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Greetings Podcast Listeners!

So great to be back among you.  As you may have noticed, I’ve been away on a long trip out West.  It was three weeks of road tripping goodness to the American West with stops in Fort Collins CO, The Badlands National Park, The Black Hills National Park and all points in between. I traveled with Joey Boats in his 18 foot RV built on a 1984 toyota truck, name of ‘The Bandit’.

Ben and I fired up the skype and rattled on for over one and a half hours.  We had  much to catch up.  Our conversation started focused on the business of business coaching and interacting  with clients.  Ben’s been working with Shane and Lisa, a couple running a business coaches who are trying to improve their internet presence. They are talking to the right person in Ben – he shares his typically expensive opinions and ideas – right here, for free.

The middle part of the podcast is where we get personal.  We share our origin stories as computer dudes.  If you have ever spent thanksgiving working on a family member’s anti-social printer, then you know what we are talking about.  We reach a consensus under the quote “God Bless the dysfunctional families of the 90s”

We wrap up with talking about the importance of headlines and the idea of Viralness, or the probability of something going viral. Ben does a headline writing case study using Jenna’s latest article –If Your Website Does Any of These 10 Things, You Should Be Ashamed (You kinda wanna click it, don’t you.  Go ahead, I’ll be here. Take your time).  We also get into the particular case of the BodyForm facebook rant response video on YouTube viral sensation.

Notes, Links and what-have-yous

Beginning:

Thrive – a good goal

Lifestyle Design – n. The idea that one’s life is progressing along a course.  Corrections to that course are an act of design.  How and When one makes those course correction decisions are ultimately lifestyle design decisions. Making decisions for yourself (see Genchi Genbutsu below) may lead one outside of the dominate culture of society.

Business coaches -While it might sound funny, it’s a way to gain perspective and clarity of the progress of your business.

Ben’s lifecycle of a business owner

Japanese phrase for ‘Find out yourself’ – Genchi Genbutsu

Middle:

Steven Pressfield – – War of Art, Alexander Book, and Legend of Bagger Vance

As we age, people let us be dicks / have opinions / don’t try to change us / let us have our way.  Young people have to be flexible because people tell them what to do / how to act / what to say, think, wear, buy, etc.  As we age slowly calcify with those habits (and unexamined assumptions).

If you notice that your clothes don’t fit you – not in size, but style – then you may be growing and progressing on your life path (see lifestyle design)

In middle age, we find ourselves as a ‘machine without a purpose’. It’s a challenge to define and follow a purpose.  [crap, I wanna be serious here, but I can’t stop thinking of Steve Martin in ‘The Jerk’ and his ‘special purpose’] We know how but not why.

Ben’s Money Quote at minute 57:30 (approximately)

Robert Cialdini – Persuasion is real and you can use it to change the behavior of others. Ben share’s a trick on how to turn the tables on reciprocity.  Get her to do you a favor and then be super thankful for it.

End:

The Bodyform YouTube Response Video from CEO Caroline Williams

Writing a headline that kicks ass… like this one: If Your Website Does Any of These 10 Things, You Should Be Ashamed

Amy Hoi vs Sasha Greif  – Both Amy and Sasha are awesome but they seem to enjoy poking at each other.  We love it too.  Amy has her 30×500 workshop and Sasha has just introduced a 0x∞ workshop (that’s 0 by infinite).  Amy’s idea is to create a product and sell it to 500 people for 30 bucks a month.  Sasha’s idea is to create a product that you give away for free to as many people as you can.   We get into the personality traits at work here and wonder about the ‘abrasive asshole’ stereotype with web workers.