Are you struggling to make progress on a project, a business, or something in your personal life? Find these two points of clarity for a map out of “the land of Stuck.” The difference between people who are ultra-productive and the rest of us isn’t willpower. It isn’t intelligence, or time, or money, and it isn’t some kind of genetic gift. The difference is that they have effective strategies for moving out of stuck spots and into a more productive flow. In this 23-minute episode, I talk about:  Some ways you can turn problems into advantages How to boost your creativity — and what to do during those “creatively quiet” times Why a lack of willpower doesn’t need to hold you back Finding your hidden advantages The five-minute map from “stuck” to “flow” (do this one today!) What to do when you don’t know what to do  NOTE: The show will be on hiatus during August, 2016, and we’ll return to a new iTunes feed and a new site starting in September.  PinkHairedMarketer.FM will take you to the right place when I resume! Looking forward to seeing you then. Also, don’t forget to drop a comment and let me know what topic you’d like me to cover in a free audio course in the fall.  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  If you want a detailed road map that will let you make a ton of progress on a digital project, our Digital Commerce Summit is where you want to be this October For an even more in-depth experience, Summit attendees will have the option to attend small-group, hands-on in-person workshops. Chris Brogan and I are leading the one on online communities, and Brian Gardner is leading one on WordPress-based business. If you’re joining us for Summit, check your in-box! A post I wrote for Copyblogger talking about the power of very small habits:  (these work a ton better than trying to muster a lot of willpower) And here’s the podcast episode I did on using your values as a battery — this is a great energy-booster if you feel like you’re spinning your wheels: A Quick, Enjoyable Way to Sharpen Your Vision, Goals, and Values (AUDIO) Finally, a podcast episode about productivity for flakes — with some of my favorite flake-friendly strategies!  (AUDIO) I always love it when you say Hi or ask a question over on Twitter — find me @soniasimone!  The Transcript Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! So, today I want to talk about something that I teach all the time to our paid customers, so folks in Authority, Teaching Sells, etc., but I’ve only touched on it on the blog or the podcast. And that’s the two points of clarity you need to get to in order to move forward on anything. Your business, your career, your family life, your fitness plan. Anything. So let’s get into it. First, you have to know your constraints I’ll take these first because they’re the easiest to identify. This is all the stuff we gripe about.  Money may be a constraint, time is usually a constraint. If you have three kids under five, you have a significant constraint. You may not have a network yet. You may not have a good internet connection. Abilities can be constraints as well — these are the kind that we can get a little creative about. If you don’t feel confident about your writing, and writing matters to you, write more. Or record your voice. Or make videos. Or do the thing that you feel needs work. Then sometimes we have false constraints. One of the biggest is, “I’m not creative.” People who feel held back by this don’t realize that creativity comes from doing, not thinking. Creative approaches won’t come to you until you’re regularly doing that kind of work. Sometimes a lack of confidence is another false constraint. Each of us has a unique psychological makeup, but often lack of confidence — or lack of self-esteem — comes from a lack of experience. The more solid work you put out, the more confidence you have.  Not always, sometimes highly capable people get into that Imposter Syndrome thing — but if you’re waiting for confidence to get some work produced, that’s counterproductive. Will power, again, a false constraint that appears very real. If you lack will power, it’s because you haven’t made what you’re working on a habit yet. Will power does improve the more you use it, but it’s also finite. When you deplete today’s will power, you have to wait for the well to refill. Habits beat will power. Use very tiny habits to create momentum, and also do the Value Exercise I talked about last week to give yourself some additional energy. Now, the more fun one — assets So your constraints are all the things you have to work around. Your assets are — you guessed it — all the things you have to work with. The categories are pretty much the same as they are for constraints. You might have a bit of a budget to apply to your project right now. You might have a few evenings free.  You might have a skill you can capitalize on — you have a good speaking voice, or you write reasonably well, or you have good design skills. You may have a person you can get help from. This might be a person you pay, a person you barter with, a person you partner with, or a person you ask for a favor.  In terms of creativity — creative professionals will nearly all tell you that creative energy tends to come in waves. Some weeks are kind of dry and some are really productive and flowing. So if you’re in a good creative time, get some creative stuff done. If you’re in a dry spell, that’s the time to go back to fundamentals, to focus on getting better at the basics, and even to work on some “boring” things — if you call them “meditative” you may find them easier to take.  When you’re not feeling ultra creative, use that as an asset to work on the not-so-glamourous things. Those are important, too. If you’ve built any kind of habit at all — even a habit of, say, posting a long post on Facebook every day, think about whether you could use that as an asset.  A long Facebook post is almost a short article. Could you take that habitual time and deploy it in a way that’s serving your needs better? Then, you put it all together You’re at Point A. You want to go to Point B. Take a few minutes to just write that down — electronically or physically, just do what works for you. Then scribble out the assets and constraints that are in play. So to launch a new ebook, maybe your constraints are that you don’t have a budget for this one, your time is limited to weekends and two evenings a week, and you’re a slow writer. Your assets are that you know your topic really well, you have a blog and an email list, and you know there’s interest in the topic if you can get it done. One thing you might do is look at the assets and see if any answers to the constraints might be on there. So — you have an audience, and expertise, but you’re a slow writer. Could you send a post to your list and your blog asking for a writing partner? You don’t have budget, but you could barter consulting time in your topic of expertise for their writing ability and speed. You get together, record some phone calls, do some consulting hours, and you could have a solid ebook draft quite quickly. Remember, how you put your own individual puzzle together depends on the pieces you have. It’s like Lego, remember? Now, this assets and constraints business isn’t stunningly innovative. There’s a whole Theory of Constraints from lean production, that people who write business books have written about. It’s kind of common sense. Funny thing, it’s those common sense, tried-and-ptrue solutions that tend to actually work.  When in doubt, the answer is usually people Sometimes there’s kind of a gray spot on your map — something where you don’t know what you don’t know, or you just can’t see a solution. In that case, the answer is usually to reach out to someone, or to a group of someones. You can ask me a question on twitter, you can email your list, you can ask in a LinkedIn or Facebook group, you can form a little accountability group, or you could even do all of those things. Before your ask, spend a moment to make a micro-commitment to yourself that you will act on some of the advice you get, even if it’s only a small action like researching or further investigating an option.  Just a reminder that the show will be on hiatus in August. That means this is the last show before my break! We’re returning in September with a new iTunes feed and hosted on a new site. BUT, the PinkHairedMarketer.FM url will continue to send you wehere you need to go.  Before I start — one of the things I’d like to do when I return is to do a mini-course that’s just for the subscribers. This will help me to restore the visibility on iTunes, and plus I just think it will be fun. If you have something you’d particularly like me to cover, just let me know in the show comments or on Twitter!  Thanks so much for your time and attention and I’ll catch you next month.  

Are you struggling to make progress on a project, a business, or something in your personal life? Find these two points of clarity for a map out of “the land of Stuck.” The difference between people who are ultra-productive and the rest of us isn’t willpower. It isn’t intelligence, or time, or money, and it isn’t some kind of genetic gift. The difference is that they have effective strategies for moving out of stuck spots and into a more productive flow. In this 23-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>Some ways you can turn problems into advantages</li> <li>How to boost your creativity — and what to do during those “creatively quiet” times</li> <li>Why a lack of willpower doesn’t need to hold you back</li> <li>Finding your hidden advantages</li> <li>The five-minute map from “stuck” to “flow” (do this one today!)</li> <li>What to do when you don’t know what to do</li> </ul> NOTE: The show will be on hiatus during August, 2016, and we’ll return to a new iTunes feed and a new site starting in September. <a href="http://pinkhairedmarketer.fm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PinkHairedMarketer.FM</a> will take you to the right place when I resume! Looking forward to seeing you then. Also, don’t forget to drop a comment and let me know what topic you’d like me to cover in a free audio course in the fall. Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/rfm-pink-071.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>If you want a detailed road map that will let you make a ton of progress on a digital project, our <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/summit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Commerce Summit</a> is where you want to be this October</li> <li>For an even more in-depth experience, Summit attendees will have the option to attend small-group, hands-on in-person workshops. Chris Brogan and I are leading the one on online communities, and Brian Gardner is leading one on WordPress-based business. If you’re joining us for Summit, check your in-box!</li> <li>A post I wrote for Copyblogger talking about the power of very small habits: <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/small-habits/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> (these work a ton better than trying to muster a lot of willpower)</li> <li>And here’s the podcast episode I did on using your values as a battery — this is a great energy-booster if you feel like you’re spinning your wheels: <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/vision-goals-values/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Quick, Enjoyable Way to Sharpen Your Vision, Goals, and Values</a> (AUDIO)</li> <li>Finally, a podcast episode about <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/encore-productivity/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity for flakes</a> — with some of my favorite flake-friendly strategies! (AUDIO)</li> <li>I always love it when you say Hi or ask a question over on Twitter — find me <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! So, today I want to talk about something that I teach all the time to our paid customers, so folks in Authority, Teaching Sells, etc., but I’ve only touched on it on the blog or the podcast. And that’s the two points of clarity you need to get to in order to move forward on anything. Your business, your career, your family life, your fitness plan. Anything. So let’s get into it. <h3>First, you have to know your constraints</h3> I’ll take these first because they’re the easiest to identify. This is all the stuff we gripe about. Money may be a constraint, time is usually a constraint. If you have three kids under five, you have a significant constraint. You may not have a network yet. You may not have a good internet connection. Abilities can be constraints as well — these are the kind that we can get a little creative about. If you don’t feel confident about your writing, and writing matters to you, write more. Or record your voice. Or make videos. Or do the thing that you feel needs work. Then sometimes we have false constraints. One of the biggest is, “I’m not creative.” People who feel held back by this don’t realize that creativity comes from doing, not thinking. Creative approaches won’t come to you until you’re regularly doing that kind of work. Sometimes a lack of confidence is another false constraint. Each of us has a unique psychological makeup, but often lack of confidence — or lack of self-esteem — comes from a lack of experience. The more solid work you put out, the more confidence you have. Not always, sometimes highly capable people get into that Imposter Syndrome thing — but if you’re waiting for confidence to get some work produced, that’s counterproductive. Will power, again, a false constraint that appears very real. If you lack will power, it’s because you haven’t made what you’re working on a habit yet. Will power does improve the more you use it, but it’s also finite. When you deplete today’s will power, you have to wait for the well to refill. Habits beat will power. Use very tiny habits to create momentum, and also do the Value Exercise I talked about last week to give yourself some additional energy. <h3>Now, the more fun one — assets</h3> So your constraints are all the things you have to work around. Your assets are — you guessed it — all the things you have to work with. The categories are pretty much the same as they are for constraints. You might have a bit of a budget to apply to your project right now. You might have a few evenings free. You might have a skill you can capitalize on — you have a good speaking voice, or you write reasonably well, or you have good design skills. You may have a person you can get help from. This might be a person you pay, a person you barter with, a person you partner with, or a person you ask for a favor. In terms of creativity — creative professionals will nearly all tell you that creative energy tends to come in waves. Some weeks are kind of dry and some are really productive and flowing. So if you’re in a good creative time, get some creative stuff done. If you’re in a dry spell, that’s the time to go back to fundamentals, to focus on getting better at the basics, and even to work on some “boring” things — if you call them “meditative” you may find them easier to take. When you’re not feeling ultra creative, use that as an asset to work on the not-so-glamourous things. Those are important, too. If you’ve built any kind of habit at all — even a habit of, say, posting a long post on Facebook every day, think about whether you could use that as an asset. A long Facebook post is almost a short article. Could you take that habitual time and deploy it in a way that’s serving your needs better? <h3>Then, you put it all together</h3> You’re at Point A. You want to go to Point B. Take a few minutes to just write that down — electronically or physically, just do what works for you. Then scribble out the assets and constraints that are in play. So to launch a new ebook, maybe your constraints are that you don’t have a budget for this one, your time is limited to weekends and two evenings a week, and you’re a slow writer. Your assets are that you know your topic really well, you have a blog and an email list, and you know there’s interest in the topic if you can get it done. One thing you might do is look at the assets and see if any answers to the constraints might be on there. So — you have an audience, and expertise, but you’re a slow writer. Could you send a post to your list and your blog asking for a writing partner? You don’t have budget, but you could barter consulting time in your topic of expertise for their writing ability and speed. You get together, record some phone calls, do some consulting hours, and you could have a solid ebook draft quite quickly. Remember, how you put your own individual puzzle together depends on the pieces you have. It’s like Lego, remember? Now, this assets and constraints business isn’t stunningly innovative. There’s a whole Theory of Constraints from lean production, that people who write business books have written about. It’s kind of common sense. Funny thing, it’s those common sense, tried-and-ptrue solutions that tend to actually work. <h3>When in doubt, the answer is usually people</h3> Sometimes there’s kind of a gray spot on your map — something where you don’t know what you don’t know, or you just can’t see a solution. In that case, the answer is usually to reach out to someone, or to a group of someones. You can ask me a question on twitter, you can email your list, you can ask in a LinkedIn or Facebook group, you can form a little accountability group, or you could even do all of those things. Before your ask, spend a moment to make a micro-commitment to yourself that you will act on some of the advice you get, even if it’s only a small action like researching or further investigating an option. Just a reminder that the show will be on hiatus in August. That means this is the last show before my break! We’re returning in September with a new iTunes feed and hosted on a new site. BUT, the <a href="http://PinkHairedMarketer.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PinkHairedMarketer.FM</a> url will continue to send you wehere you need to go. Before I start — one of the things I’d like to do when I return is to do a mini-course that’s just for the subscribers. This will help me to restore the visibility on iTunes, and plus I just think it will be fun. If you have something you’d particularly like me to cover, just let me know in the show comments or on Twitter! Thanks so much for your time and attention and I’ll catch you next month.

The 2 Points of Clarity that Will Make You So Much More Productive

Ready to launch a digital product? Here’s are the first steps to get you moving … One of the greatest things you can do to boost your income, or just expand your options, is to launch a digital product. The tools, platforms, and options for these are better now than they ever have been. So, how to get started? In this 25-minute episode, I talk about:  Figuring out your market, and how you can best serve them Growing your audience of potential customers Designing your first digital product The tools you’ll need to make your first sales The LORE model of growing your new business Some great resources we’re offering to help you out — and a chance to work with me in-person  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  If this is the year you launch your first (or next) digital product, our Digital Commerce Summit is where you want to be this October For an even more in-depth experience, Summit attendees will have the option to attend small-group, hands-on workshops. Chris Brogan and I are leading the one on online communities, and Brian Gardner is leading the one on WordPress-based business. If you’re joining us for Summit, check your in-box! Our Rainmaker Platform was designed to let you market, sell, and deliver digital products with ease — all on a hosted, secure, turnkey solution. You can even take it for a test drive … with no credit card required I always love it when you say Hi or ask a question over on Twitter — find me @soniasimone   The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  Just a reminder that the show will be on hiatus in August, and then return in September with a new iTunes feed and hosted on a new site. BUT, the PinkHairedMarketer.FM url will continue to send you wehere you need to go.  Before I start — one of the things I’d like to do when I return is to do a mini-course that’s just for the subscribers. This will help me to restore the visibility on iTunes, and plus I just think it will be fun. What I’m looking for are ideas for the course! I have lots of them in my Evernote and my stack of index cards, but I’d be interested in what you might want to see. I’m thinking about creating this short free course around the topic I covered at our live event in Denver last year — how to improve your conversion. In other words, getting more people to take the action you want them to take, including getting them to buy things. I got excellent feedback on that talk last year, which is why it comes to mind. Let me know if that sounds like you would dig it, or if you would prefer something else! Launching your first (or next) digital product Since we did mindset last week, this week I’m going to get very practical. I did a call with my friend and business coach, Gary Barnes, on this subject the other day, and I think it’s probably something that would be useful for a lot of folks.  So today I’m going to talk about how to get started with a digital product — that’s a product that exists purely in the digital world.  Just a quick pitch — we have an entire live event devoted to this coming up in Denver, Colorado in October — where we’ll really walk you though all of this and more in depth. It’s going to be a very action-oriented session — a bit of a cross between a class and a conference, which is always how Brian Clark likes to set our events up.  I’m also going to deliver an optional additional workshop with Chris Brogan, so I’ll give you a few more details on that in a few minutes. Step 1: Who (and how) do you serve? I think we’ve said this about a million times on Copyblogger — Everything good comes from the audience. You have to know who you’re helping, and you have to know how you help them. One of the most important things we do with content is to attract those folks, and then give them some meaningful help for their journey as a way to get to know one another. So this is our blog posts, our podcasts, our YouTube videos — all of that great publicly-findable content on the web. Most folks working on this aren’t getting specific enough.  I see a huge amount of “I help people make meaningful change in their lives.” OK, awesome. What kind of people?  The answer might be demographic — women between 20 and 50 who live in large cities — or it might be psychographic — people who identify as spiritual and not religious who are interested in social justice causes.  Or it could be both demographic and psychographic, if you’re into that. To some degree, you learn this by putting a message out and seeing who shows up. The audience that appears may or may not look like the one you intended to attract. As long as you still like them, go with the flow.  And if you don’t like them, try a little strongly-worded values conversation — get very real about what matters most to you. That will chase them away if you aren’t on the same page there. Then … what kind of meaningful change? Health? Relationships? Finances? Time management? And finally … how do you do that? Specifically? Could you come up with a memorable, simple label for your process or methodology? Step 2: Pulling the audience together If you haven’t started some kind of content hub to build your audience, do that now. You really do want something you control, and you also want a way to keep talking with them. Normally that means an email list. I’m noticing — not for everyone, but for many — that some folks who have put together large and loyal groups on Facebook have a terrible time when they try to sell those folks something. Because people spend a lot of time in Facebook groups when they’re looking for free advice.  Not a thing wrong with that, except that these people don’t buy, therefore they’re not your customer. In general, I’d much rather have an email list of 500 people who buy than a Facebook group of 5,000 who don’t. When you’re really starting out and you have no one, you want to think about partnering and finding those audiences that have already gathered around someone you might partner with. You can also absolutely do something like Facebook advertising, if you have some extra cash and a lot of time to get good at that. It really depends on what resources and contraints you’re working with. Step 3: What’s the smallest meaningful change? (MVP) Once you know who you serve and you’ve started to pull them together so you can talk to them, your first step is to listen. What’s bugging them about your topic? What are they struggling with? What’s frustrating or annoying?  You’re looking for opportunities to solve an annoying problem with your digital product. Maybe you’ll help people finally get consistent about an exercise habit, or learn how to catch Pokemons in Pokemon Go, or get a promotion at work. Most business — and nearly all digital products — solve a problem.  The trick at first is — look for small problems to solve first. Initial steps on the larger path.  If you try to launch a massive membership community that’s going to create complete transformation, unless you have an incredibly strong relationship with your audience, it’s too much, too soon. You’re moving too fast. Solve minor annoyances, then bigger headaches, and work your way up. As far as what you actually offer? Literally, if you can re-create it in a digital form and take money for it, you’ve got a product. Some examples are: Cheat sheets, mind maps, process maps, workbooks, ebooks, checklists, video tutorials (these go well with workbooks), audio tutorials. As you start working your way up to bigger audience problems — and bigger solutions — you start getting into the e-courses, membership communities, virtual coaching groups, that kind of thing. My friend JB Glossinger has a premium podcast called Morning Coach — Monday is free, Tuesday through Friday are a paid subscription. That’s an unusual model but it works well for him and his audience. Make it small. I like checklists and cheat sheets for the very beginning of the process, then simple tutorials (audio or video) with a PDF workbook. When I say “workbook,” realize that can be 3 pages. Think small. Step 4: Options for tools Actually delivering the digital product to the customer and getting paid for it has, frankly, been a giant pain.  When I created my first educational community, the technology side of it was a bear — and it was not cheap. Numerous products had to be stitched together, then styled by a designer to look good and work well. Then there were those couple of weeks we had Russian hackers putting porn images into our library, that was awesome.  Now, if you have any revenue at all, I really recommend our Rainmaker platform. You get the public side, so the podcast and blog we were talking about, and then a membership side that manages all of the login information for you, manages multiple products when you’re ready for that, lets you provide “free products” as well as various levels of paid things, and all of it is hosted, turnkey, and secure. It’s just a very good solution for this. If you’re talking a checklist for .99, Rainmaker is a paid service and it’s not a rock-bottom price, so it may be that you won’t feel ready right now. That’s fine. My advice in that case is, go as simple as you possibly can.  You may want to go with a service like Clickbank or E-junkie to make things simple. They’re fine when you’re starting out, but at some point you’ll probably find it makes sense to upgrade. Step 4: LORE: Launch, observe, rework, evolve I think we’re addicted to creating acronyms — this one sort of popped up as I was planning out this session: LORE. Launch, observe, rework, and evolve. In other words, get something out there — it might not be too fantastic, but there could be something to it. It reflects an idea you’ve seen in the audience that you think might resonate. It helps solve a problem you think people might care about. Then you see what happens. You talk to buyers. If no one buys, try to talk with some non-buyers — you can just get onto your list and ask for a few folks to chat with about why the product wasn’t a good fit. You rework it so it’s better, based on the feedback, and then you evolve the product to a better version.  You don’t have to have the world’s most stunning idea. You just have to start with a spark that will catch — and that’s why we start with those micro-products. That’s how you find the spark that can catch. Then you fan that flame and make it bigger. So: If you think you’d like to start a digital business — and most of these start as small projects “on the side” that can be grown into something bigger over time — just a reminder that our live event this year is going to be focused on that.  It’s called the Digital Commerce Summit, it’s in October this year in Denver, Colorado, and it’s designed to actually walk you through this process in much more detail. Understanding who you serve and then finding those folks and building your audience. Developing your product idea. Producing the product, then launching, and of course going on to evolve and grow over time. You can find that at DigitalCommerce.com, you can click the summit section or if you’re very good at listening to URLs, just jump to digitalcommerce.com/summit. This year, we’re trying something new — Chris Brogan and I are going to do an optional supplemental workshop on putting together an online course.  Both Chris and I have done quite a lot of this — an online course was really what got me out of the stress of chasing freelance clients and on to a much more sustainable and (for me) enjoyable business model. We’re doing a hands-on workshop for the folks who attend Summit — attendance is limited and there’s an additional fee, but actually that fee is really reasonable right now. This is a roll-up-your-sleeves and do it thing, with Chris and I there to guide and help you as you put your business plan together. It’s going to be fun and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll get you a registration link in the show notes if you’re interested — we’re pinning down venues, but the spaces for this are going to be limited so we can really focus on you as an individual. It should be a blast. So, as I understand it the workshop is only open to folks who are attending Summit, so the place to do that is digitalcommerce.com, slash, summit. Then we’ll let you know how to get signed up for the workshop with me and Chris if you’re into it. Thanks so much for your time and attention and I’ll catch you next week. 

Ready to launch a digital product? Here’s are the first steps to get you moving … One of the greatest things you can do to boost your income, or just expand your options, is to launch a digital product. The tools, platforms, and options for these are better now than they ever have been. So, how to get started? In this 25-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>Figuring out your market, and how you can best serve them</li> <li>Growing your audience of potential customers</li> <li>Designing your first digital product</li> <li>The tools you’ll need to make your first sales</li> <li>The LORE model of growing your new business</li> <li>Some great resources we’re offering to help you out — and a chance to work with me in-person</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/rfm-pink-070.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>If this is the year you launch your first (or next) digital product, our <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/summit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Commerce Summit</a> is where you want to be this October</li> <li>For an even more in-depth experience, Summit attendees will have the option to attend small-group, hands-on workshops. Chris Brogan and I are leading the one on online communities, and Brian Gardner is leading the one on WordPress-based business. If you’re joining us for Summit, check your in-box!</li> <li>Our <a href="http://rainmakerplatform.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker Platform</a> was designed to let you market, sell, and deliver digital products with ease — all on a hosted, secure, turnkey solution. You can even take it for a test drive … with no credit card required</li> <li>I always love it when you say Hi or ask a question over on Twitter — find me <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a> </li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! Just a reminder that the show will be on hiatus in August, and then return in September with a new iTunes feed and hosted on a new site. BUT, the <a href="http://PinkHairedMarketer.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PinkHairedMarketer.FM</a> url will continue to send you wehere you need to go. Before I start — one of the things I’d like to do when I return is to do a mini-course that’s just for the subscribers. This will help me to restore the visibility on iTunes, and plus I just think it will be fun. What I’m looking for are ideas for the course! I have lots of them in my Evernote and my stack of index cards, but I’d be interested in what you might want to see. I’m thinking about creating this short free course around the topic I covered at our live event in Denver last year — how to improve your conversion. In other words, getting more people to take the action you want them to take, including getting them to buy things. I got excellent feedback on that talk last year, which is why it comes to mind. Let me know if that sounds like you would dig it, or if you would prefer something else! <h3>Launching your first (or next) digital product</h3> Since we did mindset last week, this week I’m going to get very practical. I did a call with my friend and business coach, Gary Barnes, on this subject the other day, and I think it’s probably something that would be useful for a lot of folks. So today I’m going to talk about how to get started with a digital product — that’s a product that exists purely in the digital world. Just a quick pitch — we have an entire live event devoted to this coming up in Denver, Colorado in October — where we’ll really walk you though all of this and more in depth. It’s going to be a very action-oriented session — a bit of a cross between a class and a conference, which is always how Brian Clark likes to set our events up. I’m also going to deliver an optional additional workshop with Chris Brogan, so I’ll give you a few more details on that in a few minutes. <h3>Step 1: Who (and how) do you serve?</h3> I think we’ve said this about a million times on Copyblogger — <blockquote>Everything good comes from the audience.</blockquote> You have to know who you’re helping, and you have to know how you help them. One of the most important things we do with content is to attract those folks, and then give them some meaningful help for their journey as a way to get to know one another. So this is our blog posts, our podcasts, our YouTube videos — all of that great publicly-findable content on the web. Most folks working on this aren’t getting specific enough. I see a huge amount of “I help people make meaningful change in their lives.” OK, awesome. What kind of people? The answer might be demographic — women between 20 and 50 who live in large cities — or it might be psychographic — people who identify as spiritual and not religious who are interested in social justice causes. Or it could be both demographic and psychographic, if you’re into that. To some degree, you learn this by putting a message out and seeing who shows up. The audience that appears may or may not look like the one you intended to attract. As long as you still like them, go with the flow. And if you don’t like them, try a little strongly-worded values conversation — get very real about what matters most to you. That will chase them away if you aren’t on the same page there. Then … what kind of meaningful change? Health? Relationships? Finances? Time management? And finally … how do you do that? Specifically? Could you come up with a memorable, simple label for your process or methodology? <h3>Step 2: Pulling the audience together</h3> If you haven’t started some kind of content hub to build your audience, do that now. You really do want something you control, and you also want a way to keep talking with them. Normally that means an email list. I’m noticing — not for everyone, but for many — that some folks who have put together large and loyal groups on Facebook have a terrible time when they try to sell those folks something. Because people spend a lot of time in Facebook groups when they’re looking for free advice. Not a thing wrong with that, except that these people don’t buy, therefore they’re not your customer. In general, I’d much rather have an email list of 500 people who buy than a Facebook group of 5,000 who don’t. When you’re really starting out and you have no one, you want to think about partnering and finding those audiences that have already gathered around someone you might partner with. You can also absolutely do something like Facebook advertising, if you have some extra cash and a lot of time to get good at that. It really depends on what resources and contraints you’re working with. <h3>Step 3: What’s the smallest meaningful change? (MVP)</h3> Once you know who you serve and you’ve started to pull them together so you can talk to them, your first step is to listen. What’s bugging them about your topic? What are they struggling with? What’s frustrating or annoying? You’re looking for opportunities to solve an annoying problem with your digital product. Maybe you’ll help people finally get consistent about an exercise habit, or learn how to catch Pokemons in Pokemon Go, or get a promotion at work. Most business — and nearly all digital products — solve a problem. The trick at first is — look for small problems to solve first. Initial steps on the larger path. If you try to launch a massive membership community that’s going to create complete transformation, unless you have an incredibly strong relationship with your audience, it’s too much, too soon. You’re moving too fast. Solve minor annoyances, then bigger headaches, and work your way up. As far as what you actually offer? Literally, if you can re-create it in a digital form and take money for it, you’ve got a product. Some examples are: Cheat sheets, mind maps, process maps, workbooks, ebooks, checklists, video tutorials (these go well with workbooks), audio tutorials. As you start working your way up to bigger audience problems — and bigger solutions — you start getting into the e-courses, membership communities, virtual coaching groups, that kind of thing. My friend JB Glossinger has a premium podcast called Morning Coach — Monday is free, Tuesday through Friday are a paid subscription. That’s an unusual model but it works well for him and his audience. Make it small. I like checklists and cheat sheets for the very beginning of the process, then simple tutorials (audio or video) with a PDF workbook. When I say “workbook,” realize that can be 3 pages. Think small. <h3>Step 4: Options for tools</h3> Actually delivering the digital product to the customer and getting paid for it has, frankly, been a giant pain. When I created my first educational community, the technology side of it was a bear — and it was not cheap. Numerous products had to be stitched together, then styled by a designer to look good and work well. Then there were those couple of weeks we had Russian hackers putting porn images into our library, that was awesome. Now, if you have any revenue at all, I really recommend our Rainmaker platform. You get the public side, so the podcast and blog we were talking about, and then a membership side that manages all of the login information for you, manages multiple products when you’re ready for that, lets you provide “free products” as well as various levels of paid things, and all of it is hosted, turnkey, and secure. It’s just a very good solution for this. If you’re talking a checklist for .99, Rainmaker is a paid service and it’s not a rock-bottom price, so it may be that you won’t feel ready right now. That’s fine. My advice in that case is, go as simple as you possibly can. You may want to go with a service like Clickbank or E-junkie to make things simple. They’re fine when you’re starting out, but at some point you’ll probably find it makes sense to upgrade. <h3>Step 4: LORE: Launch, observe, rework, evolve</h3> I think we’re addicted to creating acronyms — this one sort of popped up as I was planning out this session: LORE. Launch, observe, rework, and evolve. In other words, get something out there — it might not be too fantastic, but there could be something to it. It reflects an idea you’ve seen in the audience that you think might resonate. It helps solve a problem you think people might care about. Then you see what happens. You talk to buyers. If no one buys, try to talk with some non-buyers — you can just get onto your list and ask for a few folks to chat with about why the product wasn’t a good fit. You rework it so it’s better, based on the feedback, and then you evolve the product to a better version. You don’t have to have the world’s most stunning idea. You just have to start with a spark that will catch — and that’s why we start with those micro-products. That’s how you find the spark that can catch. Then you fan that flame and make it bigger. So: If you think you’d like to start a digital business — and most of these start as small projects “on the side” that can be grown into something bigger over time — just a reminder that our live event this year is going to be focused on that. It’s called the Digital Commerce Summit, it’s in October this year in Denver, Colorado, and it’s designed to actually walk you through this process in much more detail. Understanding who you serve and then finding those folks and building your audience. Developing your product idea. Producing the product, then launching, and of course going on to evolve and grow over time. You can find that at <a href="http://DigitalCommerce.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DigitalCommerce.com</a>, you can click the summit section or if you’re very good at listening to URLs, just jump to <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/summit" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">digitalcommerce.com/summit</a>. This year, we’re trying something new — Chris Brogan and I are going to do an optional supplemental workshop on putting together an online course. Both Chris and I have done quite a lot of this — an online course was really what got me out of the stress of chasing freelance clients and on to a much more sustainable and (for me) enjoyable business model. We’re doing a hands-on workshop for the folks who attend Summit — attendance is limited and there’s an additional fee, but actually that fee is really reasonable right now. This is a roll-up-your-sleeves and do it thing, with Chris and I there to guide and help you as you put your business plan together. It’s going to be fun and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll get you a registration link in the show notes if you’re interested — we’re pinning down venues, but the spaces for this are going to be limited so we can really focus on you as an individual. It should be a blast. So, as I understand it the workshop is only open to folks who are attending Summit, so the place to do that is <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">digitalcommerce.com</a>, slash, summit. Then we’ll let you know how to get signed up for the workshop with me and Chris if you’re into it. Thanks so much for your time and attention and I’ll catch you next week.

Launching Your First (or Next) Digital Product

How do we know we’re successful? How do we set up the rules of our own game so that they serve us, and give us a more meaningful life? Jonathan Nation left a nice comment on an earlier episode about the definition of success: … What is success? What is that vision you are striving for? An excellent question, and a smart one to ask (and try to answer) as early as you can. In this 23-minute episode, I talk about:  What the Buddha and an ancient sitar player can teach you about goal setting The problem with most financial goals Is adjusting your goals just a nice way to make excuses for failure? Why your “sitar string” needs some tension The role of stress in a meaningful life Different types of stress and the healthy (or unhealthy) roles they can play How to implement “one of the most effective psychological interventions ever studied” (and it’s easy and fun) How to build your goals so they serve a meaningful life  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  My podcast episode on The 7 Escape Pod Principles (aka Sonia’s book) (AUDIO) Jonathan Nation’s site — thanks for the question, Jonathan! Steve Kamb’s fun and useful book on Leveling Up Your Life — on treating your life as an adventure and quest for meaning Kelly McGonigal’s book The Upside of Stress McGonigal’s TED talk on How to Make Stress Your Friend (VIDEO) If you need a list of common human values, this is a good one from James Clear. Feel free to choose from values that aren’t on this list, of course! I always love it when you say Hi or ask a question over on Twitter — find me @soniasimone   The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  July I’m going to be digging some more into the themes from the book I’m working on. If you want to know more about that, look for the 7 Escape Pod Principles episode from PinkHairedMarketer.FM https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/escape-pod/ I wanted to kick off with a good question that Jonathan Nation left on that post: The one big gaping hole I see is something you hit on often, but not in this model   what is success? What is that vision you are striving for? It s sorta implied, yet for long term, it is needed, even if at first success is just trying something or earning an extra $400 per month. I talk a lot about success, and every week in that intro to the podcast, more specifically I talk about running your business and your life according to your own rules. I really like Jonathan’s point here — it’s important to start from having some kind of vision for What does it mean for me to be successful right from the outset. Not too tight, not too loose There’s a story about the Buddha observing a musician tuning a guitar– or whatever the stringed instrument was of his time and place. Maybe a sitar or a sarode.  A tight string will break. A loose string just flops and doesn’t make any sound. You need to tune the string so that it’s not overly tight or overly loose. That “middle way” is a major theme of Buddhism, and it also happens to be good advice for a lot of things in life. Goal setting is very much about the Middle Way. If your vision is too tight, too specific, too rigid, then you create all kinds of problems. First, you probably won’t get it exactly right, since you do not have a TARDIS and you don’t know what the future will bring you. So you may be disappointed that you didn’t “call it” correctly. The classic example of this would be a financial goal. It’s not uncommon for someone’s goal to be, “I will make $100,000 in 2016.”  So let’s say you made $50,000 in 2015, and you make $75,000 in 2016. This is major. And yet there actually are people who will feel let down and defeated because they didn’t “make their number.”  Second, you may be closing doors that could be extremely interesting and rewarding. Every decision we make does close some doors, and that’s the nature of things and is OK. But ideally you’d like to close as few as you can get away with. So if you make the precise same amount of money but you move to some beautiful place with a lower cost of living and your life becomes immensely better — in the scheme of things, let’s adjust the goal to match the deeper vision. Or you make less money but you quit the job you hate and get a job that you love and you’re able to make your finances work because you sold the house and live on a sailboat — again, victory unlocked. Is adjusting a goal just “making excuses”? There are people out there who will throw the word “excuses” at you if you make adjustments to a goal. “You’re just making excuses.”  I find this an extraordinarily unhelpful observation. Sometimes it’s a conversation you have with yourself. You realize that you’re rationalizing staying with some toxic current reality because making a change seems too hard. Your therapist would be another person who might help you to see if this really is a case of making excuses, when it would be more productive to tough it out. But this is not a word that’s helpful to use with other people. Keep your eyes on your own path. And if you do hear it from someone else, realize that it’s much more comfortable to judge you than it is to work on their own stuff. We all know that one. So roll your eyes and move on. The problem with “too loose” Of course, sometimes that string is tuned a little too loose. Just like the sitar string won’t make a sound if it’s adjusted so there’s no tension, you’re unlikely to see the improvements you would like to see if there’s absolutely zero tension. This might be a good time for me to bring up once again Kelly McGonigall’s book, The Upside of Stress.  A lot of us hold back from big work, the kind of work that makes our heart beat faster, because “we can’t take the stress.” Now you know you. I’m not going to talk you into taking on more stress than you can manage. But you may want to play with the idea that some stress is actually quite healthy for you. In particular, chronic, relentless stress that you have no control over and that has no meaning is quite unhealthy. And coincidentally, this is the kind of stress that rats get subjected to in studies about stress.  But you are not a lab rat, thankfully. How you think about and interpret your stress has, statistically, quite a significant impact on how it will affect your health. And not every stress response is “fight or flight.” A lot of stress — I think we’ve all felt this — is what’s called a challenge response, where we pick up more energy to do the thing that needs to be done.  According to the research that McGonigall has pulled together from multiple studies, this type of stress is associated with neurochemistry that is much less damaging to your heart.  Another documented stress response is “Tend and Befriend,” which is associated with a release of oxytocin — the “cuddle hormone.” This hormone is beneficial to your heart, it turns out.  The book is a good read if you like sciency-stuff, or her TED talk gives the highlights.  So you may have a lot of stress happening today — but it could be that by shifting the rules to play a game, even if it’s part-time at first, that’s better aligned with your values, and that gives you more freedom over your circumstances, could not only make your life better, but it could help shift some of your bad stress to a more beneficial type. The power of values Here’s another quote I found super interesting from McGonigall’s book: It turns out that writing about your values is one of the most effective psychological interventions ever studied. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s such a fast tweak that you can make, and I also find this a good thing to do for example right before I go to sleep, just to relax myself and help put my head in a good place, and that’s connecting with your values. It doesn’t matter if those values are conservative or liberal, eastern or western, urban or rural. They also don’t have to be something you’re excelling at today. If your value is “family” but right now that’s in a difficult place, that’s completely ok. Values are about what you care about, not always what you’re magnificently good at right now. What matters is that you connect with what matters about your life — what gives your life meaning. You don’t necessarily have to go through an exercise of mapping out “How this thing I did today reflects my values.” Those always felt stiff and clunky to me and I just don’t do them. Instead, I make time regularly to reflect on what my values are. What they mean to me. If they’ve come up during my day or my week, I can think about that. But the main thing is to connect myself to meaning, not to try to play match-the-values game with every action I take. That can get kind of exhausting, and if it’s exhausting you won’t do it. Connecting with your values, on the other hand, is easy and energizing. It’s refreshing. It helps you reframe things. And if the research holds true, it lasts a surprisingly long time.  It can just be a matter of writing out a few paragraphs about your values and why they matter to you. Just take a little time to remember what they are, and think about them with some richness for a little bit.  I would definitely recommend that you feel connected to your values — to the ideas that give meaning to your life — as you work with goals and vision. They’ll give you that “Why.”  And they’ll help reveal goals that might be the more fun toys. Not that it’s bad to want a particular car or a particular material thing. If you can have a few treats and preserve the meaning in your life, that’s a lovely thing.  But the treats won’t give you any kind of lasting emotional payoff really — and if you pursue the material stuff at the expense of your values, they’ll become a prison. We see it all the time, people who are so caught up in the markers or the signs of success that real success — which is living a life worth living — drains away. Values are the way we protect ourselves from that and make sure the richness stays in our lives. That’s it for today — just a heads up that the podcast will continue as it has done throughout July, and then I’m going to take a hiatus for about a month in August because I’m going to be moving both my family and my podcast. Family and I will be making a grand experiment for a year, and the podcast will move on over to my personal blog site.  You can always find me at PinkHairedMarketer.FM, but it seems I’ll need to rebuild my iTunes following — we’re not having any luck transferring the podcast to my own account. So if you do happen to like the podcast, I’ll be hitting you up to help me find more listeners and sustain this community. Thanks so much for your time and attention and I’ll catch you next week.  

