Saturday, 7:14pm
Reno, NV
“Out of 9 lives, I’ve lived 7…” (The Band, “The Shape I’m In”)

Howdy…

I almost called this post “Web 2.oh no!”

And I know I’m just gonna scratch the surface here…

… but a few rules need to be laid down by somebody concerning this “Brave New World of No Freakin’ Privacy Left At All”.

Now, I’ve never noticed much “common sense” actually being very common among my fellow humans…

… but Jeez Louise, the arrival of social media and smart phone cameras has turned us all into ethically-challenged TMZ-level paparazzi.  No sense of right or wrong, no sense of crossing a line or going too far.

And people are gonna get hurt.

Do we need a collective and not-very-subtle whack upside the head here?  Metaphorically speaking, that is.

You decide…

Slap Some Sense Into You Rule #1: Just because you have a camera and recording capabilities on your smart phone, doesn’t mean you have a license to USE it.

Yes, the rest of the world is hurtling toward a Zuckerberg-envisioned future where “privacy” will be a quaint notion that strangely only irritates geezers… sort of like how we now view petticoats, doo wop and basic manners.

However, I would caution privacy-anarchists that this “nothing you do is a secret to us” mindset is how Stalinist Russia maintained control over citizens (see also “1984″, by George Orwell).

Now, what you do in your own sordid life is up to you, of course.  Including allowing basic privacy rights to be dismantled and shed.

However, as a professional, you’ve got to recognize boundaries.  Because there’s a lot at stake here.

We may need to amend The Professional’s Code.  The original (and I’m pretty sure this is my phrasing):  ”You show up where you said you’d be, when you said you’d be there, having done what you said you’d do.”

Now, we gotta add:  ”And you won’t take a freakin’ photo without getting permission.”

The reason I think we need this new rule is directly related to a couple of incidents at After-Hours parties during seminars.  I love hanging out with other writers and the strange breed of entrepreneur now dominating the biz world.  These cats are fun, smart, and brimming with fascinating tales of Life In The Marketing Fast Lane.

They also tend to play as hard as they work.

Which means the “insider’s only” after-hours parties can look, to an outsider, like one part college dorm bacchanalia, one part Special Forces hazing, and one part Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Now, I assure you that — as far as I know — the parties only look like this to an outsider.

Except for a few truly-insane individuals (who I suspect are headed for the hoosegow anyway), these after-hours celebrations are just collaborative ways to let off steam.  And share war stories with pals.  And laugh heartily and with gusto at M*A*S*H-level puerile humor.  Maybe pull a prank or two.

Okay, and maybe a little singing too loudly, off-key.  Until hotel security shows up.

The thing is, you’re hanging out having fun with people you like…

… and trust.

And I’m pretty sure that snapping photos or recording conversations with the idea of embarrassing someone is a pretty basic violation of that trust…

… and rises to the level of assault when it can harm someone professionally.

Okay, fine… if you’re a licensed detective out to catch a cheating spouse, you’re excused, I suppose.  (And you — why the hell are you cheating, anyway, you no-good louse?)

But if you’re not packing a gumshoe ID, then why are you snapping shots of anything that could be seen as compromising the integrity, or the reputation of a colleague?

And before you mimic the Google buzz-brain CEO who said (on CNBC) “… if you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place…”

… just check out the latest round of career-ending gaffes among celebs, politicians, biz owners, and innocent students.

In most cases, they tweeted or texted or said something stupid… and everyone would have long since forgotten about the faux pas IF IT HADN’T GONE FUCKING VIRAL.

You can argue that stupidity is a perfectly acceptable reason to lose your job, or your social standing, or even your self-respect.

However, one glance at the astonishment on the faces of the virally-crushed victims shows you that — minus the Web — they were absolutely not anticipating global blowback from their casual asides or what they mistakenly thought were cute posts.

We’re talking about tasteless jokes from professionally-tasteless comics (Gilbert Gottfried)… clueless coeds who just need a reality check (the UCLA student who posted a rant about Asians talking on cellphones in the library)… and kids getting nailed with sex offender records for sexting each other.

And that’s just in the last couple of days.

I dunno know about you… but even after multiple decades making my way through society, I still say more stupid things than smart things.

And I can think of a hundred times, right off the top of my head, where I said or did something offensive or insulting or tasteless… and immediately wished I could take it back.

That’s what humans do.  Make mistakes.

Hopefully, you’re doing your best to clean up your messes, make real amends (not just mumble “sorry, dude”), and strive to become a Zen self-actualized person.  So you limit the damage you do caroming off the culture as you blunder along the best you can.

Just keep the Golden Rule in mind at all times, if you get confused about the appropriateness of what you’re about to share on the Universe-Wide-Web:  Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.

And if you really, really, really don’t care if that shot of you picking your nose goes viral…

… because you have no boundaries or sense of privacy…

… then at least get in the habit of asking people if it’s okay to take a photo or record a moment.

And take “no” for a final answer, dude.

Slap Some Sense Into You Rule #2: Self-inflicted idiocy is not permission to pile on.

The 3 examples I used above are all of tweets, posts and texts that were voluntarily launched into the ether.

In our freshly-soiled world of TMZ-paparazzi-rules, you’re ripe for public flogging and humiliation if you do nothing more than step into view somewhere.  Or “allow” yourself to be caught by a camera (with or without audio).

So self-inflicted embarrassment offers no immunity at all from global shunning.

Nevertheless… at the end of the day, you — as the person helping something go viral — gotta live with yourself.

One of my favorite ways of dealing with assholes is to remember that I can walk away and get on with my life…

… while the asshole has to go home, go to bed, and wake up as the same pathetic loser jerkwad he was the day before.

So while he may have won a skirmish with me, overall he’s trapped in a living hell.  I wouldn’t want to spend 5 seconds inside his skin, dealing with whatever demons have made him such an insufferable wanker.

What’s this got to do with forwarding a photo?

Think about it.

A real pro doesn’t just consider the stuff he might get caught doing.  He also cares when it’s simply a matter of anonymously doing the right thing or not.

There IS karma in this world.

And even the smallest act of piling on makes you guilty as hell when someone gets hurt.

Slap Some Sense Into You Rule #3: “PWC”.

That means “Posting While Compromised”.

Don’t do it.

Like angry emails, the best advice is to get cold before hitting “send” whenever your inhibitions have been doused with liquor, strong emotions, or anything else.

Just don’t do it.

What may seem like just the coolest friggin’ thing to post on your Wall at the moment…

… is — if you’re pickling your brain — probably not cool at all.

And you shouldn’t be sharing it.

Tomorrow, looking at it with a clear head (but blood-shot eyes), you still have oodles of time to post, hit “send”, or upload.

We shouldn’t need basic rules like this.

But the evidence shows we do.  Especially as professionals trying to have a little mildly-inappropriate fun after working hard to create solid, ethical and high-quality deliverables under deadline.

A very old, and very excellent piece of advice for living well is:  ”Dance like nobody’s watching.”

It’s a metaphor for living life on your terms, not somebody else’s.

It’s just damn hard to pull off when you realize there are fifty cameras aimed your way, ready to immediately upload hilarious evidence to the cloud if you screw up.

And here’s a note to Zuckerberg: You’re gonna miss your privacy when it’s gone, dude.

Hey — you got a different take on all this?

Let’s hear it in the comments.

Stay frosty,

John

Monday, 9:27pm
Reno, NV
“Oops, I did it again…”  (Britney, God love her…)

Howdy…

I’m on a roll here, grabbing criminally-ignored posts from the blog archives…

… and re-posting them prominently, so you criminally ignore them no longer.  With a few minor edits, of course, tailoring the prose to fit today’s quirky needs for advice.  (Hey, you don’t fit into your old high school jeans anymore, either, you know.)

