I was not in the amazing business.  I was a Toshiba computer that you buy from Best Buy.  Nobody is emotionally connected to that, there’s no magic involved.

First – how can you sustain being mediocre?  How can you live in a way where you’re currently in a mediocre business that’s measurement is units, not “Awesomes?”

How can you be in a business that’s not shooting to be the best in its market? I can see a local Realtor wanting to be the best in a tightly defined market (their contacts, their rotary club).

How can you not realize that every job that exists today is 3 years from complete obsolescence?

How can you make something that’s just OK? Intentionally? 

If you’re not in pursuit of being the best on the planet, to transcend your limitations and push for something more, the cognitive dissonance will wreck you.  You’ll burn out, you’ll have testy discussions and you’ll wreck yourself.  Pursuing excellence is exciting.

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I didn’t want to sell infoproducts. Lame, usually.  Sometimes worse.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t good stuff out there. A precious few are worth it.

99.5%, at minimum are a waste of money.

Because I said it before: you either can’t be stopped or can’t be helped.

I didn’t have the stomach or heart for it.  I coasted in school, and I didn’t believe that I had the knowledge to impart on people (however, I’m wickedly efficient at producing a mediocre result with next to no effort).

I didn’t want to coach, because telling grown up Realtors “this is Facebook,” couldn’t possibly have a shelf life.  That was beyond obvious, and we didn’t need an Extra Normal to tell us that.

So, when Chris Pearson dropped Thesis it was like a godsend.  I could get a talented designer to whip up a few nice ways of doing things.  I was able to make make some modifications to their photoshop files, and sell websites.

Thesis was a fantastic start, a framework and a community in one package. You had a ton of options for typography, column widths and the rest of it.  For 2008 or 2009 when it dropped, it was spectacularly good.

One of the best things was it respected designers.  That means that clients could make changes but it was hard to break it.

The road had been paved before me. Infomarketers, the National Association of Realtors and Business week pitched people on blogging.  Everyone – from a plumber to a lawyer wanted a blog.

My work was done, more or less.  IT was easy to close people.  Active Rain had gathered them up and made it easy enough to find new folks.  It even published their phone numbers.

I made this video, put it on a page. Wrote/distributed some inflammatory posts.

The sales part. “$800 gets you a  custom WordPress site and a year’s worth of hosting”.

Most people understood. It wasn’t an unlimited everything site, but it was functional and useful.  I supplemented it with training calls that were basically a way to consolidate support requests.  I learned a little, and I helped some people.

Largely, though I was indifferent to my clients, late paying my vendors and about 3 beats behind.  I kept things afloat through hustle, but I had the Groupon problem ((1)).

I’m telling you this because it’s a fact. I’m not beating myself up or feeling any particular bad way.

I’m telling you this because I believe this: when someone has made a living or a business, it’s a duty to only do your best for them.  There may be times when your best isn’t good enough.  But not doing your best is not the option.

I sold a lot of these sites because others had stoked demand.  I was riding a wave I saw coming, and I was one of the first with my surfboard.  Via Tim, I had some clients that were always ready to buy.  And, I’m a hustler, and I’m good at doing novel things to get customers.

Here’s the problem.  I alluded to it in the last post.

Nice People Don’t All Have To Blog

Remember: 2007-2009 were tough years. The economy, the whole of it was different then.  People had expectations that each year would be a little nicer than the one before it.

People either can’t be stopped, or they won’t be helped.

There’s not a ton of middle ground.  I had, largely, the people in the latter category.  Well meaning, earnest people with rotary club businesses.  Friendly people that cared about helping.  People that were just hayseed hicks that didn’t know any better.

They had no business blogging.  Not because they weren’t great people, but because they had nothing to say. They wouldn’t do the work that it took to create original thought or commentary on their industries.  They’d follow instructions, and regurgitate nonsense in a step-by-step manner.

They didn’t gravitate towards connecting online.

