In fact, as that fact settled in and I reflected on the way I conduct the rest of my business, I realized that I do pretty much everything wrong, all the time.

And so I was like, “Self, you’re off track. You’re getting sloppy. You need to stop what you’re doing right now — playing on Twitter and chatting with people aimlessly and answering unimportant emails and whatnot — and get to work on the things you’ve been neglecting. Maybe create that ‘Store’ page you’ve been meaning to create, or put up some of the cool new testimonials you got yesterday.”

So then, fully motivated, I got up, turned off the computer, and went to the theater to watch that movie Daybreakers because I like vampires.

I do everything wrong in my business. It’s retarded. The call I had with that prospective client was just one shining example. So, for the sake of illustration and because I heard that both Legion and The Book of Eli sucked, let’s take a look at what I did incorrectly:

1. I told my prospect that I didn’t have a clue about some of the things he wanted to know.
The rule is supposed to be that when someone asks about something that is sort of within your ability to learn, you say yes now and learn how to do it later. But instead, when he asked me about something foreign, I said, “Sorry, I know nothing about that.” I added that if he wanted, I could probably look into whatever it was for him later on.

2. I referred my competitors.
The guy I was talking to was interested in my unique breed of “personality marketing,” but also asked if he should maybe focus more on using AdWords to drive traffic, or try harder to get good rankings through search engines. So I told him that I knew a guy who is a genius at generating automated AdWords traffic (Clay Collins) and another guy (Michael Martine) who is an SEO whiz. Then, I gave him both of their website addresses and told him that if that was the direction he wanted to go, to tell Clay or Michael that I said Hi.

3. I didn’t push the big sale.
At the end of our call, my prospect indicated that he’d like to hire me for coaching. He asked how many sessions I thought would be optimal. I told him, “This is the part where I’m supposed to say that unless you buy five hours, you’re wasting your money. But instead, I’ll suggest you buy whatever you’re comfortable with.” And with that, I left it to him to decide.

4. I didn’t offer a fast-action discount.
A really good sales tactic is to get someone to act fast (while they’re still pumped up from talking to you) by offering a discount if they buy NOW. I thought about doing that, but didn’t. Instead, I told him to get back to me “whenever.”

5. I didn’t care if he hired me.
Yeah, work is good and yeah, money is also good. But I’m kind of woo-woo about such things, so the concept of “meant to happen” comes into play — at least in my mind. The way I saw it, he’s either “one of my people” or he’s not. If he is, then he got a feel for how I roll, would like me to help him, and will be back. And if he’s not one of my people, then it’s probably best we don’t work together anyway.

Now, you could play that call back in a sales training course as an example of what not to do, but it’s how I handle every call. It’s how I handle every email. I say, “Here’s the info you’re looking for. Here’s how I can help you. If you want to do it, awesome. And if you don’t, no hard feelings.”

I don’t upsell current clients. It’s not that I think it’s not a good idea; it’s simply that I’m too lazy to do it.

I don’t optimize my own site to attract search engine traffic.

I don’t blog often about what I do for clients in order to establish myself as an expert, and I certainly never blog about technology tips and hints anymore. Instead, I blog about my shitty insurance plan and how well I did on a fitness test.

I don’t write to clients in a “professional” manner.

I hardly ever send email my mailing list, and when I do, I don’t include the sales link three times.

I blatantly, unashamedly ask people to use my affiliate links so that when they buy stuff, I’ll make money.

I swear, write about my vulnerabilities, and generally am not normal.

You take that “what not to do,” where I scored a big fat zero, and you multiply it by the number of people who contact me and the number of days I persist in backwards marketing. And somehow, all of that together adds up to a lot of clients, a lot of referrals, and a good chunk of income.

Why enough wrongs make a right

I guess I should be clear that this is a musings post (or maybe an anecdotal post that was fun for me to write) and not an advice post. I don’t totally understand why my “wrong” approach works, and I’m not really suggesting that you pursue it.

But I do have a theory.

See, some of you were reading my litany of mistakes above and getting the wrong impression. I’m not bragging about my flaunting of the rules, and I’m not saying that everything I’m not doing would be wrong to do. Could I benefit from a chain of upsells? Of course I could. Could I sell more — and still sell with integrity — by offering bonuses and discounts to urge someone to buy sooner rather than later? Yeah, absolutely.

Some of the people I respect most in this realm teach people to do the very things I don’t do, and this leads to a strange set of contradictions in my mind: I ignore most email marketing; email marketing is good to learn. I close poorly; good closings can benefit clients while boosting sales.

I think the reason I can operate in spite of eschewing so many of these “right ways” has to do with the fact that I am very clearly not a pro, bent on separating my clients from their money in order solely to line my pockets. Not that all pros do this… but there are a lot of shysters out there, and they DO play by the rules.

Instead, it’s incredibly, incredibly obvious that I am just an ordinary guy. I fuck up; you can hear my dogs or kids in the background of my calls; I lose my train of thought when I’m talking.

Just like an ordinary, everyday person.

Just like my clients.

Just like you.

It might help, in terms of sales, to polish my image… but leaving some of the tarnish there just gives me a more obvious level of truth.

Look, I don’t have a moral to this post. I can’t tie it up neatly, and say, “Here’s what you’ve learned today.” I’m just jamming here. I just find it interesting that the boundaries of authenticity can apparently be pushed much further than I ever would have thought. I don’t seem to need to be an internet pro. Apparently I can get away with being good at what I do, without the sparkles and glitter and e-commerce razzmatazz.

That’s good news. Because what you see here is truly what you get. And what’s awesome is that authenticity is easy. I don’t have to do something that’s not natural to me, that I have to learn and remember.

Maybe this is part of the lesson behind the Third Tribe, or maybe it’s not.

All I know is that if you believe there is one best way to do business online, you’re mistaken. Rules are made to be broken, and I’m living proof.

