“This book (Incognito) was written over the course of a few years by several different people, all of whom were named David Eagleman, but who were somewhat different with each passing hour.” — David Eagleman

Maybe this quote resonates with me because my passions are constantly in flux. In 2009 it was work and Generation Y. In 2010 it was about re-connecting with friends and finding happiness. In 2011 it was education reform and behavioral change.

A great professor can make you passionate about a subject. Discovering you’re talented at a work task can make you excited about your job. A new contact can get you amped about any number of things.

You get the point.

Here’s some other examples:

Monica Leonelle used to be Monica O’Brien. She used to write a lot about social media. Now she could probably still help you with your digital needs if you asked nicely, but she writes urban fantasy novels.

Andy Drish used to be one of those boring corporate guys (presumably), but then he went out on his own and consults, couch surfs, snowboards and hangs out with Tony Robbins.

Andrew Norcross used to drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, have a shit ton of tattoos and build ass websites. He still drinks coffee, smokes cigarettes and has a shit ton of tattoos, but he also has one of those day job things.

Too many people put too much emphasis on finding their one true passion. These people often end up disappointed. They use it as an excuse for inaction.

I’ve found that passion has the ability to find you… often when you least expect it… provided that you’re living life, taking chances, and experimenting.

What about you? How have your passions changed in the last year? The last three years?

Ramit Sethi is getting ready to launch his dream job course.

Ordinarily leading up to their product launches I temporarily unsubscribe from even my favorite bloggers because I get tired of the ‘hard’ sell; HOWEVER, lately Ramit’s free stuff has been superior to most people’s paid products so I’ve consumed and bookmarked as much I could.

I wish I could print it out, get it bound and give it to my friends currently job searching or trying to upgrade their current job situation. More importantly, I wish they’d read it and take action.

One of the most frustrating things for me is hearing many of my friends (mid-late 20s, well-educated) complaining that they’re not getting jobs they’re passionate about.

I’ve been fortunate thus far in my (short) career to find work I’m passionate about doing, but I’m not an expert. Ramit is.

Here’s two good quotes on passion from Ramit that I wish I would’ve wrote:

Ramit On Passiveness:

Most of us approach our passions in a passive way. After all, we don’t know any other way. We go through school, taking classes someone else prescribes for us, doing the same 5 activities, passing the tests, getting decent grades, and then we’re thrust into the real world. The only thing is, there are no “grades” in real life, and there are infinite paths we could take.

It’s no wonder we’re bad at finding our passion. Nobody taught us how to make conscious, strategic choices — sometimes unpopular choices. Instead, at every step, we were encouraged to take the safe, prescribed route.

Look, nobody expects you to have found your passion at 25, or 30, or even 35 — but I do expect you to be taking micro-steps to discover it. When you use phrases like “I want to find something I love,” you’re betraying yourself: Instead of actively seeking out what you’d love to do, you’re waiting for your passion to somehow magically fall from the sky.

Forget for a second how modern-day education teaches that mediocre obedience is the key to success. Cowards point the finger and assign blame, but high performers actively (and strategically) acquire more skills and seek to learn more about themselves.

How many people do you know who went to law school just because they didn’t know the hell they wanted to do when they graduated? What steps are you taking today to discover your own passion(s)?

Ramit On Finding Your Passion:

Most of us operate with the Invisible Script that we’re waiting for our passion to somehow materialize. That’s why we use code words like “I need to find…” and “I really want to…” instead of the words that top performers use: “I’m so excited about ___” and “I don’t know if this is what I’ll do forever, but right now I’m learning a ton.”

I have a different view of passion. It’s a messy, circuitous process. You have to dig through cobwebs and explore a kaleidoscope of patterns, getting your hands dirty in the process of discovery. It’s like shopping at Ross.

Compare this to the dainty idea most of us have of waiting under a parasol for the rain clouds to clear and a ray of passion to warm our bodies. Not gonna happen.

