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A Little More ‘HELL YEAH!’ A Little Less ‘I Guess So’

Derek Sivers has time management all figured out.

Derek Sivers, creator of CD BABY, is taking an “It’s either ‘HELL YEAH!’ or no” approach to whether he takes on projects, works with people, or even attends conferences.

If said project, person, or conference doesn’t make him go “HELL YEAH! I want to do this!” he doesn’t do it. He said it’s been incredibly freeing, letting him focus on the things he really wants to.

HELL YEAH!

I’ve been trying this myself. I only say yes to certain meetings, projects, and even clients that make me go “HELL YEAH!” I don’t do this all the time, and I’m not really faithful to it. But I’m a lot better than I used to be.

I don’t fill my days up with meetings, wondering when I’m going to get work done. I don’t take on every project I can find, because it takes away from projects I really care about. And I don’t take on every client, because some are more of an energy drain than others. I only take on those things that make me go HELL YEAH. Otherwise, I just say no.

At other times, though, I try a “HELL WHY NOT?!” approach. Personal development trainer Sid Savara came up with this approach, because, he says, there are times when you can’t say no to things that you should be doing. And sometimes you just shouldn’t.

Sid said he would never have started running if he had waited for a HELL YEAH. He would miss out on meeting new people because they weren’t a HELL YEAH. In fact, Sid says that a lot of things that have become a major part of his life started out as a hobby he had a small interest in. But they weren’t HELL YEAH moments.

HELL WHY NOT goes something like this: someone calls you up for coffee, and you say “Well, I’ve got all this work I’ve got to — HELL, WHY NOT?!” That meeting turns out to be a major turning point in your life and career.

Your friend has two tickets to tonight’s game, but you’re thinking that after the day you had, you just want to go home and — HELL, WHY NOT?! And you have an awesome time at the game. Much better than you would have had at home.

Or the day Kyle Lacy asked me to help him write a book. I was busy, didn’t think I had the time, but said HELL, WHY NOT?! Not only was Twitter Marketing for Dummies born, but that lead to writing Branding Yourself (affiliate link) with Kyle, and now, No Bullshit Social Media with Jason Falls.

That one HELL WHY NOT lead to two more HELL YEAH moments, with more to come.

It’s an interesting place to be, in the middle of these two responses.

On the one hand, an overenthusiastic YES! for specific opportunities. On the other, the most committed and energetic non-commitment you could ever have.

Admittedly “why not?” is not something you want to hear from someone when you ask them to come work for you, go to lunch with you, or even marry you. But HELL WHY NOT is hollered with that enthusiastic “that’s so crazy, it just might work” slapping-the-table gusto.

So I’m trying this out. I’m trying to agree to new opportunities and meetings if I can muster up either a HELL YEAH! or a HELL WHY NOT? If I look for a reason not to do something, if my first response is to groan loudly and roll my eyes, then I won’t do it.

We’ll see how it goes, and I’ll keep you posted on the results.

Only if I feel like it though.

Photo credit: DWizzy (Flickr)

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When “No Bullshit Social Media” Showed Up At My House

The last time I was this excited about opening up a box was last December, when I opened a box filled with copies of Branding Yourself. The first thing I did was call Kyle Lacy and congratulate and thank him.

This is one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen.

This time, when my copies of No Bullshit Social Media showed up, I called Jason Falls to congratulate him, and had to leave him a voice mail message.

There comes a time in every writer’s life where publishing blog posts aren’t enough, and they have to resort to the printed word in newspapers and magazines. Or plays. Or speeches. Then, there comes a time when those aren’t enough. Then, it’s books. Self-published, vanity published, collections, and even big boy really-and-for-true publisher books.

Writing is a drug, and blogging is the gateway.

There is no greater high to a writer than to see his or her own name on the cover of a book that they didn’t have to shell out $2,000 to have printed.

I have a lot of people to thank for giving me that opportunity: our editor, Katherine Bull, who I fooled believed in me, and was willing to put up with Jason’s bullshit quirky mannerisms; Leslie O’Neill, our development editor, who made our book awesome; Brandon Prebynski, who made sure everything in our book was correct and really worked; my business partner, Paul Lorinczi, who kept me on track at work, and made sure I had the mental bandwidth to get everything done; and, my wife, Toni, who helped me keep a writing schedule and still find time for the family, and made sure I got at least 4 hours of sleep a night.

This is a momentous time for me, and I have not felt this proud since, well, last December. I appreciate everyone who helped me accomplish a writer’s dream for the third time. I appreciate everyone who has shared their knowledge with me over the years to make me the kind of person who could write a book like this. And I appreciate everyone who will buy the book, and maybe make it a best-seller (secret goal #4).