What I’d like y’all to know is that this isn’t me sitting on some philosopher’s cushion and declaring from on high that I’ve had some esoteric, metaphysical realizations that you might want to try.

This is me living my life and realizing — in a very, very visceral way — that a lot of things have been presented to me that aren’t necessarily true or right, and starting to defy them. To actually do, in my daily life, what I’m writing about here.

However, despite that Cool Guy intro, I’m running into one thing that has me stumped. One convention that is begging to be defied, but which I honestly don’t know if I should maybe just bow down to anyway.

Maybe you can help me decide what I should do.

As some of you may know, I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic. Since 13 days before my 13th birthday (I love that stat), I’ve been monitoring my blood sugar, injecting insulin, watching the things I eat. That is absolutely no big deal to me; it’s simply part of who I am at this point.

But since I moved out of my mother’s house… and here comes the rub… I’ve also been paying for health insurance to cover myself, as a diabetic.

Every year, the rates go up. Almost always significantly.

I got my new renewal rates in the mail a few weeks ago. And I found out that they’ll be going up almost 50%… again. And once that happens, I’ll be paying around $800 per month to insure myself.

And that’s JUST myself. My wife and kids have a separate policy. And by the way –that $800 policy? It’s the worst one I’m able to get. It has a $5000 deductible, meaning that I’m essentially paying for everything out of my pocket anyway.

Now, let’s go back to the rules thing, and to fear.

Society tells you (tells me) that you (I) must have insurance. Plenty of people don’t, but almost all of those people wish they did, and are only uninsured out of ignorance or lack of funds. But the vast majority of those people want insurance. They feel they need it. Because… what if something happens?

But “what if something happens” coverage for $800 per month for the shitty policy, and rising fast? Really?

And so here we come to my rule-breaking question: Can I decide not to have insurance?

I don’t like the idea — not one little bit. It bothers me that I could have an accident, or a sustained illness, and I wouldn’t be able to pay for it. And currently, while it feels like I’m being robbed at gunpoint if I pay $800 per month, I could do it. But what happens next year, when it’s $1100 or $1200? And what happens the year after that, when I turn 35 and move into a new risk bracket, and things really start to change?

What happens when I’m 65? Will the insurance company be asking me for $5000 per month by then?

I’m fucking 33 years old and am in stellar health. I’ve broken a bone one time and was hospitalized only when I was diagnosed with diabetes. I’ve done everything right; I’ve taken care of myself; I’ve done everything the doctor told me to do. But am I being rewarded in any way? Or am I, instead, being lumped in with the people who eat cake all day, don’t check their blood sugar ever, and have a foot amputated every spring?

Am I being treated like — and charged as part of — a demographic that I don’t really match? Am I being punished for the negligence of thousands of people I don’t know?

Do I maybe have a far better chance of costing less than they do as a medical patient — of costing less, even, than what I’m paying in for insurance?

Yes, I could get hit by a bus.

But am I being financially raped each month simply because my fear of a catastrophic event outweighs the likelihood that it will actually ever happen?

I’m really not trying to talk myself into this. I’m trying to raise questions, and see if it makes sense or not. So we’ll see.

But here’s something to think about:

Insurance companies know the odds. They pay actuaries large salaries to determine how much any one type of person is likely to cost for medical care. To them, you are a number. And on average, they know that if enough of your type of people pay in and and then cost what the actuaries tell them you will cost, they will make a lot of money.

In other words, the game is fixed. If you have health insurance, you’re essentially betting against the house. The average person in each demographic will always pay more in to insurance than they will get out of it.

That’s not conspiracy theory. It’s fact.

The question then, is, are you willing to pay in more — to bet against the house — on the chance that enough bad stuff will happen that you will “beat” the odds?

It feels to me like I’ve been lumped in with a shitty group. I don’t think I match the odds of most diabetics — not by a long shot. If their lifetime costs are X on average, I’m going to be a small fraction of X.

So if you’re betting against the house with your insurance, I’m apparently hoping to hit the Powerball.

I’ve gone 20 years without any of the traumatic “diabetic costs” like hospitalization, retinopathy treatment, fancy foot care, amputations, renal failure, etc. etc. etc. Yes, I do have ongoing needs for medications and supplies, but beyond that, I have the medical expenses of a nondiabetic.

Or, I’d wager, I probably cost less even than the average nondiabetic, since most Americans are less active than I am, eat more poorly, and so on.

I insure myself out of fear. We all do. The question will be whether or not the fear is justified. Whether it’s possible to honestly mitigate that risk well enough without insurance (or with some crazy insurance alternative), or whether doing so is a foolish gamble.

So let me pose the question: Should I break this rule? Should I consider dropping my insurance now, while the rates are only moderately fucking ridiculously insulting?

Alternatively, what else can I do?

• I’m self-employed and am not about to go get a 9-to-5 so that I can get on a health plan.
• I already have the worst plan offered. I cannot opt for a plan with a higher deductible because there is none.
• Isn’t there some coverage I can get cheap, even as a diabetic, that says, “If you have expenses over $20k or something, we’ll cover it, but otherwise, you’re on your own”?
• I do have substantial ongoing monthly costs. I pay around $150 per month for insulin, but that’s not even covered by my current plan, so I’m paying that anyway. I also have other stuff (testing supplies, supplies for an insulin pump and real-time blood glucose monitor) that is apparently pretty costly but that I now get for free as part of a diabetes management plan. Basically, by giving me this stuff free, they reason that I’ll use it and not have kidney failure later. If I ditch insurance, I have to start paying for all of it myself.
• I haven’t calculated that cost yet, but have a really hard time believing it’s EVEN REMOTELY CLOSE to $800 per month.
• My other costs are minimal. Doctor’s visits are infrequent and cheap. Lab work is infrequent and not hideously expensive. Knock on wood, I’ve only had one traumatic medical event, when I broke my arm at the gym while weightlifting.
• This one’s the kicker: If you don’t have insurance for a period of time and then want to get it again later, the company does not have to cover you at ANY price. So if I ever don’t have insurance, I can probably forget about ever having it again down the road, thanks to my rather expensive preexisting condition.