My dad was a community college comp teacher.  Somehow, without meaning to, I made myself into one.  I was editing crap posts about crap businesses.  Indeed it was a great time to buy – or sell- a home.  Or to plan your 401k.  Or whatever.

I had a couple hundred sales made, and they were all writing obvious crap.

I didn’t want to do the Derek Halpern style teaching, nor did I want to spend the time to execute on that level.

So, I did the best I could and was profoundly lucky that my clients were mostly nice people.

Your Blog Will Not Fix Adult Failure Spiral

Most of them. A few people – were in a bad spot.  Problems come with being in a bad spot.

A lot of my clients – because of my price point – were at the end of their rope.  They scrounged $800 of blood money, of next month’s light bill to pay me.

The blog was to be a hail mary.  People believed that with just a few hours of work one time, they’d have an eruption of prestige and traffic.  Arbitrage.  That off the shelf products would yield prestige and more.

They were failing because the had become addicts, th ey had caused problems for themselves((2)).  A blog wasn’t going to fix it. Nor was any type of info-marketing tool. They believed themselves to have been victims of cruel fate.  Nothing could help.

There is not a single trick, hack or kludge.   There is no magic bullet.

They weren’t appropriate customers.  But, who was I to blow against the wind?  I started seeing the signals and giving people stronger and stronger warnings.  That didn’t help my sales efforts.

I was in a deeply flawed business- that’s a fact, and I didn’t want to do what it took to fix it. I didn’t have the patience.  At the core of my being, I’m a hunter. I can’t chain myself to a desk and force myself to be something I’m not.

I started preemptively refunding people that were a teensy bit testy.  That didn’t help.

I wasn’t good enough to get to serve higher end companies, and it is way harder to claw out $800 at a time – when only $300 or so was profit – than it was to do it in another way.

I was not going to – ever – fix the world or have the business.  Mediocrity is contagion, and I was broke and scared most of the time.  I couldn’t see past the next morphine hit to figure out what to do next.

.:.

There are lots of things I don’t understand.

I was not in the amazing business.  I was a Toshiba computer that you buy from Best Buy.  Nobody is emotionally connected to that, there’s no magic involved.

First – how can you sustain being mediocre?  How can you live in a way where you’re currently in a mediocre business that’s measurement is units, not “Awesomes?”

How can you be in a business that’s not shooting to be the best in its market? I can see a local Realtor wanting to be the best in a tightly defined market (their contacts, their rotary club).

How can you not realize that every job that exists today is 3 years from complete obsolescence?

How can you make something that’s just OK? Intentionally? 

If you’re not in pursuit of being the best on the planet, to transcend your limitations and push for something more, the cognitive dissonance will wreck you.  You’ll burn out, you’ll have testy discussions and you’ll wreck yourself.  Pursuing excellence is exciting.

—

((1)) The groupon problem is where you have to sell the future to pay for the past and you’re always a beat behind and doing volume without profitable.  Read here for details.

((2)) Money Drunk, Money Sober by Julia Cameron is a fantastic book for this issue.

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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.

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Not exercising, not going to go to the gym.  My legs will heal up and saturday I’ll do it again.  I’ll set some sort of personal record I’m sure, as there are many that I can break right now.

I started in December getting serious about fitness. Really going after it.  I wanted it to be sustainable, to be something that stayed with me forever rather than a diet or phase, or a bootcamp.  So I got intentional about reast.

I’m in bad shape. I’m in BETTER bad shape than I was 6 weeks ago, but I’m in bad shape. So, if I try to go 10 days in a row, I’ll hurt myself.  I can’t out-sprint fat.  It doesn’t work that way.

So I started by resting every 5th day and being hyper about working out the other 4.

That means that it’s worked like this:

• Monday- I’m refreshed and rested, I should be fine to do a GREAT workout.
• Tuesday-  the soreness didn’t accumulate.  Gotta work out.
• Wed: Only One Day To Go, a little sore, but I’ll b 3/4 done.
• Today: Gotta kill it. Leave it all out there because I don’t get to work out tomorrow.
• Tomorrow – Rest
• Saturday: back at it with a rest coming Wednesday.