I love this because, like so many other things we try to categorize and nail-down, passion is fluid. One day you’re passionate about photography. Years later you’re burned out and you’re passionate about running, or cooking, or landscaping.

Your passions are going to change so find something that makes you happy right now (or involves doing some tasks that you’ll acquire energy from) and do the best you can at that until you’re ready for the next logical progression.

Stop looking for the all-encompassing job that meets all the criteria you’ve set forth in those imaginary check boxes. It doesn’t work for significant others and it won’t work for a job.

Have you found a job you’re passionate about? If so, how did you go about acquiring that job? What percentage of the tasks you do on a daily basis align with your passions? What advice would you give to someone trying to find their passion? A job that they’re passionate about?

If you’re doing important work, work that matters, stress is inevitable. No matter how cool, calm and collective you are invariably there will be days where your workload, deadlines, work-life balance, etc. gets all up around you.

You can hyperventilate and complain all day or you can take a deep breath and leverage these 5 ways to de-stress in the office.

1.) Attack the Most Impactful Work First

Your projects aren’t going to complete themselves. Most of us breathe a sigh of relief when we mark something off of our to-do lists so determine what will add the most value to your company, your life, etc. and do that today.

Big projects are intimidating. It’s easy to get paralyzed by fear or overwhelmed by a big project. Break it into manageable tasks and complete one each day.

2.) Put Things in Perspective

You have a job. A lot of people don’t. But seriously, what is your worst case scenario? There’s a lot of people less fortunate than you and it’s often helpful to remember that.

3.) Cut up with a Co-Worker

“People with one friend at work are much more likely to find their work interesting. And people with three friends at work are virtually guaranteed to be very satisfied with their life,” writes Penelope Trunk citing Tom Rath’s book Vital Friends.

The ‘woe is me’ approach gets old really fast, but good co-workers will let you get it off your chest for a few minutes. Especially if you buy them a drink after work. And if you’re having trouble making friends at work here’s 6 ways to build better relationships with your co-workers.

4.) Take Lunch *Away* From Your Desk

(via @KerryGuard)

For at least a half hour everyday escape your office/desk/cube. Some days you feel like there’s no time, but I assure you that a half hour to break up the day goes a long way in preventing burn out. I used to take a quick drive to a parking lot and eat on my tailgate. Now I find a quiet place and read a bit while I eat.

5.) Step Away From Your Desk and Take a Walk

(via @JasMollica)

This is one of the most common recommendations, most likely because it’s simple and works for most people. Sometimes you just need 5-10 minutes to realign and catch your breath. Go get a honey bun or some hot Cheetos out of the vending machine. Call your Mom. Walk outside and watch a squirrel.

It really doesn’t matter what you do. If you get stuck or overwhelmed, don’t try to push through. Allow yourself a few minutes to get your feet underneath you. You’re not being productive when you’re flustered anyway. Work in surges when you’re at peak efficiency.

What about you? What tactics to do you employ when you’re stressed at the office? What about people that work from home? What do you do differently?

Fellow neuroscientists might claim that this book is derivative and vague, but David Eagleman’s “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain“is not written for them – it’s written for the layman.

And while the first few chapters might feel a little dense, the book builds momentum as Eagleman begins to tie the ideas together in later chapters.

Here’s some of my highlights from the book.

On how your brain interrogates the world:

Brains reach out into the world and actively extract the type of information they need. The brain does not need to see everything at once. it does not need to store everything internally; it only needs to know where to go find the information.

When getting a friend to solve a problem:

Flip a coin. If they feel a subtle sense of relief at being “told” what to do by the coin, that’s the right choice for her. If, instead, they conclude that it’s ludicrous for them to make a decision based on a coin toss, that will cue her to choose the other option.

On the democracy of your mind:

There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in your brain, each competing to control the single output channel of your behavior.

