2009 May

My Autoresponders are DISGUSTING

May 29, 2009 By chris

When your autoresponders suck, it’s worse than not having them at all. When someone trusts you with an email address, it’s the beginning of a relationship. Letting them down is a problem.

Disgusting. That’s What my auto responders are at the moment. Foul and nasty and…just plain bad. I’ve gotta fix it this week, and I will. Its one of those things that fell through the cracks. Writing autorespoonders is not hard work. it’s not particularly time consuming.

But, mine blow. I have not done the job I wanted to do because I haven’t REALLY decided what strategy I’ve wanted to execute. I’ve kind of been in transactional mode because I have been working my ass off to get the IRS out of my life. And that’s going to be something that I’ll do this week.

Autoresponders work. I’ve set them up for many people. Mine? Won’t do anything but confuse people. I have 3 set set up with a great plugin that Keith built for me. Really slick. Pulls people into aweber in a great way. Then when they get there? They hear nothing.

So it’s time to change that, and I’ll let you know what happens when I improve my campaign.

You’ll hear back from me Monday or Tuesday.

First:

A mea culpa to my list.

Then:

Notes that matter, and I’ll add the autoresponders to my daily tasks/tabs.

Getting Things Done (GTD) With Firefox Tabs: Setting Them To Have a Good Day

May 27, 2009 By chris

I love GTD. I fall off the wagon all the time, but I do love the promise, and it’s a great framework to go back to. Since I make my living connecting with people in social media, and helping them connect, and since I’m still doing “project work” as I launch my businesses…I figured I’d show you what I’ve implimented as a practice to get started.

One of the things that went wrong was the book I wrote. I abandoned it because, well, I have acute IRS problems, and I can’t bonzai something to perfection when I need money now. The thing is, I do and did have the time to get stuff done with regard to FT. But I didn’t get things done because, largely, t wasn’t in front of me.

So I decided to fix that a couple of days ago. I made some firefox tabs after my wife and I improved communication by sharing a Gdoc ToDo List (I know, I know, Remarkablogger is cringing as we speak). But, I needed to do some easy things on an iterated basis. And since I switched to FireFox 3.5.1b, Morning Coffee (a good plugin) ceased to work. So, I made tabs:

Chase- I check my bank balance every day, mostly to make sure I have not been levvied recently by the IRS.

Analytics- I’m just keeping an eye on stuff, and as my coffee brews, looking at numbers helps.

Twuffer: I have underused Twitter. Twuffer help me keep current. I do a mix of broacsast + connections, and it’s working.

GenuineChris – So I remember to post.

F#@% Therapy: So I remember to post.

Guerrilla.ME Again, so I remember.

LinkedIN: Answer whatever questions are in my wheelhouse, and look around for people to connect with. I’ve been on LinkedIn for 2ish years, and have underused the site. So it’s time to get after it.

Facebook: Kinda the same deal. FB is more about broadcasting than any of the other sites I deal with, but yano, I need to pay more focused attention to my groups etc.

YouTube: I’ve not used this NEARLY as well as I can, and I need to make sure I’m actually making a video once or twice a day.

Then it’s my MDAs- Minimum Daily Actions,

My @todos and @projects

My family budget/expenses.

And finally, my Greader. I don’t keep up with feeds like I used to, which isn’t a bad thing. I’m using reader now for alerts that I need to pounce on.

This gives me enough to do without being bored or distracted, and it is reasonably portable. If you’re on the web, almost all browsers have home tabs these days that you can set, and this is a handy way of getting done. Remember: GTD is mostly a collection of kludges and tricks that’s design is to make you better, faster, smarter.

[Time spent on blog post: 9 minutes]

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: GenuineChris, social media, wheelhouse

Goals…Update

May 20, 2009 By chris

So right now, the revenue part of the Chris Johnson show is working. I’m getting good clients and delivering blogs. I’m able to sell one or two a day, and that’s pretty frolicking cool. I’m able to work with a wide range of fun clients, and that’s also cool.

So, to date, I’ve sold 12 Blogs, delivered another $3500 in freelance projects, and gotten INCHES to the goal of getting extricated from the IRS’s clutches. By Inches, I mean it should happen in or before June. then I can hammer the rest of the stuff out.

