Yes, it’s a guest post! My friend and all-around wise dude Charlie Gilkey graciously offered me this guest post as a way to rouse Remarkable Communication gently from its slumber.

This is the second part of the How To Blog Like Shakespeare series from Charlie Gilkey. Check out How To Write For New Readers if you missed Part 1.

Regular readers are familiar with you and your content, so they’re already keyed into how you write and what you’re about. They’re also likely to be your friends, fans, champions, and customers.

The fact that they’re familiar with what you’re up to, though, can also make it more difficult to write for them. They might have already learned some of the stuff you’ve written for your new readers, so the way you write for your new readers won’t provide a lot of value to them. While they may have some favored themes and topics, to keep their attention, you’ll have to provide them something new.

The challenge, then, is to write about the same themes and topics while adding some novelty to them. Think about this as if you were putting on a concert: your fans love to hear your old songs, but if you play the same songs the same way every time, it’ll get old. However, if you play the old song in a slightly different way, they’ll be interested and entertained all over again. Lastly, if you play a bunch of songs they don’t know, they’ll be a bit confused and maybe a little frustrated.

Here are some ways to write content that remains fresh, informative, and valuable for your regular readers:

Explain Things In A New Way

As bloggers, we have a tendency to think that once we write about something, we don’t need to come back to it again because it’s old and uninteresting. After all, if we said it once, why do we need to say it again?

What we forget, though, is that we have readers who may not have read it the first time, and, even if they did, they might need to hear it again.

Explaining things in a new way is a win-win for both the blogger and the reader. By trying to explain it in a new way, we spur the creative process and make the old and uninteresting into the new and interesting. For other readers, it’s a chance to read it the first time or learn it anew.

Metaphors and analogies are your friend here. A picture is worth a thousand words, and metaphors are like conceptual pictures. Analogies are helpful because, if you do it right, you take people from one thing they already know to something that they don’t. The more cognitive maps and reinforcers people have, the more likely it is that they’ll integrate your content into their experience and habits.

Keep Them In The Know

You can only blog about the same themes and topics for so long before everybody gets tired of it. One of the most valuable things you can do for your readers is to be a source of new ideas and conversations. Most people don’t have the time or interest to do a lot of reading and research, and, if you’re already doing it, you have a rich opportunity to keep them in the know without having to come up with new content all by yourself.

If you can find a way to integrate those new ideas into the topics on your blog, then you’re showing three things: 1) the content on your blog has general applications, 2) other people are interested in things that you’re interested in (this gives your ideas increased validity), and 3) you’re someone who’s keeping up with what’s going on.

If you’re learning, growing, and sharing valuable information with them, then they’ll want to keep up with you so that they can learn and grow with you. Having some structure to your blog is a good thing, but you don’t want so much structure that it becomes static and boring. Balancing creating and consuming is a sure way to keep regular readers happy, as your content will be sustainably fresh, informative, and helpful.

Make It Personal

One of the major differences between new readers and regular readers is that regular readers are actually interested in you, whereas new readers are mostly interested in your content. That said, one way you can write for regular readers is to show more of who you are in your posts.

If you have a personal story that’s relevant to your blog, then share it. “Relevance” here is broadly construed: a story that helps your readers get to know you is relevant because it’s informative and interesting. At the same time, a mundane story about what you ate this morning is not relevant. A story could also be relevant because it helps show a point better than a less tangible explanation.

The trick to making your content personal is to make the content about your readers and not about you. If there’s too much “you” and not enough “them,” it’ll come off as narcissistic. As long as your readers are getting something out of your personal content, you’re good to go.

Alternatively, you can also make it personal by writing in a way that’s uniquely you. Think about your favorite bloggers here: you can probably identify their writing style in just a few sentences because the way they write is so unique. It takes time to find your own voice, but it’s well worth the effort.

Show That They’re Part of the Conversation

Responding to comments is an easy way to engage readers, but some of your regular readers will start leaving really good comments that are worth more than a response in the comment section.

When this happens, write a post that responds to that comment and be clear that it was that reader’s comment that promoted the post. Link to their blog or Twitter profile while you’re at it.

Aside from encouraging people to leave comments, this also shows your regular readers that they are part of the conversation and have insightful things to say. When you do this, your blog moves from being a one-way conversation to a forum for discussing ideas, and you become more than a blogger to them — you become a person that they can talk to and interact with.

Before you write this off as me being a kumbaya blogger, remember that people are likely to share a post that they’re featured in with their audience. They may even extend the conversation on their blog, which gets you an additional link and more readers. The more people identify with you and your blog, the more likely they are to share your blog with others. Never underestimate the power of having a community around your blog.

