All that piece did was to sit there for sale. Nothing else. And then it started selling.

So, given the better reviews, better traffic, and better promotion behind The Bialy Pimps, will it also start to sell on autopilot in a few months? Probably, right? It seems to make sense.

And when it does — when it finally seems to “catch” in the Kindle store — then that’s probably a good time to move on to phase 2 of my maybe-this-will-work-but-really-I-have-no-fucking-clue promotional strategy.

Phase 2

I mentioned that I didn’t go whole-hog with my initial launch. I don’t know if this is smart or will turn out to be dumb, but I can tell you why I did it.

I did it because I don’t want the first people who come to the page, buy the book, and leave a review to be random. I don’t want random, unbiased reviews and chatter to be the book’s first reviews and chatter. I want qualified, biased initial reviewers so that when the random people do show up, I’ll look really good.

My first fourteen reviews are all five stars. Think that’s sustainable, representative, or accurate? Not a chance. Those are the opinions of people who already knew me and who went into this expecting to like the book. This is what I wanted.

Once I’ve got good mojo going and have some momentum with the reviews (mission mostly accomplished) and once the book starts selling a bit better on its own (I give it a month or two more), then I’ll do a “real” promo.

But again, I’m going to do it via free, for all the reasons I explained in my last post.

I’ve got three days of free left out of the five KDP Select gave me. So what I’d like to do for phase 2 is to do another free promo, but this time do the stuff I purposely didn’t do this time. I’d like to try for a few high-profile guest posts, submit it for review, and ping sites like Pixel of Ink, which tell their readers about new free titles.

My hope is that next time, I’ll get the surge I didn’t get this time, and that I’ll get a little bit of a viral effect. Maybe this will tail off into higher ongoing sales. I’ve heard from a lot of people — and not all big-selling authors — that this does indeed tend to happen.

Phase 3

Phase 3 isn’t really a launch phase. It’s my ongoing plan to keep promoting myself — but this time prominently including “author of The Bialy Pimps” on my resume.

Phase 3 includes a lot of stuff — most of it boring to read about — but one thing it does include that may interest you is that I’m going to be starting a podcast. Stay tuned to this blog to hear more about that in coming weeks.

Phase 3 also includes writing more books. And more books. And more books.

I firmly believe that the bold new frontier of self-publishing means that you kind of can’t fail if you’re at least decent and you’re persistent. If your sales suck and a given title only makes you $2000 per year, that’s not much… but once you have ten such shitty-selling books, that $20,000 is a nice sideline. If you write 30 books, you can start to live pretty well as your backlist earns for you year after year after year.

It’s not “get rich quick”, but I think it’s “make a living with art certain.” I think that nowadays, math favors the persistent artist.

There’s probably a lot more to this, but this has been a long and rambling post and I’m going to let it be a long and rambling post. I’m not going to try and end it in a tidy manner. It’s just going to kind of fizzle out here.

So, you know, if you have questions or comments, ask or comment away. If you’re any kind of a creative person, we’re all in this together.

P.S: If you read The Bialy Pimps and liked it, would you be willing to leave me a review? That’d be seriously badass of you.

NOTE: The free promo described below has ended, so The Bialy Pimps now costs $3.99. Small price to pay for awesome, really, and people are LOVING it.

Yesterday I told you all about my novel The Bialy Pimps and how, after twelve years of indecision and resistance, I’ve finally rewritten it and published it, yada yada yada. And maybe that was interesting to you and maybe not, but what probably got your attention — if anything did — was the fact that I’m debuting this book at a price of FREE (through the end of today).

On hearing the whole “free” thing, here are some possible reactions you may have had:

“Wow, that’s awesome!”

or

“It’s free? That must mean it sucks.”

and probably most of all

“That’s incredibly stupid. He’s going to lose whatever for-sure sales he was going to get.”

I’m going to explain why I decided to launch for free in just a minute, but first I wanted to remind you to go ahead and download The Bialy Pimps for free here (non-US people, see the first P.S. below) before we go any further, because the free promo ends tonight.

Seriously. Go download it. It’s awesome.

In fact, download it even if you don’t have a Kindle, because there are apps that will let you read it… and even failing that, you can read right there on the website thanks to the “Kindle Cloud Reader,” which makes the process incredibly easy. Or, if you have an e-book reader that’s not a Kindle, email me and I’ll let you know what’s up. Hell, download it even if you don’t want it. Download it to humor me and make me feel better. I don’t have a tip jar, so downloading it to feed my ego (and spreading the word) would be an awesome way to give back if you’re so inclined.

