Hello, darlings. It’s been a while.

A looooong while, in fact: it’s a year since I returned home from Vegas with a notebook full of plans for what became Cash and Joy, where I spend my time nowadays.

I’ve been pondering for some time: what should I do with the ten months of daily content that I wrote here? Some of it isn’t very good, and some is okay, but I’m pretty sure there are some gems in among the 338 published posts. (!!!)

So I have an idea.

I’m looking for curators.

People to go through the backlog of content and gather the best articles into themed resources. I will sell those resources for a VERY modest fee ($10 or so?) and share the profits with the people who do the work.

This will likely add up to a startling $3 or so per copy, which is unlikely to be fair compensation for your time unless I sell a hundred or so. So I understand if I mostly get polite silence.

But if you were thinking of going through the archives anyway, then this could be a spectacular opportunity to fill your brain with excellent ideas, and make a bit of money at the same time.

Interested?

Send an email to catherine@cashandjoy.com and we’ll talk details.

Rock on, lovely.

Hooray for Henri and his guest post!

I started off enthusiastic with blogging, and thought I would be making a living within a year, but that didn’t happen.

However, it taught me five valuable lessons that are now catapulting me toward success and profit faster than ever before.

These lessons are very simple, but the problem is that most people do not apply them into their life or into their online business, much like I didn’t apply them in the beginning.

Oops.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in creating a successful blog or business, but if you keep going and are determined to succeed, you will arrive sooner or later.

With all that said, let’s look at five lessons I learned from 18 months of blogging:

1. Set Goals

First and foremost, set goals and be specific about what you want to accomplish with your online adventure.

The fuzzier you are, the fuzzier your results will be. Think of having your own pirate ship, if you’re going to raid another ship on the coast of Africa, you have to set sail in the right direction.

So get clear on what you want. Do you want to create a full-time income? Or do you just want a popular blog where you can hang out with like-minded people?

Make it specific, measurable, realistic, and set a time for it.

2. Relentless Focus

If you want to succeed fast, you have to have relentless focus. You have to focus on raiding one ship at a time, because if you don’t, you will end up at sea with no ships in sight.

I made this mistake before I started blogging, and I made it again while blogging. Even though I made a full-time living online before I was blogging, I still made the same mistake of going after new shiny things and hoping for a quick fix solution.

It wasn’t until I started focusing on what I wanted and avoiding all distractions that I saw massive progress.

3. Create Products & Services

Another interesting thing that I ran into was that in order for you to make money, you have to create opportunities for your readers to give you money. Pretty simple, right?

I created two products very early on my blog, but then I stopped and to this day I don’t know why. I think it was because I was afraid of failure.

Going through all this has been tough. It has also been fun, and I’ve learned a lot. I am more determined than ever to succeed.

In short, I have to create more things to sell that bring amazing amounts of value to people’s lives.

4. Make Friends

No man or woman is an island. You need to make friends in the online space in order to succeed.

And I’m not talking about networking day in and day out, because that’s not what I have done. In the beginning I avoided networking altogether, because I didn’t like it at all.

But then I reframed my perspective and began thinking about it in terms of making friends and hanging out instead, and that changed everything.

5. Be Passionate

Last, but not least is to be passionate about every aspect of your glorious work. You can have a blog about a topic you love, but if you’re creating products and services that you’re not in love with, you need to reassess what you’re doing.

I learned to constantly focus on what I want to do that intersects with what my readers want from me and what they need help with.

And I learned that creating an online business takes time, because you have to make mistakes in order to learn, but each of those mistakes are merely stepping stones to success.

Henri writes at Wake Up Cloud, where you can get his free course: Find Your Passion in 5 Days or Less. And if you liked this article, you will enjoy one of his top articles: How to Live a Happy Life

photo credit: alkruse24

It’s a guest post, by the lovely Lisa!

Even if you run your own dream business, there’s probably something about your “ideal” job that doesn’t agree with you. I’m working for an entrepreneur, getting great experience to help me plan my own business, but that still involves cleaning bathrooms and taking out the trash. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of replenishing the paper towel stash, but I do it because it’s going to help me accomplish my goals (at least, I hope it will). People like me who work for others run into stuff they don’t want to do, but they usually get a kick in the butt from the boss. When you know you have to do something and you’re accountable to someone else for getting it done, it’s easier to beat procrastination and just plow through it. But what if you’re the person in charge?

