A bunch of the world’s soccer goalkeepers are having fits about the new Adidas Jabulani ball. As the World Cup approaches, the goalies are near-unanimous in their complaints: Too light, too curvy, too sleek, too slippery, too unpredictable.

Here are some quotes about the Jabulani from the goalkeepers of several teams playing in the Cup this summer:

Hugo Lloris of France: “A disaster.”

Iker Casillas of Spain: “Like a beach ball.”

Gianluigi Buffon of Italy: “Shameful.”

David James of England: “Dreadful.”

Fernando Muslera of Uruguay: “The worst I’ve ever played with.”

Ball #2: The Worst Call in Baseball History

And on Wednesday, the Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game (only 20 of these games have been pitched in the history of Major League Baseball) when first base umpire Jim Joyce completely blew it and incorrectly called a runner safe with two outs in the ninth.

Galarraga’s response at being cheated out of a history-making achievement? “[Joyce] probably felt more bad than me. Nobody’s perfect.”

Wow.

While the goalkeepers are already making excuses for the goals they haven’t yet allowed, Galarraga responded with more grace and integrity than I can imagine.

Arguing with Reality

Here’s my confession: While I would love to say I would have reacted like Galarraga, I act like a whiny goalkeeper much more often.

It’s so easy, after all, to blame the world for what it’s withholding from me.

Even when it’s a patent absurdity, such as a soccer ball that will challenge all teams equally.

But as Mick Jagger and Buddha so wisely remind us, You can’t always get what you want.

And as one of my teachers, Byron Katie puts it, “arguing with reality” is a sure cause of misery.

After all, the Jabulani ball is equally bad for everyone. Kind of like the other excuses I like to trot out when the world doesn’t deliver exactly what I want: the market, the economy, the labor market, the demands on my time.

Unless I pay attention, I can become a veritable font of excuses that can keep me victimized, aggrieved, and helpless.

Accepting Reality

Contrast that attitude with Galarraga’s, whose near-instant acceptance of the irreversible bad call has made him synonymous with hugeness of spirit.

He showed us all how to make friends with reality.

And by “reality” I don’t mean anything more than what is actually going on right now. As opposed to the constant comparison with the story of how things should go.

Suppose Galarraga had done the “normal” thing and yelled and protested and complained and told the world he had been robbed.

Would that have changed anything?

Clearly not, as it didn’t work when the Tigers’ manager. 

Here’s what it would have changed: Galarraga’s experience of the event. As it unfolded, he ended the game with a big smile, a huge ovation, and what looks suspiciously to me like inner peace. A tantrum would have erased all that good stuff.

Plus, as my friend Brian pointed out, his story has become a resonant social fable far beyond baseball. Millions of people with no interest in baseball admire and will remember him.

How many of you can name the men who pitched the first two perfect games this season? If you’re not a baseball fan, I bet you can’t. (FYI: I can’t. Despite being a baseball nerd in my teams, I quit cold turkey after the 1978 season, reasoning that for a Yankee fan, life could simply not get any better.)

The Power of the Invisible Sun

Just to add a bit of irony to the goalkeepers’ moaning, the World Cup is being played for the first time in South Africa, a land with great energy and great challenges. I spent two months in South Africa this past year, and I’ve seen enough of childhood poverty to last me a lifetime.

While the high-tech Jabulani balls are slipping through fingers in goalkeepers’ recurring nightmares, many South African kids dream of owning a soccer ball that consists of something more rugged and aerodynamic than rubbish and garbage bags held together with string.

Photographer and philanthropist Bobby Sager, who took the above photo, teamed up with former Police frontman Sting and inventor Tim Jahnigen to create an indestructible soccer ball.

Instead of a bladder that can be punctured, the new ball can be stabbed with a knife, run over with a car, and rolled over broken glass without any problem.

The bright yellow balls, inscribed with the words “Hope is a Game Changer,” are being handed out by the thousands all over the world.

Why? Sting answers, “This is instant joy. Kids need fun, too. Imagine living in a refugee camp. I mean, what is there to look forward to? Very little. This is concrete. Very, very substantial.”

(To support this effort, go to The Power of the Invisible Sun.)

My fantasy is that one day a child who grew up in a South African informal settlement will grow up to be goalkeeper for the South African national team. I bet you he – or she – will be very happy with whatever ball is used.

And that, like Armando Galarraga, he or she will realize that the greatest victory is not the final score, but the way we conduct ourselves no matter what life throws at us.

So from my own humble place of learning, my gratitude goes out to my teachers: Armando, Bobby, Sting, Tim, and Byron.

May I be inspired to accept reality with grace and confront it with courage.

And so may we all.

Start with Why, not What.

What you do simply serves as proof of what you believe.

Enjoy.

The real reason was not something new in the water, or a brand new training facility, or anything you might expect. Instead, it was the international success of 17-year-old Anna Kournikova, whose prowess in tournaments was matched only by her supermodel looks. She quickly became the most-downloaded athlete in history.

All of a sudden, Coyle writes, thousands of young Russian girls had a role model. More than that, they had a desirable future to which they could aspire. I want to be like her, they all thought. She's like me. I'm like her. I can be that too. If I practice hard, for years. I'd better get busy.

