Revenge

Recently heard in some movie: Revenge is the best motivation. I wish it were. Boy, do I have a reason to wish for a revenge! And I do -- just not badly enough, I guess.

The funny thing is, though, when it comes to a revenge some people (the warriors) choose to win by becoming successful -- way more successful than their adversaries can ever imagine; others (the haters) prefer to win by sabotaging their adversaries' success; and the third group (the sorry asses) does neither. The sorry asses simply open their mouthes or sharpen their pencils and vomit their lies all over their adversaries' lives.

The first method is the most constructive one and can be used for business or personal motivation. The second one can be fun for a short while, but mostly does nothing constructive. This type of revenge is often used by people who desperately need another hobby. And the third method is used by brain dead folks who are incapable of anything else.

Nepotism

Nepotism is an unofficial taboo topic in business and success publication. Not that books and magazines don't mention family ties at all -- they mention it casually as if "connections" played no or very little role in a successful career of a person in question.

Lets take Donald The Trump, for example -- Great Trump as some people call him. I don't know what's so great about him, but whatever. A son of a successful real estate developer simply continued family tradition. Where would he be without his father paving the way? Who knows...

An heir to the Estee Lauder fortune and the head of the global Estee Lauder advertisement, Aerin Lauder -- where would she be without family ties?

Clans in Big Business (Big Politics, Major Motion Pictures, etc.) are so numerous, it's almost a miracle when someone without strong connections manage to get in on this game.

The nepotism in business isn't a problem. The problem is with all those "success" articles that shamelessly distort the truth of how that success was achieved. They create a Cinderella story, a hard-work-will-get-you-anywhere story, where there is none.

Donald Trump I've mentioned already. Another one is Tony Robbins story - a legend of a poor fat boy who suddenly believed in himself and achieved impossible. A lie, if there was one. Before Tony went to work for himself and became famous, he worked for many years for a a legendary motivational speaker Jim Rohm. That's where he learned his presentation skills, motivation skills, that's where he perfected his public speaking. So see, there was no sudden revelations, no overnight motivations, no self-made man Tony. Jim groomed Tony, then Tony left Jim and went on his own. It's not a bad story, just not such a glitzy one.

I used to subscribe the Success magazine. Then, I got tired of being lied to. Some people think that a pretty lie isn't a lie, but a motivational story. I have my doubts about it being motivational, but it's certainly The Story That Sells. That's why they concoct them by the dozen.

Routine

Sometimes I wonder where people get their strength to go though with daily routine. To get up at 7 or 6:30 in a morning, get dressed, have for breakfast the same thing they had yesterday... Then again, maybe it's not strength.

I had an interesting conversation with the psychologist who specialize in child development. She said children like the same stories to be read over and over to them because it's comforting. Because when they know the story, they feel mastery over it, they feel in control -- a perfect routine if there ever was one.

To say I was surprised is to say nothing. My parents read me stories too. I loved it. And... I wanted a new story each time -- not an old one. Maybe I was born without a routine gene -- a mutation of sorts. A routine which is comforting to other people is irritating to me.

But isn't the whole world -- Western and Eastern build around a routine? How well, then, people without a routine gene survive in it? I'd like a statistic, please. We know, of cause, about successful ones - Leonardo daVinci, for once. What about the rest of us?

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Photo: Mnemonick

Fear: Summing It Up

As Rich Schefren recently noted, we are always just one obstacle away from our dreams. I thought about it for a while, looked around at people I know or knew in a past, and looked at myself... Guess what? As far as I can see, he's right.

What I disagree with, though, is the way Rich "handles" this obstacle. He kind of says, Ok, you are one obstacle away from your dream. Now, go figure out what it is.

After I read his Entrepreneurial Emergency, I spent a few hours trying to figure out what my obstacles are. I came up with four of them, while still not being sure whether those were my true obstacles or the derivatives of them. There was nothing to check them against. It didn't seem to be very logical not to have clear guidelines to such an important matter.

And then I had an "Aha" moment. When I say "then" I don't mean "right then". The "Aha" happened a couple of months later, but it was like the final piece in a puzzle. Suddenly everything became clear and logical. THERE ARE ONLY TWO CANDIDATES FOR THE POSITION OF AN OBSTACLE: HOW WE THINK and WHAT WE FEAR. Sometimes it's a combination of both, but always one of them is dominant. And the rest of what might look like obstacles are just the resulting effects of either one or the other.


There could be numerous ways of erroneous thinking (some of them are listed on the chart here), but there are only two basic things we fear. Think about it: no matter what object or situation we are afraid of -- public speaking, failure, spiders, etc. -- it always comes to two basic things -- fear of pain (physical, mental, emotional) or fear of death.

So, there you have it:

There is only one main obstacle that stays in a way of your dream. And it's either mental in a form of erroneous thinking or emotional in a form of fear.

