The winner? Dennis Higgins. Hit me up via one of the usual methods and that signed copy of Jay Baer and Amber Naslund’s The NOW Revolution is in the mail to ya! Why Dennis? He brought a pretty obscure brand to the table and offered a clear and concise line of reasoning why he’s been a fan (and a long-time one, at that). I was even convinced to bop over and have a gander. Close seconds were Jonathan Vaudreuil (even though I despise *bucks) and everyone who mentioned Ash over at The Middle Finger Project (who will be appearing on Redhead Writing as a guest blogger, thanks to you guys, very soon).

Secondly, I’ve submitted to speak at Blog World Expo in New York at the end of May. My topic? “Building the Unpopular Brand: Five Reasons to Turn Your Branding Thought Process Inside Out.” Having spoken mostly here on the West Coast for the last year, it’d be super cool to get East, meet some new faces and get to The Big Apple once again. I’m also pretty stoked to finally meet my literary agent and a publisher or two on the trip (awwyeah – HUGS!). If you’re on Twitter of Facebook, why don’t you help lobby to get me on the roster? Already, the conference is graced with the likes of Danny Brown, Amber Naslund, Jay Baer, Jason Falls and CC Chapman…maybe I’ll be lucky enough to join their ranks!

Here’s how you can help:

Facebook: Become a fan of the Blog World Expo page (not for nothing, they have a great news feed and post all of the conference updates). Please don’t bomb their wall with any lobbying moves to get me on deck as a speaker. Supporting the conference in and of itself is GREAT.

Twitter: Why don’t you ask @BlogWorld if they’ll add @RedheadWriting to the slate? Tag your tweets with #BWENY. After all, if I’m going to be talking about brand building, best to show that my audience knows how to walk the walk and not just talk the same old talk, right?

If you haven’t registered for BWENY yet, Early Bird registration ends on April 14. Hop on that shit, would ya? And if you’re already attending, holla in the comments!

And the last thing we’ll deal with today: some sound business advice.

Dickheads are everywhere. They lurk in line in front of you in the express checkout line, standing there with 23 items in the fewer than 15 items line. In your inbox, they’re conspicuously absent because they haven’t replied to the email you sent (ahem) a week ago. They’ll take all of your time and for little money. They ask for “favors” (and not the kind you get at a birthday party). Dickheads will keep you up at night and in your personal life, they’ll make you angry, sad, cry and potentially punch walls and shun your dog when he comes over to give you soggy kisses.

Fuck those guys.

If you let them run your business instead of — oh, I dunno — putting on your big kid britches and running it yourself, the only person you have to blame is yourself.

There are two kinds of dickheads: those who will never change and those who got up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe you’ve been a dickhead lately (I was last month – the “wrong side of the bed” variety). Do yourself a solid: take a dickhead inventory for your business…and your life, while you’re at it.

Who could you do without?

The wrong-side-of-the-bed variety dickhead can be talked to and brought back to the light from The Dark Side. The other? They’re not worth your time, energy, worries, anger or anything you can pick up in the $0.99 store clearance bin. It’s time to jettison the dickheads.

The coolest part of being YOU is the fact that YOU are the only one who determines the people with whom you do business. No one else. If your employer is a dickhead, go find a new one. If your client is a dickhead, fire them. If your boyfriend/girlfriend is a dickhead, dump ‘em.

Build your business — and your life — so that no one makes you feel shitty or as if you’re wasting your time. Life’s entirely too short (a fact I’m reminded of daily) to fill yourself up with people who don’t give you anything but headaches. Dickheads will come along every day (and I don’t know about you, but they’re usually in front of me at a stoplight…texting…putting on mascara…) but you have one simple choice to make:

Let yourself be stuck or find a way to go around ‘em. Beatrice the Mini Cooper and I? We go around.

I’m back from Blog World Expo 2009. Four days in Las Vegas is long enough to remind me of why I moved to Denver from Sin City in November of 2008. Seriously – why does this convention have to be in Las Vegas? I’ve got my beefs with my first-ever industry trade show, yet there is some applause to be shared as well.

To make things more palatable, I’ve dubbed my Yays (CORNED BEEF) and Nays (BEEF). Corned beef hash is, like, my favoritest food of all time. Breakfast, lunch, dinner – you name it, I’ll eat it. It’s my stranded on a desert island food of choice and you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands to take it off my menu. So let’s roll with the #rehash:

BEEF: Could have done without Guy Kawasaki’s low-hanging fruit “all Asians look alike/white guy slam” at the closing keynote. Really, Guy – give us some credit.

CORNED BEEF: Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Jason Falls and Laura Fitton are all equally, if not more, impressive in person as they are online. A collective thanks for your consistently kickass content.

BEEF: Placement of an eating/social area directly adjacent to the keynote speaker area, divided only by a curtain. Yeah. Re-engineer that one for next year, please.