How do we know we’re successful? How do we set up the rules of our own game so that they serve us, and give us a more meaningful life? Jonathan Nation left a nice comment on an earlier episode about the definition of success: <blockquote>… What is success? What is that vision you are striving for?</blockquote> An excellent question, and a smart one to ask (and try to answer) as early as you can. In this 23-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>What the Buddha and an ancient sitar player can teach you about goal setting</li> <li>The problem with most financial goals</li> <li>Is adjusting your goals just a nice way to make excuses for failure?</li> <li>Why your “sitar string” needs some tension</li> <li>The role of stress in a meaningful life</li> <li>Different types of stress and the healthy (or unhealthy) roles they can play</li> <li>How to implement “one of the most effective psychological interventions ever studied” (and it’s easy and fun)</li> <li>How to build your goals so they serve a meaningful life</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/rfm-pink-069.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>My podcast episode on <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/escape-pod/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The 7 Escape Pod Principles (aka Sonia’s book)</a> (AUDIO)</li> <li><a href="http://www.jonathannation.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jonathan Nation’s site</a> — thanks for the question, Jonathan!</li> <li>Steve Kamb’s fun and useful book on <a href="https://levelupyourlife.nerdfitness.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Leveling Up Your Life</a> — on treating your life as an adventure and quest for meaning</li> <li>Kelly McGonigal’s book <a href="http://kellymcgonigal.com/books/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Upside of Stress</a></li> <li>McGonigal’s TED talk on <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How to Make Stress Your Friend</a> (VIDEO)</li> <li>If you need a list of <a href="http://jamesclear.com/core-values" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">common human values</a>, this is a good one from James Clear. Feel free to choose from values that aren’t on this list, of course!</li> <li>I always love it when you say Hi or ask a question over on Twitter — find me <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a> </li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! July I’m going to be digging some more into the themes from the book I’m working on. If you want to know more about that, look for the 7 Escape Pod Principles episode from <a href="http://PinkHairedMarketer.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PinkHairedMarketer.FM</a> <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/escape-pod/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/escape-pod/</a> I wanted to kick off with a good question that <a href="http://www.jonathannation.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jonathan Nation</a> left on that post: <blockquote>The one big gaping hole I see is something you hit on often, but not in this model what is success? What is that vision you are striving for? It s sorta implied, yet for long term, it is needed, even if at first success is just trying something or earning an extra $400 per month.</blockquote> I talk a lot about success, and every week in that intro to the podcast, more specifically I talk about running your business and your life according to your own rules. I really like Jonathan’s point here — it’s important to start from having some kind of vision for What does it mean for me to be successful right from the outset. <h3>Not too tight, not too loose</h3> There’s a story about the Buddha observing a musician tuning a guitar– or whatever the stringed instrument was of his time and place. Maybe a sitar or a sarode. A tight string will break. A loose string just flops and doesn’t make any sound. You need to tune the string so that it’s not overly tight or overly loose. That “middle way” is a major theme of Buddhism, and it also happens to be good advice for a lot of things in life. Goal setting is very much about the Middle Way. If your vision is too tight, too specific, too rigid, then you create all kinds of problems. First, you probably won’t get it exactly right, since you do not have a TARDIS and you don’t know what the future will bring you. So you may be disappointed that you didn’t “call it” correctly. The classic example of this would be a financial goal. It’s not uncommon for someone’s goal to be, “I will make $100,000 in 2016.” So let’s say you made $50,000 in 2015, and you make $75,000 in 2016. This is major. And yet there actually are people who will feel let down and defeated because they didn’t “make their number.” Second, you may be closing doors that could be extremely interesting and rewarding. Every decision we make does close some doors, and that’s the nature of things and is OK. But ideally you’d like to close as few as you can get away with. So if you make the precise same amount of money but you move to some beautiful place with a lower cost of living and your life becomes immensely better — in the scheme of things, let’s adjust the goal to match the deeper vision. Or you make less money but you quit the job you hate and get a job that you love and you’re able to make your finances work because you sold the house and live on a sailboat — again, victory unlocked. <h3>Is adjusting a goal just “making excuses”?</h3> There are people out there who will throw the word “excuses” at you if you make adjustments to a goal. “You’re just making excuses.” I find this an extraordinarily unhelpful observation. Sometimes it’s a conversation you have with yourself. You realize that you’re rationalizing staying with some toxic current reality because making a change seems too hard. Your therapist would be another person who might help you to see if this really is a case of making excuses, when it would be more productive to tough it out. But this is not a word that’s helpful to use with other people. Keep your eyes on your own path. And if you do hear it from someone else, realize that it’s much more comfortable to judge you than it is to work on their own stuff. We all know that one. So roll your eyes and move on. <h3>The problem with “too loose”</h3> Of course, sometimes that string is tuned a little too loose. Just like the sitar string won’t make a sound if it’s adjusted so there’s no tension, you’re unlikely to see the improvements you would like to see if there’s absolutely zero tension. This might be a good time for me to bring up once again Kelly McGonigall’s book, The Upside of Stress. A lot of us hold back from big work, the kind of work that makes our heart beat faster, because “we can’t take the stress.” Now you know you. I’m not going to talk you into taking on more stress than you can manage. But you may want to play with the idea that some stress is actually quite healthy for you. In particular, chronic, relentless stress that you have no control over and that has no meaning is quite unhealthy. And coincidentally, this is the kind of stress that rats get subjected to in studies about stress. But you are not a lab rat, thankfully. How you think about and interpret your stress has, statistically, quite a significant impact on how it will affect your health. And not every stress response is “fight or flight.” A lot of stress — I think we’ve all felt this — is what’s called a challenge response, where we pick up more energy to do the thing that needs to be done. According to the research that McGonigall has pulled together from multiple studies, this type of stress is associated with neurochemistry that is much less damaging to your heart. Another documented stress response is “Tend and Befriend,” which is associated with a release of oxytocin — the “cuddle hormone.” This hormone is beneficial to your heart, it turns out. The book is a good read if you like sciency-stuff, or her TED talk gives the highlights. So you may have a lot of stress happening today — but it could be that by shifting the rules to play a game, even if it’s part-time at first, that’s better aligned with your values, and that gives you more freedom over your circumstances, could not only make your life better, but it could help shift some of your bad stress to a more beneficial type. <h3>The power of values</h3> Here’s another quote I found super interesting from McGonigall’s book: <blockquote>It turns out that writing about your values is one of the most effective psychological interventions ever studied.</blockquote> I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s such a fast tweak that you can make, and I also find this a good thing to do for example right before I go to sleep, just to relax myself and help put my head in a good place, and that’s connecting with your values. It doesn’t matter if those values are conservative or liberal, eastern or western, urban or rural. They also don’t have to be something you’re excelling at today. If your value is “family” but right now that’s in a difficult place, that’s completely ok. Values are about what you care about, not always what you’re magnificently good at right now. What matters is that you connect with what matters about your life — what gives your life meaning. You don’t necessarily have to go through an exercise of mapping out “How this thing I did today reflects my values.” Those always felt stiff and clunky to me and I just don’t do them. Instead, I make time regularly to reflect on what my values are. What they mean to me. If they’ve come up during my day or my week, I can think about that. But the main thing is to connect myself to meaning, not to try to play match-the-values game with every action I take. That can get kind of exhausting, and if it’s exhausting you won’t do it. Connecting with your values, on the other hand, is easy and energizing. It’s refreshing. It helps you reframe things. And if the research holds true, it lasts a surprisingly long time. It can just be a matter of writing out a few paragraphs about your values and why they matter to you. Just take a little time to remember what they are, and think about them with some richness for a little bit. I would definitely recommend that you feel connected to your values — to the ideas that give meaning to your life — as you work with goals and vision. They’ll give you that “Why.” And they’ll help reveal goals that might be the more fun toys. Not that it’s bad to want a particular car or a particular material thing. If you can have a few treats and preserve the meaning in your life, that’s a lovely thing. But the treats won’t give you any kind of lasting emotional payoff really — and if you pursue the material stuff at the expense of your values, they’ll become a prison. We see it all the time, people who are so caught up in the markers or the signs of success that real success — which is living a life worth living — drains away. Values are the way we protect ourselves from that and make sure the richness stays in our lives. That’s it for today — just a heads up that the podcast will continue as it has done throughout July, and then I’m going to take a hiatus for about a month in August because I’m going to be moving both my family and my podcast. Family and I will be making a grand experiment for a year, and the podcast will move on over to my personal blog site. You can always find me at <a href="http://PinkHairedMarketer.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PinkHairedMarketer.FM</a>, but it seems I’ll need to rebuild my iTunes following — we’re not having any luck transferring the podcast to my own account. So if you do happen to like the podcast, I’ll be hitting you up to help me find more listeners and sustain this community. Thanks so much for your time and attention and I’ll catch you next week.

A Quick, Enjoyable Way to Sharpen your Vision, Goals, and Values

The keys to good sponsored content or native advertising, content for B2B organizations, and how to make connections with the big-audience content publishers … It’s Independence Day in the U.S., and time for a Q&amp;A! And no, those things aren’t really related at all.  In this 25-minute episode, I answer questions on:  Techniques for writing sponsored content (or native advertising) that doesn’t feel like an ad The differences (and similarities) in writing content for B2B or B2C organizations The two key emotional drivers for most B2B customers Looking for the “fuel for the fire” in a B2B company, and how that informs your content strategy Strategies for making connections with someone who has a bigger audience than you do  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  Demian Farnworth on Empathy Maps: A Complete Guide to Crawling Around Inside Your Customer’s Head And Demian again on How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Strategy My ebook on Effective Content Promotion (included with your free MyCopyblogger registration) MediaPress Studios on sponsored content and native advertising Andy Crestodina’s epic Periodic Table of Content Sharon Liu’s tweeted question Shikhashikz’s tweeted question Ifeanyi Okolo’s tweeted question Glen Allsop’s tweeted question I always love it when you say Hi or ask your content, marketing, business, or mindset question over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  Thanks to everyone on Twitter who asked a question for this episode! Sharon Liu  @SZL14   @soniasimone What are some fun ways to write sponsored content that sounds less ad-y? — Sharon Liu (@sharonzix) June 22, 2016  @soniasimone What are some fun ways to write sponsored content that sounds less ad-y? This is a super fun question — sponsored content, or “native advertising,” or as we called it when I did a lot of them, “advertorials” have been around for a long time. So as is so often the case, the “hot new thing” is something that’s been around for a long time. A little research tells me they are not the same thing — technically sponsored content is pure content that’s designed to build brand authority. Mediapress studios defines sponsored content this way: This is strictly editorial.  Sponsored content is not brand-biased and focuses on informing rather than convincing their target audience.  The strategy behind this is to become a thought leader in the industry, and increase the value of the brand.  If the audience goes to that company for advice, maybe they’ll buy their products as well. Copyblogger would be an example of this, and we call this an “authority content” model. Basically, show up and be super smart and useful on your topic. Mediapress studios: http://www.mediapressstudios.com/blog/native-advertising-vs-sponsored-content Native advertising is more that traditional advertorial — it’s an ad, but the tone, voice, and layout are designed to blend into the publication so you can’t tell it’s an ad. The key to making both of them work is actually the same — you start with the call to action that you want to work toward, and you keep that in mind, but then you sort of squish that part of your brain down and think more like a creative writer or a journalist.  What are the legitimate reasons for going with this particular company, product, or service? What do they, in fact, actually do well? What kinds of buyers are an excellent fit? Who would genuinely benefit from taking the desired call to action? The only way I know how to do these is if you as a writer truly do believe 100% in the product. So you want to choose your clients — or your employer — accordingly, and only work for companies you think are doing something extraordinarily well. For an advertorial, the key really is to blend — so if it’s a research-heavy publication, then you need some solid, credible numbers and data. If it’s a more lifestyle publication, then look at the way they use language — what do the verbs look like, how many adjectives are we talking about. Match the voice and the approach.  Hope this is helpful! This was a fun question.  Shikhashikz  @Shikhashikz   @soniasimone in today's world,do you think only content matters n Concept of b2b n b2c has vanished away?its all about b2p ( people) — Shikhashikz (@Shikhashikz) June 21, 2016  @soniasimone in today’s world,do you think only content matters n Concept of b2b n b2c has vanished away?its all about b2p ( people) This is a question I’m always very happy when people ask. The fact is, it’s always been B2P. When you’re creating B2B — business-to-business — content, versus business-to-consumer, you have to figure out who the stakeholders are — which is just corporate-speak for who’s involved in making the decision you’re trying to get to. We have a bit of a mythology that when people are at work, they’re somehow more rational and aren’t influenced by emotion. But of course that’s not true at all — and in fact, some of the new brain research is showing us that the kinds of thinking we label as “emotions” are crucial to all human decision-making. If you think of your own work experience, work is a very emotional place. The emotions are different at work — frankly, fear and status are very highly represented there in most companies. Fear of losing your spot in the hierarchy, and desire to gain a higher one. But it still comes down to understanding what moves your audience — getting into their heads, empathizing with their complex emotional states, and then understanding their complete customer experience so you can use content to make the path easier to walk. We have some posts on Empathy Maps and Experience Maps that I think may be useful, I’ll include them in the show notes. Ifeanyi C. Okolo  @pass4lifeltd  @soniasimone how does a B2B company write intermediate content for clients? — Ifeanyi C. Okolo (@pass4lifeltd) June 21, 2016  @soniasimone how does a B2B company write intermediate content for clients? This obviously leads right into the earlier question — and again, it’s one that I think is excellent when people ask. This gets to something that not enough B2B organizations do — they forget who it is who fuels the fire. Somewhere, no matter how esoteric your B2B, there’s a customer who pays for something. A consumer, or a citizen or community resident or taxpayer if you’re talking B2G.  The whole chain needs to know what that person needs. The whole chain needs to make that person successful, so that the entire chain of organizations can be successful. So if you write point-of-sale software for retail stores, you need to understand the experience of the customer who buys from that store, not just the store owner or even the store employees. If your software makes it hard for the eventual customer to buy, then your product is stealing fuel from the fire.  That insight is how you start to make decisions about what content, if any, you create for those folks, and what it will look like. It’s really the Empathy and Experience Maps all over again, but you just have kind of a chain of maps depending on the specifics of your organization and their relationship to that core customer.  Glen  @ViperChill  @soniasimone What's the best way someone who hasn't connected with you before could get the attention of you and Brian  — Glen (@ViperChill) June 29, 2016  @soniasimone What’s the best way someone who hasn’t connected with you before could get the attention of you and Brian  Glen Allsop is a very cool guy, relatively young and has lots of energy and is a great implementer. In my experience, there are two super strong strategies. The first is, if you can swing it, to meet people in person, ideally at small events. So SXSW can be a ton of fun, but it gets hard to really connect there. Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded. -Yogi Berra The parties are massive and loud, the event is so spread out. Small events, on the other hand, let you spend more quality time with a few people, and that’s what you want. So, you know, cough, we have one coming up in October. And obviously I am biased, but it’s awesome. Truly.  But you probably encounter other small events as well. I’ve certainly had some fantastic conversations at Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit, although that’s grown a lot. I’m sure it’s still terrific, though. Liz Strauss and Terry Starbucker’s event SOBCon was legendary for this, and in fact it’s where I met Brian Clark and Chris Garrett face to face for the first time, and other fantastic folks as well. Look for events that are structured to allow for quality interactions between the attendees — and ideally with the speakers as well. The other super strong strategy is to do something epic. So I will never forget meeting Andy Crestodina, who I met face to face at a larger event, because when I met him he put his Periodic Table of Content Marketing into my hand, and it was incredibly beautifully produced, very smart, a clever concept executed beautifully.  The easiest way to do “something epic” is to have a killer content platform, so have an outstanding blog or a wonderful podcast or a great video series.  Strategy #3 isn’t quite as powerful as the first two, but it makes an impression, and that’s just show up and be nice, and if you can, be useful. Drive someone to the airport. Leave thoughtful and interesting comments that go beyond “Nice post.” Engage meaningfully and thoughtfully in social media. This is like vitamins for your networking strategy. It just makes it work a lot, lot better. If you get known for being nice, everything else you do gets a halo from that. And I will tell you straight up, if you’re not nice — or, this is really fatal, if you’re nice to me but you’re rude or mean to my team — then you pretty much have to cure cancer and bring about world peace before I want to talk to you. I have an ebook on content promotion that goes into some of this in a little more detail, it’s free with the My Copyblogger library. The final thought on that is — people with big audiences have a lot of people who want to connect with us, and it’s always interesting to me how many folks with big audiences are introverts. So it will probably take some time and you want to try to be patient. Also, observe where folks are easy to find. I tend to be very easy to connect with on Twitter and blog comments, and very hard to connect with via cold emailing or LinkedIn.  Patience and a sense of humor are wonderful. People aren’t trying to give you the cold shoulder and they don’t think they’re better than you are — they just have a lot of communication flying in at them and if they’re introverts, that can get really overwhelming and exhausting in a hurry.  I totally get taking it personally when someone doesn’t respond, and I’ll tell you right now, I go in and out, and sometimes I get slammed and I don’t respond to people I really, really wanted to reply to. They get to the bottom of the inbox screen and my distraction ruins all my good intentions. As much as you can, try to assume that they’re just overloaded, they don’t really think they’re “superior.”  Thanks for the smart question, Glen.  

The keys to good sponsored content or native advertising, content for B2B organizations, and how to make connections with the big-audience content publishers … It’s Independence Day in the U.S., and time for a Q&amp;A! And no, those things aren’t really related at all. In this 25-minute episode, I answer questions on: <ul> <li>Techniques for writing sponsored content (or native advertising) that doesn’t feel like an ad</li> <li>The differences (and similarities) in writing content for B2B or B2C organizations</li> <li>The two key emotional drivers for most B2B customers</li> <li>Looking for the “fuel for the fire” in a B2B company, and how that informs your content strategy</li> <li>Strategies for making connections with someone who has a bigger audience than you do</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/rfm-pink-068.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>Demian Farnworth on <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/empathy-maps/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Empathy Maps: A Complete Guide to Crawling Around Inside Your Customer’s Head</a></li> <li>And Demian again on <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/customer-experience-maps/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Strategy</a></li> <li>My ebook on <a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/basic/effective-content-promotion/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Effective Content Promotion</a> (included with your free MyCopyblogger registration)</li> <li>MediaPress Studios on <a href="http://www.mediapressstudios.com/blog/native-advertising-vs-sponsored-content" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sponsored content and native advertising</a></li> <li>Andy Crestodina’s epic <a href="https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/content-chemistry/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Periodic Table of Content</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/SZL14/status/745435432821764096" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sharon Liu’s tweeted question</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/Shikhashikz/status/745404423514427392" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Shikhashikz’s tweeted question</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/pass4lifeltd/status/745403820738494464" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ifeanyi Okolo’s tweeted question</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/ViperChill/status/748219721267372034" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Glen Allsop’s tweeted question</a></li> <li>I always love it when you say Hi or ask your content, marketing, business, or mindset question over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! Thanks to everyone on Twitter who asked a question for this episode! Sharon Liu @SZL14 <blockquote> <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a> What are some fun ways to write sponsored content that sounds less ad-y? — Sharon Liu (@sharonzix) <a href="https://twitter.com/sharonzix/status/745435432821764096" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">June 22, 2016</a></blockquote> @soniasimone What are some fun ways to write sponsored content that sounds less ad-y? This is a super fun question — sponsored content, or “native advertising,” or as we called it when I did a lot of them, “advertorials” have been around for a long time. So as is so often the case, the “hot new thing” is something that’s been around for a long time. A little research tells me they are not the same thing — technically sponsored content is pure content that’s designed to build brand authority. Mediapress studios defines sponsored content this way: <blockquote>This is strictly editorial. Sponsored content is not brand-biased and focuses on informing rather than convincing their target audience. The strategy behind this is to become a thought leader in the industry, and increase the value of the brand. If the audience goes to that company for advice, maybe they’ll buy their products as well.</blockquote> Copyblogger would be an example of this, and we call this an “authority content” model. Basically, show up and be super smart and useful on your topic. Mediapress studios: <a href="http://www.mediapressstudios.com/blog/native-advertising-vs-sponsored-content" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.mediapressstudios.com/blog/native-advertising-vs-sponsored-content</a> Native advertising is more that traditional advertorial — it’s an ad, but the tone, voice, and layout are designed to blend into the publication so you can’t tell it’s an ad. The key to making both of them work is actually the same — you start with the call to action that you want to work toward, and you keep that in mind, but then you sort of squish that part of your brain down and think more like a creative writer or a journalist. What are the legitimate reasons for going with this particular company, product, or service? What do they, in fact, actually do well? What kinds of buyers are an excellent fit? Who would genuinely benefit from taking the desired call to action? The only way I know how to do these is if you as a writer truly do believe 100% in the product. So you want to choose your clients — or your employer — accordingly, and only work for companies you think are doing something extraordinarily well. For an advertorial, the key really is to blend — so if it’s a research-heavy publication, then you need some solid, credible numbers and data. If it’s a more lifestyle publication, then look at the way they use language — what do the verbs look like, how many adjectives are we talking about. Match the voice and the approach. Hope this is helpful! This was a fun question. Shikhashikz @Shikhashikz <blockquote> <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a> in today's world,do you think only content matters n Concept of b2b n b2c has vanished away?its all about b2p ( people) — Shikhashikz (@Shikhashikz) <a href="https://twitter.com/Shikhashikz/status/745404423514427392" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">June 21, 2016</a></blockquote> @soniasimone in today’s world,do you think only content matters n Concept of b2b n b2c has vanished away?its all about b2p ( people) This is a question I’m always very happy when people ask. The fact is, it’s always been B2P. When you’re creating B2B — business-to-business — content, versus business-to-consumer, you have to figure out who the stakeholders are — which is just corporate-speak for who’s involved in making the decision you’re trying to get to. We have a bit of a mythology that when people are at work, they’re somehow more rational and aren’t influenced by emotion. But of course that’s not true at all — and in fact, some of the new brain research is showing us that the kinds of thinking we label as “emotions” are crucial to all human decision-making. If you think of your own work experience, work is a very emotional place. The emotions are different at work — frankly, fear and status are very highly represented there in most companies. Fear of losing your spot in the hierarchy, and desire to gain a higher one. But it still comes down to understanding what moves your audience — getting into their heads, empathizing with their complex emotional states, and then understanding their complete customer experience so you can use content to make the path easier to walk. We have some posts on Empathy Maps and Experience Maps that I think may be useful, I’ll include them in the show notes. Ifeanyi C. Okolo @pass4lifeltd <blockquote> <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a> how does a B2B company write intermediate content for clients? — Ifeanyi C. Okolo (@pass4lifeltd) <a href="https://twitter.com/pass4lifeltd/status/745403820738494464" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">June 21, 2016</a></blockquote> @soniasimone how does a B2B company write intermediate content for clients? This obviously leads right into the earlier question — and again, it’s one that I think is excellent when people ask. This gets to something that not enough B2B organizations do — they forget who it is who fuels the fire. Somewhere, no matter how esoteric your B2B, there’s a customer who pays for something. A consumer, or a citizen or community resident or taxpayer if you’re talking B2G. The whole chain needs to know what that person needs. The whole chain needs to make that person successful, so that the entire chain of organizations can be successful. So if you write point-of-sale software for retail stores, you need to understand the experience of the customer who buys from that store, not just the store owner or even the store employees. If your software makes it hard for the eventual customer to buy, then your product is stealing fuel from the fire. That insight is how you start to make decisions about what content, if any, you create for those folks, and what it will look like. It’s really the Empathy and Experience Maps all over again, but you just have kind of a chain of maps depending on the specifics of your organization and their relationship to that core customer. Glen @ViperChill <blockquote> <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a> What's the best way someone who hasn't connected with you before could get the attention of you and Brian — Glen (@ViperChill) <a href="https://twitter.com/ViperChill/status/748219721267372034" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">June 29, 2016</a></blockquote> @soniasimone What’s the best way someone who hasn’t connected with you before could get the attention of you and Brian Glen Allsop is a very cool guy, relatively young and has lots of energy and is a great implementer. In my experience, there are two super strong strategies. The first is, if you can swing it, to meet people in person, ideally at small events. So SXSW can be a ton of fun, but it gets hard to really connect there. <blockquote>Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded. -Yogi Berra</blockquote> The parties are massive and loud, the event is so spread out. Small events, on the other hand, let you spend more quality time with a few people, and that’s what you want. So, you know, cough, we have one coming up in October. And obviously I am biased, but it’s awesome. Truly. But you probably encounter other small events as well. I’ve certainly had some fantastic conversations at Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit, although that’s grown a lot. I’m sure it’s still terrific, though. Liz Strauss and Terry Starbucker’s event SOBCon was legendary for this, and in fact it’s where I met Brian Clark and Chris Garrett face to face for the first time, and other fantastic folks as well. Look for events that are structured to allow for quality interactions between the attendees — and ideally with the speakers as well. The other super strong strategy is to do something epic. So I will never forget meeting Andy Crestodina, who I met face to face at a larger event, because when I met him he put his Periodic Table of Content Marketing into my hand, and it was incredibly beautifully produced, very smart, a clever concept executed beautifully. The easiest way to do “something epic” is to have a killer content platform, so have an outstanding blog or a wonderful podcast or a great video series. Strategy #3 isn’t quite as powerful as the first two, but it makes an impression, and that’s just show up and be nice, and if you can, be useful. Drive someone to the airport. Leave thoughtful and interesting comments that go beyond “Nice post.” Engage meaningfully and thoughtfully in social media. This is like vitamins for your networking strategy. It just makes it work a lot, lot better. If you get known for being nice, everything else you do gets a halo from that. And I will tell you straight up, if you’re not nice — or, this is really fatal, if you’re nice to me but you’re rude or mean to my team — then you pretty much have to cure cancer and bring about world peace before I want to talk to you. I have an ebook on content promotion that goes into some of this in a little more detail, it’s free with the My Copyblogger library. The final thought on that is — people with big audiences have a lot of people who want to connect with us, and it’s always interesting to me how many folks with big audiences are introverts. So it will probably take some time and you want to try to be patient. Also, observe where folks are easy to find. I tend to be very easy to connect with on Twitter and blog comments, and very hard to connect with via cold emailing or LinkedIn. Patience and a sense of humor are wonderful. People aren’t trying to give you the cold shoulder and they don’t think they’re better than you are — they just have a lot of communication flying in at them and if they’re introverts, that can get really overwhelming and exhausting in a hurry. I totally get taking it personally when someone doesn’t respond, and I’ll tell you right now, I go in and out, and sometimes I get slammed and I don’t respond to people I really, really wanted to reply to. They get to the bottom of the inbox screen and my distraction ruins all my good intentions. As much as you can, try to assume that they’re just overloaded, they don’t really think they’re “superior.” Thanks for the smart question, Glen.

Q&A from Twitter, Independence Day Version!

Is an “abundance mindset” the same thing as wishing really hard and making something magically appear? I don’t think it is. Here’s why … As you may have seen in my podcast a couple of weeks ago, my friend Julie Cairns’ documentary The Abundance Code has been premiering for free in the past week. (And I’m in it!) This led to a question over on Copyblogger — is this concept of an “abundance mindset” the same thing as the belief popularized by the film The Secret? The Secret’s worldview is (heavily) satirized in this clip from The IT Crowd:  I think there are some crucial differences, and I talk about them in this podcast. In this 25-minute episode, I talk about:  Why I think fatalism is dangerous Thinking about abundance in a context of global inequality What mindset can (and can’t) do for you Lessons from my grandmother, who lived to 102 Why you need a community of support (and why it might not be smart to drag your spouse into it) A fun experiment that might change everything  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  You still have a few days to catch The Abundance Code premiere for free online My podcast eposide on abundance, mindset, and luck (AUDIO) We have lots of free resources for you at MyCopyblogger — take advantage of them! I hope I can be part of your community of support! I always love it when you say Hi or ask a question over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  I had a Q&amp;A episode planned for today, but since there are a couple of days left to see The Abundance Code film for free, I thought I’d address a great question that came up in the comments over on Copyblogger. By the way, did you know we turned comments back on over there? We love to see yours.   On to the question: Is The Abundance Code the same as “The Secret”? Christine Wareing: Having watched the film, there is not a lot of difference between this and The Secret, which very much impacted me, although neither have really convinced me that you can really have it all if you manifest hard enough. I believe that every bodies life is mapped out for them from birth, and whoever you are born to this is your package deal, hopefully you are given the opportunity to have a good life, some are lucky, some are not. I will now refer you to a hilarious episode of The IT Crowd, which is a brilliant show if you’re comfortable with a bit of salty humor, about “Spacestar Ordering.”  Here’s how the character described how this system worked for him: Well, I visualised the thing I wanted. In my case, it was a helicopter. I drew a picture of the helicopter on a piece of paper, then I stood with my back to space, threw the paper over my shoulder and wished really hard. Couple of days later, bought myself a helicopter. Explain that one, if you can! OK, so that’s a pretty broad parody — but I don’t think it’s an unfair one. Here’s what I think: Fatalism is dangerous If you believe that your destiny is fixed, and you’re either destined to be lucky or you’re destined to be unlucky, you’ll take action that accords with that mindset. As I talked about in my podcast on “Getting Lucky,” people who self-identify as unlucky don’t look for the lucky break — and because they don’t look for it, they don’t see it. This doesn’t mean that no one gets a raw deal. Resources are not equally allocated. Someone born into a community where the standard of living is under a dollar a day don’t have the same resources that you have and I have. You and I have access to technology, not to mention all that cool stuff like food and clean water. The role of mindset Here was my response to Christine: For me there is a massive difference [between abundance mindset and “The Secret”], which is that you cannot, and should not, expect to get anything simply by  manifesting  (wishing). You have to take action, and you have to keep your eyes open and continue to take informed action. The role that  abundance thinking  plays for me is that it sets up a mindset in which you ll actually take the actions you know would be beneficial. It s creating a space of optimism in order to fuel behavior change. …. mindset is crucial, but it s just one element. An abundant mindset without action is just daydreaming. So, for example, studies have shown that people who have a positive view of ageing tend to do better after a significant health event like a serious illness or accident. Those with a positive view of growing older do better not because of any kind of cosmic energy, but because they are much more likely to engage in health-promoting behavior. They take that extra walk around the block. They do their physical therapy. They eat their vegetables. My grandmother lived to be 102, and right up until about 101, she was painting, she was socializing, she was taking walks, she was appreciating the things she loved, especially nature and her family. And I will tell you that if anyone said, “You know, eating broccoli is good for you,” or whatever it was, she’d eat some broccoli. She wanted to keep going. She had no interest in fading away. She wasn’t running marathons or competing in bodybuilding competitions — she was doing normal things that people do when they take care of themselves. Moderate exercise, reasonable food, staying social, and doing things she enjoyed. Now she had some very good genes helping her out, but we can’t help our genes. The thing we can help, and the lesson I take from her, is that she lived her life right to the end. She didn’t say, “Oh, that’s not for people my age.” I remember into her 90s she used to pull all-nighters making quilts to raise money for “the old people.” She’d drink about five pots of seriously bad coffee and get it done. She did this for the benefit of people who were a lot younger than she was. What else do we need besides mindset? Here’s what I would suggest. First, I think it would make sense to try an experiment at least, of taking, say, the next six months and deciding to believe you’re a lucky person. If you don’t like it, go back. Just the exercise of trying on different beliefs and mindsets is good for you.  Now I don’t suggest adopting the belief that gravity doesn’t exist, or that there is no such thing as disease. Beliefs and mindset are about what lies outside the realm of things we can see and touch. Then, within the context of that thought experiment, if you’re into it, I’d suggest these activities for your six-month project. 1. Start that side project you’ve been thinking of Most people have a bit of a daydream about a “side hustle” — a little side business to make a small amount of extra revenue. We’re not talking about making enough money to live on at this point. This is, say, $100 a month.  Important: Don’t spend $1000 a month to get $100 a month. Avoid the get-rich-quick schemes, the huge promises, all of that stuff. Focus on resources you can get for free, or — this one is a great resource for many people, me included — focus on resources you have already paid for. Every day this week, spend about 10 minutes planning out your next steps. This “plan” can be pretty rough. Just back-of-the-envelope. Example: I’m going to write a $7 ebook and then write a bunch of guest posts to try to get some traffic to it. I’m not saying that’s an ideal model. But it’s a model that might be workable. Or another possibility: I’m going to launch a part-time freelance business doing something I know how to do really well. Write, design, teach art, write grant proposals, tutor English, cook, make clothes. Don’t look for a “paint by numbers” system. Look for something you know how to do really well, that someone else wants and will pay for. Try not to think about “this is my future.” Instead, think about projects and experiments. Just interesting things to try. I’ve noticed something about a lot of very successful people I write about or interview — their story is usually really windy and full of odd little side paths. It’s how you get to be an interesting person, in my opinion. Real success, satisfying success, very, very rarely happens in a straight line. 2. Leverage the free stuff A lot of us who give any thought to this have bought some things over the years. Business advice, marketing advice, that kind of stuff. Go find all of those. Print them out if that helps you. Schedule the time to work through them. We also have a big old free library for you on Copyblogger.com — look on the Products tab for Free! My Copyblogger.  This weekend, do something. Make something. A website or a page or something. It can be small and imperfect, that’s fine. Remember, you’re a lucky person. So your little project is going to benefit from some sparks of luck along the way. That’s what this “abundance mindset” means to me. It means looking for resources you already have access to. It means asking yourself all the time, “What’s right in front of me that I haven’t seen yet?” It means cultivating the courage to move a little out of your comfort zone to try and find some great things.  And, very important, it means cultivating a community of support so that you’re not trying to do this all by yourself. I’ve said this before, but don’t put all of this onto your spouse or partner. That’s not really their job, and they’ll have their own fears and worries that can make this harder. Find like-minded friends instead, who want to experiment and have fun and see what kind of luck you can all make together. I’m not going to tell you that this is going to make you an internet millionaire. But I will tell you that there’s no reason it wouldn’t.  I am, on paper — and trust me, it’s only on paper. Not the kind of paper I can spend. But I have a lot of freedom. I can structure my days to spend the time I want to spend with my son and my husband. I can structure my time so I can take good care of myself. And I can still meet my obligations and do the kind of work I’m best at.  For example, travel is something I’ve loved since I was a teenager. Now, I work when I travel, I don’t take “vacations” in a traditional sense. But that gives me the freedom to see things and have experiences that I value greatly. So give up this idea that you can fill in an order form, stand with your back to outer space, and wish really hard. You and I both know it won’t work. Take consistent action, and stay curious. Look for possibilities. Look for support. The world has plenty of bad stuff and it has plenty of good stuff. You can find the good stuff — and you’ll have your share of the tough stuff as well, because that’s reality. It’s fine. It’s being human. And I hope I can play a role in that community of support for you. Leave me a comment or hit me up on Twitter with your questions, or if you feel stuck and can’t figure out what to do next.  Encouraging and helping each other is the way we can all build a better future. I believe in that. And I believe in you. Go get ’em.   You may find the film helpful — and it’s free until the 30th. Go grab it, and watch it with an eye to what you can extract that will help you on your path. It could be that you don’t agree with 100% of it, and that is totally ok. You get to cherry-pick the stuff that will help you.

Is an “abundance mindset” the same thing as wishing really hard and making something magically appear? I don’t think it is. Here’s why … As you may have seen in my podcast a couple of weeks ago, my friend Julie Cairns’ documentary <a href="http://theabundancecode.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Abundance Code</a> has been premiering for free in the past week. (And I’m in it!) This led to a question over on Copyblogger — is this concept of an “abundance mindset” the same thing as the belief popularized by the film The Secret? The Secret’s worldview is (heavily) satirized in this clip from The IT Crowd: I think there are some crucial differences, and I talk about them in this podcast. In this 25-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>Why I think fatalism is dangerous</li> <li>Thinking about abundance in a context of global inequality</li> <li>What mindset can (and can’t) do for you</li> <li>Lessons from my grandmother, who lived to 102</li> <li>Why you need a community of support (and why it might not be smart to drag your spouse into it)</li> <li>A fun experiment that might change everything</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/rfm-pink-067.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>You still have a few days to catch <a href="http://theabundancecode.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Abundance Code</a> premiere for free online</li> <li>My podcast eposide on <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/mindset/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">abundance, mindset, and luck</a> (AUDIO)</li> <li>We have lots of free resources for you at <a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/login/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MyCopyblogger</a> — take advantage of them!</li> <li>I hope I can be part of your community of support! I always love it when you say Hi or ask a question over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! I had a Q&amp;A episode planned for today, but since there are a couple of days left to see The Abundance Code film for free, I thought I’d address a great question that came up in the comments over on Copyblogger. By the way, did you know we turned comments back on over there? We love to see yours. On to the question: <h3>Is The Abundance Code the same as “The Secret”?</h3> Christine Wareing: <blockquote>Having watched the film, there is not a lot of difference between this and The Secret, which very much impacted me, although neither have really convinced me that you can really have it all if you manifest hard enough. I believe that every bodies life is mapped out for them from birth, and whoever you are born to this is your package deal, hopefully you are given the opportunity to have a good life, some are lucky, some are not.</blockquote> I will now refer you to a hilarious episode of The IT Crowd, which is a brilliant show if you’re comfortable with a bit of salty humor, about “Spacestar Ordering.” Here’s how the character described how this system worked for him: <blockquote>Well, I visualised the thing I wanted. In my case, it was a helicopter. I drew a picture of the helicopter on a piece of paper, then I stood with my back to space, threw the paper over my shoulder and wished really hard. Couple of days later, bought myself a helicopter. Explain that one, if you can!</blockquote> OK, so that’s a pretty broad parody — but I don’t think it’s an unfair one. Here’s what I think: <h3>Fatalism is dangerous</h3> If you believe that your destiny is fixed, and you’re either destined to be lucky or you’re destined to be unlucky, you’ll take action that accords with that mindset. As I talked about in my podcast on “Getting Lucky,” people who self-identify as unlucky don’t look for the lucky break — and because they don’t look for it, they don’t see it. This doesn’t mean that no one gets a raw deal. Resources are not equally allocated. Someone born into a community where the standard of living is under a dollar a day don’t have the same resources that you have and I have. You and I have access to technology, not to mention all that cool stuff like food and clean water. <h3>The role of mindset</h3> Here was my response to Christine: <blockquote>For me there is a massive difference [between abundance mindset and “The Secret”], which is that you cannot, and should not, expect to get anything simply by manifesting (wishing). You have to take action, and you have to keep your eyes open and continue to take informed action. The role that abundance thinking plays for me is that it sets up a mindset in which you ll actually take the actions you know would be beneficial. It s creating a space of optimism in order to fuel behavior change. …. mindset is crucial, but it s just one element. An abundant mindset without action is just daydreaming.</blockquote> So, for example, studies have shown that people who have a positive view of ageing tend to do better after a significant health event like a serious illness or accident. Those with a positive view of growing older do better not because of any kind of cosmic energy, but because they are much more likely to engage in health-promoting behavior. They take that extra walk around the block. They do their physical therapy. They eat their vegetables. My grandmother lived to be 102, and right up until about 101, she was painting, she was socializing, she was taking walks, she was appreciating the things she loved, especially nature and her family. And I will tell you that if anyone said, “You know, eating broccoli is good for you,” or whatever it was, she’d eat some broccoli. She wanted to keep going. She had no interest in fading away. She wasn’t running marathons or competing in bodybuilding competitions — she was doing normal things that people do when they take care of themselves. Moderate exercise, reasonable food, staying social, and doing things she enjoyed. Now she had some very good genes helping her out, but we can’t help our genes. The thing we can help, and the lesson I take from her, is that she lived her life right to the end. She didn’t say, “Oh, that’s not for people my age.” I remember into her 90s she used to pull all-nighters making quilts to raise money for “the old people.” She’d drink about five pots of seriously bad coffee and get it done. She did this for the benefit of people who were a lot younger than she was. <h3>What else do we need besides mindset?</h3> Here’s what I would suggest. First, I think it would make sense to try an experiment at least, of taking, say, the next six months and deciding to believe you’re a lucky person. If you don’t like it, go back. Just the exercise of trying on different beliefs and mindsets is good for you. Now I don’t suggest adopting the belief that gravity doesn’t exist, or that there is no such thing as disease. Beliefs and mindset are about what lies outside the realm of things we can see and touch. Then, within the context of that thought experiment, if you’re into it, I’d suggest these activities for your six-month project. <h3>1. Start that side project you’ve been thinking of</h3> Most people have a bit of a daydream about a “side hustle” — a little side business to make a small amount of extra revenue. We’re not talking about making enough money to live on at this point. This is, say, $100 a month. Important: Don’t spend $1000 a month to get $100 a month. Avoid the get-rich-quick schemes, the huge promises, all of that stuff. Focus on resources you can get for free, or — this one is a great resource for many people, me included — focus on resources you have already paid for. Every day this week, spend about 10 minutes planning out your next steps. This “plan” can be pretty rough. Just back-of-the-envelope. Example: <blockquote>I’m going to write a $7 ebook and then write a bunch of guest posts to try to get some traffic to it.</blockquote> I’m not saying that’s an ideal model. But it’s a model that might be workable. Or another possibility: <blockquote>I’m going to launch a part-time freelance business doing something I know how to do really well.</blockquote> Write, design, teach art, write grant proposals, tutor English, cook, make clothes. Don’t look for a “paint by numbers” system. Look for something you know how to do really well, that someone else wants and will pay for. Try not to think about “this is my future.” Instead, think about projects and experiments. Just interesting things to try. I’ve noticed something about a lot of very successful people I write about or interview — their story is usually really windy and full of odd little side paths. It’s how you get to be an interesting person, in my opinion. Real success, satisfying success, very, very rarely happens in a straight line. <h3>2. Leverage the free stuff</h3> A lot of us who give any thought to this have bought some things over the years. Business advice, marketing advice, that kind of stuff. Go find all of those. Print them out if that helps you. Schedule the time to work through them. We also have a big old free library for you on <a href="http://Copyblogger.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Copyblogger.com</a> — look on the Products tab for Free! My Copyblogger. This weekend, do something. Make something. A website or a page or something. It can be small and imperfect, that’s fine. Remember, you’re a lucky person. So your little project is going to benefit from some sparks of luck along the way. That’s what this “abundance mindset” means to me. It means looking for resources you already have access to. It means asking yourself all the time, “What’s right in front of me that I haven’t seen yet?” It means cultivating the courage to move a little out of your comfort zone to try and find some great things. And, very important, it means cultivating a community of support so that you’re not trying to do this all by yourself. I’ve said this before, but don’t put all of this onto your spouse or partner. That’s not really their job, and they’ll have their own fears and worries that can make this harder. Find like-minded friends instead, who want to experiment and have fun and see what kind of luck you can all make together. I’m not going to tell you that this is going to make you an internet millionaire. But I will tell you that there’s no reason it wouldn’t. I am, on paper — and trust me, it’s only on paper. Not the kind of paper I can spend. But I have a lot of freedom. I can structure my days to spend the time I want to spend with my son and my husband. I can structure my time so I can take good care of myself. And I can still meet my obligations and do the kind of work I’m best at. For example, travel is something I’ve loved since I was a teenager. Now, I work when I travel, I don’t take “vacations” in a traditional sense. But that gives me the freedom to see things and have experiences that I value greatly. So give up this idea that you can fill in an order form, stand with your back to outer space, and wish really hard. You and I both know it won’t work. Take consistent action, and stay curious. Look for possibilities. Look for support. The world has plenty of bad stuff and it has plenty of good stuff. You can find the good stuff — and you’ll have your share of the tough stuff as well, because that’s reality. It’s fine. It’s being human. And I hope I can play a role in that community of support for you. Leave me a comment or hit me up on Twitter with your questions, or if you feel stuck and can’t figure out what to do next. Encouraging and helping each other is the way we can all build a better future. I believe in that. And I believe in you. Go get ’em. You may find the film helpful — and it’s free until the 30th. Go grab it, and watch it with an eye to what you can extract that will help you on your path. It could be that you don’t agree with 100% of it, and that is totally ok. You get to cherry-pick the stuff that will help you.

