Ever heard of a spunky gal named Amanda Congdon?

She’s a modern-day fairy tale of what it means to “A-Ha Yourself!” After six painful weeks in a post-college cubicle plopped in the middle of a major NYC ad adgency, she took the stand that being surrounded by push-pin friendly walls was NOT her bag, baby.

So what’s a girl to do?

Well, this moxified chick decided to launch her own videoblog, Rocketboom.com. Three minutes. News, culture, riffs, intertviews, new media rants, and LOTS of color commentary with a smart, comedic slant.

Her audience grew from 700 peeps in 2004 to 70,000 in 2005 to a whopping 300,000+ by the time some big wigs in old media offered to buy her self-made enterprise. Unfortunately, when the suits were nodding their heads and agreeing to her terms - radical suggestions like creative control, keeping a sense of integrity about the show, and maintaining cultural relevance to her standards - they had their fingers crossed behind their backs.

Amanda “UnBoomed” in July, 2006.

You never have to worry about the risk-taking creative ones, though. Amanda’s off to bigger and better things, vlogging her way across the country with an “old media” crew…on her OWN terms.

Don’t miss this truly great 10-question interview of Amanda by Guy Kawasaki. She’s been there and back again and offers a great perspective on just how powerful new media can be for your own starry-eyed ambitions.

Have YOU ever considered launching your own vlog? Her clips were pretty darn basic when she started them, back in 2004. No reason why YOU couldn’t be the go-to talking head for your niche or industry. (I personally think it was the rough, unpolished, authentic content that drew fans by the hundreds of thousands, but that’s just me.)

Rock on, Amanda!

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, November 16th, 2006 at 9:02 am and is filed under 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.

Lani and I drove our son to pre-school this morning, bringing birthday goodies to his class (he turned four today, the little man did). As we did, we saw our local church spire stretching above the trees, with their leaves already changing colors.

As for the church, it reminded Lani and I of an article we once read about how the tallest buildings in the world reflected what was most important to a culture.

• When a country’s culture centered primarily around religion, churches were the tallest structures.
• When it was government, then government buildings were the tallest.
• When it was business, skyscrapers were the tallest.

And now…the world’s tallest structure is (drumroll please)… 

A radio mast in Blanchard, North Dakota.

Yes, you read that right. In fact, of the 20 tallest structures in the world, the overwhelming majority are radio, TV, or cell phone towers.

So, what does that say about us? That communication is now the most important element of our culture. Sending ideas, stories, thoughts, hopes, dreams, and plans across the miles to each other.

And this communication can be about religion, or government, or business, or none of these. Making information flow faster, more freely, more efficiently, with more people - that’s what life’s all about these days.

And a kid who turned four today. It’s all about him, too. 

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 at 12:04 am and is filed under 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.

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.

I’m in a stellar hotel suite in Garden Grove, CA right now, and I’m listening to Allen talk to our son, who’s staying with his Grandy and Fuddy in New Hampshire. Context clues tell me that our almost-four-year old just asked Allen: “What did YOU do today, Daddy?” Here’s Allen’s answer:

“Well Joe, Mommy and I sat in a room with a lot of other nice people, and we talked about ways to make money.”

I’m glad I eavsdropped, because I was sitting here, just before we get whisked away in a limo to go to a swank Italian restaurant (Adam’s treating us — isn’t he nice?!), and I was trying to figure out what the heck we actually DID do today. And what Al told our son pretty much sums it up.

Al and I met Adam at 7:30am for breakfast, then we went to a conference room at 9am, set up, and waited for everyone else to fill in so we could start at 10am. We had the “quick” overall biz catch-ups from 10-noonish, and then the real fun started AFTER lunch…

When we returned, we pulled straws (so to speak), and Al and I got to be the first pair to present our business, what our plans are, and what we should do to catch up to our financial goals in the next 90 days. ‘Twas a hodge-podge, as it is VERY easy to get overwhelmed with this stuff, and VERY difficult to summarize in desperate, open-wounded gasps what Al and I have been talking about and dreaming about for the last two years. Still, we did the best with what we had.

And THIS is what we learned:

1. People don’t LISTEN to what you say as much as they WATCH how you’re saying it. You can give your canned ideas, say what you’re supposed to say, but if you’ve got your arms crossed, if you balk at simple questions, if you hesitate at core concepts, then people will make judgments, and their feedback will be based on those judgments, NOT on what you’re telling them, no matter how hard you try to say what you think is REALLY on your mind.
2. You have to be really, truly clear about what YOU want, if you have a shot in hell at communicating what you think you need, to other people. Now, this is something Al and I are working through — but this year it often feels like it’s a little too little too late. We keep THINKING we’re clear, but when push comes to shove, we’re not able to produce our internal information in easy, digestible ways. Which leads me to our next lesson…
3. It’s OK if the feedback you get is WAY off base, as long as you listen to your audience’s interpretation of what you’re saying and work with their version to improve your messaging. It’s really easy to take feedback that seems totally out of whack from what you’re trying to say and start fighting it like a mother bear. Don’t defend — just listen. YOU know what’s true about yourself, your vision, your instincts. Use this opportunity to discover how people interpret what you’re saying you do — then work to get it as crisp and clean as you can so the differential gets smaller, and smaller, and smaller…
4. CELEBRATE where you are right NOW! OK, we all want to be further along from wherever we are in this moment. That’s life, right? But somehow the angst of what we DON’T know, or what we HAVEN’T done yet gets in the way of feeling good about the fact that we’re “doin’ the best with what we got.” As long as we keep learning, keep plodding, and keep finding new ways to improve our skills and have FUN, then we can count on the fact that we WILL get better all the time, and we WILL be at a better place in three months than we are today. Now c’mon, that’s a GREAT feeling. That kind of affirmative knowledge can keep you going forEVER.