Now, if you haven’t downloaded it yet despite my intolerable pestering, let me try something else in the interest of marketing professionalism:

C’mon.

C’mon.

Do it. You know you want to.

Please?

I’m totally serious. Go get it. It’s free. Then tell your friends and ask them to get it for free. Tweet it. Facebook it. Tell the world, so that as many people as possible can get it without giving me a cent.

Which raises an excellent point.

Why the hell would I be so eager to give something away for free?

Stupid, right?

After all, this book means a lot to me. It was written during a time of intense personal turmoil. It was born from a hell of a lot of pain, with hilarious results. It’s based (hilariously) on a real place and (hilarious) real people who I can safely say are, in the (hilarious) pages of this book, no longer that place or those people, but the sum of which is still (hilariously) still very meaningful to me.

I spent hundreds of hours on each draft of the book. There were four.

I spent dozens of hours prepping the manuscript for publication.

I spent scores of hours researching fiction marketing as it exists today, formulating my plan, and writing emails and posts like the one you’re currently reading.

And my strategy, after all of that work and head-scratching, is to give the book away — and not just to give it away, but to give it away to you, my prime audience… to the people who were most likely to actually shell out cash and buy it.

In short, I’m cutting off all potential royalties from the people most likely to earn me any royalties.

Why?

Angry Birds are smart birds

Let me explain by allegory, because that’s how I roll.

The other day, on a whim, I decided to download the Angry Birds app on my smartphone. I’d never played it before, but I’d heard a lot of hubbub surrounding it, so I figured what the hell. And besides, the app was free. So I opened it and I started playing. My son got very interested in it. Because he got interested, my daughter (who does everything her brother does) got interested.

While I was playing, I accidentally clicked on a few of the ads that exist inside the app. It didn’t annoy me, but it happened.

And then yesterday, we bought two sets of Angry Birds plushes. They are identical, but each kid had to have them. They spent their Christmas money. $25 each.

So if you’re following along, here’s what happened:

1. Angry Birds was released for free.
2. A lot of people liked it, spread it, and started talking about it.
3. Because it was free, I figured what the hell and decided to try it myself.
4. My son saw me playing and liked it.
5. My daughter saw my son playing and liked it.
6. We bought $50 in Angry Birds merchandise, and there’s no way that’ll be our last Angry Birds purchase. I also sent Rovio a few cents in ad revenue due to my fumbling fingers.

Now get this. Rovio could have priced Angry Birds 99 cents or $1.99 and there’s no question people would have paid it, because a buck or two is definitely worth it. Even the Android app has hundreds of individual levels, and it’s really addicting.

But at even a buck or two, I wouldn’t have played it, because I don’t care even a buck or two’s worth about games on my phone. Their decision to charge me $1-2 would have assured that they didn’t get my $50+ this week. And the same goes for millions and millions of other people.

But Rovio did a very smart thing. They created something great, and they made it free. Because of that — and ONLY because of that — they got my attention… and then they got my money.

It’s ironic. They got my money because they refused to charge me any.

The math of free

What would you rather do? Would you rather sell something for ten bucks, or sell the same thing for a hundred bucks?

Ideological concerns and matters of pride and brand integrity aside, you can’t make the decision without knowing how many of each will sell. The market’s appetite for what you’re selling will determine your success, and a large part of the market’s appetite is determined by price.

Again setting aside fears of bottom-feeder thinking and opinions about what a low price “means” or “says to the world,” the truth is that each time you lower the barrier to entry by lowering the price, you get more attention, and the sales get easier. You remove an excuse for a few people, and if what you have to deliver is good, everyone walks away happy.

Want more reasons why free is awesome? Okay, here are three:

1. Free results in delighted fans and lots of thank-yous. Everyone likes receiving gifts.
2. Free is very easy to promote. I can be more aggressive during this promotion because I’m not asking people to spend money; I’m trying to give them a gift.
3. Free is also very easy for others to promote. If you ask your friends to tell the world about your $2 (or $200) product, they’ll flinch because people hate to sell, or appear salesy. But friends are usually happy to tell the world about something you’re giving away.

Would you rather sell fifty thousand thousand copies of a bird-flinging app at $1.99, or would you rather distribute half a billion for free, each of which generate just a few cents in ad revenue?

It’s not a perfect analogy because price isn’t the only option, and I don’t plan to slash all of my own prices to see what happens. I also don’t plan to offer my book for free forever, and I’m not making ad revenue from my book the way Rovio makes it from their free games.