On the two-party system: reason and emotion:

The brain contains two separate systems: one is fast, automatic, and below the surface of conscious awareness, while the other is slow, cognitive, and conscious. The first system can be labeled automatic, implicit, heuristic, intuitive, holistic, reactive, and impulsive, while the second system is cognitive, systematic, explicit, analytic, rule-based, and reflective. These two processes are always battling it out.

On the *best* way to solve a problem:

The team-of-rivals framework suggests that the best approach is to abandon the question “What’s the most clever way to solve that problem?” in favor of “Are there multiple, overlapping ways to solve that problem?”

On intuition vs. numbers:

When you compare the predictive power of the actuarial approach to that of the parole boards and psychiatrists, there is no contest: numbers win over intuitions.

As it stands now, ugly people receive longer sentences than attractive people; psychiatrists have no capacity to guess which sex offenders will reoffend; and our prisons are overcrowded with drug addicts who could be more usefully dealt with by rehabilitation rather than incarceration. So is current sentencing really better than a scientific, evidence-based approach?

On appropriate punishments:

The concept and word to replace blameworthiness is modifiability, a foward-looking term that asks, What can we do from here? Is rehabilitation available? If so, great. If not, will the punishment of a prison sentence modify future behavior? If so, send him to prison. If punishment won’t help, then take the person under state control for the purposes of incapacitation, not retribution.

Maybe at first glance this book doesn’t have much to do with business or marketing, but what better way to tap into the mind of your customer than learning more about the circuitry of their brain.

And just how much value would understanding your own brain provide you in your job search? Education? Career? Relationships?

I’m going to try and stimy my own desire for re-tweets and comments in 2012 by straying away from the social media 101 type-posts and focus on creating higher quality stimuli.

What books are you reading in 2012 that will make you think? What should I add to my reading list?

“Enterprise Social Technology” is a book that flew under the radar in 2011.

The book aims to be “a how-to manual that will teach you a process for implementing social technology in its most powerful form.” It wants to give you and your organization a leg up on leveraging social media, social networking and social relevance to change how your business operates and give you a leg up on the competition.

And I genuinely feel like it does just that. There’s 12 steps (chapters) in the book and I’m confident that if you read and take action on each step your organization will be more social and better off as a result.

Here are some things I especially appreciated:

• The emphasis on ensuring social tech goals are intertwined with your organizations’ overall goals and that social tech isn’t a magic bullet
• Building a cross-discipline team approach and ensuring each team member has specific responsibilities they’re held accountable for
• The notion that policy documents should be updated every 6 months or so in such a fast-paced and fluid environment
• Embedding sales professionals into online communities where socially facilitated selling can enhance a company’s profitability
• Establishing measurement baselines, measuring results and then comparing results to overall business objectives while continuously adapting accordingly. I also like the idea of creating and sharing a metrics dashboard organization-wide.
• The importance of pilot projects and the application of consequential thinking during the development of said projects.
• The “key points” at the end of each chapter. This makes it very easy to go back and review the over-arching points when you actively try to implement the book’s advice.
• A fair amount of relevant case studies littered throughout.

And a few things I didn’t love:

• The fact that this book was crowd-sourced (different authors wrote each chapter) likely ensured that the book got finished quicker than an ordinary one-author book and it enabled the reader to get some different perspectives from various professionals. However, I do think at times it hurt the continuity of the book, created a bit overlap (not to be confused with reinforcement of key ideas) and some chapters were definitely stronger than others.
• I believe that there are some limitations to crowd-sourcing, especially for bigger companies and organizations and I wish some of those concerns would’ve been disputed or at least mentioned.
• The ROI chapter had some solid takeaways (see above), but not all measurement is ROI and I think the author of that chapter could’ve benefited from Olivier Blanchard’s Basics of Social Media ROI presentation.

Bottom Line: An underrated guidebook for implementing social technology in your organization and a resource that you can come back to after the initial reading.