Here, we have another dangerously-tasty post from not too long ago… which, I believe, requires no explanation other than to say it’s some serious insight into the writer’s brain.

You do NOT want to venture into this quagmire without a guide.  Which is what I’ve written here — a short “guide to the writer’s mind”.

Not exactly a hot Disneyland ride, but if you’re in business it’s some wicked-valuable info.

So, indulge, and enjoy (if you dare):

I’m gonna need your feedback on this.

See, I’ve always been a wave or two out of the mainstream… and that’s actually helped me be a better business dude, because this outsider status forces me to pay extra attention to what’s going on (so I can understand who I’m writing my ads to).

This extra focus means I’ve never taken anything for granted — especially not those weird emotional/rational triggers firing off in a prospect’s head while I’m wooing him on a sale.

And trust me on this: Most folks out there truly have some WEIRD shit going on in their heads, most of the time.

It can get spooky, climbing into the psyche of your market.

Still, though, it is, ultimately, exquisite fun. This gig as a professional writer — figuring out how to get people’s attention, influencing decisions that will change their lives in profound ways, and weaving stories and glory out of blank pages — can be more invigorating than leaping off Half Dome with a tiny parachute.

I’m sure you don’t believe me. Few do on this matter.

But the raw truth is… good copywriters work in the deep grooves of Real Life, where it’s strange and dangerous and… well, fun.

At the next seminar you go to, check out the bar in the hotel. You’ll find the best writers in a gaggle near the back of the room, rolling on the floor and holding their bellies from laughing so hard.

What’s so funny?  Everything.

Writers are like M*A*S*H doctors on the front lines — so deep in the mire of human existence, they need to laugh to keep from going mad. Because the world is one batshit-crazy joint…

… and they are neck-deep in it, getting up-close-and-personal with the insane stuff that decent folks try their best to ignore.

To an observer’s eyes, writers can seem irrepairably neurotic. And share a tear for the spouse:  For both the male and female of the species “Writer Erectus”, it takes a super-smart, confident, and wry partner to keep a relationship going. There’s no such thing as “settling into a rut” when half the marriage is a writer.

You better have the chops to deal with serious “wild and crazy” intellectual (and, sometimes, physical) acrobatics.  It might help to think about writers as being semi-tame monkeys, itching to revert to chandelier-swinging at the slightest provocation.

Except, of course, for those uncomfortably looooooong periods where the writer is staring off into space, or so transfixed by the Word document in front of him that you almost want to check for a pulse to make sure he hasn’t left the corporeal realm entirely.

From deep good fun, to deep near-comatose thinking.

It’s a roller coaster, trying to befriend, live or work with one.

Which may be why writers seldom get any respect.

Which also may be why most of my closest friends and confidants… are also writers. We “get” each other.

We don’t have to explain why we consider writing so much… fun.

Even when it’s painful.

Like I said… we’re weird. Not in step with the rest of the world.

And yet… we MUST connect with the rest of the world, to be able to write sales copy. So we become amateur shrinks, rookie hypnotists, gluttons for inside info… and world-class students of human behavior.

Normal people can’t be bothered with observing other humans closely. Too much trouble, and it’s hard, anyway.

Better to just adopt a convenient world view — “us” and “them” — and be done with it. Be a little loving, a little hating, do business, mow the lawn and take your kids to church. Hope for the best, fear the unexpected, kill all messengers with bad tidings.

Writers, however, will shrivel and die when forced to be “normal”.

Screw that. We read what we like (even if it’s nasty and especially if it’s prohibited)… we think bizarro thoughts that would bring normal people to their knees in horror… we sing out loud and fall hopelessly in love… and we don’t notice the sun setting — we observe the dappled thunderheads huddled over frozen mountains, swallowing the blazing orb hungrily, giddy for the starry onrush of night.

So, yeah. Fun, with life, with words, with living as deep and fearlessly as possible… if the gig wasn’t rife with these things, most of us would be doing something else.

And money?

Well, for most of history, scribes were slaves. Then (big upgrade) they were groveling servants of the ruling class — never equal, never respected much.

Then — when the novel appeared in the early 19th century — a funny thing happened: Writers started earning money for their efforts.

And, sometimes, the wealth accumulated. Mark Twain was a rich and respected world-traveler. Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and Alexander Dumas used their notoriety as story-crafters to rise above their normal “station” in life.

By the time direct response advertising became a thriving industry (early twentieth century), the utter importance of writers made them minor rock stars among advertisers.

Now, with the global reach of the Web, a guy who learns to write well — to communicate, persuade, and close the deal — will have to struggle NOT be have piles of money thrown his way.

And yet…

… and yet, as my friend Rich Schefren observed in a recent chat: “John, it’s ironic that you — the guy who helped so many of us get our start in marketing and using words to sell — seem perpetually trapped in what is viewed as the most UN-SEXY part of the business world.”

And he’s right.

I hate him for pointing it out… but he’s right.

It’s probably part of the appeal that keeps me in the game. I thrive on being an “outsider”. I get itchy whenever I’m too “accepted”, or feel myself slipping into the mainstream. Don’t like it. Will do something anti-social to break rapport, and stir shit up.

If my slovenly little corner of the biz world ever truly became “sexy” enough to gain total mainstream acceptance, in fact… my head would implode.

And bats would fly out, and little tiny monsters would scrabble from the steaming wreck of my neck, where just a wee dangling smidgen of ape-brain was left, snarling and spitting…

Professional ad writing is not sexy.  (With all due exceptions for Don Draper in “Mad Men”.)

It’s not raiding pension funds for profit… it’s not gaming the stock market for windfalls… it’s not gory entertainment like cage fighting… and it’s not sexy like the “magic” of launches and social networking scams and posting funny YouTube shit is sexy.

The irony kills me, every day.

In Hollywood, moguls gnash their teeth and directors consult astrologers while investors shovel money at box-office-boosting stars in a never-ending attempt to make their movies “huge hits”.

They do everything, in fact, except respect the ONE thing that truly matters: The fucking script.

You know — what the WRITERS produce.

Same with business. I teach freelancers to walk into a client’s office and OWN the situation. Charge a gazillion bucks (payable immediately), and make the client like it. Set cushy deadlines that please you, order folks around, and generally run things like an asshole.

Why? Because you’ve got to smack clients upside the head like that — and sometimes BE an asshole — to get the respect you require to do a good job.

Because while your skills at writing are the FOUNDATION of success in every single project out there… most clients refuse to admit it.

This hard-core “own the joint” attitude is 180-degrees opposite of how most freelancers go about dealing with clients. They crawl into a new client’s office on their knees, begging to be hurt and whipped and abused. They accept “vendor” status, and get paid on 60-day invoices. They allow their best stuff to be trampled and rewritten and shat on by lesser mortals… because they’re closer to the old slave scribes than to the Web millionaires using copy to get rich.

You want sexy?

How about having fun and making money.

You know — like the folks who bother to learn the deep, dark art of viciously-effective copywriting.

Okay, I know there are lots of members of the opposite sex who realize how super-bad-thexy writers truly are. Most of the writers I know aren’t widely appreciated in the biological pool, but within certain groups they are lust-candy. To a certain part of the population, brains being used for bad behavior… just so we have a good story to write about later… is the sexiest thing going.

But in the broader scheme of things, writers are always going to be outcasts.

Which brings me back to that table in the back of the bar at the seminar.

Who cares about respect, when you get to hang out with the smartest, funniest, most interesting folks in the room all the time?

I like the money that arrives from knowing how to write. I love the fun that comes with seeing the world differently than almost everyone else.