Coyle refers to this effect as ignition. Just as a tank of gas won't move a Ferrari – or a Vespa – without a spark to set the engine running, a well of potential skill and practice-energy will never manifest in talent without a spark.

Are You Good at Math? When's Your Birthday?

In a study described by Coyle, researchers had a bunch of college students read through some magazine articles. One of the articles was about a student, Nathan Jackson, who discovered he enjoyed math, applied himself in college, and was now a successful and happy math professor.

Half of the students read the article as is. The other half were fed a teeny fib: Nathan's birthday was altered to be the same as theirs. Then the researchers tested the students' willingness to spend time working on a math problem that had no solution.

The results: "the birthday-matched group had significantly more positive attitudes about math, and persisted a whopping 65 percent longer on the insoluble solution."

Even though each student was working on the problem alone, in a closed room, the perceived connection with Nathan Jackson – as trivial as a shared birthday – was enough to change their self-identity about themselves as mathematicians.

Why I No Longer Completely Despise "Lazy Loser" Marketing Gurus

For many years, I've gone to online marketing conferences where some of the speakers earn their living by pitching their courses, workshops, and coaching programs from the stage. I've always cringed at the long "Lazy Loser" presentations. They go something like this:

1. PowerPoint shows presenter 3 years ago, in a ratty basement room with a Pentium 286 computer with socks strewn over the monitor and a moth-eaten couch in the background

"Here I am in my sister's basement after losing my job as a pizza delivery guy because I used to pick the mushrooms off the pizza and eat them myself."

2. PowerPoint shifts to presenter 2 years ago, dead expression on his face as he sits in a depressing cubicle

"And here I am working 29 hours a day at my sister's husband's debt collection company, processing the paperwork that would repossess grandma's dentures."

3. PowerPoint shows presenter with arms around babe of a girlfriend, in front of mansion with expensive car, on a private jet, in a speedboat, flashing a Rolex

"But now, even though I'm unemployable and not that smart and really lazy, I make 3 millions dollars a year using this formula that I discovered by accident, and in about 20 minutes will tell you how to buy for the amazingly low price of $3995, but for you, today only, because [insert name of seminar host here] twisted my arm, it's only $1995 and the first ten people who climb over the heads of their fellow audience members get an additional bonus of every DVD set I've ever made, no matter how long ago."

And I would sit in the audience, cringing, wondering if I was the only person in the room not drinking the Kool-Aid, silently pitying the fools parting with their money and condemning the slick huckster for vacuuming the last dollars out of the pockets of gullible, desperate people.

"That Ain't Me, No That Ain't Me. I Ain't No Senator's Son, Son, Son"

But here's the thing: I was judging because the story wasn't mine. It wasn't an invitation to me to become a great online marketing success.

I've never been fired from pizza delivery; I've never slept in my sister's basement or worked for anyone I hated for more than a couple of weeks. My narrative is different. I went to an Ivy League university. My parents bought me my first car. I was never a slacker, or poor, or hopeless. At least not in that way.

I was exposed to this rags-to-riches narrative so many times over my first few years in online marketing that I came to believe I was doomed precisely because I didn't have such a story in my past. Unconsciously, I was hoping to sink that low so I could finally find the motivation to succeed. (If I hadn't been supporting a couple of kids at that point, I might have gone there.)

But here's what I was missing: the people who were leaping over tables and chairs to throw their money at the guru had suddenly been ignited. His story was their story. Regardless of whether the specifics of his program or course or software or workshop were sound, a whole bunch of people could now see themselves as successes.

If he could do it, they were thinking to themselves, then I can do it too. I'm not as hopeless as he was…

And when I think about how I was groomed for success my whole life – there was never any doubt that I would be highly educated, very successful (probably a lawyer), and connected to the right people as a birthright – I realize the importance, for people who didn't have that privileged childhood, of seeing someone just like them who had, against all odds, succeeded.

But here's my beef: the Lazy Losers are abusing that ignition, and in most cases, squandering it. I'll explain how by comparing their approach with the one I take with Camp Checkmate.

The Camp Checkmate Approach: Hard Work, Deep Practice

So you've probably heard by now that I'm holding an online marketing workshop, called Camp Checkmate, in Chicago on June 10-11, 2010.If you're hoping for someone to do the Rags to Riches dance to sell you some course or coaching program, you will be disappointed.

So why should you attend, and what does this have to do with Anna Kournikova, Nathan Jackson, and "Lazy Loser" Marketing Gurus?

Because it turns out that ignition is not enough. Ignition does not ignite talent, or skill, or capability. Ignition ignites the willingness to put in long hours of practice, to master the skills that produce the talent.

"Better Get Busy"

According to Coyle, ignition sends the following message to the brain:

"Hey, that could be you. Better Get Busy."

Busy? Busy doing what, exactly?

In Ten Thousand Hours, You Could Be Yo-Yo Ma

In researching the best performers in the world, in fields as diverse as music, sports, politics, literature, and dance, Coyle found an almost immutable law of talent: when a person practiced deeply for 10,000 hours (roughly 3 hours a day for 10 years), they became a world champion.

The 10,000 hours was not only necessary, it was sufficient. Regardless of "innate" ability or genius or anything mysterious given by God. A human who dedicates herself to mastery for that long will achieve world-class status.

