Sunday, 7:57pm
Reno, NV
“It’s alive!” (Baron Von Frankenstein, kickstarting the Monster)

Howdy…

We’ve just fired up the Simple Writing System blog (www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog)…

… which means a stunning (and unprecedented) pile of free tools, tactics, advice and insight can be yours…

… just for the grabbing.

This is an all-out assault on reason and logic.  We’re just GIVING AWAY stuff that — not too long ago — would have cost you a pretty penny just to get a quick glimpse of.

We’ve created a beast here, and it’s name is FREE.

Here’s just a small taste of what’s piling up over there (that you’re missing out on if you haven’t signed in):

• A free swipe file of “home run” ads I’ve written (which few folks outside the target markets have ever seen)… can be in your tool kit tonight.  This swipe file, alone, is causing hearts to skip a beat among marketers and freelance writers who love to rip juicy headlines and sales angles from proven ads.  (Removes any guesswork on who/what to rip.)

• A short (but frightenly powerful) series of special reports channeling the best “how to make the sale” secrets I’ve ever used.  (I used to keep this stuff classified, only bringing it out during high-paid consultations… and here we are giving it away.)

• The actual video (torn directly from the masters hidden in Frank’s inner sanctum) of my “How to persuade, influence and sell the shit out of anything… using the simplest stories you can create” presentation at Mass Control.

What?  You didn’t see that presentation?

It’s marketing theater at its finest… and gives away the storytelling techniques that have earned me a fortune (seriously revealed for the first time in this wacky presentation that held the crowd in thrall).

And it’s free… at least for a few days… at www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog.

More…

• Have you heard the teleclass Ed Dale and I just did… about using sneaky social media tactics to overthrow your niche and capture total, unassailable “leadership positioning”… using only Twitter?

Dude — it’s FREE right now over there.  And coming up:

• Legendary adman Joe Sugarman actually punk’d me during a sizzling interview (which reveals his BEST sales-exploding secrets).  Oh, we’re laughing about it now, but it left me speechless, twisting in the wind last week when it happened.  (And I’m never speechless.  Joe is just that good.)

These are classic salesmanship secrets now lost, overlooked and ignored by most marketers…

… which is a HUGE advantage to you (IF you have the sense to start using them yourself).

• Wait a minute… you haven’t heard of James Schramko yet?

Are you living in a cave?  This guy rocketed (that’s the right word, too) from total obscurity… not even a year ago…

… to the very top of the online  money-making wizards pile.  Respect, fame, wealth and a well-earned rabid fan-base siphoning off his deep knowledge.

Best part: He took detailed notes during his climb to fame and wealth (as a rookie!)… and this webinar we’ve got is the first time he’s shared the really good insider stuff.

And it free!

What are you doing here?  Get over to www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog and grab this cornucopia of give-away goodies now.

Again: We’re only leaving access to the reports, the webinars, the videos and everything else…

… for a few days.

Then: Ffffft.

Gone.

(Big hint: One major reason James was able to zoom to the top… was his obsession with never missing an opportunity to grab the really good info whenever, and however, it became available.)

Here… it’s all free.

More:

• We reveal the next logical (and most lucrative) big step for any smart online marketer to make as the economy continues to morph.

Have you ever wanted to be one of those people who get advance notice on hot incoming trends?  Well, here ya go.

Colette Marshall (the queen of  “Product Sourcing”) spills everything you need to know in the free webinar we’re about to post.

• And get this: Blogmeister Extraordinare Yaro Starak reveals the secrets of living lavishly from a 2-hour workday… using nothing but a blog and some specific email tactics.  (It took him years to figure this out… and he just lays out the 7 simple steps, right here in a cool-as-heck webinar you can own for nothing.)

And how about this:  Just hearing someone’s blah-blah-blah story on striking it rich using a certain tactic is boring… and useless to you.

Unless you have access to the actual “case studies” outlining what was done, and what happened to generate the breakthroughs and hot results.

Well, guess what?

Yep.  Posted for free at www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog.

Look.  I could go on and on just describing the sheer awesomeness of what we’re giving away.

But you can just find out for yourself with a quick click on the link.

And I’m gonna suggest you do exactly that…

… right now.

www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog

I have poured massive quantities of energy, brain-power and time into creating this pile o’ goodies for you.  It took weeks of exhausting work.

I did it just to blow people away.

And it’s all there… for free.

Stop reading.

Go over there now.

This is life-changing stuff.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

Sunday, 7:36pm
Reno, NV
“A thief believes everybody steals.” (E.W. Howe)

Howdy…

For those of you bugging me about the next Quiz…

… it’s coming, it’s coming.

Soon.

Tonight, though, I’ve gotta get something off my chest.

And so, a Rant.  By little Johnny Carlton:

Ahem.

There seems to be a parasite bug infecting the brains of many marketers out there.

Let’s call this bug… “Theft“.

It’s not going away anytime soon.

In fact, the very word has been mutating for a long time now… so that what would have easily been labeled “stealing” in the bad-old pre-Web days…

… is now considered smart and brave and even ethical.

Which means that the word “ethical” has also required some definition surgery, as well.

Okay, I gotta take part of all that back, right off the top.  (Note:  Rants often take sudden swerving turns like this.  Just relax and go with it.  You’ll be rewarded for your patience soon…)

This attitude — that taking something of value from someone else is not necessarily “wrong”, and may even be completely cool – has shown its ugly head before in my lifetime.

Remember Woodstock?

Forget about all the feelings brought up by that festival.  Boomer hippies assign the event iconic holiness, while later generations mock what they see as hypocritical bullshit from their elders.

Me? Still love the movie.  In fact, every year or so I line up “Monterey”, “Don’t Look Back” — Dylan’s ‘64 tour of England — “Woodstock”, “Isle of Wight Festival” — the ‘70 edition — and “Gimme Shelter”.

It’s a mini-film festival covering exactly 6 years — 1964 to 1970 — where things changed oh-so-dramatically in the world.  Innocence to grim chaos, told through the soundtrack of the time.  Lovely unintended documentary, these films…

It would have been great if the “spirit” of peace and love really had taken over the universe, and we all evolved into a groovy mind-meld of far-out angelic transmogrification.

Didn’t happen, of course.

The uncritical idealism of the time turned me, for example, away from the entire philosophy of idealism.  I loathe idealism now.  It’s counter-productive and rots minds.

And, as an older-and-maybe-wiser business owner, the most striking part of all these movies for me — aside from the music, which still astounds — is the way the “average” person saw no reason why everything shouldn’t be “free”.

Woodstock became a free concert because of shit-poor planning and bad fences.  They were forced to do it.

The bands were not consulted.  Nor were they happy about it.

And if you know the story, you know that the producers of the concert refused to declare bankruptcy, and eventually paid all their bills (though it took the organization many years to accomplish this task).

That’s old school.  Take your lumps, clean up your mess, and fulfill your obligations.

One year later, at the first Isle of Wight festival, a mob of angry socialist counter-culture types harshed everyone’s mellow by demanding that this concert be “free”, too.

Through a slo-mo riot.

It’s free, or we’ll kill you.

By the time the Stones offered a free concert at Altamont (documented in “Gimme Shelter”), things just got completely out of hand.

While the music still shines, the Isle of Wight film captures the chaos and confusion from the bands’ perspective: What?  Somebody’s gotta pay for putting this thing on, getting us here, and providing electricity for my gee-tar and Keith’s Bee-Three.

You think this shit all happens by magic?

I find this unresolved battle between clueless people waning a free lunch… and the practical folks who understand how lunches actually get made… fascinating.

Folks (including many biz owners) have been getting confused about capitalism since the first trade of something-for-something between cave men, lo, those many eons ago.

It’s particularly gnarly when prosperity collides with reality.

For example: I was a vandal as a kid.  Not proud of it, just saying.

I had no idea who erected the streetlights, or who ran the trains chugging along the tracks behind our house.  Stuff just happened, because that’s the way the post-war world operated.

So, when we took out the streetlight bulbs with BB guns, or derailed the noon Southern Pacific with a pile of railroad ties… there was no connection in our feeble brains about what consequences we were igniting.

We were bulls in the china shop.

Education was provided “free” to me, growing up.  Water came out of the tap, magically.  And, as far I could think it through, free.  Same with the radio, the TV, the mail, all all the other stuff that contributed to this “free” life for me.

It was a rude awakening to discover that, to buy a car and keep the tank full so I could take Suzie to the Who concert, I needed to generate “money” from a “job” to grease the machine of capitalism.

“Free” was so much more fun.

The World Wide Web was created by an unholy alliance of the Armed Forces and elite academia… both of which operated largely outside the demands of capitalism.   (Grants and Congressional budgets are not equal to a paycheck from a job.)

So the concept of “free” took root easily.

If you were among the early adopters of Web marketing, you must remember the snarling resistance to capitalism among the Web-heads dominating the landscape back then.

All software should be open source.  Selling stuff — any stuff at all — “polluted” the promise of a New Way Of Doing Things Online, where everything should be free (as God and Al Gore surely intended).

When non-techie-type people — your neighbors, for example — started flooding online, and finally got over the fear of using their credit card on a Web site, that “free” ethos collapsed in earnest.