Will there be more books? Yes. Do I know when or what subject? No. Will they have a curse word in the title? Probably not. But I’m sure going to try.

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Four Language Errors That Make You Sound Pretentious

There are some grammar errors people insist on perpetuating (not you, you’re awesome!). Some are just common errors that we all make. But others are errors people make in the hopes of sounding smarter or somehow official. (Think government talk or cop talk.)

I heard the first error — “an historic” — on NPR the other day, and thought of all media outlets, this one should know better. And it actually annoyed me so much, I not only shouted at the radio — “A historic, dammit! A historic!” — I wrote this post.

So here are four language errors people make that sound a little pretentious.

1) It’s Not An Historic

Just because you heard them say it on the BBC doesn’t make it true. The reason you say “an” anything is if the next word starts with a vowel sound. Not even a vowel — a vowel sound.

An apple. An MBA. An honorable profession.
A unicorn. A universal truth.

Say “historic” out loud. What sound does it start with? “H.” That’s not a vowel sound. Unless you’ve got a cockney accent, you didn’t just say ‘istoric. The only reason you’d say “an historic” is if you dropped the H sound in front of the word.

And since you’re not an 18th century bootblack, you’re going to keep the H and say “a historic.”

2) Bemused is not Amused

This is a tricky one, because “-mused” is the root word. People seem to think bemused is a form of amused, like it made you chuckle or smile slightly.

It isn’t.

Amused means you think something is funny. It means you found it slightly humorous. Bemused means confused or bewildered. It means you’re cocking your head like a puppy hearing a weird noise.

Bemused is not one step above amused. It’s not “more amused.” There certainly will never be “cemused.”

Just remember, bemused = bewildered.

3) You Don’t End Your Sentences With a Preposition EVER

Regular readers know that I hate and despise the “don’t end your sentences with a preposition” rule, because it’s wrong. However, not everyone got the memo, and some people are just mentally locked in to this idea. So I don’t begrudge the people who write this way, because they were bullied into thinking this is correct.

But if you speak that way, it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.

It makes you sound like you’re trying too hard to be grammatically correct. But even most die-hard word nerds don’t speak like they write. They end their sentences with prepositions. They use slang. They have weird accents. But they don’t try to speak correctly all the time like an overenthusiastic school marm.

The most famous example is Winston Churchill telling an aide who misapplied the preposition rule to a speech, “this is utter nonsense up with which I shall not put.”

If you contort your brain and vocal cords to speak like this, you sound stilted and overly formal.

When you talk, end your sentences with a preposition, if that’s the way you would normally talk. If you’re not comfortable doing it, try to figure out a different way of saying what you wanted to say.

Like adding, “you know?” at the end.

4. Stop Saying “Myself” When You Mean “Me”

A lot of people say “myself,” when they mean “me.”

“Please email your questions to Bob or myself.”

I heard this a lot during my state government days. I think people did this to sound smarter or more official, but it’s wrong, so it negated any effect they were going for.

Using “myself” in most cases is almost certainly the incorrect usage. There are a few times you can use it — as a reflexive pronoun or an intensive pronoun — like “I see myself in the mirror” (reflexive) or “I built the workbench myself” (intensive) but that’s it. You would never use “myself” as the object or subject of a sentence.

Wrong: Give the cookies to myself.
Wrong: Myself baked some cookies.

The best way to see whether or not to use “myself” is to remove the other person — Bob — and see if the sentence makes sense: “Please email your questions to me.”

In this case, “email your questions to myself” just sounds wrong, so you know to use “me” instead.

We’re starting to learn that a lot of our hard-and-fast grammar rules are changing, either because common usage is rendering them unnecessary, or because they were never right to begin with (see #4 above). If you can avoid these, you can feel morally superior to people who make these mistakes in an attempt to sound smarter than everyone else.

I feel that way myself.

Photo credit: ranil (Flickr)

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People Who Can’t Need to Stop Dismissing the Work of Those Who Can

“I’m tired of people who ‘don’t’ attacking the people who ‘do.'” — Britt Raybould

Writer, crafter, and blogger Britt Raybould put the dope slap on people who dismiss the work of others, saying “I could do that,” or “that costs too much” (Dismissing the Myth of Easy). It got me to thinking about the critics, both the professional and amateur a-holes, who give a knee-jerk negative reaction about some new venture, and why it won’t work, without considering whether it actually might.

There were people who thought Facebook would fail. They still write blog posts about why Google+ is doomed. (Update November 2017: It finally is nearly dead.)