The Difference Between Mindset and Wishful Thinking

When is it smart to keep your business’s “trade secrets” — and when should you blow them up? How much sharing is too much? As I was writing a quick introduction to Rand Fishkin over on Copyblogger, I got to thinking about this “transparency” buzzword.  When is it good business to play your cards close to the chest — and when should you open up? How do we make the call about what we want to share, and what we want to keep private? In this 29-minute episode, I talk about:  Where all of this “transparency and authenticity” buzz fundamentally comes from My first law of the internet (this comes even before “do not feed the trolls”) Deciding for ourselves where we’ll draw our privacy boundaries online The power that can come from vulnerability (and my thoughts on timing) Making sure the friction in your process doesn’t grind the customer to a dead stop The value of some friendly “lemonade stands” along the path to the “big” purchase Where successful companies get their best product ideas  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  My Copyblogger post introducing Rand Fishkin of Moz Brian Clark’s fascinating interview with Rand on Unemployable Rand’s personal corner on the Moz blog Copyblogger’s How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Marketing Strategy by Demian Farnworth Brené Brown has lots of excellent resources on wise vulnerability at BreneBrown.com Come see me (and Rand) — and learn stuff you’ll actually use — at the Digital Commerce Summit this October Speaking of simple and powerful tools to create online business spaces, here’s a link to the Rainmaker content and business platform I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  It’s time again for Things I Love / Things I Hate! As I’ve been doing, I’m going to share lots of details on the “Love” part, and then some general principles and practices for the “Hate” part. This week in particular, I like the business that’s on my “Hate” list, but I feel they’re shooting themselves in the foot by clinging to a business practice that does not seem to be serving them. Let’s start with Love! Rand Fishkin and radical transparency I wrote last week on Copyblogger about Rand Fishkin, who founded Moz, which is an SEO software service — at least, that’s the current incarnation of his company. Every time I run across Rand he sort of startles me. There’s a lot of talk, especially for web-based products and services, about transparency. It’s a buzzword, for one reason: If you lie on the internet, you will get caught. This is as close to being a natural law as it gets on the web, because of the nature of it. The word “web” of course points to the fact that everything is connected to something else. It’s what makes the internet work — it was designed way back in the day when Al Gore, yes, signed off on the creation of DARPANet, to be interconnected so that you couldn’t take it down through an act of sabotage. Virtually everything on the web is connected to other points on the web through multiple points. So if you say one thing on your super tiny private blog that has 8 readers, but you’re doing something different, you might get away with it for awhile. But as soon as you start to be better known, as soon as you do anything at all remarkable, good or bad, it will get shared.  This is how people get fired or sued for posting their bad behavior on their private Facebook account, or on a Twitter account that has a dozen followers.  Privacy online is very, very difficult to maintain, because it’s only as strong as the promises of every single person who can see your stuff.  So you have two options. One, you can be extremely consistent. For example, you may choose not to share current photos or other personal information about your family online. If you make that choice — don’t do it at all. This is a legit choice — “privacy” is not the same thing as “keeping secrets.” I also happen to be a fan of being private about your personal stuff. I don’t particularly get into my personal details online, whether or not it’s in a quasi-private setting like Facebook or a more public space like Twitter. I’m sure someone could find things, and that’s fine, but I don’t go out of my way to share. So we all draw some kind of line, hopefully. Oversharing is a thing. I don’t need to see your sandwich every day. We’re good. Vulnerability vs. privacy One thing many folks are private about is vulnerabilities. Insecurity, depression, grief, uncertainty, mistakes.  And my opinion is: It’s ok to be private about that. It’s completely your choice. But sometimes you can claim a tremendous amount of power by revealing your vulnerability. Brene Brown is the champion of this, I think she’s very smart about it.  Choosing to be open about certain kinds of vulnerability — emotional vulnerability, insecurity, that kind of thing — tends to have the effect of unleashing a ton of energy that you were using trying to pretend you were more badass than you actually are. So let’s talk about Rand. He’s very open about times when he was CEO of Moz where he made poor decisions. We all have blind spots, we all have times when we don’t follow our own advice. Rand just talks about them, where most people don’t. In that, he does a couple of things. First, he defuses the situation so that no one can throw that stuff at him. It’s all open, so it can’t be weaponized. Second, he opens up the opportunity to be of service and value to other people who have made the same missteps, or who are on the verge of that. That’s one of the reasons — that, and the fact that Rand is a really smart business owner who knows a lot of stuff and teaches it well — that Brian Clark invited him to keynote our event in October. Rand will give you the whole thing, not just the Instagram-ready pretty highlights. Trade secrets The other thing about Rand is that he’s been in the SEO game so long that when he started, it was all about trade secrets. SEO professionals figured out how Google was working. Google itself, and the other search engines, were insanely cagey about how they ranked pages. So there was a lot of reverse-engineering and making educated guesses based on patent applications, that kind of thing.  This still happens in SEO, both on the SEO professional side and the search engine side, but Rand’s phrase for it is, “a pane of glass versus two tons of steel.” One of the insights that Rand had, joined by folks like Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Journal, was to go ahead and publish any trade secrets that they found.  If they figured out something significant about how the search algorithms seemed to working, they told everyone. Matt Cutts came on the scene at Google with a more transparent approach, even though they certainly don’t reveal everything. Over time, instead of SEO being about a lot of tricks, it started to become about just publishing quality content instead of searching out 10,000 different ways to produce spam. Which, coming around to 2016, turns out to actually be less trouble, honestly. “Don’t take shortcuts, they take too long.”-Sonia Simone So Rand, and others like him, took this idea of “trade secrets” and turned it on its head. They revealed all of them — and it turns out that, no matter how many good SEO blogs you read, there’s still work involved, and people will pay good money to others to either do that work or to produce high-quality tools that will help make the work easier. The idea is to uncouple your business model from keeping trade secrets — because, remember, secrets are really hard to keep online. They leak from one point to another until they find open water, and then you’re done. Now, maybe you’re not as brave as Rand. I don’t think I am. One thing I will recommend: When we’re talking about airing your own screw-ups in public, I like to wait until I’m on the other side of the crisis. Crowd-sourcing solutions to problems that you’re still wrestling with has not, in my experience, been very helpful. Coming clean about lessons learned after the fact, though, is helpful, I’ve found. If you are going through a tough patch, talking about it definitely helps, and getting some other perspectives helps — but get the perspectives of people you trust who love and respect you,  not the peanut gallery. In my opinion. Now the Hate part So switching gears, I want to talk about a little online business that’s trying very hard to maintain its secrets, and from my vantage point, it doesn’t look to me like it’s serving them. This is a company that’s come up with a particular kind of drawing. Come see me in Denver this October and I’ll show some to you — it’s neat.  So these artists invented a kind of proprietary structure and teaching for making a certain kind of drawing — and their business model is to teach the method to teachers, and then those teachers teach it to people like me who want to learn. I found out about it by buying a little kit of materials — the right pens, the right paper, and then the box was decorated with these drawings, making the kit totally irresistible. I saw it at my local art store and it kind of jumped into my basket. That happens to me a lot at the art store. So I think there are going to be instructions, right? No instructions in the box. No problem, I go to the website. No instructions on the website — it says, “Find a local teacher.” Just for grins, I look up a local teacher. But the two teachers in my area aren’t currently teaching — and here’s where the business lesson comes in. This company has an idea about a business model: Train the trainer.  They forgot the most important part of that business model — all the revenue comes from people like me, the eventual students, and you have to understand that person’s path to purchase. Looking around at teachers trained in this method, only a few are taking students. It looks to me like a lot of the rest have given up — and I think it’s because they’re not doing enough to facilitate the customer journey that gets someone interested in the ideas to come on in to a class. I use the term customer journey, we’ve written about it quite a bit, and we get in-depth on it inside our Certified Content Marketer training, because if you don’t get it right, there’s no fuel for your business. In a nutshell, you have to know what the paths are that bring people from not knowing anything about you to making a purchase, and then past that through a wonderful experience so that they talk you up, they refer you, they do business with you again, all of that good stuff.  Keeping trade secrets — this little drawing company has certain types of drawings that they ask their teachers to only teach in a face to face class — by its nature puts up barriers to customers. If these barriers can be smoothly and reasonably navigated, that can be ok. I’m not saying trade secrets are always bad. But you have to understand that you’re creating friction. Now, you can’t keep secrets on the internet. So the instructions and how-to videos and all kinds of things are all over YouTube, Pinterest, Flickr, etc. So you haven’t actually kept your trade secrets at all. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”-John Gilmore,, technology pioneer and one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation All you’ve done is created friction on your customer journey.  What you can do instead is to create lots of paths that move the customer pleasingly to the destination you have in mind. And you can also create revenue models that the customer wants to participate in, think of them as little lemonade stands along the side of the path. It might not be the eventual purchase, it might not be The Big Thing you sell, maybe it’s some micro purchases along the way. For example, a lot of potential customers for this company don’t have thriving teachers near them — at least in part because the customer journey isn’t bringing in enough new students for the teachers. So maybe it would be wise to facilitate some great ways to let teachers teach online. Maybe this little drawing company could become a virtual workshop space, with teachers using their site to teach both micro classes and more comprehensive ones. They could have a quick workshop on values, which are the lights and darks in a drawing — standard stuff. One on composition. Whatever it is that you see people are having problems with, you can create workshop on that. Which is one of the super nifty things about education as an online business, you can often put these together very quickly if you have the right tools. Cough, Rainmaker. Instead of pushing every student into a half-day workshop at around $50, which some people want and some do not, look for what the students are looking for, and how they’re looking to get it. If you have a student who takes, let’s say 3 or 4 $10 mini-workshops online, that person is super primed to go to a half or full day session face to face. And they’ll really get something out of it. This lemonade stand model is what successful businesses do — they create products, which at first might be quite small, around what their customers are in the mood to buy. That’s what Rand Fishkin did at Moz. It’s what we do at Copyblogger — and we’re always adding to our model, creating new options, meeting our customers at new points.  It’s much more fun and less frustrating, because it actually works. So, those are some thoughts on trade secrets, business models, and transparency. See you next week!

When is it smart to keep your business’s “trade secrets” — and when should you blow them up? How much sharing is too much? As I was writing a quick introduction to Rand Fishkin over on Copyblogger, I got to thinking about this “transparency” buzzword. When is it good business to play your cards close to the chest — and when should you open up? How do we make the call about what we want to share, and what we want to keep private? In this 29-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>Where all of this “transparency and authenticity” buzz fundamentally comes from</li> <li>My first law of the internet (this comes even before “do not feed the trolls”)</li> <li>Deciding for ourselves where we’ll draw our privacy boundaries online</li> <li>The power that can come from vulnerability (and my thoughts on timing)</li> <li>Making sure the friction in your process doesn’t grind the customer to a dead stop</li> <li>The value of some friendly “lemonade stands” along the path to the “big” purchase</li> <li>Where successful companies get their best product ideas</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/rfm-pink-066.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>My Copyblogger post introducing <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/rand-fishkin-summit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rand Fishkin of Moz</a></li> <li>Brian Clark’s fascinating <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/unemployable/rand-fishkin/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">interview with Rand on Unemployable</a></li> <li>Rand’s <a href="https://moz.com/rand/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">personal corner on the Moz blog</a></li> <li>Copyblogger’s <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/customer-experience-maps/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Marketing Strategy</a> by Demian Farnworth</li> <li>Brené Brown has lots of excellent resources on wise vulnerability at <a href="http://brenebrown.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">BreneBrown.com</a></li> <li>Come see me (and Rand) — and learn stuff you’ll actually use — at the <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/summit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Commerce Summit</a> this October</li> <li>Speaking of simple and powerful tools to create online business spaces, here’s a link to the <a href="http://rainmakerplatform.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker content and business platform</a></li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! It’s time again for Things I Love / Things I Hate! As I’ve been doing, I’m going to share lots of details on the “Love” part, and then some general principles and practices for the “Hate” part. This week in particular, I like the business that’s on my “Hate” list, but I feel they’re shooting themselves in the foot by clinging to a business practice that does not seem to be serving them. Let’s start with Love! <h3>Rand Fishkin and radical transparency</h3> I wrote last week on Copyblogger about Rand Fishkin, who founded Moz, which is an SEO software service — at least, that’s the current incarnation of his company. Every time I run across Rand he sort of startles me. There’s a lot of talk, especially for web-based products and services, about transparency. It’s a buzzword, for one reason: <blockquote>If you lie on the internet, you will get caught.</blockquote> This is as close to being a natural law as it gets on the web, because of the nature of it. The word “web” of course points to the fact that everything is connected to something else. It’s what makes the internet work — it was designed way back in the day when Al Gore, yes, signed off on the creation of DARPANet, to be interconnected so that you couldn’t take it down through an act of sabotage. Virtually everything on the web is connected to other points on the web through multiple points. So if you say one thing on your super tiny private blog that has 8 readers, but you’re doing something different, you might get away with it for awhile. But as soon as you start to be better known, as soon as you do anything at all remarkable, good or bad, it will get shared. This is how people get fired or sued for posting their bad behavior on their private Facebook account, or on a Twitter account that has a dozen followers. Privacy online is very, very difficult to maintain, because it’s only as strong as the promises of every single person who can see your stuff. So you have two options. One, you can be extremely consistent. For example, you may choose not to share current photos or other personal information about your family online. If you make that choice — don’t do it at all. This is a legit choice — “privacy” is not the same thing as “keeping secrets.” I also happen to be a fan of being private about your personal stuff. I don’t particularly get into my personal details online, whether or not it’s in a quasi-private setting like Facebook or a more public space like Twitter. I’m sure someone could find things, and that’s fine, but I don’t go out of my way to share. So we all draw some kind of line, hopefully. Oversharing is a thing. I don’t need to see your sandwich every day. We’re good. <h3>Vulnerability vs. privacy</h3> One thing many folks are private about is vulnerabilities. Insecurity, depression, grief, uncertainty, mistakes. And my opinion is: It’s ok to be private about that. It’s completely your choice. But sometimes you can claim a tremendous amount of power by revealing your vulnerability. Brene Brown is the champion of this, I think she’s very smart about it. Choosing to be open about certain kinds of vulnerability — emotional vulnerability, insecurity, that kind of thing — tends to have the effect of unleashing a ton of energy that you were using trying to pretend you were more badass than you actually are. So let’s talk about Rand. He’s very open about times when he was CEO of Moz where he made poor decisions. We all have blind spots, we all have times when we don’t follow our own advice. Rand just talks about them, where most people don’t. In that, he does a couple of things. First, he defuses the situation so that no one can throw that stuff at him. It’s all open, so it can’t be weaponized. Second, he opens up the opportunity to be of service and value to other people who have made the same missteps, or who are on the verge of that. That’s one of the reasons — that, and the fact that Rand is a really smart business owner who knows a lot of stuff and teaches it well — that Brian Clark invited him to keynote our event in October. Rand will give you the whole thing, not just the Instagram-ready pretty highlights. <h3>Trade secrets</h3> The other thing about Rand is that he’s been in the SEO game so long that when he started, it was all about trade secrets. SEO professionals figured out how Google was working. Google itself, and the other search engines, were insanely cagey about how they ranked pages. So there was a lot of reverse-engineering and making educated guesses based on patent applications, that kind of thing. This still happens in SEO, both on the SEO professional side and the search engine side, but Rand’s phrase for it is, “a pane of glass versus two tons of steel.” One of the insights that Rand had, joined by folks like Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Journal, was to go ahead and publish any trade secrets that they found. If they figured out something significant about how the search algorithms seemed to working, they told everyone. Matt Cutts came on the scene at Google with a more transparent approach, even though they certainly don’t reveal everything. Over time, instead of SEO being about a lot of tricks, it started to become about just publishing quality content instead of searching out 10,000 different ways to produce spam. Which, coming around to 2016, turns out to actually be less trouble, honestly. <blockquote>“Don’t take shortcuts, they take too long.” -Sonia Simone</blockquote> So Rand, and others like him, took this idea of “trade secrets” and turned it on its head. They revealed all of them — and it turns out that, no matter how many good SEO blogs you read, there’s still work involved, and people will pay good money to others to either do that work or to produce high-quality tools that will help make the work easier. The idea is to uncouple your business model from keeping trade secrets — because, remember, secrets are really hard to keep online. They leak from one point to another until they find open water, and then you’re done. Now, maybe you’re not as brave as Rand. I don’t think I am. One thing I will recommend: When we’re talking about airing your own screw-ups in public, I like to wait until I’m on the other side of the crisis. Crowd-sourcing solutions to problems that you’re still wrestling with has not, in my experience, been very helpful. Coming clean about lessons learned after the fact, though, is helpful, I’ve found. If you are going through a tough patch, talking about it definitely helps, and getting some other perspectives helps — but get the perspectives of people you trust who love and respect you, not the peanut gallery. In my opinion. <h3>Now the Hate part</h3> So switching gears, I want to talk about a little online business that’s trying very hard to maintain its secrets, and from my vantage point, it doesn’t look to me like it’s serving them. This is a company that’s come up with a particular kind of drawing. Come see me in Denver this October and I’ll show some to you — it’s neat. So these artists invented a kind of proprietary structure and teaching for making a certain kind of drawing — and their business model is to teach the method to teachers, and then those teachers teach it to people like me who want to learn. I found out about it by buying a little kit of materials — the right pens, the right paper, and then the box was decorated with these drawings, making the kit totally irresistible. I saw it at my local art store and it kind of jumped into my basket. That happens to me a lot at the art store. So I think there are going to be instructions, right? No instructions in the box. No problem, I go to the website. No instructions on the website — it says, “Find a local teacher.” Just for grins, I look up a local teacher. But the two teachers in my area aren’t currently teaching — and here’s where the business lesson comes in. This company has an idea about a business model: Train the trainer. They forgot the most important part of that business model — all the revenue comes from people like me, the eventual students, and you have to understand that person’s path to purchase. Looking around at teachers trained in this method, only a few are taking students. It looks to me like a lot of the rest have given up — and I think it’s because they’re not doing enough to facilitate the customer journey that gets someone interested in the ideas to come on in to a class. I use the term customer journey, we’ve written about it quite a bit, and we get in-depth on it inside our Certified Content Marketer training, because if you don’t get it right, there’s no fuel for your business. In a nutshell, you have to know what the paths are that bring people from not knowing anything about you to making a purchase, and then past that through a wonderful experience so that they talk you up, they refer you, they do business with you again, all of that good stuff. Keeping trade secrets — this little drawing company has certain types of drawings that they ask their teachers to only teach in a face to face class — by its nature puts up barriers to customers. If these barriers can be smoothly and reasonably navigated, that can be ok. I’m not saying trade secrets are always bad. But you have to understand that you’re creating friction. Now, you can’t keep secrets on the internet. So the instructions and how-to videos and all kinds of things are all over YouTube, Pinterest, Flickr, etc. So you haven’t actually kept your trade secrets at all. <blockquote>“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” -John Gilmore,, technology pioneer and one of the founders of the <a href="https://www.eff.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a></blockquote> All you’ve done is created friction on your customer journey. What you can do instead is to create lots of paths that move the customer pleasingly to the destination you have in mind. And you can also create revenue models that the customer wants to participate in, think of them as little lemonade stands along the side of the path. It might not be the eventual purchase, it might not be The Big Thing you sell, maybe it’s some micro purchases along the way. For example, a lot of potential customers for this company don’t have thriving teachers near them — at least in part because the customer journey isn’t bringing in enough new students for the teachers. So maybe it would be wise to facilitate some great ways to let teachers teach online. Maybe this little drawing company could become a virtual workshop space, with teachers using their site to teach both micro classes and more comprehensive ones. They could have a quick workshop on values, which are the lights and darks in a drawing — standard stuff. One on composition. Whatever it is that you see people are having problems with, you can create workshop on that. Which is one of the super nifty things about education as an online business, you can often put these together very quickly if you have the right tools. Cough, Rainmaker. Instead of pushing every student into a half-day workshop at around $50, which some people want and some do not, look for what the students are looking for, and how they’re looking to get it. If you have a student who takes, let’s say 3 or 4 $10 mini-workshops online, that person is super primed to go to a half or full day session face to face. And they’ll really get something out of it. This lemonade stand model is what successful businesses do — they create products, which at first might be quite small, around what their customers are in the mood to buy. That’s what Rand Fishkin did at Moz. It’s what we do at Copyblogger — and we’re always adding to our model, creating new options, meeting our customers at new points. It’s much more fun and less frustrating, because it actually works. So, those are some thoughts on trade secrets, business models, and transparency. See you next week!

Things I Love / Things I Hate #4: Trade Secrets, Transparency, and Lemonade Stands

Language is complicated, and in the context of shifting cultural norms, it gets even more complicated. So the question comes up: Is it OK to swear in our content marketing?  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  We had a bit of a dust-up on Copyblogger a few years back, and every once in awhile the topic comes back up again. The question: Who decides what kind of language is appropriate for a blog, podcast, or other content marketing? Where is the line, and who gets to draw it? In this 25-minute episode, I talk about:  A controversy over swearing on Copyblogger Whether it’s ever a good idea to offend readers The public discourse, cultural norms, and why it’s ok to be offended Demographics vs. psychographics — is it true that folks over 50 are less comfortable with swearing? Tribe-based marketing from one of my favorite content marketers The potential risk in not offending any readers How to make the call for your own content — to swear or not to swear?  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  The original post with the controversial bio wording (the bio is now changed): 6 Proven Ways to Improve the Conversion Rates of Your Call-to-Action Buttons (I know, you can see why it was controversial!) Bob Bly’s thoughts on the issue: Are You a Digital Potty Mouth? Joanna Wiebe’s thoughts on the issue: Swearing, Euphemisms, and Writing Something that Actually Sounds Like You One of my favorite content marketers, Nancy Boy (they really do have fantastic soap) My Remarkable Communication 2009 post about Nancy Boy (this site is in the process of being switched over to Rainmaker Platform, at which point it will be unspeakably gorgeous) If you want your own unspeakably gorgeous site, here’s a link to the Rainmaker content and business platform I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  So one of those questions that comes up a lot, along with “how long should blog posts be” and “how often should I publish,” is: Is it OK if I swear on my blog? I don’t swear on this podcast, because I have been informed that iTunes doesn’t like it when we swear on our podcasts, and I want this to reach a wide audience.  Once again one of those rules of thumb of digital sharecropping — if I’m going to take advantage of iTunes to reach a wider audience, then I have to follow their rules. Every once in awhile this comes up on Copyblogger, harkening back to well-known copywriter and teacher of copywriting, Bob Bly, who was very unhappy with us for running a post by Joanna Wiebe, in which she used the term “mofo” in her bio. The post was superb, by the way, from Joanna Wiebe: 6 Proven Ways to Boost the Conversion Rates of Your Call-to-Action Buttons. Lots of deep analysis and specific examples, which she’s so good at. The quote isn’t in the post any more, because author bios get updated as the writer’s professional situation evolves, but at the time it was this: Where startups &amp; marketers learn to convert like mofos. This wasn’t something we in Copyblogger editorial found particularly controversial, then or now, just to give some context. So Bob is very smart, and he has a lot of experience, and he felt very strongly that this cheapened the content. One of the comments he left was, If it might offend even one in a hundred, why risk it, when you can say the same idea without the profanity? In his (strong) opinion, there are standards of public discourse, and not swearing is one of those standards.  He wrote an entire post about it, quoted here: I contend that in articles published online and offline on business topics, it is completely unnecessary, and people do it primarily to look cool and hip to their counterparts. But by doing so, they turn off a large segment of their readership, me included   mostly the 50 and over crowd. If you are a marketer, I would warn you not to alienate oldsters, as we control most of the money in the United States. A survey reported on the Joshua Kennon web site found that households where the head was age 35 and younger had a median net worth of only $65,000. By comparison, households where the head was 55 to 64 years old had a median net worth of $880,000   nearly 14X richer.-Bob Bly So Bob’s case is (partly) economic — is it bad business to swear in our content? Turning people away In terms of this question about turning your audience away, I’m reworking my Remarkable Communication site to run on Rainmaker finally after putting it off, and I feel like a complete moron about it. The only part of the process that was tricky was finding all of my old login information. The migration took something like seriously maybe 20 minutes. So I’m sprucing up the sidebars and and reworking things like the About page, but I am so excited to be able to share it with you soon. I’m really happy, it looks so amazing. My goal is to use Rainmaker strictly out of the box without getting help to set it up.  Anyway. I ran across a post I wrote about a soap company called Nancy Boy. Now, Nancy boy breaks all of the email marketing rules for content. I gave an example of their email messaging (link in the show notes), and I had this to say about it: You may be thinking, wow, that s wordy. And kind of insane. And it uses the word prevarication, they re gonna get some unsubscribes with that one. It s a little like horehound candy, or stinky goat cheese. A lot of people don t like it. Maybe most people don t like it. But the people who do absolutely crave it. In 2009 I wrote about their content being “an attitude that is euphemistically called Very San Francisco. In 2016 we speak a little more plainly — The content for Nancy Boy is … gay. It’s not just slightly gay. It’s very, very gay. Their tagline is “tested on boyfriends, not animals.” Um, the name of their business is Nancy Boy. There is no closet available here to hide in. Now, being gay — especially in a way that’s this out — is for many folks in our culture in the U.S. a lot more controversial than swearing. “MoFo” doesn’t have much on gay. They’re absolutely alienating many people. Many, many people. Look on Twitter or Facebook if you think everyone is super comfortable with gay people today. And yet, to restate the point I made in 2009, they’re selling soap in one of the highest real-estate cities in the country. Soap. They still have their retail store, in the really extremely expensive and adorable Hayes Valley neighborhood.  And they have a thriving mail order business still, and they still send crazy emails. Their latest one in my in-box has a picture of a dog licking plates in the dishwasher, to highlight that they sell a nice-smelling dish detergent. Their tribe is strong enough to support them, and their tribe loves them because they’re not for everyone. Because they’re brave enough to be a tall, proud, out Nancy Boy. I can get great-smelling soap at Whole Foods, but I still mail-order soap and some other nice-smelling things from Nancy Boy because I love them, because I feel connected to them. What Joanna wrote about it Joanna also wrote about this on her blog, Copyhackers, which is a good read and I’ll give you a link in the show notes. https://copyhackers.com/2013/12/swearing-euphemisms-writing/ Here’s a quote: I always recommend that you write for the 20 to 35% of your visitors that are most likely to a) convert and b) be happier for it. I recommend that because I ve tested it and it works. It s not just an assumption I randomly pulled out of the air and tried once; it s not like I applied a go-narrow principle to my business and my business alone and found that it prettymuch worked, so now I think everyone should do the same for similar results. So this points to the same thing I see at Nancy Boy. They’re writing for their customers, not the entire universe of possible customers. In Nancy Boy’s case, their customers start in their local neighborhood, and now many years on, are made up of like-minded people from all over the place.  Another quote from Joanna: But, without question, you are taking a risk when you use that kind of language…. With regard to risk, you re also taking a risk when you absolutely avoid euphemisms and impolite words in your copy. So is it ok to swear on your blog or not? The message isn’t, “Yes, go swear on your blog.” The message isn’t, to be crystal clear, that I think Bob was wrong on this. In fact, I really did not appreciate folks being disrespectful in the comments to him about it. They were trying to stand up for us and for Joanna, but that wasn’t necessary in this case. The message is,  You don’t get to decide what’s relevant or appropriate. Your audience does. The Copyblogger readership is, for the most part, 1000% comfortable with the term “MoFo.”  Is Bob wrong because he’s not comfortable with it? Not at all. We respect Bob a ton. His point of view is very valid. We actually swear very, very little on Copyblogger, precisely because we have a large audience that’s extremely diverse. We know that there are some folks who really don’t appreciate it — that’s part of who our audience is.  But once in awhile, certain words feel like they’re important to state a point clearly. I’m not a big fan of euphemism, as anyone who’s ever heard me give a talk can attest to. So I don’t like “friggen” or “flippin.” Actually for me, my issue with MoFo is precisely that it’s a euphemism. I was taught early on as a writer to avoid them, and I try to. So here’s my advice: Overall I recommend that you not swear for the sake of swearing. It’s kind of lazy and not necessarily very interesting. That kind of language has a lot of power, but the power comes from holding it back to make an impact when you really want to make a point very strongly. If your audience swears a lot and that’s what feels right for connecting to them, then make your decisions accordingly. If your audience doesn’t appreciate it, then don’t swear ever.  They decide, not you. But if it matters, if it’s the truest statement of what you need to communicate, and that’s how your audience will read it? Then I think you’re the one who is best qualified to make that call for your audience and your situation. I know I won’t convince Bob Bly with this argument, and I’m ok with that. Because as much as I respect him, the ones who are my true compass are my readers, my listeners, my audience.

Language is complicated, and in the context of shifting cultural norms, it gets even more complicated. So the question comes up: Is it OK to swear in our content marketing? <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> We had a bit of a dust-up on Copyblogger a few years back, and every once in awhile the topic comes back up again. The question: Who decides what kind of language is appropriate for a blog, podcast, or other content marketing? Where is the line, and who gets to draw it? In this 25-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>A controversy over swearing on Copyblogger</li> <li>Whether it’s ever a good idea to offend readers</li> <li>The public discourse, cultural norms, and why it’s ok to be offended</li> <li>Demographics vs. psychographics — is it true that folks over 50 are less comfortable with swearing?</li> <li>Tribe-based marketing from one of my favorite content marketers</li> <li>The potential risk in not offending any readers</li> <li>How to make the call for your own content — to swear or not to swear?</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/rfm-pink-065.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>The original post with the controversial bio wording (the bio is now changed): <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/call-to-action-buttons/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">6 Proven Ways to Improve the Conversion Rates of Your Call-to-Action Buttons</a> (I know, you can see why it was controversial!)</li> <li>Bob Bly’s thoughts on the issue: <a href="http://bly.com/blog/general/are-you-a-digital-potty-mouth/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Are You a Digital Potty Mouth?</a></li> <li>Joanna Wiebe’s thoughts on the issue: <a href="https://copyhackers.com/2013/12/swearing-euphemisms-writing/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Swearing, Euphemisms, and Writing Something that Actually Sounds Like You</a></li> <li>One of my favorite content marketers, <a href="http://nancyboy.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nancy Boy</a> (they really do have fantastic soap)</li> <li>My Remarkable Communication <a href="http://www.remarkable-communication.com/nancy-boy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">2009 post about Nancy Boy</a> (this site is in the process of being switched over to Rainmaker Platform, at which point it will be unspeakably gorgeous)</li> <li>If you want your own unspeakably gorgeous site, here’s a link to the <a href="http://rainmakerplatform.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker content and business platform</a></li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! So one of those questions that comes up a lot, along with “how long should blog posts be” and “how often should I publish,” is: <blockquote>Is it OK if I swear on my blog?</blockquote> I don’t swear on this podcast, because I have been informed that iTunes doesn’t like it when we swear on our podcasts, and I want this to reach a wide audience. Once again one of those rules of thumb of digital sharecropping — if I’m going to take advantage of iTunes to reach a wider audience, then I have to follow their rules. Every once in awhile this comes up on Copyblogger, harkening back to well-known copywriter and teacher of copywriting, Bob Bly, who was very unhappy with us for running a post by Joanna Wiebe, in which she used the term “mofo” in her bio. The post was superb, by the way, from Joanna Wiebe: 6 Proven Ways to Boost the Conversion Rates of Your Call-to-Action Buttons. Lots of deep analysis and specific examples, which she’s so good at. The quote isn’t in the post any more, because author bios get updated as the writer’s professional situation evolves, but at the time it was this: <blockquote>Where startups &amp; marketers learn to convert like mofos.</blockquote> This wasn’t something we in Copyblogger editorial found particularly controversial, then or now, just to give some context. So Bob is very smart, and he has a lot of experience, and he felt very strongly that this cheapened the content. One of the comments he left was, <blockquote>If it might offend even one in a hundred, why risk it, when you can say the same idea without the profanity?</blockquote> In his (strong) opinion, there are standards of public discourse, and not swearing is one of those standards. He wrote an entire post about it, quoted here: <blockquote>I contend that in articles published online and offline on business topics, it is completely unnecessary, and people do it primarily to look cool and hip to their counterparts. But by doing so, they turn off a large segment of their readership, me included mostly the 50 and over crowd. If you are a marketer, I would warn you not to alienate oldsters, as we control most of the money in the United States. A survey reported on the Joshua Kennon web site found that households where the head was age 35 and younger had a median net worth of only $65,000. By comparison, households where the head was 55 to 64 years old had a median net worth of $880,000 nearly 14X richer. -Bob Bly</blockquote> So Bob’s case is (partly) economic — is it bad business to swear in our content? <h3>Turning people away</h3> In terms of this question about turning your audience away, I’m reworking my Remarkable Communication site to run on Rainmaker finally after putting it off, and I feel like a complete moron about it. The only part of the process that was tricky was finding all of my old login information. The migration took something like seriously maybe 20 minutes. So I’m sprucing up the sidebars and and reworking things like the About page, but I am so excited to be able to share it with you soon. I’m really happy, it looks so amazing. My goal is to use Rainmaker strictly out of the box without getting help to set it up. Anyway. I ran across a post I wrote about a soap company called Nancy Boy. Now, Nancy boy breaks all of the email marketing rules for content. I gave an example of their email messaging (link in the show notes), and I had this to say about it: <blockquote>You may be thinking, wow, that s wordy. And kind of insane. And it uses the word prevarication, they re gonna get some unsubscribes with that one. It s a little like horehound candy, or stinky goat cheese. A lot of people don t like it. Maybe most people don t like it. But the people who do absolutely crave it.</blockquote> In 2009 I wrote about their content being “an attitude that is euphemistically called Very San Francisco. In 2016 we speak a little more plainly — The content for Nancy Boy is … gay. It’s not just slightly gay. It’s very, very gay. Their tagline is “tested on boyfriends, not animals.” Um, the name of their business is Nancy Boy. There is no closet available here to hide in. Now, being gay — especially in a way that’s this out — is for many folks in our culture in the U.S. a lot more controversial than swearing. “MoFo” doesn’t have much on gay. They’re absolutely alienating many people. Many, many people. Look on Twitter or Facebook if you think everyone is super comfortable with gay people today. And yet, to restate the point I made in 2009, they’re selling soap in one of the highest real-estate cities in the country. Soap. They still have their retail store, in the really extremely expensive and adorable Hayes Valley neighborhood. And they have a thriving mail order business still, and they still send crazy emails. Their latest one in my in-box has a picture of a dog licking plates in the dishwasher, to highlight that they sell a nice-smelling dish detergent. Their tribe is strong enough to support them, and their tribe loves them because they’re not for everyone. Because they’re brave enough to be a tall, proud, out Nancy Boy. I can get great-smelling soap at Whole Foods, but I still mail-order soap and some other nice-smelling things from Nancy Boy because I love them, because I feel connected to them. <h3>What Joanna wrote about it</h3> Joanna also wrote about this on her blog, Copyhackers, which is a good read and I’ll give you a link in the show notes. <a href="https://copyhackers.com/2013/12/swearing-euphemisms-writing/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://copyhackers.com/2013/12/swearing-euphemisms-writing/</a> Here’s a quote: <blockquote>I always recommend that you write for the 20 to 35% of your visitors that are most likely to a) convert and b) be happier for it. I recommend that because I ve tested it and it works. It s not just an assumption I randomly pulled out of the air and tried once; it s not like I applied a go-narrow principle to my business and my business alone and found that it prettymuch worked, so now I think everyone should do the same for similar results.</blockquote> So this points to the same thing I see at Nancy Boy. They’re writing for their customers, not the entire universe of possible customers. In Nancy Boy’s case, their customers start in their local neighborhood, and now many years on, are made up of like-minded people from all over the place. Another quote from Joanna: <blockquote>But, without question, you are taking a risk when you use that kind of language…. With regard to risk, you re also taking a risk when you absolutely avoid euphemisms and impolite words in your copy.</blockquote> <h3>So is it ok to swear on your blog or not?</h3> The message isn’t, “Yes, go swear on your blog.” The message isn’t, to be crystal clear, that I think Bob was wrong on this. In fact, I really did not appreciate folks being disrespectful in the comments to him about it. They were trying to stand up for us and for Joanna, but that wasn’t necessary in this case. The message is, <blockquote>You don’t get to decide what’s relevant or appropriate. Your audience does.</blockquote> The Copyblogger readership is, for the most part, 1000% comfortable with the term “MoFo.” Is Bob wrong because he’s not comfortable with it? Not at all. We respect Bob a ton. His point of view is very valid. We actually swear very, very little on Copyblogger, precisely because we have a large audience that’s extremely diverse. We know that there are some folks who really don’t appreciate it — that’s part of who our audience is. But once in awhile, certain words feel like they’re important to state a point clearly. I’m not a big fan of euphemism, as anyone who’s ever heard me give a talk can attest to. So I don’t like “friggen” or “flippin.” Actually for me, my issue with MoFo is precisely that it’s a euphemism. I was taught early on as a writer to avoid them, and I try to. So here’s my advice: Overall I recommend that you not swear for the sake of swearing. It’s kind of lazy and not necessarily very interesting. That kind of language has a lot of power, but the power comes from holding it back to make an impact when you really want to make a point very strongly. If your audience swears a lot and that’s what feels right for connecting to them, then make your decisions accordingly. If your audience doesn’t appreciate it, then don’t swear ever. They decide, not you. But if it matters, if it’s the truest statement of what you need to communicate, and that’s how your audience will read it? Then I think you’re the one who is best qualified to make that call for your audience and your situation. I know I won’t convince Bob Bly with this argument, and I’m ok with that. Because as much as I respect him, the ones who are my true compass are my readers, my listeners, my audience.

Should You Swear on Your Blog?

No, it’s not a simplistic “Secret,” but there are some very pragmatic benefits to adopting a mindset of abundance.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  I’m going to be in a documentary! It’s called The Abundance Code, and it’s about folks who have worked through varying kinds of constraints and found a more fulfilling path. (Both financially and personally.) All told there are 17 of our stories featured in the film. I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m as curious as anyone about how the final edit will turn out! I thought I’d take this episode to talk about the movie’s central theme and how I approach it.  (Spoiler alert: My take on it focuses on pragmatism and staying grounded and real.) In this 19-minute episode, I talk about:  Why “wish and it will appear” magical thinking is so counterproductive How to approach positivity and “abundance thinking” in a way that’s pragmatic and realistic The “lucky newspaper reader” study and how it can help anyone get luckier (you don’t even have to stay up all night) A smart mental strategy you can adopt to maximize happiness The crucual role that  hard work and consistent effort play in an abundance mindset  Watch the film for free! Premiere week is June 21-30 The Abundance Code premieres the week of June 21, and you’ll be able to view the 90-minute film for free. Sign up to watch The Abundance Code premiere Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism Raj Raghunathan’s book If You’re So Smart Why Aren’t You Happy? My podcast interview with Bill O’Hanlon on sharing your gifts and turning difficulties into strengths My podcast interview with J.B. Glossinger on staying grounded as you move toward success My friend Ruth Buczynski’s site The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medecine (they have a lot of fascinating courses) My friend and superb speaking coach Victoria Labalme That Jeff Walker fellow — he knows a bit about building online businesses  The link to Watch The Abundance Code for free (premiere week is June 21-30, 2016) I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  So my beautiful and ultra smart friend Julie Ann Cairns has been working on a project lately that involves me, and this is the month we’re launching. It’s not a course or a product, it’s a film, called The Abundance Code, and it’s a documentary capturing some thoughts and insights from a diverse group of successful folks about, more or less, how to cultivate more luck and opportunity within your circumstances. I love Julie, she’s more “woo woo” than I am, and I know right now some of you are wondering if that’s even possible. But she’s also super analytical.  She has a finance background, she had a prestigious scholarship in Japan, and while she was in school there she actually founded and ran an English school. She’s worked in banking and for many years she ran an educational site for the financial markets. So she has a lot of numbers in her background, and a lot of analysis. She has a skill that I always find fascinating when I see it, which is that she understands money. She understands the flow of it, whether it’s the stock market or business or our relationship with money.  And yet she also has a very intuitive side and a side that’s very open to, let’s just say, “non-linear” traditions. She’s a very open-hearted and open-minded person. So that combination of intuition and kind of “fuzziness” with the very clear-headed analytical side I find fascinating, plus she’s just a good person. I’m very grateful for her friendship. The reason I’m talking Julie up to you is that I’ve been interviewed for the film, and apparently — I haven’t actually seen an edit yet — there are quite a few segments of ‘that pink-haired lady’ in there. And launch date is this month! So I know what I said, and with these kinds of projects, I think the film guy was here for maybe six hours, so I said a lot of stuff, but then it all comes together in the editing process as something larger. So I know what I said, but I’m curious to see how it works within the greater context. I have a few other dear friends in the film as well: Bill O’Hanlon, who’s appeared on this podcast, Ruth Buczynsky, JB Glossinger who’s also appeared here, Victoria LaBalme, Jeff Walker.  So I thought in honor of the film I’d talk about how I see this concept of “abundance,” or luck, or opportunity.  They’re doing a worldwide free premiere of the movie, by the way, which you can sign up for at TheAbundanceCode.com. I know that there will be some kind of additional offer to go further with something paid at the end, I think it’s going to be something that’s not ultra expensive, but also it’s not going to be a weird hard sell. Just a chance to go deeper with it if that feels appropriate for you at this point. The main thing Julie wants to “sell” with this is really the set of ideas about working and taking care of ourselves in a healthier, more productive, more positive way.  So, let’s shift gears for just a quick minute and think about this Abundance thing. It’s not The Secret I think the first thing that may come up for a lot of people when we start to toss these ideas around is the notion from some of the popular self-help material that was really pushed by the movie “The Secret,” which is this idea that, “If you visualize it, it will come.” The word often used is manifest. So if you wish hard enough and ask nicely, the universe is like your all-powerful mommy and will give you millions of dollars and perfect health and beautiful relationships and no problems. And everyone above the age of four knows this is a lie, or ought to know.  I’m actually profoundly offended by this idea. Because of course, we’ve got 7 or 8 billion people on the planet right now, many of whom are suffering quite profoundly, many of whom are very genuinely stuck in very bad situations, and they’re not there because their mindset is off.  Bad things don’t happen in life because somehow we invited that with our bad mindset. That’s just a toxic viewpoint, and also, you know, incorrect.  So the way that I think about this whole luck and good fortune thing is not that somehow we are entitled to something special from the universe, or that some cosmic justice owes us good things. That’s childish and silly. But there’s an element of this Abundance business that I think is often overlooked, and is much more pragmatic. For most of us, there are more opportunities than you’re seeing So if you’re listening to this podcast, you have internet, you have some kind of device that can play podcasts, you have enough free time to listen to something for 20 minutes or so. You have some assets. I read about a fascinating study, I think it might have been in Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism, which is very solid. I’ll paraphrase and quite possibly get the details a little fuzzed, but: A group of students is recruited. Before they get started, they’re sorted into groups — some describe themselves as “being lucky” and some as “being unlucky.” They’re all given a newspaper and told that when they find a short specific kind of code in it, they’ll get $20. The code is in tiny text and let’s say it’s on page 17. But on page 2, there’s a large ad — like one of the big quarter-page display ads that used to appear in that ancient technology, that says, “You don’t have to keep looking — here’s the code.” So the unlucky people and the lucky people all find the code and get the $20. But the self-described lucky people overwhelmingly see that ad — and remember, it’s much bigger than the “real” code is — and get to the $20 in less than a minute, while the self-described unlucky overwhelmingly pore through the whole paper before they find the good stuff. People who believed they were lucky were looking for some luck. They said to themselves, “Hm, I wonder if my usual good luck will hold out here, let me take a quick check.” And the unlucky people didn’t look for that — so they didn’t see it, even though it was quite a bit more prominent. And that study, in a nutsell, explains how I think about good fortune and abundance. Choosing your beliefs wisely I just finished Raj Raghunathan’s book If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? (see show notes for a link) which is based on his super popular Coursera course on happiness. It’s a good book with a lot of exercises and a very pragmatic approach. Here’s what he said about our beliefs of whether or not life, (or The Universe or whatever label you would use) is in its nature benign, indifferent, or hostile: … the belief that  life can be trusted  and the associated belief that  everything happens for the best  isn t any less scientifically valid than are the competing beliefs, that  life is indifferent  or that  life is malign and can t be trusted. In other words, you could look at the mass of the evidence and argue for any of those. It’s not fundamentally a very scientific question and it can’t really be answered with the scientific method.  But here’s the bit I find useful: … what can be proven is that from a utilitarian perspective — that is, from the perspective of maximizing happiness — it is better to believe that life is benign than it is to believe otherwise. And that’s because of this mechanism that we tend to see what we’re looking for. There’s so much of our environment, and there always has been, that’s irrelevant. So just like ancient hunters, we’re looking for the signs that will lead us to what we want — a successful hunt, a site with fresh water or some nice berries to eat. Or in our case here in the 21st century, for more success, bigger audiences, better career or a better business, more satisfying relationships with the people in our lives — all the good stuff. Stop believing it’s magic So for me, the belief that The Universe is Abundant and will Magically Take Care of Us doesn’t work, because a) it’s not consistent with my observations, and b) when something not-so-good happens, I think it comes with a toxic sub-message that we somehow thought something Bad and made the bad thing happen to us. But the belief that There’s More Out There than I’m Seeing Right Now, and If I Start to Look for It, I’ll Find Something Cool is one I can get behind — because it is consistent with my observations, and because the sub-message is, If I haven’t seen it yet, I’m going to keep looking, because there are a lot of possibilities out there that I haven’t run into or maybe just haven’t noticed yet. And you know, it all comes with hard work and with paying attention and doing our best and taking consistent action, even if that action is fairly small.  We’re not sitting there waiting for some external force to “manifest.” We’re finding a path, exploring options, taking action, observing carefully, and keeping a good outlook without being delusional about it. To me, that’s been empowering and useful. It doesn’t just break when things are difficult, or cast me into some kind of funk of self-doubt. It empowers hope. And I hope perhaps it will do those things for you as well. You can sign up to see the film for free at TheAbundanceCode.com, I’m really excited about it, the launch week starts on June 21st. 