Except for the really cool stuff… like music and intellectual property.

Hey — I don’t like the Big Music Moguls any more than you do.  They raped artists and kept a corrupt house since the first needle hit vinyl.

And the Grateful Dead/Coldplay model of allowing rips (and making their real money through touring) is a great tactic… except when it isn’t.

Okay, time out again.  I’m not gonna enter the fray of whether all movies and music should be available free on bit torrent sites.

No.

I wanna get more specific.

I wanna discuss the notion that ripping off another marketer’s ADS is somehow cool and hip and righteous.

This is where I was heading the entire time here.  A slight detour through Woodstock, down the side alley of my vandal past, across the lawn of the Internet, and finally into the parking lot of Marketing And Advertising.

When I was coming up through the freelance ranks, there was not another copywriter alive who thought it was okay to directly rip another writer’s stuff.

Seriously.

It was a sin to copy someone else’s stuff word for word.

You just didn’t do it.

There was theft, of course.  Thieving bastards who thought they wouldn’t get caught would be so brazen as to clip ads from newspapers, white-out the address in the coupon, type in their own address…

… and then submit the altered ad, as is, to their local paper for publication.

This happened to clients of mine.  A lot.  Ads I wrote were nicked in Australia — where US law couldn’t touch them, at the time — and run exactly that way.

These were not copywriters doing the deed.

These were thieves.  The lowest form of life in the food chain.

No one pretended it was otherwise.

As business on the Web progressed through the early years of this century, however…

… a curious thing happened.

Suddenly, it was okay to rip off another writer’s copy.  Word for word.

My fellow “old school” writers were appalled.  But powerless to change this re-definition of the word “ethical”.

I even decided to help the rippers out.  I gave a now-infamous workshop called the “License To Steal Seminar”… where I taught people how to rip 5 of my most successful ads.

Why did I do this?

Because everyone was ripping my ads incorrectly.

It pissed me off.

And so, I took it upon myself to teach budding writers what the swipe-file process actually entailed.

The key: Don’t blindly copy.

Instead, figure out the essence of how the sales pitch has been constructed in a good ad…

… and adopt what you learn when you write your own ad.

When I started out, I stalked Gary Bencivenga’s direct mail pieces because his writing “spoke” to me.

I would literally tear his packages apart, and mark them up with notes as I dissected his bullets, his word choices, and the way he guided his reader through the pitch.

But I never copied any of his bullets, or headlines, or even “close the sale” wording.

It was like studying Eric Clapton’s solo in “Crossroads”.  Sure, learn how he constructed it.  Learn how to emulate it.

But don’t go out and play it, note for note, in one of your own songs.  That would be rightly ridiculed.

Instead, “channel” Eric’s style if you must… but be original.

There are only a handful of notes (plus quarter and half-note bends) in the classic blues scale.  That “Crossroads” solo (correct me if I’m wrong) uses just A, C, D and E, up and down the neck, with bends.

Think about that.  A smattering of notes, arranged to send chills and thrills through a Clapton fan.  He has no legal or moral right to claim those notes as his, and no one else’s.  All musicians share the same scales.

And yet what he did was original, and easily identified.

Same with copy, people.  No writer can claim to “own” words like “how to”, or “absolutely free”, or “here’s what I have for you”, or anything else.

But an entire piece of copy…

… a successful ad really can become a work of art.  Worthy of emulation and inspiration.

However, you are CHEATING yourself if you rip mindlessly.

Look, I advocate swipe files.  They’re a great tool.  I include extensive swipe files — of my own stuff — in the packages I offer.

And, as I said, I offer insight to using these swipe files to help spur your own original creation of a good sales conversation.

Just plain old copying, though… it’s like taking your sister to the prom.

It may have all the appearances of a “real” date, but it’s not legit.  It is not a foundation to build anything on.

And this kind of mis-wired thinking produces a lot of hokey “They laughed when I sat down at the piano… but then I started to play…” kind of knock-off marketing.

It will look and sound silly if you don’t understand WHY that John Caples headline and copy worked.  (For the record: It’s a before-and-after type of head.  The key words are not “laughed” or “sat down”, but the juxtaposition of being put down with the “and then I started to play” tease, promising a story of redemption and new-found respect.)

I am now calm but still rueful about being perhaps the most ripped-off writer in the game these days.

It is not — as some might say — the highest form of flattery.  It is, in most cases, intellectual theft.

And it’s become accepted, without apology.

I’ve had books sent to me by folks who should be ashamed that they’ve copied large sections of my stuff… and pawned it off as their own.  And they are not ashamed at all.

I’ve witnessed speakers go on before me at an event… and tell my stories as their own (which sends me scrambling to adjust my own talk to get around the infraction).

This kind of shit leaves me baffled.

The real professionals in marketing never copy directly.  They may quote other writers, but they are lavish in praise while doing so, to ensure there is no confusion.

And they strive to be original at all times.

There are only so many commonly-used words in the English language.  The rich body of slang is refreshed constantly as we toy with phrases and cultural definitions.

If you can hold a conversation with someone, you can write what you need written for your biz.

You don’t need to steal blindly.

You can have a real date for the prom — all you need to do is get hip to the simple, easy process of doing what needs to be done to attain what you want.

Understanding why a good ad IS good gives you insight to what you must do in your own writing.

It’s not rocket science.  It’s actually easy to get into the groove of being original, once you’ve had just a touch of mentoring.

And when it finally clicks, you are off to the races.  You are no longer a slave to your swipe file, because you know how to have a sales conversation that gets results.

And that kind of knowledge just automatically fuels original thinking.

If you’re hot to embrace the freedom, independence, and wealth-generating mojo of knowing how to write everything you need written to make your biz rock…

… you can check out the Simple Writing System package I’ve made available.

I’m not gonna pitch you on it here.  You can decide for yourself if it’s what you need by going here to kick the tires: http://www.simplewritingsystem.com

It truly is a fun ride.

I’m also in the process of interviewing an astonishing array of marketing wizards — including a number of movers-and-shakers you may not have heard of yet (offering you an obvious advantage by learning their secrets before your competition).

These interviews will be released in just a few weeks from now.

And they will be free. No theft is required to access them.

So I’m just saying… you may want to keep your eyes peeled for the announcements of these free content-stuffed interviews.

It’s all part of my devious plan to help you get past your sticking-points and problems with writing your own fast, easy sales conversations that bring in the moolah.

Thanks for letting get all this off my chest here.

Especially the Woodstock stuff.  Been 40 years now.  Still a hell of a party, regardless of whatever else you might think about the event…

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. Really… what IS so funny about peace, love and understanding?

Tuesday, 8:54pm
Reno, NV
“You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…” (Eagles, “Hotel California”)

Howdy…

Today, let’s explore a little-discussed part of running a biz…

… using a couple of enlightening (and very brief) anecdotes from my recent (and continuing) “Adventures With Hotels”.

Let’s call this lesson: The Faded Lady and the Trump.

With all due apologies to Disney’s classic dog-romance movie, of course.

See if you can spot how the following short story applies to YOUR business…

Ahem.

Each of the last two weekends found me in different cities, staying in hotels I booked online, sight-unseen.

In Sin City, it was the splendiferous Trump International Hotel Las Vegas.

In San Francisco, the once-famous, now-infamous Cathedral Hill Hotel.

Now, the Trump joint was built with luxury in mind.  Shiny, tall, imposing building with huge well-apportioned rooms and super-modern equipment like elevators and art.

As a “product”, the building was great. (Though it seems idiotic not to have any gambling on the premises, as a wanna-be “player” in the Las Vegas scene.  I heard that Trump got skunked on getting his gambling license, but that’s not the spin the staff offered.  “We just didn’t want gambling here,” is what they said, unconvincingly.)

Great price for the rooms, too.  (Most likely because of the lack of casino amenities and dearth of unit sales, which turned it from condo to hotel.)

I have complaints about the joint… but not because of the room, the rate, or the basic delivery of stuff like air conditioning, clean water, nice beds, etc.  (In fact, their pillow-top beds are amazing to sleep in.  Like being cuddled by angels.)

Now, back in SF, it was a completely different situation.

We hosted a gathering of writers, affiliates, and other mucky-mucks at the Cathedral Hill Hotel because we wanted to treat everyone to an evening with the world-renown “Beer Chef“, who puts on fabulous dinners there once a month.  (You can read more about Bruce Paton’s unique meals at www.beer-chef.com. )

You want the “Beer Chef”, you deal with Cathedral Hill. (And yes, we very much wanted his magic.  He creates these shockingly-tasty gourmet meals there, with each course matched by a local micro-brew beer instead of boring old wine.  It’ll knock your socks off, even if you aren’t well-versed in pilsners, ales and lagers.)

We also started the day off with an afternoon-long brainstorm session in the hotel’s main meeting room.  (I’m sure you caught some of the updates on Twitter from the luminaries and stars in attendance.)

However…

… none of us had ever stayed at the hotel.

And while it has a storied past (well-chronicled in San Francisco lore), it has, alas,  fallen on hard times.

Culminating in being bought out a short time ago and scheduled for the wrecking ball.