This is good for me. Not because it’s physiologically optimal.  It’s almost certainly not. I can agree that there are probably more optimal routines, and the 4 on 1 off thing is fairly arbitrary.

But I’m doing it. I’m complying.  I can hack it mentally. I can easily keep track of how many days left/days to go. I can live a relatively spontaneous life and avoid deferring workouts till night.

Right now, I’m making great progress. I’m measuring me against me.

At some point I think I might go on  5/1 cycles, but I don’t see that happening before April at the earliest.  This is working, I’m keeping track.  I’m staying after it, and getting in shape.

I’m still stuck on the treadmill because i’m not in good enough shape to push myself without feedback.  Eventually I want to get off that, but that’ll require probably that I lose about 35 pounds. That in itself provides a hill to charge and a goal to overcome.

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I still respect it. There is something to be said about being deliberate about your tasks.

But I quit it.  My life is vastly, vastly better.  Because I’m free.

The end product of GTD is itself a problem. Instead of spending time doing important stuff, you become a slave to your lists. It’s on the list, do it.  Even though there’s the “Drop” release valve, you don’t want to “drop” things because hey, you’re not a quitter, are you?

Systems make the man.  Except they don’t, not at all.

They make the man imprison himself with trivial tasks  Being able to focus on what matters isn’t going to be possible if you have a list that bosses you around.

While you’re putting things on a list, it’s likely enough that you’ll put more things on your list.  Inertia. You’ve got list-building momentum. So you put something that has no real relevance, and isn’t part of what you want to do. Because hey, you’re building a list.

Then you   have to deal with the mental overhead and guilt of having a barely relevant item on your to do list.  Do you drop it? Do you need to do it?  Why are there 18 things on this list?  I’ll never get done.

What you need to be doing is reading, writing and getting better.  But that doesn’t happen. Because the endless list of trivia beacons.

What GTD doesn’t acknowledge well is that the really important stuff gets done. Automatically.  You get your contracts and pitches out, because they matter.  You can wait on the TPS report.

We think that we’re cheating when we drop things, so we do stuff that doesn’t matter.  We make our own work. GTD has a severe activity bias. Activity and productivity are different things. Being productive is more than just a long list of things to do.

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I was haggling websites with Realtors and Mortgage people that I was basically contemptuous of. (Why I allowed contempt to enter my thinking is a whole other character defect, but I digress).  Everything was life and death.  At $600-1000 a pop, I was haggling all of them, trying to do them, and trying to make things happen a step at a time.

I had too many projects – by far- to do any of them well.  Try doing 20 websites at $789 as an average ticket.  That’s 20 server deployments, 20 themes, 40 designs, 100+ revisions, 140 emails, and probably 3-4 refunds (and I deserved more).

You’re always busy, you never have time to think. Every dime is blood money.

That’s the low end. Lots of volume. Opportunities for mistakes. Not enough money to do anything because it relies on selling LOADS of itself to be profitable.

You can enter a race to the low end, or you can ignore it.

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I may be pursing goals that are obsolete, and the simple act of managing the goals that were once important makes for a tough time. I stopped pursuing this months ago, and I’m down to one list that I keep and glance at every so often.   (It’s in Evernote and I like the way that you can hit CMD-OPT-N and have a new note and then dismiss it with CMD-W.)  I process occasionally.

I like Brad Feld’s idea:

After the call, my dad asked “how do you keep track of all this stuff?” It was asked in a loving way with a glint of humor and amazement. I responded simply “I don’t – I just let it wash over me.”

That’s more or less right. I’ll get into how I do things soon.  Wash over me. Let it happen, knock it out, let it be, let it go.

.:.

The issue has been quality.  I won’t  put out schlock under the Simplifilm name.

I’ve been a bit paralyzed at what to do next, so stuff doesn’t get done as fast as it should.