No, it’s not a simplistic “Secret,” but there are some very pragmatic benefits to adopting a mindset of abundance. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> I’m going to be in a documentary! It’s called The Abundance Code, and it’s about folks who have worked through varying kinds of constraints and found a more fulfilling path. (Both financially and personally.) All told there are 17 of our stories featured in the film. I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m as curious as anyone about how the final edit will turn out! I thought I’d take this episode to talk about the movie’s central theme and how I approach it. (Spoiler alert: My take on it focuses on pragmatism and staying grounded and real.) In this 19-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>Why “wish and it will appear” magical thinking is so counterproductive</li> <li>How to approach positivity and “abundance thinking” in a way that’s pragmatic and realistic</li> <li>The “lucky newspaper reader” study and how it can help anyone get luckier (you don’t even have to stay up all night)</li> <li>A smart mental strategy you can adopt to maximize happiness</li> <li>The crucual role that hard work and consistent effort play in an abundance mindset</li> </ul> <h3>Watch the film for free! Premiere week is June 21-30</h3> The Abundance Code premieres the week of June 21, and you’ll be able to view the 90-minute film for free. <a href="http://theabundancecode.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sign up to watch The Abundance Code premiere</a> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/rfm-pink-064.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>Martin Seligman’s book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26123.Learned_Optimism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Learned Optimism</a></li> <li>Raj Raghunathan’s book <a href="http://happysmarts.com/books.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">If You’re So Smart Why Aren’t You Happy?</a></li> <li>My podcast interview with <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/bill-ohanlon/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bill O’Hanlon</a> on sharing your gifts and turning difficulties into strengths</li> <li>My podcast interview with <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/jb-glossinger/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">J.B. Glossinger</a> on staying grounded as you move toward success</li> <li>My friend Ruth Buczynski’s site <a href="http://www.nicabm.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medecine</a> (they have a lot of fascinating courses)</li> <li>My friend and superb speaking coach <a href="http://www.victorialabalme.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Victoria Labalme</a></li> <li>That <a href="http://jeffwalker.com/blog/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jeff Walker</a> fellow — he knows a bit about building online businesses </li> <li>The link to <a href="http://theabundancecode.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Watch The Abundance Code for free (premiere week is June 21-30, 2016)</a></li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! So my beautiful and ultra smart friend Julie Ann Cairns has been working on a project lately that involves me, and this is the month we’re launching. It’s not a course or a product, it’s a film, called The Abundance Code, and it’s a documentary capturing some thoughts and insights from a diverse group of successful folks about, more or less, how to cultivate more luck and opportunity within your circumstances. I love Julie, she’s more “woo woo” than I am, and I know right now some of you are wondering if that’s even possible. But she’s also super analytical. She has a finance background, she had a prestigious scholarship in Japan, and while she was in school there she actually founded and ran an English school. She’s worked in banking and for many years she ran an educational site for the financial markets. So she has a lot of numbers in her background, and a lot of analysis. She has a skill that I always find fascinating when I see it, which is that she understands money. She understands the flow of it, whether it’s the stock market or business or our relationship with money. And yet she also has a very intuitive side and a side that’s very open to, let’s just say, “non-linear” traditions. She’s a very open-hearted and open-minded person. So that combination of intuition and kind of “fuzziness” with the very clear-headed analytical side I find fascinating, plus she’s just a good person. I’m very grateful for her friendship. The reason I’m talking Julie up to you is that I’ve been interviewed for the film, and apparently — I haven’t actually seen an edit yet — there are quite a few segments of ‘that pink-haired lady’ in there. And launch date is this month! So I know what I said, and with these kinds of projects, I think the film guy was here for maybe six hours, so I said a lot of stuff, but then it all comes together in the editing process as something larger. So I know what I said, but I’m curious to see how it works within the greater context. I have a few other dear friends in the film as well: Bill O’Hanlon, who’s appeared on this podcast, Ruth Buczynsky, JB Glossinger who’s also appeared here, Victoria LaBalme, Jeff Walker. So I thought in honor of the film I’d talk about how I see this concept of “abundance,” or luck, or opportunity. They’re doing a worldwide free premiere of the movie, by the way, which you can sign up for at <a href="http://TheAbundanceCode.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">TheAbundanceCode.com</a>. I know that there will be some kind of additional offer to go further with something paid at the end, I think it’s going to be something that’s not ultra expensive, but also it’s not going to be a weird hard sell. Just a chance to go deeper with it if that feels appropriate for you at this point. The main thing Julie wants to “sell” with this is really the set of ideas about working and taking care of ourselves in a healthier, more productive, more positive way. So, let’s shift gears for just a quick minute and think about this Abundance thing. <h3>It’s not The Secret</h3> I think the first thing that may come up for a lot of people when we start to toss these ideas around is the notion from some of the popular self-help material that was really pushed by the movie “The Secret,” which is this idea that, “If you visualize it, it will come.” The word often used is manifest. So if you wish hard enough and ask nicely, the universe is like your all-powerful mommy and will give you millions of dollars and perfect health and beautiful relationships and no problems. And everyone above the age of four knows this is a lie, or ought to know. I’m actually profoundly offended by this idea. Because of course, we’ve got 7 or 8 billion people on the planet right now, many of whom are suffering quite profoundly, many of whom are very genuinely stuck in very bad situations, and they’re not there because their mindset is off. Bad things don’t happen in life because somehow we invited that with our bad mindset. That’s just a toxic viewpoint, and also, you know, incorrect. So the way that I think about this whole luck and good fortune thing is not that somehow we are entitled to something special from the universe, or that some cosmic justice owes us good things. That’s childish and silly. But there’s an element of this Abundance business that I think is often overlooked, and is much more pragmatic. <h3>For most of us, there are more opportunities than you’re seeing</h3> So if you’re listening to this podcast, you have internet, you have some kind of device that can play podcasts, you have enough free time to listen to something for 20 minutes or so. You have some assets. I read about a fascinating study, I think it might have been in Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism, which is very solid. I’ll paraphrase and quite possibly get the details a little fuzzed, but: A group of students is recruited. Before they get started, they’re sorted into groups — some describe themselves as “being lucky” and some as “being unlucky.” They’re all given a newspaper and told that when they find a short specific kind of code in it, they’ll get $20. The code is in tiny text and let’s say it’s on page 17. But on page 2, there’s a large ad — like one of the big quarter-page display ads that used to appear in that ancient technology, that says, “You don’t have to keep looking — here’s the code.” So the unlucky people and the lucky people all find the code and get the $20. But the self-described lucky people overwhelmingly see that ad — and remember, it’s much bigger than the “real” code is — and get to the $20 in less than a minute, while the self-described unlucky overwhelmingly pore through the whole paper before they find the good stuff. People who believed they were lucky were looking for some luck. They said to themselves, “Hm, I wonder if my usual good luck will hold out here, let me take a quick check.” And the unlucky people didn’t look for that — so they didn’t see it, even though it was quite a bit more prominent. And that study, in a nutsell, explains how I think about good fortune and abundance. <h3>Choosing your beliefs wisely</h3> I just finished Raj Raghunathan’s book If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? (see show notes for a link) which is based on his super popular Coursera course on happiness. It’s a good book with a lot of exercises and a very pragmatic approach. Here’s what he said about our beliefs of whether or not life, (or The Universe or whatever label you would use) is in its nature benign, indifferent, or hostile: <blockquote>… the belief that life can be trusted and the associated belief that everything happens for the best isn t any less scientifically valid than are the competing beliefs, that life is indifferent or that life is malign and can t be trusted.</blockquote> In other words, you could look at the mass of the evidence and argue for any of those. It’s not fundamentally a very scientific question and it can’t really be answered with the scientific method. But here’s the bit I find useful: <blockquote>… what can be proven is that from a utilitarian perspective — that is, from the perspective of maximizing happiness — it is better to believe that life is benign than it is to believe otherwise.</blockquote> And that’s because of this mechanism that we tend to see what we’re looking for. There’s so much of our environment, and there always has been, that’s irrelevant. So just like ancient hunters, we’re looking for the signs that will lead us to what we want — a successful hunt, a site with fresh water or some nice berries to eat. Or in our case here in the 21st century, for more success, bigger audiences, better career or a better business, more satisfying relationships with the people in our lives — all the good stuff. <h3>Stop believing it’s magic</h3> So for me, the belief that The Universe is Abundant and will Magically Take Care of Us doesn’t work, because a) it’s not consistent with my observations, and b) when something not-so-good happens, I think it comes with a toxic sub-message that we somehow thought something Bad and made the bad thing happen to us. But the belief that There’s More Out There than I’m Seeing Right Now, and If I Start to Look for It, I’ll Find Something Cool is one I can get behind — because it is consistent with my observations, and because the sub-message is, If I haven’t seen it yet, I’m going to keep looking, because there are a lot of possibilities out there that I haven’t run into or maybe just haven’t noticed yet. And you know, it all comes with hard work and with paying attention and doing our best and taking consistent action, even if that action is fairly small. We’re not sitting there waiting for some external force to “manifest.” We’re finding a path, exploring options, taking action, observing carefully, and keeping a good outlook without being delusional about it. To me, that’s been empowering and useful. It doesn’t just break when things are difficult, or cast me into some kind of funk of self-doubt. It empowers hope. And I hope perhaps it will do those things for you as well. You can sign up to see the film for free at <a href="http://TheAbundanceCode.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">TheAbundanceCode.com</a>, I’m really excited about it, the launch week starts on June 21st.

Up All Night to Get Lucky: Sonia’s in a New Documentary!

Content marketing has been a hot buzzword for awhile now, but it’s tricky to pull off unti you understand this context.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  Once upon a time, combining relationship-building content with solid sales strategy was a weird idea. Now it’s pretty mainstream — but a lot of folks are still missing the underlying context that makes it work.  In this 25-minute episode, I talk about:  The history behind “the harpoon and the net” Why you will go broke trying to pay for traffic without understanding content How the Weirdo Tribe became the mainstream one … The real problem with traditional sales pages The element you need to master if you want your content to work (we have free stuff to help) How to connect with me face to face in October (I’d love to see you there!)  Come hang out in October! If you want to join me and the Copyblogger crew for the live Digital Commerce Summit (Oct. 13-14) in Denver, get on over to the site today for the best price on tickets and extras. If you’re quick, you can get a whole year of our Digital Commerce Academy to go with it — which will give you a massive running start on getting the most out of the event. Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  The Harpoon or the Net: What’s the Right Copy Approach for Your Prospects? My conversation with Jerod Morris about marketing funnels, paid advertising, and content strategy (AUDIO) Is Your Tribe Holding You Down? Brian Clark’s pivotal post, The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life My post on my challenges in the corporate world, Why Being Naive Can Make Your Fortune Brian Clark’s conversation with Tara Gentile on Unemployable (AUDIO) The MyCopyblogger content marketing library (free with registration) If you want to join us for the live Digital Commerce Summit (Oct. 13-14) in Denver, get on over there today for the most awesome price on tickets and extras I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  I’ve been doing lots of mindset and what some might call “woo,” so today I’m going shift gears and get into a key strategic underpinning that makes content marketing work. I wrote about this for Copyblogger 8 years ago, in a post called The Harpoon or the Net: What’s the Right Copy Approach for Your Prospects? It recently came to mind because Jerod Morris and I were talking about marketing funnels and paid advertising, such as Facebook advertising, over on CopybloggerFM, the sister podcast to this one. And it occurred to me that the thing that makes paid advertising work in 2016 is the same thing that made content work way back in 2008. So let’s unpack it. How we used to think about paid traffic Long, long ago — in other words, a few years ago — there were, for lack of better terms, “content people” — and Copyblogger was one of the very first to write about this approach, and then there were “paid traffic people,” which encompassed most of what then fell under the title Internet Marketing.  Content people wrote interesting things and built an audience. Paid traffic people bought traffic, which was cheaper to do 8 years ago, and piped that traffic into a sales page with the intention of making a sale. Like all absolutes, there were exceptions. There were a few people who advocated doing both, but the content people often shied away from learning about how to pay for traffic and not get murdered financially, and the paid traffic people looked at the work involved in creating genuinely useful content and weren’t that excited by the prospect. In the words of S.E. Hinton, That was Then, This is Now. The Third Tribe became the Primary Tribe Believe it or not, I actually generated some controversy when I wrote a post called Is Your Tribe Holding You Down, talking, more or less, about these two groups of folks — the audience-focused types, who at that time were mainly bloggers, and the traffic-focused types. I feel bad today because some of the folks on the traffic-focused side apparently got their feelings quite hurt, when really I was poking a bit of fun at both sides. If you build a relationship but have no marketing strategy, you’ll be popular and broke. If you have killer marketing strategy but spend no time on relationships, you’ll tend to have big revenue spikes puncutated by very long periods of also being broke, because no one trusts you. So it’s not wise to be one one side or other of the spectrum, you want to learn from both. I speculated that maybe a new “tribe” could be formed that learned from both worlds, and folks started calling that The Third Tribe. We actually used to have a community with that name, which over time evolved into today’s Authority community. Hopefully my brothers — at that time, almost all of them were guys — on the Internet Marketing side can appreciate that. I have some very dear friends from that community and tradition, so I’m not slamming them, although I might poke a bit of fun at times.  Back in the day, this notion of combining relationship-building content with smart selling strategy was actually a weird idea. Today it’s just how smart marketers do things, and the labels aren’t quite as limiting as they used to be. OK, enough history, let’s take a look at how it looks in the real world today. The Harpoon and the Net Unpacking this analogy, if you buy traffic and send it directly to a sales page, it’s what I call a harpoon.  A well-written traditional sales page acts like a harpoon. When a likely prospect swims along, if the writer s aim is good and she gets enough power behind that harpoon, she can make the sale. The main issue with that traditional sales page — if y0u’ve been online awhile, you might remember when they all had fake yellow highlighter and red headlines, it was not a high point in web design history. But the main issue is that this kind of page is crazy hard to write. Now it can be learned, and of course we can hire folks to write them for us. But the folks who are genuinely good at it are also genuinely expensive. In a world without infinite resources to learn something hard or pay for something expensive, we needed another model. Enter the Net Instead of hurling your single-pointed communication as forcefully as you can, consider encouraging your prospect to wrap himself in a friendly, supportive net. In other words, rather than trying to harpoon customers with single-shot sales letters, snare them in a net of useful, relevant content. Strong content will keep luring your prospect back for regular bites. Each bite builds a little more trust. Each bite builds your reputation as a friendly authority. This is what today we call “strategic content marketing.” We build an audience with our content, and that content builds trust over time. It also educates that potential customer on what they would need to know before making a purchase. This is wide territory — it might be a pragmatic thing that they need to believe. For example, folks may be reluctant to buy a WordPress theme if they don’t realize the dangers of putting all of their content on something like Facebook or Medium. To speak to that, I wrote a post on The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Online Business, about the danger of building all of your business content on a platform that someone else controls. It might be a process that they need to understand. When folks learn more about content marketing strategy from podcasts on our RainmakerFM network, or posts on Copyblogger or DigitalCommerce.com, they can see how they would use the Rainmaker platform to deliver that. People who don’t have at least some grasp of content strategy wouldn’t see the need for a platform that’s structured the way ours is. It might even be a more personal value or belief. Brian Clark wrote a great post about The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life, about how a brain injury gave him clarity about what was important in his life — and the values that event revealed were values that either resonated or didn’t. I wrote one of my own (internally we sometimes call these “hematoma posts”) about struggling in the corporate world for being “naive” because I was an idealistic person and I thought that was a better way to do business.  And you may have noticed that this podcast is really about me expressing my values as a human being who’s in business, hopefully to empower others to trust their own instincts and build on their strengths instead of getting discouraged. The strategy part is important A final word about this “Content Net” idea — it sounds very nicey-nice and “if you build it they will come,” but it isn’t.  Seriously interesting and useful content has to be paired with business strategy if you want it to work. Otherwise you just stay adrift in that “popular but broke” thing, which is maybe not where you want to be. Again, I’m not claiming I invented this or Copyblogger invented it, but I do believe that we have become known for this very ethical, principled approach, and we love to offer our platform to others who are teaching this approach. Content strategy isn’t “rocket surgery,” but it has a fair number of pieces and it’s important to know how they work together. There are a few resouces we can offer you to figure this out. The first one is 100% free, which is our content marketing library. Brian Clark and I, joined by a few other folks, have put together a comprehensive library of ebooks to give you that understanding. If you’re the kind of person who’s self motivated, this can definitely be 100% of what you need. Grab it at the Copyblogger Blog (&gt;products &gt;Free! MyCopyblogger) If you need a little more hand-holding and motivational fire, my best recommendation for 2016 is to join us at the Digital Commerce Summit. It’s happening in Denver in October.  Right now, but this will expire soon, you can actually get the Summit ticket and a full year of our Digital Commerce Academy, which is a more advanced series of courses about how to do digital business. Pricing on that is going up on May 27, 2016, so boogie on over to DigitalCommerce.com if you think you want to join us there. I’m going to be doing a keynote on how to actually use the information that you learn at that conference, or any conference. The rest of the event is really a curriculum, so you learn how the different pieces go together — not only for your marketing but also for your actual product or service. We’re structuring it so that you start to take action to get to the next level from where you are now — before you even leave the event. It’s all oriented to action you can take right now, paired with the understanding of the larger strategy so you see how everything fits together. The conference is perfect for people who want to make something happen with a digital business — either a side project or something that could grow into quite a large business — but they’re having issues with overwhelm. They have some of it figured out but there are pieces that you’re finding intimidating or too confusing. One of my super favorite things about our live events is meeting people, because we attract an audience that I find quite cool — very principled and interesting and individualistic. I always carve out a lot of time — especially look for me on day two, when my talk is done and I’m not so nervous — to hang out with the folks I meet there. Day Two for me is basically going to be sitting in on the sessions and schmoozing with you guys.   Join me this coming Thursday on CopybloggerFM for an episode on how to put together opt-in bonuses to start the conversation with your audience.

Content marketing has been a hot buzzword for awhile now, but it’s tricky to pull off unti you understand this context. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> Once upon a time, combining relationship-building content with solid sales strategy was a weird idea. Now it’s pretty mainstream — but a lot of folks are still missing the underlying context that makes it work. In this 25-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>The history behind “the harpoon and the net”</li> <li>Why you will go broke trying to pay for traffic without understanding content</li> <li>How the Weirdo Tribe became the mainstream one …</li> <li>The real problem with traditional sales pages</li> <li>The element you need to master if you want your content to work (we have free stuff to help)</li> <li>How to connect with me face to face in October (I’d love to see you there!)</li> </ul> <h3>Come hang out in October!</h3> If you want to join me and the Copyblogger crew for the <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/summit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">live Digital Commerce Summit (Oct. 13-14)</a> in Denver, get on over to the site today for the best price on tickets and extras. If you’re quick, you can get a whole year of our Digital Commerce Academy to go with it — which will give you a massive running start on getting the most out of the event. Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/rfm-pink-063.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/harpoon-or-net/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Harpoon or the Net: What’s the Right Copy Approach for Your Prospects?</a></li> <li>My conversation with Jerod Morris about <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/lede/adventures-in-advertising/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">marketing funnels, paid advertising, and content strategy</a> (AUDIO)</li> <li><a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/two-tribes/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Is Your Tribe Holding You Down?</a></li> <li>Brian Clark’s pivotal post, <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/the-secret-of-life/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life</a></li> <li>My post on my challenges in the corporate world, <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/naive/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Why Being Naive Can Make Your Fortune</a></li> <li>Brian Clark’s conversation with <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/unemployable/actionable-observation/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tara Gentile on Unemployable</a> (AUDIO)</li> <li>The <a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/login" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MyCopyblogger content marketing library</a> (free with registration)</li> <li>If you want to join us for the <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/summit/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">live Digital Commerce Summit (Oct. 13-14)</a> in Denver, get on over there today for the most awesome price on tickets and extras</li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! I’ve been doing lots of mindset and what some might call “woo,” so today I’m going shift gears and get into a key strategic underpinning that makes content marketing work. I wrote about this for Copyblogger 8 years ago, in a post called <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/harpoon-or-net/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Harpoon or the Net: What’s the Right Copy Approach for Your Prospects?</a> It recently came to mind because Jerod Morris and I were talking about marketing funnels and paid advertising, such as Facebook advertising, over on CopybloggerFM, the sister podcast to this one. And it occurred to me that the thing that makes paid advertising work in 2016 is the same thing that made content work way back in 2008. So let’s unpack it. <h3>How we used to think about paid traffic</h3> Long, long ago — in other words, a few years ago — there were, for lack of better terms, “content people” — and Copyblogger was one of the very first to write about this approach, and then there were “paid traffic people,” which encompassed most of what then fell under the title Internet Marketing. Content people wrote interesting things and built an audience. Paid traffic people bought traffic, which was cheaper to do 8 years ago, and piped that traffic into a sales page with the intention of making a sale. Like all absolutes, there were exceptions. There were a few people who advocated doing both, but the content people often shied away from learning about how to pay for traffic and not get murdered financially, and the paid traffic people looked at the work involved in creating genuinely useful content and weren’t that excited by the prospect. In the words of S.E. Hinton, That was Then, This is Now. <h3>The Third Tribe became the Primary Tribe</h3> Believe it or not, I actually generated some controversy when I wrote a post called Is Your Tribe Holding You Down, talking, more or less, about these two groups of folks — the audience-focused types, who at that time were mainly bloggers, and the traffic-focused types. I feel bad today because some of the folks on the traffic-focused side apparently got their feelings quite hurt, when really I was poking a bit of fun at both sides. If you build a relationship but have no marketing strategy, you’ll be popular and broke. If you have killer marketing strategy but spend no time on relationships, you’ll tend to have big revenue spikes puncutated by very long periods of also being broke, because no one trusts you. So it’s not wise to be one one side or other of the spectrum, you want to learn from both. I speculated that maybe a new “tribe” could be formed that learned from both worlds, and folks started calling that The Third Tribe. We actually used to have a community with that name, which over time evolved into today’s Authority community. Hopefully my brothers — at that time, almost all of them were guys — on the Internet Marketing side can appreciate that. I have some very dear friends from that community and tradition, so I’m not slamming them, although I might poke a bit of fun at times. Back in the day, this notion of combining relationship-building content with smart selling strategy was actually a weird idea. Today it’s just how smart marketers do things, and the labels aren’t quite as limiting as they used to be. OK, enough history, let’s take a look at how it looks in the real world today. <h3>The Harpoon and the Net</h3> Unpacking this analogy, if you buy traffic and send it directly to a sales page, it’s what I call a harpoon. <blockquote> A well-written traditional sales page acts like a harpoon. When a likely prospect swims along, if the writer s aim is good and she gets enough power behind that harpoon, she can make the sale.</blockquote> The main issue with that traditional sales page — if y0u’ve been online awhile, you might remember when they all had fake yellow highlighter and red headlines, it was not a high point in web design history. But the main issue is that this kind of page is crazy hard to write. Now it can be learned, and of course we can hire folks to write them for us. But the folks who are genuinely good at it are also genuinely expensive. In a world without infinite resources to learn something hard or pay for something expensive, we needed another model. <h3>Enter the Net</h3> <blockquote>Instead of hurling your single-pointed communication as forcefully as you can, consider encouraging your prospect to wrap himself in a friendly, supportive net. In other words, rather than trying to harpoon customers with single-shot sales letters, snare them in a net of useful, relevant content. Strong content will keep luring your prospect back for regular bites. Each bite builds a little more trust. Each bite builds your reputation as a friendly authority.</blockquote> This is what today we call “strategic content marketing.” We build an audience with our content, and that content builds trust over time. It also educates that potential customer on what they would need to know before making a purchase. This is wide territory — it might be a pragmatic thing that they need to believe. For example, folks may be reluctant to buy a WordPress theme if they don’t realize the dangers of putting all of their content on something like Facebook or Medium. To speak to that, I wrote a post on The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Online Business, about the danger of building all of your business content on a platform that someone else controls. It might be a process that they need to understand. When folks learn more about content marketing strategy from podcasts on our RainmakerFM network, or posts on Copyblogger or <a href="http://DigitalCommerce.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DigitalCommerce.com</a>, they can see how they would use the Rainmaker platform to deliver that. People who don’t have at least some grasp of content strategy wouldn’t see the need for a platform that’s structured the way ours is. It might even be a more personal value or belief. Brian Clark wrote a great post about The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life, about how a brain injury gave him clarity about what was important in his life — and the values that event revealed were values that either resonated or didn’t. I wrote one of my own (internally we sometimes call these “hematoma posts”) about struggling in the corporate world for being “naive” because I was an idealistic person and I thought that was a better way to do business. And you may have noticed that this podcast is really about me expressing my values as a human being who’s in business, hopefully to empower others to trust their own instincts and build on their strengths instead of getting discouraged. <h3>The strategy part is important</h3> A final word about this “Content Net” idea — it sounds very nicey-nice and “if you build it they will come,” but it isn’t. Seriously interesting and useful content has to be paired with business strategy if you want it to work. Otherwise you just stay adrift in that “popular but broke” thing, which is maybe not where you want to be. Again, I’m not claiming I invented this or Copyblogger invented it, but I do believe that we have become known for this very ethical, principled approach, and we love to offer our platform to others who are teaching this approach. Content strategy isn’t “rocket surgery,” but it has a fair number of pieces and it’s important to know how they work together. There are a few resouces we can offer you to figure this out. The first one is 100% free, which is our content marketing library. Brian Clark and I, joined by a few other folks, have put together a comprehensive library of ebooks to give you that understanding. If you’re the kind of person who’s self motivated, this can definitely be 100% of what you need. Grab it at the Copyblogger Blog (&gt;products &gt;Free! MyCopyblogger) If you need a little more hand-holding and motivational fire, my best recommendation for 2016 is to join us at the Digital Commerce Summit. It’s happening in Denver in October. Right now, but this will expire soon, you can actually get the Summit ticket and a full year of our Digital Commerce Academy, which is a more advanced series of courses about how to do digital business. Pricing on that is going up on May 27, 2016, so boogie on over to <a href="http://DigitalCommerce.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DigitalCommerce.com</a> if you think you want to join us there. I’m going to be doing a keynote on how to actually use the information that you learn at that conference, or any conference. The rest of the event is really a curriculum, so you learn how the different pieces go together — not only for your marketing but also for your actual product or service. We’re structuring it so that you start to take action to get to the next level from where you are now — before you even leave the event. It’s all oriented to action you can take right now, paired with the understanding of the larger strategy so you see how everything fits together. The conference is perfect for people who want to make something happen with a digital business — either a side project or something that could grow into quite a large business — but they’re having issues with overwhelm. They have some of it figured out but there are pieces that you’re finding intimidating or too confusing. One of my super favorite things about our live events is meeting people, because we attract an audience that I find quite cool — very principled and interesting and individualistic. I always carve out a lot of time — especially look for me on day two, when my talk is done and I’m not so nervous — to hang out with the folks I meet there. Day Two for me is basically going to be sitting in on the sessions and schmoozing with you guys. Join me this coming Thursday on <a href="http://copyblogger.fm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CopybloggerFM</a> for an episode on how to put together opt-in bonuses to start the conversation with your audience.

The Context of a Successful Content Strategy: The Harpoon and the Net

What’s one of the biggest constraints that keeps us from doing the things we want to do? We don’t have the time. Here are some thoughts on how to manage that.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  Remember when the internet was going to give us all the free time we could imagine? Yeah, well. Not so much. In this 27-minute episode, I talk about:  Why multitasking is the worst possible strategy when you’re short of time Where to look for “time scraps” you can use to work on your Cool Thing The activity that’s more restorative than TV, gaming, or getting into arguments on Facebook What to focus on if you’re working on building a business (tiny or otherwise) The most important thing I’ve done when I need to get traction Creating “compartments” of focus What to do when you drift away from the habits you’re working to create  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  This episode continues a conversation I started last week about building your Escape Pod My post about creating change via small habits Pamela Wilson’s post on a content plan to create one strong piece of content a week Tony Schwartz’s book The Power of Full Engagement (this link is to an analysis that Josh Kaufman did of the book, I thought it was well done) I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  If you caught last week’s podcast, I talked about the ideas I’m noodling with for the book I’m writing. The book is really about constructing your “Escape Pod” — the structures and patterns that will get you out of whatever’s not serving you today, and on to your next chapter. One of the biggest deterrents for any of us is a lack of free time. Very few people have free time in any kind of significant quantity. And when we do, we do dopey things with it like play Nintendo or watch TV we don’t even really like or have fights on Facebook. Don’t multitask I’ve talked before about the irony of me talking about productivity, since I am not one of Nature’s Organized People. But that’s maybe part of why I can help you out — if it works for me, it’s very likely to work for you. When your time is a significant constraint, when you’re at a point in your life when you don’t have a lot of free time — for most of this, this is most of the time — the worst thing you can do is to multitask, because it makes everything take longer. This is backed up by approximately a trillion studies. We all think we can multitask, but we don’t realize how poor a job we’re doing on everything that’s being done that way. Incidentally, this very much applies to doing anything with your cell phone while you are driving your car. Short of listening to some music or your nav, please don’t do stuff with your phone while you’re driving. It’s dangerous, and even if it feels like you have good control, studies show that you do not. While obviously you can multitask, since most of us do most of the time, it actually takes you longer to get all of your stuff done, and you don’t do a good job of it. Find the scraps of time If you’re not going to multitask and you want to try something different, the first thing to do is find your scraps of time. In the U.S. by law you have to get breaks every X number of hours you’re working. In some jobs, this is hilariously not a thing. For example if you’re a medical resident, you’re cracking up right now. But for most of us, we get some defined breaks during the day. Then there’s before we go to work, after we get home from work, etc. One key marker to look for is: Do you spend any time watching TV, socializing on Facebook or another platform, or playing digital games? If so, think about whether you’re willing to take 30 minutes, or even 10-15 minutes, from those activities for another purpose. A lot of times we are very unwilling to give up on those because they’re our relaxation time, our unwinding time. If your job is stressful and everything else is stressful, you want that time to relax. What I would just suggest as a thing you could let ping around in your thinking is: Spending regular time every day working toward something larger, a goal that you care about a lot, is genuinely restorative in a way that TV, Facebook, and gaming are not. This isn’t about being one of those people who fills every moment with something “worthy.” I’m not that person and I think you’re not either, otherwise I would annoy you and you’d be spending your time with other people who are good at being perfect. It’s just about cultivating a small habit of working on something meaningful. This is easier, by the way, if you use my values hack — one that I’ve talked about, certainly not one that I invented — to charge your battery. I’ll give you a link to that in the show notes. Identify microtasks ahead of time The other thing to know is that if you wait until your “little habit time” to figure out what you’re going to do with it, the time will evaporate. Deciding what to work on is work. So let’s say you’re going to skip 15 minutes of TV every day and work on your thing instead. The first set of tasks you do in your 15 minutes is: Figure out what tasks you’re going to do in your 15 minutes. Make a nice list you can find easily. Could be pen and a paper notebook, could be an Evernote item, could be a Google doc or just the to-do app on your phone. Just have a list of things to spend 15 minutes on. Some possibilities are:  Writing blog posts Figuring out how to get your site active Outlining and recording podcasts — these will be separate days Figuring out something complex like getting a payment method set up Outreach to people you’d like to know better in your topic  9 times out of 10 for most of us, it’s either planning content or creating content. One of my favorite resources for this was a post Pamela Wilson wrote for Copyblogger that set out a content plan to produce one excellent piece of content per week.  Link Cultivate itty bitty habits The reason we start with these itsy bitsy habit processes is that once you have even a small amount of movement, you’ve opened up the possibility of momentum. If you work on, let’s say it’s a side business, 15 minutes a day, it will take a long time to get traction. But you’ll get traction faster than working on it zero hours a day, and you’ll also make much more progress than you would working on it an hour a week. But one thing that happens is that it’s fun to make progress. It feels good, it’s empowering, it’s energizing. So those 15 minutes start to turn into 30. And then you realize there’s some other chunk of time you spend on a “relaxation” that you would rather put to your project. Changing behavior is fundamentally psychologically scary. It shakes up our attachment to who we think we are. These little habits are a way to sneak up on the change, make progress, even if it’s very slow at first, and start to open up space for new possibilities. Compartmentalizing your time So half of my statement is “don’t multitask,” the other side of the same coin is that you compartmentalize your time and your focus. That means, when you’re at your day job, you’re really there. You’re looking for ways to bring meaning to it, you’re looking for ways to do it as excellently as you can, or you’re looking for another job where you can do those things.  You’re fully present. And you’re fully present when you come home, whether you have other people there or not. You’re fully present for your project. You’re fully present with your family, if you have family. Each moment is like a compartment, and you try to focus fully on that compartment while you’re in it. This is really not easy at all to do, but if you remind yourself all day every day to strive toward it, you get better at it. This all by itself is very energizing, even if it’s imperfect. Because thinking about work when you’re with your family, and family when you’re at work, and your side project all of the time, is exhausting. It’s draining. Link in the show notes — Power of Full Engagement You really can do this Finally, I want to let you know that you can actually do this. Even if you’ve tried some of these before and petered out with it. That’s so normal. We’re talking about behavioral change, and that almost always takes a few tries. But it rewards multiple tries. If you try some of these out, do well for two weeks, then drift off for a couple of weeks, that’s completely fine. Just come back to your little habits and start fresh. You can always start fresh. This isn’t about being perfect and it’s not about superheroic levels of will power or energy. It’s about building and growing and taking small steps toward the things you want to create in your life. Let me know about your journey! And thank you all!

What’s one of the biggest constraints that keeps us from doing the things we want to do? We don’t have the time. Here are some thoughts on how to manage that. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> Remember when the internet was going to give us all the free time we could imagine? Yeah, well. Not so much. In this 27-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>Why multitasking is the worst possible strategy when you’re short of time</li> <li>Where to look for “time scraps” you can use to work on your Cool Thing</li> <li>The activity that’s more restorative than TV, gaming, or getting into arguments on Facebook</li> <li>What to focus on if you’re working on building a business (tiny or otherwise)</li> <li>The most important thing I’ve done when I need to get traction</li> <li>Creating “compartments” of focus</li> <li>What to do when you drift away from the habits you’re working to create</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/rfm-pink-062.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>This episode continues a conversation I started last week about <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/escape-pod/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">building your Escape Pod</a></li> <li>My post about creating change via <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/small-habits/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">small habits</a></li> <li>Pamela Wilson’s post on a <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/weekly-content-plan/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">content plan</a> to create one strong piece of content a week</li> <li>Tony Schwartz’s book <a href="https://joshkaufman.net/power-of-full-engagement/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Power of Full Engagement</a> (this link is to an analysis that Josh Kaufman did of the book, I thought it was well done)</li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! If you caught last week’s podcast, I talked about the ideas I’m noodling with for the book I’m writing. The book is really about constructing your “Escape Pod” — the structures and patterns that will get you out of whatever’s not serving you today, and on to your next chapter. One of the biggest deterrents for any of us is a lack of free time. Very few people have free time in any kind of significant quantity. And when we do, we do dopey things with it like play Nintendo or watch TV we don’t even really like or have fights on Facebook. <h3>Don’t multitask</h3> I’ve talked before about the irony of me talking about productivity, since I am not one of Nature’s Organized People. But that’s maybe part of why I can help you out — if it works for me, it’s very likely to work for you. When your time is a significant constraint, when you’re at a point in your life when you don’t have a lot of free time — for most of this, this is most of the time — the worst thing you can do is to multitask, because it makes everything take longer. This is backed up by approximately a trillion studies. We all think we can multitask, but we don’t realize how poor a job we’re doing on everything that’s being done that way. Incidentally, this very much applies to doing anything with your cell phone while you are driving your car. Short of listening to some music or your nav, please don’t do stuff with your phone while you’re driving. It’s dangerous, and even if it feels like you have good control, studies show that you do not. While obviously you can multitask, since most of us do most of the time, it actually takes you longer to get all of your stuff done, and you don’t do a good job of it. <h3>Find the scraps of time</h3> If you’re not going to multitask and you want to try something different, the first thing to do is find your scraps of time. In the U.S. by law you have to get breaks every X number of hours you’re working. In some jobs, this is hilariously not a thing. For example if you’re a medical resident, you’re cracking up right now. But for most of us, we get some defined breaks during the day. Then there’s before we go to work, after we get home from work, etc. One key marker to look for is: Do you spend any time watching TV, socializing on Facebook or another platform, or playing digital games? If so, think about whether you’re willing to take 30 minutes, or even 10-15 minutes, from those activities for another purpose. A lot of times we are very unwilling to give up on those because they’re our relaxation time, our unwinding time. If your job is stressful and everything else is stressful, you want that time to relax. What I would just suggest as a thing you could let ping around in your thinking is: Spending regular time every day working toward something larger, a goal that you care about a lot, is genuinely restorative in a way that TV, Facebook, and gaming are not. This isn’t about being one of those people who fills every moment with something “worthy.” I’m not that person and I think you’re not either, otherwise I would annoy you and you’d be spending your time with other people who are good at being perfect. It’s just about cultivating a small habit of working on something meaningful. This is easier, by the way, if you use my values hack — one that I’ve talked about, certainly not one that I invented — to charge your battery. I’ll give you a link to that in the show notes. <h3>Identify microtasks ahead of time</h3> The other thing to know is that if you wait until your “little habit time” to figure out what you’re going to do with it, the time will evaporate. Deciding what to work on is work. So let’s say you’re going to skip 15 minutes of TV every day and work on your thing instead. The first set of tasks you do in your 15 minutes is: Figure out what tasks you’re going to do in your 15 minutes. Make a nice list you can find easily. Could be pen and a paper notebook, could be an Evernote item, could be a Google doc or just the to-do app on your phone. Just have a list of things to spend 15 minutes on. Some possibilities are: <ul> <li>Writing blog posts</li> <li>Figuring out how to get your site active</li> <li>Outlining and recording podcasts — these will be separate days</li> <li>Figuring out something complex like getting a payment method set up</li> <li>Outreach to people you’d like to know better in your topic</li> </ul> 9 times out of 10 for most of us, it’s either planning content or creating content. One of my favorite resources for this was a post Pamela Wilson wrote for Copyblogger that set out a content plan to produce one excellent piece of content per week. Link <h3>Cultivate itty bitty habits</h3> The reason we start with these itsy bitsy habit processes is that once you have even a small amount of movement, you’ve opened up the possibility of momentum. If you work on, let’s say it’s a side business, 15 minutes a day, it will take a long time to get traction. But you’ll get traction faster than working on it zero hours a day, and you’ll also make much more progress than you would working on it an hour a week. But one thing that happens is that it’s fun to make progress. It feels good, it’s empowering, it’s energizing. So those 15 minutes start to turn into 30. And then you realize there’s some other chunk of time you spend on a “relaxation” that you would rather put to your project. Changing behavior is fundamentally psychologically scary. It shakes up our attachment to who we think we are. These little habits are a way to sneak up on the change, make progress, even if it’s very slow at first, and start to open up space for new possibilities. <h3>Compartmentalizing your time</h3> So half of my statement is “don’t multitask,” the other side of the same coin is that you compartmentalize your time and your focus. That means, when you’re at your day job, you’re really there. You’re looking for ways to bring meaning to it, you’re looking for ways to do it as excellently as you can, or you’re looking for another job where you can do those things. You’re fully present. And you’re fully present when you come home, whether you have other people there or not. You’re fully present for your project. You’re fully present with your family, if you have family. Each moment is like a compartment, and you try to focus fully on that compartment while you’re in it. This is really not easy at all to do, but if you remind yourself all day every day to strive toward it, you get better at it. This all by itself is very energizing, even if it’s imperfect. Because thinking about work when you’re with your family, and family when you’re at work, and your side project all of the time, is exhausting. It’s draining. Link in the show notes — Power of Full Engagement <h3>You really can do this</h3> Finally, I want to let you know that you can actually do this. Even if you’ve tried some of these before and petered out with it. That’s so normal. We’re talking about behavioral change, and that almost always takes a few tries. But it rewards multiple tries. If you try some of these out, do well for two weeks, then drift off for a couple of weeks, that’s completely fine. Just come back to your little habits and start fresh. You can always start fresh. This isn’t about being perfect and it’s not about superheroic levels of will power or energy. It’s about building and growing and taking small steps toward the things you want to create in your life. Let me know about your journey! And thank you all!