And I’ll just continue to be ironically pleased with a sexiness that only I and a few others seem to see.

It’s a very secret club. You earn admission only by embracing the craft, and being demanding of yourself in getting really, really good.

For those of us in the back of the room, it’s the ONLY club worth being in. We’d belong even if the money wasn’t stupid-huge.

To the writers out there: Can I get some testimony? How do you guys experience the frustration of not being understood, of working alone so much of the time, of owning a brain that goes to amazing places other people can’t even dream about?

I know that none of you would give up your hard-won chops as a writer, not for all the money in the world. We hold all the true power in life, and in the culture.  Pen mightier than the sword and all that.

And in business, too — it’s the writer who makes the magic happen.

Still, what do you guys think? Am I being too dramatic here? Not dramatic enough?

Love to hear from y’all…

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. Two last thoughts:

Thought #1. As always, if you crave knowing what writers know about the world and about business…

… just click here to see what’s available through the Simple Writing System.  That’s your first step — get the inside scoop, and learn the basics of quickly becoming the best writer you’re capable of becoming.  (Plus the sneaky advanced-yet-simple stuff filling this system that can make you ridiculously-good, in case you decide to go pro).

That’s your ticket to the club, so to speak.

Thought #2. And if you’re already a pro writer, stay tuned…

… cuz we’re gonna revamp the infamous “Freelance Manual” soon.  Which is all about the specifics of living the good life as a freelance copywriter:  Finding and managing clients… getting paid the big bucks… and grabbing your seat at the head of the Feast Of Life, where the adventures are fast and furious.

It’ll all be available soon.  Hang tight…

Thursday, 11:49am
Tampa Bay, FL
“What kind of music do you play here, Bob?” “Oh, we got both kinds. Country and western.” (Bob, the bar owner, and Jake Blues in “The Blues Brothers”)

Howdy…

Each year around July 4th, I like to post something on the blog about the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The part about free speech remains a protection that Americans enjoy (most of the time)… while much of the rest of the world refuses to even consider the concept.

Even otherwise enlightened joints like Europe have an itchy relationship with free speech.

Hell, we couldn’t get such a protection passed here in the States now.  If it hadn’t been wedged into the Constitution by Jefferson in the Bill of Rights 240 years ago, it would still be an unrealized pipe dream of writers and deep thinkers everywhere.

Make no mistake:  Your freedom to write blogs without government interference… as well as your right to use words like “fuck” to your heart’s content while making your point… is protected (mostly).

And this freedom is what fueled America’s dominance in stand up comedy.

Hey, don’t scoff.  Satire, ridicule, and funny stuff very much qualifies as deep thinking.

In fact, it’s how public opinion gets changed the fastest.

And this freedom has been denied to almost every human who has walked the planet in our history.

So don’t take it lightly.  Your ancestors would have killed for such a seemingly obvious privilege (and both did kill to get it, and die defending it).

The Man don’t like free speech.

Bugs him.  Irritates his sense of authority and moral dominance.

Well, fuck The Man.

For every writer who was or will be jailed for writing the truth (as he or she sees it)…

… and for every deep thinker who has been ostracized or exiled (or beheaded) for daring to challenge The Way Things Are…

… here is my toast to you, on the eve of the anniversary of our country’s bid for independence.

We’re not perfect, by a long shot.  We are, in fact, extremely dysfunctional on most levels — government, commerce, entertainment, Fourth Estate, and on down the list.

Still, I love this rickety old experiment in democracy.

As a writer, it’s part of my job to love and enjoy the good parts.  I owe it to all the poor slobs who preceded me in the gig… ink-stained wretches who could barely dream of the freedoms that writers enjoy today.  (Let alone the amazing stage presented by the Web for eveyone with something to say.)  (And even those with nothing to say.)

Mmmm-whaw!  Big kiss to the Constitution.

Our rights are fragile, as recent administrations have made abundantly clear.

Love them, hug them, nurture and protect them with passion and action.

And, most of all…

… enjoy the hell out of them.

To that end, I am proud to introduce another guest post by my friend and colleague Kevin Rogers.  (That stand-up-comic-turned-killer-copywriter who was also the very first writer to guest-post on this blog a while back.)

I laughed out loud several times reading this post, and I hope you get the same raw enjoyment.

The lessons are good ones, too.

So, without further ado… put your hands together and give a rousing Marketing Rebel Rant welcome to our guest, Kevin Rogers.

Kevin Rogers, everybody.

Take it away, Kevin.

And don’t fuck it up.

[Applause, dropped mic, feedback, lights dim...]

Thanks John, I’m honored to be back.

(And a special shout out to everyone who posted jokes and comments last time. Not surprisingly, there’s an army of sharp wits floating around here at camp Carlton.)

I had such a good time examining copywriting tactics through the prism of stand-up comedy on the last post that I’m going back to the well. Only this time let’s flip the script and observe at the art of bombing on stage…

…and how studying the cause and effect can help you avoid “eating the big one” with your marketing campaigns.

One of my first “hell gigs” as a stand-up comic was a deal too good to pass up…

…$75 to drive 600 miles from my apartment in Clearwater, FL to Gadsden, Alabama for one show in a strip mall country bar called Shit Kickerz – or something ridiculous like that.

(Don’t bother doing the math on that. I was 19 and living the dream. Besides, as you’ll see, negative net profit was not my biggest problem on this gig.)

It was a cavernous strip mall dance hall bathed in black light — turning anyone you talked to into a neon cartoon of eyeballs and teeth (bad teeth at that).

Ten minutes before I hit the stage, there were 11 dudes in cowboy hats wandering around looking desperate and 2 girls with poofy bangs drinking bottled beer at the bar.

If this was the audience I’d driven 9 hours to perform for, tomorrow’s trip home was going to feel twice as long. Every cell in my body screamed: Leave now!

The Art of Bombing

When asked to list their worst fears, most people rank public speaking scarier than death.

I believe it was Jerry Seinfeld who pointed out… “that means most people delivering the eulogy at a funeral would rather be in the casket.”

Makes sense.

A classic bombing is almost as painful for the audience as for the performer on stage. I’ve seen some doozies, too. Total meltdowns where the comic snaps and the audience is trapped in their seats… frozen in seething contempt.

The best are those occasions where the comic refuses to go quietly and remains on stage ranting until he’s completely “walked the room” (a comedy phrase for tormenting the audience into getting up and leaving… table by table).

A few comics (Bill Hicks and Andy Kaufman come to mind) made an art form of walking rooms before sobriety or an untimely demise broke them of the habit.

But the truth is, whether you’re an entertainer, a marketer or just the whacky guy at the company picnic, if you’re bold enough to call attention to yourself…

You’re going to bomb eventually.

In fact, I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t crashed and burned a few times. I want my experts wearing scars, don’t you?

Bombing as a comic will cause you to drink a little more and sleep a little less until your next good show… but it’s a necessary evil. Because each soul-drenching death adds another layer to the armor. Preparing you for future battles.

Bombing in marketing, however, can cost you a life savings. Some entrepreneurs never make it past their first tour of duty.

So here to help you avoid such a fate are…

The 3 Mistakes That (Almost Always) Lead To Certain Death.

1. Misjudging your “message to market match.”

One of the most common scenarios John takes on in his famous Hot Seat interventions is… entrepreneurs with a mixed bag of interests trying to be all things to all people.

Which, of course, causes you to be nothing to nobody.

People like to imagine their experts fixated on solving their problem and not much else. So try not to blow the image for them.

My pre-schooler gets freaked out if we run into his teacher at the grocery store. In his mind, any activity she engages in outside of the classroom is a serious breach of their agreement.