But let’s be honest–I’ve barely made it to the gym. I’ve not gone much this month, and I’ve gained 2-3 pounds. That’s gotta change–today. Monday kicked ass, I hit the gym early. I pounded out some great work.

So, to get where I need to be, I gotta hit the gym every day–preferably in the morning–this week.

And I gotta use the Wii Fit every day at night for 30-40 minutes.

But the good news is this: I can still hit the goal of 8# gone this month, it’s nto too late if I hustle.

So it’s time to hustle. First day this week I miss the gym I’ll have a new fun challenge for y’all.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: dream life

Vanity Plate Marketing Fail: Review of Susan Stalnaker’s License Plates

May 18, 2009 By chris

In my new office complex, there are a couple of computer shops, a couple of insurance places, and a couple of dentists.

One dentist’s name is Susan Stalnaker:

I’ve never met her. She could be a fantastic dentist. She does, however, have questionable taste in license plates.

Vanity plates have been something I’ve never understood. In ohio, it works out to 8-9 bucks a month to have something adorn your car. Of course, I’m not a car guy, so that could be part of the problem. But like Morgan, I got me no patience for vanity plates. I think they are for idiots. Something grates on me, and I think “Old Jags” when I think license plates.

I see this:

About every day when I walk to my office (I have the worlds crappiest house, but the worlds best commute). I dig it. Anyway, what do you think? I see that plate, and I remember..the actual SS dentists as being pretty creepy dudes. AM I nuts…but my mental image goes right away to this:

I’m thinking marathon man all the way:

So, what’s a BETTER license plate for Dr. Stalnaker? How can she convey things without bringing back memories of John Wayne and the Luftwaffe? I’m guessing that–given the choice between “SS DDS” and “GHX-B49J” I’m taking the second one.

Here’s the real question though. What is your marketing ACCIDENTALLY saying about you? How could people construe it?

My guess is that this post will soon rank #1 for Susan Stalnaker, Dentist. She’s not taken care of her online reputation. Here’s her google search.

Filed Under: miscellany, selling/marketing Tagged With: marketing, unintended consequences, vanity plates

Snapz Vs. ScreenFlow vs. Screencast-o-Matic: A Review.

May 17, 2009 By chris

Greg Swann got me onto SnapZ last fall when I wanted to improve on what was available from Screencast-O-matic. I was looking for something that looked good, that would last more than 10 minutes and that would allow me to render stuff and do what I wanted with video. I downloaded the Free-and-Functional-for 14 days Snapz Ambroisia. And things were good. I was able to share info, I was able to build videos that explained to folks what I did and how to get on a blog. But something was missing. I bought the paid license anyway, and I used it. It was fast, hotkey driven and it was always waiting for me, always at the ready, when I wanted to make a video. I was also able to use it to rip some DVDs the long way, and that worked out well, too.

Namely, layering. I wanted to make some callouts. I wanted to do some things that looked less ‘vanilla.’ And Final Cut wasn’t really something that I wanted to get into at the time (I’ve changed since then, since Imovie 09 introduced me to layered video.) So Kasey Kelly suggested ScreenFlow. And I hated it. At first. I downloaded the free trial, and I hated its guts. It had an interface that bit, it had a timeline I hadn’t seen before, and I couldn’t get past the learning curve. And, with Imovie 09 making things easier, there was no need to.

So I was sticking with Snapz and iMovie to edit stuff. And life went on. Except when I got my Guerrilla.ME idea: reputation management + social media training idea. I wanted to go beyond it, and I knew–from watching good ones–that screenflow was a cool tool. And ultimately, I use it daily, it beats the crap out of Snapz, and I no longer

Screenflow Wins, But First The Bad News

There is about a 90 minute learning curve. Snapz is faster. It’s easier to use. It’s the thing to get if you do one or two–total–screen casts. If you plan to do one a month or more, you might consider Screenflow, because once you use it, it’s quick. It’s also cool that it saves only the part of the screen you tell it to, and if you’re stuck editing video in Imovie ’08–where there’s no cropping–that’s something to consider. Screenflow has its own Non Linear editor built in. And, I like a lot of the way it THINKS better than iMmovie ’09 or Final Cut Express.