My #1 Time Management Tip: Don’t Multitask; Compartmentalize

a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" target="_blank"Sonia Simone/a delivers advice, encouragement, and the occasional rant from outside the drone of the marketing mainstream. Join her for a regular mix of monologues, interviews, and answers to your content marketing questions.

This week I want to talk about the values, practices, and principles that help us build “escape pods” from whatever is not serving us. And I’d love to hear your take!  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  I’ve been thinking about the themes or principles that I’ve seen to be most useful for people who are building businesses, including “side hustle” businesses or projects. I’m really interested to know if these principles resonate with you — so leave a comment and let me know? In this 20-minute episode I expand on the principles, which are:  Your DNA wants you to be dignified and free Mobilize your assets and constraints Don’t multitask; compartmentalize Itty bitty habits Lego, not IKEA Your values are a battery Construct your community  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  Copyblogger’s giant trove of free business and marketing how-to, MyCopyblogger (instant access with free registration) Charlie Gilkey’s podcast, The Creative Giant Show Our Authority community of content marketers Our courses at the Digital Commerce Academy I find that Chris Guillebeau has lots of smart advice about escape pods Steve Kamb’s book Level Up Your Life was great as well Gary Vaynerchuk’s recent post with advice for first-time entrepreneurs (I see this one a bit differently) My post on itty bitty habits My podcast with Two EQ Hacks, which talks about the “your values are a battery” idea Barbara Sher’s TEDX talk, Isolation is the Dream-Killer, Not Your Attitude I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes!  So I was talking with Charlie Gilkey for his podcast, and I mentioned there that I’ve written about 1/4 of about 4 books, which you’d think would add up to a whole book, but No. It’s not wasted work because frankly I think I’m going to wind up writing all of them, but for the first one I want to come out with something that really helps people. That moves people. What keeps happening is that I keep going to how-to, because I’m a pragmatic person and I think next steps are important. But Charlie suggested, and I think I agree with him, that there’s a manifesto that needs to happen first, a statement of beliefs that comes before the How-To, or is paired with it. I think I could probably do How-To as a resources page, with links to things like the billion free resources we have on Copyblogger, our Authority community, our Digital Commerce Academy courses, all that good stuff. So a mix of free stuff and the more advanced stuff you can pay for if that’s where you are. Today I’d like to throw out what I think are 7 principles of the “Sonia way of being a business owner.” The theme that’s really got hold of me is Business Advice for the Rest of Us.  There are wonderful resources from Chris Guillebeau for sure and also Tim Ferriss and I loved Steve Kamb’s book and there are others — there’s no shortage of resources from straight, mostly single white guys. And I love straight white guys, I have lots of them in my life.  But there are also some other people on the planet who don’t fit that definition, and I’d like to make sure they realize that this Business Ownership thing — and digital business in particular — is for them, too. Here are the 7 Principles I’m thinking about — will you do me a favor and let me know if these resonate for you, if these feel like something you’d like to know more about and would share with friends? They might not be principles, exactly, so you can let me know your thoughts on that also. This past year I’ve really realized that my motivation is to help folks build their escape capsules from whatever situation is keeping them stuck in a situation that doesn’t serve them. These are the mindset adoptions that give you the framework to construct that escape capsule. Any time you have a major economic shift, you have big cracks that people can fall into and get crushed, but you also release all of this new virtual real estate that folks can build on. And of course, we know that we’re now in the “gig economy,” which needs new mindsets, new behaviors, new values, all that good stuff. So: Principle 1: Your DNA wants you to be dignified and free This speaks to my very deep belief that we’re all “genetically encoded” to have dignity, freedom, to determine our own course. Now our circumstances can make that really tricky to pull off, but no one should feel they “aren’t cut out” to call their own shots. This leads directly to: Principle 2: Mobilize your assets and constraints I teach this one a lot, particularly in our private communities when we do mindset and productivity sessions. You need to know what you might be able to mobilize to make your thing happen, what you have that you could use, and you also need to be honest about constraints. So for example, a young single guy giving you business advice is going to have a hard time really understanding the constraints of being a parent, especially a more “primary caretaker” kind of parent, of little kids. And in fact I’ve seen this very type of guy go after parents of young kids for “making excuses.” That isn’t helpful. So I want to talk about what I’ve found helpful in working with both of these. Principle 3: Don’t multitask; compartmentalize Dear Gary Veynerchuk has been telling us recently that you can’t start a business without accepting that it’s going to severely limit your time with your family. That’s not new advice, at all. I see it somewhat differently. Anyone can start a “side hustle” project with the bits of time that they do have, if they use them wisely. Now you’re not going to launch Google with this. But you can earn a few hundred extra dollars a month, and that is huge for a lot of people. It could be from doing hair or nails for your neighbors, it could be from driving Lyft for a few hours a week, or it could be from a digital business. Those are still businesses, and they have value. The way to do that, instead of trying to do everything at once and falling apart into mush, is to set aside discrete little compartments of your time. I’ll talk more about that in a future podcast if you’re into it. Principle #4: Itty bitty habits This is one I talk about a lot — being a business owner is often about making fundamental behavior changes. Taking initiative, doing things you’ve never done before, getting out of your comfort zone, all that good stuff. I’ve found that starting with micro habits — obviously this ties very much into that previous point — is the way to go. Don’t try to change everything overnight. Build a reliable little habit, then grow it.  Principle #5: Lego, not IKEA This one is about the “blueprint” you use to construct your business. We all have really different assets and constraints. If you try to model my business precisely, you’re going to struggle, because I have assets you don’t, and you also have assets I don’t, and you want to make sure you’re using them. So instead of trying to put together something that comes pre-made in a flat-pack, take your “Legos” — your own individual set  of assets and constraints — and build something with your own creativity. Play with it. Take it apart and put it back together. Get yourself more Legos in the form of education or an expanded network or whatever. You want to stay loose. It’s just Lego. It’s meant to be rearranged. Business, especially business today, is so much about adapting and growing and evolving. So don’t be afraid to take your Legos apart to make something better. Principle #6: Your values are a battery This is about using what matters to you — your family, patriotism, religion, justice, equality, community, whatever it may be — as the energizer. We don’t really have a time management problem as much as an energy management one. Bringing your values to mind will help give you “the strength to do what needs to be done,” as Garrison Keillor said. Principle #7: Construct your community This is about finding like-minded people who get what you’re doing, so you can mutually support one another and open up opportunities you didn’t know you had. Even if you’re a disaster, you can create a community and those folks will help you find the doors. Barbara Sher has some really nifty thoughts on this.  So … what do you think? Let me know which of these might resonate with you — and if one of them makes you go Ugh, feel free to let me know that as well.  At the end of the day, this will very much be about my own beliefs — my values are my battery on this one. But it still definitely interests me to see where folks drop off, as well. Either because I’m not expressing it well or just because I have weird values, who knows. Thank you so much! Really looking forward to this. I’m also looking for stories for the book, so if you know someone who embodies “Business for the rest of us,” drop me a line in the comments or on Twitter. I totally get that I need to check my privilege on this one, I want to include voices who have faced constraints that I’m not facing, so that I can create something of value for as many folks as I can. Thank you all! 

This week I want to talk about the values, practices, and principles that help us build “escape pods” from whatever is not serving us. And I’d love to hear your take! <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> I’ve been thinking about the themes or principles that I’ve seen to be most useful for people who are building businesses, including “side hustle” businesses or projects. I’m really interested to know if these principles resonate with you — so leave a comment and let me know? In this 20-minute episode I expand on the principles, which are: <ol> <li>Your DNA wants you to be dignified and free</li> <li>Mobilize your assets and constraints</li> <li>Don’t multitask; compartmentalize</li> <li>Itty bitty habits</li> <li>Lego, not IKEA</li> <li>Your values are a battery</li> <li>Construct your community</li> </ol> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/rfm-pink-061.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>Copyblogger’s giant trove of free business and marketing how-to, <a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MyCopyblogger</a> (instant access with free registration)</li> <li>Charlie Gilkey’s podcast, <a href="http://www.productiveflourishing.com/the-creative-giant-show/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Creative Giant Show</a></li> <li>Our <a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/authority-opt-in-to-wait-list/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Authority community of content marketers</a></li> <li>Our courses at the <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/academy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Commerce Academy</a></li> <li>I find that <a href="http://chrisguillebeau.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Chris Guillebeau</a> has lots of smart advice about escape pods</li> <li>Steve Kamb’s book <a href="https://levelupyourlife.nerdfitness.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Level Up Your Life</a> was great as well</li> <li>Gary Vaynerchuk’s recent post with <a href="https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/advice-first-time-entrepreneurs/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">advice for first-time entrepreneurs</a> (I see this one a bit differently)</li> <li>My post on <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/small-habits/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itty bitty habits</a></li> <li>My podcast with <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/eq-hacks/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Two EQ Hacks</a>, which talks about the “your values are a battery” idea</li> <li>Barbara Sher’s TEDX talk, <a href="http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Isolation-is-the-dream-killer-n" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Isolation is the Dream-Killer, Not Your Attitude</a></li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Note: Links to extra resources are in the Show Notes! So I was talking with Charlie Gilkey for his podcast, and I mentioned there that I’ve written about 1/4 of about 4 books, which you’d think would add up to a whole book, but No. It’s not wasted work because frankly I think I’m going to wind up writing all of them, but for the first one I want to come out with something that really helps people. That moves people. What keeps happening is that I keep going to how-to, because I’m a pragmatic person and I think next steps are important. But Charlie suggested, and I think I agree with him, that there’s a manifesto that needs to happen first, a statement of beliefs that comes before the How-To, or is paired with it. I think I could probably do How-To as a resources page, with links to things like the billion free resources we have on Copyblogger, our Authority community, our Digital Commerce Academy courses, all that good stuff. So a mix of free stuff and the more advanced stuff you can pay for if that’s where you are. Today I’d like to throw out what I think are 7 principles of the “Sonia way of being a business owner.” The theme that’s really got hold of me is Business Advice for the Rest of Us. There are wonderful resources from Chris Guillebeau for sure and also Tim Ferriss and I loved Steve Kamb’s book and there are others — there’s no shortage of resources from straight, mostly single white guys. And I love straight white guys, I have lots of them in my life. But there are also some other people on the planet who don’t fit that definition, and I’d like to make sure they realize that this Business Ownership thing — and digital business in particular — is for them, too. Here are the 7 Principles I’m thinking about — will you do me a favor and let me know if these resonate for you, if these feel like something you’d like to know more about and would share with friends? They might not be principles, exactly, so you can let me know your thoughts on that also. This past year I’ve really realized that my motivation is to help folks build their escape capsules from whatever situation is keeping them stuck in a situation that doesn’t serve them. These are the mindset adoptions that give you the framework to construct that escape capsule. Any time you have a major economic shift, you have big cracks that people can fall into and get crushed, but you also release all of this new virtual real estate that folks can build on. And of course, we know that we’re now in the “gig economy,” which needs new mindsets, new behaviors, new values, all that good stuff. So: <h3>Principle 1: Your DNA wants you to be dignified and free</h3> This speaks to my very deep belief that we’re all “genetically encoded” to have dignity, freedom, to determine our own course. Now our circumstances can make that really tricky to pull off, but no one should feel they “aren’t cut out” to call their own shots. This leads directly to: <h3>Principle 2: Mobilize your assets and constraints</h3> I teach this one a lot, particularly in our private communities when we do mindset and productivity sessions. You need to know what you might be able to mobilize to make your thing happen, what you have that you could use, and you also need to be honest about constraints. So for example, a young single guy giving you business advice is going to have a hard time really understanding the constraints of being a parent, especially a more “primary caretaker” kind of parent, of little kids. And in fact I’ve seen this very type of guy go after parents of young kids for “making excuses.” That isn’t helpful. So I want to talk about what I’ve found helpful in working with both of these. <h3>Principle 3: Don’t multitask; compartmentalize</h3> Dear Gary Veynerchuk has been telling us recently that you can’t start a business without accepting that it’s going to severely limit your time with your family. That’s not new advice, at all. I see it somewhat differently. Anyone can start a “side hustle” project with the bits of time that they do have, if they use them wisely. Now you’re not going to launch Google with this. But you can earn a few hundred extra dollars a month, and that is huge for a lot of people. It could be from doing hair or nails for your neighbors, it could be from driving Lyft for a few hours a week, or it could be from a digital business. Those are still businesses, and they have value. The way to do that, instead of trying to do everything at once and falling apart into mush, is to set aside discrete little compartments of your time. I’ll talk more about that in a future podcast if you’re into it. <h3>Principle #4: Itty bitty habits</h3> This is one I talk about a lot — being a business owner is often about making fundamental behavior changes. Taking initiative, doing things you’ve never done before, getting out of your comfort zone, all that good stuff. I’ve found that starting with micro habits — obviously this ties very much into that previous point — is the way to go. Don’t try to change everything overnight. Build a reliable little habit, then grow it. <h3>Principle #5: Lego, not IKEA</h3> This one is about the “blueprint” you use to construct your business. We all have really different assets and constraints. If you try to model my business precisely, you’re going to struggle, because I have assets you don’t, and you also have assets I don’t, and you want to make sure you’re using them. So instead of trying to put together something that comes pre-made in a flat-pack, take your “Legos” — your own individual set of assets and constraints — and build something with your own creativity. Play with it. Take it apart and put it back together. Get yourself more Legos in the form of education or an expanded network or whatever. You want to stay loose. It’s just Lego. It’s meant to be rearranged. Business, especially business today, is so much about adapting and growing and evolving. So don’t be afraid to take your Legos apart to make something better. <h3>Principle #6: Your values are a battery</h3> This is about using what matters to you — your family, patriotism, religion, justice, equality, community, whatever it may be — as the energizer. We don’t really have a time management problem as much as an energy management one. Bringing your values to mind will help give you “the strength to do what needs to be done,” as Garrison Keillor said. <h3>Principle #7: Construct your community</h3> This is about finding like-minded people who get what you’re doing, so you can mutually support one another and open up opportunities you didn’t know you had. Even if you’re a disaster, you can create a community and those folks will help you find the doors. Barbara Sher has some really nifty thoughts on this. So … what do you think? Let me know which of these might resonate with you — and if one of them makes you go Ugh, feel free to let me know that as well. At the end of the day, this will very much be about my own beliefs — my values are my battery on this one. But it still definitely interests me to see where folks drop off, as well. Either because I’m not expressing it well or just because I have weird values, who knows. Thank you so much! Really looking forward to this. I’m also looking for stories for the book, so if you know someone who embodies “Business for the rest of us,” drop me a line in the comments or on Twitter. I totally get that I need to check my privilege on this one, I want to include voices who have faced constraints that I’m not facing, so that I can create something of value for as many folks as I can. Thank you all!

The 7 ‘Escape Pod’ Principles (Help Me Write My Book!)

Great content creators are made, not born. It takes a mix of a well-chosen topic, smart content strategy, attention to craft, and lots of personality. Then, as Rosanna Pansino would say, just Put it all together!  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  Ro Pansino’s YouTube cooking show Nerdy Nummies has millions of fans of all ages. Where else are you going to learn how to make Super Mario cake pops?  In this episode, I look into this ultra popular channel to unlock why it works — and I talk about a too-common strategy that works poorly (if ever) in the new world of content. In this 19-minute episode I talk about:  The very meta content strategy you can take away from this particular podcast episode How to choose a content topic that can set you up for success Why “Authority” isn’t about being stiff or formal (actually, just the opposite) Diversifying your business model so you don’t need six million followers to succeed The secret sauce that makes Pansino’s content (and yours!) work The sadly common content model that gets terrible results  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  Rosanna Pansino’s Nerdy Nummies! Ro’s episode with Neil deGrasse Tyson (making a Star Trek Voyager cake) Rae Hoffman’s How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution Brian Clark’s post on meaning and fascination My post on Neil deGrasse Tyson as a marketer of ideas (he has a lot in common with Ro …) Our Digital Commerce Academy has a course on how to create courses — these are among the simplest businesses to set up around a strong content site I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. It’s Things I Love / Things I Hate day!  Today I’m going to talk about a content creator who has created something really nifty, and I’ll try to unpack some of the elements that are making it work. Then I’ll talk about how to Do It Wrong — in a way I see all the time. Starting out with … Nerdy Nummies! This is a YouTube channel featuring Rosanna Pansino. It’s a YouTube cooking show, teaching how to make snacks and treats on different nerdy themes. So if you want to make a Minecraft birthday cake for that special someone? A Harry Potter butterbeer milkshake? Emoji waffles? Pacman popsicles? Ro is the one who’ll show you how. She made a Star Trek Voyager cake with guest Neil deGrasse Tyson. Who was wearing an Occupy Mars t-shirt. Seriously, gang, it doesn’t get more epic than that.  BTW, NDGT is also an epic content marketer of ideas — I wrote about him on Copyblogger, and I’ll give you a link in the show notes. I heart him. First, this is a fantastic idea for a content channel. It’s a cooking show — video tutorials are always going to do well. People like to see how to do stuff.  Then it’s got that niche twist — the “nerdy” theme, that can be taken so many different places. This happens to be a niche that is part of a community — if you think about businesses like ThinkGeek, or RedBubble which makes t-shirts — we have this self-identified community that likes to buy things related to the tribe. It’s an ecosystem. Second, with this kind of “tribe-based” content, Ro Pansino is clearly a member of that tribe. When she shows how to make little Pi pies for pi day, she has that enthusiasm and insider cred that lets the audience think, “This person is like me.” We talk a lot about Authority over on Copyblogger — we named a whole community for it — because it’s such a key concept with content. You have to be the one who stands up and says, “I’m going to teach you something you want to know about.” But sometimes people think “authority” means something stiff or stuffy, when in fact it’s the opposite. The strongest authority comes from someone who looks like you, likes the things you like, shares your values, but knows how to do something you don’t know how to do yet. This is what people miss when they say silly things like “Millennials don’t value authority.” Of course they do — it’s just that their authority looks a little different. If you think about this very podcast — I have this regular section, Things I Like / Things I Hate. That’s a very out-there expression, because at Copyblogger we like to be meta, we love to show you what we’re doing as we do it. But think about that for your audience and your content. The more you write about your take on things — what you love, and possibly what you’re not a fan of, the closer you bring people to you.  It’s memorable. To use Seth Godin’s favorite word, it’s remarkable, it creates conversations, just like I told you just now about the Star Trek Voyager cake with NDGT.  Third, although with 6 million subscribers, she’s probably doing well with advertising, she doesn’t rely on advertising alone to generate revenue. This kind of tutorial content lends itself to affiliate links to the tools and products, and she includes lots of them. She also has a cookbook out, which is kind of neat. With content, for example the professional YouTubers, people sometimes things that ads are the only way to “monetize.” Think business model, rather than monetization. On the web, advertising is a really tough way to make a living until you have monster traffic. Look for another way you can add value that will give a bigger payout. Communities and courses can be really good for this. You have free tutorial content, then you have a private course. At first, think small, rather than some kind of massive comprehensive undertaking. Think a workshop, rather than a university.  Even if the tiniest sliver of your audience goes for it, you’re about 10,000 times ahead of the game over advertising. Fourth, she takes it seriously. She does a good job. The explanations are clear, the videos are well-done. This isn’t thrown together, in fact my guess is that it takes her a lot of time. She publishes weekly, unlike a lot of professional YouTubers who post daily or several times a day. That gives her time to come out with something that’s more evergreen and produced at a higher level. Fifth, and the “secret sauce” that makes it work, she comes to the show with a really strong, well-defined personality. She’s a cute, nerdy 20-something young woman. She’s funny. She’s silly. Her viewers really feel like they know her. I still see way too much content that has all the personality stripped out of it — it’s really hard in the 21st century to make that work. Quit trying to be the Wikipedia of your topic. In fact, that bring me to … Things I Hate! (sadface) This one isn’t really a “hate,” more like I hate to see people waste their time with this kind of content because it’s never going to go anywhere. Fairly regularly on the blog or on Twitter or LinkedIn, we’ll get someone who says, “I’m generating high-quality content and I’m not getting results.” And I click through and see something right out of the content marketing paint-by-numbers manual. I think there are some so-called “gurus” who are teaching this, and it just flat out doesn’t work, and every year it works even worse.  If you have a site like this and it is working, that’s great, but don’t assume it’s going to continue forever. The landscape will catch up with you. These sites work like this:  Keyword phrase URL Dozens or hundreds of generic-looking posts about the keyword phrase No writing voice No distinct opinion Generic site design Ads for things that have nothing to do with the site topic  The site creator might be working hard, but there’s no evidence of any creativity, no personal voice, no connection with the audience, no values,  no spark, no spice. I call this Cream of Wheat content. It’s just a bland, inoffensive mush. These sites are boring. And boring content will kill you. Please remember: You’re never going to be able to beat Wikipedia at the boring, useful content game. They have it sewn up and they probably will forever. If they lose their spot some day … it’s not going to be to you. You cannot be boring and win at content “High-quality” doesn’t only mean factual or useful — it has to be interesting. Now in a very niche topic, you can sometimes get away with boring — but why take that risk? Why not bake some “interesting” in there now, to protect yourself against the scrappy, energetic competitor who’s thinking about your topic right now? The thing about “interesting” is that it always makes the pie bigger. You can have one defined topic, but 10 or 20 or 100 or 5000 different personalities that talk about it. In competitive topics, increasingly I think differentiating by voice and personality is a must-do, especially if you’re not already an authority in the space. One of my longtime favorite posts on this was written by Sugar Rae Hoffman, How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution. This post is nearly nine years old, and she called it then … and it’s still relevant. I’ll get you a link in the show notes. Rae is also a brilliant example of bringing a distinctive voice to her content and her business. She’s not like anyone else … and everything she does shows her personality.  Also relevant is the combination that Brian Clark pointed us to years ago, the combination of meaning and fascination. It has to be useful and interesting. One without the other tends to spin your wheels without ever getting traction. So that’s today’s session — think about what you could learn from Rosanna Pansino about being more interesting, about creating something genuinely memorable. Could you sharpen your topic the way she did, so you really speak within a defined ecosystem? Does your content have personality? Are you taking it seriously and producing something that will endure? That’s today’s mini-rant. Go forth and be interesting! See you next time.  

Great content creators are made, not born. It takes a mix of a well-chosen topic, smart content strategy, attention to craft, and lots of personality. Then, as Rosanna Pansino would say, just Put it all together! <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> Ro Pansino’s YouTube cooking show Nerdy Nummies has millions of fans of all ages. Where else are you going to learn how to make Super Mario cake pops? In this episode, I look into this ultra popular channel to unlock why it works — and I talk about a too-common strategy that works poorly (if ever) in the new world of content. In this 19-minute episode I talk about: <ul> <li>The very meta content strategy you can take away from this particular podcast episode</li> <li>How to choose a content topic that can set you up for success</li> <li>Why “Authority” isn’t about being stiff or formal (actually, just the opposite)</li> <li>Diversifying your business model so you don’t need six million followers to succeed</li> <li>The secret sauce that makes Pansino’s content (and yours!) work</li> <li>The sadly common content model that gets terrible results</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/rfm-pink-060.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>Rosanna Pansino’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/RosannaPansino" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nerdy Nummies!</a></li> <li>Ro’s episode with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1c0exqJ0eQ&amp;list=PLABDF3052CBF1B195&amp;index=63" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Neil deGrasse Tyson</a> (making a Star Trek Voyager cake)</li> <li>Rae Hoffman’s <a href="https://sugarrae.com/affiliate-marketing/how-to-survive-the-affiliate-evolution/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution</a></li> <li>Brian Clark’s post on <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/engaging-content/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">meaning and fascination</a></li> <li>My post on <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/marketing-of-ideas/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Neil deGrasse Tyson as a marketer of ideas</a> (he has a lot in common with Ro …)</li> <li>Our <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/academy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Commerce Academy</a> has a course on how to create courses — these are among the simplest businesses to set up around a strong content site</li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. It’s Things I Love / Things I Hate day! Today I’m going to talk about a content creator who has created something really nifty, and I’ll try to unpack some of the elements that are making it work. Then I’ll talk about how to Do It Wrong — in a way I see all the time. Starting out with … <h3>Nerdy Nummies!</h3> This is a YouTube channel featuring Rosanna Pansino. It’s a YouTube cooking show, teaching how to make snacks and treats on different nerdy themes. So if you want to make a Minecraft birthday cake for that special someone? A Harry Potter butterbeer milkshake? Emoji waffles? Pacman popsicles? Ro is the one who’ll show you how. She made a Star Trek Voyager cake with guest Neil deGrasse Tyson. Who was wearing an Occupy Mars t-shirt. Seriously, gang, it doesn’t get more epic than that. BTW, NDGT is also an epic content marketer of ideas — I wrote about him on Copyblogger, and I’ll give you a link in the show notes. I heart him. First, this is a fantastic idea for a content channel. It’s a cooking show — video tutorials are always going to do well. People like to see how to do stuff. Then it’s got that niche twist — the “nerdy” theme, that can be taken so many different places. This happens to be a niche that is part of a community — if you think about businesses like ThinkGeek, or RedBubble which makes t-shirts — we have this self-identified community that likes to buy things related to the tribe. It’s an ecosystem. Second, with this kind of “tribe-based” content, Ro Pansino is clearly a member of that tribe. When she shows how to make little Pi pies for pi day, she has that enthusiasm and insider cred that lets the audience think, “This person is like me.” We talk a lot about Authority over on Copyblogger — we named a whole community for it — because it’s such a key concept with content. You have to be the one who stands up and says, “I’m going to teach you something you want to know about.” But sometimes people think “authority” means something stiff or stuffy, when in fact it’s the opposite. The strongest authority comes from someone who looks like you, likes the things you like, shares your values, but knows how to do something you don’t know how to do yet. This is what people miss when they say silly things like “Millennials don’t value authority.” Of course they do — it’s just that their authority looks a little different. If you think about this very podcast — I have this regular section, Things I Like / Things I Hate. That’s a very out-there expression, because at Copyblogger we like to be meta, we love to show you what we’re doing as we do it. But think about that for your audience and your content. The more you write about your take on things — what you love, and possibly what you’re not a fan of, the closer you bring people to you. It’s memorable. To use Seth Godin’s favorite word, it’s remarkable, it creates conversations, just like I told you just now about the Star Trek Voyager cake with NDGT. Third, although with 6 million subscribers, she’s probably doing well with advertising, she doesn’t rely on advertising alone to generate revenue. This kind of tutorial content lends itself to affiliate links to the tools and products, and she includes lots of them. She also has a cookbook out, which is kind of neat. With content, for example the professional YouTubers, people sometimes things that ads are the only way to “monetize.” Think business model, rather than monetization. On the web, advertising is a really tough way to make a living until you have monster traffic. Look for another way you can add value that will give a bigger payout. Communities and courses can be really good for this. You have free tutorial content, then you have a private course. At first, think small, rather than some kind of massive comprehensive undertaking. Think a workshop, rather than a university. Even if the tiniest sliver of your audience goes for it, you’re about 10,000 times ahead of the game over advertising. Fourth, she takes it seriously. She does a good job. The explanations are clear, the videos are well-done. This isn’t thrown together, in fact my guess is that it takes her a lot of time. She publishes weekly, unlike a lot of professional YouTubers who post daily or several times a day. That gives her time to come out with something that’s more evergreen and produced at a higher level. Fifth, and the “secret sauce” that makes it work, she comes to the show with a really strong, well-defined personality. She’s a cute, nerdy 20-something young woman. She’s funny. She’s silly. Her viewers really feel like they know her. I still see way too much content that has all the personality stripped out of it — it’s really hard in the 21st century to make that work. Quit trying to be the Wikipedia of your topic. In fact, that bring me to … <h3>Things I Hate! (sadface)</h3> This one isn’t really a “hate,” more like I hate to see people waste their time with this kind of content because it’s never going to go anywhere. Fairly regularly on the blog or on Twitter or LinkedIn, we’ll get someone who says, “I’m generating high-quality content and I’m not getting results.” And I click through and see something right out of the content marketing paint-by-numbers manual. I think there are some so-called “gurus” who are teaching this, and it just flat out doesn’t work, and every year it works even worse. If you have a site like this and it is working, that’s great, but don’t assume it’s going to continue forever. The landscape will catch up with you. These sites work like this: <ul> <li>Keyword phrase URL</li> <li>Dozens or hundreds of generic-looking posts about the keyword phrase</li> <li>No writing voice</li> <li>No distinct opinion</li> <li>Generic site design</li> <li>Ads for things that have nothing to do with the site topic</li> </ul> The site creator might be working hard, but there’s no evidence of any creativity, no personal voice, no connection with the audience, no values, no spark, no spice. I call this Cream of Wheat content. It’s just a bland, inoffensive mush. These sites are boring. And boring content will kill you. Please remember: You’re never going to be able to beat Wikipedia at the boring, useful content game. They have it sewn up and they probably will forever. If they lose their spot some day … it’s not going to be to you. <h3>You cannot be boring and win at content</h3> “High-quality” doesn’t only mean factual or useful — it has to be interesting. Now in a very niche topic, you can sometimes get away with boring — but why take that risk? Why not bake some “interesting” in there now, to protect yourself against the scrappy, energetic competitor who’s thinking about your topic right now? The thing about “interesting” is that it always makes the pie bigger. You can have one defined topic, but 10 or 20 or 100 or 5000 different personalities that talk about it. In competitive topics, increasingly I think differentiating by voice and personality is a must-do, especially if you’re not already an authority in the space. One of my longtime favorite posts on this was written by Sugar Rae Hoffman, How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution. This post is nearly nine years old, and she called it then … and it’s still relevant. I’ll get you a link in the show notes. Rae is also a brilliant example of bringing a distinctive voice to her content and her business. She’s not like anyone else … and everything she does shows her personality. Also relevant is the combination that Brian Clark pointed us to years ago, the combination of meaning and fascination. It has to be useful and interesting. One without the other tends to spin your wheels without ever getting traction. So that’s today’s session — think about what you could learn from Rosanna Pansino about being more interesting, about creating something genuinely memorable. Could you sharpen your topic the way she did, so you really speak within a defined ecosystem? Does your content have personality? Are you taking it seriously and producing something that will endure? That’s today’s mini-rant. Go forth and be interesting! See you next time.

Things I Love / Things I Hate #3: Nerdy Nummies and Crummy Content

Real leadership starts when you step up with the courage to be a category of one.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  I have a short episode for you this week, honoring the life of Prince and opening up some ideas about leadership, about community, and about building something that matters.  Corporate culture (and what to do if you’re stuck in Attack of the Clones) Finding the value in what you do and what you can offer Wrangling the “I’m not talented enough” monster Thoughts on technical excellence and love  If I approached something with that much commitment and passion, what could I become? Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  An epic video of James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Prince onstage together — go view it now, before it gets taken down in the YouTube shuffle A great piece on Prince’s NFL Halftime show, inspiring plus just some great music to listen to. I always love hearing from you and connecting over on Twitter @soniasimone  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. I had a whole episode ready to record for you, and then Prince died, so I wanted to talk about some thoughts that brought up in me, and see if they resonate with you. This one will be short, because I just want to give you some food for thought and then send you out on your week to go do something that matters to you. This is an interesting century This century really does fascinate me, because it’s the century of claiming our own thing. We’ve seen some massive changes globally in terms of rights for people of every sexual orientation. Still people who are not free, but if you compare the situation to ten years ago, which is a historical millisecond, it’s startling. Still work to be done. There are certainly still countries where being out about your sexual orientation is a death sentence for some. Still people who are being devalued for culture or skin color or religion they grew up with or whatever it may be. So I’m not saying it’s utopia. But I do see a lot of movement and a lot of possibilities. Defining ourselves, defining our communities A lot of you know that I spent a significant chunk of time in a normal corporate job. I wasn’t particularly well suited to it — I was good at the work, I wasn’t so good at the culture. I’m an inconvenient person. The words “problem child” come to mind. My brain is weird and I have a tendency to throw a lot of, “Why couldn’t we do this” into the mix. When I work on something, I think about it pretty much all the time.  The bigger the organization, the harder it is to work with that, because there are processes and established ways of doing things, and you can’t just reinvent something every five minutes. I do a lot better in a small organization. The traditional corporate culture, which was invented in the 20th century, was about playing a particular part. You had to look a certain way, dress a certain way, behave a certain way. The show Mad Men, even though it was about the advertising industry which had more leeway, showed this really well, I thought. For all kinds of reasons, the culture is moving away from that, “play the part of the perfect corporate clone.” There are still lots of clone-filled workplaces, but now there are more companies that realize the kind of talent you can attract if you encourage people to bring their true selves to work.  But even if you’re stuck deep in Attack of the Clones, you can step out and make something more real. It might not be a business today. It might be an audience today. It might be a blog paired with a strong social media presence that starts to build your tribe. Suigeneris Invent yourself. Be a category of one. Step up We’re so hard wired to want to be valuable, to contribute meaningfully to our community. To bring something to the group and be valued for that. If you aren’t finding it 9 to 5, get out and make it in another space. You’re good at something. The thing you’re good at might bring a lot of value to someone else. And in fact, it might be the seed of an amazing community that values what you value. I think we get very tied up in “what we’re not good at.” Maybe you’re not good at selling, or managing, or you have the tiniest sliver of free time, or whatever it may be. First, we get good at things with practice. And with a lot of things, you can even practice mentally. If you suck at selling, try listening to marketing podcasts on your commute and making notes on your phone. Take advantage of the little slivers of time. Most people who have a computer have bits of free time we don’t notice because we let them slip away on Facebook or Instagram. If you do any social media or watch any television, you have some time.  Small pieces of time, applied to a problem daily, can create real results. The trick is to get the flywheel moving in the right direction — at a certain point, the momentum will start to give you a major assist. Prince had an enduring legacy because a) he worked his ass off to become incredibly gifted at his craft, b) he defined himself, he didn’t let anyone else define him, and c) he got in the game. He didn’t stay in his room playing guitar, he stepped forward and shared what he had with others. He was recording demos when he was just 17. He actually wrote his first song when he was 7. If Prince’s death moved you, or his life moved you, or anyone out there in life is speaking to your heart, get with it. Go do it. Life is sometimes very short, but we can do something epic while we’re here. I’ll leave you with a fantastic video I found of James Brown jamming with Michael Jackson and with Prince. All three of them are showing up with so much love and also so much technical excellence, which is born of love. Don’t look at this and say, “I’m not that talented, I could never do that” — look at it and ask yourself: If I approached something with that much commitment and passion, what could I become? Take care, all, and see you next week with something a little more “strategic.” 

Real leadership starts when you step up with the courage to be a category of one. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> I have a short episode for you this week, honoring the life of Prince and opening up some ideas about leadership, about community, and about building something that matters. <ul> <li>Corporate culture (and what to do if you’re stuck in Attack of the Clones)</li> <li>Finding the value in what you do and what you can offer</li> <li>Wrangling the “I’m not talented enough” monster</li> <li>Thoughts on technical excellence and love</li> </ul> <blockquote>If I approached something with that much commitment and passion, what could I become?</blockquote> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/rfm-pink-059.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>An epic video of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/this-rare-clip-of-prince-michael-jackson-and-james-brown-onstage-is-amazing_us_57190e08e4b0d912d5fddc4b?" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Prince</a> onstage together — go view it now, before it gets taken down in the YouTube shuffle</li> <li>A great piece on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NN3gsSf-Ys" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Prince’s NFL Halftime show</a>, inspiring plus just some great music to listen to.</li> <li>I always love hearing from you and connecting over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a></li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. I had a whole episode ready to record for you, and then Prince died, so I wanted to talk about some thoughts that brought up in me, and see if they resonate with you. This one will be short, because I just want to give you some food for thought and then send you out on your week to go do something that matters to you. <h3>This is an interesting century</h3> This century really does fascinate me, because it’s the century of claiming our own thing. We’ve seen some massive changes globally in terms of rights for people of every sexual orientation. Still people who are not free, but if you compare the situation to ten years ago, which is a historical millisecond, it’s startling. Still work to be done. There are certainly still countries where being out about your sexual orientation is a death sentence for some. Still people who are being devalued for culture or skin color or religion they grew up with or whatever it may be. So I’m not saying it’s utopia. But I do see a lot of movement and a lot of possibilities. <h3>Defining ourselves, defining our communities</h3> A lot of you know that I spent a significant chunk of time in a normal corporate job. I wasn’t particularly well suited to it — I was good at the work, I wasn’t so good at the culture. I’m an inconvenient person. The words “problem child” come to mind. My brain is weird and I have a tendency to throw a lot of, “Why couldn’t we do this” into the mix. When I work on something, I think about it pretty much all the time. The bigger the organization, the harder it is to work with that, because there are processes and established ways of doing things, and you can’t just reinvent something every five minutes. I do a lot better in a small organization. The traditional corporate culture, which was invented in the 20th century, was about playing a particular part. You had to look a certain way, dress a certain way, behave a certain way. The show Mad Men, even though it was about the advertising industry which had more leeway, showed this really well, I thought. For all kinds of reasons, the culture is moving away from that, “play the part of the perfect corporate clone.” There are still lots of clone-filled workplaces, but now there are more companies that realize the kind of talent you can attract if you encourage people to bring their true selves to work. But even if you’re stuck deep in Attack of the Clones, you can step out and make something more real. It might not be a business today. It might be an audience today. It might be a blog paired with a strong social media presence that starts to build your tribe. <h3>Suigeneris</h3> Invent yourself. Be a category of one. <h3>Step up</h3> We’re so hard wired to want to be valuable, to contribute meaningfully to our community. To bring something to the group and be valued for that. If you aren’t finding it 9 to 5, get out and make it in another space. You’re good at something. The thing you’re good at might bring a lot of value to someone else. And in fact, it might be the seed of an amazing community that values what you value. I think we get very tied up in “what we’re not good at.” Maybe you’re not good at selling, or managing, or you have the tiniest sliver of free time, or whatever it may be. First, we get good at things with practice. And with a lot of things, you can even practice mentally. If you suck at selling, try listening to marketing podcasts on your commute and making notes on your phone. Take advantage of the little slivers of time. Most people who have a computer have bits of free time we don’t notice because we let them slip away on Facebook or Instagram. If you do any social media or watch any television, you have some time. Small pieces of time, applied to a problem daily, can create real results. The trick is to get the flywheel moving in the right direction — at a certain point, the momentum will start to give you a major assist. Prince had an enduring legacy because a) he worked his ass off to become incredibly gifted at his craft, b) he defined himself, he didn’t let anyone else define him, and c) he got in the game. He didn’t stay in his room playing guitar, he stepped forward and shared what he had with others. He was recording demos when he was just 17. He actually wrote his first song when he was 7. If Prince’s death moved you, or his life moved you, or anyone out there in life is speaking to your heart, get with it. Go do it. Life is sometimes very short, but we can do something epic while we’re here. I’ll leave you with a fantastic video I found of James Brown jamming with Michael Jackson and with Prince. All three of them are showing up with so much love and also so much technical excellence, which is born of love. Don’t look at this and say, “I’m not that talented, I could never do that” — look at it and ask yourself: <blockquote>If I approached something with that much commitment and passion, what could I become?</blockquote> Take care, all, and see you next week with something a little more “strategic.”

Leadership, Categories of One, and Purple Rain

Creative productivity is all about habits. Here’s a super quick weekly ritual (you could even do it daily) to have a brilliant week … every week  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  It’s a funny paradox — if you want to be more productive, especially as a creative professional, the best thing you can do for your output is to establish regular rituals. But as busy as we are today, an hour every morning to meditate might not be in the cards. Here’s a six-minute ritual you can do weekly (or daily) to boost your productivity — and your happiness. Drop me a comment if you use any or all of these, and let me know how they work for you! In this 18-minute episode, I talk about:  Four painless steps to put you into a more productive mindset The powerhouse technique (backed by science!) to improve your attitude and energy levels A simple tweak to help you set your priorities — it’s easy and it actually works The one-minute sanity preserver — you can use this any time you’re feeling crummy  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  James Clear’s list of core values (remember, you can adapt or add to these) Useful little productivity book if you like sports analogies and examples: Organize Tomorrow Today My podcast on 2 EQ “Hacks” — for making positive change and handling hurt feelings I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!

