delusion

Help Is Not Coming

By chris Filed Under: Achieving Goals, delusion, Philosophy

Nobody is going to help us.

We have to do it all alone. All of us.

We will never get the recognition that you deserve, and at the end of the day, most people won’t truly be able to tell the difference between us and a charlatan.

This is just a fact. There’s nothing loaded or surprising about this. It’s the way that the world works.

It’s not a matter of serious debate. The sooner that we realize that we have to run our own miles, put in the late nights, read the books, the better our odds.

We try to pretend it’s not this way, that some accountability group will help us. Or that our boss will eventually care. Or that our wives/parents/partners/aunties give a shit about the efforts we put in.

I know salespeople who report the result of every single sales call they make to the rest of their office. One call, one attempt and they expect praise for trying. ”mmm, buddy, I’m ’bout to land a big ‘un.”

Good luck with that.

.:.

We subtly pass the buck to others. This way, it’s never our fault when we fail, but our group’s responsibility. We wuz let down. If we had better connections, parents, peers or mentors…we’d be successful. They failed too.

The answer is looking within for what it takes.

…our minds have the built in release valve. Heaven forbid it’s our fault. The fact is, people in our accountability club are information junkies. They aren’t going to help us. They can’t. They exist to sustain themselves. Free Marla Singer.

They won’t get anywhere. The sight of their mediocrity makes it so that we more easily accept our own. Why should we expect success? The economy is shit, nobody has a job, and its hard.

Of course it’s hard. It’s also easier than it’s ever been to create a company to be reckoned with.

It’s as subtle as it is insidious. We acquire the permission to fail. We get our excuse.

.:.

On the other hand, when we finally realize that the buck stops with us, we are now in a fair fight. We get the nature of the task, we are our own only hope. We can’t rely on others to make the change we want.

Advice

By chris Filed Under: delusion

I was told how to change my blog.

I needed to do this, do that, and I’d get subscribers.

But what if I don’t want them? What if I want to cultivate indifference towards subscribers? What if I want to be my own thing? What if my goals are different? What if I’m trying to develop my voice and be indifferent towards the adulation loop.

When people give advice, it’s generally because they are presuming that you have a goal.

Before you give advice, why not ask what someone’s goals are?

Mania

By chris Filed Under: Achieving Goals, delusion

A lot of my life I was trying to achieve in some manic state. You know, intensity. I would do n units of work, and n was always something close to the physcial maximum possible in a perfect day.

I’d say, “I’ll do these every day,” and it would be a 10-12 hour day. I’d get initial results.

This would happen at the gym (losing the first 10 pounds is a well trodden trail for me).

This would happen at work (finding a sale when I need one is something I am good at).

This would happen at home: “Now we’re on a new, exhausting family plan.”

Problem is…you create something that’s barely possible, and then…

…you’re too sore to go back to the gym. You’ve got no time between finding clients to help them. You turn love into a to-do list. It doesn’t work, long term to require as a condition of success the physcial maximum every day.

The “doable better” is better than the “possible once.” It’s just hard because you don’t feel like you’re making progress when the progress is so modest.

Desperate Resellers and Wilcomes

By chris Filed Under: Application, Books, delusion, The Meditations

I encounter people all of the time that presume that I’m going to do business under basically any sort of terms. I hear from them all of the time, and they say “Hey, I’ll try to do a deal with you,” or they presume that I’m hungry to the point where I have to grovel or beg.

The attitude isn’t meant as an insult, and it’s really just a reflection of their own insecurity, but it eats me up. I always feel like I need to point out, “listen, jerk, I do the business I want how I want to do it, all the time.” Gets me nowhere. But there’s this dumb attitude where people presume Ineed something from them. I need nothing, I make my own luck.

Bill Gates? Just some guy. If I don’t do business with him, there’s Bezos, Elison, Zuck, Benioff, etc. There are many people to work with. There are many people that we can work with. It’s a great honor to work with everyone, but at some point every client is completely fungible and replacable. It does me not one shred of good to point this out.

But it is on my mind plain as day. I can’t hide my thought.

.:.

The other part of my day is a waste of time with low end ad agencies. Loads of them. They pretend they have a product that they are pitching or schlepping. They aren’t. They just want to talk to us. And they ask about a reseller agreement. All the time.

When I say no to the business I wasn’t ever getting anyway, I’m mocked. I’m given a lecture about how I should run my business. I’ve given the same lecture when I was unable to meet payroll, so I get that impulse. I have compassion.