All ideas, thoughts, opinions, alternate means of covering my ass are welcome. I honestly don’t know what to do.

Ultimately, the question is: Is $800 per month (and likely to increase by at least 30% per year going forward) a fair price to pay for “just in case” coverage? Or should I maybe just put that same $800 per month into a bank account, and draw from it when needed?

Ugh, I don’t know. Fucking stupid insurance.

(And also, Lee is worth checking out even if you don’t give a shit about pricing simply because he’s interviewed director Kevin Smith and his Facebook profile picture is of him with Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols. So, yeah.)

Anyway, on to the topic at hand: Pricing yourself.

And at this point, allow me to climb up onto my soapbox, because most of you out there — you designers, coaches and consultants, writers, illustrators, photographers, and whatever else — are going to screw up this whole pricing thing. You’re going to screw it up by undervaluing yourselves, because you think that what you do is a commodity, like a pack of razor blades or a toilet seat cover.

This may seem obvious, but it’s worth really thinking about, so think about it: Creative services are NOT A COMMODITY.

Read that again. Write it on your office wall. Crochet it onto your pillow. Tattoo it on your spouse.

What you do is not a commodity, so stop acting like it’s something you can pull off a shelf at Wal-Mart. Stop ranking yourself against those in your niche in the way a bargain store would. Stop competing on price. Stop thinking that if you do X and Joe Blow down the street does X, that Joe’s going to run you out of business if he charges less than you do.

Photographers aren’t interchangeable. Designers aren’t interchangeable. The price of a photographer or a designer matters to clients, but it’s only one of the deciding factors, and usually one down near the bottom. Will your price weigh in your customers minds? Yes, but only relative to the rest of what you have to offer.

Customers and clients aren’t weighing whether the price is “high” or “low.” They’re wondering if what they think they’ll receive is worth the price they’re being asked to pay.

See, there is no inherent dollar value to a photograph or an illustration. What it’s “worth” to one client is different from what it’s worth to another. For instance, I hired N.C. Winters to create the banner graphic at the top of this website. He quoted me a price and I got to decide if I wanted to pay that price to have a custom piece of his art.

I was not thinking, “If I have this banner, will it bring in X more dollars per month?”

And even if I could draw a direct line between N.C.’s art and my profit, it wouldn’t tell the whole story. Has having that banner it improved my branding? Has it made me look more reputable or professional? Has it increased my image of “cool”? Has anyone seen the art, thought it was neat, and then quite coincidentally remembered it when pointing a friend to a post I made — a friend who then referred someone who referred someone who introduced me to a good networking connection?

What is the value, in dollars, of my header graphic? And what is it that makes N.C.’s work worth more to me than other people I could have hired — people who might have charged me less?

The answer to the second question is, “It’s worth more because I liked it more.” And the answer to the first question is, “Who knows?” Because I sure don’t.

The market may give you an idea of the price range you can work within, or the price range you might try to strive to rise above, but the market does not DETERMINE your price.

The most commonly overlooked fact about subjective pricing is this: The main reason that the cheapest providers in the market are cheap is because they decided they weren’t worth much. And the main reason the most expensive providers in the market are expensive is because they decided they were worth more.

Yes, people have to agree with the expensive guy if he’s to make any money, but he never would have made that money if he hadn’t decided it first.

There are good and bad photographers. There are good and bad coaches. Which are you? If you’re good, believe it — and then hike up your pants and price yourself accordingly.

Cutting prices works for commodities, but will not win you good clients. If you’re cheap, people won’t think it’s because you’re awesome and they’re getting a good deal. Instead, they will look at your bargain basement price and will assume that you suck.

Because everyone has heard that expression — the one about how you get what you pay for.

Lee and I talked about this stuff in some serious depth (enough depth that he had to cut me off or I’d go forever), and he also got some crazy good stuff from my buddies Charlie Gilkey and Caffeinated Elf. (I know it’s good because I’ve heard it.) So let me go ahead and make a totally biased suggestion — biased because I’m in it, and biased because I’m an affiliate:

If you’re a person providing a product or service that is in ANY way subjective and if you are AT ALL uncertain about pricing, go buy Lee’s “How Much Should I Charge?” course while it’s still cheap. Because I’ll bet that most of you could be charging $20 more per hour, and recouping what you paid right away. Like my wife… she charges this one client like $25 an hour or so, which is ludicrous. She could and should very easily be charging $45. I keep telling her.

If you’re serious about your business, then for real: head over and buy this course. Then listen to what we have to say and act accordingly. The entrepreneurial world isn’t a corporation with regular raises handed down from above. Nobody’s going to hand you the increased rates that you deserve, so you need to learn to ask for what you’re truly worth. And if you’re good at what you do, you can almost certainly get it.

Go get ‘em, Sparky.

.

You may remember that in early November, I set a goal. I was going to score 28 points on Crossfit’s “How Fit Are You?” challenge. To refresh your memory (which is surely unnecessary, as I’m sure you have detailed notes everywhere about every aspect of my life and work), here are the descriptions of the tests that make up the challenge, and what I wanted to do on each:

Test #1: Maximum bench press immediately followed by maximal pullups
GOAL: 8 points, which would be max bench press x max pullup reps equal to more than 8000.

Test #2: 15 clean and jerks at a fixed weight without putting the bar down or resting it on the floor
GOAL: 12 points, which would be using 160 pounds for the 15 non-stop reps.

Test #3: Maximal Tabata squats followed by max muscle-ups in 4 minutes
GOAL: 0 points, but one muscle-up. (There’s no way I was going to reach even the lowest scoring level.)

Test #4: Max deadlift followed immediately by maximal handstand pushups
GOAL: 4 points, which would be deadlift max x HSPU max reps equal to more than 3500.

