Newsletter Archives

I just sent out the latest edition of my newsletter which is chock full of free and useful information.

If you haven’t signed up you ought to consider doing so or risk being among the almost 2 billion people who haven’t subscribed yet. You don’t really want to be among those people, now do you. Be a leader, think for yourself and join those of us who swim upstream against the current.

If you haven’t already accepted that you are a rebel in need of a cause consider this your call to action. Sign up and stop worrying about whether you have the guts to walk up theÂ downÂ escalator.

Or do what I do and tell people that the guy in the white Nikes stole your wallet. If they ask you for more of a description say that you got a quick look at him but you are convinced that he is kind of short/tall and skinny/fat.

Alternatively you can always describe him being sort of in between milky and mocha about Venti tall. By the time they finish scratching their heads you’ll have finished you stroll up the escalator and will be well on your way to your next destination.

Never Do This

But you musn’t ever do one of these things:

1) Wait until you reach the cashier to get out your credit card or checkbook. You knew long before that you were going to have to pay. Waiting isn’t rebellious, it is just stupid.

2) The same rule applies to those who wait in line to fill their tanks at Costco. You should have your card out before you hit the pump or risk having your tires slashed by the Costco pump genies.

Stop shaking you heads at me. My blog, my rules.

Do I Have Your Attention?

Do I have your attention now? By now it must be obvious that I ~~was~~ am trying to get it.

That is because I am not always a silly and insouciant man. I really did unsubscribe to a number of newsletters because they didn’t serve a useful purpose for me. They just added noise and clutter to my life and I already have plenty of that.

When I looked at them I didn’t see any personality or passion in them. There was no attempt to try to build a relationship or establish a connection. Â Nor did they provide any new information that I hadn’t seen a million times before.

Granted some of you will say the same thing about my newsletters and or my posts. Some of you won’t relate to my sense of humor and instead of thinking about “That clever fellow Jack” you will use some other less endearing term(s) to describe me.

That is ok, I don’t expect or need everyone to like or love me.

What I Am Trying To Do

What I am trying to do is simple. I am working on becoming a better writer who one day will be the publisher of many books that you and others enjoy reading. I am working on learning how to use social media more effectively than I do now.

Part of the reason that I started the newsletter was to see if I could build one from scratch. I wanted to see if I could take nothing and turn it into something.

It is possible that I will fail.

It is possible this newsletter won’t ever gain any traction and that nothing will come of it.

I am not worried about that. It is not because I doubt my ability to build and grow it. I have more than a few ideas about how to make this mother do more and be more than it is.

Time is my biggest adversary. I don’t have as much to use as I want to.

But that is not stopping me either.

Right now I am playing around with it. Right now I am experimenting with times and formats. I want to see what works and what doesn’t.

Once I get that sorted out things will begin to take shape and I will start to implement some of the more concrete ideas.

Eventually I will be in a position where I can provide more useful information about what I learned and how I did it. Ultimately I see it all as a learning experience and that has an awful lot of value.

Your Call To Action

Here is your second chance to see what my newsletter looks like and to sign up. Click on the link and take a look at the latest edition and those that came before it. If you like what you see please sign up for it.

It is free and if you decide it is not for you it is just as easy to unsubscribe as it was to subscribe.

Don’t wait to sign up because I am not going to give out any Ginsu knives or cool stuff from Ronco. Â Go on now, point and click your way to free and useful information.

Knowledge When the words are flowing fast and furious from my fingertips I never stop to think about whether people will read my words or if they will like them. I just write.

Out on the basketball court when I let the game come to me and I don’t think about what I am doing I make more baskets, grab more rebounds, make more assists and play better defense.

I like looking at those two areas because I see them as being representative of life. They cover success in both the mental and physical arenas and that is what I am looking for.

So I ask myself several questions:

What am I doing right?
How do I apply that to my entire life?
What am I doing wrong?
How do I avoid making those mistakes over and over again.

And that is how we reach the:

Learn By Doing- Help Me Edition

The premise of the learn by doing-help me edition is very simple. The best way to learn how to do something is to get off your butt and do it. Turn theory into practice and find out what is involved in whatever it is you want to do by doing it.

Now obviously this doesn’t always translate well. I am not suggesting that we can learn how to become brain surgeons by cutting open the skulls of random strangers or that you should learn how to fly a plane by knocking out the pilot on your next transAtlantic flight.

But we are not talking about extreme examples. Our focus here is upon blogging and I can tell you that the best lessons I have learned have come from my willingness to step outside of my comfort zone and try things.

I can provide a number of concrete examples:

When I didn’t like the way this joint looked I made changes that were more significant than just purchasing a new theme. I messed around with HTML and CSS. I tinkered with this and that and if I broke something I figured out how to fix it.
Promotion- I started reaching out to my community and asked you to become fans of my Facebook page and or follow me on various social media platforms.

There are lots of other examples but I want to take a moment highlight the newest leap of faith, my newsletter. That was a bigger step for me than you might realize. I almost didn’t do it because I wasn’t really sure that it made sense. I wasn’t sure that I could fill it or that people would want to subscribe.

But I thought about it and I came up with a few things. It might sound silly to you but sometimes am I surprised that anyone reads my words. Sometimes I am surprised that I am not being used as a cure for insomnia.

When I thought about my desire to live my dreams and to write books a newsletter made sense to me. It made sense to use it to help build the community and to communicate more intimately with those who wish to join me on my journey.

So I took a leap of faith and opened my account with AWeber. Took a leap of faith and decided that I would share my journey with you and talk about my growing pains. I don’t want to embarrass myself, but I might make a few mistakes here. I might screw a few things up, but I believe in learning by doing.

Help Me

This is where you come in. I have ideas andÂ a rough plan for what I want to do with the newsletter but I want to hear from you. What do you want to see in it? Many of you use Feedburner’s email subscription service to read these posts so I expect that I will probably turn that off and ask you to subscribe via AWeber.

But that isn’t going to be it is only purpose. Like I said I have plans, but I want to know what you would like to hear/see in it. You are always welcome to email me directly but it would be great if we started a discussion in the comments too.

What do you think?