Disclaimer: The following post is self-indulgent. Most end of the year round-up posts are. Despite that fact, I felt like this was a good way to pay respect to the work that went into this year and to provide a review of content you may have missed (or have never seen before). Should you decide to keep reading, I hope that it will give you a foundation for where we’re headed in 2012.

Last January I wrote that I wanted 2011 to be about you. It wasn’t.

I wrote that I wanted to read 52 books. I read 27. I only reviewed 3.

I wanted to write more posts and ship a couple of projects. I wrote 47 posts this year, and only 5 after after July. I didn’t ship either project.

And yet 2011 was one of the best years of my life. It was *easily* the best of my professional career.

• I fell more in love with a job that affords me the opportunity to leverage social technologies and my knowledge of integrated digital strategies to market the nation’s #1 ranked cancer hospital while simultaneously broadening my overall marketing knowledge and picking up skills like video editing along the way.
• I spent a lot of time with my buddies drinking cold beers, listening to live music, hanging out by the pool, grilling, dancing, and watching sports.
• I visited with my family. At least one of my parents every day. I grew even closer to my sister. I absorbed lots of wisdom from my grandparents.
• I found an incredible woman who somehow puts up with me despite my desire to frequently say and do things that are “in the box.” (Notice where the post volume started dropping off…)
• I spoke at a really cool online conference to some very intelligent people.
• I stimulated my mind and body almost daily. (Which included running my first half w/ no competition, just for fun in 1:49).
• I started saying “no” more often and I stopped doing things I wasn’t intensely passionate about.

What You May Have Missed in 2011:
22 Key Mentoring Messages – Mentorship is a great way of growing and progressing your career. This post features some awesome insights from my organization’s C-suite the basics of mentorship, embedding it into your organization’s culture, approachability and more.

Reasons Your Employees Are Running for the Door – It amazes me how many organizations don’t “get” why their turnover is so high. Here’s 8 reasons that shouldn’t surprise you. And here’s me angrily ranting after a I read a tweet an executive sent about all her employees getting poached.

American Education: You Deserve Better – One of my favorite posts from 2011. I genuinely believe that modern day education is severely broken and this post details the change I’d like to see. Some people smarter than me chimed in as well. And here are some resources that initially sparked the discussion.

Carving Your Own Path – Carving your own path isn’t easy. You will have to think for yourself. You will invariably call attention to yourself. People will hate you if you’re successful. This is why most people yearn to be led. This is why most people spend their entire lives following.

Forget Social Media – There’s significantly more noise than ever before. Trying to keep up with all of it and be everything to everyone is a waste of time. It’s just fear manifesting itself through excuses and procrastination and we’re all guilty of it.

Why Being a Thought Leader is Boring – This post totally contradicts the predominant advice that you should try to be an expert in one, narrow niche. While many people successfully employ this strategy, I think it’s boring as hell and this post attempts to explain why I’d rather be well-versed on a variety of topics.

I Probably Un-Friended You Last Night – There’s so much noise, so many things to keep us utterly distracted from the things that really matter why do we insist on validating ourselves with excess “friends” who’s status updates we’re totally indifferent to? It’s time to de-friend those that no longer add value to your lives.

3 Things the C-Level Still Doesn’t Get About Social Media – This title is pretty self explanatory. And 6 months later I think all of these still hold true at most organizations.

Life is Adversarial Enough… – Don’t test people just to display your authority. Most of us (young professionals) inherently know that in the scheme of things we’ve accomplished jack shit. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to. That doesn’t mean that it’s not really hard to balance our desire to climb with the gentle reminder that patience is a virtue.

The Easiest Way to Evaluate Most Tasks – Time, not money, is my most coveted resource; therefore, I get really annoyed when my time is wasted. Here’s the strategy I employ to ensure I’m balancing the execution of a project vs. the resources (time + money) used.

Forget the Dream Job, Take the Money & Run – I don’t necessarily believe this (as evidenced by my career path), but the notion certainly challenges the status quo and I think it’s an idea that warrants some thought, especially if you’re still in college.