As fear of death is rather unlikely to become an obstacle to building an internet business, there is only one other fear that could get in a way of fulfilling an entrepreneurial dream -- fear of pain.

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Photo: basic.ru

Motivation

Ask me to save someone's day, be a hero, and I'll be working like a dog. Ask me to do the same work for my career advancement or a financial gain and each step I'll have to take will feel like an enormous and painful effort. The majority of people have it the other way around.

I don't know how I got to be this way -- no one with the hero complex was around when I was growing up. But the question is, how can I work this thing into my motivation for building an internet business?

I am coming up with a big fat blank.

Finishing Projects

When it comes to finishing projects, there two end-of-spectrum problems connected to it:

1. Inability to finish a project.
2. Compulsion to finish a project

I once read that overachievers become what they are because in their childhood they got a tremendous positive response to something they had accomplished. And as a result, they got addicted to this rush of positive emotions associated with the end of a project, an accomplishment.

Sounds very plausible to me.

I have a friend who is an overachiever. She is doing great with her career. Her social life is wonderful. Her networking abilities are outstanding. It's hard to imaging all the things she manage to fit into her week. She finishes all her projects.

She also can't help herself but finish what she shouldn't be finishing -- like a box of chocolate éclairs. She feels compulsion to finish whatever she starts.

I, on the other hand, have really hard time finishing projects, which is considered to be typical for people with ADD. However, I absolutely refuse to believe that a child -- any child -- could be born with the "unfinished project" syndrome. It's obviously a learned behavior.

I wish I knew how I picked that one up. But mostly I wish I knew how to get rid of it.

Fear: Abandoning Enterpreneurship

Right after college I got to work for a great small company. There were only 12 of us and my boss -- the CEO -- a brilliant businessman who was only 33 at the time manages to snatch a great market share. Actually, we were doing what nobody else was doing at the time - forecasts for major metropolitan cities' consumption of water and electricity.

Ten years after I moved away, my former boss sold his company and moved to the Silicon Valley to work as a programmer for one of the major software companies. What happened? I don't know, but, perhaps, something like what is happening to one of my friends now. Lets call him Dan.

Dan is a party planner. He is great at what he does. What he is not good at is strategic thinking. And so his business is always above the water but just about. Last week Dan called me to ask whether he should convert into a programmer or a webmaster because his business is not doing well and the news of the recession are very, very scary.

Dammit!

I've spent hours helping him improve his business. Free of charge. Just because I wanted to help. And now he wants me to help him be a coward. I am sorry but I don't think he needs my help with that.

What I really think, it that he should do whatever he whats to do. But do it without trying to scare the hell out of me because he needs someone to be scared with him; and without whining to me about bad things that MIGHT happen to his business. Really, if I ever want to hear someone's whining I'll listen to my own.

People do get scared and depressed, but the worst thing one can do when feeling like that is to try and bring someone down with him (or her) because it feels lonely to be scared without a company.

Fear

I was born to a family of cowards. My parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins were all born and raised to be cowards. Don't get me wrong -- they are (or were) all capable, talented and some of them are quite brilliant.

But none of them have had the courage to follow a dream, to voice an opinion when it weren't safe to do so, to not follow the crowd, to stand up for any cause or to go after anything that weren't easily obtainable.

It's not something unique to my family. Being fearful actually quite common among Eastern European Jews. Centuries of prosecution breed fear, and then fear breeds more fear. Something like that.

I'd like to say that I am different, but I am not. I was brought up to be afraid of anybody in charge, to keep my thoughts to myself and to never risk a failure. It did sink in, too.

For many years I was scared day and night until one day I got really sick of being scared. I don't remember what day it was. But from that day forward I started being afraid a little less each day.

I squeezed as much fear out of my heart and mind as I could -- not all at once, of cause. It did take a few years.

Now it seems silly that I ever was afraid of people in charge. They are there to either be respected and liked if they deserve or to be disrespected -- not to be afraid of.

Also, my opinions are not something I hide any more. Those who know me know that i have opinions about pretty much everything and I tend to voice them even if they're not what the majority thinks.

The only thing I completely failed to eradicate is the fear of failure. It's still with me in its full blown force and it takes the most idiotic forms. For example I feel scared silly to go back to something I let go for a while. It may be checking an email I haven't checked for sometime. Or returning to an unfinished writing. Or connecting again with a social network from which I was absent for a month.

I was scared returning to this blog after a brake. Very scared.

I still am.

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Photo: paolo màrgari

The Worst Thing That Could've Happened After 30DC

Information overload and the loss of focus are the two worst things that could've and did in fact happened. Just reading emails and taking some kind of action -- even if it's just quick evaluation and bookmarking for the future takes 2 hrs. About 20 gurus (I don't even remember most of their names) are fighting at the moment for my attention with e-mails, feeds, podcasts, videocasts, new programs, free ebooks.