But it grates on me daily. People want what we’re offering, at the level we’re offering it.

Why I have to be nice to someone that is wasting my time with a delusion that will never happen, I don’t know. Talking to me, a vendor, isn’t going to solve the revenue problem that they have.

And I’m stuck talking do them. Nonsellers.

.:.

Then there are the wilcomes. People promise me a bunch of future business for taking one on the chin now.

They premise is that I should do something cheaply for relationship they won’t fulfill with reach they don’t have. Classy people with reach and referrals have always paid the first time. They have the money.

I’m supposed to think that it’s in my best interests to drop my price.

And it never is, ever.

But I have to pretend like it is. Or somehow, I’m the asshole. Not once has a “wilcome” worked out. A small discount on an early deal does occasionally benefit me, but not generally.

Business wise, right now, I don’t want for anything. I have ideas, a team, and I’m growing. So why do I have to entertain this crowd?

Endorsements Are Not a Business Model

By chris Filed Under: Business Models, delusion, Philosophy

Listen, there’s nothing new under the sun. Just because someone has tons of endorsements, that doesn’t mean squat.

There’s a self organizing delusional cult out there, and you can too, for just $129.99. Got it? You can launch your tiny coaching business from nothing and conquer the world.

It’s a crock. It’s a trap that will keep you in a game that never makes you money. You’ll self destruct.

Read this whole thing and you won’t. I promise. You’ll see the truth and do better.

First, let’s explain where online authority comes from.

Page Rank Doesn’t Account for Bots and Spinners

Let’s take the example of Page Rank by Google. The first premise of PageRank is this: that every single page on the web has a tiny amount of Page Rank. This represents a “credit” for the effort it took to make the web page. Page Rank is authority transferred and aggregated. If many links go to one site, that site accumulates Page Rank.

Content producers need to gin up links, but there is a problem. PageRank presumes that human effort created the content.

PageRank won’t know how to deal with aggregators and bots and content spinners. If a bot can do 10,000 pages an hour, all different, is there value there? The teensy amounds of page rank add up and pass authority to sites where it doesn’t belong. Even with Panda stuff happens.

What if the page itself was create only to transfer the minuscule amount of presumed authority upstream? Does it then have the intrinsic authority that PageRank implies? This is how you used to game the search engines. A bunch of crap pages in a box somewhere. Farm-ZineArticles and its ilk. Google’s been combating this since its first days, most recently with the “Panda” update.

Larry Page’s PageRank premise of PageRank was that human effort was behind a page, and someone wanted it up. What if no human did it? If even 1% of the spun content gets into the index of Google, we’re all screwed because 1% of a trillion pages is too many.

When the basis of Authority works with a faulty assumption, it follows that there are problems everywhere.

The Echo Chamber is Self Organizing

Social proof is hacked. Proof is now meaningless in many ways.

We rely, to some degree, on social social proof to buy things. Yelp gets a ton of traffic selling our reviews back to us. We look at who our Facebook friends are friends with before making a choice. We purchase because of social proof. It’s shorthand.

When you hack this and pervert social proof, you can win. Let’s consider the case of a pretend author that wrote a book.

Let’s take Tom Hopkins, business author, a our hypothetical example. We often see quotes from him on the front – and back – cover of various sales books.

“Oh, Tom Hopkins said on the front cover that this book doesn’t suck? Well, shoot, I’ll have a gander.” Once a book is in your hand, you may be persuaded to buy it. We don’t understand that Tom may well charge a fee for some consulting service that includes a review. This may be $5,000 and it may be more. It’s implied that the review will be favorable in the consulting deal.

Tom’s endorsement is worth 5 stacks. Tom lends his credibility to the new author. People buy.

The new Author–we’ll call him Steve– buys a “consulting” package that includes a nice implied pull quote from Tom Hopkins.

In exchange, the new Author–let’s call him Steve–is now dependent on Tom can’t ever say that Tommy hasn’t had a good idea since the 1970s. (Which is true).

The new author won’t t say that because he’s trapped by the endorsement. Bought off. It works just as well for Tom, because he’s now insulated from criticism. Can’t take shots at someone that you got an endorsement from. Roger Ebert has a fascinating take on this idea.

When Steve hired Tom to “consult” on the book package, he didn’t understand that he was forever compromising his ability to deliver criticism to Tom. ”Come over here dear boy, welcome to the machine.” (To mix up some Pink Floyd lyrics.)