Test #5: Run 800 meters (1/2 mile), then do 21 thrusters (a front squat combined with a push press), then do 21 L-pullups (pullups with your legs in front of you)
GOAL: 4 points, which would be finishing the above inside of six minutes.

So I trained for this. I worked on aspects of each test and the tests themselves for two and a half months, knowing that I had promised to do the thing around January 15th. For a while I was goaded along by competition in the challenge by Craig from Bloomverse, but then he wussed out because he decided that caring for a new child was in some way more important than an internet fitness challenge with someone he didn’t actually know.

Time passed, and my deadline loomed. Then, this week, I did the tests — five tests in five days in a row, in the order above, as prescribed.

And I scored 8 points.

How to fail, Truant style

Get this: I don’t care that I scored 8 points. And do you know why? Because I scored 8 points. And do you know how many points I would have scored if I hadn’t set the a goal to score 28, and then hadn’t trained for or taken the challenge at all? I’m thinking zero.

I don’t care because the goal made me train, and stretch, and improve. I grew further than I would have if I hadn’t been striving for something, if I hadn’t felt a positive “push” moving me forward.

You see, there’s more to the story.

The challenge is scored differently for each of the five tests. But in each, if you reach a certain threshold, you get four points. If you reach the next threshold, you get eight. The next is 12, then 16, then 20. If you’ve never tried Crossfit, it also wouldn’t be obvious to you that a 20 on any given test is almost unattainable, and a 20 on more than one test would only be possible by Superman if he found a good supply of crystal meth.

So while 8 sounds not so fantastic, it’s also not terrible. Specifically, here’s what I did.

Test #1: For how long I’ve been training, I’m a hideous bench-presser. I got a max of 240 pounds. I then did 22 pullups. Multiply them together and that’s 5280. You need 6000 to get four points. So I got a zero.

Test #2: This was the only one I scored on. I did a 160-lb clean and jerk 11 times without setting the bar down. I would need 15 reps at 160 to get 12 points. But because 15 reps at 135 is the low end of the 8-point bracket and because I’d done 150 lbs. a few weeks prior, I gave myself 8 points.

Test #3: I still can’t do even one muscle-up. I scored 16 on the Tabata squats. Those two multiplied together have to be 180 points to score a 4, and I got 0 x 16 = 0. Obviously room for improvement here.

Test #4: I just missed a 475 pound deadlift, so I settled for the rep at 445 that I had done earlier. I then did 6 handstand pushups, which, multiplied with the 445 deadlift, totals 2970. I needed 3500 to get 4 points.

Test #5: I could do the components of this test, with rest between, in under 6 minutes total. However, it fell apart when I put it all together. I needed under 6 minutes to get 4 points, and it took me 7:13.

If you don’t give a shit about weightlifting or fitness and are just looking for the bullet points of why I’m still happy with my monumental failure on this goal, here they are:

1. My score of 8 is, despite appearances, actually a respectable score.

2. My scores on tests #1, #4, and maaaaybe #5 represent “high zeroes,” and my score on test #2 represents a “high eight.”

And most importantly,

3. Even though the “points” score doesn’t reflect it, I improved on each and every one of those. Each and every one. (Except for 3, but 3 sucks anyway.)

See, the purpose of a goal isn’t to get the goal. The purpose of a goal is to make us stretch, to force us out of our comfort zone, to cause us to get better at something.

Several times now, I’ve made the goal to have a million dollars in the bank by such-and-such an age. I haven’t accomplished that goal even one of those several times, but I keep making more and more money, and doing better and better in my business. (Just don’t check my bank balance to verify this. Despite my million-dollar goal, I currently have in the neighborhood of zero dollars saved thanks to my terrible real estate investments. Although, I did find a quarter in the couch the other day.)

But where would I be without the goal to make the million dollars? And where would I be without the goal to score 28 points on the HFAY test? Well, I don’t know exactly, but I can give you a simple answer that I’ll guarantee is qualitatively true:

I’d be poorer. I’d be fatter.

We get hung up on goals. We think that if we don’t get the object of the goal, that the goal wasn’t worth making — but that’s not true. The goal made you stretch. And, by the way, the failure to achieve the goal forced you to accept that things don’t always work out perfectly, but that if you’ll just keep working and keep trying, they’ll eventually work out better than they would have if you’d have given up.

So here’s the thing. Here’s my new goal.

If I had cranked out just three more pullups on test #1, four more reps on test #2, two more HSPUs on test #4, and had trimmed 1:13 off of test #5, I would have scored 24 points instead of 8. That’s how close I was.

So by June 1, I’m going to do that, and a bit more. I’ll go one level higher on the bench press/pullups test and the deadlift/HSPU test, for a grand total of 32 points.

Do you hear that Craig from Bloomverse? There’s a new goal afoot, and I doubt you can pump out another excuse child quickly enough to avoid running for this one.

And because I know that some fools will take what Tim says literally, um… yeah, don’t take this too literally.

Oh, and one last thing: good fucking luck figuring out what the hell he is saying through all of the Britishisms. The use of 3-D glasses is suggested.

—–

No man is an island. I’m sure you’ve heard that expression many times and I’m here to tell you it’s a load of old bollocks. For instance, my mate Bob Island that works at NASA can say categorically and without any risk of contradiction, he is indeed an Island.

Still, John Donne (the dude that first wrote that quote) maybe could have said:

“You know what? We all rely on other people to a greater or lesser extent. Sure, some people work alone and shit like that, but they still need electricity, transportation and cheese. So therefore, they rely on others and thus, are connected.”

Admittedly it’s not as snappy as the original, and he’d probably have been burned at the stake for heresy, talking about electricity centuries before Al Gore invented it — but technically speaking it would have been more accurate.

I don’t think I’m breaking client confidentiality when I tell you that Truant was a mess when I first met him. A blubbering, incoherent shell of a man that fantasized about Zombies and had nightmares about naked women.

His fruit fly fetish that you will know about if you have been reading for any length of time was quite frankly out of control, and his finances had people from Enron wincing in pain and offering help.