Creating Higher Quality Stimuli – Reading things that challenge the status quo and/or oppose my own core values/belief system/internal dialogue require me to re-evaluate where I stand on these issues. More importantly instead of just saying “That’s outlandish,” or nodding my head in quiet agreement, I’m forced into the process of absorbing a multitude of information, evaluating that information, and then evaluating what I think based on that information. I recommend you start doing the same more often.

Disruptive Social Technologies: How Your Organization is Missing the Boat – I wrote a lot about topics that go far beyond business/marketing/social media this year, but here’s one that doesn’t. I think it serves as a good reminder that more organizations need to use social technologies for tasks such as cross functional information sharing and internal networking.

If you’re a glutton for punishment here’s My Top 10 Posts of 2010.

I haven’t thought too much about where this blog is headed in 2012, but I encourage you to:

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I recently attended our organization’s first town hall meeting under the tutelage of our new president. He spoke about the recent confluence of transformative identities and disruptive technologies that have come together over the last couple of years, leading him to believe that we will cure several major cancers in his lifetime.

I’m hopeful that I am a part of a place that can leverage new computational firepower, quantitative analysis of bio-specimens, and disruptive genome technologies to advance existing paradigms and cure this awful disease.

Your Organization Doesn’t Get It… Yet.

But in the interim, I’m rather dumbfounded and annoyed that more organizations aren’t leveraging disruptive technologies to enhance the way they communicate, organize and operate their businesses.

Even now, after all the hoopla around “social” has died down (a bit) and we know so much more, companies are still insistent about “integrating some of that social media stuff into our marketing.” Never mind leveraging disruptive social technologies to enhance business intelligence by listening to customers (patients in health care), conducting market research, solidifying customer service, managing a community and more.

I get it. I really do. I understand that your organization is big, siloed, doesn’t get social and so on and so forth. I also understand that most people don’t like change. Change is hard.

The Opportunities are Endless

But in a world where disruptive technologies give us the ability to potentially cure cancer, why can’t we leverage digital/social solutions to put an end to pointless meetings, collaborate across teams, dissipate important news or information, etc.?

Top-down hierarchical institutions wont always be the norm and the power of open source projects is becoming increasingly evident. Rule-followers and drones might keep their mouths shut and do what they’re told, but the industrial revolution is over and those people don’t impact meaningful change anymore.

Linchpins who ask hard questions, challenge the status quo, and demand to be pushed outside the comfort zone do. How do we scale the work that they do – the value they bring to the institution? How do we share it? How do we leverage it?

Oh, You Want Some Examples?

• Cross functional information sharing – What if there was an easy way for front line people to communicate issues to upper management, and then for upper management to share noteworthy changes to the PR/Marketing department?
• Increased Office Efficiency – What if instead of an hour long status meetings (# of people in meeting x how long meeting lasts) where people go around in a circle and say what they’re working on there’s a sharepoint employees keep updated where others can go and see what projects are relevant to them?
• Internal Networking – Most companies organize employees in such a way that all the account executives sit together, the creative sits together, the IT sits together. What if there were internal forums where employees could bond not just over their job description, but other things that interest them. Wouldn’t something like that unlock new collaborations and opportunities to learn and become more well-rounded employees?

How about?

• Increasing internal brand awareness
• Idea generation (brainstorming via Google docs anyone!?)
• Facilitating the spread of research, insights, etc. and making the information more accessible

The list goes on. And on.

What’s Next?

As we gradually come to understand how disruptive social technologies can enhance our own internal communications perhaps we’ll see forward thinking organizations take it a step further. Can you imagine MD Anderson, Mayo Clinic and Memorial Sloan-Kettering all leveraging these disruptive social technologies to enable their respective physicians, physicists, geneticists and more to collaborate with the other institutions in an effort to cure cancer?

The future is now. Don’t let your organization fall behind.