Ouch.

We made the most of it.  The stories and jokes we all shared about our rooms and experiences in the hotel are howlingly funny…

… but still, as a “product”, there’s no getting around the fact that the building was in serious disrepair.

Sort of like a once-beautiful lady who has fallen on hard times, and ended up sacked-out in a filthy alley, soused with cheap booze and a reputation heading south at light speed.

The price was actually a red flag: You cannot stay in the city, in a decent room, for anywhere near the rate Cathedral Hill was asking.

Kind of like seeing an ad for a luxury Caribbean Cruise in the paper for five bucks.  It sort of sets off your early-warning alarm.  (Five bucks and your kidney, maybe.)

So… while no one got robbed, or found a dead hooker in their room… the experience came off as part Overlook Hotel horror-show (from “The Shining”), and part David Lynch “29 Palms” surreal.

Good grist for hair-raising tales.  And jokes.

Not so good for scoring nice comments on hotel-rating sites.

Now…

… here’s where the lesson comes in.

While the Trump shined as architecture… the hotel staff was a disaster.

They left us standing outside for half and hour in 100 degree heat while finding our valeted car… and got pissed when I raised a fuss.  I was told that pffft, of course I should have known it would take 20 minutes or longer to get a car from the garage.

Was I that naive?

Then, after charging me $9 for a few Advil in the tiny, inadequate store… I asked the desk clerk to hold the oversized bottle until I came back from my adventures outside.

And they stole it.  Or lost it.  And it was my problem.

Room service?  No one ever answered the phone when I called.  No message, no music, just endless ringing.  (I finally called the toll-free number for the hotel, got the manager on the line, and gave him my simple order.  Somehow, it actually got delivered some time later.)

Hey — I realize this isn’t earth shaking stuff. Lost overpriced Advil bottles, snotty attitudes, phones unanswered, meetings missed because of long waits for the car…

… I don’t really care all that much.

I’m actually amazed that anything works in this culture, ever.  Water coming out of the tap, planes actually flying, mail getting delivered…

… I find each act of modern life a mind-boggling miracle.  (The light came on!  I just flipped the switch like this… look! It came on again!)

But that’s the point of this little story.

It’s the little shit that actually leaves the biggest impression in business.

Over at the crumbling Cathedral Hill, the staff was like long-lost family.  The desk clerks fussed with clients, making sure we were as happy as possible.  Bell hops scrambled to help with luggage and directions (even though I know they were often stiffed from foreign bad-tippers).

The staff assigned to us during our brainstorm was attentive and eager to please.

And the Beer Chef’s kitchen staff performed amazing culinary feats all night long.  (Yum.)

These were, almost to a person, nice folks tackling difficult short-ticket jobs in a hotel with a date for demolition.

This got me thinking about customer service.

Most online biz fall down on dealing with customers and clients.  It’s just too tempting to treat people like numbers when everything is anonymous and digital.

Offline, you gotta look a customer in the eye.  Online, it’s email, and maybe a phone call.

So it’s easy to forget that after making a sale, the “real” work begins of creating a lasting relationship with a customer.

And the life-time value of a customer is what counts.

It’s not that first sale.

It’s all the following times he buys from you that builds a successful business model.

Good biz savvy demands over-the-top excellent customer service… all the way down the line.

It costs you to acquire a new customer.  It can be expensive, in cash laid out for ads, and in time spent communicating your sales message.

Once he’s a happy current customer, however, there’s an opportunity to bond deeply… which creates the kind of trust and bonhomie required to make back-end sales simple and easy.  (And this post-sale bonding can be accomplished for spare change.)

But there’s a mix of factors here, too.

I probably won’t stay at Trump’s little condo experiment again.  What I saved on the room rate was gobbled up by extra cab fares and the overpriced drinks and food they served.

And it just pissed me off that the staff seemed to have taken classes in offending customers.

So it’s worth noting that a great product, at a great price…

… can be nullified by rotten customer service.

And it’s also worth noting that a poor product — like the Cathedral Hill soon-to-go-bye-bye Hotel — can still leave you with good feelings about the experience.

I won’t be staying there again, mind you.  Because, again, the product sucked.

So the perfect mix is: Great product, great price…

… and great customer service.

It’s not brain surgery.

I ran Marketing Rebel as a 2-person shop for years, earning a fortune and a sterling reputation.

It was just Diane and me… and both of us made post-sale customer service a priority.

Even now, with the staff burgeoning, everyone who deals with customer happiness is a single phone call away from me.

You got a problem, you’re gonna get someone I know personally on it as fast as possible.

And each case is unique, far as we’re concerned.  There are real people behind every email we send out for customer service.

We will never make everyone happy, of course.  We’ll always have unpredictable problems that just crank some folks so much it damages the relationship forever.  It happens.

And we’ll always see a very tiny percentage of pure rage-aholic customers who cannot be satisfied, ever, because they’re batshit crazy.

Still, they will get replies, as fast as we can get on it.  For most customer service, in fact, my own personal assistant (the infamous Diane) is point person and chief handler.

You may, for whatever reason, become disenchanted with us.

But it won’t be from a sucky product or bad customer service.  You will never be left dangling in the wind.

I came up through the ranks knowing that customer service can make or break a project.

Some businesses out there say “screw it”, and accept 20% and higher refund rates because they just don’t want to bother with good customer relations.

I don’t recommend that model.

Truly resilient success is built on having a killer product… supported by equally killer customer service.

It’s easy to ruin a relationship.  (Lord, don’t I know that.)

And it’s hard to follow through with doing the right thing, as a rule.  People can be assholes, clueless, and utter nuisances… often all at once.

But it pays off to hang in there, and take the high road.

The customer may not always be right… but that’s the right attitude to start out with when dealing with someone.

If Trump was smart, he’d hire the Cathedral Hill staff as soon as they’re all available… and send his current mob packing.

It’s a huge lesson.  Great product, great service.

Any other combination just plain sucks, and will contaminate your success.

What do you think?

Love to hear your comments.  Maybe a horror story about dealing with a biz using professional assholes for customer service, or staying in Hotel Hell yourself.

(I loved that YouTube video about the cable TV guy napping on the job, and the other one about trying to quit AOL… while the representatives on the phone refused to allow it.)

Also… a couple of posts ago, someone put up a comment about being “ignored” by my staff regarding a complaint.  And I looked into it, and discovered that she had given us incorrect contact info, and ignored OUR reply emails on the matter.

I left that comment up (I’ve never taken down a comment yet, in five years, that wasn’t spam) as a little exercise in seeing how our years of over-the-top customer service has affected our reputation out there.

The answer: Not a whole lot.

Folks who deal with us are happy.  The few who cannot be satisfied, no matter what, remain disgruntled.

And you simply cannot really brag about good customer service to prospects.  No one will believe you until they experience it firsthand.

So, be clear on this: You don’t do it in your online biz because you score huge points with prospects.

You do it because it keeps happy customers happy.  And because it’s just the right thing to do.

Over time, your reputation will benefit.

More important, over that same period of time, your bottom line will grow faster, because you’re able to build on good will with back end sales to a happy list.

A small lesson, perhaps.

But critical to sustainable, honest success.

Please — share a horror story.

Stay frosty,

John

Howdy…

Can you do me a favor?

Actually, two favors:

1. Just forgive me for not paying close attention to this blog over the next week or so.

… and…

2. Please hop over to www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog/ and indulge yourself.

Am I forgiven?

Great.

I’ll be back here with a vengence soon enough.

Right now, however…

… we’re launching the Simple Writing System, and it’s taking all my time.

No, seriously, I mean ALL my time.

I haven’t slept much this week… and when I do, I’m dreaming about the damn launch.

I was going to give you a blow-by-blow, “behind the scenes” commentary on the process in this blog…

… but it turns out I was deluded.

Launches are consuming events. Especially when — like us — you defy the standard “rules” and just boldly march into the process with as little preparation as possible.

Gotta love the entrepreneur spirit. Damn the torpedoes and all that.

The best part of a launch, of course…

… is that it’s over when it’s done. Sort of like a short jail sentence, where you’re chained to your desk… but you get cut loose when the curtain goes up, and all sins are erased.

“Curtain Up” day is coming up fast, too.

And that means the cool, deeply insightful webinar/interviews on the SWS blog go away, too. Not gonna leave ‘em up for very long.

You definitely need to see them. We just posted Mike Filsaime, who revealed (for the FIRST time ever) his private mentoring notes from his intense learning days as a salesman…

… and Rich Schefren, who allowed me to expose all his secrets about making mere blog posts bring in massive fortunes (shocking revelation, by the way)…

… and Eben Pagan, who just unloaded on the specifics of his million-dollar marketing tactics (especially how he wrote to sell and influence so successfully)…

… and Frank Kern, who… well, who was so totally Frank in this interview, that I may bottle his webinar and turn it into rocket fuel.

These things are crammed with risky, maddeningly real-world revelations and insight these guys have rarely (if ever — Mike’s salesmanship notes, for example, are a total exclusive) shared in public.

I grilled ‘em.

Now you get to feast.