Even though he was on his knees and only a haddocks dick away from living under a cardboard box and smelling of urine for the rest of his unfortunate life, he still had the wherewithal to call and beg me to coach him.

Of course I mocked him to begin with, but 5 hours of sobbing down the phone is enough to break down even the steeliest of resolves. So eventually I crumbled and agreed to take him on as a client under the strict condition that he never told a living soul. At that point he asked if he could tell his Zombie buddies and I told him to grow up.

Zombies have lips too you know.

Why we work together

You may be wondering what possessed me to take on a lunatic like Truant. That’s a fair question, and one my wife asked me several times when I was wandering around in a daze, muttering to myself and wearing a thousand-yard stare after our early sessions.

Bizarrely, I stuck with it due to a gut feeling — a gut feeling that this wreck of a human being actually had potential. Not lots of potential you understand — I mean he wasn’t going to become an ‘A’ list blogger or anything like that — but he had enough to make me think he wasn’t such a tool after all.

The fact is, Truant was hitting the phones begging half of the Internet to help him. It was months later that I found out I had listened to the same five hour tape of him weeping down the phone that everybody else had.

I also knew that if I could pull several rabbits out of one hat and help JT get where he wanted I would cement my place in the Life Coach Hall of Fame. Of course I’m a modest guy, (talk of me commissioning that 40 foot statue of myself was grossly exaggerated. It was actually only 25 feet and made of bronze, not gold) and helping Hobo Johnny was way more important than me getting myself on Oprah.

At this stage I have to point out that I cannot divulge the exact magical tricks and life coaching wizardry that I performed on the Truantmeister to drag him out of the gutter and turn him into the fine(ish) upstanding human being you see before you today. After all, if you knew what I knew you’d be me and then where would I go? Needless to say though, they worked.

I don’t want to make this post all about me (actually that’s not completely true. I would love to make it all about me, but I doubt it would get published and that would be a waste), so let you tell me about the man that is normally writing for you.

It would be easy to say, ‘That lucky fucker Truant — he has all sorts of people helping him. I hate his guts and would gladly punch him in the face” I know I have, many times.

I know why he’s such a lucky fucker though, and amazingly enough it’s not because he has a rabbits foot hanging round his neck. The reality is his luck emanates from working his tits off and being prepared to ask for help when he needs it without worrying that he’ll look like a total wuss.

It’s not rocket science as I said to Bob Island the other day. It is common sense, though. Although I’m sure you know what they say about common sense: it’s not that common.

My New York Times best selling book (in my mind) How To Be Rich and Happy tells people to ask for help, because that is what smart people do. Of course 90% of people will laugh in your face, but so what? You just move on to the next person and sooner or later somebody will say yes.

In fact, I’m in the process of trying to raise $1,000,000 to print up copies of How To Be Rich and Happy to give away to people that can’t afford it. Trust me — I need help, and I know most people will say “No.” Actually, that’s not true… they’ll say “Sounds like a great idea Tim, I’ll get back to you” and then vanish off the face of the earth, but it’s effectively the same thing.

Johnny can afford to pay me now, which is ironic seeing as we hardly work together anymore. He has done a truly stunning job of dragging himself up by the boot laces. You can too if you aren’t where you want to be, because you really are good enough.

Don’t fucking argue, you are, and that’s the end of it.

I probably don’t know you, but what I do know is that unless Bob from NASA is reading this, you’re not an island. It’s not rocket science and it’s not only ok to ask for help, it’s uber COOL to ask for help. Because guess what? That’s what the most successful people do. Asking for help is the new black, so just do it. But not from me, I’m full.

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Tim Brownson is absolutely the kind of life coach you want if you’re a cool person and enjoy British accents. If you do nothing else after reading this post, head over and read his goal post and get off your ass and help if you can. This is a man on a mission.

1. I talked to my friend Clay Collins, who is out of his fucking mind, and
2. I saw the “Not Normal” episode of SpongeBob Squarepants, in which SpongeBob tries to be normal and just becomes lame, and
3. I remembered that I only use my son as an excuse to watch SpongeBob, and that I’d be watching it even if he were gone.

And suddenly it dawned on me that:

1. We have this idealized notion that says, “Normal is boring. Everyone should be unique,” but
2. Society wants us to be normal and to conform. And it wants it — needs it — desperately.

Isn’t that fucked up? Isn’t it strange that people everywhere tout the importance of “being an individual” and “being unique,” but that all of our institutions are designed to homogenize us?

• Schools teach kids to sit still and behave in an orderly fashion, while teaching them all a standard curriculum.
• We’re guided to grow up, get a job with a company, and work until we retire at 65… despite the fact that that paradigm is decades dead.
• We may not desire it with all of our hearts, but most people nonetheless think that a good and average job means sitting in an office, in front of a computer.
• We’re told that it’s normal to work 9 to 5, Monday through Friday.
• We’re taught to pay our bills and our taxes, to take out our garbage on a certain night, and to keep our grass from getting too tall.
• We have a very specific set of rules that tell us what we can and cannot do, and then a bunch of less formal moral and institutional guidelines that tell us what’s right and wrong.

I’m not saying that the above stuff is bad. A lot of it is necessary. But it’s also all designed to get us to act in a predictable way, and to follow a certain pattern. Deviating from that pattern is frowned upon.

And yet, there’s this romantic, commonly-held notion that it’s good to be unique. To be individuals. It’s supposedly good to think for ourselves, to be pioneers, to work outside of the box, to innovate.

No wonder we’re so confused.

Everyone is not like you, you weirdo

If you’re reading this blog, that means you’re probably kind of like me. It means that if we met in real life, we’d probably hit it off well. If you found me through IttyBiz or Copyblogger or Problogger, that means that you probably have an entrepreneurial spark. Maybe you have your own business. Maybe you’re itching to start one. If you work a nine-to-five job, chances are you’re eager to leave it and do your own thing.

