We don’t know what you’re doing on a Monday night at 8:30pm, but we’re doing something pretty interesting. We just “took our seat” at what very well could be the biggest online class ever. More than 750,000 have signed up, and last-minute stragglers are welcome to show up and check out the action - now, or later, when they’ll be making a podcast of it available on both Oprah.com and iTunes.

It’s called “A New Earth Web Event,” and it’s a book club-ish class around the ideas and philosophies found in Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.
Though we happen to have a very noisy, babbling baby with us right now, and the “pre-show” promo is doing too much stuttering and rebuffering to make this look like a viable reality for us tonight, we’re both impressed and inspired by what’s happening here.

Oprah is using the Web and her wealth of resources in a powerful way, to unite people in positive, insightful, bold thinking…and ultimately, (and hopefully) in taking joy-filled action to make this world a better place.

We both listened to big chunks of one of Tolle’s other books, The Power of Now, on audio. It’s truly outstanding. A little outside the comfort zone of normalcy (Tolle’s new-agey voice freaked us out a bit at first), but the IDEAS and incisive TRUTH of what he says really blows your mind, if you let it past the gatekeepers.

Though we just got A New Earth at Border’s on Friday and haven’t yet cracked the binding, we know the content will not let us down.

Soooo…

Have you signed up for this yet? If not, why not? Not to sound like a schoolyard brat or anything, but…Are ya a ‘fraidy-cat? Do you have a thing against Oprah? Dontcha like to learn, listen to ideas, challenge your thinking, be part of cultural happenings, or just see how they pull off this giant virtual classroom thing?

Consider it recommended. And if you check it out, let us know how it goes.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Gotta Reads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

As a small business guy, lifestyle entrepreneur, microbusiness owner, et cetera, I’ve been told over and over again that I should read what used to be called “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber (now The E-Myth Revisited).

Well, the other night, I finished it. And when I asked myself what I would write on our blog about it, the first random thing that popped into my head was a chapter title from Richard Bach’s A Gift of Wings - “I shot down the Red Baron, and so what.”

Bach was writing about his experience as a stunt pilot on a Roger Corman movie, The Red Baron. Which has absolutely nothing to do with this post or The E-Myth, but the “so what” sentiment kind of captures how underwhelmed I was.

That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything from it. The Technician vs. Manager vs. Entrepreneur thing was very enlightening for me, for example. It gave me the gift of sanity - I’ve been a little crazy and frustrated in my head about our business sometimes, and to see so clearly why it was happening was a big “Aha!” for me.

It could simply be that people were hyping the book so strongly to me, there was no chance of anything but a letdown. How many times have friends told you that you HAVE to go see such-and-such movie, and when you see it, you’re left wondering, “What’s the big deal?”

Same idea. I’ve recently heard people say they’ve read The E-Myth three and four times, and gotten something different out of it every time, especially as they grew and progressed in their own businesses. A fair point. But it’s going to be like that for any business book, I’d wager.

At this point, the thing I’d be most interested in is reading more about Gerber’s own background. He tells his story in the book, but my goodness, if that was blown into a full-length biography, I think that’d be one of the best and most instructive reads of the year.

As for The E-Myth, I think on balance I’m glad I read it. Would I recommend it? Yes … but if people are telling you it’s going to radically change the way you think about your business, take that with a grain of salt, read it for yourself, and trust your own judgment.

Just my $0.02 on it.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am and is filed under Gotta Reads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are few people who obsess over words and web content more than we do. After all, we are “The Content Lovers,” right?

But one guy kicks our fannies, hands down. His name’s Gerry McGovern.

Gerry has written three books obsessing about web content: Content Critical, The Web Content Style Guide, and Killer Web Content. (Betcha didn’t know there was so much information to be shared about this subject by one person, did ya?!) All of these are must-reads for anyone writing or managing content for sites that mean business.

He has a bulleted list on his site with a few stunning examples of how much the right word or phrase tweak can boost - or bust - your sales and success. Below is just one of the examples he cites:

In the United States, over 80 times more people search for “cheap flights” than for “low fares.” In the United Kingdom, 6,500 times more people search for “cheap flights” than for “low fares”. No, that’s not a typo. It is 6,500 times more! “Low fares” is what the airline industry likes to say. “Cheap flights” is customer language. This an extremely common mistake organizations make on the Web: assuming that their words are their customers words. Never, ever assume that.