So…

… again, I’m gonna be a ghost here on this blog. But only for a few more days… while I concentrate on the Simple Writing System blog.

Lots of great stuff posted over there, and more coming.

Go check it out.

As always, your comments are welcome, helpful and encouraged.

Back to the grind…

Stay frosty,

John

Howdy,

Quick post here, I swear.

I have a small problem…

… and I could sure use your help.

It’ll take you, like, two minutes or so.

And yet… it will be of tremendous value to me. If I’ve ever given you something of value before — a piece of advice, a tip, a hint on direction, a good belly laugh, whatever — then I’m calling in the chit.

I want you to comment here.

Here’s what’s up: Among smart marketers — those who have their money-making act together — my core message is a well-known commodity.

“Nothing good will ever happen in your biz… until the copy gets written. And… the best person to write the most important stuff… is you.”

This message is unquestioned among the top marketers I hang out with.

They even eagerly tell anyone who will listen, to listen to me.

Many of the best (like Eben Pagan, Frank Kern, Rich Schefren and others) almost never talk about copy without mentioning my impact on their own learning curves… and they help spread the message.

The heavy hitters all know — without a shred of doubt — that copywriting is the foundation of all things profitable in business.

But here’s the rub: Outside that group of “in-the-know” marketers…

… I often run into a brick wall trying to get entrepreneurs and biz owners to truly understand the importance of writing.

I feel like the first guy to see the aliens land in a sci-fi movie… and the townspeople all ignore my dire warnings of Armegeddon. They smile and nod, and agree that it certainly WOULD be nasty-bad if evil aliens were coming, but…

And their minds wander off in total distraction.

If you’re in business…

… and you’re ignoring the role of great copy in your quest for success and wealth (and your need to learn HOW to write that great copy)…

… then, like the oblivious townsfolk, you’re risking becoming TOAST.

Especially in the economic melt-down happening now.

It’s really pretty simple: Those who know how to write killer ads, emails, video scripts and everything else…

… are going to thrive.

And those who don’t…

… well, it ain’t pretty.

And that’s my dilemna: I’m very good at reaching the “insiders” in business. They immediately “get” how critical and how totally cool it is to know how to write sales copy.

As for the people who are “un-initiated” in direct response?

Not so much.

The message seems to take a while to sink in.

So here’s what I would love to hear from you: What is your NUMBER ONE problem with writing ads right now?

Are you frustrated with the process of trying to write? Do you see it as hard work or — worse — as a big voodoo mystery you’ll never figure out?

Do you avoid learning the essentials of writing for any conscious reason? Or is there something personally difficult about writing that makes you just want to skip the whole concept?

Or what?

I am seriously looking for input here.

If you’re an entrepreneur… or small biz owner… or even a rookie… and you don’t know how to write what you need written…

… could you please look inside your own brain…

… and honestly share with me what the problem is? What is your Number One constraint holding you back from digging into this skill?

I’d appreciate it.

Thanks, in advance.

Hey — let’s make it a little contest.

The person who most succinctly and clearly helps me see what I’m missing here…

… will win a free copy of the freshly updated “Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel” — the course that launched so many of the online marketers now dominating the virtual landscape.

Does that make it worth your time to look inside… and give me some insight as to why it’s so hard to break through the resistance so many people have on this mega-important subject?

C’mon. It’ll take you a couple of minutes. You may even learn something about yourself.

And…

… if you’re already writing your own stuff, successfully… you can get in the competition, too.

Just remember back to what held you up from getting started learning the skill.

What was your biggest obstacle? The cost of getting help? Not knowing where to turn or who to trust? Not having the time? What?

Let’s give it until Monday to decide on the winner, what do you say?

The competition begins now…

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

Howdy,

Do you ever get any of those weird epiphanies about life?

The ones that burst into consciousness like the first bloom of dawn… after a particularly dark and ominous night?

They aren’t necessarily the kind of insight that drops you to your knees and propels you off into a completely different direction.

But they are a critical plot point in your life’s story.

Here’s what just happened to me (and see if you can’t identify with it):

For the last week (has it only been that long?), the global news has been a horror-show.

Politics is tearing the country apart (again)… we’ve got a financial mess that may make the dot-com bust look like a picnic… and, personally, I’ve got biz pressures building up in my head like the Mother Of All Brain Farts.

So, I’ve diving into every distraction within my grasp for Miller Time. (Miller Time, for the uninitiated, is the built-in “reward” I insist all my freelance students create for themselves. It’s main task is to help you officially call an end to the day, which helps prevent burn-out.)

(I came up with the idea while working with Halbert, as a coping mechanism. Without a set point in time where I said “That’s it — done for the day”, the pressure of the tasks at hand would suck me into even longer work hours…

… and that’s not good.

In fact, that’s bad. Very bad. I burned out once, and that’s all it took for me to never, ever, ever want to do it again. Required three years of remedial goofing off to be able to catch my breath.

And I was young, too. I’ve had students ignore my advice on this — dudes in their twenties, cooking with peak internal fuel — and flame out like a dunked match.

Miller Time is serious play time. You quit working. You have a little fun. You give it a freakin’ rest.)

So, anyway…

Obviously, I have a much different philosophy about stress than most business owners.

I don’t avoid stress. In fact, if there’s something stressful on the plate for tomorrow… well, that’s the first thing I wanna dig into.

No avoidance on this monkey.

However…

… neither do I regard stress as something “good”.

It is (and current research backs me up) probably the source of all the bad shit in your health profile.

So how you DEAL with it… is probably one of the most important decisions you make early in your career.

Because you’ve got to make dealing with it a habit. Breaking the stress up and jettisoning it from your system must be on your “A” list of things to do each day.

Otherwise… you’re putting that career in serious danger of short-circuiting.

For me, toys play a big part of “steam removal”. I’ve loved games and toys my entire life — and that’s what guitars, cars, iPhones, Web-surfing, Twitter, cable TV, iTunes, barbeques, and every quest you engage in for anything outside Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is: Games and toys.

It’s been a long, long time since anyone could claim to have a handle on how civilization works. The well-educated dudes of the early Renaissance MAYBE could claim a decent savvy in every skill and knowledge-base in exisitence.

But that’s simply not possible today.

Humans have never been in this situation before — where NO ONE has a handle on how the essentials of the civilization works.

It’s like nobody’s in charge anymore. It’s like glancing down the aisle and noticing that the pilot’s gone. The driver has disappeared. No one goes into the boiler room anymore, because no one knows what to do in there.

A large part of the mob deals with this sense of not being in control… by zoning out. I doubt there has ever been this large a percentage of the population zomibified before in history. Just willingly oblivious.

In my experience, you can’t really hide from stress, though. It builds up, it festers, it infects every joint and synapse in the system.

For those of us who are incapable of ignoring the blinking warning signs now flashing… (and our global engine has been overheating for a very long time)… it’s more important than ever to manage stress.

You do NOT make it go away by eating it like candy. It won’t leave unless forced out.

Thus… to be effective today (and oh my God do we need effective people in the mix right now)…

… you gotta choose your battles. You can work every day. You can gear up and charge monsters every time you go into “work mode”.

But you can’t do it 24/7. You’ll fry.

So… playtime becomes an essential tool.

What rocks your Miller Time boat may change, often, thoughout your life. That’s to be expected.

So you gotta keep a tab on your own responses.

You know what makes you happy… what sucks you in so thoroughly and pleasurably that you forget the smell of the trenches for a while.

Don’t focus on the “what”, however.

Instead, focus on how you feel. You will have to alter things — the games, toys, distractions, etc — that trigger the right response often.

And the new stuff is only going to work — only going to help you disengage so you can re-charge — if it nails the wheelhouse of your pleasure center.

At various times, playing music has been “it” for me. But then I go into another phase, and I need something else. Drawing comes and goes — hours spent completely absorbed in putting ink on paper, creating visual worlds from nothing.

Games, too. I played the first Doom like a junkie. No other game since has held my interest like that. Collecting rare stuff, too. Reading history… I’ve been lucky to have a long list of stuff that works.

But here’s the one tip I really can give everyone: One of the most enduring, and most pleasurable, Miller Times available…

… is simply going outside and feeling the universe swirl around you.

Fresh air, the cool breezes of early fall, the coming harvest moon (big as the sky), the leaves changing so fast you can almost see them turn.

Especially now… especially with so many entrepreneurs welding themselves to cyber-space at a desk…

… it’s essential to reconnect with Nature.

In as giddy a manner as possible.

Just my two cents.

What’s your Miller Time consist of?

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. One last funny aside: I dove into the world of Twitter with gusto this week. Not obsessed, but having great fun…

… sorta like the first time Mom let me loose in the Fun Zone at the LA County Fair. (Never been a place like that before, nor since. Total art deco sprawl of mazes, haunted houses, vast wheels that spun you in circles half the size of a football field, tight little capsules that swung like hammers at 3 G’s, pulling your cheeks back as they dove… all of it way too dangerous to ever be allowed today…)

I explored the apps of Twitter-land, strolled into little-travelled areas, spelunked in the nether regions of the software (as far as I could go without using code, I suppose).

And today, a new follower told me that, hey, he was happy to see me on Twitter…

… but, dude, I was tweeting too MUCH. “Cool it,” he implored.