In other words, if you’re here now, you’re already weird. You’re not just observing the romantic notion that “different is good,” but you’re already living it.

Clay told me that he used to have a normal job, once upon a time. He worked in an office, attended meetings, probably filed TPS reports. He said that he was terrible at it. Didn’t pay attention, fucked things up. Got in trouble with the boss. Felt like working there was draining his soul.

And so I told him about how I used to work in a lab when I was moving toward getting a PhD, back before I decided I didn’t want a PhD. I’d put a chemical reaction on that took an hour to complete, and instead of working on something else while it was running like my co-workers did, I’d go to the cafeteria and read. Or I’d figure out how far I could walk via the interconnected buildings without going outside. (It was like 2 miles or something. Madness.)

I told Clay about how one day, my boss called me into her office and said that I didn’t seem engaged, and that I’d have to start caring more about my work if I wanted to stay.

And I told her that I hated my work, and that I was leaving anyway.

I mean, talk about a job draining your soul… I was literally having panic attacks.

If you’re like me and you’re seeing the “normal world” programming everywhere, you feel guilty for something like being bad at a job and quitting. You sense that it’s wrong to be the type of person who would blow off work. But it’s cool, see? You’re not normal, and you were trying to do a normal job. That’s not a match. It’d be like hiring a fish to be an air traffic controller.

I’m not normal. Clay isn’t normal. If you’re reading this, you’re not normal.

So if you not only hate your job but are actively trying to find a way to leave it, don’t expect anyone to understand. They won’t. Most people are too normal.

If you want to do something and everyone thinks it’s retarded, that makes sense, because most people are normal, and won’t get it.

If you have an idea and people tell you, “That’s crazy,” that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad or wrong. It just means that it’s outside of their normal comprehension.

They’re not right, and you’re not wrong. They’re not wrong, and you’re not right. You and the normal people are just different. It’s as if you know for a fact that red and green make yellow, but then you watch TV and hear radio and realize that everyone else is sure that red and green would make a kind of greenish purple. What you’ve missed is that you’re in a different world than they are. They’re using paint and you’re using light. Neither is incorrect. Both are right for that world.

Normal people can’t see the way the pieces of your life are supposed to fit together, so don’t ask for their advice. That’d be like asking a fish to land a 727. The fish is going to fuck it up almost every time.

I have to remind myself of all of this stuff constantly, because normal is everywhere. Commercials are aimed at the normal world. Institutions are geared toward normal people. Rules are written to govern a normal society. If you live among normal people and watch their TV and movies and walk their streets, you really shouldn’t violate their rights or be a dick, but you also have to always remember that what you’re observing is their society, not yours.

So you have to go out, and you have to find a group of weirdoes. If you want support, ask them for it. If you need advice, ask their advice. If you insist on benchmarks, at least look to their benchmarks.

This whole concept is very strange, and it’s not something that I have a nice, tidy conclusion for. It’s just something I run into when it starts to feel like I’m breaking a rule, or defying a convention, or pushing too hard against the grain, or dismissing the way things are normally done and instead going in the other direction, following my gut.

I have to step back sometimes and say, “Oh, that’s a normal-person rule. It doesn’t apply to me.”

It’s cool. You’re weird. You don’t need to follow every one of those rules.

I mean, don’t go killing or stealing from people… but it’s no big deal if you don’t have a company-sponsored 401(k) and 2.3 kids by the age of 32, or if you work in the middle of the night and sleep all day long.

Or, for that matter, if you wear your clothes backward like Kris Kross. I’m trying to bring that back, you know.

Every once in a while, I run across something really outstanding, and when that happens, I feel the need to tell the world about it so that everyone can share my joy.

So for instance (and this is just an example, so that you can get a feel for what’s up here), I was listening to The Pogues’ album Hell’s Ditch the other day, and I think everyone should go get it because Celtic punk is like the best thing ever. And also, the song “Living in a World Without Her” (which is actually on the Pogue Mahone album) may be just about the coolest song I’ve ever heard.

So, get the idea? Read, participate, and share my joy.

(Oh, and by the way… I don’t make money if people buy any of these things. I just think you should know about them because if you don’t, your life will be empty. So this is like a public service or something.)

Anyway.

Cool thing #1: Mercury Falls by Rob “Diesel” Kroese

Honestly, you should probably check this book out solely because a computer nerd who works at Google has somehow gotten thousands of his readers to call him “Diesel.” That kind of magic is worth analyzing.

I bought this book because I’m an avid reader of Diesel’s blog Mattress Police. (You can tell that I’m not blowing smoke because Diesel has the distinction of being the ONLY person to date who has ever had a guest post on my blog.) I figured it’d be a fun read, but I’m going to be honest — when you read about a DIY project like this (he’s been chronicling the process of self-publishing it), your expectations are sometimes kind of low. I figured, “I’ll enjoy reading this story by a guy I’ve kind of gotten to know.” And that’s about it.

But here’s the thing: This book is good. Like, really good. It belongs on Barnes & Noble shelves next to books by Christopher Moore and Carl Hiaasen. You’d never know it was written by a first-time author. You’d also never know it wasn’t published by a major house or that it wasn’t edited by a seasoned editor. Seriously.

The story itself is about the coming of Armageddon, and about the convoluted plans, subcommittees, regulations, and bureaucracies of Heaven and Hell that are in place to make sure it happens on time, according to plan, and precisely by the book. The story follows renegade angel Mercury and unfortunate human bystander Christine Temetri (who finds herself caught up in a no-win maze of red tape and ritual when her linoleum installation goes awry and she ends up thwarting an assassination attempt on the life of a mouth-breathing nominee for the post of Antichrist) as they try to stop it.

Also, along the way, there are a few explosions and at least one really fast elevator. And some innocent snowmen are unfortunately destroyed.