Ignition is the seed event that starts the deep practice ball rolling. But ignition without the subsequent years of effort means nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, because dashed hopes make it all the more difficult to believe in yourself when the next ignition occurs.

"Lazy Loser" Gurus Short-Circuit the Mastery Process

The big problem with the online marketing gurus setting expectations that anyone can achieve their level of professional and financial success by continuing to be lazy is that it just isn't true. They are masters at ignition: "Hey, that could be me."

But their need to make a buck short-circuits the second half of the equation: "Better get busy."

So the ignition is "spent," not on practice, but on a roll of the dice that the magic wand offered by the guru (at a hefty price) is enough. All that is needed. Brains and effort optional. 

So no matter how good their material or how rigorous their training, most of their customers are already predisposed to failure because of their fantasyland expectations.

And the gurus blame it on the lazy idiots who don't even take the shrink wrap off the DVDs.

Of course, when we reflect soberly, we realize that any strategy that requires neither brains nor effort is completely unsustainable. If it's so easy, anyone can do it, and the reward for that activity falls to minimum wage by the law of supply and demand. 

But in the heat of the moment, when all our "primal cues" about scarcity and exclusivity and belonging and identity are being invoked by a charismatic speaker wearing a watch we could never afford, we forget all that and respond, as nature intended, by igniting and following the path of least resistance.

Camp Checkmate – Two Days of Deep Practice

At Camp Checkmate, there are no shortcuts to mastery. What we're really working on, for two whole days, is the fundamental core of marketing: how to connect with our prospects so completely that they decide to like us and trust us with their futures.

We use simple and powerful tools to achieve this connection: the Google search results page, the Checkmate Matrix, Sean D'Souza's Reverse Testimonial Strategy, Perry Marshall's Diary Insight, Ken McCarthy's Testimonial Factory and Positioning work, Ben Jesson and Karl Blank's Objection/Counter-Objection Technique, and a bunch of exercises I've borrowed from the world of improvisational theater. 

But we are working, and working hard.

And it's the kind of work that simply doesn't happen when we're back home, in our offices, running our day-to-day businesses. Humans are social animals, and we take our cues on how to act from the other people in our environment. If you want to become a world-class direct marketer, then you have to spend time hanging out with other people practicing the same skills at the same level of commitment.

Camp Checkmate is a Talent Hotbed

In The Talent Code, Coyle writes about "Talent Hotbeds" – for example, a ramshackle tennis club in Moscow with one indoor court that has produced more top-twenty female players than the US. Or the Island of Curacao, whose Little League baseball team has made it to the Little League World Series semifinals six out of the last eight years.

Talent Hotbeds arise when two conditions are met:

1. There are enough environmental cues that motivate ongoing practice
2. The practice is done the right way – with learners struggling to attain skills just beyond their reach

The effectiveness of Camp Checkmate – as testified to by the reactions of participants, including direct marketing superstars like Drayton Bird and Perry Marshall – arises from the ways in which you are forced to practice skills of empathy and assertiveness, at first not on your business, but on other people's. 

Marketing is hard. Damn hard. 

So the task of the serious marketing educator is to chunk it down into manageable skills that a person can struggle with and succeed at. The most significant chunking at Camp Checkmate consists of solving other people's business problems before you address your own.

When you watch the video testimonials of Camp Checkmate participants, you hear the words "fun" and "easy" and "creative" a lot. Please realize that's just their perception. It's not the truth – at least not the "easy" part.

They're actually doing hard work, all of them. I know, because I watch the groups grapple with the games and activities. They're sweating out there.

But they don't realize it, because they're "in the zone." Time flies, insights come, and by the end of the exercise participants have developed new neuronal pathways that simply cannot form without this kind of deep practice.

Camp Checkmate is really an old-school gym, building marketing muscles. 

Through practice, repetition, and failure. 

Very unglamorous, yet wickedly effective.

The Two Easiest-Hard Days of Your Life

Look, I know it's a pain the butt to travel to Chicago for two days of workshop. Unless you live in Chicagoland, you'll have to fly out the day before, and you may even stay an extra night afterwards. 

And I know it's not cheap – even if Camp Checkmate were free, you'd still be paying hundreds of dollars on airfare and hotel. And Camp Checkmate is decidedly not free. In fact, it gets more expensive the longer you wait.

But here's why all that is a good thing:

The people you will be hanging out with all share your level of commitment. 

By virtue of their decision to turn up, they're contributing to the Online Marketing Talent Hotbed that is, in fact, the hallmark of every great seminar, workshop and mastermind group I've ever attended. 

At most marketing seminars, the networking is the best part, but it's the least scheduled and intentional part.

At Camp Checkmate, working in small groups with fellow campers is 90% of the experience. The others are coming to work with YOU. And you're coming to work with them. 

All I'm doing is attracting the right people and creating a structure and process that fosters deep practice and mastery.

Why Camp Checkmate Feels So Easy

I'm really proud of this bit, but the truth is I hit upon it by accident.

Because everyone is working on other people's businesses, the happy side benefit is that you will come home from Camp Checkmate with an amazing quality and quantity of new marketing material, ready to test.

New ads. New headlines. New landing page copy. New content for autoresponder and broadcast emails. New positioning. And new ideas for the visionary improvement of your current business.

And – I can guarantee this – you would never have come up with this material on your own. Not at this stage.