You have to kick your own butt. And when it comes to procrastination, being able to motivate yourself to get things done is especially important. As a self-employed writer in my spare time, I know a thing or two about beating procrastination – and here are some of my favorite ways to buckle down and accomplish the not-so-appealing tasks at the top of my to-do list.

1. Make It Easy

You might think you have a whole dumpster’s worth of trash to take out, but sometimes those big bad tasks are innocent jobs that you just don’t want to complete. Whether it’s genuinely difficult or simply unpleasant, you can break it down into manageable parts. Instead of tackling the whole issue and having a panic attack, plan out a series of reasonable steps you can take to complete the task.

For example, you might need to start a marketing campaign for a specific product or service. Instead of telling yourself how impossible it is to accomplish the task, break it down into smaller, more well-defined pieces. You might start by researching any demographics who might want to use your product or service, getting to know their general characteristics so you can appeal to them successfully. You could then decide on the medium (or media) you want to use, focus on getting a list of contacts, design your piece of marketing, and send it out. This strategy works for a wide variety of tasks, so try breaking down your worst nightmare into smaller parts before you file it away for “tomorrow”.

2. Make It Social

It helps to be in the company of hard workers because they can inspire you to hold yourself to the same high standards. If you can look over into the next cube and see someone working hard, you’re in a good place to avoid procrastination. In some cases, this isn’t an option – maybe you work from home, for example – so you’ll need to find other people in your life who work hard no matter what. Talk to your friends and family about what they do when they go to work. You might be surprised and inspired by what they accomplish in a day.

3. Make It Flow

If you’re bored out of your mind, keep at it by making your work flow. Come up with games that increase your productivity, such as competing against yourself or the clock to accomplish a certain task. This will take your mind off of the fact that you’re not enjoying your work, which will help you get it done faster.

4. Make It Meaningful

There’s a reason you’re doing the tasks you don’t enjoy. Don’t let yourself forget that reason – it will help you keep the important stuff in sight at all times. For example, you might be working on a marketing plan so you can sell more products and services, make more revenue, expand your business, and ultimately achieve your goal of helping other people by doing what you love. If you keep your goal in sight and remember that the work you do has an important role in reaching that goal, your work will be more pleasant.

5. Make It Happen

Make yourself dive into that task you’re avoiding. If you need a little incentive, that’s fine – buy yourself an orange mocha and get to it. But procrastinating will only make the situation worse, so the most important thing you can do is to tell yourself that you’re going to start working now and make it happen.

Lisa Shoreland is currently a resident blogger at Go College, where recently she’s been researching scholarships for women as well as vocational college grants. In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing, practicing martial arts, and taking weekend trips.

photo credit: Ivan Walsh

It’s been some time since I described the tools and tech I use to do my work, and I’ve been getting some questions from ya’ll about automation, tools and all that jazz.

So, in short, here’s how it my bizzy-ness does its thang.

Getting paid and getting scheduled

I use e-junkie to make my buttons and I take the cash using PayPal. Specifically, I create products for my consulting here and on Cash and Joy in e-junkie, unticking every single selling option except for the automated email sent every time someone buys. In that email I say a few important things:

• Thank you for investing in your awesomeness
• When you’re ready, sign up for our session here:

The link is to my TimeDriver, which takes care of my scheduling. There are other nifty scheduler services, but I’m happy with TimeDriver: It’s free for the first 90 days, it integrates with my Google calendar, and it’s very simple to use. (And because of the integration, if I block out some time in my Google calendar, Timedriver makes those times unavailable too.)

Oh, another reason to adore TimeDriver? It automatically displays the available session times in your time zone, by referring to your computer clock. I freakin HATE time zone conversion, so it’s delightful to not have to worry about it.

Doing the work

I do my calls using Skype and a Logitech headset – the comfort one so I don’t get headaches. Most people use Skype on their end too, but I burn through about $5-10 of Skype credit or so a month to call people who can’t use Skype for whatever reason, or in the cases where we’re having tech issues on the connection. It’s only 3c a minute or so for me to call phones around the globe if I do it through Skype.