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If you’re looking for a step-by-step blueprint to becoming an entrepreneur, I encourage you to look elsewhere, but if you think entrepreneurship might be for you and that you just need a kick in the pants then Ryan Blair’s mind-set and philosophies are a fairly solid place to start.

There are chapters that move faster than others; I personally got a little bogged down in the middle of the book, but there are certainly some good nuggets to extract.

For example:

• Ryan’s whole approach that you have to work your ass off, never give up, and that you’re going to be okay — it could always be worse.
• I love that he dispels the notion that entrepreneurship is something you obtain and put on auto-pilot by explaining most entrepreneurs work longer and harder, but don’t drain as easily because they love what they’re doing.
• The emphasis on taking action and breaking down complex tasks into smaller, more manageable tasks and starting immediately.
• The notion that you should never bring a problem to your boss/manager/leadership without a recommended solution or two.
• Identifying your primary driver for becoming an entrepreneur: independence, wealth, recognition or contribution.
• How to evaluate just how risk averse you are — Entrepreneurship isn’t for the weak of heart.

But there are also some things that I didn’t particularly like:

• I found Ryan’s personal story compelling and inspirational, but there were also instances in the book when I felt like he was being pretty self-indulgent and simplifying the whole “anyone can do it” mantra.
• I also really disliked the strong emphasis on raising venture capital and using other people’s money as a way to spread the risk. Often this might be necessary (and in Ryan’s defense it was the way that worked for him), but I would’ve liked to see more of a balance between bootstrapping vs. venture funding.

Bottom Line: I think this book teeters a bit between memoir and business blueprint and as a result falls a little short from both vantage points. If you read a lot of books then by all means pick it up and enjoy a relatively compelling story with some solid (though probably somewhat obvious to more seasoned entrepreneurs) tidbits, but if you only read a handful of books a year there are other, more comprehensive solutions out there with respect to entrepreneurship.

The following is a guest post from Mitch O’Connor.

The Internet has often been described as the “wild west” of technology – it’s exciting, constantly changing, and there are loads of opportunities. But there’s the complicated side of the wild west as well – vague regulations, little enforcement, and morally questionable practices. A divisive issue that’s at the heart of this metaphor is Internet anonymity. Proponents claim that the Internet is one of the last places where people can express truly unfiltered freedom of speech. Opposers of Internet anonymity claim that it can lead to crime and deception, and indeed, people do tend to lie more on the Internet than in person.

Social media is changing the game of course, and a lot of discussion is going to be had about Internet anonymity in the coming years. However, proponent or not, one thing is clear – anonymity removes accountability, which can lead to dirty sales practices. You might think you can get away with these tactics because people can never trace them back to you personally – and you’d be right for the most part. But the image of your company or website will suffer, and the temporary increase in sales caused by those dirty tactics won’t make up for the long-term damage that they can do.

#1 – False Reviews

This might be the easiest dirty sales tactic to succumb to. It’s incredibly simple to create a review of a product yourself and post that review as somebody else. People have been known to do this on sites such as Amazon, ConsumerSearch, CitySearch, Yelp, Epinions, Customer Lobby, TripAdvisor, and any other site that allows users to post their own reviews of products or services. Certain sites make this process even more attractive. For example, you could probably go on Fiverr or Craigslist right now and see an ad for a writer willing to create a positive review of your product for a small fee. Again, Internet anonymity will allow you to get away with this.

However, people are becoming more and more aware of bad reviews and fake customer testimonials. Reviews that sound overly salesy or that stick out (i.e. one ecstatic review among hundreds of bad ones) will be a red flag for any discerning Internet user. Researchers at Cornell University have even developed software for developing fake reviews. Not only will you lose the trust of your customers, but if you live in the E.U., you could eventually face legal action.

#2 – Bait and Switch

Remember how annoying being Rickrolled was? Maybe this never happened to you – basically somebody would send you a link to a video, telling you that it was something important. Then the link pointed to the YouTube clip for singer Rick Astely’s 1987 “hit” Never Gonna Give You Up. Sadly, some companies do this to their customers – promise them one thing then give them something else.

