A quick check-in from my bike trip (pictures below). We’re riding from Mysore all the way up along the coast to Bombay over the next few days, where we’ll meet Phoebe who has taken a plane. It’s one of the last experiences I’ll get here before we leave India, so I’m enjoying every second of it, despite getting plenty drenched by the monsoon. (And trying to get the hotel to iron dry my jeans is a challenge. They’re now completely without wrinkles, but not all that dry. And forget about the shoes. Dry socks into wet shoes sounds nice, anyone?)

I wanted to share a story about the importance of taking home your authority over your life and business. Something that I for one have had to learn over and over again.

When I created my first software product, PublicSquare, I was so enamored by 37signals, I tried to emulate them in every way, from partnering with a designer who was well connected to the US tech ecosystem, to the look & feel of the user interface.

It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that it didn’t work out so well.

Later, when I got into info-marketing, I tried to study all the teachers I saw there. I immediately discovered that Dan Kennedy seemed to be the guy teaching all the other guys, so i “swam upstream” and hooked up with his stuff. He’s an interesting character. He’s not that old, in his 50s, I think, but he looks so much older. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I went to his events, and bought the biggest package he had – called “The Whole Enchilada”. Every info-product he has available, in one big package. I forget the exact price, but I think it was around $16,000.

I still remember the day it arrived. The mailman showed up with 3 big boxes full of manuals and CDs and DVDs. All this stuff. It was both exhilarating, terrifying, and slightly embarrassing. Exhilarating because there was all this good stuff buried inside her. Terrifying because it was a lot of money to spend, and what if it’s not worth it. Embarrassing because … well, there goes that authority thing again: What would people think of me?

I devoured it, studied his every word. I even started to speak like Dan Kennedy, to crack his kind of jokes. And I did learn a ton. But I also managed to sidestep my own judgment in the process. There are so many things that Dan Kennedy teaches that I strongly disagree with. His level of consciousness, for one. His view on employees, for another. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things I can learn, it just means there’s a few things Dan could learn from me, too. And that’s how it should be, of course.

Today, all those manuals and DVDs are mostly collecting dust in my Dad’s attic. I ripped all of the DVDs and CDs and have them with me on a hard drive, and I listen to some of it sometimes (his “Personality in copy” presentation is absolutely fabulous), but mostly I’m done with Dan.

When zenbilling really started to happen for me was when I really grew into my own. I found my own style in designing and creating software. I found my own style in servicing my customers. I found my own style in marketing.

The things I’ve learned are now internalized, and I can focus on asking myself how I want to do things. What’s my take on a mailing list system or a landing page? What’s my take on how to interact with and support customers? What’s my take on marketing?

There are no rules in this game. If you’re following other people’s rules, then you’re not creating your own thing. Learn from others, yes, but always ask yourself, what’s your take on it?

Now, the trick here is to not delude yourself. You will run into situations where “this is not my style” is just another way of saying “I’m afraid of doing this, and I’d rather stay stuck than face my fear”.

That’s when you need a good coach, a good mirror, who can lovingly see through your bullshit, and see the fear or emotion that’s lurking underneath. No shame, though. We all bullshit ourselves. It’s part of being human.

But slavishly following other people’s formulas is tantamount to saying “I don’t have it in me to find my own answers”. And that, my friend, is the biggest bullshit of them all.

Because you do. You’ve just forgotten.

Join my Mastermind Coaching Program, and let’s remember together.

Love,
-Calvin

PS. If you have any questions about it, email me. Just hit reply to this email, I read and respond to every single email I receive.

PPS. A few photos from my bike trip. Yesterday we were off to a late start (4pm) but still managed to drive the 250km  from Mysore to Mangalore on the coast. Today we’ll try and reach Goa. It should be about 400km in around 12 hours. So we better get going.

First up, we met a snake on the road. Hello, snake!!

Before that, we saw this beautiful mountain fog in Madikeri:

Then, after we’d been riding on really bad roads (like, really bad, like I don’t know how you’d even go about making roads that bad, even if you tried, hard), our tires had lost a lot of pressure. Thankfully, this tiny restaurant knew how to restore it.

According to TechCrunch, jobs are going away, and they’re not coming back.

Sounds about right to me. This speech by Seth Godin 3 years ago made a huge impression on me. In it he explains how jobs are a relatively new invention necessitated by the invention of the steam engine, which required people to man it. The idea of a job was alien to people. The conversation went something like this:

“Why would I go to a dark and dirty room for 10 hours a day and do grueling work in blistering heat?”

“For money”

“Money? What do I need that for?”

“So you can buy things?”

“Which things? I have everything I need.”

