LifeDev

A screenshot of LifeDev’s very very beta new look. Whatcha think?

I’ve been heads-down creating a new design for LifeDev for the past week and a half. It’s been three and a half years since I’ve changed the design, so it was about time change was made.

I’m also a bit ashamed to admit that I’ve seriously let the design slip. There are tons of unused divs, inline styles and other big design no-nos. (I’ll save the other reasons for the redesign for a later post.) The current template has been great, but it’s about time I flexed my design muscles and created something unique. Above is a tiny sliver of the new LifeDev to whet your appetite of the coming changes.

While I don’t have any new material for you, here are a few articles I’ve truly enjoyed and found helpful this past week.

What You Don’t Do Doesn’t Matter
Chris is one of my favorite bloggers. This post reminds me of my favorite adage:

You can wish in one hand and crap in the other. Which do you think gets filled first?

What I Learned from the 100 Business Launch
Another gem by @chrisguillebeau. Never compromise when it comes to business.

Would you Pay to Read Your Own Blog?
The New York Times decision to put up a paywall last week sent shock waves around the ‘Net. Jonathan Fields asks a very important question that all writers/bloggers should have to answer at some point: Would you pay to read your own content?

Could You Be Ruining Your Blogging Business?
This CopyBlogger post addresses many of the problems that businesses have with actually brining in referrals with the writing.

“Let me restate the obvious: you are business blogging. That means your awesome content must be delivered in the context of your business goals.”

The Hustling Secrets No One Talks About
Love Jade Craven’s work ethic.

life is subject to change: what happened when I raised my rates
Danielle started working less and charging more. Guess what happened? She started selling more.

The Reason You’re Stuck (and the one best way to avoid the six ways that will keep you stuck)
A guest post on Leo’s blog by Seth Godin himself.

“What separates the few who ship from the masses who stumble, stall and ultimately surrender? The resistance.”

If anybody knows how to create killer content every day, it’s Seth.

How to Make Your Reminder System Totally Useless
Brett hits the nail on the head as to why your reminder system isn’t working, and gives a few reasons to fix it. Brilliant.

Brett’s blog is still new, and he’s cranking out killer stuff. (His blog masthead was designed by yours truly.) Subscribe to his feed for more tasty tech goodness.

Ok, that’s it for this week. You should be seeing a brand-new LifeDev next week and more regular posts (if there is such a term as “regular” around here.)

Photo by Thomas Hawk

Abraham Lincoln walked into the heart of the Confederate Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, on April 4, 1865. Less than a day after Richmond had fallen to the Union, the President strode to the capitol building and placed his feet on Jefferson Davis’ desk.

It was a gesture that rang throughout America. The Civil War was officially over, and this President was the leader of the entire country.

If there was ever an authoritative statement in America’s short history, this was it. As the broken nation looked for unity and leadership, Lincoln proved he had both.

And it’s a perfect example for us to see what it takes to earn authority.
Read the rest of this entry »

Downtown Port-Au-Prince after the massive earthquake in Haiti.

My friends Carolyn and Doug are incredible people, and I don’t think I’ve ever looked up to two people more. Doug and Carolyn work in a church, and if you’ve ever worked in a church you know that all kinds of needy people use (and abuse) the church with handout requests. Droves of people come to the church with a sob story of some kind, and literally expect the church to give them money. Here’s an example:

A man came into the church and said that he needed money for gas to go home to care for his wife in Texas. So, the pastor offered to personally go and fill up his car for him and buy him any supplies needed for the trip. (Quite generous, if you ask me.) The guy flat-out refused. He said that he just needed the money, and left hurling empty threats at the people who “wouldn’t help him”.

There are thousands of examples just like this, and the storyline is always the same. They have a need, but it usually just comes down to wanting cash. They take advantage of the Church’s helpfulness and reputation of helping the needy.

So, it naturally came as quite a surprise to Carolyn when an older woman came in with her grandson, asking if there was any work around the church that she could do to get a place to live for her and her grandson.

When homeless people come to the church, they typically never ask for work, and they almost always ask for just money.

So instead of just giving the homeless woman money to pay her bill–which they did–Carolyn offered her own house for the two to live while they got back on their feet. She literally welcomed two complete strangers into her home to live for a few months.