For example, consider a possible affiliate link like this:

Infant costumes at Halloween express

An affiliate would probably host this link because they realized that “infant Halloween costumes” was a popular keyword phrase. However, if he or she decides to use that popularity to point the user to other things, they’ve just pulled a bait and switch. If this link led to adult costumes, Halloween decorations, or something completely unrelated, ask yourself – would you consider buying from Halloween Express or its affiliates? Your visitors won’t either. Not to mention, certain types of bait and switch can get you in trouble with the FTC.

#3 – Excessive Popups

This tactic isn’t necessarily “dirty,” but you’ll definitely lose some credibility if you use too many popups. While it’s true that popups can be very useful for getting email subscribers, they’re undoubtedly annoying when excessively used as a sales technique. In fact, the Psychology Department at North Carolina State University once conducted a study where over half of the participating college students quickly closed popups regardless of what they say. Also, don’t forget the fact that you can’t place Google ads on sites that have more than three popups. And don’t even think about using popups as a bait and switch.

#4 – Deceptive Banners

In an effort to fight against “banner blindness,” some webmasters like to place flashy banner ads next to their affiliate advertisements. The problem here is that they look spammy and untrustworthy – probably because the majority of them are. Banners that claim visitors are the “one millionth!” or that look like Windows alerts completing a download are often blatantly false advertising. A rarely used (but just as damaging) technique involves using banners that look like links to popular sites such as YouTube or Facebook. If you’re doing this, you’re essentially creating something along these lines:

#5 – Bad Emails

Call it “unsolicited bulk email” if you will, but spam is still widely used as a sales technique. In order to avoid possible violations of your ISP regulations, fraud allegations, and a bad reputation in general, just avoid this practice altogether. Generating an organic, targeted email list takes time, but it’s not impossible. Forgo the quick tricks to get real customers.

Another aspect of the “bad email” game involves the overuse of auto-responders. Even if you have a dedicated email list, you don’t want to send your customers a barrage of auto-sent offers. This depersonalizes your business and is generally annoying.

About the Author: Mitch O’Conner is an online marketer and writer. When he’s not building sites, generating traffic or writing content, he enjoys spending time with his wife and kids, watching TV, playing games and camping.

On October 15 at 10:00pm CST I will be speaking at PajamaConf, and by speaking at… I mean virtually from the comfort of my home office. Fine, I don’t have a home office. Also, there’s a reason I’m speaking so late… We’ll get to that momentarily. First a little about the conference from the website:

On Oct 15 & 16, passionate entrepreneurs, doer, and starters will converge online to teach you from their personal experience. Learn tactics for conquering fear, learning from failure, writing simply and effectively, and becoming more persuasive — all while staying in your pajamas

The bottom line is that there are a lot of smart people speaking and you absolutely cannot beat the $10 price tag. (Register Here)

Now, back to why I’m speaking at 10:00pm CST. If you attend my session, I’m encouraging you to have a couple of glasses of your poison of choice before our workshop. It’ll help put you in the right frame of mind AND potentially make me more interesting to listen to.

My topic is, “A Few Beers Deep: How to Overcome Fear & Complacency by Approaching ALMOST Everything You Do as if You Had a Nice Buzz”

Some of the things we’ll explore are:

• Exploring worst case scenarios
• Taking the “right” risks
• Reframing to leverage the little steps

Also – I’ll share some personal examples where I’ve used this strategy and it has led to some really amazing professional opportunities. Finally, I’ll reserve more than half the time just to answer questions and have a candid discussion with everyone about anything related to overcoming fear & the art of persuasion as it relates to entrepreneurship.

What other things would you like to learn about? What fears do you want to overcome? What’s your biggest hurdle with respect to entrepreneurship? Let me know in the comments and I’ll randomly select two people to receive a free ticket to the conference.