Ever wonder why musicians have parts of their show where they encourage people to sing along or clap? It changes the feel of the concert so that it’s not so much about the musician as it is about the music. You can and should do the same thing on your blog.

Regular Readers Are The Backbone of Your Tribe

Though your regular readers make up a small fraction of the numbers you see on your feedcounters, they are the people who leave comments, grok and share your content, and purchase your products and services.

And even the ones who don’t interact with you are lurking in the background and might one day say hi at a conference or click to buy a product.

In short, regular readers are the ones that most of us get up in the morning to write for, even if it can be a little more challenging at times.

While it’s highly likely that Shakespeare had regular attendees to his plays, the Bard’s “regular readers” were the people who had enough education and sophistication to understand the cultural context in which he was writing. Part of the suspense of Julius Ceasar for his regular readers was seeing how Brutus fell — they already knew it would happen, so it took some art on the part of Shakepeare to make the story interesting. This is where our challenge is the same as his when it comes to regular readers: we have to take what they already know and make it interesting. But we have write in such a way that people who aren’t familiar with the background can also follow the conversation.

Sonia’s also very good at writing for regular readers. I’ve been a regular reader of her posts here and on Copyblogger for years, and every time I read a new post I learn something new.

For instance, I recently completed one of her free e-courses, and while it was a great refresher course for me, her ninth piece in the “Email and Content Marketing” course spurred some creative ideas about how to get people outside of my audience to sign up for my newsletter. By explaining email and content marketing from this broader perspective, she taught me something new and incredibly useful despite the fact that I’ve been a fanboy for a good while now.

In the next part of this series (to be aired on my blog, Productive Flourishing), we’ll see what experts are looking for and discuss ways to write for them.

Action Steps

• Find one of your older pillar posts and explain it in a new way.
• Write about the current topics in your field or about a popular book.
• Tell a personal story that explains or supplements something you talk about
• Find a good opportunity to write a post in response to a good comment from a reader

About the Author: Charlie Gilkey writes about meaningful action, creativity, and entrepreneurship at Productive Flourishing. Follow him on Twitter to get more of him without having to read monolithic posts.

I’ve been spending more time lately teaching folks who are new to marketing, and I’m finding it really fascinating.

The same themes come up again and again. These are people who had an interesting idea for a product to sell or a service to market, but they run up against a horrid scary intimidating wall: marketing.

(And even scarier, its evil twin, selling.)

It seems impossibly hard. It seems like something for “other people.” It seems like they’d need a personality transplant to make it work for them.

And I totally get this, because I used to feel exactly the same way. I only ever drifted into marketing because I was drawn to writing, and so when someone needed help with a marketing task, they tapped me on the shoulder.

I wasn’t that into marketing (I’m the worst salesperson in the history of the human race), but I was into communication, and hanging out with customers, and answering questions, and making the product work better for them.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that all that stuff was marketing.

To quote Keanu, Whoa.

Two resources to make it easier

If marketing seems horrible and hard for you, I’ve got two things coming up that I think will make it easier.

The first is a free five-part series on What Makes Marketing Hard. I’m going to be delivering it by email to everyone who’s signed up for my free content class, so if you’re already getting that (or the marketing tool kit), you’ll be in good shape.

If you’re not signed up for it, it’s a pretty great class (if I do say so myself) and I think you’ll get a lot out of it. The main focus is email newsletters, but the information is also very usable for bloggers and other content marketers.

Sign up for the free content class right here.

A new Sonia-style marketing course

The second resource will be a brand new marketing course that I’m creating.

I’m still hammering out details, but here’s what I know now:

• It’s going to be CHEAP, but only for the first group of students. You’ll be my beta-testers to refine the course and make it absolutely perfect as time goes on.
• It’s going to get EXPENSIVE later. I’m modeling it on Teaching Sells, which started out at $97 per quarter (when I signed up), and now goes for about $1600, with the price climbing each time the course is released. The price goes up because new content gets added and the format keeps improving, making it ever more valuable. That’s going to be my model here.
• Charter members will get lifetime access at the original CHEAP price, so those of you who are ready to sign up now will get a killer deal.
• It’s going to be a step-by-step blueprint, showing you exactly how to put together a marketing system that works for you and your business.
• It’s going to include a members-only community forum, so you can ask questions, share problems, and get answers from me and from your peers.
• It’s going to focus on marketing that is fun, reasonably easy to implement, and that respects you and your customers. Nothing yukky or creepy, because I hate that stuff as much as you do. I might actually hate it even more than you do.
• It’s called the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint.