It doesn’t require malice or fraud. On Tom’s side, he’s well intentioned. He has connections, and people probably ask about making that book deal. So Tom offers some consulting as a way to help. He probably means well.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

-Upton Sinclair

Some fabulously hilarious writers I know think that there’s overt corruption. There might be, but I think it’s mostly just daddy issues.

The Bloggers Make This Happen at LightSpeed

I’ve been sick of blogs lately. I unsubscribed to a ton of ‘em because they have all echoed the same shit for 2 years. Bereft of real insight or value, once great blogs have become content farms of sorts where riffs on the 4 basic themes are played:

Lifestyle marketing and the new rich is the way to go.
Corporations are dead and meetings totally suck
Content marketing is what smart people do.
Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!

The bloggers offer this incestuous compromise at light speed.

What if a blogger exists only to promote someone else’s stuff? This could be called an affiliate marketer. Does that endorsement matter? If I endorse the company I work for, does it matter? A little, maybe, but it’s still perverted.

What happens when social proof itself is purchased? Newt has some ideas about this.

What happens when an idiot endorses a famous blogger with a great and compelling testimonial? Do you think the blogger will turn down the chance to put a photo there and caption it? No chance. What if they are batshit nuts, delusional and emotionally unhinged? Hey, the endorsement sounds great, let’s go with it. Batshit people need beacons too.

Why I Know This

Let me tell you a story.

When I was selling websites (badly), I collected testimonial videos. I might have 40 of ‘em lying around. They helped me sell websites. sold pretty well, I delivered badly. This isn’t self loathing, it’s a fact.

I never once asked a customer to lie. But they did. I know this. They said they were getting benefits that they never got. I had their hosting, saw the traffic first hand. My customers were trying to help me. They lied, all the time. They said that I was better than I was. I never asked for this.

I never asked for this. Not once. I never used the known lies in my marketing. I had to restrain people and ask them to be truthful. All I wanted was to get them to say that the process was good, but unprompted they made ridiculous claims about their fake success. I didn’t understand why, but they were simply hoping it was coming true.

I just showed them how to record on Youtube in 3 easy steps. My customers were kind, nice people. Mostly Realtors, mortgage folks and their ilk. None of them ever meant to do anything but benefit me. The exaggerated because they were delusional. It was a mystifying - and unintended – social experiment

Some famous blogger will take an endorsement, put it on a product page, and the new blogger will get to have the benefit of being part of the club. So, it’s in the new blogger’s interest to gin up as many product endorsements as possible, and play as nice as possible. Then they can too, you see?

Everyone is compromised, nobody has malice or fraudulent intentions. Everyone probably even means well, despite why my fabulously hilarious acquaintance says. Nobody feels compromised: of course we could tell off the big blogger.

This also compromises new ideas. Our economy is in need of the destruction of old ideas. There are bad ideas being portrayed as truth abut everything. I don’t often agree with everything a lot of bloggers say, but

Again: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Our inherent biological valuation of social proof probably presumes it won’t be hacked. Like PageRank, it is probably assumed that we aren’t gaming the system, and our presence there is an endorsement of sorts. We all know somethings amiss, we have that queazy feeling, but we can’t place it.

Kiss the ring, promote our stuff, and someday you might get to guest post regularly. When you do, you’re forever unable to say anything bad. Be a good company man. Don’t bite the hand that has made you. No money needs to change hands, the rules are understood tacitly.

I’m Compromised, Too

Take this at face value: I’m compromised. When a client buys from me – be it a website or anything else, I’m going to be publicly cordial forever. They are a customer, I’m not going to rip a customer, it’s simply poor form. You’d be scared of me if I went all Mike Arrington on my own, and I don’t have that kind of style.

Only classless people gossip about others. Even if circumstances change, I am bought off and I’ll shut up. So take this stuff as it is. The blogosphere – from the Blogworld folks and around them – have all sold out, tacitly. There’s no room for dissent because there’s money to be had.

There’s also upward mobility- you can grind your way up the food chain pretty quickly, I’ve watched others do it.

I don’t have any immature urge to tell my former clients a thing or two online. That does no good. There are a couple we have no plans (or, fortunately, need) to do business with. But I’m not “naming names.” Just be aware that things aren’t what they seem. My clients lied freely and without prompting.

Be Picky

By chris Filed Under: Business Models, delusion

I’ve spun my wheels with about 10 people that have wanted to resell our products.