After Camp Checkmate, you'll be significantly better at coming up with it on your own. Unless you're Drayton Bird or Perry Marshall or Ken McCarthy or Sean D'Souza, someone who has already put in the 10,000 hours required of world-class mastery. For folks at that level, Camp Checkmate is like skill maintenance and refinement. But for the rest of us – and I include myself here – the Camp Checkmate experience definitely raises our game.

But in the process, we get our marketing done for us by people who can see what we can't because they're standing outside of our business, seeing our customers and competitors objectively, and with fresh eyes.

Ready to Crack Your Own Marketing Talent Code?

Here's the link to register for Camp Checkmate Chicago, June 10-11, 2010, and reserve your seat:

Single Payment $2497 $1497 (early bird pricing until April 30, 5pm Eastern Time US): Click here

Three Payments of $866 $532 (early bird pricing until April 30, 5pm Eastern Time US): Click here

Got questions about Camp Checkmate? 

Open Q&A phone session today, April 30, from 1:35-2:30pm Eastern Time:

Phone: 1-219-509-8222
Access Code: 233080#

It's an open line, so don't ask questions that you don't want the world to hear. 

If I think Camp Checkmate is for you, I'll tell you. And if I think it's not for you, I'll tell you that as well. Camp Checkmate will fill up, so it's just self-interest that I would discourage people who might not be a good fit. I don't like giving refunds, and I don't want people to show up who aren't able to contribute to their fellow campers' success.

Wishing you ignition and deep practice,
Howie

" For 15 years now I have worked on such familiar terms with the bees that when I see them down the river, or listen to them at night, I know exactly what they are doing. I now can understand a little bit, though not nearly as much as I thought I did the first year I worked with them. They have forced me to realize that my senses and powers of observation are very limited.

"My city friends know well enough what I do here during the season; it may seem strange work to them, but it is undisputedly work; what I do during the slack times is harder for them to figure out: "organizing my ignorance" is perhaps as good a description as any."

Marketers have a lot in common with beekeepers; when we first start working with our market we think we know a lot more about them than we really do. The longer we engage with prospects, the better we get at figuring out how to speak to them and how to serve them, but we also realize how much we still don't know.

It's ironic, perhaps, that our increasing wisdom highlights our ignorance. But it's by exploring those places of ignorance, those little nooks and crannies where we don't know what we need to know, that we develop true deep market insight.

Organizing our ignorance

In online marketing especially, we like to think of ourselves as macho cowboys writing the great sales letter, making the great pitch, actively pursuing wealth. What's less obvious and less sexy work is the organization of our ignorance so that we may begin to close the gap between what we don't know and what we need to know in order to empathize and serve.

Simply sitting – meditating, stewing, imagining, whatever word makes us feel most OK with the inaction – with our confusion, our blankness, our unexamined assumptions, begins to allow for whole new levels of reality to emerge.

As marketers, we tend to rush in to answer those questions: to conduct a survey, to perform some market analysis, to take a wild stab or a wild guess at the answer. Doing something sure feels good; it feels like good old hard work. And hard work, we're told by our culture, makes us wealthy.

But it's a much more receptive, feminine act of simply being in the mystery that allows for the subsequent active work to be most effective.

Sitting in the Questions

So this isn't an article about how to do market research. Instead, it's an invitation to ask ourselves a series of humbling questions on a regular basis:

• "What might not be true here?"
• "What am I not seeing?"
• "What else could be going on here?"

Sitting with these questions, perhaps with a journal open in front of us, or maybe a set of colorful markers and a big pad of art paper,  might be the most profitable "nonwork" that we do all year.

Deep Curiosity is More Powerful than Knowledge

Once we have a map and a feel for the fertile terrain of the dark holes in our understanding, we can then begin the process of discovery with a new clarity and reverence for the ultimate mystery that is our prospect; the ultimate mystery that is every human being we may encounter on our journey.

No matter how well we think we know a person, be it a customer, a colleague, a life partner, a child, or even ourselves, the ultimate form of respect is a recognition of the deep mystery, the unknowable within them. Marketing, in its purest and deepest form, is not about knowing everything about the inner life of our prospect. Instead, it's being willing to approach them with fresh eyes every single time, to allow for deeper connection and communion.

"Slow Down" Marketing

If you'd like to experience a balanced environment, in which active and receptive forces dance in harmony to give you powerful and deep insight into your market, please consider attending Camp Checkmate in Chicago on June 10-11, 2010. While I don't tout the two days as "Slow Down" marketing, in a way that's exactly what goes on. We slow down our own monkey minds, get curious about reality, and start making connections that will seem obvious once we've made them. 

Read about Camp Checkmate, and sign up for the free pre-Camp training series here.

• Long black hairs like warthog bristles sprouting from the bridge
• Clogged pores
• Dead skin and dirt piling up like dead leaves over a storm drain

It’s All Mirrors

What the Heck Am I Talking About?

• Children who do not clean their rooms to my specifications of what a clean room looks like (which is much much cleaner, by the way, than my vision of what a clean entrepreneurial office looks like).
• Children reading The Book of Bunny Suicides at 7:52am instead of packing their lunches or brushing their teeth.
• Children saying things to each other in a voice calculated to be overheard by a parent, “If you haven’t made your lunch yet, why are you reading The Book of Bunny Suicides instead of doing your job?”