I record the sessions using Pamela Professional, which produces surprisingly good call quality recordings (I’ve made products using them and they really were clear). I scored a copy for free by jumping through a zillion hoops in the TrialPay offer, but it’s only 20 euros anyway.

Bonus tip: if you ever want to publish or sell a call recording, use Levelator to balance it. Free, beyond simple to use, and creates stunning results.

I then upload the call recording to a folder in Dropbox with the client’s name, which I then share with them. You get 2GB of storage free when you sign up to Dropbox, and they also give you bonus storage when you sign up other people. Thus, I have plenty of storage for call recordings, which is neat.

Post-sales niftiness

MailChimp, my email provider, is linked in to e-junkie, so when anyone buys from me they get added to my buyer’s list. I still have to go in manually and tick the right boxes to link which people bought what, but I’m pretty sure I can automate that when I find the time.

As a result, I can email everyone who bought a particular product with updates or reminders or thank yous. Handy!

How much this all costs

Once-off:

• $50 for the headset
• 20 euros for Pamela (or free if your time and attention is less valuable than your money)

Ongoing:

• $30/year for TimeDriver after the initial 90 days free
• $5/month for e-junkie
• $5/month in Skype credit
• PayPal fees (3%-ish)

And that’s it.

Does that sound complicated? I suppose it is when all put together like that, but it was actually done as a series of solutions… the calendar issue, and then the recording issue, and eventually the gee-whiz-emailing-call-recordings-is-a-stupid-idea issue.

Any questions or recommendations? Tell me in the comments!

P.S. Some of these are links where I benefit in some way if you click. But you probably knew that.

photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

So last week was a super-crazy-busy week. Like, every day was four hours of coachsulting/two hours of writing/holy crap I need to answer my email in there somewhere/mmm, burritos.

I was on FIYAH. I was powering through all of it, writing loads of great stuff, running three friendly conversations simulataneously with no loss of quality, keeping fifteen balls in the air. Super-productive times BOOYAH.

And then on Friday the plug fell out. Stuff I had to do was pushed back. Email all got filed under Too Hard, Don’t Care, Whatever. Big thinking was shelved and all resources were diverted to Rocking Out at Coachsulting Sessions Then Falling on the Couch and Saying, “Blehhhh”.

This continued through my weekend and Monday. I did my best at the Have To Do This Right Now list and ignored absolutely everything else. Even the We Really Need To Get Started On This list. And the You Got Paid A Lot Of Money To Think About This list.

Then this morning all the lights were back on. Suddenly brilliance was poring out, impossible became easy-fucking-peasy, and I got a weeks’ work done in four hours. I wrote three articles, brainstormed like a dervish, and caught up with a large chunk of the neglected inbox.  It all came flowing out.

This is a rhythm I am becoming better at incorporating into my work. I had to get good at it, because for me everything is either in flow – bam bam ba-dam wahoo I am brilliant at this – or not in flow – what.ever. I don’t know. This is hard. – and I don’t think that’s ever really going to change.

So my challenges are:

• to give myself enough breathing room to let the downtimes happen when they need to
• to not have too much that has to be done Right Freaking Now
• to have enough savings so I can take a few days off without going instantly bankrupt
• to learn the discipline of not committing to hard deadlines when they’re not necessary
• to shape a life in which it’s okay to work ten hours one day and two the next
• to be VERY firm about saying no

I’ve gotten better at this over the last six months. And it is SUPER-SWEET to not have to do the old Day Job thing of having to turn up on the off days and sit in front of my monitor staring blearily at the screen thinking, “No-one benefits from me being here today. Argh.”

What are the parts of your rhythm you’ve had to adapt to? Tell me in the comments!

photo credit: DerrickT

So last time I talked about the fascinating journey of going from 4 subscribers to full-time business in less than a year. And a number of you asked if I had any advice.

HELL YES I DO.

Here’s my top ten smart decisions.

I didn’t use my name as a domain, but I did use it as my Twitter handle.

I pretty much always recommend your business doesn’t use your name unless you’re Oprah.

Because catherinecaine.com could provide anything from clown supplies to photos of kittens smoking cigarettes. It provides no context whatsoever.

Instead, I chose a domain name that incorporated some decent clues about what this website was about and who it was for. I’ve thought up a zillion better ones since, but I don’t regret the choice.