There are people who have been predicting the death of email, blogging, and now Twitter for years, and despite their egregious incorrectness, still insist on doing so.

There are people who dismiss modern art, writing, and even social media consulting as “too easy,” and they don’t value it.

Britt’s pretty tired of it, and after reading “Dismissing the Myth of Easy,” I’m right there with her.

You don’t have to like my work, but don’t you dare say that it’s easy or has no value. Maybe not to you, but unless you’re willing to ante up, I don’t want to hear it anymore.

If you want to have a best-selling book, write one. Quit slamming people who’ve already got one. If you want to host a widely popular webinar AND charge money for it, then figure out what the market wants and do it. If you want a custom quilt, then by hell, buy the 12 different fabrics, cut out 200+ pieces, and sew the damn thing together.

It’s not easy to sit down and come up with words that string together into powerful sentences and come together to make big ideas. And it’s not easy to take your version of the blank canvas and create something out of nothing. It may look easy, but that’s just the result of time and a willingness to do the hard work.

So the next time you see me, please don’t say, “I could do that, too.” I highly doubt it, and you’ll just piss me off.

Stop Dismissing the Pros, if You’re Not Even an Amateur

I face this all the time as a professional writer. The problem is we all learned to write in the 8th grade. But for a lot of people, that’s where they stopped. And since the extent of their writing is dozens of emails, they know how to write. As a result, they don’t value writing, because they think it’s easy.

There’s a big difference between plopping out an email and actually writing something that’s powerful and moving. There’s a difference between whipping up scrambled eggs and cooking a souffle. And there’s a difference between playing a kazoo and playing a piano concerto.

But those people who write emails, make scrambled eggs, or have mastered the kazoo seem to think that what they do is on par with the professional writer, the trained chef, and the concert pianist.

It isn’t. Not even close.

The people who dismiss it as “not that hard” or “not worth anything” either need to go out and show us how smart they really are, or step out of the way of the people who are actually doing the work.

Because until they understand what actually goes into creating something, their criticisms and out-of-hand dismissals are nothing more than the meaningless and petty ramblings of the perpetually envious.

And anyone can do that.

Photo credit: hfabulous (Flickr)

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What William Faulkner Would Say About Content Curation

I’m reading an interview with William Faulkner in a 1956 issue of the Paris Review. He said this about critics:

The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews. The critic too is trying to say “Kilroy was here.” His function is not directed toward the artist himself. The artist is a cut above the critic, for the artist is writing something which will move the critic. The critic is writing something which will move everybody but the artist.

I’ve been saying this about content curation for the last few months. A content curator is that person who assembles content in a meaningful and important way, to get other people to read (or not read) that content.

For Faulkner, the critic is trying to move “everybody,” but the artist is trying to move the critic. For today’s bloggers and writers, we’re trying to move “everybody,” but since there are so many of us, we know we’re not going to reach everybody. So we hope some popular content curators (critics) will help us move everyone as well.

We call these curators and critics “influencers,” and we think that if we can get them to tell their networks about us, we’ll be more widely read, and more easily able to move “everybody.”

Of course, that means if you want to move people, you need to 1) write good shit, and 2) have people who like it.

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15 Social Media Tactics to Promote Your Upcoming Theatrical Show

We just finished the 10-day festival of independent theatre and weirdness known as the Indianapolis Fringe Theatre Festival, and I had a chance to see a few shows, including a couple of old favorites.

I also had a chance to talk social media — because I’m an annoying geek that way — with a couple performers, and decided to write a blog post based on what I told a couple of them.

Didi Panache and Wayburn Sassy of the Screw You Revue

This post is written for any musician or performer, especially the independent theatrical types who depend on ticket sales to make their living. For some of these performers, they bounce from festival to festival and make a good portion of their income from their take. Some even use one festival to pay for the next one.

This is a strategy they can use to improve their take next year.

What You’ll Need

  • A laptop computer
  • A digital camera with video capabilities. If not, your laptop’s camera will do.
  • A Twitter account.
  • A blog (WordPress.com or Blogger.com are great free platforms, as is Posterous.com and Tumblr.com)
  • A YouTube account.
  • A Facebook page. (This is different from a personal profile. You want an Artist’s page.)

What You’ll Do

These are in a general chronological order, but not in a do-one-then-the-next lockstep order. I’m using the Indianapolis Fringe (#IndyFringe) as an example, but this will work for any concert, performance, show, or festival.