Not one has done so. We’ve gotten referrals galore, but everyone that “wants a cut” before we work together is not the type of people we want to work with.

Every stranger wants to derail you. Don’t let it happen.

How To Lose a Decade on a Girl That Never Mattered To Begin With

By chris Filed Under: Application, delusion

From when I was young, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write ads, fantasy, I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid. That was my dream.

I read Carver, Keats, Hemingway. Ogilvy. I read self help. (Mostly pabulum).

I read more than most people. That was what I wanted to do. I lived next to a bookstore, and above a print shop. It was the right time.

I was 23 years old. I was getting to do it. I was freelancing for non profits (for pay) and small ad agencies. I was waiting tables at Bravo Italian Kitchen 4 nights a week for something around $500 a week.

I was writing and turning in work that was getting me enough to live on. I had a novel mostly written – Searching For Bedford Falls it was called. I was in good shape- I ran every day. I had no overhead- my place was 350 square feet and then under $300 a month.. I had built an Orgy Proof loft bed. I had an ACT! database full of great contacts that all were happy to see me do well, everybody roots for the young kid .

I was a year away – maybe less – from amazing things. It was 2000, and if you weren’t of age then, you can’t know what I’m talking about. We were all connecting. The world was waking up, and we were free. I had my first attempt at GenuineChris.Com, a blog, that was mostly, then, about my running. I was 23, and i’d already been fired by a company I liked working for.

See, There Was This Girl – and It Wasn’t Her Fault.

There was a girl I met. She was the one. Not the one for me. That would have been acceptable.

I had this dumb idea that I was supposed to get married in my 20′s. I started shopping around the time I was 18.

She was the one that I knew everyone would approve of. She passed every test – she was pretty, polite, kind, slim. I could bring her home and everything would be OK. I tormented my parents with a parade of ridiculous specimens in my late teens and early 20s, bringing poor women home for inspection by my mom.

Pink Floyd comes to mind: “Mother is this one clean enough?” My brother’s picks hadn’t met with the approval of the family, and the object lesson I learned was be approved or be shunned. I wanted to ensure that my selection was satisfactory. This girl had all the check boxes ticked.

She had dark hair, dark eyes. She sang and played piano. She had grace. Nobody on earth could disapprove.

She had a problem with me. My job. I drove a crappy car, had a tiny place and waited tables. Comments about that, “How old is the oldest person there? How long will you do this?” The were subtle, but effective. She was sizing me up.

Look – I loved my jobs. I dug the restaraunt. I loved the fact that there were some 30 year olds doing it, I loved the esprit de corps. My manager at Bravo was a kind man Justin Strattford. He was a great guy (who was beyond gracious to me at the time). I loved it all. It was electric. The writing. the kludge of a living I was making. The early morning runs, the late night writing benders.

I loved the freedom I had. The ability to work at my own pace. The ability to live cheap. The $800 nut. Imagine – $800 was enough for a whole month. Including Internet. That was a launchpad. But this girl, see, she didn’t dig it.

One Question Changed My Life

The one that Could Be Approved Of , she didn’t see it that way.”How long will you do this?” she asked. She was referring to all of it – the tiny place, the waiting tables. The writing for peanuts.

What a question! It had never occurred to me that my awesome life I had some expiration date. I was getting somewhere. Slowly, I was getting better clients, and I’d hacked around at it for six months, and some of my initial clients had changed jobs and used me at their new jobs. I’d met tons of people. I’m a salesman at heart.

But an Approved Girl girl wasn’t going to marry some waiter. Who would, right? I wasn’t Hemingway yet. And I didn’t have a developed schtick when I was 24. It wasn’t in me to fight for that idea and sell it. I didn’t know that this was right, I just did it because I thought I was going to be a writer, and doing hustle jobs was the way to be a writer.

I was making a living writing. At 24. Who does that? I was on my own, and hadn’t had a real job, not really.

Look, this girl wasn’t the one. Even then, that was obvious. She bored me to tears. I couldn’t have a conversation with her that didn’t feel tedious. But Approved Girls wouldn’t abide me being a waiter in a Geo Prizm. That truth was revealed, too.

That gnawed at me through the winter of 2000, slow months. I didn’t have a much client work come in and I didn’t have the same income I had always had waiting tables. It wasn’t tight, not like I knew when I went really broke, but I couldn’t up and go anywhere.