Business Mirrors

Who are Your Mirrors?

• Where are we projecting your own insecurities and fears out into the world?
• What gets our blood boiling?
• What makes us feel weak and ashamed?
• What turns us against ourselves, muttering curses like “I’ll never figure this out”?

What Can We Learn from Mirrors?

Lessons from the Mirror

This morning, while I was getting into position for my morning yoga practice, I wrenched my lower back and collapsed onto my mat.

The pain shot up my spine, down my legs, and left me shaking and gasping.

And you know what? It’s all cool.

Self-Acceptance: A Cornerstone of Business Success

I realize this isn’t my usual article, chock full of business strategies and online marketing tips. But truth is, business tactics and strategies are only as effective as the human beings who execute them. 

And one of the biggest stumbling blocks for entrepreneurs is a lack of acceptance.

Of ourselves. Of our situations. Of our incomes. Of our achievements.

What is Self-Acceptance?

Many people confuse accepting ourselves as we are with passivity.  Like, “If I accept myself as I am, I won’t be motivated to change.”

I’ve tried to grow by beating myself up. Sometimes a hit of self-cruelty can get me moving, but not in a useful way. Who wants to do business with someone who exudes self-loathing?

Back to the Back

I’ve had episodes of crippling back pain since my early twenties. And ever since I started reading mind/body books (in my early twenties, coincidentally), I’ve beaten myself up about my back pain.

“You’re doing this to yourself with your stressful, negative thinking.”

“You didn’t get back pain when you were running 5 miles a day. Why’d you stop, you lazy bum?”

“You’ll never cure this, no matter how many different body workers you see.”

So being cool with it is a big thing for me.

I’ve also had trouble accepting my business limitations. I used to  get hung up on the fact that I was consulting for people who were richer than I was. My thought pattern went like, “When this guy
discovers that you aren’t kicking it in business, he’ll realize you’re a fraud and will fire you instantly.”

And because I’m a business consultant, I can muster up lots of self-judgment about my own failures. I have trouble budgeting. I can spend days in unproductive wheel-spinning. I’m not making
as much money as I should be making.

All that heavy judgment is the opposite of acceptance. And you know what? As much as you might think that being hard on myself would motivate me, it doesn’t.

Non-acceptance blocks gratitude

Because all that non-acceptance makes it hard for me to connect with gratitude and appreciation. Heck, I’m doing pretty well, aren’t I? I can provide for my family. We took a month off and went to Africa this summer. I own a $40 pair of merino wool boxer shorts. These achievements are nothing to scoff at.

But as long as I’m comparing myself to a more preferable, more acceptable Howie, I can’t see or appreciate any of the good.

And when I can’t be grateful to the universe for providing, why should it send any more good stuff my way? When my kids don’t say “thank you” I’m less inclined to do nice stuff next time. Why should Reality be any different?

So I’m pleased to report that I’m handling my temporary back situation with calm acceptance. Wherever it goes this time, it’s fine.

And I’m fine.

If I could have done anything differently, I would have. So this pain is simply an invitation to explore a profound opportunity for healing.

I’m learning to accept myself in all my glorious imperfection.

And it’s a gift I’m glad to be receiving in my 45th year.

Acceptance enables spontaneous action

When something in our lives or businesses isn’t as we’d prefer, we entrepreneurs take action.

When we’re mired in non-acceptance, our actions are not fully conscious of the Reality of our environment. They’re impulsive, often too forceful or too timid. Not in proportion to the Reality of the situation.

We’re too much in our own heads and not cognizant enough of the playing field to be truly effective.

When we accept the situation and our own role in creating it, without beating ourselves up, we are free to be spontaneous, to deal with whatever is out  there (or in here) with fluid grace and just the right
amount of power.

Reality check: There’s nothing unacceptable about us

I get so many emails from readers who feel the need to apologize for their lack of knowledge, or savvy, or success.

Underlying these apologies is often a palpable feeling of shame. Like they believe business building, making money, marketing online are so simple that there’s something wrong with them if they aren’t raking in the bucks in a few hours a week.

Please know: you have nothing to apologize for.

Whether you are raking in the bucks, or have a business that’s limping along.

Whether you have a business, or a vague dream.

Whether your click through rate is 4.3 or 0.2.

Whether you’ve spent your last $24.95 on AdWords For Dummies or your last $2495 on a marketing seminar.

Whether you’re taking swift bold action or you’ve been procrastinating and buying info-products and doing nothing for years.

None of this has anything to do with your real worth. Or mine.

An alternate vision of motivation

Once we tame the demons of “gotta prove myself worthy” and “I’ll show them” and “gotta be rich to be OK”, what motivations remain?

Just a couple: Joy and love.

Joy for the sweet pleasure in expressing ourselves through our work. Bringing the best of ourselves out of our heads and into connection.

And love for others, manifest in the excellence of our service and our commitment to value.

Do you know any businesses that operate on joy and love? I can think of a few – Dr. Holstein, our pediatric dentist in New Jersey, whom we still travel hundreds of miles to see; the Mustard Museum in
Mt Horeb, Wisconsin; my coach Christian Mickelsen’s business; to some extent, the Durham Bulls minor league baseball team. And some others.