But given a limited and defined set of circumstances, I think you get my point.

The magic of free on Amazon

If you’re an aspiring author, pay close attention to this section.

I’ve enrolled my book in Amazon’s KDP Select program in exchange for the opportunity to offer my book for free on the Amazon Kindle platform for a total of five days, divided however I’d like. The way it works is, I give them a 90-day exclusive (the book’s not available on Barnes & Noble’s e-book store or anywhere else), and as a thanks, they give me the right to give my book away for free. It sounds like a shitty deal, but it’s not for a lot of people I’ve heard about.

It’s because of the algorithm, and because of critical mass.

See, there are two basic ways to drive sales of e-books. One is for people who already know you to seek out (or be driven to) your book. That’s significant if you have a gigantic audience or if you’re an established name. If Steven King farts and has it transcribed (with the possible addition of an evil clown), it becomes a bestseller because people know and love Steven King.

But if you’re like most people, the bigger source of sales is people who didn’t know you in advance, but who somehow run across your book. There are a few ways that happens (you rise in rankings like the top 100 or the genre bestsellers, or maybe you show up in the “people who liked this also bought” suggestions for books like yours) but all of them depend on you already being popular, and already being successful on Amazon.

In other words, it’s kind of a catch-22. You need buyers to attract buyers.

It’s a vicious circle, but the more positive way to think of it is as requiring a critical mass. If you — somehow, anyhow — get enough buyers who think highly of your work, you’ll rise in the rankings and more people will find you. As more people find you, more people will buy from you. And as more people buy from you, more people are able to find (and buy from) you.

Most authors aren’t able to achieve the critical mass needed to get the ball rolling. They don’t have enough “at the ready” buyers to sustain the reaction, and they fizzle out. Nobody can find them, so nobody buys them. And when nobody buys them, it becomes less and less likely that anyone will find them.

Amazon’s ranking algorithm is just as mysterious to the outside world as the Google search algorithm, but there are a few things that are known:

1. Popularity matters. The more people who visit your book’s page, give you good reviews, link to you, and buy your stuff, the higher you’ll rank.

2. Downloads of a free book give you the same momentum as do sales.

and the really important one:

3. It’s a lot easier to “sell” free than it is to sell non-free.

So yes, I’m giving up maybe a thousand relatively for-sure sales, but I’m doing it because much like Angry Birds, I’m trading those sales for what I hope are a lot more eyes. A lot more downloads. A lot more reviews. A lot more popularity.

I could sell X number of books at $3.99 this month and be happy, but I’d rather “sell” ten times that number for $0 and manage to hit my own critical mass.

Will it work?

Hell if I know.

I might as well say right now that what I’m doing scares the bejesus out of me. I write these posts in what probably sounds like a confident, authoritative voice, but it’s the magic of editing and zero body language that makes me seem sure of myself. I’m not sure of myself about this. Not at all.

Truth be told, I’m on a wing and a prayer here.

I haven’t staked my mortgage on selling even one copy of The Bialy Pimps, so no actual harm is going to come to me if, when the free period ends, nobody ever buys it. But I will tell you one thing: that would suck.

I would not like it.

It would seriously bum me out.

Because I spent a lot of time on this book, and because it’s a story that means a lot to me, and because (if I could pretend that it’s possible to be objective about my own work) it’s a really good story. It’s funny as hell, and I think it’ll also make you ponder a bit. I think the story will stay with you and resonate once you’ve finished reading. I think it speaks to some bigger, somewhat more serious truths. I think there are messages in this tale that are about conformity, about the fragile and random nature of fame, and about what we’re truly supposed to spend our lives doing.

It’s occurred to me, in my less-than-confident moments, that this book may have only a few hundred to a few thousand sales in it, and that what I’m doing right now may just be giving all of those sales away and getting nothing in return.

And although I don’t need that money, it’d be nice to have even that small amount of recompense if this thing totally bombs.

What the fuck

There’s a line in the movie Risky Business that forms a cornerstone of my life’s philosophy. It’s when Joe Pantoliano (as Guido the pimp) tells a very young Tom Cruise, “Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, ‘What the fuck.’ ”

Do I know what’s going to happen?

No.

Am I pissing away the small amount of reward I could get from my years of emotional and physical effort?

Maybe.

Should I remember that a (angry) bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? That if I know I can get some sales today, I should take those sales rather than rolling the dice on a free promotion?

Who knows.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, “What the fuck.”

So it’s free. And I want you to pick it up, and I hope you like it and share it.

