Cat's Eye Marketing Blog

Who Are You, Anyway?: Showing Up Online

It's been a strange week. I'm in day 10 of the crappy upper respiratory stuff.

Type. Cough. Sniffle. Repeat.

I'm keeping my water glass to myself and trying not to breathe on Bob. In fact, it would be better if I just didn't breathe at all, his eyes are saying.

And why is everyone talking about website bios all of a sudden?

This week had a weird synchronicity to it. People have been talking about website bios and social media profiles. In phone calls. On Twitter. On forums. In emails.

Everywhere. 

For a minute, I thought they'd all gone crazy. Then I put it together.

It's what I've been working on all week for clients. Fun, memorable bios. About Us pages. Social media profiles.

Bios are on my brain. So of course I'm paying attention more.

You know, like when you buy a new car and all of a sudden you see all the other ones on the road just like it? They were always there, but you just noticed them.

Showing up online: part II

This past week, I had lots of smart questions from people struggling to create their bios, to boil down the essence of who they are in a short paragraph or two—in a way that is consistent and that attracts the people they want to work with.

Here are some starter tips:

1. Align your profile and website bio with your brand.

Your website gives people a good idea of who you are (or it should). But if the bio on your website, the one on your blog and the one on Facebook sound like you are talking about three different people, I'd say you have a problem. Unless you have multiple personality disorder. Then, of course, it would make perfect sense.

Connect your profile with your brand. If you are playful, and your website copy reflects that, so should your profile. Got a quirky sense of humor? Go with it. Someone tweeted a line from my website bio on Twitter yesterday: She said, "@CatsEyeWriter's website bio says she can juggle, has been to Timbuktu and can say, 'Four knives will be sufficient' in Swahili. I LOVE THIS!"

Everything I said was true. And, yes, a little quirky. Just like me.

Just be sure you show yourself in a real and consistent way—across all platforms.

2. Tell what you do best—and for whom.

When I am browsing through Twitter profiles and bios or visiting someone's About Us page on their website, I am attracted to the ones that deliver their messages with style and originality.

One of my Twitter friends, Havi Brooks, says it this way on her website's About Havi page: 

My duck and I (okay, the duck is a little weird and that could be a blog post all by itself) help bright, creative kooky people (who she does it for) destuckify their stuff so they can do their thing (what she does best).

She goes on to say:

So they can work through all the overwhelming, sometimes-terrifying goo that gets in the way of doing what they love and biggifying it like crazy.

When I read this, I know right away. Either I am her target market or I am not.

3. Leave the cardboard person at the doorstep.

I saw a small business networking site recently that warned its members to only enter "basic business information" into their profile. They said, "It's not about you personally. It's a business profile.

I couldn't disagree more, particularly if you are a small biz owner. People who are deciding whether to interact with you are looking for someone real.

Asking yourself a few of these questions will help you uncover—and show—the real, multi-dimensional you:

1. What three things do you believe most about people?

2. What is the one thing you've done in your life that you are most proud of?

3. What's the one thing you haven't done yet that you want to do before you die?

4. What three adjectives best describe you?

5. Which movie or TV character are you most like and why?

6. What's your favorite food or beverage?

7. Name the two things that bug you the most when they happen.

Use phrases from these answers to make a list. From that list, mix and match until you come up with the whole person that best describes you.

On Twitter, it's a challenge to do that in just 160 characters, but that's part of the fun. And it's the very process that gets you to the core of who you are.

My Twitter profile says:

Slightly neurotic copywriter. Loves strong verbs, creating unique online identities, oaky Merlot & John Cleese. Thinks the word cree-A-tive is overused.

4. Act online in ways that match your profile.

People are getting to know and, hopefully, trust you, so your online behavior and the copy in your bio should not clash. Who you are should not change. Whether you write an article for a social networking site like Biznik, create a new blog post or make a comment on Twitter, stay true to yourself.

5. Play with the content as you change and grow.

You aren't going to be the same person you are today. None of us are. Hey, next year you might climb Mt. Everest. Or write a book. Or become a goalie on a women's indoor soccer team (which one of my clients did) You might join the hole-in-one club. Or master conversational French.

Profiles are easy to edit. Be sure to do that regularly so when things change, your customers, prospects and colleagues can keep up with all the cool things you are doing.

What does your profile say about you?

