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Monday Morning Masters: 14 Bites of Blogging Brilliance to Nourish the Blogger’s Soul

By Michael in Business Blogging & Monday Morning Masters with 2 Comments

If you want to be great at something, it helps to study those who are already great it. I’ve read a lot of informative and inspiring stuff over the past week, and it only makes sense to share some of the it. May it be as inspiring and informative to you as it is to me.

I plan to make this a weekly series, so if you have some bites of brilliance you’d like to contribute, feel feel to leave a comment or hit my contact page.

Brian Clark: You Must Respect My Authority:

“Good blogging creates authority, plain and simple. Writing consistently about your area of expertise makes you an authority figure within your industry and niche. You will enjoy a definitive advantage over competitors who do not blog, and likely even over those who have been blogging for shorter time periods.”

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How to Work Less & Make a Bigger Impact; Abe Lincoln Style

By Michael in Web Marketing & Writing with 2 Comments

On November 19th, 1863, the great American president, Abraham Lincoln, stood before a group of citizens assembled in a small, southern Pennsylvania field.

With his country deeply entrenched in the brutal and bloody Civil War, Lincoln gazed out at the traumatized, war-torn faces gathered before him and delivered a brief statement composed of no more than 300 words.

Clocking in at just under three minutes in length, Lincoln’s remarks paled in comparison to the two-hour, 13,700 word oration completed just minutes before by Edward Everett, a well-known and highly regarded politician of the times.

Chances are, unless you’re a student of American history, you’ve not heard of Edward Everett before this moment. Nor do you have a clue about the content of his speech that day.

However, you’d be hard pressed to find a single American citizen who’s never heard of Abraham Lincoln or this brief, but historic speech, which he delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Despite it’s brevity, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is regarded as one of the most famous speeches in American history. His words not only helped to re-unite a nation ripped apart by civil war, but they also now serve as a cornerstone of American government and democracy.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

As for the two-hour long speech of Edward Everett, although originally intended to be the actual “Gettysburg Address,” it seems his words merely drifted away on the gentle breeze of that cool, November day. Irony aside, when you imagine the amount of work likely needed to compose and prepare for a lengthy presentation like Everett’s, the inequity is palpable.

Still, there are lessons to be learned here. How is it that one person can work for hours, days or weeks on a project and achieve little impact, while another can – seemingly – invest a fraction of the effort and produce results that change the course of history? Here’s how Abe did it.

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12 Tips to Overcome Writer’s Block and Become a Faster, More Prolific Content Creator

By Michael in Writing with 2 Comments

1. Get Your Mind Right.

Much has been written about the power of your mind to inspire or dis-empower you. I won’t say much more about it here other than to say your mind can be your biggest obstacle or your greatest ally as a writer.

Holding onto thoughts like  “writing is a necessary evil” or “I’m just not a writer” don’t serve you. Release those beliefs, and adopt some new ones.

My core limiting belief was “I’m not creative.” It was based on my misunderstanding of what creativity really is and the creative process. So I let it go and adopted some new beliefs. First, I now energize the belief that “writing is my path to freedom.” Second, I believe “each day, I’m becoming a better, faster writer.”

Pick some new beliefs, and write them down somewhere you’ll see them often. Choose beliefs that are empowering, inspiring and believable. It does no good to try to convince yourself of something when you know deep down you don’t believe it.

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Inspiration from Will Smith

By Michael in Inspiration & Video with 2 Comments

If you’re a Will Smith fan, and even if you’re not, you’ll find the bits of wisdom in this video quite inspiring. Here’s one of my favorite quotes:

“You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say ‘I’m gonna lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid,’ and you do that every single day, and soon you have a wall.”

Via Frank Kern

8 Lessons Learned About Writing Morning Pages

By Michael in Writing with Add a Comment

Today is day four of the morning pages exercise. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

1. Make it a Priority

I almost skipped morning pages today. It wasn’t something I consciously chose to do. I just let myself get side-tracked. I started surfing around reading other peoples’ stuff, looking for inspiration, and before I knew it, an hour had passed, and I’d still not started writing.

I may have to change my morning routine, which typically looks like this. I roll out of bed and hit the bathroom. Then I grab a coffee. Next, I turn on my computer and check a few things. Then I finally sit down to write my morning pages. I think tomorrow I won’t turn on my computer until my morning pages are done.

2. Let Go of Results

When we start some new course of self-improvement, whether an exercise program, a spiritual practice or morning pages, we tend to expect immediate results. At least I do. And If I don’t see results pretty quickly, I tend to find reasons to stop doing the exercise. I decided this morning that I’d commit to doing morning pages for 30 days without any expectation of results.

3. Make it a Special Ritual

Get clear about the reasons you’re doing this. For me, there are several reasons. First, writing is imperative to my business. Any successful online business is driven by relevant and informative content, and that starts with writing. Second, I’m doing this to become a better writer so I can write more, and touch more people with my writing.

Third, this has become a spiritual practice for me. Through this process, I’m reconnecting with myself; with my inner spirit. It’s a form of meditation. I’m reconnecting with my true self and the divine within me.

When I sit down to write, I have a hot cup of coffee or tea, and turn on Gregorian Chant Radio on Pandora. The music is soothing and relaxing and it sets a mood that reflects the special and spiritual nature of my ritual. Of course, if I don’t turn on my computer tomorrow, I’ll need to find a new source of music. Fortunately, I recorded some Gregorian chant music that I can download to my iPod.