 

  • First, make sure your Twitter bio includes a line about the name of your show, or your most famous character’s name. If you only performed in one festival, put the name of that in the bio too. “You may have seen me at the #IndyFringe Festival!” You can always change your bio, especially as you move from festival to festival, or follow specific groups of people.
  • Start following people on Twitter. People will follow you back, especially once they see that you’re a performer at the festival they went to, and even moreso if they were at your show. To find people who were at the festival, do these steps:

 

  • Go to FollowBlast.com and do a search for #indyfringe, and follow anyone using that term. Keep in mind that these hashtags only work for about 30 minutes, so it’s actually a good idea to access this site while you’ve got some downtime at next year’s show.
  • Build a hashtag archive at TwapperKeeper.com. I’m still trying this out, but I’m hoping it will collect old hashtags, unlike FollowBlast.com. However, it only goes back 7 – 10 days, and back for 1,500 tweets. It will then go forward and continue to save tweets. You should set this up before your next festival starts. Work in conjunction with the festival organizers, because they may want to use your archive as well. Also, before you start, search to see if anyone else set up an archive before you so you don’t duplicate efforts.
  • Go to search.twitter.com as another way to search for #hashtags. Put in #indyfringe and see what you can find. Search results are somewhat limited, but you may be able to find older tweets that FollowBlast and Twapper Keeper couldn’t, especially if you’re seeing this now, and are scrambling to recover those old tweets.
  • If all else fails, try Topsy. It’s not 100% accurate, but it gives you more than you might get if you’re looking for a festival that ended three weeks ago.

 

  • Check out the festival organizer’s Twitter page and follow everyone they follow (not everyone who follows them). If they have been good Twitter stewards, they have vetted the people they’re following. Those people will include other performers, supporters, festival-goers, and other people in the industry or festival business. (This last group could be a good connection to getting into other festivals!) Do this with any festivals you plan on going to next year as well.
  • Use Twellow.com and Twellowhood.com as a way to find other people who are in the cities where you’ll be next year.

  • Why You’ll Do It

    Okay so far? You’ve built your Twitter list for a very important reason: Promoting stuff! You’re going to promote next year’s show through videos, your blog, and even email newsletters. Here’s how.

    Zan Aufderheide of Welcome to Zanland
    • Now you need your camera. Start shooting some short videos. Update us on what you’re doing, where you’ll be, thoughts on stuff you did this year. Treat it like a diary. If you’re an actor playing a part, do it in character, especially if that character is going to be back at the festivals next year. Shoot the videos in character, or tell some jokes, or give people a preview of what you’ve been working on. Shoot some rehearsals, some special messages to individuals, or perform a new song.
    • Post those on YouTube.com (make them public), and make sure you fill out all the details, like Title, Description, etc. (all this stuff is indexed by Google, which makes your videos found more easily by people searching for you or the festival).
    • Share these videos on Twitter and your Facebook page, and post them to your blog (do the same with any photos you take). This will accomplish a lot of pre-show promo before you ever set foot in the city. And if you can get people buzzing about the show before you start, you’ll be selling out more shows.

    You can get a Flip camera for as low as $170 now, and if you think that’s still high, use the money you were going to spend on fancy-schmancy postcards and spend it on the camera instead. The postcards are immediately dated once the festival ends, and you can’t reuse them. The video camera will pay for itself with all the videos you shoot and the postcards you don’t buy.

    Finally, there are a few things you want to do next year, to get ready for the next off-season.

      • Build a mailing list of all your attendees. Send around a clipboard before your show begins, or have them sign up before they leave. Ask people for their HOME email, not their work email — especially if your show is laden with profanities and cross-dressers. Guard this with your life. Promise to never, ever spam them. Use it only for newsletters and occasional social media communication.
      • Load that list into a Gmail account (here’s why you should use Gmail), and then either use the Rapportive.com Gmail plugin, or upload the email list to Gist.com, to start finding where your list members can be found on the different social media networks. Follow them on Twitter, and connect with them on Facebook.
      • Send out an occasional newsletter — no more than once a month — and email it to them. Let them know what you’re working on for next year so they get excited about your upcoming visit. Give them an opportunity to unsubscribe, but try to give them useful information so they won’t want to.
      • Use your video camera to shoot post-show testimonials and get them up on your blog as soon as a show ends. Tweet the new blog posts to your Twitter network during the show, so you can continue to remind people you’re there and you’ve got an awesome show. Ask your Twitter network to retweet your show information, so they can help you spread the word.

    There is so much more you can do with social media. Believe it or not, this is just scratching the surface of what can be done. But while it seems overwhelming, keep in mind two things:

        1. This will get easier as you do it more often.
        2. It beats the hell out of busking and handing out postcards in 90 degree heat.

    Photo credit: Erik Deckers