She teacher, him student. End of story.

Your customers see you the same way. You get to be the champion of one niche. So, choose wisely.

If you’re a hypnotist/entertainer selling a video on “fertility through guided meditation”… do not mention anywhere in the same ad – or the same website – that you’re also available to perform magic at children’s parties.

No sane woman is taking fertility guidance from “Bonkers the Clown”. So demonstrate your balloon-twisting skills on a totally different site… under a different name… wearing heavy make-up… and a wig.

2.  Wimping out.

This one is crucial… whether you’re speaking at live events or writing direct sales copy, you’ve got to beam with confidence.

Now, there are some pro comics who play the nervous, insecure or ambiguous character (remember Emo Philips?)… but trust me, it’s only an act.

If the crowd were to mistake that meekness for weakness and become aggressive, they’d quickly see another side to the character.

I once watched Bobcat Goldthwait yank an overzealous audience member out of his seat… drag him on stage by the leg… and kick him back off the stage onto the floor.

He then launched right into another joke with that nervous pitchy character voice… and the audience went wild.

Marketing yourself with confidence doesn’t require you to take on a “Rich Jerk” type persona, but you do need to write and speak with gravitas. Always use an active voice rather than a passive one.

(If you don’t know the difference between active and passive RUN to the bookstore and buy “Elements of Style” by Strunk and White.)

Your readers crave leadership.  (Not, leadership is craved by your readers.)

3. Get the crowd behind you BEFORE you take on hecklers.

Most hecklers suck. They’re rude and incoherent and serve no purpose but to interrupt the show.

So for the comic, having to stop the show to tell them, “It’s amazing that out of 100 million sperm, YOU were the fastest swimmer…”

or…

“Hey, man I don’t come to your job and knock the mop out of your hand… can I get back to work here?”

…while good for a quick laugh, is nothing more than a tedious game of Whack-A-Mole.

But, every once in a while, you get a really good heckler. One that shouts out witty jabs at just the right moments (preferably between jokes), and gets a segment of the crowd to rally behind her.

This is a risky scenario marketers also face in this age of Internet forums. The gurus take a beating on message boards… and while it’s RARELY a good idea to respond to the territorial pissings of frustrated wannabes… it can be done to great effect.

The key to success in either situation is to know your final shot before entering the battle, and leading your opponent accordingly.

A few years into my road career, I began welcoming good hecklers because I knew how the game was going to end. And I had a line so good, I could close the show with it.

After lulling the heckler into false confidence, I would feign defeat by saying…

“Look. You’ve been shouting out and disrupting the show all night. We’ve had a little fun with it. But it’s to a point now where it’s unfair to all these good people who paid to see the real show.

So, let’s make a deal. As a peace offering, I’m going to buy you a drink… and all you have to do is keep quiet and sip that drink for the next 5 minutes while I finish up here. Does that sound fair?”

At this point the crowd is touched by the gesture, and the heckler has little choice but to agree. And then I say:

“Great. Waitress… would you bring a vinegar and water to this DOUCHE BAG at table 6!”

Ka-boom! Good night everybody.

Bottom line: You can’t always choose your opponents, but you can always control the battle.

Meanwhile… back at Shit Kickerz…

I had yet to learn any of these survival lessons that night in Alabama. I was introduced to the crowd I described, plus a few more that straggled in unenthusiastically…

…then proceeded to bomb so hard that I literally took up smoking the minute I came off stage. (I had never smoked in my life, but after that – I needed a cigarette!)

Christopher Walken was quoted in the June issue of Esquire. He said:

“When you’re on stage and you know you’re bombing, that’s very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going–you’re bombing, but you can’t stop. And you know that a half an hour from now, you’re still gonna be bombing. It takes thick skin.”

I once calculated that every horrifying stage death I endured snipped a week off of the end of my life. (Not to mention the decade of cigarette smoking!)

But I wouldn’t trade it, because the experience makes the time you spend here richer and more productive. Bombing teaches you how not to bomb.

And hopefully this article did, too.

You’ve been great. Enjoy Foghat!

Kevin

P.S. Now that I’ve laid my soul bare, it’s your turn. Tell me about your big bombs, and what you learned from it.

Howdy,

Let me know what you think about this, will ya?

It seems, at first, to be a light-weight subject…

… yet, really, it’s one of the foundations of living a good life.

I’m talking about the people you surround yourself with.

But not the way you’re thinking.

This may even jar you a little bit. Here goes:

Early in my career, I realized that grown-up life isn’t all that much different…

… than what goes on during recess in the third grade.

There are outsiders, insiders, cliques, teams, gangs, winners and losers galore.

No matter WHAT grisly experience you had in grade school…

… you’ve got company.

It’s brutal out there.

And then you become an adult…

… and it’s the SAME SHIT all over again. Hierarchies, power-grabbing, humiliation plays, one-up-manship, and clubs you can’t belong to.

The ranks of entrepreneurs I know are filled with “recess survivors” who finally gave the finger to “The System”, and went off on their own.

As amazing as it seems, you really can get on with life without the “gotcha” games and pettiness of “Life With Bullies, Prom Queens, and BMOC’s”.

However…

… that’s not the realization I want to share with you today.

Nope.

Instead, the second part of that epiphany (that life is just a replay of third grade recess) is this:

Regardless of whether you “won” or “lost” in the social-climbing bullshit you’ve suffered through in your time…

… it can all still be a blast…

… if you have the right people around you.

In other words… it’s not whether you win, or lose.

It’s how much fun and insight to life you get during the adventure.

Let’s use me as an example.

Cuz I don’t mind telling embarrassing stories about myself:

I had a very mixed record of social “success” coming up the ranks… both in school, and in early adult life.

I was okay at sports. Just good enough to make the team and suffer the anxieties and physical/emotional debt of vicious organized games. And just under-powered enough to get cut from every attempt to make varsity. So I got to play… and I got to experience the arrid loneliness of the bench and the exit door.

But I sucked, utterly and without redemption, at most social interaction. Girls scared the bejesus out of me as a kid… flummoxed me as a teen… and toyed with me after that.

I was so unprepared, so confused, and so clueless about dealing with standard issues of dating and being a cool guy and feeling like I belonged… that, if I were a character in a novel, you’d roll your eyes and say “No way could anybody be that much of a loser!”

Yeah.

That was me.

But get this:

I still had a BLAST.

Even when Life dialed up the most humiliating, emotionally-scarring horror possible to a shy, skittish introvert like me…

… I was able to shake it off, and show up the very next day smiling and ready for more.

“That all you got, Fate? That’s your best shot, you miserable s.o.b.? Ha!”

You know how I did it? How I survived, and even thrived while being buried in sticks and stones and the arrows of misfortune?

I’ll tell you:

I had buddies to share it all with.

Not just fellow losers, either.

No.

And this is the essential point here: I had a close-knit group of guys (and a few gals) around me…

… who delighted in being alive.

There’s probably some social-math equation I could come up: Your ability to survive and thrive… is directly proportional to the time that elapses between a horrible event…

… and your ability to laugh about it.

With my friends and me, that time was often instantaneous.

We had a lot of practice.

(And I’m not talking about just dating disasters, or heartbreak, or social blunders. I’m including death, financial misery, and the near-total upheaval of normality. The kind of blows that can rock you to your knees.)

Wait.

I’m still not yet revealing the essence here.

The take-away of this tale is not “friends are good.”

Because I will attest that there was a very definable, and very rare aspect of these friends that is absolutely essential…

… and even beside the point of being able to laugh about tragedy.

You wanna guess what that aspect is?

It’s…

…

…

… energy.