One Girl, One Hero: A September 11 Story

I wrote this story last September 11.

September 11, 2008.

Seven years had gone by. Seven years since the day that changed our perception of our world—and our safety in it.

Still, some of my friends had memories too painful, too fresh, to read what I had written.

They sent me emails. One friend was supposed to be on one of the planes and still had grief—and guilt that he was spared.

Another couldn't talk about it, just one line about the Pentagon and black choking smoke.

I wanted to write a story of hope, of good over evil, but some weren't ready yet.

 

A September 11 Story—Retold

It was the day after the day.

September 12, 2001 was a Wednesday. I know because Wednesday was my mentoring day.

I swung into the parking lot of the elementary school not far from Seattle.

My friend was a smart, but troubled 8-year-old. I'll call her Bella. She was in the gifted class.

Bella loved to read. I brought her my old comics, like Little Lulu. She read them out loud and laughed hysterically at the strong, spunky Lulu. We made bracelets out of plastic jewelry and waved our hands at each other to see who could make the loudest clicking sound.

We played board games. Once she tried to teach me chess but she gave up. I could never figure out what move to make and she got tired of waiting. Sometimes Bella would come into the library, sit down and frown, arms crossed, swinging her legs. On those days, she didn't want to talk to anyone, not even me.

On this particular Wednesday, Bella was quiet. She sat down, took out the set of blocks and started building, her tongue sticking out in concentration.

"What are you making?" I said.

"Towers," she said, keeping her eyes on the blocks.

My heart did a flip. She continued adding blocks until she had two blue buildings, side by side. She gently pulled out blocks on each side, about three-quarters from the top of each tower, so there were perfectly square holes on all sides.

Then she did an astounding thing. She lifted a black crayon, holding it with the thumb and forefinger. She made it climb, turn, then slowly push through the empty space, from one side of the tower right through the other side and onto the library table.

"See?" she said.

"If they just would have made the towers this way, with holes in the sides, the plane could have gone right through. And no one would have been hurt. Why didn't they make them that way?"

She frowned.

I swallowed. I didn't have any words.

Bella punched the buildings with her fist. The blocks fell across the table and onto the floor. 

As the weeks went by, in my "Wednesdays with Bella," we talked more about the terrorist attacks. She asked why the firefighters had to go in those burning buildings. She wanted to know if any kids died.

I had to tell her the truth. I felt like she needed to know.

She said she never wanted to go on an airplane again. Then she walked out of the library, down the hall to her classroom.

 

******************************************************************************

One Wednesday four and a half months later, Bella and I sat in the library.

"I'm going to New York City for a writer's conference tomorrow," I said. "What would you like me to bring you back?"

I waited, expecting, I don't know what: a t-shirt, maybe.

"I want a picture of a firefighter," she said. She stared at me with huge brown eyes.

"And what I really want is an autograph," she said. She studied my face.

"I'll do my best," I said. "Hey! How about if I bring a picture of you and maybe a short letter, and see if I can find a firefighter to give them to?"

I had no idea if I could do this.

Bella's eyes lit up. She grabbed my pen and wrote:

                                                                                         Jan. 29, 2002

Dear Firefighter,

    Thank you for working hard to clear the ground at ground zero. I think it is very brave that you are doing what you are doing. Thank you.

                                                                                      Your friend,

                                                                                      Bella

 

********************************************************************************************************************

I stood in the fierce Manhattan sun, in a line that wound down four blocks and around another two. Just as I got to the fence with its mementos and massive butcher paper wall, with thousands of messages of hope and sorrow scrawled every which way, I saw him.

He wore brown overalls, a blue shirt with an embossed fire department insignia and a navy blue baseball cap with red letters: FDNY. His name was JJ, from Engine 299, Queens.  His eyes widened as I told him about Bella. I handed the letter and photo to him.

"Wow," he said. "Tell her these are going up at the station." He waved the letter and photo. 

"She wants your autograph," I said.

"Are you kidding?" 

No, I said, it's the one thing she wants me to bring back from New York.

He took the paper from me and wrote,

Dear Bella,

Thank you for being so kind and thoughtful.

 

                                    Your Friend,

                                   J.J. Kerns

Then he reached behind the fence and pulled out an FDNY hat. "Give this to Bella," he said. "Tell her it's from me."

He held up Bella's letter and I took a photo of him.