So I quit. I gave up. I stopped the hustle and grind and looked for a cube farm job. I worked at New Pros for a few days. (Truly horrible company). I kept looking. Bank One eventually got back to me. Processed me through, and I was a banker. Newly mined, with ridiculous blazer, and toxic coworkers. My econ degree finally could be put to use.

The Detour Was Supposed To Be Months. I Was Deluded For Years

I wouldn’t even try to write again for five years.

I wouldn’t try hard for 10 years. I’m still not any good yet. I know this.

One stupid, brief conversation from a girl I didn’t like much waylaid my purpose for a decade.

I’m still not back to where it’s just me and the writing. I still don’t have the cocksure confidence I did at 24 (who does? Loads of people do.). I hear my kids rustling around. Bills to pay. IRS stuff to deal with. Getting lost in the writing is harder even though the tools are way better.

My Approved Girl lost her cube farm job. She wound up marrying – get this – the assistant manager of the Bowling Palace. The standard was fake, and my detour was based on a lie.

I was long since done with her when I surrendered to Jamie Dimon and realistic goals.

I gave in, years of a horrific job. I worked for the bank, resigned a day before they were to fire me for competence. I learned that mortgage brokers “killed it.” I went off to become one. I hated the job. Every day of it. But I was good at it. And I made in one closing $4,000 or so. That would take me 10 weeks of waiting tables.

…or 2 months of writing. I would be a fool to go back, right?

The Bribe Is Predictable.

I was bribed. A voice said; Come, work a soulless job for a couple years. You’ll come back to writing. You’ll come back to being a business owner. Just start here, and in a few months you’ll be back. You’ll get a pretty girl, you’ll get the respect of your parents. You have to put away childish things sometime.

And so I was gonna get comfort, security, in exchange for being realistic.

This was all a magic trick of The Resistance. I was out everything just because my mother-by-proxy cast a tiny bit of doubt on my decision at a vulnerable time in my mind. I thought – for years – that I’d get back to writing. I tried and flailed. I let that get eaten and instead of getting better, I got nothing.

I got married -for no good reason. Because I thought it would get me out of the rut.

Let’s don’t get me wrong. My wife is a better catch than I deserve. And we’re recovering slowly from me being a complete, angry asshole for the first years of our marriage. We might make it still. We’re working on being partners, friends, parents. All that. We can’t blame her for me picking a bad job. She wasn’t the approved girl. In fact, I just went ahead and eloped and didn’t give a damn if she was to be approved or not.

But I got married because my dream was eaten. Not because I wanted to, I just felt it was time. The next milestone. So when I met her, an even better Approvable Girl I said, screw it, I’ll get married. I did. She was beautiful, lovely, full of adventure and rebellion. (And she is still). Figured she’d do just fine.

We got hitched, we got houses. I was in the Rich Dad delusion.

I was stuck. All in with real estate. In debt, I couldn’t leave. Not free. The IRS kept me on the treadmill a while longer. Had to breathe.

Because I thought I could get a few places, rent them out, and get back to writing The Great American Novel. That did not work. Failure made me lash out. I got fat.

I had some good money years – early on when she was working, and then later when it was do or die.

I got out of the real estate hustle. I documented that here. I’ve been at the new hustle since 2007 or so.

I’m finding my way back to writing, and little by little getting OK at it. I needed to take a year to work though some reading before the writing would work itself out. I’m not as read as I want to be but it’s all coming together.

I gave up a decade of my life – and I might only get 8 decades if I’m lucky – because of some girl that never mattered. I gave up a decade because I wasn’t in touch with my values. It wasn’t the girl’s fault as @irrelevant points out. It was my fault. And it can happen any time you’re not in tune with what you’re supposed to be.

An Open Letter To All Of The People That Aren’t Going To Be Clients

By chris Filed Under: delusion, Sales

Dear Mr or Mrs. Client:

Tell me no.

Seriously. You tell me no right now, ok? Great. Now you’re file is closed.

I have work to do, and if you tell me maybe, you’re either wasting our time, or you’re trying to extract free advice from me while we’re both in limboland.

Either way is ugly and unfortunate.

Most of my freelancing friends delude themselves. They believe that every client that doesn’t say no might say yes. They ‘sell’ with the idea that they are here to prevent a no instead of get a yes. Screw that. I want as many ’yesses’ as possible. I don’t give a rip about my percentage.

And if you’re not buying (and let’s admit it, you’re not). Let’s get it in the open. It’s more respectful and easier on both of us.