This realization came rushing back to me yesterday while I chatted with my best friend from high school. Haven’t seen the dude in two years, but we stay in close touch.

And, mid-way through the call…

… I realized I ached from laughing.

Even though some of the subjects we discussed were illnesses in our families, job woes, relocation horror stories, and other tragedies.

And I was able to put a “quality” on that laughter.

It was bristling with raw energy. The “good” kind of energy.

There really are two kinds of people in the world: Those who bring energy with them to everything they do…

… and the great masses, who suck energy from you like psychic vampires. (That’s a Halbert term, by the way. Privately, we had other names for these types of buzz-killing grim reapers.)

I’ve known a lot of folks in my time. And I’ve unconsciously been putting each and every one through a little test upon meeting them.

The test is simple: Do they provide energy? Or are they leeching it from the air around us?

A party crammed with energy-gobbling vampires is a drag, through and through. Even Vegas can’t salvage a good time.

And yet, just hanging out with a single “mini-solar system” type of person in a drab coffee shop… can be pure bliss.

In business… in life… in games and in every social and quasi-social gathering…

… there is no fun, and little chance for adventure or good stories when the energy level is flat-lined.

And yet… when you are in the company of someone bursting with life-force…

… well, it’s pretty freaking magical.

The most mundane tasks become a joy. (My pal Art and I used to just drive around Cucamonga, with no goal or destination… not cruising, but rather just hanging out, laughing, basking in raw energy and verve and marvelling at the cruel and wonderful adventures Life handed out.)

Life isn’t gonna treat you better when you surround yourself with heat-source types. You’re still gonna take it on the chin, still gonna encounter monsters around every corner.

My mother — after ten months of gruesome chemo — still managed to tell a joke and make me smile… just hours before she passed away.

Believe me — there was nothing funny going on that afternoon.

But I cherish that last “don’t let the bastards get you down” shared moment with her.

If you understand what I’m talking about, you don’t need to know anything else about her to know exactly what kind of special woman she was.

That was over 15 years ago. And the lesson I learned is never far from my thoughts… especially when I’m feeling like Life has it out for me again.

Screw it.

The ride’s too short.

If you’ve got that flame in your soul, don’t let anyone or anything douse it.

We need you in the mix.

We already got enough of the damned vampires hovering…

Anyway, something to consider.

What do you think?

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

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…

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…

Howdy…

Has anyone lied to you today?

Have you loosed a zinger yourself?

Do you have a sophisticated grading system for your own non-truths, so you can ameliorate any guilt you feel when you only lie a little tiny bit? Or only lie to, you know, spare someone pain? Or keep them blissfully in the dark?

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about lies and the miserable bastard weasels who use them as tools for doing business and for controlling their social lives.

One of the hardest lessons to learn, while I was sculpting my career, was how to deal with lies. In all their myriad forms and nuances.

I hung out with shrinks as much as I could — both as paid listeners and as biz colleagues (cuz most psychologists desperately want out of the job of professionally raking the muck in other people’s brains and hearts… and every time one would sense an opening through Halbert or me into the entrepreneurial world, they jumped at it). (Some of the weirdest stories I have entail shrinks and marketing misadventures.)

Dudes who study human behavior (and all its sordid and disheartening variations) professionally know some amazing things about people. For a salesman, this is fabulous insider knowledge, and we crave and seek it.

And one of the main things I picked up from a shrink wannabe-entrepreneur… was his idea of how to divide the human population into three basic categories:

1. Those who saw the world as mostly safe…

2. Those who saw the world as mostly dangerous…

3. And those who had a well-defined, balanced view of things as they really are.

This last group might well be called “adults”. Not as in “you’re just turned 21, so you’re now an adult”… but rather “you’re the only guy in the room who isn’t driven and tortured by demons, guilt and sick needs.”

I must say: Growing up as I did… snug in the biggest bulge of the post-war Baby Boom and nurtured by parents devoted to giving their kids a real childhood (without spoiling us)… I treated the entire world around me as a big, mostly-safe playground. I easily took too many risks, pulled too many completely stupid stunts, and contantly put myself and others in situations where somebody could have gotten seriously hurt or killed.

Living through it made us stronger. Amazingly, no one suffered any permanent damage (other than a few nasty scars, busted bones and popped vertebrae).

My cousins (co-agents of adventure with me throughout childhood) and I are just stunned by the leeway we were given: We absolutely had to be home at certain hours, and we never dared break that taboo. We had to be polite to grown-ups, and do what we were told. We had a few chores here and there, and any added responsibilities that came up were to be done without complaint.

Other than that… we were like little Viking mauraders, unleashed on the neighborhoods to pillage and lay waste to everything we could tear up, burn, or steal.

Mom would wave goodbye on a typical summer day, warn us to be home for lunch… and then she would not have a clue where we were or what we were doing for the next four hours. We’d show up, dirty and panting (and maybe a little bloody), gobble food, and leave again until dinner.

No questions asked, no information offered.

The world was ours. As far as the folks were concerned, kids needed to be kids… and you just sort of hoped some sense or help from angels or something would intervene in any serious danger.

(Once, exploring New York City with my pal David Deutsch, we started chatting with a couple eating pizza next to us, because David has a couple of kids nearly the age of their two young boys. I was shocked to learn that the oldest boy — who was almost thirteen — had NEVER been out of their Manhattan apartment without adult supervision. NEVER! They talked excitedly about maybe allowing him to take a walk around the block or even — gasp! — ride the subway for a stop or two… alone. Maybe they’d let him do that, in the near future. Maybe. I’m still stunned at that — kids growing up without the space to get in trouble, and figure out how to get OUT of that trouble. I don’t think that’s a make-up skill you can master very easily, once you’re an adult…)

Anyway, my point is that I grew up with this possibly exaggerated sense of how safe the world was. This caused some problems as I got old enough to drive… and challenge other boys for the right to date some girls… and try to find my place in the hive.

We started losing friends in car crashes. I myself was in around a dozen bloody wrecks before I left college, and I’m pretty sure our Boomer sense of invulnerability was behind our dumbest choices and decisions.

I was in high school before I started realizing that some of the other kids didn’t share my sense of entitlement to enjoy the wonders of the world. They were hostile to the idea of unfettered adventure, or had such strict home rules they never dared dream of going out at night to see what might happen… or, sometimes, they just seemed cowed and broken.

Like the weight of the world was crushing them.

I even went out of my way to make friends with some depressed kids, and drug them into my social circle almost as a sponsor. But there was always some horrible secret burning inside them, and they tended to suck energy out of the room rather than supply energy.

Many years later — after life had delivered some very adult-like blows to my self-esteem — I got a good taste of what depression could do to you. It tightened you up, bled you of vigor, and exhausted your heart just getting through a day. Fun was hard to come by.

The world seemed… hostile.

I have empathy for people in all the categories now. Been there, felt that, survived all of it.

Makes you humble. And gives you insight.

The world, as I now clearly see it, is both dangerous and delightful… often at the same time. I hitch-hiked for years without problem (and with a novel’s worth of adventure) before I even knew what a serial killer was. Can’t even imagine doing it now. Can’t believe I never had any trouble before. Would NOT recommend it to anyone today.

There are dark alleys, here and there, you can wander through without fear. Mostly, though, I avoid them all. (I’ve been writing for the self-defense market too long, perhaps… seen too much of the bad side of people.)

I have no allusions of safety among my fellow citizens. Nor do I keep a loaded pistol next to my bed, though. (I prefer the baseball bat.)

What’s all this got to do with lying?

Everything.

See, when the world seems safe, you don’t look for lies. You take people at face value, and accept statements as either true or possibly true until they are proven otherwise.

This seemed like a great way to move through the world, for a long time.