Snapz also doesn’t put your talking head on anything, and you can put your mug in the corner with Screenflow which is important to some folks (me). You can shrink stuff down, make callouts (need more callouts)

Also, ScreenFlow doesn’t save settings. I do screencasts that generally look fine at 10-12fps. So I want to save ‘em that way. There’s no “default,” saving. PITA. Also, if you want to open the program and start, it doesn’t want to do that. Finally, it makes me ‘prepare to record’ first, and I do love the ‘instant on’ part of snapz.

What ScreenFlow Does Great

Screenflow is a fantastic entry point to non linear video editing. It doesn’t launch in that mode by default, but it is fantastic at trimming clips, splitting clips, and doing loads of other ‘minor’ fixes’ like adding titles. I like using it–for the most part–better than Imovie. When I need transitions or color effects I use iMovie, but most of the ‘roughing’ can easily start in Screenflow. It also rendes as fast or faster than Snapz on my setup.

It also captures your face. You can do a training video and put your little talking head in the lower left or upper right (or, hell, you could drift annoyingly across the screen). That makes a training video more relevant and intimate. There could be options–like color filters and CROPPING (in lieu of just resizing) but that’s a minor complaint, and I don’t think SF needs more complexity. It also does a good job of recording Keynote presentations and you can then put your face in the corner if your ego requires it.

Finally, if you want to make callouts, to make some things get bigger to illustrate a point, SF does a good job there–and it’s easy once you do it a couple of times. If you need a video TODAY, snapz is the way to go. If you need a video to be GOOD, screenflow it is. I own both, and I probably wouldn’t buy snapz again, but I still use it almost daily…particulaly when screenflow is rendering.

Screenflow can improve, but at the moment it does a nice job. There are workarounds for almost everything, and it’s a good tool to learn to sync sound with video…

Till next time.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: Mac, Products, Projects and Process, snapz, telestream, video tutorials, videos

Embrace The Worst Case Scenario: Then You Become Powerful

May 15, 2009 By chris

Not to be vague, but I’ve battled the IRS for a while now.

That is to say, I’m not fully in compliance and I have a mid-five figure balance. Right now, I’m making income. Right now my blogs are getting things done, and my blogs are selling. I’m punching my way out, and I’ve put together a few eggs.

But, those eggs, see, they made me nervous. The new revenue officer has found some dough.

And I spent most of Thursday trying to figure out how to hide what I had. Take it out, put it in a safe, whatever. It’s appocolypse money, trade for silver and gold money, yano?

Well, the novel idea struck me: I owe more than I have. Why not just embrase the worst possible thing. They get my money. Not like they’re not getting it anyway. So what.

Now, I can earn it all back. Now, my balance with the IRS is less than 20k. Now, I can earn that in a month, AND support my family. Now, I’m free because they ain’t comin’ after it. There’s nothing for them to take. I put my faith in God, if you will, and cast my lot with my ability to outhustle the collapse.

Because, kids, let’s face it, the silver, the little I got ain’t gonna be jack. Getting levied? Who cares. Bring it on. Doesn’t matter.

I can earn my way out of anything in the world.

I can solve any problem because I’m not a victim.

So what do you fear? What’s the worst thing that cam happen? If the economy gets bad, fast, what then? Chances are, you’re making excuses by worrying too hard.

More soon, man. More to come. But take your punches, don’t avioid ‘em. Chances are they won’t hurt that bad, and the mental worst case scenario is worse than the actual one.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals Tagged With: dreams, worst case scenario

Daylite CRM: First Thoughts and a Review

May 14, 2009 By chris

For other CRM Reviews See here:

Heap Reviewed and Highrise CRM Reviewed.

I just started using Daylite CRM by MarketCircle. I am not using its full capacity, or even coming close to scratching the surface of it. I’m underutilizing it, and I’m working harder than I need to work to get stuff done, and that’s no fault of the software. This is a patial review of the first month. I think it takes a couple months to figure out how to use a CRM, and for now, I’m on Daylite. I refuse to put up with web speeds for my CRM, and I refuse to put up with

For now, let’s take it and look at what it is and can do.

