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

Howdy…

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

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

… just for the grabbing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What?  You didn’t see that presentation?

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

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

More…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it free!

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

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

… for a few days.

Then: Ffffft.

Gone.

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

Here… it’s all free.

More:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, guess what?

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

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

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

And I’m gonna suggest you do exactly that…

… right now.

www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog

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

I did it just to blow people away.

And it’s all there… for free.

Stop reading.

Go over there now.

This is life-changing stuff.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

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…

A colleague of mine recently shared an interesting tactic for instantly increasing cash flow.

It’s very low tech.

It’s the phone. And no, it’s not telemarketing.

Here’s what he did: During an afternoon lull in the workday not too long ago, my friend (let’s call him “Joe”) realized he had nothing urgent on his plate that required immediate attention.

So he picked up the phone and called a long-time customer who he’d been playing phone tag with over some minor matter. It was a “B” list kinda task.

During the chat that ensued, however, Joe happened to mention another project he was involved in… and his client expressed immediate interest.

Joe wasn’t pitching the event. Just bringing it up in conversation.

But it triggered a sale.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

So Joe made another call, out of the blue, to another long-time customer… and after some brief small talk, brought up the project. That client, too, wanted in, at full price.

No pitch. No hard sell.

Just a casual mention of something coming up.

Joe sat back and considered things. Both of these clients should have already heard about this project… and should have had ample opportunity to sign up previously. There had been email, direct mail, blog postings, etc.

In fact, before the phone calls, Joe had taken it for granted that all his best clients had of course already heard about this upcoming project. He was very thorough with his marketing.

But no. The project hadn’t entered their attention span. Until he brought it up in a friendly phone call.

Hmmm.

So Joe picked up the phone again…

Long story short… Joe spent the next couple of hours calling random numbers on his “hot list” of best customers… and grossed something like $51,000 in sales. For a few hours of soft work, just chatting with people he liked and alerting them to the upcoming event.

There’s a couple of lessons here.

The power of the phone — when done RIGHT — is astonishing. Most telemarketing sucks, because it’s impersonal and insulting. Many classic telemarkers live off a fraction of a percentage point in sales, and fully expect to piss off many times more prospects and prior customers doing it. It’s a numbers game… and in some markets (where filling up a list with new prospects isn’t a problem, and losing old customers isn’t a sin), it sorta makes economic sense.

Sorta.

I loathe impersonal telemarketing myself, and take great pride in foiling the best-laid plans of man and machine. (I’ve even said “Sure, I really want to hear about your deal! Hang on just a second…” and then left the phone on the counter while I went on with my day. When the calls really rile me up — cuz they interupt a nap or 30 Rock — I ask to speak to the supervisor, because I know that forces someone in the boiler room get off their fat ass and attend to the call. Then I hang up.)

I have nothing against people who work on phones for a living. I’ve had some great service lately from Delta (big surprise), Southwest (not a surprise), and even the hated cable company. It’s a tough job, because unless you’re just taking orders for product, then you’re dealing with unhappy people who need help or want to complain.

The phone can be a great tool for getting stuff done.

But outbound telemarketing is a vile thing, in my mind. Yes, it can work. So can armed extortion. Doesn’t make it a good marketing tactic.

(Side note: The concept of outbound telemarketing bounces around the small-biz/entrepreneurial scene every few years on a fairly predictable cycle… and suddenly, you start getting pre-recorded calls from your favorite guru’s. It’s interesting for about five seconds, and then it’s just annoying. And I’ve noticed, over the years, that marketers rarely invest in pre-recorded outbound calling for longer than a single project. I think the backlash is too vicious.) (Please leave a comment if your experience is different.)

Anyway…

What Joe did wasn’t telemarketing. Not by a long shot.

Instead, what he did was to reach out and touch a few folks. And it was him on the line, in person and full of personality… not one of his underlings or — shudder – some hired phone goon.

It was a real call.

And it discovered a kink in Joe’s marketing system.

I realize it’s a shock to learn that even your most devoted fans and customers don’t read all your email, direct mail, or blogs. But it’s true.

Every single time I’ve held a seminar… at some point soon after it sells out, I get notes from a few long-time customers disgruntled because they hadn’t caught wind of the event in time to sign up. Multiple emails, letters, blogs, etc… but often, your best customers are also among the busiest people you know… and they aren’t hanging around waiting for another email from you.

Makes you think.

Now, for most successful business owners, the idea of getting on the horn for even a short afternoon spurt is appalling. Especially if you “waste” time shooting the breeze with people.

That’s why the $51,000 in sales — for a little over two hours soft-work — is the punch line of this story.

The bottom line of all business transactions is that every sale you make is a kind of human-to-human interaction. It may be done online, virtually, without a word being uttered or two actual humans brushing up against each other during the entire process of ordering, downloading, and even refunding.

But savvy salesmen know that the human element is always there, regardless. Robots are efficient, but buying decisions are emotional… and last I heard, any empathy you percieve in that recorded voice (“afterward, you may hang up, OR press pound for more options”, like I need her friggin’ permission to hang up…) is completely phony.