Once I went deep into the business world, however, I realized I was being seen as a fool for having so much trust in other people. I started encountering whole roomfuls of folks who considered everything you said an outrageous lie until you could be proven to have told the truth.

Lying as the default position?

This was like Alice in Wonderland for me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live in a world where you couldn’t trust most folks, most of the time.

It felt too… lonely. Like it was you against the world, every second of the day.

Fortunately, I soon discovered a whole segment of business people who felt as I did. Except, they had developed a kind of “lie radar” inside their intuition that operated 24/7, quietly and in the background.

They would always entertain whatever they were told as true, but not act until they got the report from their “lie radar”. It might start with a feeling, that you followed with a little easy research or a phone call to someone who might confirm or deny certain elements, followed with some mild questioning of the speaker.

I liked this approach. It didn’t matter if the other guy was lying through his teeth, because I wasn’t gonna act one way or another on what he said until I verified it. There was ALWAYS something positive to pull from any meeting or experience in business… even if what I pulled from it was a little practice in being patient, and testing my immediate intuition against hard-core research into facts.

I don’t feel so lonely, as I would if I walked around (like many folks I know) assuming that everyone was lying through their teeth, and out to get me.

I probably get “taken” a few more times than the paranoid dude… but I’ll enjoy my calmer life (full of friends who share my worldview of “mostly not dangerous”) and accept the occasional screwing like a man. (Besides — I’ve also noticed, in my long career, that the pissed-off, brick-on-shoulder guy always looking for the scam also gets tricked fairly often anyway. His snarling defenses are like an empty moat, as worthless against a skilled liar as the most gullible dude around.)

I get irked when people lie. Don’t get me wrong.

But I don’t take it personally (unless it IS personal) (which hasn’t happened to me in decades).

People lie. For all kinds of reasons. They can’t handle getting yelled at, they’re just trying to spin things so they don’t look like idiots, they think they can avoid responsibility or consequences… it’s a long list.

Some do it just because they can.

Others do it to position themselves.

And when you think about it… once you get over the myth that lying is an aberration in human behavior, and realize that most folks waddle through their day weaving one tall tale after another (often for reasons they can’t even fathom themselves)… there’s little downside to conducting yourself with full knowledge that everyone around you is delivering a soupy mix of truth, half-truth, and damned lies every single day.

Heck — James Bond, one of my literary heroes, was a professional liar. Just part of his toolkit for survival. I have friends who exaggerate so much, you start to doubt every detail they offer in a story… and yet, they remain friends. I just work a tiny bit harder to find the nuggets of truth in what they say, and ignore the fluff.

I’ve been a lifelong fan of tall tales, too. I’ll add a few outrageous details to a story, just to emphasize some angle, or to call attention to the absurdity or irony of a plot twist. (“The poodle was, like, twelve hundred pounds. Couldn’t fit through the door.” “We loved going spelunking in the county sewer pipes, where you could walk for miles in six-foot diameter tunnels in pitch darkness. Sometimes, we’d lose one of the kids if he fell behind. I’m sure there’s at least one of them still down there, turned into a troll.”)

Professionally, however, I have developed a sharp ear for red flag lying, after years in the smoldering center of the biz world. Sometimes it’s just a tiny blip on my “lie radar”… a tick that others can’t even detect.

This happened last week, when one of my assistants related the “confirmation” of all email problems being fixed by an Infusion customer service rep. To my ass’t, the FUBAR situation must have been cleared up, because the CSR weasel told him it was.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Tell me exactly what that ‘confirmation’ was.”

“He confirmed all was okay,” said my ass’t, confidently. “He said everything should be fixed now.”

Should?

SHOULD?

“Terminate the batch emailing,” I ordered. “Right fucking NOW.”

One weasel word, which slipped by less experienced ears, froze my gut.

And, it turned out, I was right to be alarmed. The bug wasn’t fixed at all, and if we hadn’t terminated the job, tens of thousands of blank emails would have gone out… ruining my reputation and denting our credibility. (As it was, several thousand did get out… thanks to the lying little CSR weasel at Infusion.)

Words matter. Doctors repeated told my family — back when my Mom took sick — that they were “confident” they could predict how the cancer would take her out. Six months, for sure, some said. Three months, said others.

This didn’t sit right with me. I dug deeper, and discovered than four different docs had four different ideas of what KIND of cancer she had. Bone. Breast. Liver. Lung.

They were lying.

They didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

We didn’t ask them for a prediction of when it would be over. They just offered it.

Lying weasels.

What IS it about so many people… that they are simply incapable of saying “I don’t know”?

I have searched in vain, my entire career, for the answer to that ridiculous question.

There is no shame in not knowing an answer.

And yet, to my mind, there is TERRIFIC shame in making something up, as if your imagination and your desire to be a know-it-all trumped reality.

Lying is all around us.

It’s a piss-poor way to get through a situation, but some forms of lying are just built into the human hard drive.

Work on your own “lie radar”. Simply make a mental note of what someone tells you, and then check it out. They don’t need to know what you discover. But you do.

You don’t “win” anything by confronting a liar, most of the time. Many people cannot abide by what they consider an affront against Truth, and they will verbally assault anyone they catch lying. As if the universe will not be right until the lie is confronted, confessed, and scorched by the light of day.

And these avengers lustily engage in lie-witch-hunts while ignoring their own culpubility in twisting things once in a while.

It’s not your job to set everything straight in the world. In my experience, liars don’t often “get away” with much, over the long haul. They may see short-term benefits, but they’re living a spiritually unhealthy life… and it catches up with you, eventually.

The Zen warrior would rather learn the truth in secret, than share in a communal lie. That can be lonely… but when you surround yourself with honorable people, the truth is always welcome, and you can even forgive small transgressions (since you don’t act on their version of things without fact-checking everything first, anyway).

Sure, it’s complex. Tangled webs and all that.

Work on your intuitive radar.

All top marketers possess it… and most became good at it only after years of disciplined practice and follow-through.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

P.S. Just a small warning — the slots in the “Launching Pad” consulting program are dwindling, especially in the near-term.

To see how you can be “John’s New Best Friend” for a month, and get unbelievable personal access to me (and Stan) while going deep into your biz and plans, go to:

http://www.carltoncoaching.com

And see what’s going on. It’s intense mentoring, as the folks who’ve been through it will tell you.

And I ain’t lying.

P.P.S. One last thing — for folks like Karen, who aren’t getting their email notifications when I blog (thanks, Infusion)… just remember that I’m being fairly faithful to a Monday-Thursday schedule. I blog on Monday, and then again on Thursday of each week.

That’s the plan.

Rain or shine. (Though I did miss a couple during the heavy traveling days recently.)

So go ahead and drop by, even if you haven’t gotten an email.

I’m always dinking around here with some idea or notion or whatever…

Howdy,

Not sure if you’ve been following the micro-news or not… but our little town here nestled against the Sierra Nevada has been Earthquake Central for the last week or so.

That’s right. Reno made the national newscasts by shaking its butt.

Actually, a flurry of heart-pounding smallish quakes has been unsettling the joint since February… but things got really interesting this past week: On average, we’re experiencing over a hundred shaking events a day (!), with the largest so far nudging 5.0 (knock you off your feet level).

The experts assure us a volcano isn’t about to emerge from under Fourth Street and shower us with lava or anything like that.

Still, the whole city is holding its collective breath, waiting for the punchline to arrive.

Now, I’m from California, and we’re so blaise about seismic activity, we named our minor-league baseball team after earthquakes. (Literally, the Cucamonga Quakes, single A.) I slept through most of the big ones while growing up — my bed would bounce across the floor, and everything from the walls and bookcases would doink off my head, yet I refused to leave slumberland. (Probably helped that I grew up less than one hundred feet from active train tracks, where the Southern Pacific freights would rattle the house several times a day.)