I laughed.

Because I had found a new toy that let fresh air into my system. Fun, distracting, with some of the elements of a game. (Trading witicisms and barbs with fellow word-meisters. That’s invigorating, for me.)

And I laughed because I suspected it was time to put the Mac to sleep…

… and go outside for some real air, too. A long hike, paying attention to things. Soaking up being alive for another season.

I’m stressed, no getting around it.

Lots to be stressed about. Unless you’re a zombie, and that’s not a job I’ve ever gone after. (Can’t meet the basic requirements of accepting bullshit.)

So I need all my tools, and I need to able to use them elegantly… and that requires rest, distraction, and rejuvenation.

Miller Time.

You on my Twitter follower’s list yet?

It’s www.twitter.com/johncarlton007…

Howdy…

Tonight, I have a strange question to ask you.

I’ve just experienced a fairly fabulous week, from all angles. I’m juiced with positive energy, feeling good, and bubbling with hope.

And yet…

… I am also oddly compelled to ask: “What are you afraid of?”

Your thoughts are welcome. And needed.

Here’s my side of the story: I attended two events this week that couldn’t be more different…

… and yet shared so much of the same voodoo that fuels livnig a good life.

First, I drove out to one of Napa’s oldest and most exclusive golf resorts (The Silverado, deep in the lushest part of California’s wine country) to meet with a star-studded group of speakers and authors for a big damn 3-day brainstorm session.

This event is the brainchild of my old pals Stephen Pierce and Chet Holmes and Larry Benet.

In attendance were marketing lumaries Ron LeGrand, Alex Mandosian, Russell Brunson, Brad Smart, Scott Hallman, Joel Comm, JT Snow, and too many others to count.

Plus a few dudes who’d hit the billion-dollar mark in earnings.

It was a super-exclusive group. By invitation only.

The meeting place was about as hoity-toity as you can imagine, with hordes of staff scurrying about and an air of old-world colonial spendor hovering over everything. Though tastefully so.

Parking lot crammed with Lexus’s and Caddies and Porshes.

Cocktails are twelve bucks in the bar.

It was a great place to hang out with the cream of Web marketing for a few days. Safe, nurturing, comfortable.

Then…

… I rushed home, unpacked the collared shirts and nice shoes, re-packed with dingy hiking gear…

… and headed out to Burning Man.

I’m not even going to attempt to explain Burning Man in detail. Words fail the effort. Go to www.burningman.com for some history.

Basically…

… a bunch of artists, neo-hippies and funsters from the coasts hold an in credible outdoor party and art-fest every year on the Playa in the middle of The Black Rock desert in Nevada.

It’s an actual functioning city of 40,000 people from all over the world. Tents, RVs, hammocks, you name it, you’ll see it. (And the port-a-potties are actually clean… not counting the thin coating of Playa dirt) (which you will never get completely out of your clothes.)

For 51 weeks of the year, the Playa is a flat, nearly lifeless plain of dirt. (Looks kinda like the Salt Flats in Utah, where all the land speed records are broken.)

Then, for one amazing week every August, it’s a beehive of action, art and partying.

When the party breaks up, everyone decamps, leaving ZERO trace of human activity. Every scrap of paper, every drop of gray water, every day-glo pasty is hauled out…

… leaving the Playa once again lifeless and naturally gorgeous.

No trace. That’s the rule.

It’s a pretty stunning event. They’re on year 22, I believe.

It’s exclusive, in that you gotta buy into the ideology to survive (and afford the $300 tickets).

Once you become a citizen, no money can buy you anything within the well-laid out streets of Black Rock City — you must trade art, water or something else of immediate value to conduct any business.

The art is often massive, built with industrial savvy (so it moves), and sometimes hydraulic power. (A mechanical hand the size of a Volkswagon moved eerily like a real human hand… and yet could actually crush stuff like a Volkswagon. Which they actually crushed again and again during shows. Impressive. And arty.)

Much of the art burns, or entails fire.

At night, 40,000 people are grooving to ear-shattering techno-pop and dance music, while huge installations burst into flame.

Lots of Mad Max-style costumes, mixed with total nudity. Think “Thunderdome meets Satyricon”.

Okay, I tried to explain it a little bit. Sorry.

But I want you to have these two distinct images in mind: The clean wealth and influence of Napa’s Silverado resort… coupled with the filthy fun of Burning Man’s impromptu Black Rock City.

Got that image?

Good.

Here’s my point: Underneath the shallow first glance…

… they are almost identical events.

How?

Here’s how: They both thrive on…

… Freedom From Fear.

See, all the energy of our civilization comes from the edges. I’m not dissing the center… but the great mass of sonambulent middle class folks aren’t really a driving force for action.

No, the heat comes from the extremes. The top business owners and especially the entrepreneurs who take risks and push envelopes keep the financial side humming.

And — just as important, if you truly care about the quality of life — the top artists and especially the semi-deranged free thinkers who take risks and push envelopes keep the fun side humming.

Both sets do their thang by crawling outside the “box” of repression society tries to foist on us all… and creating something new from, essentially, thin air.

And before anyone gets all huffy about responsibility and values and all that hokum…

… you should reflect on the fact that Burning Man attracts lots and lots of Republicans (elected officials, no less) from all over the country… and the Silverado will not deny entry to anyone based on ideology. (Heck, I got in.)

Both sets have dress codes, once you step back and look at things dispassionately.

Both have strict behavior requirements. (Burning Man has an “alternative” list of acceptable behavior, but it’s very unforgiving if you violate it.)

Both, basically, are refuges for people who just need to get the fuck away from the straight-jacket of “normal” life.

And freak out in a way that appeals to you.

(Yes, on the Meta level… playing lots and lots of golf while guzzling top shelf booze is just as much an orgy… as dancing naked around a Playa bonfire buzzed on pharmeceuticals is…)

It’s all about finding a safety zone, where there is a palpable absence of fear.

Both Black Rock City and the Silverado are situated out in the middle of nowhere. Far from easy to get to.

Both have long approach driveways — several blocks for the Silverado, on a private road… and 8 freakin’ miles of arid desert for BR City.

Both are staffed with an army of folks dedicated to making your stay happy.

You can relax. Be yourself.

And let go of the bullshit that cranks up your blood pressure in the world outside.

You’re among, if not exactly friends, at least like-minded people who share your idea of a good time.

It’s pretty amazing that to get this kind of freedom, you have to go to such extremes.

Because what everyone is afraid of…

… is opportunistic crime…

… and…

… The Man.

Anyone who gets deeply involved with life has a libertarian streak, or should. Or quickly develops one.

You just want to be left alone. You don’t want sociopaths preying on you, and you don’t want cops sniffing around just because they can.

At the Silverado, you’re on private grounds… so you’re not gonna get a DUI or get rousted for public drunkeness.

I found it very interesting that Burning Man is held in the middle of the desert, in the hottest week of the hottest month of the year, far, far away from any semblance of a “normal” town…

… and yet every law enforcement branch that CAN hover and cruise the party…

… does.

There are BLM rangers, Pershing County sheriffs, FBI and Nevada Highway Patrol officers all over the joint.

It’s like they’re just TERRIFIED that somewhere, someone might be having a good time.

Authorities — meaning uptight politicians looking toward re-election — have tried to close down Burning Man throughout the two-decade history of the event.

Despite the money that floods into Nevada from the international crowd. Despite the way the desert is not harmed. Despite the very obvious fact that 40,000 people (again, including every strata of society — old to young, socialist to capitalist, pagan to papist, straight to not-so-straight) very much WANT to be left alone to their single week of controlled debuachery and artsy engorgement.

I saw more people at the Silverado too drunk to stand up, than I did at Burning Man the day I spent there.

And I’ll bet the actual amount of drugs were about equal, per capita. If, that is, you count prescription pharmaceuticals with Mother Nature’s alternatives.

(Just to cut any rumors off at the knees here… I was at Burning Man as an observer only, not as a participant. I was there as a guest of the City of Reno arts and culture manager, to check out some of the artsy installations the city might want to purchase.)

(So there.)

Not that there’s anything wrong with choosing your own poison for Miller Time.

But that’s where the two worlds collide nicely.

What the HELL is The Man afraid of?

So WHAT if people wanna get naked and burn shit up during a week of weirdness in the desert?

Fear drives us in so many ways.

Fascist-leaning societies want lots of fear cooking in people’s system. Makes control a lot easier.

And certain kinds of power corrupts, by making someone with a badge “more equal” than you… simply because he has the badge. The symbol of nasty, humorless power that WILL be obeyed.

The Man has come to an uneasy truce with the Burning Man participants. Nudity is overlooked. Displays of weirdness are ignored.

And yet, I heard cops were busting Burners for “driving” while under the influence… even though they were driving golf carts reconfigured (with some creative welding) into giant lizards or Mickey Mouse heads. And, of course, not hurting anyone.

Golf carts.

The irony is inescapable.

And I ask again: What are you afraid of?

The entrepreneurs and artists I know — and I know vast mobs of each — all share a similar love of freedom…

… and an overriding lack of fear.