What to do next

If you think something like this would be valuable for you, sign up for the free content class and you’ll get all the details. Plus you’ll get the five new lessons I’m putting together on “What Makes Marketing Hard,” and a free lesson or two from the paid course.

Sign up for the free content course & bonus good stuff

Those of you who are already on my lists know that, while I do make an offer every once in awhile, my email lists have tons of great free material and zero high-pressure sales squeezing.

Of course, if you’re not digging it, just unsubscribe. It takes maybe 15 seconds and I won’t mind a bit. (And obviously, I don’t ever share my email list with anyone or use it for any evil purposes. I hate spam with a fiery passion, and I know you do too.)

What makes marketing hard for you?

I’ve got my own list based on the folks I’ve been coaching, teaching, and talking with. But I’d love to hear yours.

What makes marketing hard for you? What is it about marketing you hate, or you think you’d hate if you tried it? What’s scary? Creepy? Just plain intimidating?

Let me know in the comments, and I’ll try to find some answers to make it easier for you.

Flickr Creative Commons image by cpt.spock

If you’re doing any social media marketing at all, you know the drill. It’s all about showing up. Being your authentic self. Showing that you’re a trustworthy human being, making a connection, reaching out one-to-one.

The cornerstone idea of this blog is that if you can create more remarkable relationships with your customers, you’ll have a more remarkable business.

It’s fun and it works and it’s a great model. But it does have a significant downside.

How am I ever going to get anything done?

The problem with putting so much you into your business is that there’s a finite amount of you.

A couple of years ago, I asked Chris Brogan at a conference how he manages it.

He didn’t need me to elaborate, he knew exactly what I meant. Following tens of thousands on Twitter, making himself amazingly available for questions and conversations around the web, writing great blog posts then following through in the comment conversation, writing a terrific book. Plus he has, you know, a job. And two young kids.

“I sleep about four hours a night,” he said with a smile. A tired smile.

Since then, I think he’s developed some more techniques for being able to make remarkable connections without killing himself. (I really hope so, anyway.) And he’s a particularly energetic, passionate guy, which helps a lot.

I can’t make Chris’s way work. I need plenty of sleep (and time to work out, and creative noodling time) to function. So here are my thoughts on how to manage the demands of the social web with the need to get things done.

You can’t be everywhere

I’m on Twitter and Copyblogger. A few times a month I post here, because I love the culture and community that’s distinctly “Remarkable Communication.”

That’s it.

Once in a blue moon I get onto Facebook to see friends, but I don’t use it professionally. I never venture into public forums any more, too many trolls. My Squidoo lenses are neglected, but luckily, they tend to take pretty good care of themselves. I have a LinkedIn account that I never use.

MySpace? Get real.

Pick one or two platforms (one of which you should own, like a blog or a great email newsletter). Do your best work for them.

If you create remarkable work in just one or two places, others will share your message far and wide. Mediocre work spread out over a dozen sites is mostly wasted effort.

My most important tool

The most important tool on my desk isn’t my laptop, my complicated GTD-based next action list, my phone (on which I spend more time than I like), or even my fancy fountain pen collection.

It’s my timer.

I work in 50-minute chunks, followed by 10 minutes of goof time.

The goof time is really important when you’re doing creative, difficult work. Your brain needs time to play and rest and have a good time, or it won’t work for you when you need it. Sometimes I knit, sometimes I hang out with the cat, sometimes I just walk in circles. Under no circumstances do I do anything productive.

My social media connection time is also on a timer. Twitter is confined to specific times of day, and no more than 10 minutes at a run. I usually answer email in 20-minute chunks.

I don’t have enough follow-up time in my day. I do the best I can with the time I have, and sometimes I drop the ball.

It’s 2009. Our lives are insanely complex, and our social obligations get overwhelming. We drop the ball. If you’re not doing heart surgery or managing a nuclear power plant, you’re allowed to drop the ball.

Bad as I feel when I don’t get back to someone, I’ve also realized that I can spend my energy feeling like a terrible person, or I can spend my energy helping as many people as I can. The latter doesn’t just feel better, it also makes a lot more sense.

The Sacred Two

I’ve made a commitment to carve out two hours a day, five days a week, for my most important work. (They’re actually two 50-minute chunks, per the above.)

Right now, that includes content creation for the membership site I’m building (I think that’s my first official public notice!), content for my email classes, writing for Remarkable Communication, and moving forward two on two other nifty projects I’m launching this fall.