So I’m not particularly nervous. Been sleeping fine, even when the big jolts arrive in the wee hours. I’ll get up, calm the dogs down, check for flaming lava in the hallway, and fall back into a deep snooze before the first aftershock arrives.

Of course, everyone who didn’t grow up in California is freaking out. Michele’s downright jumpy — her hometown of Chicago was, she insists, firmly nailed down like a city is supposed to be. Damn it. She is actually offended by my smug refusal to sit up all night waiting for the next tremblor.

And hey, being jumpy is fine. As long as you channel that energy into being prepared. We’ve been chatty with neighbors we haven’t noticed since last summer (when everyone spent the evening sipping wine in the middle of the cul de sac, watching the nearby hills burn and taking bets on whose house would go up like a matchhead first if the wind changed). Trading info and phone numbers and secret emergency plans.

And also trading fears.

It’s gotten me thinking about what life is really all about, again.

You know — once the danger passes, how are you gonna change things so you enjoy this corporeal ride with a little more gusto?

Gary Halbert and I used to gleefully have a very similar conversation, over and over, whenever the mood struck: We asked ourselves, what does a good life look like?

It’s a subject worthy of repeated exploration.

If you need help getting started, consider those inane celebrity interview modules in magazines… where somebody pitches them 20 fast questions like “What is your perfect day?” and “What do you see yourself doing five years from now?”

They ask these questions as if, of course everyone has an instant answer handy. I mean, who doesn’t constantly obsess on what a perfect day would be?

Try it on your friends, and on yourself. You’ll find that, in reality, very few people have even considered the concept of looking ahead like that. (I’m betting the celebs have their PR handlers do most of the answering in those articles, anyway.)

Many folks are just plain superstitious about imagining the future, like they’ll jinx any chance they may have of attaining a good life down the road…

… when — once you understand how goal-setting works — that kind of avoidance is actually a damn good way to guarantee you’ll never get close to a perfect anything.

A good life seldom just happens to you.

You gotta envision it… go after it… and attain it.

You want it… you take it… and you pay the price.

Here’s a tip you may not discover immediately, that will help you understand why it’s so hard at first to see your future very clearly: Your desires, and thus your “perfect” goals, will change dramatically over time.

If you have your old high school yearbook, go read what your pals wrote about the impending future. If life just kinda “happened” to any of them in the cruel adult world, there wasn’t much in the way of startling surprises. Or adventures.

It’s very much worth thinking about what a good life looks like.

The rules Halbert and I came up for our incessant chats on this topic were simple: We had to be painfully and excruciatingly honest.

Sometimes, this meant our talk degenerated into locker room fantasies. That was allowed. We both had bloated biological imperatives.

Mostly, though, we talked of finding not a moment in time where bliss was attained… but rather an ongoing series of opportunities for exploration and sampling.

In other words… we suspected that the Perfect Life would be too full of surprises, too unpredictable, and too intertwined with edgy adventure to allow a quick, pat, consistent answer.

So our vision changed, constantly. Curiously, neither of us gave a shit about material possessions. Or power.

In the end, the Introvert usually triumphed within us. A good life had its lovely carnal pleasures, sure… but central to complete fulfillment was a pursuit of intellectual goals and long greedy spells acquiring knowledge and (as silly as it sounds) wisdom.

(I’ve recently heard how Gene Simmons, the bass player from KISS, describes his perfect day… and I gotta admit, he has a point about not getting too philosophical about shit. Fortunately, I’ve had a few extended spells of hedonistic excess to enjoy… and while I do not regret a single hour, I will admit that it gets boring after a while. Especially for someone who spends an inordinate amount of time deep inside their head.)

(Still, you go, Gene. Party ev-er-y day…)

Now, here’s the kicker: You cannot just possess wisdom. To set up a life where you have the LUXURY of pursuing such lofty crap… you need lots of freedom.

I realized something a very long time ago: Many entrepreneurs really do get into biz for the money, and all the things money can buy. The freedom they enjoy is the freedom from want, and the giddy gorging at the teat of modern pleasures.

However, there are just as many others for whom money is just a way to buy different kinds of freedom: Never having others choose for you, never needing to shoulder responsibilities you don’t freely seek, never wondering when “life” will begin… because you’re highly aware you’re deep into it, every day.

As you explore your own notions of a good life, judge harshly against your intuition and your gut. Make sure no one else is influencing your dream, unless you welcome the influence. (My first lists of goals — while I was struggling with the concept of being able to actually “want” something and go after it — were heavy with rewards I didn’t actually want… like boats, or a big mansion, or fame. I had to extract myself from the quicksand-like influence of other people’s desires, before I could find where my heart truly lay. It’s a process. I had a long way to go, but each attempt at refining and reshaping my peculiar goals paid off hugely.)

Is freedom important to you? It’s not, for everyone. Like Dylan said, you gotta serve somebody. A higher purpose, a god, an addiction, a family model, something. If you choose something hard-to-define, like a “higher purpose”, then your everlasting homework assignment is to explain to yourself HOW you will serve that purpose.

You can’t just say you’re after it, either. When you’re engaging life on all cylinders, you get busy, not philosophical.

You go after it.

In Gary’s case — and this still influences me today — he had a peculiar inability to settle down and enjoy any reward he’d attained. For him, the happiness of succeeding meant only that another chapter in his life had ended… and he had to hunker down to find that next challenge, that next hill to climb, that next dragon to vanquish.

That’s an exhausting way to live, but it’s also invigorating when you do it right.

And, because you have the freedom to choose your goals and directions… and the freedom (in your mind and your bank account) to pursue them with balls-to-the-wall fervor… you can change direction any time your gut tells you it’s time.

Consider, as you mull your own perfect day and good life, if the destination or the journey is more important to you.

For me, it’s always been about the ride.

Sometimes, I get too complacent about success, and make the horrible mistake of thinking “I’ve done it, by Jove!” When, according to my private scorecard, I haven’t done jack shit yet in life.

I’ve been telling people lately to think about their life story as a movie. Because that’s easy to digest. For me — and maybe for you, too — the better analogy is a big long novel.

When chapters end, new ones begin immediately. The tale has no clear final act, because life isn’t a static frozen moment, but a continual jaunt through ever-changing scenery.

Still, it’s good to think (and to talk about, with good friends) what your good life looks like.

I’m always fascinated by other people’s ideas on this, too.

Comments are welcome. If you’re just beginning to consider your own journey, all the better — here’s a forum for your thoughts.

I am constantly blown away by how smart, how involved, and how alive the commenters in this blog are. It’s a rush, I gotta tell ya, to know so many people of quality and insight are out there.

Love to hear from you.

My good life is taking me over to San Francisco this weekend, of course — out of the Sierra Bed O’ Earthquakes, into the quivering bosom of The Mother Of All Fault Lines in the Bay Area.

If we survive, I’ve got a big damn fresh list of “good life” things to indulge in over the summer.

What a ride we’re on…

Stay frosty,

John Carlton
http://www.carltoncoaching.com

P.S. If you’re still bummed about missing out on this upcoming copywriting workshop… and who in their right mind isn’t bummed about missing it?… remember that we’ve still got several coaching programs in place, all heavily loaded with personal attention from me.

Check out www.carltoncoaching.com, while you’re contemplating your future.

Might be a great fit there, you know.

Howdy,

Just plowed through the old tax grind here. Spent several hours chasing down documents, digging through files, double-checking my math.

Cuz I suck at math, you know. How I got through trig in high school is a mystery (let alone statistics and matrix theory in college).