Heck — we even taunt Fate with our outrageous plans and way-out ideas.

Most of society asks “Why do you need to challenge the system?”

And we answer “Because it fucking NEEDS challenging.”

Maybe now, more than ever.

Long live Burning Man.

Love to hear what you think in the comments section below.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

P.S. Sometimes — in fits of hopeful dreams — I try to imagine a world where The Man just lets go of being so uptight all the time.

Look — I’m all for a level of authority. I’m a home owner. I’m a business owner. I pay taxes, I vote, I get involved with the community.

And I think there is a place for regulation and laws restricting actions that harsh my mellow. (This is why no existing US political party will have me — not even the Libertarians.)

But the greatest assets of our country — whether people realize it or not (clueless zombies) — are freedom of speech and the right to be left alone.

Not bullshit freedom of speech. The real thing. We’re losing it.

And we’ve already lost so much privacy to prying government eyes, it may take a generation or two to re-establish it.

Fear sucks.

Yes, it’s a dangerous world.

It’s also a beautiful world… and beauty shrivels under the boot of a self-righteous majority.

Something to consider, if you’re ever tired of walking around zombified.

P.P.S. And, on a purely capitalist finishing note…

… I want to congratulate all the folks who grabbed a spot for the upcoming Simple Writing System at-home mentoring course.

If you missed out — cuz the door slammed shut on Wednesday, when all the slots were gobbled up — you should know there’s a waiting list.

Just hop over to www.simplewritingsystem.com, and scroll down to the P.S. on the first page.

You’ll see how to get on the waiting list.

This is gonna be a blast…

Howdy,

Have you ever been so freakin’ nervous you almost lost control of bodily functions?

Two things made me suddenly think about this unseemly subject.

First Thing: We have an Afghan hound in the house with a bark that rattles windows four blocks away… and he has come thisclose to eating the mailman, the Fed Ex guy, three neighbors, and a flock of Jehovah’s Witnesses who dared knock on the door.

And that’s just over the past month or so.

But here’s the kicker: He will break down into a sobbing lump of useless self-pity if Michele or I so much as look at him cross-eyed.

His bark is a mask for the social vulnerability he suffers.

He doesn’t really want to rip out your throat.

Deep inside, he’s just a confused, awkward puppy, trapped in an adult dog’s body. Scared shitless of the world. (Literally shitless, whenever fireworks or lightning are nearby.) (Yeah, it’s a mess.)

Second Thing: I was recently advising someone about “getting his ass out in the marketplace as an expert”… and the guy actually started shaking.

Just the thought of stepping onto the metaphorical stage of life, and performing… sent this poor guy into a stuttering implosion.

He not only had no “bark”… he had no cojones, either.

This got me thinking about my own journey from stuttering fear-meister to swaggering bluster-bomb.

It’s relevant… because, in business, my line is: If you truly have a great product that your prospect should own… then shame on you if you don’t step forward confidently and BE that guy he needs you to be… so he can feel good about buying.

You can’t sell from your heels, people.

(I love to trot out the old quote by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones: “It’s not that I’m all that great of a guitar player, you know. It’s just that I can step out in front of ten thousand people and DO it.”)

(Talent comes in WAY behind cojones when it comes to carving out your niche.)

Anyway, back to me…

I am not an extrovert by any stretch.

In fact, I chart pretty heavily toward “total thumb-sucking, light-avoiding, cave-dwelling introvert” in basic personality tests.

You can tell an introvert from an extrovert pretty easily: When the extro is around people, like at a party, he gets energized. The introvert finds it a chore, and leaves the event drained.

It’s all about energy transference.

Now, I was lucky to grow up with a sizeable contingent of good friends — who I went all the way from kindergarten through high school with — which saved me from having to “make” new friends until I hustled off to college.

And, in college, for whatever reason, I was immediately taken in by a group of goofballs who somehow saw my potential for furthering their goofball yearnings.

However, it took me a long time to get to “know” most of these people.

Seriously. It was decades before I finally felt comfortable around most of them.

Nearly all of the people I’m close to, I’ve been close to for half my life. (I’ve known my business partner, Stan, for 25 years, and our contract writer, Mark, since we were nineteen.)

I tell you this to illustrate how ill-equiped I was to become a guru.

I stuttered as a kid… and frequently found myself getting stuck on words as an adult whenever I encountered uncomfortable situations.

Meaning, any new situation where people I didn’t know were looking at me.

In grade school — back when I was convinced that everybody else knew things they weren’t sharing with me (and that’s why life seemed like such a mystery) — I even burst into tears in class math competitions. (One little girl — Peggy The Bitch, I call her — repeatedly tripped me up with the question “What’s 5 times 0?” I nearly always said “5!” before realizing my blunder and being told to sit down while the rest of the class continued the competition.)

(Ah, childhood humiliation. What a concept.)

As a teen, a good (longtime) friend convinced me to learn guitar so we could start playing in bands. He wanted the excitement and recognition of being on stage. I just got a thrill from playing music.

So he fronted the many bands we formed, happily, from center-stage… and I happily lurked near the far edge, out of the limelight, content to concentrate on the tunes.

I was kinda like Garth, from Wayne’s World. Thrust into the action on the coattails of a raging extrovert.

Freelancing was a natural for me. It required long, lonely hours inside your head… and you were excused from looking like the regular “suits” in the agencies because, as a writer, the more outrageous you appeared, the more they believed you must possess the “goods”.

Idiots.

Halbert, of course, was THE uber-extrovert. He publicly listed his main hobby as “finding new methods of self-aggrandizement”.

I stayed behind the scenes as much as possible. My main job, in fact, during seminars was to handle everything but the actual delivery of the action onstage.

It was Halbert’s show, and I liked it that way.

I had defined myself as an introvert, and never considered it could be any other way.

I even had a “defining moment” — back in college, when I was introduced to my first “real” girlfriend’s beloved sister, I started laughing uncontrollably. Not because anything was funny… but because my body betrayed me, and just went off in an inappropriate spasm.

I was humiliated, because after lamely stuttering about why I had burst out with guffaws (I could come with nothing good to explain myself), the awkwardness just got deeper and deeper. My girlfriend forgave me (and even sorta found it endearing — I was her “bad boy” artistic-type boyfriend, so weirdness was expected).

But her sister forever thought I was an A-Number One Doofus Jerk-Off.

Rightly so, I might add.

Around uncomfortable situations, I was that guy.

However…

After, oh, around thirty gazillion private consultations and Hot Seats and meetings with clients once I became a sought-after pro… all of whom initially tried to “alpha male” me into submission, because they wanted the writer (me) to be their slave…

… I started to think that maybe I had unwisely “defined” myself.

As anyone who has gotten freelance advice from me knows, I quickly learned to walk into a new client’s life and OWN the bastard. I knew that I held all the cards — he needed copy, couldn’t produce it himself to save his life, and thus was in zero position to be dictating terms to me.

I ain’t shy, professionally.

Now, my technique may or may not help others. (I developed a “stage personality” for these consultations I called Dr. Smooth… and let this “alternative John” take over.)

(And damn, but that Doctor was good at taking control and bullying clients.)

It’s a standard tactic, adapted from acting. No big deal, nothing revelatory about it.

However…

What it did for me was immediately obliterate that old “defining moment” that I had regarded as my “fate”.

I wasn’t really a socially-retarded loser.

I just played one in life.

Cuz I thought I’d been… assigned… the role.

If you’ve ever seen me speak at seminars, you know I’m no wallflower these days. I’m totally comfy in front of any size crowd, because the “mystery” of what’s going on has been solved in my mind.

It’s not about me.

It’s about the content of what I share.

(Plus, of course, I know so much about the people in the audience nowadays… from all those decades of delving into the psychology of salesmanship… that I don’t even need to imagine anyone naked to be calm.)

(It’s just us folks in the room. Good people looking for good info, plus maybe a little entertainment along the way. And a speaker line-up of “just-plain-dudes” having fun in the limelight.)

My point: You can do what you need to do.

If your market is crying out for someone to stand up and be the go-to-guy… you really can do it.

Like Keith Richards, you can get your chops honed to a degree that gives you enough confidence to be “onstage” (however you define the stage — it can be your website, an actual stage, or infomercials or any other media)… where you will deliver what the folks paid to see.

There are vast armies of “experts” out there (especially online) with no more real skill or insight or knowledge than you have.

Often, they have less.

What they DO have, that so many others refuse to cultivate, are the cojones to step up and BE that guy the audience needs you to be.

I can tell you this with absolute certainty (because I personally know it’s true): Most of the top guru’s in the entrepreneurial world — especially online — are former dweebs, stutterers, social outcasts and semi-dangerous nutcases.

They are, essentially, gawky and lonely and scared little kids trapped inside an adult’s body.

What they have done, however…

… is to re-define WHO they are when it counts.

Everyone, at some time or another, feels the urge to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over their head. Life is tough, business tougher. Hamlet’s slings and arrows constantly rain on everyone’s parade, and NO ONE gets a pass.

However…

… the winners define themselves.

I’m still an introvert. I still have my awkward social moments. I still occasionally stutter.

But those things do not define me.