There are other commitments I’ve made that are very important to me. Deadlines to hit, projects promised, email to answer. All of that is important. But it’s not sacred. Those two hours spent on my core projects are sacred.

Most of the time, they’re the first two work hours of my day. But if I need to take an important call or hit an early deadline, they might get shifted. What matters most is that they get done. 10 hours a week.

How do you do it?

I think this problem is nearly universal, at least for the community around this blog.

So how are you handling it? What are your favorite techniques to make social connections (on or off the web) without the social element eating your entire life?

I’d love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments?

Flickr Creative Commons image by realSMILEY

I have a friend who’s creating a business.

Actually, I have lots of friends who are creating businesses. And this is a story that reflects many of their journeys. One person inspired this particular story, but her story is the story of many people I know.

She got an idea she was passionate about. She collected great advice. She worked out a plan. She dreamed big. She found her courage. She leapt.

You know that expression “leap and the net will appear?” The net didn’t appear. In fact, it looked like it was the floor that was going to appear. Quickly.

She thought fast, she adjusted course, and she reconfigured the plan with a new component: continuing to work some hours at her day job.

”I guess I’m just not a badass”

I sensed that my friend was second-guessing herself. Maybe even feeling like a bit of a wimp.

And I realized that I had played a part in her perceptions. Not just me, but all the folks who do what I do. The cheerleaders for self employment. The champions of solopreneurship. The ones who work hard to give you tools to make the leap on your own.

She was comparing herself to our “fearlessness,” our battle cries.

Sometimes we forget to acknowledge something.

Some days, it’s hard

The whole reason we have battle cries is because sometimes it’s hard. You notice there’s no such thing as a battle cry for enjoying an ice cream sundae.

When you’re on your own, cash flow can be insanely tricky, even if you’re doing well. The 10 things you were sure would work don’t work. The next 10 things do work, but not as well as you wished they would.

And it’s taking a lot of time and energy to refine them. And just when you’re feeling good, you pay estimated taxes and suddenly you’re broke again. And your COBRA provider drops you for a bogus reason right in the middle of your insane busiest week.

It’s fun, too. It’s exhilarating and you feel amazingly alive. The rewards are real. But some days it’s hard. And some days it’s scary.

It’s your journey

I’m reading Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents right now, which is terrific. One of things that resonates for me is his idea of treating your life as a game.

You create the game. And you make the rules.

When folks like me exhort you to get way outside your comfort zone, we’re trying to liberate you from your fears. But not all fear is unhealthy. One of my favorite Naomi sayings is, “Absence of fear is not courage. Absence of fear is mental illness.”

Make your own rules. Build your own safety net. Build quadruple safety nets if you want to. I’m the sole breadwinner in my family and I have a mortgage and a four-year-old. You’d better believe I had a whole bunch of contingency plans before I went out on my own.

And yeah, I felt wimpy for taking so long. But looking behind me, I’m very glad I did it the way I did.

It’s not lame to have a day job

I loved many things about my day job, one of the nicest being that I knew exactly how my mortgage and health insurance were going to get paid for.

But the longer I was there, the harder it was to ignore some key facts.

1. I’m really not cut out to work in a company bigger than about five people.
2. My job looked like it was going to disappear in the next round of layoffs, so I was very in tune with the reality that day jobs don’t equal security.
3. Working harder and putting more passion in didn’t get me any greater results. In fact, it just got on the nerves of many of the senior executives.
4. I’d built a strong foundation to go solo, with the blog, the email newsletter, and the wonderful professional relationships I’d nurtured.
5. The economy was in a perfect place to support the kind of work I wanted to do on my own. That meant that I would be able to help a lot more people by devoting more time to my own thing.

None of that means I think day jobs are evil. That one I had just stopped being suitable for me.

Trust yourself

The biggest issue when you transition from employment to entrepreneurship is that you make all of your own decisions.

That’s the part you can start doing today. You can decide how big a role (if any) you want your business to play in your life. You can decide that making $300 a month is just perfect for you right now, and enjoy building that success.

If it takes you 5 years to get there, who cares? It’s your game. It’s your vision. You get to build it the way you want to.

You can make up the rules of your game. You can define what it means to win. And if the rules aren’t working for you, you can change them.

That’s the fun part of all this, and any of us can do it. You’re wise enough to make wonderful decisions for your own life. So go for it. I’m cheering you on.

Let us know in the comments what rules you’re writing these days for your own game. How are they working for you?

When I was on vacation a few weeks ago, I went out to dinner with my friend Isabel. She wore a simple dress and a really cute cotton hoodie. Ever since I got home, I’ve been trying to find a hoodie just like it.