If you have a list, you can probably identify the red-hot core of it — where your best and most loyal customers reside.

And if you can honestly say that you — as the owner — are a big part of the appeal of being on your list… then you should consider this lesson carefully.

No, you can’t spend every day chatting on the phone. That’s not Operation MoneySuck.

But every so often… perhaps even on a semi-regular basis… a few hours spent reaching out and touching could be very, very lucrative.

Something to consider.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton
www.carltoncoaching.com

Howdy…

Let’s chat about money.

Cash, moolah, the big bucks, treasure. Greenbacks. Funds. Scratch. Coin of the realm.

You know — the stuff we kill ourselves (and sometimes each other) to get ahold of.

People who pretend to know will tell you that money cannot buy you happiness.

In fact, they say, too much of it can even cause you grief, and ruin your life.

There is ample evidence that there’s something to this, too — lottery winners are often right back where they started, financially, a short time after taking possession of their loot… wealthy business owners often lead lives of desperate loneliness, estranged from their own family and without any real friends… and many folks who strike it rich go into life-long funks worrying about losing it all, and the paranoia makes them suspicious, nervous, unlikeable pricks.

Still… most of us want to experience the horror of having lots of dough for ourselves, thank you very much.

We’ll take the risk of being ruined forever by a too-fat bank account.

Well… as with most of the good info in life, this topic bears a little airing out. It’s not black-and-white, and it’s definitely worth exploring a bit.

In fact… I just returned from a weekend brainstorm at my pal Joe Polish’s joint in Phoenix (attended by a bevy of bucks-heavy business mavens) where this very subject was a hot discussion point. (I was there as a guest lecturer. The regulars were all part of Joe’s schockingly-successful “$25K Mastermind Group” — who literally write twenty-five thou checks just for the privilege of attending four of these carefully-presented events each year.) (If you’ve ever demanded real-world proof that mastermind groups are worthwhile, this should shut you up quickly: The event I spoke at was the last of the year, and everyone in attendance considered the cost a genuine bargain… and most were eager to pay again for another year.) (Think about that.)

Anyway…

Joe asked me to clarify an operating statement I’ve been tossing around for years. It goes like this: Money will solve problems that not having money creates.

I came up with that slogan over a decade ago, in an attempt to explain to MYSELF the role money should play in my life. Other folks liked it so much, I’ve been bouncing it off of audiences every since.

The concept of money not making you happy is not unique, of course. I just googled the phrase, and there are deep references to brilliant minds (both ancient and modern) stressing that very point.

But for my mind (always antsy about details), the “money problem” wasn’t that simple. Yeah, money won’t make you happy. It won’t dissolve your psychological problems. It won’t magically grease the skids of life… at least not much.

But there’s a subtle reality to having money that isn’t so easily put into a motto.

What my phrase does — money solves problems that not having money creates — is to focus on the issue as I saw it back when I first started earning some Big Bucks.

See, I’ve been poor. In fact, it was a major catalyst for me — one day, as my bank account once again floated below solvency and I was again eyeing my precious ’64 Stratocaster as fodder for the pawn shop, I just snapped. I didn’t want to be that poor anymore.

Here I was, living in a free country oozing with opportunity and flush with the means to take advantage of that opportunity… and I was just floating along like driftwood on a stormy ocean, buffeted about without direction, plan or goal.

For me, it suddenly seemed criminal that I was languishing on the bottom rungs of the financial ladder. Rent was a problem every single month. If my rattle-trap Toyota broke down somewhere, I would have to just take the license plates off and leave it for thieves, cuz the price of a tow job would bankrupt me (let alone the price of having to fix any part of it). I was wearing clothes from thrift shops, not that there’s anything wrong with that… but one fine early autumn, everhthing just hit rock bottom: I lost my pitifully-low-paying job, my place to live and my girlfriend all within a couple of weeks.

And I discovered I could fit everything I owned into the back of my Celica (yes, including that precious Strat and the Princeton Reverb amp), with room to spare.

Now, the stories I have to tell you about the six-month period that followed are pretty wild… but that’s for some other time. I lived out of the car, slept on friend’s and near-friend’s couches, and spent many, many moments (sometimes in the drizzling rain) in foreign fields and driveways and streets keeping that car alive (barely) with used parts and desperate ingenuity. (Including chewing gum, bent paper clips and rubber bands keeping critical elements of the engine functional.)

In fact, I now consider it damned lucky that I went through that period of near-disaster. It was my personal “trek through the desert”, looking for America and relying on my wits and living in the gritty reality of never knowing where I’d be tomorrow.

You know — the classic American Road Novel.

So I don’t regret doing any of that. I’m glad I survived, because there were times of extreme danger (and occasional violence)… all very normal when you’re forced to sometimes rely on strangers for help, in unfamiliar towns where the nearest friend might be several day’s journey or longer away.