Friends, let me tell you this: hearing no is a big relief. Seriously. Because then the tension is gone, the variance is off the table, and now I can go find someone to hear yes from.

Because we’re off the hook, we’re no longer pretending. This means we’re not deluding ourselves into believing we have income that’s not coming. You don’t have to pretend you might buy anymore. It’s a win for everyone.

Most importantly, we’re not wasting any more time.

Listen. I know that I jump the gun. I know that I might have closed too soon. You might have been put off by it. I know this. I’ve got some self awareness. We might even pretend – for a moment – that my premature close really was the reason you didn’t buy (it’s not). I’m still fine with that.

This may come as an utter shock to you – and I mean this in the nicest possible way - but you’re not the only client I’m talking to. My finances aren’t going to be impacted at all by you. Not one bit. Because there are six calls after this one that I’m making and another couple dozen emails that I’m sending. This is what I do.

I’m OK with all of this because for every client that I ‘alienate’ with an overzealous closing finger, there are four more that I find with the extra time freed up by not following up with someone that’s simply being “nice”. (As an aside- why is it ‘nice’ to not respect someone’s time and keep ‘em in limbo).

See, the nastiest thing you can do is lead me on. How would you feel if someone was tried to dangle money in front of you and promise that something might happen?

Look: I have a mild preference for you to be my client. But I know can’t force you. Nobody can persuade you to do something that wasn’t in the cards. I’m not going to try. I just want an answer. Fair enough?

Now finally: just because you tell me no doesn’t mean I’m going away. You were thinking about buying my stuff once, this means that you might have other reasons that you chose not to reveal that kept it from happening. Again, I’m 100% fine with that. So look, it’s not personal, I’m not desperate. I know that people like you are likely to buy. I’ll call you occasionally. We might become friends. Even if you say no.

Especially if you say no now.

I remain

Very Truly Yours

Chris Johnson

Personal Branding Is Not a Business Model [Confessions of a Recovering Social Media Dbag]

By chris Filed Under: Application, Business Models, delusion, Philosophy, Sales

You’re going to hate this post. You should probably stop reading.

This post isn’t going to make us friends. It could even tarnish my “personal brand.”

Really, you should go. The couple hundred readers that followed me here from GenuineChris are gonna be mad. You’ll think I’ve lost my last marble. But I’ve got to say this. I have two true-believers left. This has to be said.

Personal Branding is a waste of time. Totally, completely, and without any major exceptions. It might make cash but…only when you can position yourself atop some ponzi scheme. When you do that, you lose touch with who you are. When you do that, you become some slithering reptile that monetizes every connection. You lose track of who you are, and you pontificate instead of creating.

I had a teensy personal brand, of sorts. Real estate people followed me from Lenderama, Bloodhound Blog and other places. I made a couple ridiculous e-books. (Note: that particular one is 80% half joking, to quote yogi berra, and if you want one, I’ll get you a copy, just lemme know in the comments).

Nowadays I have a business. This site? Not a business. Never will be. Just some place where I get things off of my chest, and consecrate my thoughts. A sandbox. Something that’s intentionally relatively anonymous. Not hidden; anyone looking me up can find it. But not “out there.” It shouldn’t surprise too many people.

My business is the real deal. I hustle, I find people that need what we do, and I tell ‘em we do it. That’s about the gist of it.

Together with my partner, we’re looking for great stories to tell, and we’re taking the simple “demo movie” farther than we’ve seen anyone go. Our stuff sells because Jason is a total pro. I’ve learned from working with him, it’s a treat personally, professionally, spiritually.

I’ve barely blogged about it. Because I’m fucking working, you know. Get that? This site is just an indulgence to clear my head and to keep some notes. I have to write or else I’m constipated, and people get irritable when they are full.. But the real work I do has nothing to do with this site. It also had nothing to do with GenuineChris, Guerrilla.Me or any of the other umpteen flailing iterations of what I was trying to do.

It’s Never About You – It’s Always About The Work

It used to be (back in, say, February) that I believed I was some sales supergenius when I netted a couple extra 3 figure sales. I puffed out my chest like a rooster. Coffee’s for closers, baby. Mmm buddy, text the wife and call your mom, you don’t have to give plasma this week…

I’m operating at a different level now, and the work I’m doing has more numbers before the comma, and the companies I serve have many, many more numbers before their commas. It still doesn’t matter. I’m just one fungible vendor, effortlessly replaced. Many people do the work we do. Adding friction to what I do would be dumb. A personal brand is not going to make my clients get their videos any faster.