So far, no luck. Why?

• Isabel doesn’t pay a lot of attention to what clothes cost. If a designer hoodie costs $750 but it looks good on her, she doesn’t really worry about it.
• Isabel shops all over the world. She might have picked it up in Barcelona or Bangkok or Buenos Aires.
• Isabel is maybe a size 4.

None of these traits is true for me. So I’m taking a garment that looks terrific on someone else and trying to make it work for my very different situation. And it doesn’t.

For some reason, this surprises me.

Ever do that with your content?

Ever try to imitate someone else’s attitude or writing voice? How many of us started out trying to be Seth Godin? (raises hand) Or Chris Brogan or Darren Rowse or Naomi Dunford?

We admire these folks because they do great work. We chase someone else’s audience, someone else’s business model, someone else’s persona, and then we’re puzzled when it doesn’t fit us very well.

You can learn a lot by modeling someone who’s doing what you want to do. But before you can make any real success with it, you’re going to need to learn to sing with your own voice. Their model is always going to be too tight in the elbows and too baggy in the rear, because it doesn’t belong to you. You’re just borrowing it.

Who defines you?

Are you letting other folks dictate how much selling you do? Telling you you’re “too salesy”? Or maybe that you aren’t selling hard enough?

Do you get one unsubscribe to your email list and start second-guessing yourself based on their parting comment?

Are you doing something on your blog because a blogger you admire said everybody had to? Are you sure it’s working for you? Are you sure it’s working for your audience?

Are you using a technique because “it works,” even though it makes you sick to your stomach?

Virtually every successful blogger or business owner you know had to throw away some piece of conventional wisdom. They may not have an elevator pitch, or a traditional USP. Their email newsletters might be too long and their sales letters too short.

Because they tried it out for themselves, and this is what worked for them. Worked in terms of their goals, which might have been bigger than “bump up conversion” or “increase leads.”

Their goals might have included creating a better relationship with their community of customers, going for quality over raw quantity. Their goals might have been 10-year goals rather than 6-week ones.

Their goals might have included just not feeling like a slimeball.

Taking advice is smart, and there’s plenty of good advice out there. But advice is the starting point, not the end.

Every one of us needs to draw our own blueprint. If yours ends up looking pretty different than the model you started with, don’t let it worry you. That’s how you can tell you’re doing it right.

I picked up a couple of Nancy Mitford novels while I was on vacation in Taos a few weeks ago. Mitford wrote acidly funny, impeccably observed novels about her own background, which was as a child of the minor aristocracy growing up in Great Britain between the world wars.

It’s probably a bad idea for me to read any of the Mitfords (there were six sisters, all brilliant, some nasty, each with her own brand of insanity), because I find myself wanting to refer to things as heaven, or begin sentences with Any Danube peasant knows better than to . . .

Nancy Mitford became notorious in 1954 for a semi-satirical essay she wrote about “U” and “Non-U” pronunciation, the “U” standing for upper class.

(She didn’t coin the term “U,” but she did make it ubiquitous. U vs. Non-U was still a rowdy discussion when I first went to London in the 1980s.)

She outlined the situation neatly in her earlier bestselling novel The Pursuit of Love, in which the family patriarch is outraged because a young girl who’s a friend of the family is learning to say note-paper at boarding school, instead of writing-paper, and mirror instead of looking-glass.

Like her female characters, Nancy Mitford didn’t attend school at all, and thus couldn’t go to university as she had very much wanted to do. But by damn, she would have endured torture before she said note-paper.

It’s not about money

Mitford’s observations caused a lot of hand-wringing about snobbery and social class, which I suspect she found hilarious. She was born and bred to be a comic novelist, a brilliant observer but unable and unwilling to take anything very seriously.

What I find fascinating about it all is how fiercely tribal Mitford was, and how good she was at describing her tribe’s customs.

It wasn’t just about money. At various points in their lives, the real Mitford sisters lived on much more modest means than Nancy’s fictional characters did. (Money was a significant factor in the girls not going to school, for example.)

In fact, The Pursuit of Love details precisely the conflict between the rich middle class and the poorer (but in Mitford’s eyes, much more attractive) aristocrats and landed gentry.

Every tribe has a language

Whether it’s rabid fans of a sports team, residents of a neighborhood, members of a social class, or just people who share an interesting obsession, every tribe has a language.

When you’re writing to persuade a particular tribe, you’ve got to find the language that they use every day. Every time you say note-paper when they expect writing-paper, you send a signal that you’re not one of them.