“We’ll invent some thing for you to buy and then your neighbors will buy them and then you’ll feel like you have to as well. And we’ll invent shopping malls and Sunday shopping as a leisure activity. And we’ll invent debt so you can buy things that you can’t afford and now you have to work to avoid losing those things.”

“Hmm…” 

“Oh, and we’ll have a cart full of gin going around the factory for free consumption so you can be drunk all day, at our expense.”

“Now you’re talking!”

I believe we are on a path towards the disintegration of the idea of a job. Look at how much taking a job involves disowning your power to create your own life. You’re giving up a huge chunk of your life in return for money and the illusion of security.

Here in India there are five shirt-iron-shops within spitting distance of my house. Granted, that’s not very innovative. But at least these people have come up with something they can do to make a living that doesn’t require anyone else to benevolently grant them anything. They’re free to come up with innovative ways to raise their incomes by doing better marketing or making a better offer or giving better service. They’re free to not do anything, too, or even to fuck up and watch their market disappear. In other words, they’re in the game, and the stakes are real.

I think we’re going to see much more of that. Individuals and small groups of people teaming up, taking control of their own destinies, and taking up the divine pursuit of discovering how they can best make a difference in other people’s lives that they’re willing to fork over the greenback for.

And that is as it should be. It’s not going to be painless, but it’s going to be liberating. And we need liberation of human potential on a massive scale.

Funny story. When I first came to India, I thought it was such a spiritual, enlightened place. And yes, there is a rich and deep history here. Yoga, ayurveda, Vivekananda, Yogananda, Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali, and all the rest of it. But day to day, the general population around here is not all that conscious.

I spoke with Gay Hendricks about this a couple days ago, and he quoted Osho, the big Indian guru, as saying: “Most Indians, if they came face-to-face with God, would ask for a new BMW.” My experience exactly!

Across the street from us lives a man with a son and a dog. He beats both his son and his dog with a stick. And his son, of course, also beats the dog. Hey, a son wants to be like his daddy, right? So it’s no wonder that the poor creature – who was a puppy when we moved in – is so filled with fear and anxiety it starts to whine and wimper about and pee anxiously all over the place as soon as anyone gets near it. And since we were shooting this video in front of the house, you can hear the dog. Sorry. 

Actually, this was the third take. During the first two, we had all the kids from the street watching, people starting their old broken scooters (takes like 8 attempts and makes an awful lot of noise), talking loud on the phone, and whatnot. The soundscape around here is incredible. The third shot was the best. Try not to be too distracted.

BUT! If you make it past the whining dog, you will win a big prize, namely the Tracer Bullet Method™.

The Tracer Bullet Method is my most popular strategy of all. It’s what has made me produce a whole software package competing with much bigger companies all by myself. And it’s what has made me break through to a whole new level time and time again. And it will do the same for you.

So watch the Tracer Bullet Method now.

Please share in the comments and share with your friends. You’ll have my eternal love in return.

Love,
-Calvin

When you experience a truly inspired success, you can’t be sure you fully understand what made you successful, even though you really want to understand why, so you can replicate it. So the danger is being too certain about what that reason was.

I personally believe Google is one such case. They don’t fully understand what made them so tremendously successful in the first place, and thus they’ve having trouble replicating that incredible success in any new field.

Pixar president Ed Catmull is someone who seems to give these things a lot of thought, and I love his take on it in this interview, as captured by Scott Berkun:

“We’ve got these successful things going on and we mis-perceive how we got there. Or who the influences are. And we draw these wrong ideas and we then make a series of mistakes which are not well grounded in reality. Which means the things that are happening now that are wrong at Pixar are already happening and I can’t see them. And I have to start with that premise. And through all the history.. there is something going on here and I don’t know what it is.”

Love this take. It’s humble. It’s open. It’s full of wonder.

Often times, the questions are much more important than the answers.

The other day I was lifting this jug of water and there was more in it than I thought, so I lifted with too little force, and water spilled. It made me stand in awe of just how intelligent the human body is.

We’ve all done this, lifting something we thought was going to be more heavy or less heavy. Our body instantly evaluates the weight of the object, based on the size, material, our history with it (did we just fill the jug?), and so many other factors, and uses the correct strength. Most of the time. Imagine trying to build a robot to replicate that.

And that’s just a small sample. I remember studying computer vision back in college. Just the processing that needs to happen when you walk to make it seem like the world isn’t bumping up and down is amazing.

Cherish your humanness. It’s quite incredible.

Came across this (common) phrase in the cease-and-desist letter sent by the New York Times to (aptly named) developer Cody Brown:

If the video has not been taken down within three (3) business days of the receipt of this letter, we will have no choice but to pursue all available legal remedies.

Key words: “We will have no choice”.

It’s a common thing to say, both in legalese like this, and in everyday conversation.

But it’s bullshit.