Ryan talks about losing confidence, but I know the second I get even a little, I’m toast. Willie tells me I need to spotlight what I’ve done. Last thing I need. I’m 35, and my net worth is underwater. That’s part of my “personal brand.”

What do you really do? What do you make? You don’t inspire people to be more free, the epic conference call almost never is. You might be around when they convince themselves to do something different, but you didn’t cause it. Personal branding is a ripoff, at worst, and an undisciplined sales call at best.. What gets made because of you? And are you selling delusions, or are you being of real live service to others? Do people want or need that help?

I spent 3 years towing my ridiculous brand around, behind whatever I did. I had to think “is it authentic? transparent? is it me? Does it fit?” Really, I did. ”Is it in your face enough?” I was never less sure of what I was doing. I had traction. I was too broke to be any of the things I pretended to be. You think I wouldn’t have taken any sort of bribe? Heh. The whole world is lucky my kid never got sick or hurt and I never had to make any real hard decisions.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

-Upton Sinclair

I was ready to “believe” anything because I was scared about as shitless as my wife.

Creating a persona is a waste of time. Do real work.

Even Tom Peters – who is credited with inventing the concept of personal branding pushes out content that says “it’s not about what you say about yourself.”

Create character. Cultivate kindness.Fix people’s problems. Listen to the bitching on Twitter, and offer a real solution to whatever’s ailing them. That’s how you use social media – if someone is whining about broken widgets, and you fix widgets, connect.

Personal Branding adds no value. What problems were solved because you became known as “the Firecracker coach?” Or whatever.

What you want to do is be preternaturally competent, you want to make it dead simple to do business with you and you always, always want to be around to help others. When you do that, things change, you get traction and life gets better for you.

[note: I took a bunch of links out of this thing because it came off as mean. the ones I left are from people that can take it and won't notice a pebble being thrown at a battleship]

Delusional Customers

By chris Filed Under: delusion, Philosophy

I hustle daily. Do you?

I find clients for my business. I sell the art that Jason and I (more Jason than I) make.

I encounter many similar people over and over again. They come in the same flavors of delusion. There’s always some guy that believes that he’s your meal ticket.

As if we haven’t caught that line before. Our person comes in several varieties:

The dude that believes that his exposure will be so great he doesn’t have to pay much.
His cousin, the gal that thinks that working on her project is such great shakes that she won’t pay anything.
The dude that believes that I’m financially dependent on one sale and can jerk me around.
The one that equates sales as begging.
The chick that intends to pay with future referrals that she can’t deliver.
The dude that mistakes hunger for despair.
The dude that thinks I have clumsy sales skills (when it’s really utter indifference to working with you).

Now, let’s think about something. If I’m good enough to get you close to buying, isn’t it fairly likely that I’m good enough to get many others just like you close to buying? Isn’t it likely that many of them will be higher value customers at great companies?

If I’m the co-founder of a company, don’t you think I should have many people that I approach each day? Don’t you think I am doing this stuff fairly deliberately? What, you think that after I’m done with this sales call, I’m going to hang up the phone and play Angry Birds all day?

All of this is obvious Clients that think that because we made the initial approach they can dictate everything are clueless. When you generate you don’t

have to tolerate. It’s self indulgent and stupid, but it’s always fun to say no to a client we approached first. It’s even more fun to piss them off- (but where does that get us.)

Seth Godin has tacitly taught America to take pity on those salespeople that approach first. Because you know, the customer must initiate and give permission. I like that he does that. It makes them underestimate me. I have a responsibility to keep good customers away from poor shops. I might seem ham fisted, but like Columbo, it’s more effective to be underestimated (and not an accident).

Helping people by proposing a solution they didn’t think up can’t wait on their permission. If Apple waited for us to understand touch computing before they built the Ipod Touch, we’d be in rough shape.

Each Interaction Is Fungible When You Gin Up More

It’s not that I don’t respect the people I get to talk to, but I certainly don’t live and die with each interaction. I want to improve how I interact, but I don’t care when I lose a client or two. The experimentation is worth it. I close because it’s what I do, I don’t close because I’m filled with anxiety and despair and need someone to make a living.

And, when I can’t get someone to buy, it’s my way of ending the relationship. It’s nicer to let them believe it was their idea than mine. ”Forgetting” to follow up, or saying something meandering and arrogant. Those are the best ways to get a customer to wander off. Let them. Focus on the ones that you love, and forget the ones that you can take or leave.

