On our drive to and from the nanny’s, there’s one of those signs with the sliding letters. (It’s the same sign we talked about in the great Just Because It’s Lame Doesn’t Make It Stupid incident of 2009.) The owner of the sign is a herbal weight loss place — one of those joints where you consume 800 calories and 43 herbal pills a day to lose weight. Like gyms, these guys don’t sell products, they sell memberships.

Memberships are notoriously difficult things to sell.

For a certain buyer — one who hearts you more than life itself and thinks about you all the time and talks about your products to everyone they can pin down long enough to listen — memberships are AWESOME. Tragically, there aren’t many of those buyers out there. For the rest of us, memberships equal commitment and in our mind, commitment equals bad. Read More

Note: This is one of the best posts I’ve ever read on getting what you want. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t write it. Fortunately for you, Chris Anthony did, and he’s going to let you read it.

First, get a red marker, pen, crayon – whatever you have handy to write with, as long as it’s red. Then, draw a red line on the floor.

No, really. I’ll wait.

You didn’t do it, did you? “I just had these floors put in.” “This is a rental.” “My husband would kill me.” Read More

I cannot think of one problem that can’t be solved by this solution:

“Work more hours than the average factory worker.”

(I found that on a post about being an artist for life. The rest of it’s just as good.)

Not work, mind you. Work at this.

Don’t get marketing? Give it a month of 42.5 hours a week.

Aren’t sure how to find your blogging voice? 20 full working days, baby.

Need more clients? Make it your full time job, one from which you could get fired for not meeting your quota.

Want more people to stop by your store? Devote 10,200 minutes to nothing but bringing them.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how this applies to every area of life. Toilet training your toddler. Paying down your debt. Renovating your house. It seems impossible and overwhelming but if you actually sit down and apply yourself, actually work at it, it’s not that hard. Read More

This is a guest post from Holly Jackson, who has valiantly offered to write stuff while I’m cavorting with my pinko comrades.

One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given about running a business came early on, from a virtual stranger on Twitter. “Congratulations, and you’ll know you’ve made it when you start sabotaging yourself and your business,” they tweeted in reply to my triumphant announcement of something or other.

I remember being really annoyed at the time by the response, thinking I couldn’t possibly ever become like that. I was new, I was different, and I would never do something as stupid as screw up my business. I felt like an explorer, discovering a brand new world and gleefully hacking my way through the marketing forest. I couldn’t imagine feeling any other way about my new venture, or my work habits. Read More

(Posted while I’m in Cuba, through the magic of the interwebs. Please feel free to talk amongst yourselves.)

To celebrate Victoria Day weekend, Jamie and I took Jack to Niagara Falls. I left my iPhone and my laptop at home and just hung out with my family for a few days.

We tried to make it one of those vacations that kids appreciate while they’re actually experiencing it, as opposed to years later. We splurged on a room with a view of the falls, with floor-to-ceiling windows so we could watch fireworks right from bed. Instead of walking down to the falls, we bought tickets to take an elevator that called itself a railway and tried to get Jack squealing “This is REALLY FUN!” on tape. Read More