In fact, I’m only half-joking when I say I’m pretty sure I’ve lost the ability to multiply by 8. That entire synapse has just dried up and fluffed away. (I still have vivid memories of squirming in my third grade class during the vicious head-to-head multiplication games the teacher forced us to play. I got tricked more than once with “five times zero”, blurting “FIVE!” before realizing my blunder. Argh!)

This is why one of my first splurges when my career got going was hiring an accountant.

Accountants like numbers. Watching their hands fly across a calculator is something to behold. Looky there — all my money vanishing like dots on a digital screen…

But here’s the thing: The first time I wrote a check to the IRS for an estimated payment… I was actually thrilled to death.

This first quarterly payment was proof that I was — finally — my own man. In my own biz. Paying my own taxes.

No withholding. No payroll check. No timing my bills to The Man’s schedule for doling out my hard-earned dough.

But I enjoyed that thrill alone.

Many of my early gigs as a freelancer were with business owners who considered taxes to be evil, evil, evil. Reagan encouraged them in this hatred — it was a time when government was seen as the problem, and unfettered free enterprise the solution.

The only solution.

I’m not gonna get into it… but after last month’s bailing out of Bear Stearns with taxpayer money (mine!) — because deregulation allowed them to act like four-year-olds with someone else’s piggy bank — I’m gonna slug the next guy who spouts ideological bullshit about the free market being able to regulate itself and fix any problem.

Economics has never been easy to understand, no matter what anyone else tells you. It’s a complex mix of theory, emotion, psychology, greed. con-man tactics, and lots and lots of wishing and hoping.

Oh, and gambling. The entire financial infrastructure of our civilization is essentially a big damn roll of the dice. If everybody woke up tomorrow and decided that paper money was worthless… it would be. Same with gold. And IOUs, and everything else of “value” you can’t eat, use for fuel, or build anything with.

Still…

…I was damn proud to start paying my taxes as a rookie freelancer.

Damn proud.

This confused nearly everyone I worked with at the time. Especially since I was hip to Ayn Rand and Robert Ringer and a small bit of economic theory…

It was like, I should know better or something.

Back then, it was almost heresy to like paying taxes. A few of my colleagues even became tax rebels, refusing to pay anything under the hazy notion that income tax wasn’t “in” the constitution, and so… blah, blah, blah.

They got in trouble. Ayn couldn’t save ‘em.

I kept my thoughts mostly to myself. As a vandal in my formative years, I destroyed lots of stuff. We were removed from the creation of bridges, street lighting systems, even stop signs. So we burned, blew up, cut down and defaced public property like it was a game.

Seriously. It seemed like a game.

I’ve had this idea for a “basic lesson” I’d like to deliver to “pre-vandal” kids in grade school and junior high. In this lesson, I would explain to kids where they “fit” in the culture, and where stuff like street lights and earth-moving equipment came from. Cuz no one ever did it for me.

My theory is that kids are too removed from the creation of the stuff around us. Strangers arrive in uniforms, build and fix shit, and vanish. In earlier times, you may have known the folks who put up the lights (“Hi, Mr. Edison!”), ran the tractors, painted the walls, dug the holes for power lines, etc. (Heck, you may have even been involved – I doubt a kid who helped raise a barn would later vandalize it.)

I got a taste of this when my little town formed a Little League. Parents got together, pooled scarce resources and money, sought out sponsors… and my Pop helped build the freaking baseball field. From scratch. Went out there and leveled the field, cleared the debris and rocks (big rocks in the dirt, too), erected the stands and concession, wired the microphones, poured concrete for the dugouts… all of it.

We treated that diamond like church, too. It was sacred ground.

Slowly, it was dawning on me that anarchy was dumb, and could harsh your mellow.

Building stuff… and (gasp!) even taking care of it… could make life better.

Once I became an entrepreneur, I was ready to step up and be an “owner” of the civilization I was living in. Taxes weren’t “taken out” of my paycheck anymore. Instead, I wrote quarterly checks to do my part in funding the upkeep and creation of local and national crap.

Crap we needed. Like roads, sewers, firehouses, power lines, the whole interconnected mess that kept the lights on, the beer cold, and garbage picked up.

Yep. I’m a proud taxpayer.

I have never forgotten listening in on a heated conversation between a couple of advanced businessmen, back when I first weaseled my way into those kinds of meetings. (Literally smoky back rooms.)

Most of the guys were all pissed off about taxes, hated the thought of paying even a single penny to “the gummit”, and considered the whole thing extortion.

But there was this one guy… the wealthiest and most Zen-centered dude in the group… who just shrugged.

He said — and I remember the sound of his voice — that he made his millions, and paid every penny he owed in tax, when it was due. And slept like a baby, and went about earning another million.

The other guys grumbled and bitched and moaned and agreed with each other that this was the wrong way to go about being a success. You fought with the taxman over everything, smuggled money into hidey holes whenever possible, lied, cheated, played dumb and dumped vast sums into off-shore accounts.

Over the years, I paid attention to who led the better life. No contest.

Off-shore money vanished (“Oops!”)… years were spent wrangling with attorneys and IRS agents… and many sleepless nights ensued.

And I slept like a baby, having taken the rich guy’s advice. And got busy with my career.

No one understands my joy at being able to say I pay for the upkeep of my quirky little town and my staggeringly-big nation. And though the checks I write are pretty damn huge (I quickly got used to paying more in quarterly’s than I used to earn in a year), I do not begrudge Caesar a single coin.

Sure, lots of it is wasted, misspent, stolen and worse.

The world’s a messy place. Choose your battles.

I focus on the never-ceasing wonder of living in a joint where a guy like me — lowly, formerly-clueless, working class me — had the opportunity to grab a seat at the Feast… simply by getting busy and setting goals.

This is an astonishing playground we live in here. Most of the rest of world is agog at our freedoms, and would happily pay twice the tax we dole out just for the privilege of being able to bitch about paying it… and not being jailed or shot in the process.

Taxes suck.

So pay ‘em and forget about it until the next quarter.

You really should be too busy making hay to even notice the money’s gone…

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

P.S. Important note to anyone who’s been gazing longingly at any of the offers over at www.marketingrebel.com: Every single package there is on the front burner for being taken OFF that site (probably forever).

In particular, the mega-popular “Bag of Tricks” package is about to be retired.

It’s just too good a deal (especially with the personal attention from me included).

We’re not getting greedy, mind you. We’re just getting hip to the structure our new biz model is becoming. And that killer offer needs serious revamping (and higher prices).

However, as long as it’s there on the site, we’ll honor the deal. I’m heading down to San Diego this week to speak at Frank Kern’s spectacular seminar, and I’m kinda focused on the upcoming “17 points of copywriting” workshop just around the corner.

Still, we’ve got geeks scrambling… and as soon as we can, the entire current set of deals at www.marketingrebel.com vanishes. I can’t tell you, right now, what will replace them… but I CAN tell you this: You will never see an amazingly hyper-generous deal exactly like the “Bag of Tricks” again.

So pop over and check it out while you can. This particular “menu” of essential info and tools and skills is what fueled so many of the top marketers now doing their thang online. Just check the testimonials.

We’re not shelving the “Bag of Tricks” to be mean… it’s just time to grow into a new model. Changes online demand it.

Don’t dally. I know you’ve been lusting after that package. I’m announcing it’s demise at the Kern event, and we’ll follow through soon after…

P.P.S. By the way… all incoming comments were disabled last night, due to a technical glitch while our server was upgraded. I know at least a few people emailed me, privately, to tell me they were denied.

Anyway, it’s all working fine now. Fire away, if you like…