CORNED BEEF: Giving me the book “Blog Blazers” in my schwag bag. I like books.

BEEF: Giving me the book “Blog Blazers” in my schwag bag. I don’t need to hear the same questions answered by 40 bloggers. As well, I have to take some credibility away from a book copyrighted in 2009 that cites blog URLs from top bloggers hosted on Blogger and Wordpress.com. You even quoted Dharmesh Shah (who’s da schizz, BTW) stating that no one should have a blog.provider.com domain for their blog. WTF, yo? (see my post Stop Being a Wordpress Whore)

CORNED BEEF: The spread at the closing night BBQ party at the Hilton Pool. I was so happy to see grilled dead animal I almost *censored* myself.

BEEF: The fact that the other Blog World 2009-sponsored parties weren’t anything like the closing night BBQ. At an event that was teaching the importance of building community, you subscribed to the antithesis by hosting events that were divisive and exclusive (and not to mention all over the damned Strip with no access other than by taxi). I was with a group on Thursday who was cockblocked at the door for the Techset Party at The Bank where we were told we couldn’t enter and while the ladies got in free, the guys were blessed with half-priced admission. On Saturday’s party at Jet, we were met with olfactory offense upon entry by an antipasto spread that smelled like vomit and my friend Jodi got to pay $21 for a seltzer water and an appletini. Tell me this: you can’t talk to people in sessions and you have little time to talk between sessions. You sponsored events where we were deafened by loud music and exorbitant drink prices in dark nightclubs. Do you want to rethink that whole “community building” angle next year? Awesome and high five in advance.

CORNED BEEF: I have heard nothing but kickass reviews of Laura Fitton’s keynote “Be Awesome.” She is one of the first people I ever followed on Twitter almost two years ago and meeting her, if only briefly at the end of  a panel session, was pure joy. She exudes…well, swellness. Here’s a link to the notes from her presentation (thanks to Wayne Sutton).

BEEF: I don’t drink and have no BEEF with those who do. I’d love the ability to have water available as complimentary at Blog World Expo-sponsored events in the future. Have you ever seen bloggers dehydrated? Our backlinks dry up.

CORNED BEEF: The Keynote speakers who gave their time. There is a difference between taking an audience’s time and giving yours. Thanks for giving yours and in return, you thanked us for ours.

You’re expecting some smartass remarks about why, in 8 days, I’m boarding a plane for Las Vegas. I fucking HATE Las Vegas. I lived there for 3.5 years and stayed as long as I did for my friends and access to outdoor adventure. I don’t miss The Strip. I don’t miss the endless days of commercialized debauchery. I don’t miss reeking of smoke after having to walk through a casino to get to my restaurant of choice.

But there are five really weird reasons I’m going to Blog World 2009.

• Human interaction. I text, tweet, blog, write and email all damn day. Conversations with real, live people will be nice. Very, very nice. I hoping that some will be spectacular. If I were Baz Lurhmann, I’d even say, “Spectacular, Spectacular!”
• Morbid curiosity. Again, it’s about putting faces with personas. Unearthing the men and women behind their online facades. I think it’s all very well and good to develop an online following that values your opinions, insights and expertise but that’s all worth fuckall if you can’t back it up in person.
• Analysis. Aside from the hordes of vendors who want to pimp their wares to me like a $10 blow job, I’ve never attended an industry convention. Ever. I genuinely want to know WHY people go to these things, especially in a cesspool city like Las Vegas. I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised, yet approaching the 3-day immersion with a bit of trepidation. It’s not that I’m trying to come across like an asshole or anything, but I genuinely want to know WHY people go to these things. Educate me.
• Sleeping in a hotel room. I admit it – I love to travel. Vegas though it may be, I get to be somewhere else for awhile. My pups will get to play with other pups non-stop for 4 days, and I – she who works from a home office or bookstore du jour – will get to be away.
• Fodder. People are inherently weird and Las Vegas is the epicenter of the universe for weird. I am relishing being bombarded by weird. As the title of this blog states, I’m a little into weird. Oh, and I have an iPhone with a camera. If you’re being a jackass in my vicinity, rest assured: it’s going on Twitter.

The not-so-weird reasons I’m going to Blog World include catching up with my friend Jodi (we’re roomies!), seeing friends while in town, and maybe even learning a thing or two. Whatever comes out of the experience, this I know: I won’t be sad to board the plane back to Denver on Monday morning at 7am, but perhaps I’ll look forward to coming back again next year.

By the way: Redhead Writing launched its new Facebook Page. On Facebook and like my brand of snark? Become a fan and you’ll be instantly in the loop on all that goes on in Redhead Land (includes RedheadWriting.com, RedheadedFury.com and ToyWithMe.com/dear-redhead).

If you’re coming to Blog World, look a sista up. Leave a comment below.