 

******************************************************************************

The next Wednesday, Bella was sitting on a chair in the library waiting for me.

"I brought you something from my trip," I said.

I handed her J.J.'s photo and note, which I had framed. Her eyes got big.

"Cool!" she said, jumping out of her seat as if I had just brought her the biggest, softest teddy bear from FAO Schwartz.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the FDNY cap. Her face sagged. She grabbed the cap and put it on. It made her look goofy, the way it covered her ears and most of her eyes. I helped her adjust the tab in the back.

Bella stood up. "I want to go back to my class now, " she said.

 She pushed the bill of the cap down and peered out at me.

I smiled. "Sure." 

I watched her skip down the hall, pumping her arm in the air. 

One horrific day. And four and a half months and 3,000 miles later, a genuine, heartfelt connection between an eight-year-old girl and her hero.

It's the one good memory I have from September 11. 

 

******************************************************************************

We have had eight September 11's since that gut-wrenching day.

Bella is now a high school junior. She doesn't need a mentor anymore. She's bright, achieving, just starting to think about the rest of her life.

As we never forget September 11, as we think about the sacrifices that were made for us, let's also think about the kids who, if only for a season, replaced Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys with bigger heroes, like New York's firefighters.

 

What about you? Do you have a story of hope, something good that came out of September 11?

 

 

Everything I Know About Being an Entrepreneur I Learned From My Dad: A Father's Day Tribute

He didn't have an MBA. In fact, my dad had to quit high school in the 11^th grade to take a job to help support his brothers and sisters.

He worked at the Grays Harbor Chair Factory in Aberdeen, Washington, a small, blue-collar lumber town in the Pacific Northwest.

Then he got as job as a cement truck driver at Graystone of Grays Harbor. He later moved up to "batchman" and then foreman of the plant.

Most nights, he would shuffle in through the kitchen door, big black lunch pail in hand. All I would see were his bright blue eyes peering out through a light gray coating of cement dust.

Looking back, I suppose all he wanted to do was take off his caked, high-top work boots and settle into the olive green recliner with his Daily World.

But right away I would start pestering him with my "12 Degrees of Why" questions. Patient he was, and tolerant of curious 7-year-olds. 

Tell me. What does your father do?

Once I read a comment on a blog. The business owner said that when he interviews someone for a job in his company, he always asks, "What did your father do?" Said it was a good indicator of how "entrepreneurial" the candidate was.

Aside from that being a sexist question (what if your mom had been the CEO of Xerox or PepsiCo, both run by women, by the way), we all have certain traits that help us run our businesses, but not all of us come from the same mold.

Just because my dad drove a cement truck, doesn't mean I didn't learn valuable lessons from him.

A few of of my dad's lessons in entrepreneurship

Find a way around obstacles by thinking in different ways.

When the muddy banks of the Wishkah River flooded the road, he invented what his fellow workers fondly labeled the "Spaur Board."

It was a long piece of plywood fashioned over the car's front fender to create a makeshift bulldozer. He was a little late to work that day, but he made it. No one else did.

See the humor in everyday mishaps.

When my mom bought a new gadget, say, a can opener, and it didn't work as advertised, my dad would grumble, "I bet that was invented by some guy's brother-in-law. 

His explanation was that some man was pressured to give his wife's sorry, clueless brother a job. The guy had no skills, but, hey, he was the boss's wife's brother, so he was hired.

So he comes into the board room one day with a goofy idea for a can opener. But everyone is afraid to shoot his idea down because he's the boss's brother-in-law. The "some guy's brother-in-law" story was pulled out whenever something we bought didn't work right.

When times are tough, call on your team to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Added expenses for new school clothes or a broken hot water heater? Find more income streams.

Like bark peeling. My sisters and I, under the watchful eye of our parents, would go beyond the back yard to the old growth forest where the cascara trees grew. At the age of 5, I learned to shimmy up the tree.

Perched on a strong branch, I would slit the bark straight down in a vertical line with my handmade knife. The hard part was pushing the fingers around the tree, underneath the slick, inside edges of the smooth gray bark, past the sharp notches that stung my hand.

If I did it right, I could pull the bark away in one long piece, kind of like those people who can take the skin from an apple in one long peel.