Long ago, I threw away the role “assigned” to me… and just created my own new one. Which allows me to do whatever needs doing to further my goals… including climbing up on stage alone and engaging a thousand people as a ringleader.

Life sucks when you’re crawling around under the weight of unnecessary self-loathing, self-pity and self-expectations you can never meet.

Life rocks when you re-cut the jigsaw of your personality, and make something new according to who YOU want to be.

Just food for thought.

Love to hear your experiences with self-defining moments.

It’s heartening to hear so many commenters in past blogs finally come to grips with internal battles they’ve sometimes struggled with for years.

Hey — it’s fun when this stuff starts working.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton
www.carltoncoaching.com

P.S. We are very close to finishing up a new venture here that — if you crave rollicking adventure in your business life — will absolutely light up many people’s worlds.

It’s a limited opportunity… but the folks who truly know, in your heart, that one of the spots was meant for you… will instantly understand what has to happen to get involved.

Just a few more days…

Howdy,

Did luck have anything to do with how you got where you are today?

Do you consider yourself generally lucky, either in life or circumstance? Or cards, maybe?

I run into the concept of “luck” a lot in business. And since I’ve had such a stormy relationship with luck throughout my life, I perk up whenever I hear anyone talk about it.

I’ll come clean right off the top, though, before going further: I consider “luck” (at least the way people I grew up around think about it) as a form of superstition.

Which almost consumed me in my youth. The idea that unrelated things could influence the outcome of certain events, once it takes hold in your head, can dominate your life. Being in sports didn’t help.

Here’s my example (love to hear yours, too): I played hardball until I was 17, and while I couldn’t hit worth a damn — no peripheral vision — I was considered agile enough with the glove to start at shortshop with my Colt League team.

I still have nightmares about the anxiety. At that level of ball, the left side of the infield handles most of the action… and it’s brutal. (Some of those guys were only a few more years away from pro ball.)

I always considered third basemen as fortunate bastards — you’re so close to the batter, you have no time to think when a shot comes your way. You’re totally into reactive mode. Every play is bam-bam.

Fifteen feet farther back, at short, you’ve get enough time even with a hot grounder for your fevered brain to go through a dozen different ways you could screw this play up before the ball reaches you. The anxiety ate me up. (If I hadn’t gotten a handle on that nervousness, I surely would be crippled with ulcers today.)

Every pitch presented a new opportunity for physical pain (ever had a baseball going 4,000 mph take a wicked hop and careen into your face, groin, or neck?), and the humiliation of letting down your team with an error. The irony is, I had a good fielding percentage… yet, I felt no elation at making a play. That was my job, to make the play. No glory in just doing your job out there.

No glory. But an avalanche of shame and self-loathing if you didn’t perform absolutley perfectly.

Yeah, I was kinda hard on myself. I should have quit, and devoted myself to the band. (For whatever reason, I had zero fear of mounting a stage to play music. No anxiety, and no sense that I had to be perfect, either. It was fun.)

Anyway… isolated out there at short, with vast stretches of infield dirt in every direction, I somehow got the idea that if I smashed all the dirt clods around me before each pitch, I would be protected from errors.

I have no clue how that thought got into my head. The pitchers refused to step on the baseline going in and coming out each inning, and you weren’t supposed to talk to them while they had a no-no going… and other guys had their lucky socks (phew!) and their must-do routines to avoid jinxes… but I have never come across another jock who thought of dirt clods as holding any power over outcomes.

Once the thought took hold, though, it obsessed me. At first, I just had to stomp the clods next to me. But by mid-season, I would spot a clump six feet away, and NEED to scurry over there as the pitcher wound up, crush it, and get back into position before the ball reached the plate. I must have looked like a bugged-out meth addict out there, desperately looking for things to stomp, and dancing left and right when I should have been settling in and getting ready for action.

Finally, the coach grabbed me by the scruff between innings and asked me what the HELL I was doing out there, huh? Was I channeling Fred Astaire, maybe? Or Ginger Rogers?

So I gave it up. The little dirt clods would mock me, and the anxiety ran hot through my gut… but I quit. The horror of riding the bench trumped my fear of fate.

Here’s the Final Jeopardy question, of course: Did not killing the dirt clods affect the outcome of my play at shortshop, once I altered my behavior?

The answer is no, it did not.

However, in the grip of superstitious thinking, empirical evidence like that cannot make a dent. I did not come away from that forced experiment with any new sense of freedom.

Most of the people I knew back then “believed” in superstitions, sometimes to ridiculous extents. So I wasn’t gonna get any sensible advice from them about dealing with my own need to “protect” myself from bad things using unrelated behavior rituals, lucky charms, and magical thinking.

THey were, in fact, all for rituals, charms, and magic.

This paranoia went on for years… and then, one day, I just snapped.

It was soon after I’d discovered the power of setting goals. In a way, setting a goal, and going after it, is the opposite of superstition.

Instead of being at the mercy of “fate”, or mysterious forces that cause things to either go well or go badly for you…

… with goal setting, YOU are in control.

It’s like two opposing models of looking at the world.

When you feel mostly out of control… and you’re not being proactive about regaining control… it’s easy to believe that events are entirely out of your hands. You need luck.

On the other hand… when you’ve done your homework, and visualized outcomes, and put everything you possibly can in your favor… you exert actual control over how things will turn out.

When you’re prepared, you may welcome a lucky break here or there.

But you don’t NEED it. You will succeed or fail from your own exertions.

Anyway, one of my early and most fundamental goals was to become “comfortable in my own skin”. I sensed that most anxiety and low self-esteem came from not taking control.

And, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that superstition sucked.

It was a negative force. It came from weakness, and fear, and a refusal to face life square on. (I was studying Carl Jung at that time, too… and one thing he said about nightmares leaped out at me: “When you are chased by a monster, stop and confront it. You will see that the monster’s strength comes from your fear. He has no power when you face him down.” That hit me hard — I’d spent most of my life believing I had to run faster in my nightmares.) (I don’t have nightmares much anymore, and while I miss the adventure, I don’t miss the anxiety.)

So I made a simple vow: No more superstition.

No matter how much I felt I “needed” to obey the demands of the superstitious monsters deep inside… and no matter how much they threatened me with horror and humiliation and pain if I refused their burnt offerings… I just stopped engaging.

And years of pent-up fear fell away, instantly. I was no longer a prisoner to irrationality.

Even better… I started keeping track of results.

And guess what?

Things are going to happen, or not happen, or happen in odd ways, regardless of any superstitious thinking involved.

The ONLY thing that affects the outcome… is preparation. Being aware, awake, and alert to the odds. Hip and ready to rumble.

And, especially, hyper-alert to opportunity.

Hey — for all I know, “luck” actually exists. I know I’ve been a pretty lucky guy for most of my life… starting with having the good sense to be born to good parents in a good generation, in a good little town in a good country that offered all kinds of basic freedoms and opportunities.

However… the opportunities in life didn’t “change” around me when I got hip to going after them.

No. What changed was my attitude about opportunity. When you allow notions of luck and superstitious belief to dominate, you have little incentive to grab onto opportunity… because, hey, if I’m in a lucky streak, I can be picky.

But when you have a set of goals to measure any incoming opportunity against, you know exactly what to do. If the opportunity moves you closer to your goal, then you jump on it. If it doesn’t… well, you’re allowed to reconsider your fundamental goals, but when you’re dead set on something specific (like being an entrepreneur) then it’s easy to let even hot opportunities go (like taking another job with The Man, regardless of how attractive the salary is).

I’ve been very lucky with the way things have turned out in my life. And yet, despite the fortunate series of events that allowed me to grow up near the center of the cultural maelstrom on the west coast, soaking up the peak experiences of my generation (I was 13 — the perfect age — when the Beatles hit US shores, and went through college with what became “classic rock” as the soundtrack behind the sexual, social and consciousness revolutions we enjoyed) and somehow staying safe in spite of all the factors sending me toward danger (the draft ended my last year in college — I was set to go, too) (and all those car wrecks… jeez, I should’ve been diced, sliced and minced a dozen times over, and yet never broke a bone) — despite all that cool, fascinating action…

… I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin.

In fact, I was miserable. I was having a damn good time… but the lack of having a “place” in the world left me feeling like an exile in the culture. I was bereft of any anchor, or purpose, or direction.

It may well have been lucky that a woman I was dating had just been fired from her job with the ad agency, and was reading the Want Ads when I stopped by one afternoon… and she pointed out this “weird” little ad by a guy named Jay Abraham talking about Claude Hopkins or some other such nonsense. Wasn’t that a funny ad? What freelancer in their right mind would answer such a goofy ad?

But it was focused goal-attainment that got me to jump on that opportunity, regardless of whether “luck” put it in my lap or not. (That woman lost all respect for me by going to see Jay, by the way… and Jay at first told me I didn’t have what it took to work with him, which would have crushed me a year earlier… but I suspected he hadn’t actually read my submitted pieces, which was true, and because I also suspected this was a guy on my path to where I wanted to go… I burst into his offices unannounced and nearly got in a fight. We made nice, though, and I ended up working with him for a couple of years — writing for free, in exchange for being able to sit in on meetings and have free run of his offices — which led to that “fateful” party where I was introduced to Gary Halbert, recently out of the clink and raring to go, and so on…)

Luck is for pussies.