Develop the novelist’s habit of writing down scraps of conversation that you hear. Keep file folders of customer comments, and go through it looking for interesting turns of phrase. Don’t “clean up” client testimonials too much—leave the linguistic quirks and oddities.

Listen more than you talk, and read more than you write.

If you’re building a tribe

You don’t just have to stick with the tribes that exist already. Creating your own is one of the most effective (and fun) ways to build a business or project.

When you build a tribe, remember that every tribe needs its own language. (The six Mitford sisters had one just among themselves, in fact.)

Over on Copyblogger, we’ve started to use the expression Third Tribe to mean “smart, ethical business based on great content and solid direct response copywriting.”

When I write about audience there, I talk about each of us building a village of customers.

We define ourselves as content net creators, as opposed to the “harpooners.” (Defining “the other” is also a big part of creating a tribe. I try to do this with respect and without vilifying anyone.)

When we overcome objections and build trust with customers, it’s called killing trolls.

You don’t have to force this “secret language.” (In fact, trying to force it is probably a terrible idea.) But you keep your ears open for the ideas and metaphors your villagers respond to.

When you come up with a good turn of phrase, keep using it. Repetition is your friend.

How about you? What’s the secret language of your tribe?

Flickr Creative Commons image by aturkus

In the interest of protecting your eyesight, I’ve bumped up the font on the body copy of the blog by a couple of points.

It looks good on all the machines I can test it on, but if things look wacky on your machine, will you leave a comment on this post and let me know? Thanks as always!

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I do get to the gym a few times a week, generally right when Oprah is on. (Could be a lot worse. Jerry Springer, for example.)

A few weeks ago, she had some of the old contestants from the reality show The Biggest Loser. This is, to me, vastly more interesting than watching the actual show could be.

It’s one thing to lose tons of weight while at a ranch where there’s nothing to do all day long but work out and get yelled at by trainers. (Still an incredible and impressive amount of work. But not reality.)

It’s another to make the choices every day to maintain a healthier weight and lifestyle.

One gentleman in particular made a big impression on me. “For 15 seconds, I weighed 182 pounds and won a game show,” he said. His weight has gone up quite a lot since then, although he’s still managed to consistently stay 100 pounds below what he weighed when he first appeared on the show.

If you’re still a fat person in a skinny body, nothing’s going to change

He understood (intellectually) what to do. He knew all about working out and nutrition. And he wanted to be thin.

But his mindset didn’t match his temporarily sleek exterior. And as soon as he wasn’t in the hyper controlled environment created by a TV show, he started to revert to what his mindset told him was his “true” nature.

Money works exactly the same way

I’ve been working for the past few weeks with a money coach. (Actually, Gary’s more of a financial and business and lifestyle and happiness and freedom coach.)

A lot of what we work on is getting me to get what I already know. Internalizing it. Making it real. Strengthening my self reliance. Weakening my tendency to be cheap with myself. And knocking holes in the idea that Nice People Don’t Make Money.

To be successful, you need three things

You need good-quality information about ways to create success. (There are lots and lots of ways to do it. You just need to focus on one that suits you, and to make sure the information you’re getting is reliable.)

You need the will and the ability to translate that information into action. If you’re locked in Guantanamo, you won’t be able to do much to create the results you want. That’s true even if your Guantanamo is mainly psychological.

And you need a mindset that won’t set off little booby-traps to undermine all your work.

The thing about working on mindset is, if you get it in the right place, the first two become a whole lot easier.

Of course, you still need to take action. It’s not the Law of Attraction or magic beans in any way. It might look and feel like the universe is shifting around to take care of you, but actually it’s just what the world looks like when you get out of your own way.

As we weather the massive “economic climate change” that’s occurring all around us, we’re going to need to think about the world very differently.

We’re going to need to unlearn the mental habits we picked up by working for companies. Even good companies.

We’re going to need to re-evolve, from cube dwellers to hunter/gatherers on the open plain.

It’s more fun. It’s more stressful. It’s more difficult. It’s more dangerous. It’s more rewarding.

I don’t believe it’s optional, personally. The corporate cube isn’t the safe haven it was even a year or two ago. We need to find our true self-reliant nature again.

P.S.

My coach, Gary, has a new group program available with really excellent introductory pricing. If you’re looking for someone who can help you gently but effectively shift your thinking, I can highly recommend him.

This isn’t an affiliate link. I don’t make a nickel, whether 1 person signs up or 100 do. I’ve just gotten so much out of working with him, and I’d love to see more people benefit from what he has to offer. Max Life Coaching

I’m going to be Gary’s first guest speaker, so if you want to hear our call on the real way to use social media in your marketing, that’s how you would do that.