I would stuff the pungent bark into my scratchy gunny sack and sell it later at Mr. Reid's store: 5 cents a pound for wet bark, ten for dry. Mr. Reid sold the dried bark to Eli Lily Company because its main ingredient, cascara sagrada, was used to make Fletcher's Castori and other retchingly bitter-tasting laxatives.

I learned that there was always a way to make a few bucks if I needed it. My dad taught me that.

Thanks, dad

You taught me way, way more than that. Lessons that I use every day of my life as I juggle the challenges of running my own business.

How to be inventive with limited resources. How to practice patience. How to understand other points of view. How not to take myself too seriously.

I can't thank you enough for those lessons.

And just the other day, when I gave up on my leaky fountain pen, I looked at my ink-stained hands and back at the pen, then said said out loud, "I bet some guy's brother-in-law made this."

December Navel-gazing: 5 Insanely Helpful Things I Learned in 2008

OK, I admit. I'm not much for "looking back." You know, that end of the year, how-did-I-do-with-my-goals stuff? It's not that I see no value in it. It just doesn't come easily.

Authors of memoirs are often accused of "navel-gazing," turning completely inward, observing their every emotion and thought, chattering about themselves incessantly, as if they were the most important human on the planet. 

Well, that's not me.

Not usually. But this year was different. I did learn certain things about myself in 2008. In a personal way.  In a sort of is-this-who-I-really-am kind of way.

Now, I'm a fierce independent, not prone to whining or big, fat, self-involved "innerness." So this was a big deal for me.

Eleven months ago, we took a huge leap of faith, Bob and I. We had an idea. We wanted to see if it would fly. We were jumping up and down excited. Racing-to-fetch-a-frisbee excited. 

We launched a new online business, a subscription-based membership site packed with resources to help solopreneurs solve their biggest marketing challenges. Videos, podcasts, newsletter, industry "hotlinks" and other cool stuff. All delivered electronically.

I wasn't prepared for all the changes in me that had to happen with the transition from warm, caring relationships with real clients I could touch, to distant subscribers I would never know anything more about than their email address.

Absolutely didn't get it that it mattered that much to me.

In one of those rare moments of introspection—you know the kind I'm talking about, when you say to your partner, "I thought you wanted this. Are you kidding? You're not happy either?"— we decided to pull the plug on marketingyoursmallbiz.com.

It was a moment of blinding honesty that left us blinking, with white spots before our eyes.

Within a week, we had shut the site down and announced our decision to put our whole focus back on our original, long-standing business, our award-winning Cat's Eye Marketing. Clients and colleagues alike applauded us for following our heart and our passion.

What I now know about myself that I wish I had then

Sometimes it takes a time-consuming (and dollar-sucking) experience to get to these aha moments in our lives. Okay, here goes. Five insanely helpful things I learned about myself in 2008:

 1. I don't have any fun helping clients when I can't see their faces. Sending e-mail messages to someone I've never seen and picking up a paid subscriber doesn't make me excited. Not like the massage therapist who overcame her fears and started her own blog after your workshop. Or the e-letter subscriber who implemented one of your marketing tips and got five new customers. Or the quilt shop owner reporting her sales increased by 20 percent the month after the newsletter you created was sent out.

 2. I get as much joy from learning as I do from teaching. There is something about walking away from an e-marketing workshop you teach with a new strategy, a new tool, that an attendee gave you. Learning something new from a prospect or client. Priceless.

 3. I am energized by the creative process. I want to do more copywriting, more projects where I have a distinct and different problem each time. Where I have to take the client and their business, hold them up to the light, keep turning them around, watching the glint, considering creative solutions to problems. Then picking the best one and delivering it.

 4. I despise selling to people I'll never meet. I do not like the feeling of not being trusted, of being lumped in with all those blood-sucking online carnival barkers. It makes me ill to write one of those insanely long, hypey sales letters. You know, the ones that say, "But wait. There's more!" I want you to hire me because you believe I know my stuff and that I care about you, not because I've hounded you to death.

 5. I like the feeling of knowing I've accomplished something. Like getting a gold star on a math paper. Like the excited look on a client's face when the idea I proposed turned out to be the perfect way for them to attract more customers. Not knowing any of the outcomes really sucks.

 What about you? Was this a year of transformation for you? Did you plunge into something new only to find it didn't fit, like a raincoat with too-long sleeves? Or maybe you took a creative risk and had brilliant success.

 What did you learn—that helped, or hurt a little bit, or both—in 2008? 