Creative productivity is all about habits. Here’s a super quick weekly ritual (you could even do it daily) to have a brilliant week … every week <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> It’s a funny paradox — if you want to be more productive, especially as a creative professional, the best thing you can do for your output is to establish regular rituals. But as busy as we are today, an hour every morning to meditate might not be in the cards. Here’s a six-minute ritual you can do weekly (or daily) to boost your productivity — and your happiness. Drop me a comment if you use any or all of these, and let me know how they work for you! In this 18-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>Four painless steps to put you into a more productive mindset</li> <li>The powerhouse technique (backed by science!) to improve your attitude and energy levels</li> <li>A simple tweak to help you set your priorities — it’s easy and it actually works</li> <li>The one-minute sanity preserver — you can use this any time you’re feeling crummy</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/rfm-pink-058.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>James Clear’s <a href="http://jamesclear.com/core-values" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">list of core values</a> (remember, you can adapt or add to these)</li> <li>Useful little productivity book if you like sports analogies and examples: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24693651-organize-tomorrow-today" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Organize Tomorrow Today</a></li> <li>My podcast on <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/eq-hacks/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">2 EQ “Hacks” — for making positive change and handling hurt feelings</a></li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li></ul>

Make Better Mondays! 6 Minutes to a Happier, More Productive Week

“Help! I have no idea what to write about!” We’ve all been there — and when you produce as much content as the Copyblogger team, keeping the idea stream flowing is a top priority.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  Today, I’ll talk about five practices we use at Copyblogger and Rainmaker to come up with plenty of high-quality ideas. These are the habits and techniques that keep us (more or less) sane in the face of an insane volume of content. I’ll also talk briefly about our community for content marketers, Authority, because we’ll be opening up to new members again soon — but just for a brief period. Let’s get into it! In this 23-minute episode, I talk about:  The one thing you truly have to do if you want a solid stream of workable ideas Some of the ways we manage the idea firehose at Copyblogger The life-changing magic of getting your content organized Finding the right rhythms for your content My favorite quick fix when you need more ideas (or confidence) Serving a larger purpose with your content A massive pile of useful free stuff you can use immediately  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  Get on the wait list to learn about the Authority community and how we help folks get smarter about creating their content Pamela’s post on Creating One Powerful Piece of Content a Week (production schedule and content process) Free My Copyblogger! No, it’s not a political rallying cry, it’s a bunch of nifty free stuff you can use Brian Clark’s A Content Marketing Strategy that Works (free with registration) My podcast on index cards and creative idea capture I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone!  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Today we’re going to talk about how to get ideas for content. I’ll share some of my favorite ideas when I don’t have any ideas, and some of the little tricks or hacks we have at Copyblogger to keep producing so much content. You may know that over on the Copyblogger blog, we’ve got at least one post every weekday at the moment. That number has gone up and down over the years, I think Brian started off with two posts a week.  I also have two podcasts running right now. What the Heck Should I Podcast About is a thing in my life. And then we have a new site over at DigitalCommerce.com, and we’re coming up with ideas for that. And for email sequences. And for product ideas, like new courses to add to the Digital Commerce Institute, as well as some content-focused courses we have in the work. And I’m working on a bang-up keynote for our event in October.  A few words about Authority We also produce four sessions a month in the Authority community. A quick “ad” for that — that’s our community of content marketers, and a lot of my time and creativity are spent there with that group. It’s meant really to answer that question,  What does high quality content mean exactly, and how do I get it created? We have writers, we have business owners, we have digital entrepreneurs, especially folks who run online courses or other kinds of premium content, like ebooks. We also have some folks who run small content “agencies” — basically loose teams of freelance professionals who help folks with their content. And it’s the “continuing education” hub for our Certified Content Marketers, who are writers and content strategists that we actually certify — the editorial team looks closely at their work and says, “Yes, this person is a well-qualified content marketer.”  So you can think of it as, Copyblogger is known for content, and Authority is the “professional upgrade” — the next step to Copyblogger. We also do a lot of community cheering and support. Every month we have a Q&amp;A where we literally do mini-coaching to help people get out of stuck spots. If you want coaching from me, at this point that’s the only way to get it.  Every month we have a mastermind-style “hot seat” where we look deeply at someone’s business and help them see and make critical changes. Everyone in the community really learns from those, they’re some of best-loved content. That’s open on a limited basis, so that we can spend most of our time making great stuff for our members, and a limited amount of time marketing the community to new members. We’re going to be opening that up again soon, so if you want to know when that’s happening, boogie over to Copyblogger and look at that PRODUCTS tab at the top of the page. There’s an option there for Authority, and I’ll also give you a link of course in the show notes. That’s a lot of ideas … That comes down to a lot of ideas coming out of a small editorial team. That’s a lot of creative energy just to get the ideas, before we actually implement them, whether in writing or audio. So over the years, we’ve come up with practices to generate all of the ideas we need. Today I’m going to share 5 of my favorite practices — the ones I’ve relied on for years and years. You can use these for product ideas, posts, podcasts, videos, live talks — you name it. #1: Idea capture and retrieval system Any kind of creative person — and really if you’re going to survive in the 21st century, that’s all professionals — needs to be able to generate creative ideas, which is actually more about capturing and retrieving ideas than it is about coming up with them. You have creative ideas all the time — but they come and go like clouds. You need to be able to catch them as they drift past, then find them again when it’s time to come up with some work. You have to have something with you all the time to capture ideas. I’ve been playing around with my index cards, as I talked about a few weeks ago in a podcast. Then have something in your life that stores all of the ideas. If you like the index card thing, it can be a nice box or a card wallet that holds them. If you’re a more digital sort, there are so many options — you probably already have a solution you use to keep track of notes, like Evernote or Google Docs. Let’s say you need to create a piece of content right now — in the next hour. Something has fallen through, someone called in sick or something. Where do you go to find your ideas that are ready to be developed?  If you know exactly what to do, you’ve got the right system. If you don’t — come up with the answer for that, then enter a few ideas. One thing that can be very useful is to keep ideas in various stages of development in there. For more on that, take a look at Pamela’s post on creating one strong piece of content a week. The stages she outlines can be adapted for pretty much any kind of content. #2: Editorial calendars and content rhythms It surprised me how much getting organized about your content production will make it easier to come up with the ideas you need. I suspect that knowing you’ll be writing, let’s say, a long list post on the third Thursday of every month gets your “background processors” looking for the material for that post, so you notice things when they float past you. Our process includes three elements:  A production schedule — for example, every Wednesday I go to a coffeeshop and write podcast scripts. Every Thursday is a recording day, and I try to schedule any interviews for that day, as well as doing solo recordings. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Friday afternoons are for writing. On Friday we also hold our sessions for Authority. Break this down however it makes sense to you. A publishing schedule — we use an editorial calendar so we always know what’s getting published and when. Every piece of content we’re responsible for producing has a publishing schedule — and obviously this dovetails with a production schedule. So for example, we have folks who work on getting the Copyblogger images created — and they need to have the headline, themes, and some options for quotes by a certain number of days before the post runs. The more people you have, the more essential this becomes — but it’s incredibly helpful even if it’s just you. Publishing rhythms — daily, weekly, and monthly. For many years now, we’ve scheduled our strongest, “chewiest” Copyblogger posts for Wednesdays and Mondays, because those have always been strong traffic days for us. Right now we do “Throwback Thursday” posts, bringing a post forward from the archive. Coming up with these kinds of rhythms makes it so much easier to latch onto a content idea — you’re not looking for “a post,” you’re looking for, let’s say, a “behind the scenes” post, or a “case study” podcast, or a “quick tutorial” video. The more specific you get about the rhythms, the easier it gets to come up with ideas.  #3: Conversations Once you have your processes and your capturing tool in place, you’ll spark a lot of ideas from conversations you have. These can be on social media, phone conversations with other creative people, lunch dates, live events and conferences. I keep index cards on the desk any time I’m doing an interview, either for my own podcast, for some premium content, or for someone else’s show. Because there are always ideas that fly by — and this way I can catch them. #4: Q&amp;As One of my favorite ways to generate ideas is to ask folks to ask me questions. So if you follow me on twitter, you know that from time to time I’ll throw out a request for questions to answer on the podcasts. The Authority community also gives me lots of opportunity to answer questions — and when you start answering questions, you start seeing the themes and issues that people need you to speak to. I’ve said this before, but one of my favorite exercises for any content entrepreneur is to hold a Q&amp;A session. It can be a webinar, a Google Hangout, even an Ask Me Anything on Twitter. It’s particularly helpful to get the questions in advance — if you have an email list, you can just shoot them a message asking them to get questions back to you. This lets you give answers that are more in-depth and informed. #5: Look ahead And finally, if you’re creating content that has a larger purpose — you’re promoting a project, you’re marketing a business, you want to find a new job this year, you’re advocating a political change, whatever — make sure you’re looking ahead at what’s coming up on your calendar. As we have significant events coming up like the re-opening of Authority for new students, or our live event in October, it’s natural for me to weave those into these podcasts.  There’s a real art to getting strategic about this, and no one is smarter about content strategy than Brian Clark. He actually wrote an entire ebook on this, you can snag it for free, along with 14 other titles, by joining our MyCopyblogger marketing library. There’s enough free stuff in there to keep you improving your content marketing for quite awhile.  The easiest way to get rolling is to go to the Copyblogger blog and click the “Get free training” green button near the top right of the site. It’s also in the Products menu at the top of the site, under “Free! My Copyblogger.” You can find that ebook from Brian in the EBOOKS library, it’s called A Content Marketing Strategy that Works. I’ll drop you a link in the show notes if you want to get right to it. From there, you can go onto the aspects of content strategy you need the most help with — so maybe it’s creating content that converts, or specifically landing pages, or search engine optimization, or email marketing, or promoting your content. There’s a lot there that you can make use of — it’s a total of 15 ebooks, each of which will give you a lot of focused advice that you can start putting into place right away.

“Help! I have no idea what to write about!” We’ve all been there — and when you produce as much content as the Copyblogger team, keeping the idea stream flowing is a top priority. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> Today, I’ll talk about five practices we use at Copyblogger and Rainmaker to come up with plenty of high-quality ideas. These are the habits and techniques that keep us (more or less) sane in the face of an insane volume of content. I’ll also talk briefly about our community for content marketers, Authority, because we’ll be opening up to new members again soon — but just for a brief period. Let’s get into it! In this 23-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>The one thing you truly have to do if you want a solid stream of workable ideas</li> <li>Some of the ways we manage the idea firehose at Copyblogger</li> <li>The life-changing magic of getting your content organized</li> <li>Finding the right rhythms for your content</li> <li>My favorite quick fix when you need more ideas (or confidence)</li> <li>Serving a larger purpose with your content</li> <li>A massive pile of useful free stuff you can use immediately</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/rfm-pink-057.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>Get on the wait list to learn about the <a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/authority-opt-in-to-wait-list/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Authority community</a> and how we help folks get smarter about creating their content</li> <li>Pamela’s post on <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/weekly-content-plan/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Creating One Powerful Piece of Content a Week</a> (production schedule and content process)</li> <li><a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/login/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Free My Copyblogger!</a> No, it’s not a political rallying cry, it’s a bunch of nifty free stuff you can use</li> <li>Brian Clark’s <a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/basic/content-that-works-ebook/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Content Marketing Strategy that Works</a> (free with registration)</li> <li>My podcast on <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/creativity-system/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">index cards and creative idea capture</a></li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a>!</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Today we’re going to talk about how to get ideas for content. I’ll share some of my favorite ideas when I don’t have any ideas, and some of the little tricks or hacks we have at Copyblogger to keep producing so much content. You may know that over on the Copyblogger blog, we’ve got at least one post every weekday at the moment. That number has gone up and down over the years, I think Brian started off with two posts a week. I also have two podcasts running right now. What the Heck Should I Podcast About is a thing in my life. And then we have a new site over at <a href="http://DigitalCommerce.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DigitalCommerce.com</a>, and we’re coming up with ideas for that. And for email sequences. And for product ideas, like new courses to add to the Digital Commerce Institute, as well as some content-focused courses we have in the work. And I’m working on a bang-up keynote for our event in October. <h3>A few words about Authority</h3> We also produce four sessions a month in the Authority community. A quick “ad” for that — that’s our community of content marketers, and a lot of my time and creativity are spent there with that group. It’s meant really to answer that question, <blockquote>What does high quality content mean exactly, and how do I get it created?</blockquote> We have writers, we have business owners, we have digital entrepreneurs, especially folks who run online courses or other kinds of premium content, like ebooks. We also have some folks who run small content “agencies” — basically loose teams of freelance professionals who help folks with their content. And it’s the “continuing education” hub for our Certified Content Marketers, who are writers and content strategists that we actually certify — the editorial team looks closely at their work and says, “Yes, this person is a well-qualified content marketer.” So you can think of it as, Copyblogger is known for content, and Authority is the “professional upgrade” — the next step to Copyblogger. We also do a lot of community cheering and support. Every month we have a Q&amp;A where we literally do mini-coaching to help people get out of stuck spots. If you want coaching from me, at this point that’s the only way to get it. Every month we have a mastermind-style “hot seat” where we look deeply at someone’s business and help them see and make critical changes. Everyone in the community really learns from those, they’re some of best-loved content. That’s open on a limited basis, so that we can spend most of our time making great stuff for our members, and a limited amount of time marketing the community to new members. We’re going to be opening that up again soon, so if you want to know when that’s happening, boogie over to Copyblogger and look at that PRODUCTS tab at the top of the page. There’s an option there for Authority, and I’ll also give you a link of course in the show notes. <h3>That’s a lot of ideas …</h3> That comes down to a lot of ideas coming out of a small editorial team. That’s a lot of creative energy just to get the ideas, before we actually implement them, whether in writing or audio. So over the years, we’ve come up with practices to generate all of the ideas we need. Today I’m going to share 5 of my favorite practices — the ones I’ve relied on for years and years. You can use these for product ideas, posts, podcasts, videos, live talks — you name it. <h3>#1: Idea capture and retrieval system</h3> Any kind of creative person — and really if you’re going to survive in the 21st century, that’s all professionals — needs to be able to generate creative ideas, which is actually more about capturing and retrieving ideas than it is about coming up with them. You have creative ideas all the time — but they come and go like clouds. You need to be able to catch them as they drift past, then find them again when it’s time to come up with some work. You have to have something with you all the time to capture ideas. I’ve been playing around with my index cards, as I talked about a few weeks ago in a podcast. Then have something in your life that stores all of the ideas. If you like the index card thing, it can be a nice box or a card wallet that holds them. If you’re a more digital sort, there are so many options — you probably already have a solution you use to keep track of notes, like Evernote or Google Docs. Let’s say you need to create a piece of content right now — in the next hour. Something has fallen through, someone called in sick or something. Where do you go to find your ideas that are ready to be developed? If you know exactly what to do, you’ve got the right system. If you don’t — come up with the answer for that, then enter a few ideas. One thing that can be very useful is to keep ideas in various stages of development in there. For more on that, take a look at Pamela’s post on creating one strong piece of content a week. The stages she outlines can be adapted for pretty much any kind of content. <h3>#2: Editorial calendars and content rhythms</h3> It surprised me how much getting organized about your content production will make it easier to come up with the ideas you need. I suspect that knowing you’ll be writing, let’s say, a long list post on the third Thursday of every month gets your “background processors” looking for the material for that post, so you notice things when they float past you. Our process includes three elements: <ol> <li>A production schedule — for example, every Wednesday I go to a coffeeshop and write podcast scripts. Every Thursday is a recording day, and I try to schedule any interviews for that day, as well as doing solo recordings. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Friday afternoons are for writing. On Friday we also hold our sessions for Authority. Break this down however it makes sense to you.</li> <li>A publishing schedule — we use an editorial calendar so we always know what’s getting published and when. Every piece of content we’re responsible for producing has a publishing schedule — and obviously this dovetails with a production schedule. So for example, we have folks who work on getting the Copyblogger images created — and they need to have the headline, themes, and some options for quotes by a certain number of days before the post runs. The more people you have, the more essential this becomes — but it’s incredibly helpful even if it’s just you.</li> <li>Publishing rhythms — daily, weekly, and monthly. For many years now, we’ve scheduled our strongest, “chewiest” Copyblogger posts for Wednesdays and Mondays, because those have always been strong traffic days for us. Right now we do “Throwback Thursday” posts, bringing a post forward from the archive. Coming up with these kinds of rhythms makes it so much easier to latch onto a content idea — you’re not looking for “a post,” you’re looking for, let’s say, a “behind the scenes” post, or a “case study” podcast, or a “quick tutorial” video. The more specific you get about the rhythms, the easier it gets to come up with ideas.</li> </ol> <h3>#3: Conversations</h3> Once you have your processes and your capturing tool in place, you’ll spark a lot of ideas from conversations you have. These can be on social media, phone conversations with other creative people, lunch dates, live events and conferences. I keep index cards on the desk any time I’m doing an interview, either for my own podcast, for some premium content, or for someone else’s show. Because there are always ideas that fly by — and this way I can catch them. <h3>#4: Q&amp;As</h3> One of my favorite ways to generate ideas is to ask folks to ask me questions. So if you follow me on twitter, you know that from time to time I’ll throw out a request for questions to answer on the podcasts. The Authority community also gives me lots of opportunity to answer questions — and when you start answering questions, you start seeing the themes and issues that people need you to speak to. I’ve said this before, but one of my favorite exercises for any content entrepreneur is to hold a Q&amp;A session. It can be a webinar, a Google Hangout, even an Ask Me Anything on Twitter. It’s particularly helpful to get the questions in advance — if you have an email list, you can just shoot them a message asking them to get questions back to you. This lets you give answers that are more in-depth and informed. <h3>#5: Look ahead</h3> And finally, if you’re creating content that has a larger purpose — you’re promoting a project, you’re marketing a business, you want to find a new job this year, you’re advocating a political change, whatever — make sure you’re looking ahead at what’s coming up on your calendar. As we have significant events coming up like the re-opening of Authority for new students, or our live event in October, it’s natural for me to weave those into these podcasts. There’s a real art to getting strategic about this, and no one is smarter about content strategy than Brian Clark. He actually wrote an entire ebook on this, you can snag it for free, along with 14 other titles, by joining our MyCopyblogger marketing library. There’s enough free stuff in there to keep you improving your content marketing for quite awhile. The easiest way to get rolling is to go to the Copyblogger blog and click the “Get free training” green button near the top right of the site. It’s also in the Products menu at the top of the site, under “Free! My Copyblogger.” You can find that ebook from Brian in the EBOOKS library, it’s called <a href="http://my.copyblogger.com/basic/content-that-works-ebook/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Content Marketing Strategy that Works</a>. I’ll drop you a link in the show notes if you want to get right to it. From there, you can go onto the aspects of content strategy you need the most help with — so maybe it’s creating content that converts, or specifically landing pages, or search engine optimization, or email marketing, or promoting your content. There’s a lot there that you can make use of — it’s a total of 15 ebooks, each of which will give you a lot of focused advice that you can start putting into place right away.

5 Idea-Generating Techniques We Use on the Copyblogger Team

Blogging isn’t the only game in town any more for content marketers. Podcasts are super popular as the new “do-it-yourself” content format. So which works better, and why?  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  Today’s content marketing question: Should I blog or should I podcast? Or maybe I should be doing video? Or all three? Or do I even need a site at all, particularly if I don’t work for myself? Let’s get into it! In this 25-minute episode, I talk about:  An important housekeeping note about this podcast Why I think every professional in the 21st century needs their own individual website The “60s band name” technique for finding a good domain (especially if your real name is taken) The 5 questions to ask when you’re figuring out what kind of content to produce The audio advantage for “Personality Projects” SEO considerations to keep in mind when deciding whether to blog or podcast The quick but essential step you must take if you offer transcripts  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  My Digital Sharecropping post — why you don’t want to “build on rented land” Rainmaker Platform Our friend, “nicest guy on the web” Darren Rowse The Showrunner podcast (essential listening if you want to start a podcast!) We also offer a podcasting course if you need help getting rolling.Copyblogger‘s still the best spot to find my longer writing And Digital Commerce Institute is going to be the other best spot to find my longer writing I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. First off, I want to let you know that the podcast will be moving house shortly — I’m going to start hosting it on my longtime personal blog, which lights the fire I’ve been needing to get that moved to Rainmaker platform. The automagical URL will still forward, pinkhairedmarketer.fm will whisk you to the right place, and I’ll keep you updated on how you can make sure you get all of the episodes. I’m going to try not to miss a week, but we’ll see how that works!  Today, because we’ve been awfully airy-fairy for awhile, I’m going to talk about a very pragmatic content strategy question — Do I still need a blog? Or should it be a podcast? Or do I even need a site at all? As you know, on Copyblogger and RainmakerFM and Rainmaker Digital, we’ve been all about the podcast this last year. Maybe it’s a good thing blogger is right there in the name of Copyblogger, because you might think we don’t think blogs are cool any more. But we totally still love blogs — they just aren’t the only option any more. Today I’m going to talk about how to decide whether you should have a blog or a podcast — or even, dare I say it, both. Why everyone needs a content site First, let’s talk about those of you who aren’t business owners.  You may be a freelancer (in which case you’re a business owner, but for some reason, some freelancers don’t think of themselves this way). You may also be an employee, which is totally legit and cool. There are many great things that are done by employees. So if you’re an employee of any stripe, or you’re a student and you’re not in the working world yet, should you have your own blog or podcast? My answer to this one is: Absolutely. First: If you can get the domain for your name, go grab it. Like, now. Some of us have names where this is in the realm of possibility, and some don’t. If you don’t, you can go with something like “TheJohnSmith,” or “TheBestJohnSmith,” play around with it.  Or you can come up with a short phrase that you feel embodies who you are. “Remarkable communication” was the phrase I found — Brian Clark makes fun of it for being long, which it is. Brian makes fun of me for all kinds of things. Think about sites like Neatorama — great name, memorable, but doesn’t pin you down. Made-up words are great when they’re evocative and easy to remember. They’re not so good when they are hard to pronounce or have some kind of unpleasant association. I wouldn’t go with Poomeister.com.  Or you can go with that old trick, I feel like Seth Godin recommended this way long ago, of a color or a fruit plus a random concrete noun. This is also known as the 60s band name technique. I just made that label up. Blueberry Coffee, Sepia Martini, Pink Fedora, Tangerine Jalopy, I don’t know. These have the advantage of being easy to visualize so they’re somewhat more memorable than just something bland like HighValueCopywriter.  The more senses you can pack in there, the better, because memory is strengthened by multiple senses. So if something has a familiar smell, like coffee or coconut, that can be an advantage. I think in 2016 it’s ok to go with something that isn’t the dot-com. Dot-com is great if you can get it, but if there’s another top-level domain that you can make something nifty with, a dot-ly or a dot-fm or whatever, I think it’s fine. Make it memorable and make it really easy to say.  And they can mean anything, so they have that potential to evolve with you. Maybe when you’re 50 you’re going to want to be known for interpretive dance. You don’t know. So it’s nice to have something with some flexibility. Put it on your own domain Another thing I always want to hammer home is, you want to have some critical mass of interesting and useful content on your own domain. Digital sharecropping. So your ninja ability might be tutorial videos, and you might develop an amazing YouTube channel. Which is great. Some people are doing unbelievable stuff on YouTube. But I also want to make sure you have some significant amount of extremely excellent content on your own domain. If Rainmaker platform is something that would work for you, it lets you add a few sexy bells and whistles like a members-only area, which is a much more nifty way to deliver content to an email list. OK, with that out of the way, let’s talk about how you make that decision, let’s say, should I have a blog or a podcast? Factor #1: Are you a writer? I think you guys know that I’m not a fan of the whole idea that you have some set of preordained talents, and that’s it forever. So I don’t buy into the “you’re born a writer or you aren’t” thing. I don’t think it’s supported by the evidence. If you want to be a writer, and you’re willing to do a lot of writing, I think you can be a writer. But. Some people love to write, and some people super do not love it. Also, some of you make a living, in whole or in part, as writers, and some of you don’t. And that’s pretty important. If it’s an important part of your identity — particularly your professional identity — that you’re a writer, then you need to blog. You need to be creating words as text in a place where people can see what your writing looks like. If you write for a living, start a blog, and put your best writing there. If you’re a freelancer, you may need to work this into any contracts you have with clients, allowing you to include writing you do for them in your portfolio on your site. Normally unless it’s a super-secret ghostwriting type of gig, that will be fine. Factor #2: How much time do you have? This next one is related to Factor #1, but for most people, podcasting is a faster way to create content. So if you’re short on time, it can be a good way to go. If you’re me, this doesn’t hold up, because basically every podcast is a piece of writing. I script out about 80+ % of what I’ll say, with room to riff here and there.  Remember that you also need to account for production time — audio editing, putting music on if that’s a thing, and coordinating if you’re going to have your episodes transcribed. Even so, for a lot of folks, audio is faster. So if that’s a factor for you, all things being equal, it’s something to consider. Factor #3: Is this a Personality Project? As I talked about a few weeks ago in my “Things I Love / Things I Hate about Fitness Marketing” podcast, some businesses are built around one strong personality, and some are built more around an idea. If the business or project you’re promoting is one that’s based on an individual, it can be very useful to have the literal voice of that individual as a key element of your content. I’ve found audio content to be the single best format if what you want to do is form a relationship with your audience. You’re literally speaking into their ear — it’s so intimate. If you’re a very solid writer, you may be able to get there with text on the screen, but it’s not easy to do. So if your business is you — or that project or business for a client — consider at least adding some audio into the content mix. Of course there’s also video content, which works really well for a lot of folks. I don’t love it as a content producer for two reasons: 1) The prep time is so much more than it is for audio, given that let’s face it, we’re lucky if I put pants on before 3 pm, and 2) I don’t personally watch much online video because it takes a lot of time. With audio, I can be filing or taking a walk or driving to an appointment or putting some pants on, and the audio can just come along with me.  And frankly 3) I prefer to preserve my own delusions about what I look like.  But that’s my bias — there’s no shortage of people who love video, and if you’re interested in producing it, don’t let me deter you. At some point I’m sure I’ll get my video act together — a lot of my video-producing friends have been giving me a hard time about it. We’ll see. Factor #4: Which one do you love? That third point is kind of sliding into this fourth one — which one do you think you would actually enjoy creating over the long haul? I do a lot of text and I also create a lot of audio because I really enjoy both processes. I don’t do video because I don’t enjoy doing it.  Content marketing is a long game. It takes time to get found, time to build your audience, time to build a network of content publishers. So if you don’t like it, that time is going to weigh heavily.  What you actually want to do needs to be a big factor, especially because if you like it, you’ll be better able to be consistent with it. Factor #5: Search This is the very last point I’ll mention, which is that for now, search engines will have a lot easier time finding your text content than they will your audio content. You can absolutely mitigate that by providing a transcript, if that’s in your budget and you’re willing to do the coordination.  If you do them, I really think it’s a major plus to edit them at least lightly before you post them.  Otherwise you can end up with unintentionally hilarious things like the time our transcriber turned Darren Rowse, of Problogger’s, “readers” into “raters,” I think she thought he meant folks leaving ratings. It actually made sense in context, but, you know, wrong. Small and totally understandable errors like this can completely change the meaning of your words, so if you’re hiring a transcriber, you really want to at least give it a read-through and make sure nothing’s hiding in there. You don’t necessarily have to choose Keep in mind that you can absolutely host podcasts, or audio posts if you prefer that term, on your blog — Rainmaker is designed to make that simple. So you can have an audio channel and a text channel, like we now do on Copyblogger. Or you can just have some of your posts be text and some audio — we had to go to a separate channel on Copyblogger because there was such an insane amount of audio, but you probably won’t have that issue. This works particularly well, for those of you who aren’t sure you want to commit to a podcast, for a podcast series. People often don’t think of that — they think that they’re signing up to do an episode a week forever. That’s too daunting, you’ll never get started. Try a series first. You don’t have to have Rainmaker to do it — RM just makes it simple. But you can totally create blog posts or pages that have podcast episodes.  You can even turn your series into a product when the series is finished, and either charge money for it or put it into your members-only area as a bonus for folks who sign up for your email list. That mixed content model is the one I think I’ll go with for my personal site — these podcasts will be hosted there, but I’ll also probably have some short, punchy text posts and things like announcements for speaking appearances, pointers to other content I think is excellent, that kind of thing.  Right now it’s still an amorphous collection of ideas, so you get to come along with me and see what I do with it. For long-form text content from me, Copyblogger and also the Rainmaker Digital sites are where it’s at for me — those are my primary content homes. But waking Remarkable Communication back up will let me goof around with some personal ideas and give me a sandbox to try some things out.

Blogging isn’t the only game in town any more for content marketers. Podcasts are super popular as the new “do-it-yourself” content format. So which works better, and why? <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> Today’s content marketing question: Should I blog or should I podcast? Or maybe I should be doing video? Or all three? Or do I even need a site at all, particularly if I don’t work for myself? Let’s get into it! In this 25-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>An important housekeeping note about this podcast</li> <li>Why I think every professional in the 21st century needs their own individual website</li> <li>The “60s band name” technique for finding a good domain (especially if your real name is taken)</li> <li>The 5 questions to ask when you’re figuring out what kind of content to produce</li> <li>The audio advantage for “Personality Projects”</li> <li>SEO considerations to keep in mind when deciding whether to blog or podcast</li> <li>The quick but essential step you must take if you offer transcripts</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/rfm-pink-056.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>My <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/digital-sharecropping/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Sharecropping</a> post — why you don’t want to “build on rented land”</li> <li><a href="http://rainmakerplatform.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker Platform</a></li> <li>Our friend, <a href="http://digital-photography-school.com/about-digital-photography-school/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“nicest guy on the web” Darren Rowse</a></li> <li>The <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/showrunner/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Showrunner podcast</a> (essential listening if you want to start a podcast!)</li> <li>We also offer a <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/showrunner/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">podcasting course</a> if you need help getting rolling. </li><li><a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/author/sonia/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Copyblogger</a>‘s still the best spot to find my longer writing</li> <li>And <a href="http://digitalcommerce.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Commerce Institute</a> is going to be the other best spot to find my longer writing</li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a></li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. First off, I want to let you know that the podcast will be moving house shortly — I’m going to start hosting it on my longtime personal blog, which lights the fire I’ve been needing to get that moved to Rainmaker platform. The automagical URL will still forward, <a href="http://pinkhairedmarketer.fm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">pinkhairedmarketer.fm</a> will whisk you to the right place, and I’ll keep you updated on how you can make sure you get all of the episodes. I’m going to try not to miss a week, but we’ll see how that works! Today, because we’ve been awfully airy-fairy for awhile, I’m going to talk about a very pragmatic content strategy question — Do I still need a blog? Or should it be a podcast? Or do I even need a site at all? As you know, on Copyblogger and RainmakerFM and Rainmaker Digital, we’ve been all about the podcast this last year. Maybe it’s a good thing blogger is right there in the name of Copyblogger, because you might think we don’t think blogs are cool any more. But we totally still love blogs — they just aren’t the only option any more. Today I’m going to talk about how to decide whether you should have a blog or a podcast — or even, dare I say it, both. <h3>Why everyone needs a content site</h3> First, let’s talk about those of you who aren’t business owners. You may be a freelancer (in which case you’re a business owner, but for some reason, some freelancers don’t think of themselves this way). You may also be an employee, which is totally legit and cool. There are many great things that are done by employees. So if you’re an employee of any stripe, or you’re a student and you’re not in the working world yet, should you have your own blog or podcast? My answer to this one is: Absolutely. First: If you can get the domain for your name, go grab it. Like, now. Some of us have names where this is in the realm of possibility, and some don’t. If you don’t, you can go with something like “TheJohnSmith,” or “TheBestJohnSmith,” play around with it. Or you can come up with a short phrase that you feel embodies who you are. “Remarkable communication” was the phrase I found — Brian Clark makes fun of it for being long, which it is. Brian makes fun of me for all kinds of things. Think about sites like Neatorama — great name, memorable, but doesn’t pin you down. Made-up words are great when they’re evocative and easy to remember. They’re not so good when they are hard to pronounce or have some kind of unpleasant association. I wouldn’t go with <a href="http://Poomeister.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Poomeister.com</a>. Or you can go with that old trick, I feel like Seth Godin recommended this way long ago, of a color or a fruit plus a random concrete noun. This is also known as the 60s band name technique. I just made that label up. Blueberry Coffee, Sepia Martini, Pink Fedora, Tangerine Jalopy, I don’t know. These have the advantage of being easy to visualize so they’re somewhat more memorable than just something bland like HighValueCopywriter. The more senses you can pack in there, the better, because memory is strengthened by multiple senses. So if something has a familiar smell, like coffee or coconut, that can be an advantage. I think in 2016 it’s ok to go with something that isn’t the dot-com. Dot-com is great if you can get it, but if there’s another top-level domain that you can make something nifty with, a dot-ly or a dot-fm or whatever, I think it’s fine. Make it memorable and make it really easy to say. And they can mean anything, so they have that potential to evolve with you. Maybe when you’re 50 you’re going to want to be known for interpretive dance. You don’t know. So it’s nice to have something with some flexibility. <h3>Put it on your own domain</h3> Another thing I always want to hammer home is, you want to have some critical mass of interesting and useful content on your own domain. Digital sharecropping. So your ninja ability might be tutorial videos, and you might develop an amazing YouTube channel. Which is great. Some people are doing unbelievable stuff on YouTube. But I also want to make sure you have some significant amount of extremely excellent content on your own domain. If Rainmaker platform is something that would work for you, it lets you add a few sexy bells and whistles like a members-only area, which is a much more nifty way to deliver content to an email list. OK, with that out of the way, let’s talk about how you make that decision, let’s say, should I have a blog or a podcast? <h3>Factor #1: Are you a writer?</h3> I think you guys know that I’m not a fan of the whole idea that you have some set of preordained talents, and that’s it forever. So I don’t buy into the “you’re born a writer or you aren’t” thing. I don’t think it’s supported by the evidence. If you want to be a writer, and you’re willing to do a lot of writing, I think you can be a writer. But. Some people love to write, and some people super do not love it. Also, some of you make a living, in whole or in part, as writers, and some of you don’t. And that’s pretty important. If it’s an important part of your identity — particularly your professional identity — that you’re a writer, then you need to blog. You need to be creating words as text in a place where people can see what your writing looks like. If you write for a living, start a blog, and put your best writing there. If you’re a freelancer, you may need to work this into any contracts you have with clients, allowing you to include writing you do for them in your portfolio on your site. Normally unless it’s a super-secret ghostwriting type of gig, that will be fine. <h3>Factor #2: How much time do you have?</h3> This next one is related to Factor #1, but for most people, podcasting is a faster way to create content. So if you’re short on time, it can be a good way to go. If you’re me, this doesn’t hold up, because basically every podcast is a piece of writing. I script out about 80+ % of what I’ll say, with room to riff here and there. Remember that you also need to account for production time — audio editing, putting music on if that’s a thing, and coordinating if you’re going to have your episodes transcribed. Even so, for a lot of folks, audio is faster. So if that’s a factor for you, all things being equal, it’s something to consider. <h3>Factor #3: Is this a Personality Project?</h3> As I talked about a few weeks ago in my “Things I Love / Things I Hate about Fitness Marketing” podcast, some businesses are built around one strong personality, and some are built more around an idea. If the business or project you’re promoting is one that’s based on an individual, it can be very useful to have the literal voice of that individual as a key element of your content. I’ve found audio content to be the single best format if what you want to do is form a relationship with your audience. You’re literally speaking into their ear — it’s so intimate. If you’re a very solid writer, you may be able to get there with text on the screen, but it’s not easy to do. So if your business is you — or that project or business for a client — consider at least adding some audio into the content mix. Of course there’s also video content, which works really well for a lot of folks. I don’t love it as a content producer for two reasons: 1) The prep time is so much more than it is for audio, given that let’s face it, we’re lucky if I put pants on before 3 pm, and 2) I don’t personally watch much online video because it takes a lot of time. With audio, I can be filing or taking a walk or driving to an appointment or putting some pants on, and the audio can just come along with me. And frankly 3) I prefer to preserve my own delusions about what I look like. But that’s my bias — there’s no shortage of people who love video, and if you’re interested in producing it, don’t let me deter you. At some point I’m sure I’ll get my video act together — a lot of my video-producing friends have been giving me a hard time about it. We’ll see. <h3>Factor #4: Which one do you love?</h3> That third point is kind of sliding into this fourth one — which one do you think you would actually enjoy creating over the long haul? I do a lot of text and I also create a lot of audio because I really enjoy both processes. I don’t do video because I don’t enjoy doing it. Content marketing is a long game. It takes time to get found, time to build your audience, time to build a network of content publishers. So if you don’t like it, that time is going to weigh heavily. What you actually want to do needs to be a big factor, especially because if you like it, you’ll be better able to be consistent with it. <h3>Factor #5: Search</h3> This is the very last point I’ll mention, which is that for now, search engines will have a lot easier time finding your text content than they will your audio content. You can absolutely mitigate that by providing a transcript, if that’s in your budget and you’re willing to do the coordination. If you do them, I really think it’s a major plus to edit them at least lightly before you post them. Otherwise you can end up with unintentionally hilarious things like the time our transcriber turned Darren Rowse, of Problogger’s, “readers” into “raters,” I think she thought he meant folks leaving ratings. It actually made sense in context, but, you know, wrong. Small and totally understandable errors like this can completely change the meaning of your words, so if you’re hiring a transcriber, you really want to at least give it a read-through and make sure nothing’s hiding in there. <h3>You don’t necessarily have to choose</h3> Keep in mind that you can absolutely host podcasts, or audio posts if you prefer that term, on your blog — Rainmaker is designed to make that simple. So you can have an audio channel and a text channel, like we now do on Copyblogger. Or you can just have some of your posts be text and some audio — we had to go to a separate channel on Copyblogger because there was such an insane amount of audio, but you probably won’t have that issue. This works particularly well, for those of you who aren’t sure you want to commit to a podcast, for a podcast series. People often don’t think of that — they think that they’re signing up to do an episode a week forever. That’s too daunting, you’ll never get started. Try a series first. You don’t have to have Rainmaker to do it — RM just makes it simple. But you can totally create blog posts or pages that have podcast episodes. You can even turn your series into a product when the series is finished, and either charge money for it or put it into your members-only area as a bonus for folks who sign up for your email list. That mixed content model is the one I think I’ll go with for my personal site — these podcasts will be hosted there, but I’ll also probably have some short, punchy text posts and things like announcements for speaking appearances, pointers to other content I think is excellent, that kind of thing. Right now it’s still an amorphous collection of ideas, so you get to come along with me and see what I do with it. For long-form text content from me, Copyblogger and also the Rainmaker Digital sites are where it’s at for me — those are my primary content homes. But waking Remarkable Communication back up will let me goof around with some personal ideas and give me a sandbox to try some things out.