It’s a CRM that’s meant to share in a mac environment, in a real way. Multiple users can simultaneously access and modify the same database, and it has a fair degree of customization that you can do. It stores the important fields by default, and it has other fields that the user can define. It creates activity series and, once set up, this works PRETTY well. It can be used to relatvely efficently create documents with Mail, Word, & Pages, and that’s important for a mac. It’ll do your mail merges. With the exception of automated webforms, this has all the basics for a salesperson oriented CRM–and webforms aren’t that important to me. (If the Market Circle people show me webforms, go for it).

What it does right: Hotkeys, rightclicks and customization. I do wish that it had an ACT style “contact layout” mode, but I can get to anything I want via a lookup/hotkey that I can set for myself. So, if I want to schedule an activity series, I can do it. I can also have just a twitter address as a point of contact and have “get info” as a category, where I can move people in and out of that “ID/STATUS” (Act! style) at will.

The things I dislike: hot email addresses. I when I click on someone’s email address, OPEN MAIL AND SEND AN EMAIL. When I right click on a contact, GIVE ME MY OPTIONS. I wanna be able to email contact, schedule a TODO with the contact. You can do it when you view the contact in a LIST, but you can’t do it in the screen that looks like this:

I right click? Nothing happens but the normal mac stuff. Stupid oversight, hopefully they’ll correct it.

Same deal with email address. I should be able to hotkey launch MAIL to send an email from that view.

This sounds negative. It’s not meant to be, I think that Daylite CRM is a good start. When the interface comes around to match the features, then it’s a great start. They need webforms, and a half decent interface and then they are done, and can fine tune.

My fantasy is to be able to right click on a twitter name, have it get sucked into my CRM, and then have it get scheduled.

More soon–gotta actually get some work done.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: CRM review, heap

A Coherent Design Interview: Focus on What the Blog is FOR

May 13, 2009 By chris

One of the things I’m not is a designer. I outsource my design work to guys local and not local. I have a good sense of what looks right at the end. I have a thick skin to mitigate the demands of the folks I work with. I have a knack for getting people to compromise. But I’m realizing now that a design interview is critical to the process.

Revisions are where I lose money. Every now and then a project gets in revision hell and has no chance of winning. Once something gets to the fine details, once a client is focused on the teeny things that are wrong, they lose focus on the big picture: Blogs dominate SEO, blogging, done right is STILL in 2009, the EASIEST WAY of rocket your business upwards. The Thesis Theme even moreso. When we don’t get really close the first try, the customer gets honked. I filter the work that comes from my three (freelance) designers before it gets to the customer. More often than not, it gets done quickly. Sometimes, when a customer sends something up, they lose focus.

So I need a design interview, accompanied by a video, that expresses what I want to express in the way I want to express it. Because I’m ridiculously cheap, I have to make it video based, with examples. So I think I’ll sue the Contact Forms 7 Plugin so I can show examples and the like.

More to come.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: marketing, sales

Speed, Freelancing & More.

May 13, 2009 By chris

I’ve got three projects, nearing completion. Days away they represent two things: the last of my ‘freelance’ projects where I’d take any work possible, and also a hefty sum of money. These projects have been in some version of nearly done forever. They have been an irritant and a distraction because all are–for various reasons–late. Speed matters, and the customers are–in all cases–at least partially responsible for the delays. I’m also partially responsible, and that sucks. I have good clients though that generally understand the way things are, and that they had a role in this stuff. I don’t feel like I’m exposed to a default risk.

But still–and I will joyfully honor my word–I would not have taken the projects had I known then what I know now. Stuff that can’t be delivered and done fast, open ended stuff….makes me into more of an employee than I have a stomach for. On the one hand, I have a commitment to honoring the people that are affording me to get out from under a pile of debt, that are supporting me financially. I have to honor the money they sent and earned. That means that I have to take a yoke and bear it. And that sucks.

When I deliver a product I created, I’m selling someone else. I’ve put them in my world, and I’m offering it to them. When I apply for a job, it is me trying to accommodate another. Oh, to be sure there is some give and take there, but fundamentally, there’s a difference between blog sales guy and freelancer. I’m still a freelancer, but I’m selling what I want, not what I can find. It’s easier, selling what I want, too because I can build a personal brand around it.

The revision hell that I’m in now is due to not having a finite ending to a project. It’s hard to take control after the fact…

The thing I’m working on today is a little project (incidentally lagging behind but not part of the above three projects) for International Tax LawyerPhil Hodgen that I thought would be done in March. He was in Dubai for much of that time. It should be done & revised tomorrow from my end, possibly today.