Not long ago, I decided to redo our placeholder website. Jason and I ground it out in a few days.  What happened was that we iterated in public, and during a 3-4 day period, our site looked pretty ugly.

Didn’t matter a bit.  We put it on a new design theme that we liked, and had the changes made. Now that it’s going, it’s rocking, and we’re getting more leads – by far – than we ever have.

That lesson freed me to understand that I’m going to be improving things.  Getting them done is important.

Be in the cult of done.

.:.

What happened was this: we had 270 people see a site that was under construction.

But we got it done. We had 29,000 people see a site that we were both unhappy with.

90 days of traffic with an ugly site.  We were avoiding THAT.

.:.

So, I want to do routine follow up with people. It takes time  for people to part with the 5 figures that it takes to get a Simplifilm sold and created.

The messages have to be right.

But they have to be in place first. They have to exist. 

You can’t improve something that’s not deployed, not really.

So, get it out there.  Set a reminder to reevaluate.  Build a loop.

Then improve it.

.:.

Put something in place, make a loop.

Set a reminder.

Make something, then plan to make it better.

Deploy, improve, repeat.

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The idea that, to me, is pretty rough, is that there are a lot of debts that can never be repaid.

I can’t ever repay Marcus Aurelius for filling my soul with good things.

I can’t ever repay my children, Jack and Ruby for transforming my charachter.

I can’t ever repay the people I remember fondly, the teachers, the first co-workers.

The clients that supported me and let me get away with murder and indifference.

I can’t repay my parents for doing the best they could.

There are even people that are not in my life (and won’t be) that I owe something to for a kindness shown towards me.

I feel like I’ve got a much richer, better life than I deserve. I feel like I’ve been selfish and gotten away with something to have the life I do.

I don’t know how I got to the point that I’m at. I don’t know why I have a great life.

All i can do is try and be kind, quit delusions, and listen a lot more.

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This much is clear.

I use a service called RescueTime to block things. To get better. (They are a Simplifilm Client).

And for me, I have had to block loads of sites. To stay sane. To not go into delusionville.  To get away from horrific people.

I had to pry my eyes away from the human train wreck that was Naomi Dunford, Dave Navarro and the Salty Droid.

Sports sites. I didn’t play sports in high school. Yet, I know that Kobe is dropping mad points on every team. I know – for some reason – that the Giants are back in 2007 form and Bill Belichick (the cheating smug, ugly bastard) looks to get his revenge. I know the storylines.

Then…Facebook.  That site antagonizes me like none other. It’s a news source for me, an echo chamber, and a look at the “what if” game.  I dated literally dozens of people. There they all are. The tramps, train-wrecks and worldbeaters all gathered for me to gawk at.

This is my whole life, being oozed out of me. For what? The chance at a pat on the head from some kid from high school? The opportunity to look edgy?

And heaven forbid I get drawn into a political fight. I can look testy and stupid faster than anyone I know.

It’s no good for me. Not when I’m meant to work, to create, to do whatever.  I don’t trust myself to run without a treadmill yet, and I don’t trust myself to do the right thing with my time.  So I put the blocks in place.

So I’ve trotted out the blocked list. It’s easy enough to do– Ehow has an article on it that works as of January 18, 2012.  For a pc, it’s here.

Anyway, FB got blocked.  I’ll still join it on my iPad and phone. But not on my computer.

For me, that is reserved for creating things and being productive.  That is a tool for work, and even though I may still need to be patted on the head by people I’m mildly contemptuous towards, I won’t do it while I’m supposed to be working.

When our end comes – and it will come – we will either die in agony or by surprise.

It will probably involve a loss of dignity and bedpans. Even if science is somehow able to press the snooze button on life, it’s still finite.

What is there to fear? You know that you’re going to meet a grim and unfortunate ending.

Why stay in bed? Why worry about approbation?

We are already dead.  As we postpone death with life, let’s not do it in a fearful way.

The worst case scenario is a certainty. It’s a virtual guarantee. All we can do is live with passion and dignity.

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