However, I DID want to use my name on Twitter, and that was a great choice. I became recognisable – I had dozens of people in the corridors of BlogWorld call me out by name – and it meant I wasn’t totally screwed when I changed businesses.

I had something for sale from Day One.

There was a consulting service on the site from the first day with a functional Buy Now button (none of that “Email Me To Work With Me” crap). I knew that no-one was likely to buy it – a belief amply realised in the first quiet months of the website – but that wasn’t the point. The point was that it was always clear that this website, no matter how small and amateur, was a money-making operation. No-one was surprised or betrayed when I added more products and services.

Also, I set my prices well from Day One. I listened to everyone who said that newbies drastically underprice themselves, so I set the original rate at $150/hour, which was a terrifyingly high number at the time. (I think I reconciled it to myself by saying I could halve it and still be earning good money, and for my very first paying client I did.)

I found ways to talk with people. LOTS of people.

I made two “sign up for a free half-hour chat” offers, and while I don’t want to describe all of the small context decisions I made that made those offers successful – I am writing a resource about that – I ended up talking with well over a hundred people in total.

That’s more than 50 hours of market research. I knew my people intensely well by the end of it. I knew their sense of humour, their fears, their budgets and desires and dogs.

If I need to explain why this is awesome you should quit right now.

I made stuff people were asking for.

I would never have created most of the stuff I did off my own bat. But I paid attention and picked out themes of need during the free sessions, and I created products and services to solve those needs. And I wasn’t terribly surprised when they did quite well.

I played – a lot.

I let myself be creative and experimented with almost everything. Not in a split A/B test way – ugh – more in a “let’s see what THIS can do” way.

I played around with post length, topics, interviews, colour schemes, services. I tried a dozen things that didn’t work for every one that did and learned from every failure – which posts got no comments, which ones did waaay better than I thought they would.

I owned my screwups.

I made some BIG ones. Some that were almost unrecoverable, and would have been if I hadn’t owned my errors, apologised, explained and then left it be.

I did my best to be awesome, and when I wasn’t I tried to fix it.

And sometimes, I realised that it wasn’t my error, just a difference in opinions. Those times I lovingly disengaged.

I strongly encouraged comments.

I really wanted comments. They kept me going through the Dip of “I”m not making any money/I hate getting up early to write before the Day Job/This will never work out”. Comments let me know I was doing good work, and soI made them happen.

Firstly, I end every post with a question and a “Tell me in the comments”. Because that works really well.

Secondly, I rewarded them. It bugged the crap out of me to write a thoughtful reply and get whistling silence in return, so I replied to every comment.

As a result, there are 333 posts on this site, with 5473 comments, half of which are mine. That’s an average of 16 comments per post, which certainly kept the cockles of MY heart warm.

I posted every single day.

From Jan 1 until BlogWorld in October, I posted every single day.

This had big effects:

1. A ridiculously good Alexa ranking. Which is pretty cool.

2. Building my writing muscles from meh to flexalicious.

3. Getting known, and getting trusted. Most blogs crash and burn within three months with a dozen articles. I was reliable.

4. Lots of chances to experiment.

5. No possibility of cheating. I knew myself and my triple-thinking justification machine of a mind. If my schedule was “twice a week” you could immediately scratch that out and insert “Never”. (The new schedule is stuff like “Every Tuesday”, because I am still sensible.)

6. Refining the crapshoot. I’ll never be perfectly accurate, but I’m MUCH better at guessing which posts will do well and which won’t.

I made success easy when I started.

I set the bar low. At first, to succeed at running the website, all I had to do was post something every day and reply to all comments. The article could be 100 words long as long as it was useful. One was 80 words long, I recall.

Once that felt easy, I gradually raised the bar. I wrote longer posts, I started creating products, I got active in forums and Twitter. But at every stage it only felt like a teeny tiny stretch.

I only did the fun stuff.

I didn’t want to optimise for SEO, so I didn’t. I never really got into Facebook, so I didn’t.

I only did the stuff I enjoyed, that felt easy, and I did it as hard as I could.

I started a new website.

When my skills, my focus and my ambitions grew past a place where this website could grow with them, I started Cash and Joy. It allowed me to build smarter, be more tightly focused and start fresh without having to try and incorporate a huge backlog.

And then I spent some time thinking about whether this website should keep going, and why.