If nothing else, I’ve shipped a work that’s been in my closet for over a decade, and that means a lot, too.

P.S: The book IS available at no charge on non-US Amazon sites too, so if you’re outside of the US and these links tell you that you can’t get it, go to your local Amazon site and search for “The Bialy Pimps.” Here’s the Amazon.co.uk link, for instance.

P.P.S: The free period ends TONIGHT. So be sure to download it now.

P.P.P.S: Remember, you don’t need a Kindle. Read the first part of this post again to see what I mean.

P.P.P.P.S: I think I forgot to mention that I have a book out, and that you can get that book for free. I forgot to mention that, right?

P.P.P.P.P.S: What the fuck.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S: Mitch Hedburg said, “At the end of my letters, I like to write, ‘P.S. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.’ “

Monday night, I uploaded the final elements required by Amazon to publish my novel, The Bialy Pimps, in the Kindle store.

Go over and check it out. I made it FREE for today and tomorrow — a decision I’ll tell you all about tomorrow — so while you’re there, be sure to download the book. (Oh, and if you’re not in the US, see the P.S. at the bottom of this post.)

(Do it even if you don’t have a Kindle, by the way… there’s an app for that, and you can even read without an app… just order the book, and Amazon will deliver it to the “Kindle Cloud Reader,” which will let you read on your screen right away. It’s easy.)

Seriously. Download the book. Do it now; I’ll wait. Consider it a favor to me if you must, but do it.

Now, it’s kind of ridiculous, from a business standpoint, that I’m publishing a novel. You don’t know me as a novelist. Nobody was clamoring for this, and until a few months ago, nobody even knew it existed. I do have some marketing and follow-up ideas that will keep me in the fiction-writing world and hopefully make me some money at it, but this businessy, entrpepreneurish, human-potential-personal-development niche I’m in right now is where I’m known, and where I earn my living.

So why does it matter that I’ve published a novel?

Answer: It matters because it’s AWESOME.

Awesome

Think about what you really love to do, and then think specifically about the things you’re proud of even though none of your friends or family members give a shit. I have a few of these things. One day I deadlifted 475 pounds and came home and proudly told my wife, Robin, and she said, “Huh.” Another day, Seth Godin agreed to speak for The Badass Project conference and I told her, and she said, “Huh.”

She cared more about the book than she did about deadlifting or Godin, but she could never care as much as I care. When I solved narrative problems that had been dogging me and told her about my solutions, she said a nicer version of “Huh.” My parents were interested, and a few friends nodded politely when they heard what I was working on… but that was it.

We’re human. We like validation. We like to do things that seem impressive and then have others tell us that we done good. When that doesn’t happen, it’s annoying, but here’s the rub: many of the truly important things in life are the things that bore everyone else. Those things are important specifically because nobody gives a shit, since that’s how you can be sure you’re doing them for you… and not for anyone else.

(Now, for context, I’m about to explain why my novel means so much to me. But in the spirit of this post, it’s likely that you won’t care. If that’s the case, you can skip it and resume reading at the “For You” subhead below. In fact, I’ll even give you a link. Click here if you don’t give a fuck. I won’t be offended.)

Below, in full, is the “Author’s Note” that appears at the end of The Bialy Pimps. The character names won’t mean much to you if you haven’t read the book yet, so just ignore them if needed and read for the big picture.

Author’s note

This book took me twelve and a half years to write.

Or, more accurately, it took me six months to write, then another twelve years to find the courage to “kill my darlings,” as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch put it.

See, this book isn’t a true story. That would be ridiculous. But it was inspired by real people and a real place, and those people and that place were very dear to me. I started writing this novel after I’d left the people and the place behind in college, begun grad school laboratory work, and started having some really delightful panic attacks because I had ended up where I wasn’t supposed to be, doing what I wasn’t supposed to do.

When this happened back in 1999, it felt as if in a mere six months, my life had gone from being filled with laughter and fun and camaraderie to having very little of any of those. Without the love and support and companionship of my now-wife Robin (to whom this book is dedicated), I think I would have lost my mind. I hated my new job in a way I didn’t think it was possible to hate something, but it wasn’t venomous hate. It was giving-up hate. I felt like I’d discovered that the best years of my life were behind me, and that the future I had to look forward to — at least the part of the future that comprised work, which was a lot of it once you factored in my 2.5-hour round-trip commute — was nothing but bleak.

I wanted to turn back the clock, to go back to college and the way it had been. But because Superman wasn’t around to scream in anguish and then fly rapidly around the Earth to inexplicably roll time backward, I settled for going back in the privacy of my own mind. So I started to write down the stories we’d shared back then, back there.