Now, what I’m not going to be able to convey here is the way that Diesel manages to tell the story of opposing celestial superpowers (which operate as huge and unstoppable bodies without an apparent head) and an angel that frankly doesn’t give a shit while being striking a perfect balance between morality and satire, between irreverence and reverence. He manages to be hilarious while making you think… but not in a, “Wow, I’m really aware of this guy making me be all philosophical and shit” kind of way.

So, go get a copy if you enjoy reading funny stuff. You’ll dig it.

Cool thing #2: Rube by Matt King

Full disclosure on this one: Matt is my brother-in-law. But, that could actually work against him, and it almost did, as follows:

You know how when your sister marries some musician, it’s an unspoken rule that you’re supposed to listen to his music and then nod and say, “Mmm, this is good stuff”? Like, you know it’s going to suck, but you have to pretend that it doesn’t suck too terribly? Or how, at the very least, if it doesn’t suck, you know that it won’t actively be good… like maybe in the best-case scenario, it’ll be the type of music that you could hear it in a bar and think, “Wow, I don’t want to kill the band too badly tonight”?

Well, that’s where I was. But then I actually heard the album, and so coming from that expectation of total shit, it’s saying something that I now tell everyone that they should buy it and listen to it repeatedly.

(In fact, since we’re talking about music in the age of the internet, you can actually have a listen before you think about buying anything. You can listen to samples here.)

Now, I’m not a country music fan, and I’m not too into Matt’s other albums for that reason. You give me the album of a country music guy who lives in fucking Nashville, Tennessee of all places and I’m not really expecting to like it much. But this music isn’t country. Or at least, it’s not “traditional” country. Neither Matt nor my sister Jaime will classify it for me, but I’d say it’s somewhere between country and rockabilly and alternative, but really isn’t any of the three.

I then tell people that it’s music that reminds me of the Hatfields vs. the McCoys (Matt is descended from one of them; I forget which), and that when I hear it, I think of, like, “hills justice.” So, like, maybe it might have been at home at the end of that movie Snatch, in which Brad Pitt talked about “liking dags.”

Hands down the best album I’ve heard in a few years. You should get it.

Cool thing #3: Following Featherbottom by Philip Haussler (and illustrated by Brad Sneed)

This last item is totally different from the above two in that if you don’t have kids, you can stop reading now. Author Philip Haussler writes neither about hilarious angels nor about hillbilly revenge, and there’s no beat that you can dance to.

But if you have kids, you should pay attention because this is really cool. And then you should visit the Marblespark website because the publisher has a virtual tour of the book.

I got it in my head to write this blurb when Phil sent me a copy of the book personalized for my 5-year-old son, Austin. I don’t trade books for positive reviews, so if the book had sucked, I would have thanked him and then written nothing. But it didn’t suck.

Here’s why it doesn’t suck… and let me be totally honest up front so that you’ll believe me.

I don’t really understand authoring of children’s books under most circumstances. Most kids’ books have a few hundred words in them or less, and the plots aren’t exactly very convoluted or inspiring. Again being totally honest, when I see praise about a kids’ book, I usually sort of think I could write one just as good. I’m not saying that’s right or fair, but it is what I normally think.

I’m letting y’all know about this book because it’s different in a very cool way. Specifically, each book is customized to the kid… and not in some lame “this book is for Joe Blow”-written-inside-the-book-cover kind of way.

The story itself is about the travels of Felix Featherbottom, a stork tasked with finding the perfect name for a new and impending baby by flying all over the world to collect the letters of the name and returning with it prior to the birth date. And here’s how that shakes out:

When you order your kid’s book, you enter his or her name into the online form along with the right birthday and a few other pieces of information. The fine folks at Marblespark then assemble the book for you so that Featherbottom spells your kid’s name.

So in our version, Featherbottom flies to Antarctica to retrieve an A from an alien and the Abominable Snowman, then to Ukraine to pick up a U from this uniformed unicyclist carrying an urn, then to San Fransisco to grab an S off of a streetcar being ridden by a seal and a saxophonist, and so on through the letters for A-U-S-T-I-N R-O-Y.

There are a few versions of a page for the letters. So for instance, I picked the “N” page on which Featherbottom visits the North Pole instead of the one where he goes to Naples or New Orleans because the North Pole is where Santa lives, and also, the illustration on the North Pole page showed an awesome narwhal with a giant cone on its head that I knew Austin would think was pretty boss. (And yes, I was right about that. And further yes, I just wrote the word “boss.”)

And, it’s his specific birthday that Featherbottom is working toward, and the book does have a “this book is for” in the first pages, and I got to pick from three different versions of the cover.

But here’s the thing… most importantly, IT LOOKS LIKE EVERY COPY OF THE BOOK IS THIS WAY.

Sometimes when books are customized, you’ll see a slightly askew bit of customization printed in not-quite-right colors in not exactly the right spot. This doesn’t look that way. You’d think Marblespark had printed thousands just like Austin’s.

Phil’s a good guy with a good project. If you have kids or nephews or nieces or grandkids or whatever, go check out Following Featherbottom and subscribe to the Marblespark blog.

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So, that’s about it for my cool pics of early 2010 — again, all of which I’m recommending just because I think they rock and thought you might too — and honestly for no other reason. All of the above cool things are quite inexpensive, too, so if they strike you as awesome, you should get them and be enriched.

I mean, this site’s tagline is “The internet made awesome,” so I need to be sure to live up to that in a holistic fashion. I can’t just write dick jokes and think that will do it.

I did something crazy this week. I’m not going to tell you what it was — at least, not yet. I’ll just say that it was something that I was afraid of, and it was stupid, and it was wrong, and it was not good by the definition of most people in this little world of ours. But I did it anyway. And you know what? It’s fantastic. It’s the best thing ever.

So let me tell you a little tale about doing something crazy, and why you should try it for yourself.

I grew up a pretty straightlaced, whitebread kid. But during my junior year in high school, I met some kids who were fun in a totally different way than I was used to. Specifically, they were weird.