These are businesses that I support, not just because of the service I get, but because joy and love are infectious and I often want another hit.

Whatever we sell, we’re selling to human beings.

And whatever humans want or need – more money, a hot car, a thriving business, status, sex, power; deep down we think those things will bring us joy and love.

Why not serve joy and love with every helping anyway?

Uniqueness

If you haven’t yet, spend an hour reviewing this week’s webinar, the AdWords 2010 Prognostication Call. (Available only in the Ring of Fire, click here to join. And once you’re a member, look out early next week for an interview with Sean D’Souza, explaining exactly how you find your uniqueness, how you develop it, and how you propogate it.)

Today, check out this quote from a NY Times op-ed piece about the demise of Gourmet magazine by Christopher Kimball, the editor of Cook’s Illustrated, bemoaning the “sound bite” web and the democratization of expertise.

The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack more resonance and useful content than an article that reflects a lifetime of experience, experts are not created from the top down but from the bottom up. They can no longer be coronated; their voices have to be deemed essential to the lives of their customers. That leaves, I think, little room for the thoughtful, considered editorial with which Gourmet delighted its readers for almost seven decades.

To survive, those of us who believe that inexperience rarely leads to wisdom need to swim against the tide, better define our brands, prove our worth, ask to be paid for what we do, and refuse to climb aboard this ship of fools, the one where everyone has an equal voice. Google “broccoli casserole” and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise — the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind. I like my reporters, my pilots, my pundits, my doctors, my teachers and my cooking instructors to have graduated from the school of hard knocks.

In fact, Gourmet did not die because readers fled to Google’s broccoli casserole recipes at the expense of better quality information. The reasons are far more complex than that.

And the author doesn’t realize that what he wants is what everyone wants – real, honestly-won, confident expertise.

The person who clicks your ad or the link in your Tweet is also hoping to find a pro’s advice at the end of it.

So no matter how much time you spend tweaking AdWords or SEO or any of the technical channels, pay 10 times as much attention to the quality of what’s flowing through those channels.

And if you have a good vegan recipe for broccoli casserole, please let me know.

Staying at my wife’s cousin’s farm, in a location currently vying for “Place Most Likely to Make You Jealous You Don’t Live Here.”

High, rugged mountains on all sides, vinyards just sending out new buds, plum orchards in blossom with intoxicating scent, guava trees practically throwing their excess fruit at you as you pass.

The dinner bottles of Chenin and Sauvignon Blanc, sourced from the very vines you passed during your sunset stroll. Table Mountain in the south western distance, invoking the two oceans that lap against its grassy base and the murmur of limitless horizons and the whiff of Malay spice caravans.

Now that’s why I travel!

Yesterday Nelis (the dad of the farm) and I took our four kids to Cape Town.

We “did” the waterfront, lunch in a tourist trap (the “mopani worms” appetizer for 40 Rand should have tipped us off),Greenmarket Square with its craft and t-shirt stalls; half of Table Mountain (cable car down for maintenance, “so nothing goes wrong,” returned the gift shop proprietor somewhat defensively when we inquired what was wrong with it); Signal Hill, with breathtaking panoramic views (including the new soccer – oops, football – stadium under construction in preparation for the World Cup 2010 mania that has utterly gripped the country; the beach at Camp Bay with its neoprened surfers, wedding parties, and tattooed middle aged ladies playing with their dogs; and the gardens near parliament with their mix of familiar and exotic birds and flowers.

Fun, yes, but secretly I was pining for the farm the entire day. The homey-ness of the well-stocked kitchen, the scuttle of miniature dachshunds and long-haired Weimeraner under our feet, the sense that nearby in every direction nature was turning elemental energy of sun, moisture and decay into the miracle of fruit.

The relaxed curiosity of my kids, hanging with their English-as-a-second-language cousins just as easily as if they had known each other their whole lives. Working for hours on an apple pie together, serving it golden brown with a latticed top crust, proudly contributing to a farmhouse dinner and receiving praise from the grownups in the form of sighs of pleasure.

The Point of Travel

In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton reminds us that travel is all about the pursuit of happiness. So is the rest of our lives, I suppose, but travel brings the goal into focus.

Every decision, from where to go, which vehicle to rent, what to order for dinner, whether to camp or indulge in a real bed tonight, is calculated to maximize the pleasure of the trip.

I’m finding that this trip is honing my marketing mind by helping me get back in touch with this raw desire for happiness that, to some extent, drives everything we do.

The Internet is not so much about surfing as it is a round-the-world epic. One minute I’m on a site about a water sports store in Fort Lauderdale, and the next I’m exploring photos of the Natal coastline. Then I teleport to a blog about diving in shark-proof cages, which leads me to a Mozambique government site with data on water temperatures through the seasons. And maybe I wander back to the store to make a purchase, and maybe I don’t.

Like traveling, searching on the Internet is a constant confrontation with the unknown. A never-ending source of curiosity and boredom. A minute-by-minute evaluation of the relationship between my grasping human mind and its environment.

And like traveling, there’s nothing I like better than stopping at the perfect place and resting in the rightness of the fit between desire and fulfillment.

It’s no accident that the places that have “done it” for me on this trip have not been tourist meccas, but authentic expressions of the good will and good taste of good people. This farm; the White House Bed and Breakfast in Grunau, Namibia; my wife’s family’s 200 year old ancestral sheep farm just outside Springbok, South Africa.