Finally, the truth is we’re just numbers. I’m just another vendor. They’re just another customer. We’re all gonna do the best that we can. We’ll make a beautiful video, but we can live long and happy lives without each other. Nobody makes or breaks me. The waiting game is another delusion. The ideas I have about my customers are probably delusions as well, they are probably doing their work without a second thought to me and what I think. I could be a vendor, an opportunity, a welcome distraction or a time suck. All of that is true at various times, for all of us.

Delusion is Not a Business Model

By chris Filed Under: Application, delusion, Philosophy

Let’s start with some truth about today’s economy. Just, you know, so we’re on the same page, here is the model I’m working from:

Nobody is going to “discover” us. (If they did, it wouldn’t matter- your site is unnavigable.)
Nobody is buying into the “startup” that will finally make social media easy for Boomers.
Nobody is impressed by your “personal brand;” people snicker at you behind your back.
Your “coaching program” is beyond useless
The Secret is for idiots.
Our writing isn’t any good, nobody’s going to read our scripts,
You’re just an American Idol audition punchline.
Your “lifestyle blog“ is a sham
You have never – once – been underpaid.
You never “chose” your job, you just cling to the first place willing to hire you.
Your “elevator speech” is as obvious as it is ridiculous.
All this work will continue to go unpaid, unnoticed and unseen.
You’re not an entreprenuer, you’re delusional.

Delusion is much easier than actual work. It’s nice to believe that if you got “discovered” things would magically change. That the checkers will soon be aligned in such a way that you could make one quadruple jump and fix your life . Things will be fine.

You can believe that you’re one seemingly arbitrary event away from success. That if you follow the yellow brick road, you’ll get a heart, brains, courage. You can believe that you got cheated out of something great. Or, that you’re a hack, tip, trick, or tweak away from explosive growth.

Listen, it’s not like that. I know. I spent years chasing the bullshit. I spent years deluded.

Delusion spares you the need to learn. Delusion keeps you from going pro, because delusion makes you believe all you need is more promotion or traffic. Delusion is the resistance, in another form.

A couple bucks in Paypal does not a business make. A bunch of nonbuyers enthusiastically sharing your drivel on Facebook leads you no closer to sales.

A little bit of activity blog post, and you believe you have arrived. Get someone cool to retweet you, and it feels like achievement. At the end of the day, what is it? If there is no substance behind it, what is it?

Are you a genius if you can only do it once in your life–and even then, it’s not that good?

The Difference Between a Delusion and a Business

Delusions posit that if you were only just slightly more clever, a world of riches will await you. You’re not finding arbitrage. Pushing crap content out via social media won’t make you money. Helping debt-addled Realtors clutter the world’s Facebook streams with fraudulent begging to buy a home isn’t expertise.<
A business helps people, brings comfort or relief, and solves real problems. A business makes a profit most of the time, pays its bills and wants for nothing. A business doesn't need one big break to be a valid concern; it finds its own customers, it helps them and it creates some type of self-perpetuating ecosystem.

A business doesn't require massive amounts of traffic or ads to be valid or valuable.

A business doesn't have to be a "someday' thing.

Until (and unless) the VCs are paid back, all you have is an idea or a service, not a business.

A business helps people right now, makes a buck right now. A delusion – whether it’s your delusion or someone else’s doesn’t yet make money. If you’re not making money, if you don’t have customers, you’re in delusionland.

When you do business, you are not just adding some layer of trivial connectivity to the existing world, you’re also helping the world get better.

Silicon Valley is destroying wealth chasing fantasy and delusion. And folks we encounter are even smug about clinging to delusion. As if we are fools, pikers or mopes because we’re intent on creating some of the finest motion graphics work on the Internet.

Hacker News, TechCrunch and the rest speak of “service business” as an epithet. They believe that if you expend effort or labor for money, it’s a bad exchange. CPU cycles for money is the only exchange they want. Bad thinking. Funding a good team to grow, to help others, to get big and strong is probably the most likely way to create and incubate products.

The team gets customers, the customers tell the team what they want, and then stuff gets built.

Funding delusion destroys wealth, too. How many hours were spent coding, building and marketing sites that were either never going to succeed, or were focused on making only the most trivial of improvements? How many hours now are being spent on unnecessary Groupon Clones?

When they close down, what happens? The money that went into them is mostly annihilated.

These are not businesses. These are delusions. They always were.

Are you working on a business or a delusion?