Now contrast that with something that happened yesterday.

A man claimed the Haiti earthquakes were due to the people being “cursed” because of a “pact made with the devil”:

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.

Aside from how ridiculous and downright crazy Pat Robertson sounded, his comments did absolutely nothing except catapult his own name. In a time when a whole country of people are looking for relief, Pat condemned them. (It’s estimated the death toll could rise to 500,00, half of Haiti’s population.)

I don’t think I would mind Pat’s stupidity if he actually did something about the problem. Contrast that with someone like Carolyn. Carolyn is doing what Pat should be doing as a “religous” thought leader: helping people. Not making stupid-ass prophecies and taking a holier-than-thou stance.

Statements like Robertson’s (and others) really pissed me off yesterday. I can’t think of anything much worse than someone using catastrophes as a way to generate attention.

We should think long and hard about Haiti. What if the roles were reversed? The best part about being rich (compared to the rest of the world) is that we are in a position to give. To help others that can’t help themselves. (Apparently people were miffed at the White House’s website redirecting people to organizations like the Red Cross.)

Even if you don’t have any money, you can still give. It cost Doug and Carolyn $0 to open up her home to complete strangers. Love costs nothing.

You don’t have to fly to Haiti to help with relief efforts. You don’t have to donate large amounts of money. You just have to be open to giving, whether that’s your time or money.

But we shouldn’t stand by and do the worst thing of all: Nothing.

There are plenty of ways to help Haiti financially, and a great place to start is the Red Cross.

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Ok, rant = over :) We’ll be bringing you your regularly scheduled programming shortly…

Photo by Anna Fischer

I finished Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It! a while back, and surprisingly, I was a big fan. Nothing against @garyvee or course, it’s just that I had feared the book would mostly be an instructional for sites like YouTube. I was dead wrong.

While the book does have beginner training on technologies that most of us already know (Twitter, YouTube, etc.), it also adds some excellent thoughts on not being afraid to be us.

What’s Your DNA?

A major part of Gary’s book is about finding your true DNA and using it to rock your business. Gary, admittedly, is a bit of a “live wire”. The man is intense. If you’ve seen any episodes of Wine Library TV, you know what I’m talking about. Gary has reached incredible success by embracing his high-energy appearance. Sure, he could dial his rhetoric down a notch and possibly retain 4% more of his audience. But Gary knows that’s not him, and trying to be someone else is hard work.
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by seanmcgrath

If anything, let 2010 mark the point in time where we stop relying on “experts”.

Gone. Buh-bye.

You see, the experts get us into trouble. They provide “insights” to guide our way when we think we don’t know the answer. Or they tell us we’re wrong.

It never fails to amaze me how many “experts” publish their predictions for the upcoming year. I wonder what would happen if we looked at all of their predictions from 2009 and compared them to what actually happened. (Wasn’t this Winter supposed to be warm?!)

But we eat predictions from experts up. We love to have the inside scoop and make our own predictions. It’s human nature.

If you take a look at many of the experts, most aren’t really that qualified, at least in a sense that we’d imagine. We’d like to believe that some sort of formal education took place in order to earn their lofty title, like education a doctor or lawyer goes through.

But, shockingly, most experts never earned a Harvard diploma.
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Oncle Tom

It’s really simple: You can’t become an expert until you’ve failed at something.

Yet it’s funny how people with authoritative titles never talk about their mistakes. In fact, it’s a taboo. We want to put our trust in someone who’s more of an “expert” than us. It makes us feel safe and gives us warm fuzzies.

For example, you’d rather not be in the dentist chair and have your dentist proudly telling stories of botched root canals. And nobody wants to believe their doctor ever made a wrong diagnosis.

But they have. Many, many times.

This is where the world gets it wrong. It’s not really “failure” if we view it properly: it’s learning. You don’t know what works until you know what doesn’t work. Failure is all part of the learning process, and anyone who says differently is delusional.

I’d rather a chef tell me how many times he got the recipe wrong before he finally made the perfect pancake.

So don’t worry when you fail. It’s going to happen, and it should happen. Often.

Just don’t make the mistake of using it as an excuse to quit.

Further Reading: Here’s a post from a couple years back that I love and still reference today.

“There Is No Effort Without Error and Shortcoming”