The point of travel, it seems to me, is to feel the embrace of homecoming.

While I can’t give you a soft bed with a fluffy comforter, a farm breakfast, or a stroll in the orchards, I hope this site provides you with a taste of hospitality and kindness on your journey.

I thank the road and the farm for reminding me how to greet and treat you, dear reader.

May all your travels lead you home to warmth, love and safety. Feel free to stop by here anytime…

In the park next to my hotel, I see a toddler circling a fountain on a push bike. No pedals, no training wheels, just two feet alternating on the ground to keep vehicle and child upright and safe. (Something like the photo below, which I grabbed off a site selling the Skuut brand of push bikes.)

Which reminds me about…

The strange history of the bicycle

Da Vinci or a student of his may have sketched one some time in the 15th century. But like his famous flying machine, the bicycle never got off the ground either.

Fast forward four centuries, to 1816, the famous Year without a Summer, when crops were destroyed by really freaky weather. Like snow and ice in Pennsylvania in July and August.

In Europe, crop failures led to starvation and social unrest. One of the most egregious effects was the decimation of the horse population. There simply wasn’t enough oats to keep them alive and healthy.

German inventor Karl Drais put his mind to work to develop a horseless form of transportation. On June 12, 1817, he amazed the public by riding his Laufmaschine ("running machine") from Mannheim to Rheinau, a 118km trip along the banks of the Rhine.

Now, 118 kilometers (75 miles) is a decent afternoon’s ride on my Bianchi hybrid road bike. But imagine going that far on what’s essentially a seated muscle-powered scooter – a two-wheeler with no gears and no pedals – just two feet alternating on the ground to keep the good Herr Professor upright, safe, and motoring.

Why No Pedals?

The really interesting thing about the bicycle’s evolution was how long it took for someone to act on Da Vinci’s inspiration and stick a couple of pedals on the darn thing. I mean, it seems pretty bloody obvious to me that the thing would go faster, with less effort, if you used pedals and a chain. This technology had been around in mills for thousands of years. What was the limiting factor?

The problem, as it turns out, is that no one could conceive of a rider being able to keep their balance without constantly touching down with a foot on one side or the other. Why add pedals when the feet were needing for balance?

It was only after that particular limited belief was challenged that the modern bicycle could appear – and now small children can learn to stay upright in an afternoon (provided some loving adult is willing to sacrifice their spinal integrity to help).

What Does This Have to Do With Online Marketing?

Nothing, really. I’m just trying to justify a tax write-off for a new bike.

No, silly IRS auditor. That was just a little joke. Not serious at all.

What Does This Have to Do With Online Marketing? Be Serious This Time

OK. Fine.

Inherent in your business (and mine, and everyone’s) are beliefs that limit what we think is possible, based on what’s going on now.

If you’re getting 20 leads a week from AdWords, it’s hard to imagine what 200 leads a week would look like. From your current perspective, it will probably look just like 20, except 10 times more.

But when volume and velocity and quality of traffic increase, lots of things change. Big time.

You can get much pickier about the leads you accept as clients.

You can create hurdles to prescreen and prequalify, and to give you the power and authority in the relationship.

You can create waiting lists to generate the perception of great demand.

You can raise your prices.

You can build your business and hire help, so you get to focus exclusively on the stuff you love and are good at, instead of having to do it all yourself.

You can refer business to your competitors and become the go-to guy or gal for your industry.

If you sell products, you can start to source them at a cheaper rate.

You can negotiate deals with your suppliers.

You can cut out middle men and go straight to the manufacturers.

You can increase your profit margins.

In all cases, you end up making more money while expending less of your life energy (time and emotional angst) to get it.

It All Starts With Traffic

When you understand your market, and what keywords they search for, and what they want when they’re searching, and how to engage them in your ads and landing pages – you start a process that can end with you being the biggest player in your market.

No traffic, no sales.

No traffic, nothing to test and improve.

No traffic, no conversations with customers and no feedback on how to build a better business.

Is Your Business a Stationary Bicycle?

Without enough velocity, any business can feel like a stationary bike. Lots of hard work – good for the soul, right? – but not much movement.

And if you’re a cyclist, you know that you simply can’t describe the exhilaration of a fast downhill on a cool morning, after cranking up the hill via switchbacks and granny gears, to someone who just goes to the gym and pedals a stationary bike for 45 minutes while watching CNN or listening to Lil Wayne on their iPod.

Two completely different universes.

Are you ready for that downhill?

Traffic Surge Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Wednesday 20 May, 2009, is the first day of the long-awaited Traffic Surge telecourse.

Due to my inability to interpret a calendar, the course is not filled. Instead of putting out the required number of promotions in the right time frame, I was busy consulting in Germany (and now I’m up at 4am in NYC, writing this before attending and speaking at a Media Relations Conference all day).

So I just put out a free webinar loaded with great content (watch the replay here), sent one email, and golly gee – it wasn’t enough.

So I can’t say, "Hurry, there’s only one seat left." Actually, there are more like 6 seats left. I can’t use that "extreme scarcity" technique to get you to sign up. (I could lie, I guess, but you’d see right through me. I have no poker face.)