C’mon. 6,500 times more? THAT is pretty darn amazing.

Gerry has set up systems to extract “Customer Carewords” for organizations and businesses. Through polling, brainstorming, and good ol’ fashioned market research, he finds that crucial five percent of nit-picky language that converts or neglects your audience. Basically, he makes sure your site is using the words that speak to YOUR audience - that use the language THEY use -and not the ridiculous corpspeak or insider drek so many companies fill their sites and blogs with today.

Interestingly enough, his site’s architecture could use a little user testing. Navigation is inconsistent, information’s difficult to find, and I kept getting lost in a labarynth of secondary pages. Nonetheless, if you want to get hip deep into the world of Web content, Gerry’s books will get you there.

Everywhere on the Web, words are making a difference. Words are making the sale, delivering the service, building the brand. The trick is to find the right words-your customers’ words.

So true, Gerry. So, so true!

For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business, sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 10:07 pm and is filed under All About Content, Dances With Gurus, Gotta Reads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Ah, camping on the shores of Sebago Lake, ME. The call of loons before sunrise. The skunk outside our tent in the middle of the night. The compelling page-turner of a business book I read by the campfire after our son passed out from hours of play with his 10 cousins.

What book, you ask? Why, it’s Blogwild!, Andy Wibbels’ super-strightforward introduction to the blogging phenomenon. It’s pitch perfect - a breezily written and completely unintimidating guide to getting started, fast and painlessly.

My biggest “A-Ha!” from it came in a little section called “Become the Filter, Be the Lens”:

Think of all the information that your potential customers and current clients need to know to succeed in their businesses and their lives. Without a doubt, they don’t have time to read a hundred marketing magazines, journals and Web sites each month to get the information they want. Instead, they can just find a handful of bloggers to find, field, and filter the information for them.

What if you can become the filter for your customers? You can provide a digest version of the latest industry trends and news that matter most to them. You can become the blog they can’t live without.

Of course! It’s forehead-smackingly obvious when you put it that way, Andy.

And the beauty of it is, it works for any niche, any hobby, any specialized area of interest.

What’s more, the book even gives the most friendly walk-through for setting up your first blog! And since I’m usually the first line of tech support in our two-person company, I can truly appreciate a blog set-up routine that, to borrow from Lionel Ritchie, is easy like Sunday morning.

It’s a great way to dive in and start to “A-Ha Youself!” Give it a try!

(Seriously, try it - Andy offers a free excerpt from Blogwild! right here.)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 at 9:28 pm and is filed under All About Content, Gotta Reads, How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?, Lessons Learned. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

“The strongest oak tree of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.”
- Napoleon Hill, author

Man, I’m so sick of struggling, aren’t you?

That noblest of noble entrepreneurial traits. The Forger. The Struggler. The Pavement Pounder. The Stubborn, Get-Kicked-in-the-Groin-and-Keep-on-Two-Steppin’-Toward-Your-Big-Beautiful-Dream Maverick, with eyes firmly set on his prize, and heart teetering on her sleeve for all to poo-poo upon.

We all have things we do when that going gets tougher than we think we can handle. Me? I’ve been yelling a lot this year. Believe it or not, this hasn’t proven to be very effective, so I’m transitioning to new, more productive strategies.For example, I’ve been climbing a local mountain at the crack of dawn once a week since the middle of May, and I hung up two awesome hammock chairs on our porch so Allen and I would have a place to sway, rock, and BREATHE while we attempt to shake off the stresses of building our dream business and living our lives. And just four days ago, I finally started reading “Think & Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.This book could not be more ubiquitous on the Recommended Reading shelves of the business-minded, solo or otherwise. And even though I’ve known its backstory — that the turn-of-the-century mega mogul Andrew Carnegie delivered unto Napoleon Hill a secret for infinite wealth, and Mr. Hill spent the next 20 years interviewing 500 other successful mega moguls and flipping ALL the information out into this handy little page turner — I’ve ignored its riches.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 1:34 am and is filed under Gotta Reads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.