P.P.S.

Gary and I are also working with a terrific designer to make his site look less generic and show more of the warm, nice, generous person he is. So if the design makes you think it might be too corporate or business-y or “not you,” keep that in mind.

P.P.P.S.

The self-serving bit for me, of course, comes when you have a killer financial mindset and are ready to start or grow your business. Then you’ll be in a great position to buy lots of marketing information from me. So really it’s all about me and my needs. Pretty sneaky of me, eh?

Those of you who saw me at South by Southwest this year know that I’ve dyed my hair pink. *

Along with What do you do?, I find Why did you dye your hair pink? an unanswerable question. But if I can’t answer it. I might be able to address it.

(By the way, if you’re newish here, the babe in the photo is not me. She sure is cute, though, isn’t she?)

Making the break

The simplest answer is that a head of pink hair signals to any and all that I don’t work for a Real Company.

No cubicle. No 401K. No HR department. No chain of command. No receptionist. No big-name agency to work with. No meetings. No set schedule.

Some of those things are good and some bad, and most a mixed bag. I had a lot of good years working with companies, and I’m not knocking it. But pink hair is a very visible signal that I’m not doing that right now.

Freedom from pointless rules

There’s a huge category of things you can’t do in a Real Company because it Wouldn’t Be Professional.

Some of these make sense, like No Getting Smashed at Lunch, or No Sexually Harassing Adorable Eddie in Accounting, Even Though He Is Admittedly Extremely Cute.

Some of them don’t really have any logical underpinning at all. Like No Having Pink Hair.

Of course, I’d be allowed to have pink hair if I just told people it was an incompetent dye job. That I was trying for red hair, but my hairdresser is an idiot.

I could probably get away with that for years, explaining to new managers as they came in, “Oh, no, it’s not pink. It doesn’t look pink to you, does it? It’s red.”

So I could have pink hair if it wasn’t my intention to have pink hair.

This is getting at the reason(s) why I don’t want to work for Real Companies any more.

Embracing my inner muppet

This is the real reason: I like having pink hair because pink hair is bright and pretty and special. It makes my little boy especially happy. It’s our own little bit of Sesame Street right at home.

Pink is a pretty color and now I get to have it all the time. And if I feel like a change of pace, when the pink wears off I can have turquoise, or sky blue, or violet.

Does any of this have anything at all to do with writing, blogging, or communication?

Of course it does, silly!

If you can’t dye your hair pink at the moment, you can still write like someone who does.

• Sing with your own voice.
• Break as many stupid rules as you can get away with.
• Do what makes you feel shiny and happy.
• Define yourself. When you let other people do it, they just mess it up.
• Try something (that’s ethical and doesn’t hurt anyone, of course) that invites a lot of pointless judgment. It reminds you not to be pointlessly judgmental of other people.

Love you all

Sorry to go dark like that for ages and ages here on Remarkable Communication. I was, let’s just say, insanely busy with the Marketing for Nice People course.

(Which is going AMAZINGLY. Tip: when you define your customers as nice people, that’s what you get. Our students are a giant stack of awesome.)

But the major huge chunk of work is done and I’ll be around more regularly, at least until the next insanity rolls along. I miss you guys so much when I don’t hang out with you here.

Footnote: * Actually, it’s more accurate to say that I’m dyeing it pink, as no one seems to sell permanent pink hair dye. Which is sort of fun as I can try out different variations of pink and find the one I like best. Right now I’m sporting a sort of cherry coke color with hot pink highlights. Most enjoyable.

Flickr Creative Commons image by kalandrakas

So yesterday I gave a talk at Naomi Dunford’s membership site, SpeakEasy. (SpeakEasy is closed to new members now, but I’ll let you know if/when it opens up again. I’m a member myself and I think it’s an amazing value.)

I got to talk for an hour about all the things I’m a total dork about. Then I got to answer questions for another hour and a half.

This is pretty much like saying “I got to have an ice cream sundae and then homemade raspberry croissants and then chocolate cream pie.” It’s a good thing.

It really made me think about what a wonderful job this is. So I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you about that.

Helping people!

Seriously, it’s an amazing feeling when someone asks a question, you think, Cool, I have a really good answer for that, and you can share your experience with them and get them moving again.

It’s not at all about being some kind of creepy guru. It’s just about having done a bunch of stuff and seen what works and what doesn’t, and sharing that experience with someone who can use it.

It rocks. So much.