Then I’ve got to come up with a coherent, form based design interview that takes 5 minutes or less and allows people to express themselves.

Filed Under: Business Building, miscellany Tagged With: distraction, hodgen, interview, speed, speed matters

Outline: Thesis Training Videos For WordPress.

May 2, 2009 By chris

I started watching some of the videos I made for my thesis clients. Man, what gibberish I made. Indefensible stuff. I had to scrap it all…because I honestly wanted to do a good job. I was meandering, and that came from a lack of pre-planning. I do a lot of tech coahing and that stuff can be done 1-on-1….because it’s being done specifically towards someone. This sorta thing has to have some polish on it, and my first efforts were merely a learning experience. Chalk it up to part of my 10,000 hours that Malcom Gladwell says we gotta put forth.

A training video can’t be haphazzard. It has to be carefully wrought, specific, and it has to have some VALUE. Nobody wants to hear a stammering ninny. So I’ve gotta start again. Which is fine.

The upside is with a decent outline–which I now have–I can run through this stuff really quickly with a lot of polish. I get rid of my hems and haws on the timeline in ScreenFlow (an awesome tool), and I can get this done in a few days.

Here’s what I know. Most of it is geared for the basic-to-intermediate crowd…and it starts after the fold to keep my pages lookin’ pretty.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Building, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: video tutorials

May 2009 Goals: Some BHAGs

May 1, 2009 By chris

There is really light at the end of the tunnel for me with all of the IRS/etc that I’m up against. I’m looking at (now) a low five figure debt, and I’m looking at being able to be free of it relatively quickly. So, it’s time to work harder than I have been if that’s possible.

I’m going to get back to posting my Goals on Google Docs on monday.

The main metrics are as follows:

+30 Thesis Blogs Sold.
40 Guerrilla.ME accounts opened.
100 Copies of my Book sold.
45 videos made for Guerrilla.ME & Thesis Blogging.
$7500 month in the rest of freelance business (closing out existing pipeline….stop doing one off jobs).
8 Pounds shed. (Been far off the wagon in that area)

Now, I’m gonna post about this stuff almost every day here, I’ll probably exclude it from the feed except weekly by finding some category driven plugin to do that.

There have been some serious bummer growing pains in moving from selling blogs at $2,000 to $750. I’m still committed though. The bummers:

Expectations: My original article didn’t say what I would get done. People expected everything from an identity package and letterhead (!) to a much more refined look that comes from multiple revisions. So I’ll say it now: Custom Header, Cusotm Color Scheme, Custom clean look….plugins and analytics set up, good checklist. Thanks to Mark Shandrow for finding and using Thesis Open Hook. For some reason, it Fubar’d the fist time I installed it, and never went back, but now it works well.
Videos: The first batch of videos were utter crap. Not really, but I was stuttering more than Rain man and they didn’t have the pop or polish I’d want. So I scrapped ‘em. I started doing ‘em again, this time with Screen Flow instead of Snap Z, and holy hell…what more can I do. The problem is that the production takes longer. I think it’ll be worth it…but I’m a little stuck on making ‘em perfect instead of getting ‘em done. There’s a serious “OMFG its COOL factor with ScreenFlow….but I dropped the ball HARD on the videos this week, stopped selling for a while to try to get caught back up…and am daunted by the task.
Paid Wall I envisioned this as a membership site, I got WP-Wishlist to run it, and then realized that this was a chore. So I moved everything to rightrightnow.com I planned on having both the ‘guerrilla.me’ and the ‘thesis blog’ videos there, but it makes more sense to have that stuff all live at http://guerrilla.me. The camo makes it look and feel more like a traning environment and initially I can sell more Thesis Blogs than Guerrilla.MEs. The paid wall ate me up, and I should have dumped the videos to a 100-200 MB file and delivered.
Script: I need a script that works with thesis to install it and the plugins automatically.
Pricing: Existing Blog Hosts Gotta figure out if I want to migrate/upgrade existing blogs. ALL the problems with DNS/Hassle were with people that I upgraded with existing blogs.

The downside of doing ‘products,’ is the lonliness in the start.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Business Building Tagged With: bhag, dream life, irs