Goals are what gets things done.

The point of all this: My youthful obsession with luck and superstition and the idea that I was essentially NOT in control of my life was aiming me in a direction where… at my current age… I would still be uncomfortable in my own skin.

I think about this all the time. Especially as I watch my colleagues and friends and neighbors go about their day. Many still believe that money will buy them happiness. Or a new car will do the trick, or a new spouse, or moving to a new city, or whatever.

I’d have to guess that 90% of the people I know are squirming in their own skin. Not comfy at all.

I never get jealous when I hear about some dude scoring big bucks in a launch, or a new biz venture, or even from an inheritance. I USED to, before I realized what my own main goal in life was.

Now, I have a simple test: Whenever I meet someone new, or meet up with someone who’s the toast of the town… I gauge their inner comfort.

And I wonder: Would I want to spend a single minute inside their skin? BE them for any length of time?

In my earlier days of angst and cluelessness, I quickly assigned massive levels of happiness and contentment to anyone with a better basic set-up than I had. My default position was that everyone else was having a better time than I was.

Now, though, I guess I’ve attained a sort of Zen ease.

I haven’t met anyone who isn’t riven with inner turmoil in a long time.

And I don’t know anyone I’d like to trade places with, even for a short time.

I worked hard to get comfy in this battle-scarred, weathered, grizzled body of mine.

I kinda like it in here, now. A lot.

And luck had nothing to do with me getting to this lovely point.

Well?

What do you think about luck, superstition, and envy?

Love to hear your thoughts…

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

PS: Don’t forget that I’m speaking at Ron LeGrand’s “Info and Internet Marketing Bootcamp” the last weekend of June. In South Carolina.

I consider Ron the most consumate salesman I’ve ever met, period. I have NEVER spent more than a minute with him, either on the phone or in person, without learning several killer Master’s Level lessons in classic salesmanship.

And my guess is, this event may be one of the last times you’ll get to see him live like this. He’s one of those guys who isn’t working because he needs the money — instead, he just loves teaching. Still, I know this is a rare event where he will BE there, speaking and interacting with the audience. We’re talking history here.

If you — like me — value the lessons of masters, you’ll want to check out the opportunity here:

http://www.RonLeGrand.com/Carlton

I’m really looking forward to this event. Never been to SC…

Howdy…

You got a favorite TV show?

I was a charter member of the first TV-addicted generation, and I may yet live to see the end of network television as we’ve all known and loved it all these seasons.

The Web’s already killed it for the youngest generations. Once the last of the Boomers wander off, we’ll take our fond memories of Howdy Doody and The Twilight Zone with us… and no one will much care, being too busy with fourteen incoming Twittering IMs on their ear/eye implants and a fresh scene loading up from the new Grand Theft Auto XXVII they just injected straight into their pituitary gland.

Sometimes I think about that — television, easily the most culture-shaping technology advance in the history of mankind… eclipsed before it reached seventy years old… murdered by hotter, more intensely interactive tech. (Okay — I know that television was actually viable in the 1920s, but get real. It wasn’t a cultural phenomenon until the fifties.)

But that’s not what I want to write about tonight.

Naw.

Instead, something else triggered my interest. We just watched the season-ending episode of “House”, which had everyone in the room reaching for tear-soaked tissues (including the cat, who was barely watching).

And, if you’ll give me a minute here, I’m gonna tie that show in with you making money with your ads. (VERY major lesson coming up, so pay attention.)

First, though, you gotta put up with some ranting: Television, overall, has followed the same arc that — in micro — the show Saturday Night Live has followed: Great for a couple of years… suck for several years… recover, and be great again… then quickly descend into Suckdom once more… and over and over, in a cycle that (someday) historians will probably be able to track down to the second. (”As we can clearly see, class, the show left the rails thirteen minutes into the first episode after Lorne Michaels left in season five… you can almost — chuckle – see it jumping the shark as Louise-Dreyfus sputters in yet another vapid, unfunny scene…”)

And I believe we’re currently in one of the recurring “up” bumps. Always good when you realize there are actually a couple of shows on that DESERVE to be watched. Not brain-dead watching, but active interest watching.

What do you Tivo?

We religiously record House, 30 Rock, The Office (though I suspect the shark is in mid-air on that one), and Manchester United games on Fox Sports. (Okay, Michele won’t watch soccer with me, and I can’t stomach Brothers And Sisters with her. Trade off.)

I love the medium, but I don’t “need” it. I grew up watching all the sixties sit-com, sci-fi, drama and kitsch I could cram into an evening (The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Addams Family, Outer Limits, The Prisoner, The Avengers, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., American Bandstand, She-Bang, Soupy Sales, Phil Silvers, Ed Sullivan, Gilligan’s Island, Star Trek, The Monkees… God, I’m embarrassed to admit all that…).

But I watched, primarialy, because it was there. Mom had the kitchen radio on all day (it’s how I discovered rock and roll), and the boob tube was cranked on when Pop came home, and wasn’t turned off until beddy-bye. (Laugh-In, Red Skelton, Where The Action Is, Your Show of Shows, The Match Game…)

Once I was old enough to beg Pop for the car keys, my evening rituals changed dramatically. I didn’t even own a TV through the seventies. (Never saw a single episode of Mork & Mindy, Mary Tyler Moore, or Three’s Company, thank you very much.) (One of TV’s “down” cycles, I would say.) (Showed up, often drunk, at friends’ houses with toobs for SNL, of course.)

MTV and cable brought me back to the fold, fitfully.

Now, I’m in a groove once again.

Gotta have my “House”, and the occasional Law & Order SVU. (BTW: Why is Rooney not playing for Man U lately? Did he get hurt? Traded? What’s up? He wasn’t in the Moscow grueler…)

Okay, back to the point of all this:

The last episodes (it was a twin-hour ending show) of House were pretty riveting television. I’m ALWAYS impressed with good writing (Boston Legal, CSI: NY, the commentors on the World Series of Poker, Californication)… and I’ve learned to watch both passively (to enjoy the moment)…

… and to go back over what just hooked me, and watch critically.

I like to break down exactly what the writers did to tweak my emotions, my interest, and ESPECIALLY my resistance to being sucked into the story.

That’s right. With every show, I challenge the writing to do its job.

We have an unwritten rule in the house: Any time either of us can start predicting the dialog before the actors speak it… that show is toast.

The shark has done jumped, when the script is so weak you can burble along with the actors in real time.

So here’s the thing…

… this House final episode (WARNING: Spoiler alert!) polished off one of the major characters. That’s not unique in television… but the way the writers did it defied what any viewer would have predicted.

It was as if… the script burned down the house.

Just created all kinds of emotional havoc and brain-tickling mayhem.

It was that riveting, and satisfying.

I can’t wait for next season. Seriously.

I’m pissed I gotta wait.

I’m addicted.

Consider what the writers did, as you consider how to write compelling, riveting copy yourself.

Sometimes, you gotta burn down the house just to get your prospect’s attention.

Not literally, of course (”you idiot”, House would add).

Figuratively.

Most ad copy is like an episode of Three’s Company — at best, vaguely suggestive, but nothing you’d remember the next day (or even the next hour).

Great copy, on the other hand, is like South Park — you simply cannot snooze through it.

You gotta be prepared for the reaction, too, if you ever get ballsy with your writing. Not everyone will cheer you on. “He can’t say that, can he?” will be a common response.

“Somebody’s got to do something about that repulsive material.”

“Can’t we shoot them, or deport them, or something?”

I’ve never gone for straight outrage, but neither were my first golf ads greeted with encouragement at the big golf magazines. They swallowed hard during the first round, took the money, and pretended not to notice how much those 3-page copy-dense beasts fouled up the pretty “look” of their publications.

When my client went back for multiple insertions, it was almost too much to bear.

Fortunately, the publishers were shameless money-grubbing whores, and the ads ran despite the cries of alarm from readers. (But only from readers outside our target market. The guys we were after LOVED those ads.) (Still do.)

We, essentially, burned down the nice golf house, like vandals in a riot.

Something to think about, the next time you absolutely have to get attention for your copy. Don’t you think?

What TV shows do you remember fondly? (I’d watch MTV for hours in the first years, when it was all video, all the time… and I still consider The Larry Sanders Show to be one of the best ever written. Entourage ain’t bad, though it’s occasionally infuriatingly stupid. The Simpsons, yeah. Seinfeld, I guess. What else am I missing here?)

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

P.S. Hey — we just put another super-hot Radio Rant Coaching Club show in the can. I cannot understand why any marketer with his head screwed on straight isn’t breaking a leg to get into this club — it’s fun, it’s informative up the yin-yang, and it’s without doubt the greatest single resource for marketers available today.

Check it out. I believe we still offer a free month’s trial, with no obligation to stay when the trial’s up. (Yep — you can rip us off.) Plus, since you get access to all the current shows still posted, it’s actually like getting 2 free months. (Again, no obligation to stay, ever.)

Here’s the link:

http://www.carltoncoaching.com

Later…