So here’s the real scarcity pitch: the bleepin’ course starts tomorrow! It’s deeper than I’ve ever gone into the mind of the market.

How to combine the insight of an anthropologist with the high-tech savvy of an online marketer.

How to find out – quickly and for free – how big and hungry the market is before committing resources.

How to write ads and craft landing pages that scratch the big itch – and make you the most desirable path to action for your prospects.

So hurry, there’s only ONE SEAT DAY LEFT.

Find out all about Traffic Surge – I’ll bet it’s less expensive than you’re assuming.

Hope you’ll join me for that ride. It feels better than most people can imagine.

Wishing you health, happiness, prosperity, and the wind in your hair,
Howie

She’s good, but if you just heard her karaoke rendition of "I Have a Dream" on the radio, without the drama surrounding her triumph, you probably wouldn’t rush out and search for the album.

And yet Ms. Boyle has become an instant sensation. Her performance has been viewed about 100 million times on youtube. You can hardly find a Facebook page without a link to her performance. And the media and blogosphere are having a fabulous time deconstructing Susan and telling us what she means.

And now, so will I.

The Recession and the Rift

This recession has revealed a psychological rift in the world’s consciousness. A lot of people are scared and angry.  They’ve lost their jobs, their businesses, their insurance, and in some cases their self-worth. They feel victimized by events, by elites, and by entities. So they bob up and down, waiting to be rescued by a government or a hale wind or a friend. They hunker down into a form of abdication of self-responsibility because it feels better to be justified in misery than vulnerable in power.

And the interesting thing about this first group is how threatened they are by the second group.

This second group of people may be suffering just as much in real terms as the first group, but they refuse to see themselves as victims. Instead of giving up and waiting for rescue, they are scrapping and hustling and retooling. Starting businesses. Taking risks. Flexing muscles they may not have fully understood or claimed before. In crisis they are making opportunity, and in the process, taking responsibility for making themselves. Tending to the inner landscape, the "Spirit Lake" within.

This second group discovers something amazing about work: that it really isn’t about the money or the power or the status. In other words, not about the external rewards. Those are nice (actually, they’re awesome when received in the right way), but the real reward of work, or entrepreneurship, is the flowering of passion. When we take responsibility for our contributions to this universe, we discover that work truly is, in Khalil Gibran’s words, "love made manifest."

The Acorn Theory of the Soul

A wonderful book, The Soul’s Code, by James Hillman, presents the "acorn theory" of the soul. In Hillman’s understanding, our souls arrive on this planet knowing their destiny, and they do everything they can to give us the experiences – both seemingly good and bad – that prepare us for this destiny.

Yet our big brains often short-circuit the call of the soul, and we wallow in Thoreau’s "quiet desperation" punctuated by weekends and evenings of addiction and distraction.

I have to admit, I don’t know if the acorn theory of the soul is literally true, or just a useful construct. When I’m in such a quandary, I generally settle it by asking myself, "What are the implications – positive and negative – of believing this story?" In the case of the acorn theory, it’s all good. It puts a positive spin on all the pain and suffering and confusion I’ve experienced (it all sensitized me, taught me, and prepared me for this moment, whatever "this moment" turns out to hold and unfold). And it tells me that my life matters. A lot. And that respecting, unpacking, and honoring the quiet voice of my soul is the opposite of self-indulgent; it’s what I’m on this planet to do. It’s my responsibility.

Why Group One Hates Group Two

I was talking with a friend about the importance of having passion in one’s work, and why that seemingly obvious (to me) idea triggers so much rage and cynicism in so many people. "It’s because they don’t have passion," he explained. "So they refuse to believe it can exist in anyone else."

I think that’s partly true. Another part of the truth – of which I was reminded recently by my friend and marketing mentor Perry Marshall – is that they once believed passion and joy was possible, and they no longer do. So the message that life is more than punching a clock and earning our daily bread is a painful reminder of what they’ve lost (or perhaps abandoned and betrayed).

But there’s a third part of the truth: the acorn is still alive inside each of us, however shriveled and starved for nutrients. We may neglect it, ignore it, and tell ourselves it doesn’t exist, but deep down each of us knows we are an extraordinary being here to be, do and experience extraordinary things. And we may respond with rage and fear when someone (like me now ;) lectures about this, but the deepest longing of our being arcs upward and outward at the resonant field created by Susan Boyle. How else to explain the phenomenon of her popularity?

A lot of our acorns got watered by Susan Boyle in the past couple of weeks. Here’s a prayer that those acorns sprout and find purchase in nourishing souls and soils.

And now a couple items of business…

Announcement: Zero-Cost Web Clinic on Getting Traffic to Your Site

How do you find profitable online markets? How do you start getting affordable and qualified traffic to your site? How do you jump online without risking everything? If you already have an online business, how do you find the people looking for what you’ve got? This stuff is really important, so I’m making it ultra-convenient for you. Two web clinics, you choose the one most convenient for you: Wednesday, May 6, at 1pm and 8pm EDT. Sign up for this zero-cost web clinic here: http://askhowie.com/traffic-surge-web-clinic/

Reminder: The Keyword Spying Web Clinic

It happens on Monday, April 27 at 8pm EDT. Spaces still available, and if you register you also get the recording later. Register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/577359970 Wishing you health, happiness and prosperity, Howie