Blog or Podcast? 5 Questions to Help You Decide

Today, two techniques that can boost your “EQ” (emotional intelligence) and help you be a happier, more productive person.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  Today I have two techniques for you — a new, research-based “hack” that looks interesting for improving our ability to make positive changes, and an approach I’ve used for a long time to constructively handle emotionally sticky situations. Also,  note that there’s a bonus technique in the transcript below! Look for the header: Bonus Technique all the way at the bottom of the transcript. In this 25-minute episode, I talk about:  A super quick technique to improve your motivation for positive habit change The first thing to do when your feelings get hurt Why you might not want to develop a “thick skin” 3 steps to feeling better when you’re feeling like a loser My favorite 20-minute cure for the “I suck” blues  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  Dr. Kelly McGonigal, who pointed me to the University of Michigan study about values and habit change McGonigal’s popular TED Talk on How to Make Stress Your Friend The study mentioned in the podcast: Self-affirmation alters the brain s response to health messages and subsequent behavior change (Note that “self-affirmation” isn’t the same technique as self help affirmations) A list of common human values — this one’s from James Clear My creative index card system podcast Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism (a resource for the bonus technique — see the transcript below for more details) I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter @soniasimone  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Today I have a couple of thoughts on a couple of suggestions to boost your EQ. This is a relatively new term, Emotional Intelligence, it’s about being smart or wise in ways that aren’t the more traditional IQ. One of the things we know from all of the new neuroscience research is that the kinds of cognition we call “emotions” are an essential part of our thinking. We imagine that we are rational creatures, but first and foremost our thinking is emotional. Getting more skillful with your EQ will help you with everything in your life. Your work, your family, your relationship to yourself, your hopes, your dreams, the whole shebang.  I have two thoughts on this today. One is new to me, it’s a research-based idea I found on driving habit change. The other is a collection of habits that I use to manage a sticky emotional situation that comes up for nearly all of us sometimes. A research-based hack for making healthy changes The first point comes to me from Dr. Kelly McGonigal, who wrote a book called The Upside of Stress, she has a super popular TED talk, and who’s also a featured speaker in an online course that I’m attending at the moment. She cites a recent study from the University of Michigan — I’m working on tracking down a link for you — about personal values and habit change. I’ll summarize the study in very, very broad strokes:  The study looked at folks who were extremely sedentary. The researchers gave these folks simple advice about starting to move more — the usual things about finding a parking spot further away, taking a flight of stairs once a day, we’ve all heard these. Then they put accelerometers on them, which are fancy pedometers basically. They sent a daily text with a reminder about one of those movement tips, and watched what happened. There was a control group, who were just given the advice and the daily reminders. And then there was a group who, before they got the advice, were just asked to look at a list of common human values and pick one that was important to them, then think about it for a minute. These values are things like: Family, Autonomy, Faith, Justice, Service, Stability, Learning, Love. What matters to you the most, when push comes to shove. So, one group of subjects chose a word that was important to them, and then they just thought about why for a minute. That value was just brought into their awareness. This group also got a text before the daily tip that said, “Your value was: Respect. Take a moment now to think about why that’s important to you.” So when they ran the study and looked at the results — and again, I’m paraphrasing wildly from someone else’s description, so I’ll try to find a specific link for you — the folks who had been asked to think briefly about their values before the specific advice about change had very, very significantly better results.  Here’s what I found ultra interesting: The study did not ask them to make the connection. They didn’t say, “Think about how taking the stairs before lunch will help you with your core value of Respect.” They didn’t ask the participants to connect the dots.  They just asked the participants to reflect for a moment about a value that mattered to them — and this seemed to make people more receptive to hearing and acting on all of that wonderful advice out there on making positive change in our lives.  Here’s what I’m going to try: I’m going to get my index cards, like I talked about in my podcast two weeks ago and write one word on a nice pretty pink card. Still thinking about what that word will be, but it will probably be some variant on Love — Closeness or Family Connection or something.  I don’t think we need to get super gummed up in The One Perfect Word with this. I suspect this will work with any phrase or word that has a significant emotional impact on your life and that matters a lot to you.  Then my plan is just to look at it once or twice during the day, and spend maybe a minute or even less remembering why it matters. I think it’s probably important to figure out how to get this in front of your face occasionally, but not all the time. So you don’t want a post-it that you see every hour of your workday, because you will instantly go blind to it. But a calendar reminder once a day might work nicely. Or a physical thing like a card tucked into something you look at once or twice.  Even better would be a way to send yourself that message maybe once a day but at random times. If anyone has a good suggestion for that, let me know in the comments! I don’t think predictability is your friend here — you want it to pop up at various times so you don’t just get into an “oh yeah, that again” habit of dismissing it before you’ve taken the few seconds to really think about it. What I’d like to look at in this experiment is, would this practice improve my energy level to do the good stuff that I know I want to do, but sometimes that in the moment doesn’t look as enticing as some tempting distraction. I’ll let you know if anything super interesting happens, and I hope you’ll let me know if you try it out! Handling Hurt-Feelingathons Second thing I want to talk about today is also in the realm of EQ, emotional intelligence, and that’s how we handle our hurt feelings, especially in the online space, as it’s so easy to mis-step here. All people who aren’t sociopaths get their feelings hurt sometimes, although not everyone shows it. And you’ve probably noticed from your own life that when your feelings get hurt, your IQ drops about 30 points and your ability to make good judgments goes straight into the toilet. When do we get our feelings hurt? If you’re thin-skinned like I am, it happens all the time.  It can be an offhand remark someone makes that was maybe not phrased perfectly. Of course, it can happen when someone we care about says something difficult to us — maybe we deserve it or maybe we don’t, but either way the hurt feelings come up.  I happen to be a person whose feelings can be hurt by trolls. Some stranger says something evil to me online and I can feel pretty terrible. You can say that’s silly, or “don’t listen to those people,” but that’s not an option for me, and I’m ok with that. I’m also a person who can come out of a very constructive conversation about a challenging issue, and still have some hurt feelings. It’s just some of my stuff that I need to own, and it’s probably a reason that meditation practice is so important to me — I need a way of working with those emotions in a useful way. A permission slip First and foremost, I want to give you permission to have hurt feelings. If it’s how you feel, then it’s how you feel. The worst thing you can do — ask me how I know — is to kick yourself for how you feel. It’s not going to improve matters at all.  If your feelings are hurt, you have to be willing to say,  OK, I feel like crap right now. It’s painful. This sucks. I would really like to crawl under the table with a blankie and two packs of Girl Scout Cookies and come out some time in August. We have such a “toughen up” culture. Such a culture of “you have to develop a thick skin.”  I’m giving you permission not to, if that’s not who you are. Thin skin has its advantages. If you are thin-skinned and you develop good habits of behavior control, you are going to be kind. You are going to think before you act. You’re going to develop some powerful strengths. No matter how bad you feel, you can control your reactive behavior. And that’s what we’re going to focus on. 3 quick steps to move through hurt feelings Almost everyone — you see this in small kids — has an initial desire to hit back when their feelings get hurt. Being in pain makes us angry, and we want revenge.  Someone calls us an unflattering name, and we start to develop elaborate fantasies about dropping a house on them. Maybe that last one is just me.  #1: Pause So the first habit you want to cultivate is: When your feelings are hurt, STOP. Get offline, get off your email, don’t text, don’t call. That first hour is when we tend to get all Unabomber on whoever hurt us, so take yourself out of the danger zone for that hour or two. What should we do in this pause? Feel what we’re feeling. If you want to wallow a little, I think that’s fine actually. Nurse your hurt feeling. Pout if you need to. The point of the pause is: Pouting is private time. If you get on Facebook and let it all hang out there, that’s not going to serve you well.  If you’ve ever had small kids in your life, again, they’re very instructive. They get hurt and they wail. A scrape produces a vocalization like they just broke both arms and both legs.  And then it’s done, and in two minutes they’re back to what they’re doing. Five minutes if it’s a more sensitive kid — but they feel the hurt very fully, and once they have, it loses its power.  There’s a clue there. Try to squish the feeling down and it will seep out and poison everything. Feel it fully, let it be intense, and then stay mindful as it dissipates and leaves. Remember I mentioned meditation? It’s very useful for this. Meditation is just practice in watching thoughts and feelings come and go. Another thing to do during the pause is go for a walk. All of those angry brain chemicals are flooding your system and they need something to do. Fight or flight. Doing something physical will give that chemical state a reason for being. If you’re a runner, that’s probably even better.  But don’t do any kind of exercise where you can get hurt if you’re distracted. You’ll feel like it’s time to try for that triple-bodyweight deadlift, or see if you can swing the 108-pound kettlebell, but I don’t recommend it. #2: Write it down Now, if we’re just talking about an online troll who made some kind of rude remark, #1 is probably sufficient. Depending on how hurt you are. But some wounds go deeper, so if you still need to work on the ache,  here’s what works for me. After the pause, I find it’s super useful to journal what’s going on. What happened, who said what, why you think it came up, etc. You probably won’t come up with amazing insights here. You’re still mad and still somewhat hijacked. But again, it’s a way to acknowledge how you’re feeling and get it expressed. Sometimes these are valuable to go over later on, when you’ve cooled down. If you’re a journaling type person, one tip my dad taught me that I adhere to strictly is, Your journal is just for you. It’s where you get to be unfair, unreasonable, mean, petty, embarrassing. This is an extension of, Pouting is private time. Don’t show your journal to other people.  Now before you move to Step 3, make sure you don’t need more pause time. Give the event enough space and fresh air so that you can start to see it objectively.  This can be an hour or a day or sometimes somewhat longer. Make sure you’re pausing long enough that you can bring your rational brain onboard, and you’re not still working right from fight or flight. #3: Are there adjustments you could make? Once you feel like you have a cerebral cortex again, that’s the time to decide what, if anything, you’ll do about the situation.  Could you come up with a better way to handle the household chores with your partner? Could you ask your boss for specific behavior changes you could make to be better aligned with her expectations? Could you let your friend know that being teased is really hard for you to take?  You get the idea. Now’s the time to come up with a plan for what action you can take to make things better going forward. We don’t get to control other people. The only thing we can ever really change is our own behavior. 20 minutes to beat the “I suck” blues Another technique that always helps me tremendously is, if I’m having those “I suck, I’m a loser” thoughts, to spend about 20 minutes doing something I’m good at. For me, it’s often writing, or it might be something like a Q&amp;A call, where I can help someone with an issue and get them “unstuck” from what’s keeping them from moving forward. It might be work-related, but it doesn’t need to be — just 20 minutes (you can set a timer) of some kind of focused activity that you really are good at. It’s helpful if it’s an activity that brings something positive into the world, but that’s optional. If it’s a killer racquetball game or some perfectly executed kettlebell swings, that can work just fine. I wonder, too, if our values exercise from the first section wouldn’t come in handy here. Maybe before our action plan. Worth a try. So that’s it, two EQ “hacks” — I don’t know if it’s accurate to call them hacks, I’m probably being click-baity there. But two techniques for you to build your emotional intelligence, make good changes, have great relationships, and be a happier human who’s doing the things you want to do with your life. Bonus technique: Compassion practice I didn’t want to take time in the podcast for this, but I’ve found a formal compassion practice to be extremely valuable when working with any kind of difficult emotional state. This is a practice rooted in Buddhism, although it is suitable for any spiritual practitioner, as well as for atheists. This is a practice to try during or after “Step 1.” In a nutshell, the practice is: Once I’ve truly located and allowed that pain to be there, to try to open up to all of the other people on the planet who are feeling this right now. Call them to mind and cultivate a state of empathy for the difficulty we are all feeling. All the people who are feeling unloveable or unattractive or disrespected or ashamed or whatever it is. The practice is to open your heart to them, open your compassion to them, and try to hold them in your heart. This can be challenging at first, but like most things, it gets easier and smoother with practice. There are many resources if you want to look into it more deeply. One is Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism,  they offer courses but nothing online at this point. There have also been many books written on compassion training, particularly for meditators.  If you have a terrific online resource for compassion training and practice, let me know! 

Today, two techniques that can boost your “EQ” (emotional intelligence) and help you be a happier, more productive person. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> Today I have two techniques for you — a new, research-based “hack” that looks interesting for improving our ability to make positive changes, and an approach I’ve used for a long time to constructively handle emotionally sticky situations. Also, note that there’s a bonus technique in the transcript below! Look for the header: Bonus Technique all the way at the bottom of the transcript. In this 25-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>A super quick technique to improve your motivation for positive habit change</li> <li>The first thing to do when your feelings get hurt</li> <li>Why you might not want to develop a “thick skin”</li> <li>3 steps to feeling better when you’re feeling like a loser</li> <li>My favorite 20-minute cure for the “I suck” blues</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rfm-pink-055.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://kellymcgonigal.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dr. Kelly McGonigal</a>, who pointed me to the University of Michigan study about values and habit change</li> <li>McGonigal’s popular TED Talk on <a href="http://kellymcgonigal.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How to Make Stress Your Friend</a></li> <li>The study mentioned in the podcast: <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/7/1977.full.pdf?sid=3723effe-b8da-4531-a21d-978e13dca7ef" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Self-affirmation alters the brain s response to health messages and subsequent behavior change</a> (Note that “self-affirmation” isn’t the same technique as self help affirmations) </li><li>A list of common <a href="http://jamesclear.com/core-values " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">human values</a> — this one’s from James Clear</li> <li>My <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/creativity-system/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">creative index card system</a> podcast</li> <li>Stanford’s <a href="http://ccare.stanford.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Center for Compassion and Altruism</a> (a resource for the bonus technique — see the transcript below for more details)</li> <li>I always love it when you say hi over on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@soniasimone</a></li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Today I have a couple of thoughts on a couple of suggestions to boost your EQ. This is a relatively new term, Emotional Intelligence, it’s about being smart or wise in ways that aren’t the more traditional IQ. One of the things we know from all of the new neuroscience research is that the kinds of cognition we call “emotions” are an essential part of our thinking. We imagine that we are rational creatures, but first and foremost our thinking is emotional. Getting more skillful with your EQ will help you with everything in your life. Your work, your family, your relationship to yourself, your hopes, your dreams, the whole shebang. I have two thoughts on this today. One is new to me, it’s a research-based idea I found on driving habit change. The other is a collection of habits that I use to manage a sticky emotional situation that comes up for nearly all of us sometimes. <h3>A research-based hack for making healthy changes</h3> The first point comes to me from Dr. Kelly McGonigal, who wrote a book called The Upside of Stress, she has a super popular TED talk, and who’s also a featured speaker in an online course that I’m attending at the moment. She cites a recent study from the University of Michigan — I’m working on tracking down a link for you — about personal values and habit change. I’ll summarize the study in very, very broad strokes: The study looked at folks who were extremely sedentary. The researchers gave these folks simple advice about starting to move more — the usual things about finding a parking spot further away, taking a flight of stairs once a day, we’ve all heard these. Then they put accelerometers on them, which are fancy pedometers basically. They sent a daily text with a reminder about one of those movement tips, and watched what happened. There was a control group, who were just given the advice and the daily reminders. And then there was a group who, before they got the advice, were just asked to look at a list of common human values and pick one that was important to them, then think about it for a minute. These values are things like: Family, Autonomy, Faith, Justice, Service, Stability, Learning, Love. What matters to you the most, when push comes to shove. So, one group of subjects chose a word that was important to them, and then they just thought about why for a minute. That value was just brought into their awareness. This group also got a text before the daily tip that said, “Your value was: Respect. Take a moment now to think about why that’s important to you.” So when they ran the study and looked at the results — and again, I’m paraphrasing wildly from someone else’s description, so I’ll try to find a specific link for you — the folks who had been asked to think briefly about their values before the specific advice about change had very, very significantly better results. Here’s what I found ultra interesting: The study did not ask them to make the connection. They didn’t say, “Think about how taking the stairs before lunch will help you with your core value of Respect.” They didn’t ask the participants to connect the dots. They just asked the participants to reflect for a moment about a value that mattered to them — and this seemed to make people more receptive to hearing and acting on all of that wonderful advice out there on making positive change in our lives. Here’s what I’m going to try: I’m going to get my index cards, like I talked about in my podcast two weeks ago and write one word on a nice pretty pink card. Still thinking about what that word will be, but it will probably be some variant on Love — Closeness or Family Connection or something. I don’t think we need to get super gummed up in The One Perfect Word with this. I suspect this will work with any phrase or word that has a significant emotional impact on your life and that matters a lot to you. Then my plan is just to look at it once or twice during the day, and spend maybe a minute or even less remembering why it matters. I think it’s probably important to figure out how to get this in front of your face occasionally, but not all the time. So you don’t want a post-it that you see every hour of your workday, because you will instantly go blind to it. But a calendar reminder once a day might work nicely. Or a physical thing like a card tucked into something you look at once or twice. Even better would be a way to send yourself that message maybe once a day but at random times. If anyone has a good suggestion for that, let me know in the comments! I don’t think predictability is your friend here — you want it to pop up at various times so you don’t just get into an “oh yeah, that again” habit of dismissing it before you’ve taken the few seconds to really think about it. What I’d like to look at in this experiment is, would this practice improve my energy level to do the good stuff that I know I want to do, but sometimes that in the moment doesn’t look as enticing as some tempting distraction. I’ll let you know if anything super interesting happens, and I hope you’ll let me know if you try it out! <h3>Handling Hurt-Feelingathons</h3> Second thing I want to talk about today is also in the realm of EQ, emotional intelligence, and that’s how we handle our hurt feelings, especially in the online space, as it’s so easy to mis-step here. All people who aren’t sociopaths get their feelings hurt sometimes, although not everyone shows it. And you’ve probably noticed from your own life that when your feelings get hurt, your IQ drops about 30 points and your ability to make good judgments goes straight into the toilet. When do we get our feelings hurt? If you’re thin-skinned like I am, it happens all the time. It can be an offhand remark someone makes that was maybe not phrased perfectly. Of course, it can happen when someone we care about says something difficult to us — maybe we deserve it or maybe we don’t, but either way the hurt feelings come up. I happen to be a person whose feelings can be hurt by trolls. Some stranger says something evil to me online and I can feel pretty terrible. You can say that’s silly, or “don’t listen to those people,” but that’s not an option for me, and I’m ok with that. I’m also a person who can come out of a very constructive conversation about a challenging issue, and still have some hurt feelings. It’s just some of my stuff that I need to own, and it’s probably a reason that meditation practice is so important to me — I need a way of working with those emotions in a useful way. <h3>A permission slip</h3> First and foremost, I want to give you permission to have hurt feelings. If it’s how you feel, then it’s how you feel. The worst thing you can do — ask me how I know — is to kick yourself for how you feel. It’s not going to improve matters at all. If your feelings are hurt, you have to be willing to say, <blockquote>OK, I feel like crap right now. It’s painful. This sucks. I would really like to crawl under the table with a blankie and two packs of Girl Scout Cookies and come out some time in August.</blockquote> We have such a “toughen up” culture. Such a culture of “you have to develop a thick skin.” I’m giving you permission not to, if that’s not who you are. Thin skin has its advantages. If you are thin-skinned and you develop good habits of behavior control, you are going to be kind. You are going to think before you act. You’re going to develop some powerful strengths. No matter how bad you feel, you can control your reactive behavior. And that’s what we’re going to focus on. <h3>3 quick steps to move through hurt feelings</h3> Almost everyone — you see this in small kids — has an initial desire to hit back when their feelings get hurt. Being in pain makes us angry, and we want revenge. Someone calls us an unflattering name, and we start to develop elaborate fantasies about dropping a house on them. Maybe that last one is just me. #1: Pause So the first habit you want to cultivate is: When your feelings are hurt, STOP. Get offline, get off your email, don’t text, don’t call. That first hour is when we tend to get all Unabomber on whoever hurt us, so take yourself out of the danger zone for that hour or two. What should we do in this pause? Feel what we’re feeling. If you want to wallow a little, I think that’s fine actually. Nurse your hurt feeling. Pout if you need to. The point of the pause is: Pouting is private time. If you get on Facebook and let it all hang out there, that’s not going to serve you well. If you’ve ever had small kids in your life, again, they’re very instructive. They get hurt and they wail. A scrape produces a vocalization like they just broke both arms and both legs. And then it’s done, and in two minutes they’re back to what they’re doing. Five minutes if it’s a more sensitive kid — but they feel the hurt very fully, and once they have, it loses its power. There’s a clue there. Try to squish the feeling down and it will seep out and poison everything. Feel it fully, let it be intense, and then stay mindful as it dissipates and leaves. Remember I mentioned meditation? It’s very useful for this. Meditation is just practice in watching thoughts and feelings come and go. Another thing to do during the pause is go for a walk. All of those angry brain chemicals are flooding your system and they need something to do. Fight or flight. Doing something physical will give that chemical state a reason for being. If you’re a runner, that’s probably even better. But don’t do any kind of exercise where you can get hurt if you’re distracted. You’ll feel like it’s time to try for that triple-bodyweight deadlift, or see if you can swing the 108-pound kettlebell, but I don’t recommend it. #2: Write it down Now, if we’re just talking about an online troll who made some kind of rude remark, #1 is probably sufficient. Depending on how hurt you are. But some wounds go deeper, so if you still need to work on the ache, here’s what works for me. After the pause, I find it’s super useful to journal what’s going on. What happened, who said what, why you think it came up, etc. You probably won’t come up with amazing insights here. You’re still mad and still somewhat hijacked. But again, it’s a way to acknowledge how you’re feeling and get it expressed. Sometimes these are valuable to go over later on, when you’ve cooled down. If you’re a journaling type person, one tip my dad taught me that I adhere to strictly is, Your journal is just for you. It’s where you get to be unfair, unreasonable, mean, petty, embarrassing. This is an extension of, Pouting is private time. Don’t show your journal to other people. Now before you move to Step 3, make sure you don’t need more pause time. Give the event enough space and fresh air so that you can start to see it objectively. This can be an hour or a day or sometimes somewhat longer. Make sure you’re pausing long enough that you can bring your rational brain onboard, and you’re not still working right from fight or flight. #3: Are there adjustments you could make? Once you feel like you have a cerebral cortex again, that’s the time to decide what, if anything, you’ll do about the situation. <ul> <li>Could you come up with a better way to handle the household chores with your partner?</li> <li>Could you ask your boss for specific behavior changes you could make to be better aligned with her expectations?</li> <li>Could you let your friend know that being teased is really hard for you to take?</li> </ul> You get the idea. Now’s the time to come up with a plan for what action you can take to make things better going forward. We don’t get to control other people. The only thing we can ever really change is our own behavior. <h3>20 minutes to beat the “I suck” blues</h3> Another technique that always helps me tremendously is, if I’m having those “I suck, I’m a loser” thoughts, to spend about 20 minutes doing something I’m good at. For me, it’s often writing, or it might be something like a Q&amp;A call, where I can help someone with an issue and get them “unstuck” from what’s keeping them from moving forward. It might be work-related, but it doesn’t need to be — just 20 minutes (you can set a timer) of some kind of focused activity that you really are good at. It’s helpful if it’s an activity that brings something positive into the world, but that’s optional. If it’s a killer racquetball game or some perfectly executed kettlebell swings, that can work just fine. I wonder, too, if our values exercise from the first section wouldn’t come in handy here. Maybe before our action plan. Worth a try. So that’s it, two EQ “hacks” — I don’t know if it’s accurate to call them hacks, I’m probably being click-baity there. But two techniques for you to build your emotional intelligence, make good changes, have great relationships, and be a happier human who’s doing the things you want to do with your life. <h3>Bonus technique: Compassion practice</h3> I didn’t want to take time in the podcast for this, but I’ve found a formal compassion practice to be extremely valuable when working with any kind of difficult emotional state. This is a practice rooted in Buddhism, although it is suitable for any spiritual practitioner, as well as for atheists. This is a practice to try during or after “Step 1.” In a nutshell, the practice is: Once I’ve truly located and allowed that pain to be there, to try to open up to all of the other people on the planet who are feeling this right now. Call them to mind and cultivate a state of empathy for the difficulty we are all feeling. All the people who are feeling unloveable or unattractive or disrespected or ashamed or whatever it is. The practice is to open your heart to them, open your compassion to them, and try to hold them in your heart. This can be challenging at first, but like most things, it gets easier and smoother with practice. There are many resources if you want to look into it more deeply. One is <a href="http://ccare.stanford.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism</a>, they offer courses but nothing online at this point. There have also been many books written on compassion training, particularly for meditators. If you have a terrific online resource for compassion training and practice, let me know!

Two EQ Hacks: A Nifty Trick for Making Big Changes, and How to Handle Hurt Feelings

Health and fitness have some of the strongest examples around of good content marketing — and unfortunately, they also have some of the sleaziest.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  It’s that time again! Today I’m talking about more things I love! (And … a couple of things I hate.) In this 30-minute episode, I look at three different health and fitness businesses that are built around content. I talk about:  How a Storytelling Strongwoman uses personal challenges (and triumphs) to build her tribe The behaviors that have given the Compassionate Coach such a massive and powerful network The key to the Rigorous Researcher’s authority — and what you can borrow from their approach Business models and best practices you can “swipe” from these folks Thoughts on harnessing trends to boost your content-based project Marketing malpractice, and two of my least favorite marketing “crimes”  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  A sample post from Nia Shanks My trainer Val Hedlund, also known as “The Mutant” Jen Waak’s Keyboard Athletes site The Body Positive Fitness Alliance A sample post from Josh Hillis Examine.com, a supplement and nutrition encyclopedia My podcast on How Not to Get Suckered by Internet “Facts” That bogus chocolate study Some thoughts on confirmation bias and how it operates  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. It’s time for Things I Love / Things I Hate! Like a lot of people, I read a lot of health and fitness sites, and sometimes I buy information products, like ebooks, workout plans, that kind of thing. You may have noticed that health and fitness is one of the worst spaces on the web for misinformation, shady tactics, and downright sleaze.  But there are also some players who are doing terrific things, and specifically who are taking a strong content-driven approach. I’m going to talk about three different businesses, each of whom has something to teach about how they put their content, their marketing, and their product mix together, and then I’ll get to some tactics that really do make me cringe when I see them. All three of these folks are people I’ve come to know a little bit through social media, but none of them is someone I’ve sat down and had coffee with. Although who knows, it could definitely happen. Josh came to our live event last year, and I’m hoping we’ll see him again this year. Nia Shanks: The storytelling strongwoman Nia has a business called “Lift Like a Girl,” she has a strong Facebook presence, and in fact all three of these players are very strong on Facebook. Facebook can be a really excellent way to reach an audience in this space, because it’s the kind of thing people talk about a lot on Facebook — their workouts, their diets, their gym selfies, etc. I call Nia the Storytelling Strongwoman. Nia is really a living example of what she teaches — a female strength athlete who’s gone through her share of difficult times with fitness, weight management, and all that good stuff. When I started following her work, women who were interested in serious strength work were somewhat unusual — with the popularity of Crossfit, the trends have somewhat caught up with her. But she still regularly addresses misperceptions like lifting a barbell will make a woman instantly huge. Or even that regular strength work makes women “bulky.” Like most strong content marketers, Nia has a ton of very solid how-to content, both free and paid. Her business model includes ebooks, which she calls guides, and online courses, which she calls programs — around topics you’d probably expect like strength workouts and fat loss.  Because she’s really pulled together a tribe who resonate with what she’s doing, she has other opportunities as well. For example, folks who follow her on Facebook also from time to time have the opportunity to buy stuff with the Lift Like a Girl brand — I’m the proud owner of a Lift Like a Girl sweatshirt, which I always liked to wear to the gym on heavy deadlift days.  Josh Hillis: The compassionate coach Of the three, Josh Hillis is the one I “know” more than the others — he’s friends with my fantastic trainer, the one who Pavel Tsatsouline called a “mutant.” I’ll give you a video to show you why.   And he has a connection with my friend Jen Waak who has a site called Keyboard Athletes. And also with a Facebook pal of mine Michele Burmaster, who’s a driving force behind a project called the Body Positive Fitness Alliance. This might seem like a coincidence, except Josh is friends with everybody — and that’s a clue to his success. When I started following his content, Josh did a lot of celebrity workouts — things like what Scarlett Johansson is doing to look so amazing in the Marvel movies. Those were always presented in an entertaining way. He also came up with a few really entertaining content angles, like the workouts that the professional strippers were doing in his local gym.  In past few years, Josh has zeroed in on habits as a way to shape his story, and wrote a book called Fat Loss Happens on a Monday which lays out a habit-based plan. I think Josh shows a couple of strengths as a marketer. First, he’s always looking for really engaging content angles, like that exotic dancer story. He’s pretty relentless in staying on top of his topic — he’s always learning and growing, and he shares that with his audience. But also, he’s a consummate nice guy — always positive, kind, and encouraging. He has a very kind tone, which contrasts with a lot of the nearly abusive stuff we see around that’s based on shaming people and making them feel horrible to try to motivate positive change.  This kind of encouraging voice is really magnetic when folks are working on something like weight management which can be so difficult. I call Josh the Compassionate Coach — he’s there to help you through the rough spots and give as much encouragement and love and high fives as you need. And as I mentioned earlier, he has a massive network — everyone knows him, and everyone loves him. That led him to co-write a book with Dan John, if you know the strength space, and he also has alliances with a lot of super strong folks who have great audiences.  Josh’s business model at the moment is working one on one with clients as a trainer, and he also does small-group training programs online. Examine.com: The rigorous researcher Nia and Josh both lead highly personality-based businesses. You get their stuff because you feel connected to them, human to human. My final example of a content-based business is built less around connecting with one individual, and more around establishing authority for a team. The site is examine.com, and to complete my alliteration labels, I’m calling them the Rigorous Researcher. Here’s how they describe themselves: Examine.com is an independent encyclopedia on supplementation and nutrition. We are not affiliated in any way with any supplement company  and we have a team of health professionals analyzing the full body of research. WE CURRENTLY HAVE OVER 41,000 REFERENCES TO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. Just as a personal recommendation, if you ever want to look up, for example, a fitness supplement that a blogger is telling you is the key to health and skinniness and eternal youth, look it up on Examine. They have a serious team of researchers, registered dieticians, and MDs who know how to read the scientific studies and tell you what the evidence actually is for just about any supplement you can think of.  Examine offers a ton for free, they also have a premium content model. They offer several paid content options for different customer types, including a detailed monthly research digest that digs into the research behind science reporting on nutrition and then synthesizes it for folks who don’t necessarily have a science background. This is a trickier play than the personality-based approach, because you need a larger team and more resources, but there are elements of their approach that a lot of us can work with. In particular, they offer reliable information in a highly unreliable environment. They sift through the extreme mass of disinformation — and science reporting right now is pretty pitiful — and they explain how they come by their conclusions. So you can probably see elements in every one of these businesses that you can apply to your own stuff. You can just make sure you’re always sharing positivity and kindness when you’re in the online public sphere — that will start to get you a killer network like Josh Hillis, as well as attracting clients who want that positivity in their own lives. You can share your own story — the triumphs and the challenges, like Nia Shanks. She’s also a great model for catching trends — women interested in serious strength work — when they’re still emerging. Josh has done that as well — he always taught habits, but when “Habits” started to get a lot of traction with popular books and websites, Josh followed that lead and brought that element of his work more front-and-center. You can also make a commitment to doing some significant in-depth research like Examine.com. You might not have a team of more than a dozen researchers, but you can approach the research you do with rigor and integrity. Things I hate in fitness marketing Because this is Things I Love / Things I Hate, I guess I’m obliged to provide the “hate” part here as well. I won’t name names, and in general I’m not going to name names for this part, because getting into fights on the internet is not a great use of anyone’s time. But I’m happy to share tactics that I think suck. Two tactics I can’t stand in marketing are super prevalent in fitness — one is outright disinformation, and the other is what’s sometimes called negging. Disinformation comes in two flavors — the honest kind and the dishonest kind.  Honest disinformation is really the state of a lot of science reporting at the moment. You have journalists and bloggers with very low scientific literacy who report on studies without being able to evaluate them. In my Internet Facts podcast I mentioned a faked study showing that chocolate helped people lose weight, and I’ll re-link to that in the show notes. The study was faked precisely to show how easy it is to get and spread false information, mostly from people who aren’t trying to be deceptive. The other flavor is intentional disinformation, and there’s a fair amount of that as well. People who write nutrition books need an angle, they need something counterintuitive to be able to sell their books. So maybe next year someone will come out with a nutrition book about how Water is Bad for You. I’m surprised we haven’t seen it yet. These books are all packed with scientific citations — either to studies that are weak or sometimes even faked, but also often to studies that don’t support the conclusion of the book. And some of these writers will explicitly tell their research assistants to “just find a study that mentions water.”  Not everyone who writes a junk nutrition science book is a liar, some of them are just so biased by their preconceptions and confirmation bias that they literally can’t take in the mass of evidence that contradicts them.  So the takeaway for folks in any kind of content marketing space is: We’re teachers. We have a responsibility to think critically about our topics. We have a responsibility to stay open to evidence that contradicts our biases.  I’ll tell you straight up: The oversimplified explanations make for better marketing, because simple messages are easier to swallow. But to me, that’s a form of malpractice. Tell the truth, and tell yourself the truth as a foundation of ethical communication. Sometimes the story really is complex and nuanced, and you have to lead with something straightforward to start the conversation. I have no problem with that. But I want you to work to give people the rounded picture — and it is work. Once people do have the more complete picture, though, my experience and observation is that they can coalesce into a “tribe” that has more loyalty and will stick around for the long haul, rather than bouncing from miracle solution to miracle solution. I also mentioned negging — this is a term from the so-called “PUA” people, and it means putting someone down in order to manipulate and persuade them. So, a guy in a bar putting down a very pretty woman by insulting her looks is negging. Weirdly enough, it does work sometimes — just think about all of the fitness content that’s cruel, that’s abusive, that’s shaming, that’s downright hateful. If someone can make us feel like nothing, then we start to look for that salvation. Again, this can make for very effective marketing — putting people into a space of self-hatred can indeed make them easier to manipulate. But it’s lousy at producing effective, healthy change — and that goes for health, business, parenting, whatever you care to name. People who hate themselves make poor decisions. Since this segment is “Things I Hate” I can put this strongly — don’t come to me with lies, or with shaming and put-downs, and tell me “they work.” I don’t care if they work. I have no use for them, and I have no use for marketers who use them. If your business isn’t on this planet to help your fellow human beings, go somewhere else. Don’t buy from me, don’t even read my stuff. I have no time or patience for that.  You get one shot to live this life as a human being, don’t screw it up by chasing short-term success at the expense of what matters most. Thus endeth the rant.

Health and fitness have some of the strongest examples around of good content marketing — and unfortunately, they also have some of the sleaziest. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> It’s that time again! Today I’m talking about more things I love! (And … a couple of things I hate.) In this 30-minute episode, I look at three different health and fitness businesses that are built around content. I talk about: <ul> <li>How a Storytelling Strongwoman uses personal challenges (and triumphs) to build her tribe</li> <li>The behaviors that have given the Compassionate Coach such a massive and powerful network</li> <li>The key to the Rigorous Researcher’s authority — and what you can borrow from their approach</li> <li>Business models and best practices you can “swipe” from these folks</li> <li>Thoughts on harnessing trends to boost your content-based project</li> <li>Marketing malpractice, and two of my least favorite marketing “crimes”</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rfm-pink-054.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>A sample post from <a href="http://www.niashanks.com/9-fat-loss-mistakes/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nia Shanks</a></li> <li>My trainer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqzDQBSU6Gc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Val Hedlund</a>, also known as “The Mutant”</li> <li>Jen Waak’s <a href="http://keyboardathletes.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Keyboard Athletes</a> site</li> <li>The <a href="http://www.bodypositivefitness.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Body Positive Fitness Alliance</a></li> <li>A sample post from <a href="http://www.losestubbornfat.com/hierarchy-scale-body-comp/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Josh Hillis</a></li> <li><a href="http://examine.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Examine.com</a>, a supplement and nutrition encyclopedia</li> <li>My podcast on <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/internet-facts/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How Not to Get Suckered by Internet “Facts”</a></li> <li>That bogus <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">chocolate study</a></li> <li>Some thoughts on <a href="http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">confirmation bias</a> and how it operates</li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. It’s time for Things I Love / Things I Hate! Like a lot of people, I read a lot of health and fitness sites, and sometimes I buy information products, like ebooks, workout plans, that kind of thing. You may have noticed that health and fitness is one of the worst spaces on the web for misinformation, shady tactics, and downright sleaze. But there are also some players who are doing terrific things, and specifically who are taking a strong content-driven approach. I’m going to talk about three different businesses, each of whom has something to teach about how they put their content, their marketing, and their product mix together, and then I’ll get to some tactics that really do make me cringe when I see them. All three of these folks are people I’ve come to know a little bit through social media, but none of them is someone I’ve sat down and had coffee with. Although who knows, it could definitely happen. Josh came to our live event last year, and I’m hoping we’ll see him again this year. <h3>Nia Shanks: The storytelling strongwoman</h3> Nia has a business called “Lift Like a Girl,” she has a strong Facebook presence, and in fact all three of these players are very strong on Facebook. Facebook can be a really excellent way to reach an audience in this space, because it’s the kind of thing people talk about a lot on Facebook — their workouts, their diets, their gym selfies, etc. I call Nia the Storytelling Strongwoman. Nia is really a living example of what she teaches — a female strength athlete who’s gone through her share of difficult times with fitness, weight management, and all that good stuff. When I started following her work, women who were interested in serious strength work were somewhat unusual — with the popularity of Crossfit, the trends have somewhat caught up with her. But she still regularly addresses misperceptions like lifting a barbell will make a woman instantly huge. Or even that regular strength work makes women “bulky.” Like most strong content marketers, Nia has a ton of very solid how-to content, both free and paid. Her business model includes ebooks, which she calls guides, and online courses, which she calls programs — around topics you’d probably expect like strength workouts and fat loss. Because she’s really pulled together a tribe who resonate with what she’s doing, she has other opportunities as well. For example, folks who follow her on Facebook also from time to time have the opportunity to buy stuff with the Lift Like a Girl brand — I’m the proud owner of a Lift Like a Girl sweatshirt, which I always liked to wear to the gym on heavy deadlift days. <h3>Josh Hillis: The compassionate coach</h3> Of the three, Josh Hillis is the one I “know” more than the others — he’s friends with my fantastic trainer, the one who Pavel Tsatsouline called a “mutant.” I’ll give you a video to show you why. And he has a connection with my friend Jen Waak who has a site called Keyboard Athletes. And also with a Facebook pal of mine Michele Burmaster, who’s a driving force behind a project called the Body Positive Fitness Alliance. This might seem like a coincidence, except Josh is friends with everybody — and that’s a clue to his success. When I started following his content, Josh did a lot of celebrity workouts — things like what Scarlett Johansson is doing to look so amazing in the Marvel movies. Those were always presented in an entertaining way. He also came up with a few really entertaining content angles, like the workouts that the professional strippers were doing in his local gym. In past few years, Josh has zeroed in on habits as a way to shape his story, and wrote a book called Fat Loss Happens on a Monday which lays out a habit-based plan. I think Josh shows a couple of strengths as a marketer. First, he’s always looking for really engaging content angles, like that exotic dancer story. He’s pretty relentless in staying on top of his topic — he’s always learning and growing, and he shares that with his audience. But also, he’s a consummate nice guy — always positive, kind, and encouraging. He has a very kind tone, which contrasts with a lot of the nearly abusive stuff we see around that’s based on shaming people and making them feel horrible to try to motivate positive change. This kind of encouraging voice is really magnetic when folks are working on something like weight management which can be so difficult. I call Josh the Compassionate Coach — he’s there to help you through the rough spots and give as much encouragement and love and high fives as you need. And as I mentioned earlier, he has a massive network — everyone knows him, and everyone loves him. That led him to co-write a book with Dan John, if you know the strength space, and he also has alliances with a lot of super strong folks who have great audiences. Josh’s business model at the moment is working one on one with clients as a trainer, and he also does small-group training programs online. <h3><a href="http://Examine.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Examine.com</a>: The rigorous researcher</h3> Nia and Josh both lead highly personality-based businesses. You get their stuff because you feel connected to them, human to human. My final example of a content-based business is built less around connecting with one individual, and more around establishing authority for a team. The site is <a href="http://examine.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">examine.com</a>, and to complete my alliteration labels, I’m calling them the Rigorous Researcher. Here’s how they describe themselves: <blockquote><a href="http://Examine.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Examine.com</a> is an independent encyclopedia on supplementation and nutrition. We are not affiliated in any way with any supplement company and we have a team of health professionals analyzing the full body of research. WE CURRENTLY HAVE OVER 41,000 REFERENCES TO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.</blockquote> Just as a personal recommendation, if you ever want to look up, for example, a fitness supplement that a blogger is telling you is the key to health and skinniness and eternal youth, look it up on Examine. They have a serious team of researchers, registered dieticians, and MDs who know how to read the scientific studies and tell you what the evidence actually is for just about any supplement you can think of. Examine offers a ton for free, they also have a premium content model. They offer several paid content options for different customer types, including a detailed monthly research digest that digs into the research behind science reporting on nutrition and then synthesizes it for folks who don’t necessarily have a science background. This is a trickier play than the personality-based approach, because you need a larger team and more resources, but there are elements of their approach that a lot of us can work with. In particular, they offer reliable information in a highly unreliable environment. They sift through the extreme mass of disinformation — and science reporting right now is pretty pitiful — and they explain how they come by their conclusions. So you can probably see elements in every one of these businesses that you can apply to your own stuff. You can just make sure you’re always sharing positivity and kindness when you’re in the online public sphere — that will start to get you a killer network like Josh Hillis, as well as attracting clients who want that positivity in their own lives. You can share your own story — the triumphs and the challenges, like Nia Shanks. She’s also a great model for catching trends — women interested in serious strength work — when they’re still emerging. Josh has done that as well — he always taught habits, but when “Habits” started to get a lot of traction with popular books and websites, Josh followed that lead and brought that element of his work more front-and-center. You can also make a commitment to doing some significant in-depth research like <a href="http://Examine.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Examine.com</a>. You might not have a team of more than a dozen researchers, but you can approach the research you do with rigor and integrity. <h3>Things I hate in fitness marketing</h3> Because this is Things I Love / Things I Hate, I guess I’m obliged to provide the “hate” part here as well. I won’t name names, and in general I’m not going to name names for this part, because getting into fights on the internet is not a great use of anyone’s time. But I’m happy to share tactics that I think suck. Two tactics I can’t stand in marketing are super prevalent in fitness — one is outright disinformation, and the other is what’s sometimes called negging. Disinformation comes in two flavors — the honest kind and the dishonest kind. Honest disinformation is really the state of a lot of science reporting at the moment. You have journalists and bloggers with very low scientific literacy who report on studies without being able to evaluate them. In my Internet Facts podcast I mentioned a faked study showing that chocolate helped people lose weight, and I’ll re-link to that in the show notes. The study was faked precisely to show how easy it is to get and spread false information, mostly from people who aren’t trying to be deceptive. The other flavor is intentional disinformation, and there’s a fair amount of that as well. People who write nutrition books need an angle, they need something counterintuitive to be able to sell their books. So maybe next year someone will come out with a nutrition book about how Water is Bad for You. I’m surprised we haven’t seen it yet. These books are all packed with scientific citations — either to studies that are weak or sometimes even faked, but also often to studies that don’t support the conclusion of the book. And some of these writers will explicitly tell their research assistants to “just find a study that mentions water.” Not everyone who writes a junk nutrition science book is a liar, some of them are just so biased by their preconceptions and confirmation bias that they literally can’t take in the mass of evidence that contradicts them. So the takeaway for folks in any kind of content marketing space is: We’re teachers. We have a responsibility to think critically about our topics. We have a responsibility to stay open to evidence that contradicts our biases. I’ll tell you straight up: The oversimplified explanations make for better marketing, because simple messages are easier to swallow. But to me, that’s a form of malpractice. Tell the truth, and tell yourself the truth as a foundation of ethical communication. Sometimes the story really is complex and nuanced, and you have to lead with something straightforward to start the conversation. I have no problem with that. But I want you to work to give people the rounded picture — and it is work. Once people do have the more complete picture, though, my experience and observation is that they can coalesce into a “tribe” that has more loyalty and will stick around for the long haul, rather than bouncing from miracle solution to miracle solution. I also mentioned negging — this is a term from the so-called “PUA” people, and it means putting someone down in order to manipulate and persuade them. So, a guy in a bar putting down a very pretty woman by insulting her looks is negging. Weirdly enough, it does work sometimes — just think about all of the fitness content that’s cruel, that’s abusive, that’s shaming, that’s downright hateful. If someone can make us feel like nothing, then we start to look for that salvation. Again, this can make for very effective marketing — putting people into a space of self-hatred can indeed make them easier to manipulate. But it’s lousy at producing effective, healthy change — and that goes for health, business, parenting, whatever you care to name. People who hate themselves make poor decisions. Since this segment is “Things I Hate” I can put this strongly — don’t come to me with lies, or with shaming and put-downs, and tell me “they work.” I don’t care if they work. I have no use for them, and I have no use for marketers who use them. If your business isn’t on this planet to help your fellow human beings, go somewhere else. Don’t buy from me, don’t even read my stuff. I have no time or patience for that. You get one shot to live this life as a human being, don’t screw it up by chasing short-term success at the expense of what matters most. Thus endeth the rant.