Data waves, dead surfers and marketing overload: there's too much stuff

There's a line in the romantic comedy, Duplex, where Ben Stiller's character asks his wife, played by Drew Barrymore, if the rent control laws in NYC mean that they can't evict their elderly, bothersome tenant.

She reaches to turn off the light on the nightstand. "I don't know," she says. "I'll have to look it up on the Internet."

That, my friends, is precisely the problem. The answer to that question is on the web, along with truths, half-truths, opinions and downright bad advice— on any topic you can think of.

The Internet, with chain after chain of entrancing links, is just a mouse click away.

Neil Postman, author, New York University professor and expert on culture and communication said:

Our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune system is inoperable. We don't know how to filter it out; we don't know how to reduce it; we don't know how to use it.

When did Postman make this sage observation? In 1990. 18 years ago.

Too much stuff

I'm feeling like information overload is a way of life.

The other day, one of my solopreneur friends said, "It's a huge time sink. At first I was enthused. Now I'm just overwhelmed. The tools like Google search have become less and less useful because there's too much stuff to search."

Speaking of Google, I did a search yesterday, using a few marketing-related terms. Here is what I found:

• 782 million results for marketing
• 21 million results for small business marketing
• 23,300 results for marketing for the solopreneur

Basex, a business research firm, predicted in December 2007 that the problem of the year for 2008 would be information overload.

In fact, $650 billion a year is the cost of unnecessary interruptions in work that result in lost productivity. The computing giant Intel estimates that each of their knowledge workers loses 8 hours of productivity a week to information overload.

What's the answer?

It seems that the challenge is not in finding things; it's in throwing stuff away, sorting and sifting through all the data streams to get to the gems.

A new wind's been blowing for a while. Even back in 1994, a few sharp people felt it. That was when Paul Saffo wrote in Wired Magazine:

An avalanche of content will make context a scarce resource. Consumers will pay serious money for anything that helps them sift and sort and gather the pearls. The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but to those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools.

Um, that's us.

If you've ever felt you were barely holding on, on a crazy little surfboard with that gigantic wave of marketing information headed straight for you, we can help. We throw away the lame, useless stuff so you're just left with the best of the best. And that saves you hours a week.

Visit our brand-spanking new web site, MarketingYourSmallBiz.com.

Become a free member. Sign up for Marketing Hotspots, our weekly e-tips. Poke around the site a bit. Check out the member benefits.

You just may want to spring for a membership, with all the practical, use-today ideas and samples that come with it.

Oh, and congratulations to Amy Woidtke of EcoKind Design, the winner of a full one-year MarketingYourSmallBiz.com SoloSavvy membership subscription at our drawing at BizJam!

Amy's reaction was, well, typically Amy: "Holy smokes! Neato!"

Would love to hear comments on our new site from you, our loyal readers.

What Do You Do Again?: A Blogger's Show and Tell Part II

In Judy's last blog post, she spilled her guts...and now it's my turn. Whether you like it or not, here is the good, the bad, the ugly.

Hi, I'm Bob (Hi Bob). You see in my photo that I have a coffee cup. Not a prop there, but a triple, dry, nonfat cappuccino. Yes, I love coffee and it's not just the "Seattle" thing. I started drinking it with milk when I was a kid at home. Year's ago, before espresso was the "in" thing, a friend of mine, when we were bartending, made expresso in a cast iron pot over heat. Seriously wired!

Speaking of, yes, I could make a mean margarita, mai tai and long island ice tea. Back in the early days of bartending I managed clubs, played bouncer, poured drinks to 6 deep at the bar, and stunk like cigarettes.

I like to read. A lot. Books are piled on my side of the bed. I often make the mistake of buying a book a second time. I like comedy. Funny movies are the best. Anything (almost) with Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Steve Martin, Woody Allen, John Cleese. Saturday Night live from the 70's and 80's. Monty Python. Laughing till tears run down my face and I have a case of the perma-grins.

I love animals, all animals. Found the love of my life. Enjoy good wine and dry vodka martinis. Can't help but nibble on any kind of cheese. Can almost name any song from the 70's in a few notes. Would still love to own a Miata. Able to do a great imitation of Roy Orbison's growl (or purr) in Pretty Woman.

I do like computers. Technology is my friend. I admit I am a Crack Berry. Learned computers way back on a Radio Shack TRS (trash) 80. Finally get social media. Would like an iPhone if they come down in price. Love Macs, don't like Windows.