And no one knew where you were. I was a ghost, popping up every so often to let family and friends know I was still kicking, and then disappearing again.

But living literally on fumes like that helped me finally make up my mind that I wasn’t going to do it again. If there was a point to be proved, fine — I’d proved it. I could manage. I survived. I had wandered over the edge, without a safety net, and come back with only minor damage.

And, just to further make the point, I gotta tell you that I was happy, much of the time. Usually when I was deep into some adventure or other. However, the reality of encountering trouble I couldn’t solve with my wits was always hovering, and the free-floating anxiety was intense.

I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences.

So I learned, first-hand, some things about living life without money (or at least with the very minimum needed to scrape by). There was some real brotherhood among other broke people, even. A sense of shared plight.

But the problems that cascaded onto my life seemed mostly to be caused by not having enough money to deal with them in a dignified way.

Not having money created problems. I started to believe that having money would solve all my troubles. A pocketfull of cash was all I needed to attain bliss.

We all need motivations that ring true to us. These motivations are all over the map — people have charged machine gun nests because “duty” demanded they do so, and others have walked away from fame and wealth because some internal gauge of happiness directed them elsewhere.

For me, the motivation to finally stop being a slug and to put my nose to the grindstone of “success” (a concept I had only a vague notion of at the time), was as simple as the sudden realization that businesses sucked at writing things, and I could charge money for some very fundamental copy skills.

I had no idea at the time just HOW much those basic skills were valued in the biz world, however. I just wanted to rise above “scraping by”, and maybe get ahead one or two months in the rent. That was it — my idea of heaven was not having to worry about July’s rent in June.

The money started to arrive, as a direct reward for the hardest and most brain-twisting work I’ve ever attempted… and in a relatively short time, I realized I hadn’t worried about the rent for a while. I could go buy a new car, for cash, if I liked. That very night, in fact. The fridge was stocked, and the price of an airline ticket to anywhere in the world actually seemed a true bargain, cuz I could pay it in full and not even notice the dough gone from my ever-burgeoning account.

However… I wasn’t anywhere near as HAPPY as I’d figured I’d be at that point.

Money had solved all the pressing problems in my life that not having any money had created.

But I merely moved up another step on Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs — from mere survival, to the new problems of “what’s it all mean?”

This was the part about having money that tends to confuse people who aren’t prepared for it.

For my entire adult life, to that point, I knew how to navigate being broke. I was comfortable about it, even if the anxiety ate away at my stomach.

I wasn’t severely unhappy being broke, because I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to have oodles friends in the same boat, so I never felt too alone in my sense of not “making it”.

Still, I had a few friends break away from the pack and get serious about biz and life, and there was a noticeable cooling of our friendships. When everybody’s broke, there are no screaming social problems. When only one of you can’t afford to pick up a round of drinks, the disconnects start popping up.

I was paying attention during this entire journey, and I took notes because I sensed there was something important going on. Being suddenly free of the worry about the rent didn’t open up any grand new opportunities — it simply took that time-consuming problem off the table.

In my Zen moments of gratitude, I try to remember to be thankful each time I write a big check for our big house (with its big mortgage)… but the main thing is that I simply don’t spend much time thinking about it.

So money solved the problems that not having money created. I’m neither throwing money away now, nor hoarding it. I was able to settle the issue in my brain and heart, by not falling into the trap of believing the slogans.

Money and happiness are two entirely different things. One has almost nothing to do with the other. I know many wealthy people who are miserable on every level, and I know people of very modest means who feast on life to a degree that shames their richer friends.

For me, separating the issue helped me come to terms with how money fit into my life. I haven’t lost a single friend because of it. I neither flaunt, nor hide my success.

I have, however, taken full advantage of the things that money offers: More time to do the things that fuel my passions, for example.

Being chronically broke will drag you down. You can still be a jolly fellow, but you’ll have to devote energy and attention to things that — with money — become minor details, easily solved.

It’s an issue worth exploring for yourself.

Many newly successful entrepreneurs are deciding NOT to grow too quickly — they, instead, groove along with a very fat income of a few hundred K and indulge in the non-biz pleasures of life. Later on, they can (if they so choose) pursue the million-buck ventures that will require more attention and energy.

Depending on your age, your goals, and your situation… sooner or later, you’re going to wake up one day and wonder what it all means. Broke or rich, you will face this crucible in life. It’s inevitable.

As you work through this Zen-like question, you may decide that neither happiness (however you define it) nor money is worth the struggle. You may crave something deeper, more profound, or more relevant to your heart’s desires. For many people, both happiness and wealth are overrated.

For most of us — and I’m speaking from the benefit of having lived a while here — this crucible comes after the turmoil of early adulthood. During that time of growth, you will be doing yourself a huge favor by exploring how YOU react to making too much money. Thus, getting hip to the wonders of entrepreneurial and small biz success makes sense on a personal level.

That’s my two cents, anyway.

It resonates tremendously with successful entrepreneurs and small biz owners.

Think about it.

And stay frosty…

John Carlton
www.carltoncoaching.com