The best thing that could've happen after the 30dc is another 30 days of structured action taking with no distractions from outside whatsoever. I'd like to make it happen. But how should I go about it?

I Just Couldn't Help Myself :)

The name of this video is "Junior System Administrator Fixes A Printer".

On being terribly Inefficient

Information sometimes can be your worst enemy. Too much of it -- and you're suddenly paralized with trying learn of of the "good stuff" at the expence of taking a practical, maybe no so perfect, but good enough action that would've led you in a right direction

I've been reading this and that, watching video-seminars... All of the very good quality and partially helpful, partially -- good info but wrong timing. Plus all the e-mail I could barely handle. Not much of actually doing things. Some, but not enough.

Here's what I accomplished in the last 2 weeks:

1. Restored my WP blog (it was damaged by the evil WPD, who wouldn't even take responsibility).
2. Built a mini-network on Tagfoot. Have to work on that some more.
3. Joined mini-network on Ma.gnolia. Need to work on that.
4. Made 2 different backups for my site.
5. Increased the blog font size for readability.
6. Build a couple of dozen links to my WP blog.
7. Made a couple of entries into my blogs.

The rest of it was learning and reading and doing extras (like relocating my e-mails to a new address).

I would call it "not much"...

How Much Is Free Lunch?

I don't know who said that there is no such thing as free lunch. Why not?
If the point is someone someday will have to pay for that lunch, well... maybe. But the phrase about a free lunch is most often used in the context of: "Watch out. You'll have to pay for this lunch - eventually."

The fear sometimes gets the best of people.

Relax. Free lunch is free lunch is free lunch. You just have to make sure it is a free lunch and not a trap.

For anyone who uses common sense on a regular basis (you'd be surprised how many people don't) detecting a trap is easy. If some stranger wants your bank account information in exchange for a few million dollars, it's a trap. Obviously. If someone wants to give you a free website in exchange for signing up with an overpriced web hosting service, it's a trap. Less obviously so, but if you've done at least basic research on hosting, you would see it.

If someone wants to give you a free ebook in exchange for you reading it, it's a free lunch.

The problem with free lunch isn't the cost. The problem with free lunch is that there's too much of it, there are tons of it. Free lunch is endless like the Universe.

I am not just talking about the internet. Free libraries, free museums, free parks, free concerts, free fireworks, free wi-fi, free services, free radio and tv...

Internet is even bigger on free stuff. Even now, when it's less free than before.

Don't think for a minute that I am complaining about free lunch. Not at all. Not crazy. I am complaining about free lunch management. If there is no such a science, there should be.

Someone has to figure out how to manage free stuff, how to keep it in control, how to tame it...

As it stands today, I've gotten so much free stuff from the STSE2 that it's EATING ME for lunch.

When Does It Get "Too Much"?

I know I get overwhelmed easily. If I find more than 10 emails in my inbox, I get a full-blown panic attack. But even for a person with normal tolerance level how much is too much?

The whole month of August I was in the Thirty Day Challenge - a very intensive training program, where the lessons were posted daily (on weekends as well) and required immediate "practice" action -- sometimes several actions. It was a great free training at a price of 10 to 12 hrs a day in front of the computer. Not kidding. I was anxious, jittery, claustrophobic and overwhelmed but unwilling to drop the course or postpone it.

By the end of August my perfect 20/20 vision was no more. I was mildly freaking out. "Mildly" only because I knew I could probably get it back as soon as I drastically cut down on my computer time. Well, my 20/20 is almost back. But it's not the point. The point is: how much is too much and how do you handle it, so "too much" doesn't swallow you alive?

I am still not done with the training (even though it's been officially over), mostly because new information keeps coming at me. It's good information -- most of it, anyway -- and some of it is even essential for what I am trying to accomplish. But it seems to prevent me from moving forward because there's always something else that needs to be done in preparation for moving forward.

Maybe it's ok. Maybe it's how it suppose to be: first, you prepare for a while, patiently, paying attention to details, taking your time, and then you make a step forward.

Maybe it's not ok. Maybe processing all this information gives you the illusion of a progress, but, in fact, like an anchor it keeps you tied down to a no-real-motion zone.

Every day I open my mailbox and there they are -- new emails waiting for me. And I still have the old ones unopened because... because... it's just too much. It's like the job that could never be done. Too many offers, too many ebooks, too many seminars, too many reminders of the offers and ebook downloads and seminars... And some of these emails are like friends - "Oh, hi, Ed Dale! Love ya...". But some are like "Who is that Sean Casey person and why is he writing to me?"

The easiest solution would be to unsubscribe from anything I don't have time for at the moment. Easy to say. But what if I miss something IMPORTANT??? Yeah...