At first, the people I wrote into my new manuscript were as they had been in life, and the place was as it had been in concrete and glass. That soon changed, as “Bingham’s” became its own new thing and the characters began to blend and melt into wildly distorted, wildly exaggerated amalgams of the people I’d once known. The plot built itself, our for-real regular “Captain Dipshit” became a villain, Dicky Kulane materialized out of nowhere, and the characters began to think and talk for themselves. And what had begun as a kind of journal became the fully fictional first draft of what you’ve just finished reading.

But I still remembered who the people had been in real life, and I still remembered every small feature of the place that Bingham’s had been based on. There really was a chipped-out shape in the paint that resembled someone the place had once known. There really was a pothole in the middle of the office floor. There really was, once upon a time, a real-life Ghetto Phone.

I’d written this sprawling epic that was partially true, partially blue-sky fabrication — or inspiration, depending on how you see it. And because it was so important to me, I couldn’t edit it. I could nudge it a bit and clean up the wording and “punch it up” as the Hollywood types say, but I couldn’t address the biggest problems. I couldn’t remove the minor characters so that the reader would remember the main ones. I couldn’t remove my recounting of High Street’s many colorful characters that weren’t relevant, but that meant something to me. I couldn’t change the autobiographical truths of some real-life moments so that they made sense in the context of a fictional tale.

In other words, I couldn’t commit to the harsh rewrite it would take to turn something I cared very much about into something that others might care about — and remain interested enough in to read all the way through. The first, second, and third drafts of this book were filled with my precious friends and memories. They were filled with my “darlings,” and I couldn’t bring myself to kill any of them.

Flash forward a decade or so.

In November of 2011, a friend of mine named Adrian Varnam insisted that I read Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art. He insisted, in fact, that he pay for a copy and have it shipped to me. I tried to protest, saying that I could pay for my own books, but he very firmly said, “I’m sending you this book,” and so I let it be. The book arrived, and I read it in a day. And after a week or two of letting Pressfield’s words rattle around in my brain, I realized something troubling.

I realized that The Bialy Pimps was still unfinished, no matter how much I told myself it was complete. I’d given birth to a major creative work, but I’d let Resistance stop me.

I went to my closet and pulled out the manuscript box containing the 180,000-word third draft of my ancient novel (on the box: “IT’S VERY GOOD! TRUST IT! DON’T MESS WITH IT!” and the codicil I’d neglected to add “… UNTIL YOU’RE READY TO KILL SOME UNNECESSARY DARLINGS!”), and began reading.

On the first read, I figured my task would consist mainly of excising the irrelevant parts. This was encouraging, because it meant I could do it relatively quickly. I’d lop out the sections that went nowhere and remove the huge, windy, introspective passages that were all about me telling myself that life was going to work out if I had faith. I’d put myself in the shoes of an objective reader and simply ask myself what bored me. And after a distance of twelve years — time during which I’d gotten and remained very happily married, had two delightful kids, quit the terrible job and created an online business that I enjoyed every minute of, gained some internet fame, and made many amazing new friends — I was every bit objective enough to do that.

But the job was far, far harder than I’d thought. My emotion at the time had masked major problems with the manuscript. Dicky Kulane, who was the only major character that hadn’t been inspired at all by a real person, read like a cardboard cutout. Dicky’s plotting and motivations were totally unbelievable. I cut-jumped around the novel as it suited me as a writer, leaving the reader hanging and confused. A lot of it was still very funny and very good to my older and hopefully wiser eye, but it needed a lot of work.

But I was on fire like I’ve seldom been. I rediscovered that place, now mostly fictional. I re-met those people, now personae in their own, imaginary right. From this, I found the energy for a top-to-bottom rewrite of easily two-thirds of the book, and did it on top of a full-load of “real, for-money business” I had on my plate. I got up early. I stayed up late. I squeezed in over six hours a day on the rewrite in addition to my work and family commitments, and in around seven weeks, the final draft was complete.

Well, almost. Until I published the thing, it would still be incomplete in the way that counted. So I told myself that no matter what happened with this novel, it deserved to at least see the light of day. It deserved, in Seth Godin’s terms, to be “shipped,” regardless of what would happen next. And I pushed through until that happened.

I hope you enjoyed this book, but if you didn’t, I won’t be offended because I didn’t write it for you. I wrote it the first time for me, and the second time for the book itself.