And as long as we find new ways to keep going (and LOVE it while we’re going along), we’re in really good shape.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur Diaries, Lessons Learned, Masterminding. 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.

Just yesterday, a miracle occurred in the Voivod household.

There were no potatoes resembling the marvelous contours of Brad Pitt’s face, or celestial visits from deceased poets.

No — THIS miracle was of the “one small step for the average online maverick, but one giant LEAP for the striving online maverick” variety.

THIS miracle was the miracle of creation. Of E-Product creation. Our first. Unleashed. Out, to the world, at long last.

Goodness gracious, but it took a heap of effort!

Of course, maybe it wouldn’t have been quite as harrowing if our first e-product didn’t set out to overthrow the Secretary of Defense of the United States of America…But then again, that’s probably just Monday morning quarterbacking.

Suffice it to say, The Content Lovers bit off more than we planned to chew with our first effort, so it’s only good form to share what we learned so that you might approach your e-product ideas with a bit more wisdom and grace.

 Shall we?

1.  Even the most thorough step-by-step systems leave about half of the steps out. It’s not anyone’s fault — it’s just that things come up, no matter HOW methodic you think you are — and they have to be dealt with. Nuts. 
2. Whatever you think you’re going to spend in time, money, and effort on your first e-product? Quintuple it. Then double that. Then add a buffer. THEN take a long walk, and have a laugh at this unconventional life you’re carving, cuz baby — this IS the journey!
3. If you have a choice, don’t look to the monkey on your back (or your biz partner’s back) as that first experimental “thing” you want to product-ize and monetize. No no no, NOT a good choice. Unless you’re stubborn and crazy, like we are. Then it’s just your destiny, Luke, and there ain’t nuthin’ you can do about it.
4. Showering every once in a while is good for everyone involved. When you’re pulling stupid hours around the clock, and it’s the middle of July in New England, and going out in public — like, to the grocery store — is as far away from your reality as meeting the Duchess of York for tea, a little soap and water on your bod and a wash-rinse-repeat cycle on your hair (and, if you’re REALLY ambitious, a shave!) reminds you that basic self-care rituals aren’t useless — they’re actually essential for a healthy environment.
5. Experienced guidance is a MUST. If you think it’s easy to navigate your way through the labyrinth of shopping cart systems, merchant accounts, Google AdWords, market research, project planning, virtual workspaces, sales letter production, autoresponders, and smart business practices in general, you’ve got another thing coming!
6. Virtual Assistants really do ROCK. They are not only the cat’s meow, but the dog’s bark, the loon’s mystical song, the camel’s hump, the fish’s gills, the bee’s knees, and the chicken’s best eggs, all rolled up into one. (Thanks again and always, Margot Thompson!)
7. A really good Mentor (and rare human being) lets you learn the hard way, even when he did everything he could to lead you away from that ultra-rugged route. In our case, it’s Adam Urbanski. Even though he tried to warn us, and we ultimately shunned his strong recommendations to go gung-ho into our first e-product, Adam STILL managed to give us invaluable feedback, encouragement, time, and advice. I don’t know how or why, but he did. Phew. (Next time, we’ll try it your way instead, Adam. )
8. The only way out is through. Yup. It’s true. You’ll never know until you try, and you’ll never get around to actually trying if you don’t just leap into the center of everything and figure out how to get out before your time’s up. I didn’t think we were EVER going to make it out to the other side, but we did, and we’re happy happy HAPPY to be here. We’re still married, we’re still in business, and we’re looking at our next projects with less fear than before. These are very good things.
9. The entrepreneur lifestyle is built to support your work style and success…if only you’d let it. Making that transition from the JOB mentality to being accountable for your own success can be pretty sticky. You’re always wondering if you’re working enough, productive enough, doing enough, etc. Sometimes it’s the snide comments from friends and family (”Oh, it must be nice to be able to take a walk in the afternoon…”) or your own inner drill sergeant (”Get back to that desk and WORK! I don’t care if you were up until 2am. You’re not done, and you’ve got work to do!”), it’s easy to lose sight that you chose this path because you: A) Trust Yourself and your abilities, B) Relish flexibility, C) LIKE to work on your own projects, and D) Excel in finding creative ways to fulfill your goals and dreams.

So if I could do the last month over again — not that I’d want to, but if I could…

I’d take more advantage of this situation I created. I’d take more walks, crash unapologetically in the middle of the day instead of barreling through dry spells and low-energy foot-dragging, and step AWAY from the work — and/or my business partner — when the work took on more ridiculous weight than a bloody container ship. Step away, get some perspective, fill the well…whatever you call it. Just find a way to take a look at the life of the forest before you go face-first into the mighty oak right in front of you.

 Now it’s OFF to our first Mastermind retreat in Orange County, CA, where I’m SURE Allen and I will come back home with our next, much simpler e-product idea firmly in place.

(Lord knows, we better…)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 3:57 pm and is filed under 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.