I didn’t write any more until I had a reason to do so, and a role for the website that couldn’t work at Cash and Joy.

(Posts like these!)

The ginorminous caveat

These might not work for you.

Some I recommend to everyone – don’t use your name as a domain, have something for sale on Day One, find ways to talk with people, play around, reward the behaviours you want, only do the fun stuff, make success easy when you start.

But how you do those things, and everything else I’ve mentioned, is up for grabs.

Just try it, is all.

Have I missed any secrets you’ve observed? Tell me in the comments!

photo credit: greenchartreuse

On January 1, 2010, this website had 10 visits a day and four subscribers (including me, and my friend and first fan Cass – thanks as always, sweetie). I had completed one coaching session – free – had zero products for sale, and made exactly $0.

That long weekend I created my very first product, Website in a Weekend. (It went on sale for a gigantic $27.)

That weekend I decided to post every single day.

And now it’s a year later.

I have two websites, no Day Job, and a LOT of people who know and enjoy my work. I did it: I’m successful.

But this time last year I had NONE of the advantages people write me to tell me they wish they had.

I had no connections, audience, reach, sales, testimonials, experience.

I also had no discipline, plan, or endurance.

I was a nobody with a few good ideas.

So what changed?

None of this would have happened without me waking up at 5am one year ago today to record video with my atrocious camera before cars started driving by.

I don’t believe in the talismanic power of New Year’s Resolutions, but bet your fucking ASS I believe in the power of New Year’s Action.

So if you want something big to happen…

Whether it’s Jan 1, September 16, or Stardate 205743, you have to start taking action.

If you’re not there yet, you have to keep taking action.

I cannot possibly convince you to do this before you’re ready – it took me years to stop daydreaming and to start working.

But I can promise that not one damn thing will change until you do.

4 subscribers to a full-time business. In one year.

Thank you, Past Catherine. It was worth getting up early for.

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

If you haven’t been keeping up with the happy-haps over at Cash and Joy (and why would you miss it, I am writing kick-ass stuff there!) then you might have missed the launch of my new service: Goddamn Radiant.

You need to go read that page first. (And buy it, of course, if you want to. I’d be overjoyed to have you.) But come back to the page when you’re done.

People ask me sometimes how I write sales pages, because they like the way I do it.

So here is the first outline I wrote, the bones of that sales page. Yes, I saved it in a draft for you.

[Story]

[Caveats]

Session One: Shining from the inside out
New model
Headline
Heartline

Session Two: Light up your audience
Bestest People
Narrowing the beam

Session Three: Highlighting the path ahead
Barriers to communicating your passion
Current disharmonies

[Transformation]

[Limited numbers]

[Button]

That’s it?

Yep, that’s it.

But that’s… boring!

It sure is!

So you don’t sit on a mountain-top with enlightened herbs in your hair praying to the Mysterious Sales Page Divinities?

Nope. And what ARE enlightened herbs?

There are two layers to a sales page. Underneath is the structure, which is important – and dull.

On top is your voice, which is where things get awesome.

The structure matters in the sales page, and when you’re getting that to flow your writing will likely be dull.You’re ticking all the boxes:

• have I been clear on what this thing is?
• have I explained why they should buy it now and not in fifty years?
• have I addressed the fears that would prevent them from buying?
• have I included benefits and features?

But then you come back and give it the OOMPH of your you-ness. (I rewrote a long sales page once from dull to funny by adding a LOT of adjectives. I add stories, too.)

It’s much simpler to sexy-fy an effective sales page than it is to make an interesting one effective. Start boring, then add YOU.

Oh, and by the way… there’s a giveaway over at Cash and Joy right now to win a free Goddamn Radiant package. Check it out!

photo credit: edkohler

Yesterday I wrote an article for Cash and Joy about the biggest marketing mistake we all make. It’s one of the best articles I’ve ever written anywhere. (If that hasn’t tempted you to go read it, this article will make much less sense if you haven’t. I’ll wait.)

It’s a good thing I had a free schedule yesterday morning and I’m letting posts take their time. Because the first draft of that article sucked. So did the second. And the third.

Interestingly, the changes I made on each draft are an archaeology of myself as a writer: each layer is a lesson I’ve learned.