I have a hard time saying no to nonprofits. I love to listen, don't talk so much. Not much of a sports fan, but can handle watching football. I bite my nails, sometimes move my lips when reading, and get indigestion from one of my favorite foods, nachos. I have a terrible singing voice, but have often been told I should have been a DJ or minister. When I was a teenager, I had hair down to my butt, now I don't want it even touching my ears.

I like to work, but probably do too much of it. Am pretty good with a camera, and have an eye for print design. Fairly intuitive when it comes to most technology, but lousy with numbers. I like to build relationships and gain the trust of our clients and customers. I'm honest, straightforward and despise BS.

I want to keep working, meet great people and never grow old and stodgy. Will continue to reach out to all new technology, try my best to relate to anyone, any age, and not become an old fart. And if at all possible, someday still learn to play the harmonica.

What Do You Do Again?: Show and Tell for Bloggers

James over at the Men with Pens blog wrote a post a few weeks ago that got me thinking. He said that readers still ask him what he does for a living. They know he writes great blog posts, but, really, what's he all about?

Most blogs have an "About Us" page. This is the place most of us try to give our readers some sense of who we are, I mean who we really are.

But people are impatient. If they click on it at all, they may read only a few lines before something else pulls them away. I'm one of those fickle, click-crazy readers myself.

So I decided to clear things up, right here and now:

Hi. I'm Judy.

I love words of all kinds. When I was in kindergarten, I could recite every one of my classmates' names, in alphabetical order and syncopated rhythm, from Georgia Bushnell all the way to Andy Zooka. (I still remember their names. That's pretty scary.)

I write ebooks and website copy and how-to articles and e-letters and newspaper and magazine articles and children's stories and, yes, blog posts. But I couldn’t write code for websites if someone put a gun to my head. I am working on two other writing pieces now—a middle grade novel and a memoir.

I'm crazy about new ideas, especially creative ones. I spend too much time going down "what if" paths, which are incredibly fun but suck up great gobs of time.

I like black licorice, the smell of crayons, and the sound of foghorns. And rain. I really love rain. I know. It's weird.

I know every line of the movie The In-Laws by heart. Not the remake, but the original—the one with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.

I am a writer.

Bob and I started this cool Internet business called marketingyoursmallbiz.com. We can help the solopreneur whose last e-mail sales letter bombed. The person whose ad got not a single new client. The small biz owner who wants more customers but doesn't want to sound like a used car salesman.

I can give you more ideas for promoting your business in one month than you can possibly wrap your brain around. I can give you practical, downloadable marketing takeaways to make your life easier. Things like sample press releases, advice on how to hire a copywriter, and the thirty all-time, best words to use in headlines to get sales results.

Oh, and I can give you a monthly e-zine packed with more information on the very best marketing trends and strategies. I also know how to juggle. And I can say, "Four knives will be sufficient" in Swahili.

The one thing I can't do is play the harp. I guess I never got the hang of making cappuccinos, either. Or shooting one of those bright colored balls into the corner pocket. Those three things. Everything else I can do.

I write …

Because I don't know anything about nuclear physics. Because I can't put the melody and chords together on the piano. Because I tried waiting tables and I always dropped the trays. Even spilled a strawberry milkshake in some poor guy's lap once. I write because helping solopreneurs succeed is what I care most about. Because writing brings me joy when I find just the right word to make a piece shine like the paint on a brand new Jaguar XK.

My customers are…

That tired mortgage planner who just wasted three hours on the Internet looking for information on writing ad copy that sells. That event planner who found a great article (or was it a blog post?) on getting new clients with word-of-mouth strategies but can't remember where she saved it. The home-based "mompreneur" who can't afford to join the Chamber of Commerce but needs to improve her networking skills. People who want advice from someone they can trust. Someone who isn't trying to hook them in just to sell them way more expensive products.

Next on my plate...

I'm joining Bob with balloons and hats and those crazy whistle thingies to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. I'm going to try to move from three- to four-ball juggling. I'm going to biznik.com's two-day BizJam and indie party in July. I'm going to write three more e-books and try to stir things up more on this blog. And I'm going to brush up on my French so I can order cheese and a bottle of the finest red when we visit Paris.

And you?

Are you ready to tell me who you are?