No matter what happens next, I’m proud of this book, and what it’s grown up to be. I’m pleased it had the courage to be born, and then to be reborn. I’m glad it was able to tell its story, and to become what it was meant to become.

For you

We spend a whole hell of a lot of our time doing the things that other people want us to do, or require us to do. Most people go to a job and do the work a boss wants them to do. Freelancers do what their clients want them to do. Entrepreneurs, who like to act like free spirits who are beholden to nobody, spend their time trying to do what the market wants, because that’s what’s profitable. We do the dishes because that’s what our spouse or roommate wants, we pay the bills because that’s what the utility companies want, and we play Candy Land with our kids because it’s what the kids want.

If you’ve got a creative endeavor in the works — no matter which form that “creation” takes — and if that endeavor is something that nobody other than you gives a shit about, then you must take the time to work on it.

You must finish it.

You must ship it, and get it out there into the world.

Maybe the world will magically start to care at that point, and maybe it won’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve completed something that you did for you, and for nobody else.

I’d love it if the world fell in love with The Bialy Pimps and it became really popular, but it doesn’t matter if that happens because that’s not the reason I wrote it, and it’s sure as hell not the reason I took the time now, twelve years later, to spend hundreds of hours rewriting it and preparing it for publication.

I did it because it was my own foolish dream to write and publish a novel, and on Monday night I pushed the button that, after decades of dreaming, made that dream a reality.

And it was so damn worth it.

P.S: IMPORTANT NOTE… the book IS available at no charge on non-US Amazon sites, so if you’re outside of the US and these links tell you that you can’t get it, go to your local Amazon site and search for “The Bialy Pimps.” Here’s the Amazon.co.uk link, for instance.

P.P.S: Even though I’ve said I don’t care what happens, I do kind of care and would love if you’d download The Bialy Pimps (remember, it’s free for the first days) because then I get to watch the numbers go up. Even self-realized people who do things “for themselves” aren’t above shallow ego boosts.

P.P.S: If you have an e-reader that won’t recognize the Kindle file format, shoot me an email.

Many times I’ve debated — and have asked friends whose opinions I trust — some form of this question:

Is “follow your heart” good advice?

Because you know what? It sounds really compelling. We all like the notion of a kumbaya world where we can do exactly what we want to do, whenever we want to do it. We all really dig the idea that we can, should, and must ditch the bullshit in our lives and pursue our passions. If you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, it’s really appealing to have permission to quit doing it and to take to the road playing the harmonica if that’s what moves you.

There’s a million variants on this theme.

Do what you love. Follow your bliss. Pursue your passion. Turn your hobby into your vocation.

My friend Lee Stranahan says, “If you’re in a job where people don’t thank you for what you do on a regular basis, I think you should stop doing it.”

For most people, all of these usually amount to the same big question: Faced with a choice between doing something you love (which may not pay) and doing something you don’t love (but that pays), which should you pursue?

Speaking for myself, I have two answers to this question:

First of all, following your passions is an incredibly stupid thing to do.

And second, you absolutely must follow your passions, because not doing so is the stupidest damn thing you could ever do.

Let me explain.

Follow your heart

What terrible advice. I know people who say this, but I also know what they really mean, and “follow your heart” isn’t the whole story.

I would never tell anyone that they should always follow their heart. Passions come and go, and the trouble with passion is that it’s incredibly loud. It drowns out lesser preferences and desires. If you only listen to passion, that’s like listening to the one loud asshole in the crowd who’s complaining about the show you’re putting on and ignoring the quieter majority who are enjoying it just fine. If you follow your passions without thinking, you’re listening to the squeaky wheel and giving it all the grease.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you really want to play the harmonica. It’s all you want to do, all the time. It’s your passion, in the purest sense of the word. You think about the harmonica constantly. You wake up and grab your harmonica. You go to sleep with your harmonica in your mouth. You make room when brushing your teeth so that you can play harmonica at the same time. You bought an electronic harmonica with headphones so that you can play it secretly at work. No sexual experience that does not include harmonica is worth engaging in.

So you should obviously quit your job and just play the harmonica all the time, right?

Wrong. Stupid. Because unless you’re very, very unusual, I’ll bet you have other, quieter desires that your harmonica-lust is drowning out.

For instance, I’ll bet you like to eat food. And I’ll bet you like that food to be a step above Ramen noodles on occasion.

I’ll bet you enjoy living under a roof. In fact, I’d further bet that the vast majority of you prefer to live under a decent, clean roof in a good part of town. And I’d go on to bet that well over half of you enjoy living where you are right now, or have ambitions to live somewhere better.

