Sundee Morn

I’m sitting here at the cafe. This place is already full on a Sunday and it isn’t even 10:30. I got here as fast as I could, but still ended up without an outlet nearby. So I’m in one of the comfy leather chairs by the fireplace. Almost as good. Except, I only have 35 minutes left on the battery.

I feel like I’ve neglected my personal blog. I’ve had a ton of great things going on the past several weeks – all great professional inroads that I’m starting to make. It is sort of exciting.

The greatest piece of advice that I keep coming back to is:

It’s not what you know. It’s not who you know. It’s who knows what you know.

I think this is the key to the soft-sell… get enough people that know your talents and gradually your reputation with them starts to sell itself.

For example, Tina sent out a note to her ezine about my upcoming blogging course. I’ve known of Tina for years, met her in San Mateo and have been woring with her for the past several weeks. I hold her in huge esteem – and so do the subscribers to her newsletter. And then value her recommendations. Her endorsement of my blogging class gave me over 20 instant sign-ups to my blogging tips newsletter. You can’t just buy that kind of influence.

I think the biggest ingredient here is patience. And confidence. I am a waffler on both at times. I’m always waffling on my confidence in my skills and knowledge, even though time after time I am complimented and singled out for my extensive know-how on a certain topic. I am doing another blog ‘expert call’ with a group of coaches on Tuesday (again, referred to by a friend) and the facilitator and I recorded three ‘preview audios’ to get folks interested. After each call the faciliator would tell me how smoothly I went from topic to topic. I’ve been doing these blogging expert calls since August so I have my set five bullet points to dance around.

Along with who knows your skills is heart. I wrote up a product review of Michael and Mitch’s program that I just completed. They are having a free ‘intro call’ tomorrow and all of us alumni were invited to send our subscribers and associates to their intro call to get more information about their program. I was probably one of the last to send out the ‘heads-up’ message. But I ended up writing a pretty damned good product review and recommendation (you can read it here). And I got several responses that it was excellent copywriting and one even said it was the best salesletter she has ever seen. I didn’t follow any of the conventions of copywriting that I’ve been learning from Lori. I just used heart. My honest feelings about their program. And that really affected people.

I’ve started to see my twice-weekly blogging tips newsletter as a way to entertain my audience. I’ve tried several rowdy subject lines like ‘The Dingo Ate Your Baby’ or ‘Dick-less Blogging’ and sure, there are some unsubscribes – but even more the emails are becoming memorable. And folks are starting to expect a little snark here and there.

This laptop’s hinge is starting to loosen up again – but it is not under the repair plan anymore. I have really gotten my money’s worth out of this Vaio. Because it is so small, and, laptops haven’t gotten all that smaller since I bought it, everyone assumes I just got it. It is now over 3 years old and still humming away. I probably should do a fresh re-install sometime soon to clear all the gunk off the hard drive. But that first scratch kills ya. Same thing with an iPod. That first scratch really pisses you off. But once you get enough scratces that the laptop appears rugged instead of deblossomed, you feel much better.

Kitty is shedding to beat the band. Sometimes, I think that I gie him too much affection since I am home all the time. He really gets a lot of love from me. Getting a cat was the best mental health decision I ever made. Except when he bites.

I flipped the bed to the other side of bedroom to try and shake up my shui. I still have bare walls and need to go get some frames and such.

Ah – a seat opened up and the Tetris game that is Caribou seating has granted me a spot next to an outlet!

I want to open a coffee and teashop – with the tenets of Community, Creativity and Progress. We’d have at least one meeting room that can be used by different local action groups for planning. A second floor would provide a quieter writing and wireless space – and in the weekend evenings turn into an improptu stage for poetry slams and music. It would be locally owned and operated, using local merchant’s products and services whenever possible.


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