The first draft

Every article on Cash and Joy is a story, and this story started with you opening your store on its first day. A magical genie turned up and gave you three choices:

• work with whoever pays you, even if you dislike them
• work with people you like
• work with people who bring out the best in you

Except the genie didn’t actually turn up, so you had to go through the process the long way: by working with anyone who paid you, then arguing with yourself about whether to focus on only people you liked. (I didn’t get to the third stage, because this had already started feeling dead.)

Can you even see the bones of the current article in this mess?

I reverted back to myself as a writer from ten years ago and used two weaksauce techniques: writing in the passive voice AND the second person. (The genie tells you that you have three choices. The decision was made.)

Way to make the writing feel distant, flat and impersonal! You wouldn’t think that writing in the second person would make something feel impersonal, but you bet your sweet bippy it can. The key, sweetness, is to write it so that it clearly doesn’t feel like you. “You pull out your Glock and fire into the air screaming, “You’ll never take me alive, Magilley!” is not personal. “You are surprised” is really shithouse writing.

The second draft

Passive voice, begone! All the tell-don’t-show elements are removed, and dialogue enters stage left. Instead of describing a conversation between your head and heart, a conversation actually happens. This means I have to struggle with dialogue attribution, which I am not great at. But the writing suddenly has some energy in it.

No longer am I describing how you feel. (WEAK.) I am telling you a story. Much better, but still…

The third draft

This genie crap has to go. It doesn’t link up to my point at all. In fact, I think I need to re-write the point of this story, which started being about figuring out who your Bestest People are but is really about marketing. Title change!

Now this story needs a hero so I can be extremely specific about the details without alienating people. Second person persective, begone! Enter Kim, stage left. Kim brings a whole lot of colour and liveliness to this story. And now there’s a clearly defined arc to this story, I can add vivid details.

The fourth draft

Moral of the story time! I tweak the point again, and explore a little further outside the box. (Why do we do the crazy shit we do?) I kill a few of my darlings because they don’t support my point. I add a linking point so the story flows better.

The difference between bleh and woah-mama

I don’t know if there is one single word left from the first draft in the final one. There is a time I would have fought that, hard. I would have held out for the well-turned phrase, the justification, the interesting point.

Back then I was an entertaining writer. Nowadays I’m a powerful one.

Which are you? Tell me in the comments, dearest.

P.S. I announced a week ago that all my packages and services would be changing… about now, in fact. With the new website and the next big thing coming, I haven’t had time to do anything but announce the upgraded version of the Awesome Chat – the turbocharged new Cash and Joy Provocateurs mastermind group.

The prices and packages will keep changing over the next couple of weeks, but if you move fast you can still get them at their cheaper rates.

photo credit: openDemocracy

The wonderful, magnificent, we-love-the-shit-out-of-each-other-in-possibly-inappropriate-ways Ash Amberge from The Middle Finger Project is a champion. A fighter. A powerhouse and a dynamo. She is strong and confident and SHAZAM.

So when she writes out her vulnerable, trouble-heavy life story, where she is kicked and then kicked again by life, she’s never a victim. Never, ever. I admired her and respected her more when I finished reading it.

But what if that had been her first story, our first interaction? The first thing she’d written on her site instead of the hundredth?

Then my first reaction would not have been, “My god, Ash, you are resilient and delightful. How do you do it?”

My first reaction would have been “CRY MOAR NOOB”.

Same wonderful woman. Same stories. Totally different frame.

Start with the awesome, THEN show the cracks

If your very first post on your new website is “So I’m really new at this and this post is probably gonna suck and it’s really really hard so bear with me,” then I’m gone. Done. Buh-bye.

Impressions matter. They will colour everything that comes after them. And while it is possible to overcome a bad early impression (and thank fuck for that, she says from personal experience), most people won’t make the effort. There are plenty of other, less whiny, fish in the sea.

You better come out the gate strong. With passion, with strength, with stolen confidence, with the bravery to say, “Why hello. Yes, I am awesome. Let’s get to know each other.”

Later on you can tell me about the money problems, the anxieties, the stuff that makes you human and loveable.

But when you start, DO NOT BE PITIABLE.

BE KICK-ASS.

And if you need some help, the aforementioned Ash has a dee-lightful new resource. It’s called You Don’t Need a Job, You Need Guts. It is mind-squishingly cheap right now. Go, buy it. I won’t get paid, but I will be proud of you.