Then, there are courses and ebooks that I already have, started even and have to finish. Oh, about 7 or 8 of them. I predict, there will be 20 of them by the end of this month.

And every time I go online to do a very specific research, I stumble onto something very useful but unrelated, wonder deep into the woods and get lost for an hour or two. Or three, to be completely honest. I don't suffer from ADD, mind you.

Not to forget, there are also communities -- forums, friendfeed rooms, membership sites, Web 2.0 networks... Is it even possible to keep up with them? I was wondering the other day, if I should sign up with sort of a private network club. It could be good for me in terms of support and camaraderie, but it can also push me right over the edge. And I don't know which way it's going to turn.

To join or not to join - that is the question...

I think I need some peace and quite for a while. I saw some pink earplugs in a 24hours pharmacy. Maybe I should put them in. And turn off the lights. No, that won't work. I still need to see. Put the sign on my door then, so strangers would know not to knock and go away. It shall say:

How I Got To The First page Of Google And Why I Am Not Happy About It

I never knew it could be so easy - getting on a first page of Google search. All you need is a blog, a domain name with the search term you're aiming for in it, a seo optimized theme for the blog, a title and a first post with the search term in it, and a few quality links pointing at your domain/blog. Ready - aim - fire!.. And - voilà! - you're there, on the first page.

Now what?

I mean, it only will do you any good if you got on a top ten list for the right search term. I didn't.

Oh, what am I gonnaaa doooooo?..

A do-over?
Buying a new domain is not a problem. 1&1 sells them for $6.99 apiece. Not a big deal. But then, it's not like you can simply move a blog from one domain to another. And even if you could, nobody knows how Google will react to it. Start a new blog? I already put so much into this one...

It's not a random topic for me. It's not regurgitated news. I write every article myself -- from the first word to the last one. Because it's MY topic, My mind poured thirty times into the electronic medium of the Internet.

People ask me, Why did you pick this niche? Is it profitable? No. Ridiculously so. They ask me, How did you get interested in lie detection? I am not. I am darn good at it, that's what it is. I know how to tell if someone is lying better than anyone I know; and it's easy for me. It's the natural gift of keen perception times lifelong practice. It's my own skills, my own topics, my own way. This is what I write about, and I can't imagine starting over.

Yeah, silly me...

So, I am trying to "fix" the problem with the wrong search term by scoring a rank for a second, better search term. Do you know how to do this? I don't. At the moment I am kind of stumbling in a dark.

The time is a real issue here. That, and the resources. And the fact that I have no support network and no luxury of a safety net.

But the main problem is I am scared out of my wits. Because I am not brave, I just wish I were. And going after a thing like that, building a business alone, from scratch, requires all the guts I have and then some.

I am afraid one day the fear will take over and I will give up.

Dark ages is not the time in history. Dark ages is when nobody believes in you. And even you barely believe in yourself.

Internet Business Manifesto

Back in summer 2006 (yes, I am really behind on my reading) Rich Schefren -- the business coach and strategist to the internet marketing gurus -- wrote The Internet Business Manifesto. The IM community is still crying about it. I don't know why, though. It must be really speaking to some people.

I read it yesterday and didn't shed a tear. But it has some excellent points and, however salesy it is, I feel it was worth reading.

According to the Manifesto, any activity that doesn't make you money is not a productive time spending. For example, reading about a business strategy or searching for a good business strategy is not. Applying a good business strategy is.

The organizational chart on page 15 is simply hilarious. It's so much like me I almost fell off my chair when I saw it:



It's just a couple of things from the Manifesto. You can read it yourself. It's free.

And The "Big Flop" Continues...

From Ed Dale's email, today 6:40am:

Andy Jenkins has been pulling his hair out at the fact the he had a major server meltdown yesterday.

This meant most of you could not order Stomping The Search Engine 2.0 (Which is Free - you just pay shipping and handling)

They have got everything back together and they will re-open at 2pm Eastern USA Time today.

Not so fast. It's already after 2pm Thursday (more than 24 hrs after the original date-time) and the Grand Opening still hasn't happened.

What lesson can we learn from this? Simple. Don't promise what you can't deliver. And if you're planning a great event with thousands of eyes upon you, give yourself time and test for any technical issues. That is, if you don't want to look and feel silly.

However, it doesn't change the fact that Andy Jenkins, the founder of the STOMPERNET, is great and his courses are pure gold.

Behold The Power Of Guilt

I love it when IM (Internet Marketing) masters feel guilty. Then they start piling free gifts on top of free gifts they've already promised you for "buying" their premium insanely popular product for the price of S&H.

That's what happened yesterday with the Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon's "Grand Opening" of The Net Effect magazine. The opening was postponed for a day, and a free offer got even freeer (I probably misspelled it, but what the heck. It looks pretty.).