Of course they have a choice!

They can choose which legal remedies they pursue, they can pursue none. Of course those choices have consequences, and they may not like those consequences and so they choose the option with the best likely consequences for them. But it’s still a choice. Saying otherwise is a lie.

It’s like Louis CK said the other day (in the New York Times, no less) about people saying they were forced to apologize:

How did somebody make you apologize? Did they literally hit you on your body?

So how will they have no other choice? Will the be hit on their body or put in jail for the rest of their lives if they don’t? (And even if so, it would still be a choice.)

And why is it that the authors in this case feel a need to lie?

Probably because they know they have the choice of not being as aggressive legally, and they’re not willing to own it. So they play the victim card. “We really have no choice in the matter. We’re just victims of the circumstances. It hurts us as much as it hurts you.”

But you can’t have it both ways.

Be aggressive and own it. Or be reasonable and own that.

I’m not saying that the New York Times shouldn’t pursue all available legal options. Just don’t lie about their choice in the matter.

Not fully owning our choices saps our energy. Fully owning every choice gives us strength and power and integrity.

Yesterday, our house ran out of water. I guess the public water supply has run out of water a while ago, but every decent house has its own underground water tank to even out the shortfalls in the public supply. Only this time the drought was so serious we ran out.

So what do you do? You call someone and ask them to come with a tankful of water. And so we did.

Thankfully it wasn’t all that expensive.

Later that day, our maid’s husband was cutting the grass, indian style, sitting on the ground with scissors. No lawn mower here. I had to snap a photo.

I’ve been saying this for decades: Every single time a clinical trial is done, scientific proof happens that the we can heal ourselves, that the mind can heal the body. Why? Because that is exactly what the placebo effect is, and that’s what every pharmaceutical product has to beat in order to be allowed on the market. And the reason it has to beat it, is that the placebo effect is very very real and very effective.

So the obvious response would be to do a ton more research into the placebo effect. How does it work? Can we harness it for healing? Can we perhaps get so good at using the placebo effect we don’t need the drugs and the surgery and the side-effects and the expensive procedures?

But that doesn’t happen, of course, because there’s very little money in that. There’s money in peddling expensive drugs.

So naturally I’m extremely delighted to see that there are doctors out there, who are doing research in this.

Watch Gabby Bernstein interview doctor Lissa Rankin over at her blog.

The Mountain of fear is that thing that lies between us and our dreams. If you’re not living the life you dream of, the Mountain of Fear is the reason why.

Learn more about the Mountain of Fear in this video I’ve recorded. People have said they can feel the Mountain of Fear getting smaller just from listening in.

Go watch it now

Inspiring interview with Louis CK in the New York Times:

Last season was the first time I sat down and wrote the whole thing. When I wrote the Parker Posey stuff, it was really verbose and long, and I was like, “This is supposed to be one episode.” So I wrote a card that says, “This can be anything you want,” and it sat on my desk the rest of the season. Once I got to that, I was like, “Hey, telling longer stories, that’s fun.”

Isn’t that just a great sign to have sitting on your desk? “This can be anything you want.”

When creating a product or a business, why not remind ourselves that this product, this business, can be anything we want it to be. Heck, even this life can be anything you want. Why make it the way others do it, why make it the way you’ve been taught, why do it the way it’s typically done.

This can be anything you want.

Bam!

More gold in that interview:

I don’t think you should ever say anything that you’re going to have to apologize for later. If the heat gets hot, just let them get mad. How did somebody make you apologize? Did they literally hit you on your body? Let them be upset. It’s not the worst thing in the world. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be a pauper. It’s a desperate thing to need everybody to be really happy with everything you say. To me the way to manage is not to have 50 versions of yourself — I do this thing, and the next time you’re going to hear me is the next time I do another one. As soon as you crack your knuckles and open up a comments page, you just canceled your subscription to being a good person.

People have an infinite capacity for and desire to feeling offended. I once did a very un-scientific survey of the stories in the media, cataloging them by the emotion they were designed to evoke. Feelings of being offended or outraged were a clear number one. When we feel offended, we get to feel better than other people, and we don’t have to deal with our own shortcomings or what we have failed to do with our own lives. It’s a very powerful emotion.

My take has always been: If thats’ what they so desire, then give it to them. You’re only doing them a favor by giving them something to feel offended about.

Clearly that’s easier said than done, but I love Louis’ take: “Did they literally hit you on your body?”

And finally, this exchange:

Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special and your tour can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that you do?

Why do you think those people don’t have the same resources that I have, the same visibility or relationship? What’s different between me and them?

You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.

So why do I have the platform and the recognition?

At this point you’ve put in the time.

There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

Give it a minute!

(Via Callie Oettinger on Steven Pressfield’s blog.)