I’ll bet you enjoy your computer. Your iPod. Your iPhone. Your iPad.

I’ll bet you enjoy pleasing any family members you may live with or may support.

In other words, your harmonica passion isn’t your only passion. Each yin has a yang, and each thing you want has a price. Unless you get a harmonica sponsorship or unless Blues Traveller signs you up, leaving your job to play harmonica is going to involve a significant — possibly total — pay cut. Are you cool with that?

If you are, awesome. Quit your job, marry and fornicate with your harmonica, and have fun out there.

But because most people have those other desires too, my guess is that you aren’t going to be cool with it. Following your heart would net you a big win in the harmonica department… but would cost you in a lot of others.

It’s a recipe for a huge, foolhardy net loss.

But, follow your heart

Noticing some incongruity here?

I’m the guy who told you that you’d better carpe diem immediately because the universe doesn’t care about you, and hey, also, by the way, you’re dying, so you’d better get a move on.

I’m the guy who told you to schedule your fun stuff so that you can have more fun.

I’d also say that burning your days doing things you don’t care about or don’t want to do is akin to slow suicide. We only get one life, and this is yours. We only get one today, and you’re living yours.

Wasting your life doing things that aren’t in your heart is the stupidest thing you could do. It’s just as stupid as quitting the stuff you don’t like in order to do the things that are your heart.

Before I stop fucking with you, let me just incriminate myself a bit further.

I just finished writing a novel called The Bialy Pimps. (I’d very much like to link to it for you, but I can’t publish it until the cover art is ready.) I’m very proud of this novel. Creatively speaking, I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. I can’t wait to have it out in the world. I can’t wait for you to read it, because I think you’ll really, really like it. I can’t wait to write another one. I can’t wait to do a few cool things to spread, market, and disseminate this novel and the ones I write next.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my harmonica.

I’m writing and publishing fiction right now because I’m passionate about it. What other reason could there be? Yes, I might make some money on it, but I’m definitely not counting on it. I don’t expect to become a bestselling fiction author overnight. I don’t think it will help grow the business I’m currently in, because nobody reads a novel and then says, “Hey, that was great… let’s buy some of this guy’s info products!” And I’m certainly not planning to abandon what I’ve built in the business/blogging/rule-questioning space to follow my new bliss, because I like it a lot here.

I’m doing it because I want to do it. Because it’s in my heart. Because I think about it all the time and because I can’t not do it.

Ditto the Badass Project conference I hosted last week. Someone asked me why the team and I went to all that effort when there’s zero financial or business gain to be had from it. I didn’t (and won’t) make a cent off of anything the Badass Project does. I got some good exposure and connections by doing the conference, but that was a side effect. At root, and at its inception, I work on the Badass Project because I’m passionate about giving people props for saying, “Fuck you, world… I’m going to do this whether you think I should or not.” I’m passionate about making people who blame external circumstances for the crap in their lives feel like douchebags.

I think you should ditch the meeting to go to see your kid’s dance recital. I think you should tell co-workers you can’t work a certain time because you want to go see a movie. I’ve said that my mission statement in life is to “do cool shit with cool people.” I believe firmly in the doctrine of dicking off.

Passion. All passion.

So… now what?

Passion is overrated. Passion is underrated. Following your heart is usually a stupid idea. Not following your heart is the stupidest thing you could ever do.

You can believe all of those statements, because very few things in life are absolute.

As always, it comes down to self-awareness… and that means knowing which questions you’re really asking.

The question isn’t, “Should I follow my heart?” It’s “Should I follow this particular aspect of this thing that’s in my heart, now, in this way, in full awareness of both the positive and negative consequences that may or may not arise from my decision?”

Almost nothing is as absolute as YES or NO, regardless of qualifications. I say “It depends” a lot. You know why? Because it always fucking depends.

So, should you pursue your passions?

Yes, if.

No, if.

If you’ve ever asked that question in its naked form, you either aren’t paying much attention or are afraid of taking the scary, decisive action that might come from a legitimate answer to a legitimate question.

So, if you can get a handle on your fear, I’ve got something for you to try. The next time you’re trying to decide whether you should follow a passion, ask yourself five questions.

The first two are:

1. What do I have to gain by following this passion?

2. What am I losing by not following this passion?

These two are easy, because it’s what’s being screamed in your ear by that internal voice. That voice knows all the reasons why you should quit your shitty job and go play harmonica (#1) and it has many pushy opinions about how staying in your shitty job is sucking the life out of you (#2).

But then, keep going, and be honest.