One of them once wore a pink women’s nightgown to school. Some had hair that was green, or blue, or multicolored. They were all curiously polite; we always shook hands and for some reason referred to each other as “Mr.” at a time before I shook hands with anyone. They formed a club dedicated to toaster appreciation — the Toaster Lovers’ Association, or TLA — and created a number of shitty film and audio projects culminating in The Flame Squad, a documentary about a gay policeman who licked windshield wipers.

One of these people — we’ll call him Robert Charles Stuart the Third to preserve his anonymity — was the guy who introduced me to punk rock. He had a cassette with Bad Religion’s No Control album on one side and Alien Sex Fiend’s Open Head Surgery on the other, and we listened to it during a drive to Cedar Point (that’s an Ohio amusement park, for you heathens) one summer day. And I fell in love — with punk, with the ideas behind it, with the notion of nonconformity and the fact that there was a totally “wrong” way to do things that nonetheless worked somehow.

So during all of this punk rock listening and filmmaking (we made a series of shorts involving a 96 oz. can of Vanee brand barbecued beef from Gordon Food Service), we, as teenagers who of course were the most profound thinkers ever, decided to have some retarded personalized items made up.

A tip: If you go to a keepsakes shop like Things Remembered, they’ll engrave pretty much anything with anything as long as you ask with a straight face and pay in advance.

So one guy got a plain white nametag that said, “I Like to Romance Fish.”

And here’s one that I still have:

But when you got past the tomfoolery and just being dumb, what really mattered to us was the spirit of punk rock. So we also had things made like a beat-up money clip sporting a line from the Jawbreaker song “Boxcar” (the lyric “you’re not punk, and I’m telling everyone” was too long).

I still use it today:

… and of course, the dandy at the very top of this post: the “Do Something Crazy” nametag that was kind of where the idea for this post came from:

I had that nametag made after listening repeatedly to a Mighty Mighty Bosstones song by the same name. (And by the way, if the only MMB song you know is “The Impression that I Get,” that’s kind of like judging Stevie Wonder on “I Just Called to Say I Love You” – so do yourself a huge favor and check out the deeper archives.)

At the time, I liked the idea of “doing something crazy,” because it was fun and interesting. In my teen years, “doing something crazy ” meant taking that 96 oz. can of Vanee into (and getting kicked out of) the GNC sports nutrition shop in the mall, or listening loudly to Rob and Rick’s we’re-not-even-trying band LMNOP, which released the hit albums My Ass is Welded Shut and Mouth to Buddha Recessitation (sic). (The master of Nate Makes a Good Ham and Cheese Sandwich with his Hands Tied Behind His Back was accidentally erased when one day, Rob taped over it with Poetry Rodeo.)

But now that I’m an adult, the idea of “doing something crazy” is more profound, more elusive, and much harder than it used to be.

Doing something crazy is quitting your job and having nothing but a dream to fall back on.

Doing something crazy is taking up gymnastics when you’re a 30-year old, 205-lb man, just because you want to try it.

Doing something crazy is not following through on an obligation that, in retrospect, was fucking retarded to have ever made.

Doing something crazy is knowing you’re a good person — yet doing something that society suggests makes you a bad person because you know that society is wrong.

Doing something crazy is doing what you want, no matter how many people laugh.

Most people can’t actually do something crazy once they hit a certain age. They may think they can, but taking barbecued beef into stores is for teenagers. It’s young-person crazy. Doing teen crazy as adult is a cop-out; it’s not truly crazy anymore. It’s not far enough outside the lines. It’s not stretching your comfort zone, challenging the walls that we and other people put around us to make us fall into line and behave.

So I keep that nametag, and when something that I want to do feels like a stretch, I’ll ask, “Is it truly stupid and wrong? Or is it just crazy?” If it’s the latter, I’ll usually give it a shot, and damn the reactions I get. And frankly, it’s made all the difference in the world for me.

Try it some time. Normality is boring and redundant. The juice and freedom of life is found when you’re out with the wackos, doing what’s not quite right.

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So I’ve finally realized why I like you freaks so much. It’s because you remind me in a very real way that a person can not toe the line, not follow the rules, not adhere to a dress code or a behavior code or whatever the fuck else… and still do just fine in this rather straightlaced society of ours.

Let me explain.

I’ve always been a pretty down-the-middle sort of a guy from all outside appearances. YES, I swear a lot and YES, I have some controversial perspectives on things and YES, I can be kind of “out there” in personality and sense of humor and whatnot.

But I have no tattoos. I have no body modifications. I’ve never dyed my hair an odd color, unless you count bleaching, once, in college, when I was “really crazy.”

Okay, so what? “Way to be surface level, Johnny,” you may be thinking.

But I’ve also never really bucked authority. I’ve never paid a bill late, or not paid it at all. I’ve never done something in a way that was patently WRONG according to every rule that our society has and then stood there and said, “Okay… so what are you going to do about it?”
>> Read the rest of this post on Freak Revolution

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You know you can’t make any money online without a blog.

Well, luckily, I’m setting up self-hosted Wordpress blogs for free until the end of the month. Which is the same as the end of the year. Which is the same as “through Thursday.”

(This is a repeat of the very popular promotion that started the Johnny B. Truant biz back in April of this year, when I offered free blogs to IttyBiz.com readers. Why am I doing it again? Because I can still make money doing it, and you can get something for essentially nothing. I say “essentially” because you’ll still have to pay for website hosting, but you’re going to need that regardless.)

So yeah:

1. Get your free blog by Thursday by going to this page, reading through it, and “buying” a $0 blog.

2. Tell your friends to do the same.

3. Remember, if you would like to work with me in any other way (including tech coaching or small business consulting), my rates are going up for all of those services after Thursday, too — significantly, in many cases. So get your order in now, yo. (You’ll have two months to use any consulting you buy, so feel free to stock up now and use throughout January and February.)

Free blogs. Seriously.

But remember, THE FREE BLOGS PROMOTION ENDS ON THURSDAY. So go get one now before I have to start chasing you with a rake.