The friends

I’m reluctant to even start listing names here, because there are so many amazing people I’ve met since I started blogging.

Brian, of course, who has taught me so much. Naomi, who was one of the first people who started hanging out here, and who I fell in love with at first sight. Jon, who knocks me out daily. Dave, who wants to save the world (and is so productive that I think he might). Charlie, a magnificent wall of support and wonderfulness. Joanna, with her gimlet eye and her wise, warm voice. Pace and Kyeli, who believe the world is awesome, and make us believe it too. Karen, the world’s most reliable source of sunshine. Janice with her panache and the color in her words. Michael, the cranky un-guru who makes me laugh. James, my pesky little brother (big brother? I can never keep track) who I love. The other James who is so damned smart and who helps me to remember to be optimistic. Jeff, who has been so kind and so generous. Brogan, the most big-hearted guy I’ve ever met.

Shit, I’m forgetting people, and I think someone is going to cue the Oscar music.

(If you’re not on the list, it’s because my brain just melted from gratitude and amazement and I couldn’t think of any more names. But I love you too!)

Seriously, the people in this thing are amazing. Every day I meet smart, funny, active (hyperactive), kickass people who are doing something. Some of these folks are rich and some are still working on it, but all of them are working every day to help other people.

I’ve never experienced that before, at least not to this degree. It’s completely exhilarating.

The money

Um, way better than corporate life. That’s all I’ll say about that.

The stress

Specifically, the kind of stress.

When you’re in a big organization, your stress tends look like this:

I know this idea would rock and make money and not cost a lot and make our customers love us. I also know that it will die a premature death because someone who makes 20x what I do will veto it for a reason we will all agree makes no sense whatsoever.

My forehead has permanent dents in it from crashing it against the wall of my (admittedly nice) corporate office.

When you do what I do now, your stress looks more like this:

Oops, that thing worked completely differently than I thought it would. Now I need a new sales letter, new sign-up page, new autoresponder, new order form and new blog. In the next four hours. Fire up the espresso machine, mama needs to kickstart those brain cells.

The stress in this gig is fun. Still stressful, but fun.

The security

When I left corporate life, people wanted to know, “Aren’t you worried about security?”

You know what? I’m not going to lay myself off.

If my business model quits working, I have a dozen more models I can implement. I know a hundred ways to give value to other people, and a hundred ways to get paid for that.

That’s security. Or as close to it as you get in this world, anyway.

The partnerships

If there’s anything I miss about corporate life, it might be working on a team with incredible people. I had my share of frustrations, but I also have to say that I’ve worked with some people who just took my breath away. (You guys know who you are.)

But, hey, I can still have that!

When I talked with Naomi at South by Southwest about doing something together, she said “Yes” so fast it made me a little dizzy.

(OK, the dizziness may have been aggravated by the margaritas.)

Since then we’ve been talking on the phone and by email, cooking up really juicy stuff for our nice people. (I’m hoping this will be the first of many. Naomi is way fun to work with, and we feed off each other’s energy. And people seem to find us entertaining. Or maybe it’s just my attempt to keep up with Naomi’s cursing that they find amusing.)

Yesterday on the SpeakEasy call, we announced the first project in what we’re calling Marketing for Nice People.

If you’ve been waiting, yep, this is the Third Tribe. It’s marketing reality, not just marketing ideas. It’s what works now, even in this bizarre economy and crazy sea of marketing clutter. And it won’t make you want to put your eye (or other body parts) out.

This is about a business that pays your mortgage and feeds your heart. At the same time. Go figure.

We’re kicking it off with some good free stuff to get you rolling. One piece of which is the recording of the SpeakEasy call, which was about “non-sleazy copywriting.” It was a terrific call and people seemed to get a tremendous amount out of it. (Caveat, the audio quality is not great. Sorry. Working on it.)

If you want to get that teleclass and some other high-quality goodies, you can sign up for them here. And no, we’re never going to spam you with a lot of creepy high-pressure sales messages. That would be pretty lame.

Sign up for the good free stuff

Thank you

I want to thank everyone who reads this blog and Copyblogger. And more thanks to the lovely people who follow me on Twitter.

Thanks for your time and attention, thanks for letting me go on about my passions, thanks for buying our products and letting us share what we know.

I hope you find as much fulfillment, excitement and connection on your own path. Something tells me you will.

We’re just getting started.

(5/8/09 P.S., duh, can’t believe I forgot to point you guys to the Sonia and Naomi interview on Copyblogger. It’s got entertainment value, at least, but also some pretty smart advice from the asterisk queen.)