Things I Love/Things I Hate about Health & Fitness Marketing

Creativity isn’t just about getting inspired — it’s about strong systems to capture inspiration when it arises.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  Today I outline a simple system I’m using to capture ideas and put them into action.  In this 30-minute episode, I talk about:  A boring office supply that can boost your creative productivity Why going analog (sometimes) can improve our attention spans The two parts to an effective idea-capture practice Some suggestions for what to do with the ideas that come your way Why the “freedom to have stupid ideas” is so important  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  My post on Social Media Distraction and shrinking attention spans High-end speaking and presentation coach Victoria Labalme The Pomodoro Technique for time management More on David Allen’s Someday/Maybe list (from Getting Things Done) More on David Allen’s Next Action (from Getting Things Done) An easy-to-carry option for 3×5 cards Leuchtturm is one option for fountain-pen-friendly alternatives to Moleskine — Goulet Pens has lots of interesting possibilities 3 Changes to Your Physical Environment that Can Make You More Productive  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Productivity is an ongoing challenge for a lot of us, especially me. And we have a funny assumption sometimes, that people who are organized are less creative. But if you know super creative people, usually they’re not disorganized at all, they usually have strong systems in place — at least for their realm of expertise.  I wrote the world’s longest post about what digital tools and toys are doing to our attention spans, and some ways to fight for our brain cells in an environment of distraction. Today I want to talk about a creativity tool I really enjoy that isn’t digital, because I think it’s actually super beneficial to get off the keyboard and screen regularly.  I love digital things, I love my laptop and the age of information we live in, but I also think we can widen our minds and become more resilient if we mix a few analog practices in there. You’re not a brain in a jar, you’re a human being with a body and hands and eyes, and doing things in the real physical world is a habit worth cultivating. Today’s technique is a simple two-part process that will take well under 10 minutes a day. At first, probably more like 2 minutes a day.  We start with physical index cards I got inspired on these by my friend Victoria LaBalme at RockTheRoom.com, who’s a very high-end speaking coach, and I’m working on snagging her for a few podcast episodes about becoming more proficient at communicating our messages across all kinds of media. Victoria, or my friends all call her V, has a very simple and very powerful system for outlining important communication, like a talk, using index cards. I’m going to guess that something close to 100% of her clients balk at using physical cards for anything. But she always uses them with her clients, including the executive team at Microsoft, which is the company that invented PowerPoint. I’m not going to outline her system, because it’s hers, but I will give you a variant that I came up with specifically for improving creativity and the quality of your ideas. To get started, I want to talk about a few benefits of index cards that you may not have considered: Physical cards don’t have the D-bag factor. If you want to make a note about something, pulling out a little index card and jotting a note with a pen sends a completely different message than pulling out your phone. When we get the phone out, what we communicate, even if that isn’t really true, is that we just checked our email or started a game of Dumb Ways to Die because what the other person was saying wasn’t holding our attention. Using a phone when you’re face to face with another person is disrespectful. You may think that your friends see it differently — but just watch for their reaction when you write something down physically instead of putting it into your device. Physical cards are distraction free, so you won’t get sucked into something that may or may not be a good use of your time. That’s also why I use a cheap physical kitchen timer to do focused work sessions, what you may have heard of as the Pomodoro method — because if I use my phone, all of a sudden there are all these other distractions there that start to vie for my time. Physical writing gives you a memory boost. If you write something on a card — a quote, an insight, an idea for a piece of content, you start to attach it to your memory, because it’s multisensory. It has a tactile quality, you have an ink color and a card color. You can sketch on a card. You can draw a little map. If you’re into it, you can make up a card with your daily schedule and your time blocks for focused work. Physical cards give you a tangible open loop. Writing something on a card opens a loop in your mind — a thing that requires more thought. By contrast, clipping something to Evernote, for me, signals, “OK, this is handled.” Digital systems like Evernote absolutely have their place and I rely heavily on mine. But the physical cards are to open up possibilities. And some of them, when you process them for the day, will go onto what David Allen called your “Someday/Maybe” list — you make a choice not to work on them right now, but the idea is parked for the future. Or maybe you put something on your calendar to look at it in 90 days when you’re not in the middle of your big project. Physical cards get stuff out of your working memory. You can become very free and very present when you have a way to capture anything important — to park it, and know that it will get reviewed before the end of the day. Keeping a lot of stuff in your head causes a low-level background stress that you probably don’t even notice until you start to get rid of it. What to do with the cards (do this daily) For this to really work well, make a daily habit to process your cards at a specific time. I like to do this after dinner. Let me emphasize — this is a very, very quick process. I’m not talking an hour or even 20 minutes. Try to get this done in just two or three minutes.  Go through your cards and give each one a moment of focused attention. Then enter the information or the idea into whatever systems you use for different things. For example:  You can decide this idea isn’t worth moving forward on, and just recycle it Schedule a time block in your calendar to work on that interesting post or podcast idea. Rewrite out a quote in the system you use to capture these — and of course, remember to include the author and a link if that applies. Start to sketch out a headline and some ideas for subheads, or an intro paragraph, for a post in Google Docs or whatever you use. Decide what the Next Action is, to use a GTD term, then put it onto your to-do list. Drop the card into a physical box labeled “Terrible Ideas.” Pin the card to a corkboard as part of a big creative project you’re planning Enter the card information into Scrivener if you’re writing a book You can shred it if you’re feeling really intense.  The card is meant to be temporary. Your processing time is where you shift the fleeting idea into your systems for taking action. This multi-step habit is very quick and easy to implement, and it creates a two-step process for handling all of those things that fly into our brains all day — obligations, to-do items, creative ideas, intentions, hopes, dreams, resolutions, etc.  The two-steps are a tiny bit less convenient than just dumping into your device — and that’s the point. It gives you a moment of reflection to consider, “Does this really make sense to do? Is it a priority? How could I approach this from a more creative direction? Is there someone else who would be a better choice to tackle this?” Cards are meant to be ephemeral. The idea is, we capture, then we recycle the card. That’s one of the reasons V doesn’t plan out a talk directly in Keynote or PowerPoint — once we’ve created a placeholder slide, in a way we feel like that’s “handled.”  You can play with cards. You can shuffle them. You can lay them all out on the ground. You can use different colors and color-code your ideas, if you’re that kind of person — this can be very powerful if you’re a visual person. V has already got Jerod Morris on our team addicted to them, and he’s an evangelist like I am.  If you want to try it out, obviously first pick up some cards. (I’ll give you a link to a little notebook of perforated cards, those are easy to carry around. Or just hold some cards together with one of those really small binder clips.)  Then implement a mini habit: Capture one idea a day to an index card, and then process that card at a specific time. If you forget, and some days you will, it’s fine to do it right before bed. Scribble an idea on a card that you remember from the day, then put a note into your calendar for the next day called “Think about X.” You can create as many cards as you want to, but to satisfy your “I did my habit today” resolution, you just need one. And again, if you’re coming up blank, just write a stupid idea on a card. “Note to self …” then come up with the dopiest idea you can manage. It’s a two-part habit, so it’s important to schedule that daily review of your cards. This is a very fast task — say between one and four minutes. Put an alarm for that time into the calendar of whatever device you’re addicted to, like an alarm on your phone, so you remember to do it. It won’t take too long before you associate a certain time of day with just a fast review of your cards. This is an ultra powerful way to increase the number of creative ideas you have for whatever you do — blog, podcast, parenting, managing your team, etc. Just have a habit of capturing one idea, with the paired habit of processing it. It will blossom on its own, you don’t have to push it any further than that. If you do any creative work — and we all do — you will actually probably end up saving a huge amount of time if you implement this, because such a big part of creative work is trying to get an idea happening. Other options That throwaway nature of the index cards is psychologically useful, because it lets you play around with ideas and not feel like you’ve made any kind of commitment. The freedom to have stupid ideas is one of the fundamental creative freedoms that allows for good work.  But some of you will already be using paper. For example, as I said in a talk at Hubspot last year, the Moleskine notebook is the Book Of Our People. Lots of content creators love them.  If you already have a habit of capturing things in a Moleskine, you could just tuck some index cards into that envelope in the back, or you can do the work right in the notebook. By the way, in my opinion there are some nicer options to Moleskine, which has kind of crummy paper if you use fountain pens like I do. I’ll give you a link. I have a notebook where I keep all kinds of things — nutrition journal entries, workout logs, goals and habit development, journaling about what’s on my mind with business or my personal life.  If I used it for my idea captures, I’d start by writing something consistent like IDEA CAPTURE at the top of a blank page, then use that page exactly the same way I’ve outlined the index card process. Then during my idea processing time, I’d consider each idea, do what I need to do with it, and physically cross it off. For some people, writing in a notebook makes it overly “official,” so you won’t have that Stupid Idea Freedom working for you. Others are more accustomed to writing random stuff in their notebooks, and they won’t get caught up. Start with whatever feels right to you. I personally prefer the cards because they’re small and light — my notebook stays on my desk, my cards travel with me. Don’t start digital I know many of you, possibly most of you, are thinking, “I’m going to create this entire process on my phone so I don’t have to mess around with paper and a pen or pencil.”  A lot of us have terrible handwriting because we don’t ever do it. And we just don’t have the physical writing habit. If you’re physically able to write, I really recommend it. It just seems to hit a different set of synapses. One of the things that makes this process work is that crossover between physical and digital.  At least give it a shot — go through a pack of index cards and see if it adds something. If you never, ever physically write, it will feel a little weird for sure. Try to find a pen you like, get index cards in an awesome color that makes you happy, this can give you that little motivational boost to get your new toys out and play with them — and that will give you the energy to get the habit in place. If glitter or stickers or really fancy coloring markers, or any other kind of fancy office supply, helps you get motivated, by all means go for it. A good art store will have some enticing options for you. By the way, Brian Clark shared another nifty post, written by Julia Roy, on work hacks for your physical environment, on his Further newsletter. That article is on FastCompany.com, and I’ve got a link for you in the show notes. You know I always love your thoughts and comments! If you have an analog component to your creative work, I’d love to hear about it.

Creativity isn’t just about getting inspired — it’s about strong systems to capture inspiration when it arises. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> Today I outline a simple system I’m using to capture ideas and put them into action. In this 30-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>A boring office supply that can boost your creative productivity</li> <li>Why going analog (sometimes) can improve our attention spans</li> <li>The two parts to an effective idea-capture practice</li> <li>Some suggestions for what to do with the ideas that come your way</li> <li>Why the “freedom to have stupid ideas” is so important</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rfm-pink-053.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>My post on <a href="https://www.copyblogger.com/social-media-debate/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Social Media Distraction</a> and shrinking attention spans</li> <li>High-end speaking and presentation coach <a href="http://www.victorialabalme.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Victoria Labalme</a></li> <li>The <a href="http://pomodorotechnique.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pomodoro Technique</a> for time management</li> <li>More on David Allen’s <a href="http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/16/productive-talk-someday-maybe" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Someday/Maybe</a> list (from Getting Things Done)</li> <li>More on David Allen’s <a href="http://zenhabits.net/why-whats-the-next-action-is-the-most-important-question/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Next Action</a> (from Getting Things Done)</li> <li>An easy-to-carry option for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Spiral-Bound-Ruled-40281/dp/B006VYWUGQ/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">3×5 cards</a></li> <li>Leuchtturm is one option for fountain-pen-friendly alternatives to Moleskine — Goulet Pens has lots of <a href="http://www.gouletpens.com/bullet-journaling-starter-set-medium/p/Package-BulletJournal-A5" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">interesting possibilities</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3057377/work-smart/3-changes-to-your-physical-environment-that-can-make-you-more-productive" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">3 Changes to Your Physical Environment that Can Make You More Productive</a></li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. Productivity is an ongoing challenge for a lot of us, especially me. And we have a funny assumption sometimes, that people who are organized are less creative. But if you know super creative people, usually they’re not disorganized at all, they usually have strong systems in place — at least for their realm of expertise. I wrote the world’s longest post about what digital tools and toys are doing to our attention spans, and some ways to fight for our brain cells in an environment of distraction. Today I want to talk about a creativity tool I really enjoy that isn’t digital, because I think it’s actually super beneficial to get off the keyboard and screen regularly. I love digital things, I love my laptop and the age of information we live in, but I also think we can widen our minds and become more resilient if we mix a few analog practices in there. You’re not a brain in a jar, you’re a human being with a body and hands and eyes, and doing things in the real physical world is a habit worth cultivating. Today’s technique is a simple two-part process that will take well under 10 minutes a day. At first, probably more like 2 minutes a day. <h3>We start with physical index cards</h3> I got inspired on these by my friend Victoria LaBalme at <a href="http://RockTheRoom.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RockTheRoom.com</a>, who’s a very high-end speaking coach, and I’m working on snagging her for a few podcast episodes about becoming more proficient at communicating our messages across all kinds of media. Victoria, or my friends all call her V, has a very simple and very powerful system for outlining important communication, like a talk, using index cards. I’m going to guess that something close to 100% of her clients balk at using physical cards for anything. But she always uses them with her clients, including the executive team at Microsoft, which is the company that invented PowerPoint. I’m not going to outline her system, because it’s hers, but I will give you a variant that I came up with specifically for improving creativity and the quality of your ideas. To get started, I want to talk about a few benefits of index cards that you may not have considered: Physical cards don’t have the D-bag factor. If you want to make a note about something, pulling out a little index card and jotting a note with a pen sends a completely different message than pulling out your phone. When we get the phone out, what we communicate, even if that isn’t really true, is that we just checked our email or started a game of Dumb Ways to Die because what the other person was saying wasn’t holding our attention. Using a phone when you’re face to face with another person is disrespectful. You may think that your friends see it differently — but just watch for their reaction when you write something down physically instead of putting it into your device. Physical cards are distraction free, so you won’t get sucked into something that may or may not be a good use of your time. That’s also why I use a cheap physical kitchen timer to do focused work sessions, what you may have heard of as the Pomodoro method — because if I use my phone, all of a sudden there are all these other distractions there that start to vie for my time. Physical writing gives you a memory boost. If you write something on a card — a quote, an insight, an idea for a piece of content, you start to attach it to your memory, because it’s multisensory. It has a tactile quality, you have an ink color and a card color. You can sketch on a card. You can draw a little map. If you’re into it, you can make up a card with your daily schedule and your time blocks for focused work. Physical cards give you a tangible open loop. Writing something on a card opens a loop in your mind — a thing that requires more thought. By contrast, clipping something to Evernote, for me, signals, “OK, this is handled.” Digital systems like Evernote absolutely have their place and I rely heavily on mine. But the physical cards are to open up possibilities. And some of them, when you process them for the day, will go onto what David Allen called your “Someday/Maybe” list — you make a choice not to work on them right now, but the idea is parked for the future. Or maybe you put something on your calendar to look at it in 90 days when you’re not in the middle of your big project. Physical cards get stuff out of your working memory. You can become very free and very present when you have a way to capture anything important — to park it, and know that it will get reviewed before the end of the day. Keeping a lot of stuff in your head causes a low-level background stress that you probably don’t even notice until you start to get rid of it. <h3>What to do with the cards (do this daily)</h3> For this to really work well, make a daily habit to process your cards at a specific time. I like to do this after dinner. Let me emphasize — this is a very, very quick process. I’m not talking an hour or even 20 minutes. Try to get this done in just two or three minutes. Go through your cards and give each one a moment of focused attention. Then enter the information or the idea into whatever systems you use for different things. For example: <ul> <li>You can decide this idea isn’t worth moving forward on, and just recycle it</li> <li>Schedule a time block in your calendar to work on that interesting post or podcast idea.</li> <li>Rewrite out a quote in the system you use to capture these — and of course, remember to include the author and a link if that applies.</li> <li>Start to sketch out a headline and some ideas for subheads, or an intro paragraph, for a post in Google Docs or whatever you use.</li> <li>Decide what the Next Action is, to use a GTD term, then put it onto your to-do list.</li> <li>Drop the card into a physical box labeled “Terrible Ideas.”</li> <li>Pin the card to a corkboard as part of a big creative project you’re planning</li> <li>Enter the card information into Scrivener if you’re writing a book</li> <li>You can shred it if you’re feeling really intense.</li> </ul> The card is meant to be temporary. Your processing time is where you shift the fleeting idea into your systems for taking action. This multi-step habit is very quick and easy to implement, and it creates a two-step process for handling all of those things that fly into our brains all day — obligations, to-do items, creative ideas, intentions, hopes, dreams, resolutions, etc. The two-steps are a tiny bit less convenient than just dumping into your device — and that’s the point. It gives you a moment of reflection to consider, “Does this really make sense to do? Is it a priority? How could I approach this from a more creative direction? Is there someone else who would be a better choice to tackle this?” Cards are meant to be ephemeral. The idea is, we capture, then we recycle the card. That’s one of the reasons V doesn’t plan out a talk directly in Keynote or PowerPoint — once we’ve created a placeholder slide, in a way we feel like that’s “handled.” You can play with cards. You can shuffle them. You can lay them all out on the ground. You can use different colors and color-code your ideas, if you’re that kind of person — this can be very powerful if you’re a visual person. V has already got Jerod Morris on our team addicted to them, and he’s an evangelist like I am. If you want to try it out, obviously first pick up some cards. (I’ll give you a link to a little notebook of perforated cards, those are easy to carry around. Or just hold some cards together with one of those really small binder clips.) Then implement a mini habit: Capture one idea a day to an index card, and then process that card at a specific time. If you forget, and some days you will, it’s fine to do it right before bed. Scribble an idea on a card that you remember from the day, then put a note into your calendar for the next day called “Think about X.” You can create as many cards as you want to, but to satisfy your “I did my habit today” resolution, you just need one. And again, if you’re coming up blank, just write a stupid idea on a card. “Note to self …” then come up with the dopiest idea you can manage. It’s a two-part habit, so it’s important to schedule that daily review of your cards. This is a very fast task — say between one and four minutes. Put an alarm for that time into the calendar of whatever device you’re addicted to, like an alarm on your phone, so you remember to do it. It won’t take too long before you associate a certain time of day with just a fast review of your cards. This is an ultra powerful way to increase the number of creative ideas you have for whatever you do — blog, podcast, parenting, managing your team, etc. Just have a habit of capturing one idea, with the paired habit of processing it. It will blossom on its own, you don’t have to push it any further than that. If you do any creative work — and we all do — you will actually probably end up saving a huge amount of time if you implement this, because such a big part of creative work is trying to get an idea happening. <h3>Other options</h3> That throwaway nature of the index cards is psychologically useful, because it lets you play around with ideas and not feel like you’ve made any kind of commitment. The freedom to have stupid ideas is one of the fundamental creative freedoms that allows for good work. But some of you will already be using paper. For example, as I said in a talk at Hubspot last year, the Moleskine notebook is the Book Of Our People. Lots of content creators love them. If you already have a habit of capturing things in a Moleskine, you could just tuck some index cards into that envelope in the back, or you can do the work right in the notebook. By the way, in my opinion there are some nicer options to Moleskine, which has kind of crummy paper if you use fountain pens like I do. I’ll give you a link. I have a notebook where I keep all kinds of things — nutrition journal entries, workout logs, goals and habit development, journaling about what’s on my mind with business or my personal life. If I used it for my idea captures, I’d start by writing something consistent like IDEA CAPTURE at the top of a blank page, then use that page exactly the same way I’ve outlined the index card process. Then during my idea processing time, I’d consider each idea, do what I need to do with it, and physically cross it off. For some people, writing in a notebook makes it overly “official,” so you won’t have that Stupid Idea Freedom working for you. Others are more accustomed to writing random stuff in their notebooks, and they won’t get caught up. Start with whatever feels right to you. I personally prefer the cards because they’re small and light — my notebook stays on my desk, my cards travel with me. <h3>Don’t start digital</h3> I know many of you, possibly most of you, are thinking, “I’m going to create this entire process on my phone so I don’t have to mess around with paper and a pen or pencil.” A lot of us have terrible handwriting because we don’t ever do it. And we just don’t have the physical writing habit. If you’re physically able to write, I really recommend it. It just seems to hit a different set of synapses. One of the things that makes this process work is that crossover between physical and digital. At least give it a shot — go through a pack of index cards and see if it adds something. If you never, ever physically write, it will feel a little weird for sure. Try to find a pen you like, get index cards in an awesome color that makes you happy, this can give you that little motivational boost to get your new toys out and play with them — and that will give you the energy to get the habit in place. If glitter or stickers or really fancy coloring markers, or any other kind of fancy office supply, helps you get motivated, by all means go for it. A good art store will have some enticing options for you. By the way, Brian Clark shared another nifty post, written by Julia Roy, on work hacks for your physical environment, on his Further newsletter. That article is on <a href="http://FastCompany.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FastCompany.com</a>, and I’ve got a link for you in the show notes. You know I always love your thoughts and comments! If you have an analog component to your creative work, I’d love to hear about it.

A Simple, Powerful Creativity System to  Capture and Generate More Ideas

It’s the podcast’s birthday! To celebrate, today I want to talk about one of my favorite traits: stubbornness.  Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By  Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today!  There are all kinds of traits our culture insists we “have” to have to run a successful business, but looking around, there’s just one I’ve seen. In this 22-minute episode, I talk about:  How to make the most of our gifts and blessings How to think about your constraints and assets to build something amazing What a box of Legos can teach you about business Finding inspiration for business and life  Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes  Gary Vaynerchuk on Entrepreneurial DNA Sean d’Souza on this podcast, also talking about entrepreneurial DNA, How to Strengthen Your Talents Paul Piff’s TedX talk on Whether Money Makes People Mean PBS Frontline, The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela  The Transcript Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.  I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. This is episode 52 of this podcast, which I vote makes it the one-year anniversary. Because we skipped an episode or two over the holidays that isn’t literally exactly right, but who wants to be that literal? In honor of my first year of podcasting, I want to talk about my favorite virtue for business owners: Raw, undiluted, and maybe even cranky stubbornness. If you have this one, you can get the rest A lot of you have heard me go off on the idea that business owners have to have special “DNA.”  Gary Vaynerchuk is one who really believes in entrepreneurial DNA. Let’s just say — I don’t agree. Gary came here from Belarus when he was three. His family owned a liquor store, and Gary did really amazing things in getting more customers to that using content.  He was actually born into a family that gave him amazing gifts — not the kind of privilege with marble bathtubs or gold-plated silverware, but the privilege of a mindset for business. It looks like DNA because he didn’t ask for it, he didn’t “earn” it — it was given to him as a gift of his birth. And it’s fantastic. And I love the way he looks at the world through this lens that he inherited.  But it’s not DNA. Traits and abilities like “the ability to sell” aren’t DNA. And we know they aren’t DNA, because we have examples all over the place of people who didn’t have it growing up, but learn it or otherwise acquire it along the way.  No matter what I read or who I meet or what workshops I attend or investments I make, I don’t get any taller. How tall I am is DNA. Privilege and luck The way I see it is, we have privileges — these are the things we get born with. Sometimes they are DNA, like you’re tall. A few people inherit some crazy gift of resilience, and can come through really horrible beginnings.  A lot of times it’s just being lucky enough to get born to parents who value education and hard work — I was lucky enough to get those. It’s not a small thing.  Experiment a couple of years ago at U.C. Berkeley, which I find hilarious since that’s my alma mater and also the epicenter of political correctness on the planet. Participants played Monopoly — but some were given double the starting money, allowed to roll more dice, or otherwise had the game stacked in their favor. Part of the scenario is asking them at the end of the game why they won — because of course, with their advantages, they all won. And they gave reasons like their strategy, or having a passion for the game. Some of them even mentioned luck, like lucky die rolls. But none of them seemed to remember that they started with double the money and three dice instead of two. Now the study was very broad and I notice it’s a bit of a blind-man-and-elephant study. Everyone sees their own bias in it. So don’t get crazy attached to it as scientific evidence … but I think it’s a fascinating microcosm or metaphor. That’s privilege. I don’t actually believe in apologizing for it, since I’m hoping you didn’t elbow someone else aside to get it, but also don’t think it means you’re smart or hard-working or anything other than just very fortunate. Try hard to be conscious of it, be thankful, and roll up your sleeves. It strikes me that people have gone a little off the rails with this study, possibly, thinking “that’s why those people are like that.” The researcher, Paul Piff, has a TEDx talk called “does money make you mean.” Those other rich people.  No. This is why we are sometimes like this. Every single person listening to this has inherited some privilege. You’re on the internet, you live in this age where so many things are possible, you have access to technology, you have enough to eat, you have clean drinking water. This stuff is not trivial. We take them for granted, they’re double-Monopoly money, but they’re not trivial, and not everyone has them. So take a little time to honor the gifts you received at birth. Privilege is hard to look at because it’s a little taboo. We think that privileged people are bad people, and the Monopoly study researchers I think brought some of that bias to it. But we all have some privilege, some very juicy pieces of luck that we did nothing to earn, and I’ve found it’s more constructive to try to be mindful of that instead of falling all over yourself insisting that privilege has no bearing on your life. The role of blessings Then there’s the other thing, and I call these blessings. These are the opportunities, the doors that present themselves, and we decide to open them or not to open them. They’re still gifts, but you have to do something to unlock them. You have to put the work in. You have to assess the situation with your best judgment and try to make the right call. You have to compete on your strengths and train your weaknesses — which means, do what you’re excellent at, and then make a plan for how to work with what you might kind of suck pretty badly at.  Blessings are where things like marketing and business education come in. A blog that teaches you, a conference that inspires and educates you.  They’re opportunities to play the hand we’re dealt in a smarter way. Sometimes they’re opportunities to go get more cards.  So my philosophy is, Be conscious of and grateful for your privileges and don’t let them make you think you’re so smart. Then work hard and leverage the blessings that you come across to the best of your ability. Luck matters, but plenty of ultra-fortunate people have thrown their success and happiness away with both hands because they put no work into their blessings. So don’t be that person, because seriously, how depressing is that. Where stubbornness comes in  So I talked about my favorite vice/virtue of stubbornness: this is how I see it playing into that mix. If you’re going to reach a goal — personal, financial, business, health, relationship, whatever — you have constraints and you have assets. Your assets are the privileges and the blessings. They’re all of those resources you can tap into to make something happen. Your abilities, your education, your money, your available time, your network, your upbringing, the marketing and business podcasts you listen to, the books and courses you’ve acquired, you get the idea. These are your assets. Then you have constraints — and funnily enough, these often have the same labels. So there might be something lacking or sub-optimal about your abilities, your education, your money, your available time, your network, your upbringing, etc. You know how to fill those blanks in for yourself. You sit down — and I’m going to write about this soon — and basically you have a box of Legos. You’re going to make something out of the Legos you have. And you aren’t going to use the Legos that you don’t have, because … you don’t  have them. That’s what reaching goals is all about. So if we’re talking about a success goal or a business or financial goal, you have a unique combination of assets and constraints, and how you put those together is up to you.  Now if you have absolutely everything you need right there in front of you, you happened to be born with the really good set of Lego that had the little wheels and axels and maybe even the electronic motor, then you just go forth and do it. And probably you don’t listen to podcasts like this one, because you don’t need it. You have what you need. Go you. But for most of us, we need to work around some things. We need to get creative. We need to build something no one has seen before, because we’re working around constraints.  Constraints make the most beautiful design, actually. Or if we want to make a life-sized bullfighter out of Legos, and we have no red Legos at all for the cape, we may need to figure out how to get some red Legos. Maybe a friend has some they’ll let us borrow. Or we have a bunch of yellow and green ones, and we can swap. Maybe we can take our birthday money and buy some. Maybe we can create a new character called the Bluefighter who has a blue cape. I don’t know. How you solve this problem is what makes your business or your project unique. With enough stubbornness, you’ll figure it out. If you have to go out and wander the streets looking for stray pennies and save them up, you will eventually have enough for some red Legos. It’s going to be really hard for some and pretty manageable for others.  But we all will come up against an issue that requires a lot of stubbornness. Another word could be courage. Another word could be “grit.” If you are a meditator, another word could be mindfulness, or equanimity.  But it’s staying with the problem set through the frustrations. Continuing to apply our intelligence and our intention. Sometimes we need to back off of it for a little bit — work hard on it, then back away and sleep on it. To consider and re-consider the assets, and how they match up against the constraints, until we come up with a solution that is pleasing. If you have the stubbornness, you can get to the rest of it or die trying. For me, there is something really core to human dignity about that. Finding inspiration This is why we love those stories where people overcome amazing odds. Something amazing in my lifetime was to see that Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison, in a country that was known for fanatical — essentially religious — clinging to a system of pervasive injustice. And — this blows my mind every time I think about it — Mandela figured out how to use that as an asset to lead his country to freedom.  In the winter of 1964, Nelson Mandela arrived on Robben Island where he would spend 18 of his 27 prison years. Confined to a small cell, the floor his bed, a bucket for a toilet, he was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He was allowed one visitor a year for 30 minutes. He could write and receive one letter every six months. But Robben Island became the crucible which transformed him. Through his intelligence, charm and dignified defiance, Mandela eventually bent even the most brutal prison officials to his will, assumed leadership over his jailed comrades and became the master of his own prison. He emerged from it the mature leader who would fight and win the great political battles that would create a new democratic South Africa. — PBS Frontline, The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela And of course he became South Africa’s first post-apartheid president. I have to tell you, in the 1980s, really nearly no one thought South Africa could ever overthrow apartheid and become whole. Certainly not in our lifetime. But Mandela saw it. Whatever constraints you or I have, we can look at someone like Mandela — and of course, thousands of others — and feel inspired to refresh our own stubbornness. They remind us that we have this unbelievable human ability to keep turning over the assets and constraints, over and over again, keep applying our creativity and our stubbornness. We’re a crazy species and some days I worry about us. But we do have this going for us, and it’s cool. Any time you can, try to look up from your own problems and say to yourself, “If that person can do it, I can do it.” It’s very helpful. So: Let me know about your assets and constraints! And if you want to share a time you were able to sit with a problem and get stubborn on it, we would all love to hear about it. If you are in the middle of a problem set that’s got your gears grinding, let us know that too — one of the assets we don’t always mobilize is our community.  People want to help you get to where you’re going. We’re wired for that. It’s so easy, and especially in the West, the U.S. in particular, because we have a big mythology around the “Lone Ranger,” it’s so easy to forget that all of us can pull together a community to reach our goals together. It’s so powerful. It’s so, so powerful.  Or if you just want to wish the podcast happy birthday, I’ll take it.  Swing by PinkHairedMarketer.FM, or tweet me @soniasimone. See you next time.  

It’s the podcast’s birthday! To celebrate, today I want to talk about one of my favorite traits: stubbornness. <a href="http://Rainmaker.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rainmaker.FM</a> is Brought to You By<a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3><a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></h3> Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=394686&amp;u=1827249&amp;m=41388&amp;urllink=&amp;afftrack=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Start getting more from your site today!</a> There are all kinds of traits our culture insists we “have” to have to run a successful business, but looking around, there’s just one I’ve seen. In this 22-minute episode, I talk about: <ul> <li>How to make the most of our gifts and blessings</li> <li>How to think about your constraints and assets to build something amazing</li> <li>What a box of Legos can teach you about business</li> <li>Finding inspiration for business and life</li> </ul> Listen to <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer</a> below ...<a href="https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rfm-pink-052.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Download MP3</a><a href="https://rainmaker.fm/series/pink/feed/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe by RSS</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id974801944" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Subscribe in iTunes</a> <h3>The Show Notes</h3> <ul> <li>Gary Vaynerchuk on <a href="http://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/entrepreneurial-dna-do-you-have-it/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Entrepreneurial DNA</a></li> <li>Sean d’Souza on this podcast, also talking about entrepreneurial DNA, <a href="https://rainmaker.fm/audio/pink/strengthen-talents/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How to Strengthen Your Talents</a></li> <li>Paul Piff’s TedX talk on <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean?language=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Whether Money Makes People Mean</a></li> <li>PBS Frontline, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/prison/ " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela</a></li> </ul> <h2>The Transcript</h2> Sonia Simone: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital. I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should. This is episode 52 of this podcast, which I vote makes it the one-year anniversary. Because we skipped an episode or two over the holidays that isn’t literally exactly right, but who wants to be that literal? In honor of my first year of podcasting, I want to talk about my favorite virtue for business owners: Raw, undiluted, and maybe even cranky stubbornness. <h3>If you have this one, you can get the rest</h3> A lot of you have heard me go off on the idea that business owners have to have special “DNA.” Gary Vaynerchuk is one who really believes in entrepreneurial DNA. Let’s just say — I don’t agree. Gary came here from Belarus when he was three. His family owned a liquor store, and Gary did really amazing things in getting more customers to that using content. He was actually born into a family that gave him amazing gifts — not the kind of privilege with marble bathtubs or gold-plated silverware, but the privilege of a mindset for business. It looks like DNA because he didn’t ask for it, he didn’t “earn” it — it was given to him as a gift of his birth. And it’s fantastic. And I love the way he looks at the world through this lens that he inherited. But it’s not DNA. Traits and abilities like “the ability to sell” aren’t DNA. And we know they aren’t DNA, because we have examples all over the place of people who didn’t have it growing up, but learn it or otherwise acquire it along the way. No matter what I read or who I meet or what workshops I attend or investments I make, I don’t get any taller. How tall I am is DNA. <h3>Privilege and luck</h3> The way I see it is, we have privileges — these are the things we get born with. Sometimes they are DNA, like you’re tall. A few people inherit some crazy gift of resilience, and can come through really horrible beginnings. A lot of times it’s just being lucky enough to get born to parents who value education and hard work — I was lucky enough to get those. It’s not a small thing. Experiment a couple of years ago at U.C. Berkeley, which I find hilarious since that’s my alma mater and also the epicenter of political correctness on the planet. Participants played Monopoly — but some were given double the starting money, allowed to roll more dice, or otherwise had the game stacked in their favor. Part of the scenario is asking them at the end of the game why they won — because of course, with their advantages, they all won. And they gave reasons like their strategy, or having a passion for the game. Some of them even mentioned luck, like lucky die rolls. But none of them seemed to remember that they started with double the money and three dice instead of two. Now the study was very broad and I notice it’s a bit of a blind-man-and-elephant study. Everyone sees their own bias in it. So don’t get crazy attached to it as scientific evidence … but I think it’s a fascinating microcosm or metaphor. That’s privilege. I don’t actually believe in apologizing for it, since I’m hoping you didn’t elbow someone else aside to get it, but also don’t think it means you’re smart or hard-working or anything other than just very fortunate. Try hard to be conscious of it, be thankful, and roll up your sleeves. It strikes me that people have gone a little off the rails with this study, possibly, thinking “that’s why those people are like that.” The researcher, Paul Piff, has a TEDx talk called “does money make you mean.” Those other rich people. No. <blockquote>This is why we are sometimes like this.</blockquote> Every single person listening to this has inherited some privilege. You’re on the internet, you live in this age where so many things are possible, you have access to technology, you have enough to eat, you have clean drinking water. This stuff is not trivial. We take them for granted, they’re double-Monopoly money, but they’re not trivial, and not everyone has them. So take a little time to honor the gifts you received at birth. Privilege is hard to look at because it’s a little taboo. We think that privileged people are bad people, and the Monopoly study researchers I think brought some of that bias to it. But we all have some privilege, some very juicy pieces of luck that we did nothing to earn, and I’ve found it’s more constructive to try to be mindful of that instead of falling all over yourself insisting that privilege has no bearing on your life. <h3>The role of blessings</h3> Then there’s the other thing, and I call these blessings. These are the opportunities, the doors that present themselves, and we decide to open them or not to open them. They’re still gifts, but you have to do something to unlock them. You have to put the work in. You have to assess the situation with your best judgment and try to make the right call. You have to compete on your strengths and train your weaknesses — which means, do what you’re excellent at, and then make a plan for how to work with what you might kind of suck pretty badly at. Blessings are where things like marketing and business education come in. A blog that teaches you, a conference that inspires and educates you. They’re opportunities to play the hand we’re dealt in a smarter way. Sometimes they’re opportunities to go get more cards. So my philosophy is, Be conscious of and grateful for your privileges and don’t let them make you think you’re so smart. Then work hard and leverage the blessings that you come across to the best of your ability. Luck matters, but plenty of ultra-fortunate people have thrown their success and happiness away with both hands because they put no work into their blessings. So don’t be that person, because seriously, how depressing is that. <h3>Where stubbornness comes in </h3> So I talked about my favorite vice/virtue of stubbornness: this is how I see it playing into that mix. If you’re going to reach a goal — personal, financial, business, health, relationship, whatever — you have constraints and you have assets. Your assets are the privileges and the blessings. They’re all of those resources you can tap into to make something happen. Your abilities, your education, your money, your available time, your network, your upbringing, the marketing and business podcasts you listen to, the books and courses you’ve acquired, you get the idea. These are your assets. Then you have constraints — and funnily enough, these often have the same labels. So there might be something lacking or sub-optimal about your abilities, your education, your money, your available time, your network, your upbringing, etc. You know how to fill those blanks in for yourself. You sit down — and I’m going to write about this soon — and basically you have a box of Legos. You’re going to make something out of the Legos you have. And you aren’t going to use the Legos that you don’t have, because … you don’t have them. That’s what reaching goals is all about. So if we’re talking about a success goal or a business or financial goal, you have a unique combination of assets and constraints, and how you put those together is up to you. Now if you have absolutely everything you need right there in front of you, you happened to be born with the really good set of Lego that had the little wheels and axels and maybe even the electronic motor, then you just go forth and do it. And probably you don’t listen to podcasts like this one, because you don’t need it. You have what you need. Go you. But for most of us, we need to work around some things. We need to get creative. We need to build something no one has seen before, because we’re working around constraints. Constraints make the most beautiful design, actually. Or if we want to make a life-sized bullfighter out of Legos, and we have no red Legos at all for the cape, we may need to figure out how to get some red Legos. Maybe a friend has some they’ll let us borrow. Or we have a bunch of yellow and green ones, and we can swap. Maybe we can take our birthday money and buy some. Maybe we can create a new character called the Bluefighter who has a blue cape. I don’t know. How you solve this problem is what makes your business or your project unique. With enough stubbornness, you’ll figure it out. If you have to go out and wander the streets looking for stray pennies and save them up, you will eventually have enough for some red Legos. It’s going to be really hard for some and pretty manageable for others. But we all will come up against an issue that requires a lot of stubbornness. Another word could be courage. Another word could be “grit.” If you are a meditator, another word could be mindfulness, or equanimity. But it’s staying with the problem set through the frustrations. Continuing to apply our intelligence and our intention. Sometimes we need to back off of it for a little bit — work hard on it, then back away and sleep on it. To consider and re-consider the assets, and how they match up against the constraints, until we come up with a solution that is pleasing. If you have the stubbornness, you can get to the rest of it or die trying. For me, there is something really core to human dignity about that. <h3>Finding inspiration</h3> This is why we love those stories where people overcome amazing odds. Something amazing in my lifetime was to see that Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison, in a country that was known for fanatical — essentially religious — clinging to a system of pervasive injustice. And — this blows my mind every time I think about it — Mandela figured out how to use that as an asset to lead his country to freedom. <blockquote>In the winter of 1964, Nelson Mandela arrived on Robben Island where he would spend 18 of his 27 prison years. Confined to a small cell, the floor his bed, a bucket for a toilet, he was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He was allowed one visitor a year for 30 minutes. He could write and receive one letter every six months. But Robben Island became the crucible which transformed him. Through his intelligence, charm and dignified defiance, Mandela eventually bent even the most brutal prison officials to his will, assumed leadership over his jailed comrades and became the master of his own prison. He emerged from it the mature leader who would fight and win the great political battles that would create a new democratic South Africa. — PBS Frontline, The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela</blockquote> And of course he became South Africa’s first post-apartheid president. I have to tell you, in the 1980s, really nearly no one thought South Africa could ever overthrow apartheid and become whole. Certainly not in our lifetime. But Mandela saw it. Whatever constraints you or I have, we can look at someone like Mandela — and of course, thousands of others — and feel inspired to refresh our own stubbornness. They remind us that we have this unbelievable human ability to keep turning over the assets and constraints, over and over again, keep applying our creativity and our stubbornness. We’re a crazy species and some days I worry about us. But we do have this going for us, and it’s cool. Any time you can, try to look up from your own problems and say to yourself, “If that person can do it, I can do it.” It’s very helpful. So: Let me know about your assets and constraints! And if you want to share a time you were able to sit with a problem and get stubborn on it, we would all love to hear about it. If you are in the middle of a problem set that’s got your gears grinding, let us know that too — one of the assets we don’t always mobilize is our community. People want to help you get to where you’re going. We’re wired for that. It’s so easy, and especially in the West, the U.S. in particular, because we have a big mythology around the “Lone Ranger,” it’s so easy to forget that all of us can pull together a community to reach our goals together. It’s so powerful. It’s so, so powerful. Or if you just want to wish the podcast happy birthday, I’ll take it. Swing by <a href="http://PinkHairedMarketer.FM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PinkHairedMarketer.FM</a>, or tweet me @soniasimone. See you next time.

Anniversary Edition! On Finding Your Stubbornness and Going the Distance

a href="<a href="https://twitter.com/soniasimone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/soniasimone</a>" target="_blank"Sonia Simone/a delivers advice, encouragement, and the occasional rant from outside the drone of the marketing mainstream. Join her for a regular mix of monologues, interviews, and answers to your content marketing questions.

Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer

The Best Multi-Part Documentaries, with documentaries on Obama, Federer vs Nadal, the making of Star Wars, Netflix vs Blockbuster and more. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

Best Multi-Part Documentaries

The best podcast episodes on global issues affecting everyone. Covering topics such as the #metoo movement, climate change, the impact of technology and some of the biggest global issues facing us right now. For anyone interested in learning more about the world, and some of the issues we're facing, pick an episode below and start listening! Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!