Ask:

3. What am I gaining by not following this passion?

Think really damn hard about this one. Be honest in both directions, meaning that you’ve got to truthfully come up with things that you are gaining from staying right where you are even if you don’t want to admit it (self esteem, the perception of safety, the feeling that there’s safety in numbers) and that you can’t exaggerate the importance of not rocking the boat on your current situation (i.e., your job is not keeping you alive, and it’s pretty unlikely that it’s literally keeping a roof over your head unless you have no friends or relatives who would house you if there was no alternative).

Frame these things in the positive, because you’ve got to see the good in the situation, not just the bad in the alternative. So if you think that quitting your job would have you borrowing money and that would embarrass you, reframe it. Say that your current situation protects your dignity and makes you feel respected.

The next question is the hammer. Pay close attention to it.

4. What’s the price of following this passion?

Everything has a price. EVERYTHING. The price of a normal job is forty to fifty hours per week, a defined salary, and the need for approval of your actions, among other things. The price of playing harmonica all the time for no pay is that you may (may!) have to live in your parents’ basement and have no spending money and be called a loser. Everything has definite and potential upsides, and everything has definite and potential downsides. You’re going to pay the price for whatever you do, so make sure you’re okay with the price you’re choosing to pay.

There’s one more. And this is where things get really fun.

5. Are there other ways to get to where I want to be?

In other words, question the rules, because everything you’ve carefully reasoned out in questions 1-4 may be moot if you find an alternate way to satisfy your passion. The price may be far less in size, and far more appealing than you’d imagined.

I was talking with my buddy Benny Lewis yesterday. Benny travels. Like, that’s what he does, essentially for a living. He goes to different countries and he immerses himself in the local culture and he tries to learn the language. He’s from Ireland, but he really only goes back for Christmas. Everything he owns, all together, weighs fifty pounds. He’s a true nomad.

Benny said that people tell him all the time that they wish they could do what he does. And Benny told me that his response is, “So do it.”

But people don’t think they can do it. They’ve decided that the “price” of doing what Benny does is different from its true price, because they’re “pricing” a traditional, inside-the-box model. Benny’s model is outside the box. Most people think of travel as consisting of an expensive plane ticket, a week or two in a hotel (which is usually expensive), and then all sorts of other vacation expenses. But Benny doesn’t fly in and fly out. He flies in and stays for months. That’s several plane tickets a year, not several a month. He rents a place for the long term. His current place in Taiwan costs $300 a month. And if that’s too pricey? He couch surfs, and gets his accommodations for free.

Benny told me that most people have this mentality that says, “Work hard, save up a big chunk of money, and then travel the world.” But if you hack the system, you can start now. With just a bit of planning, you could do what Benny does for a pittance. So don’t wait. Travel, and earn that pittance as you go along.

The bottom line

I think that you should pursue your passions. I think that you should follow your heart.

…if, that is, you decide what it’s going to cost you, and decide that you’re honestly okay with paying that price.

Anything is possible. The only questions are how, where, when, and at what cost.

Following your heart isn’t bad. Staying where you are isn’t bad. What’s bad is inaction. Malaise. Inertia. Apathy. Unconsciousness.

Decide, then do.

Go.

So you like the idea of being a badass? You’re sold on badassery? You admire people who are badasses, and you want to become more badass yourself?

Are you sold on the idea that excuses suck, that most excuses are bullshit, and that the minute we learn to master our own true abilities is the minute our lives become amazing and virtually unlimited?

Well, lucky you. By joining us online for the Badass Project Conference 2012 next week, you can immerse yourself in an insane amount of badassery — taught by 18 amazing speakers — for FREE.

Here are the details on the conference.

So, I just want to make sure we’re clear about this.

This is virtual (online), meaning that you can attend from anywhere with an internet connection.

18 amazing who believe in our cause are joining us: Leo Babauta, Carole Brown, Brian Clark, Jonathan Fields, Charlie Gilkey, Maggie Ginsburg-Schutz, Matt Glowaki, Seth Godin, Joe Hall, Thor Holt, Warren MacDonald, Anissa Mayhew, Jon Morrow, Amber “Miss Destructo” Osborne, Amber Rae, Julien Smith, John Unger, and Tommy Walker.

They’ll be speaking about topics that will help you achieve your maximum level of badass… things like getting through fear, overcoming resistance, and eliminating excuses.

And IT’S ALL FREE.

Check it out, then block off the time on your calendar. You absolutely don’t want to miss this.

We’ve put together something I’m very, very proud to be a part of. I hope you’ll join us.