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What My Vacuum Repair Guy Can Teach You About Web Marketing

By Michael in Web Marketing with Add a Comment

I was talking to a friend about web marketing recently, and we were discussing the time commitment that’s involved. At the time, we both agreed it’s a serious time commitment, and she said she’d rather invest most of her time into marketing her business coaching practice locally offline.

I came away from the discussion feeling like it’s an either-or proposition. Either you invest a lot of time and energy into web marketing, or you simply give up on the idea of web marketing altogether, and invest most of your time into local offline marketing. While writing my morning pages today, I came to a different conclusion.

Your online presence can be the hub of your local marketing strategy without a huge investment of time, money and energy. As an example, lets look at my local vacuum repair store, Phaneuf Vacuums, located a couple miles from my home.

First, a little background. If you know much about me, you may know I have a cute, cuddly beagle named Ellie. What you probably don’t know, and I’m embarrassed to admit, is even though she’s nearly two-years-old, Ellie still isn’t house broken.

Consequently, I spend a lot of time cleaning my carpet. I even have my own Hoover Steamvac carpet cleaner. Last week, my sturdy Steamvac stopped steaming because of a broken part.

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Want to Make Writing Easier? Try Morning Pages.

By Michael in Writing with Add a Comment

As I mentioned yesterday, writing is often a chore for me. With that in mind, I’ve undertaken a new morning ritual called “morning pages.” Morning pages is a writing exercise devised by Julia Cameron and popularized in her book, The Artist’s Way.

The morning pages exercise is designed to help you recover (or discover) your creativity, and silence what Julia refers to as the Censor. The Censor is that critical inner voice that criticizes each and every word you write and makes it brutally painful for you to write anything.

“The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly. Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never do enough and what we do isn’t right. We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth…The point is to stop taking the Censor as the voice of reason and learn to hear it for the blocking device that it is. Morning pages will help you to do this.”

Interestingly enough, one of my clients wrote me this morning after reading about my struggle with writing. She said: “I really did think that writing came so naturally that you had no problem putting pen to paper and the words just flowed out of you. That is a wake up call for me.” I think the same thing when I read other peoples’ writing. I think writing must be so easy and natural for them, when in reality, that’s likely not the case. It’s very possible they struggle with writing nearly as much as I do.

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I’m Learning How to Write. Again.

By Michael in Writing with Add a Comment

I don’t know about you, but very often, writing is a chore for me. Since I started working online, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve sat down to write an article, and the words simply flowed out of me easily and effortlessly.

One recent article took nearly an entire day to write, and it really wasn’t that long of an article; only about 900 words. It’s a brutally painful process, and it has to be remedied lickety-split.

After doing a bit of research this morning, I’ve discovered what some of my problems are. The first issue seems to be around my expectations. See, I expect to be able to sit down in front of my computer and just start typing out an article easily and effortlessly. That’s not really a bad expectation, but I expect to do it without any sort of preparation before sitting down to write. I expect that the information is already in my head, and all I need to do is get it out of my head and onto the screen. Apparently, that’s not how real writers work. Real writers actually do a bit of preparation that makes their writing much easier and effortless.

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How Do You Stay Inspired Every Day?

By Michael in Business Blogging & Inspiration with 4 Comments

Not to sound like a Baptist preacher, but we should all rise up, and give praise for the existence of the Internet. Every day. I mean really. Never before in history has it been so easy and inexpensive for you to share your ideas with an audience that could potentially number in the hundreds, thousands, or even millions.

Never before has it been so easy and inexpensive to get your product or service in front of prospective clients and customers. Never before has it been so easy to connect with people all over the world, and create new relationships. And it’s never been easier than right now for you build your personal brand, and make your mark on the world, even if in a relatively small way.

“We are going through a gold-rush of branding. In the old days to become a brand, you needed a lot of mainstream media attention. But now, if you get talked about enough in all the social webs; blogs, you can get there. You can build your brand; you company’s brand. But it all starts with that first moment when you look in the mirror … first moment. What do I want to do?” – Gary Vaynerchuk

I don’t know about you, but I spend a good 15 hours a day online. Most of it spent reading, writing, communicating and just generally doing business. And when you spend that much time online, it’s all too easy to take the Internet for granted.

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Top 10 Ways to Become More Famous: Introduction

By Michael in Inspiration with 2 Comments

Fame. It’s an interesting concept. On one hand, it conjures vacuous images of Paris Hilton striking a pose on the red carpet while the paparazzi fight like pitbulls on a poodle to get the money shot for next week’s edition of People magazine.

On the other hand, as a small business owner, you must realize exposure like that would certainly help you generate more leads, grow your business and ring the cash register on a much more consistent basis.

Furthermore, I’ll let you in on a little secret. We ALL want more fame. Some less than others, sure. But even the most spiritually evolved folks among us have at least some desire to be more relevant, more important and more valued by more people. And what’s wrong with that? Well, nothing. You’re human. Own it. Accept the fact that fame is okay, and you’re okay for wanting a bit more of it.

Further still, you need more fame. As I implied above, it’s a crucial component of business success. If you have trouble with the word “fame,” simply replace it with the word “exposure.” I would have used that word myself, but “How to Become More Exposed in 2010″ didn’t work as a title. And besides, “fame” is much more provocative.

With that in mind, here’s the first of my Top 10 Ways to Become More Famous in 2010.

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