the Bacon Bloody Mary.

Fine. Don’t believe me. I’m not lying. Every Bloody Mary should have bacon in it or mixed into the salt on the rim. Talk to your local bartender. INSIST that your favorite brunch destination upgrade their hair-of-the-dog offerings. You will thank me.

It’s a week where I’m wrapping up Book #1 (The Insider’s Guide to Egg Donation) with my writing partner out of California so I can get back to Book #2 (The Power of Unpopular), so I’ve got some shit to keep y’all busy while I meet a publishing deadline:

Item A for Your Consideration: Imagine an 80 Foot Tall Redhead in Times Square

Yeah, you read that right. Me. 80 feet tall*. In Time Square. You see, About.me is having this RUHdonk contest where you can go vote for my profile and if I make it to the top 20 profiles with the most votes by September 23, I get sent to The Judges. The Judges at About.me will then pick (dramatic inhale) three winners and those willers will, for a fleeting moment, have their About.Me profiles broadcast on the jumbotron billboards in Time Square in New York City.

Is it silly? Oh, yes.

Is it necessary? Most certainly not.

Should you vote? Fuck yes, you should vote!

Here’s how to help me out:

1. Visit my About.me profile EVERY GODDAMN DAY until 9/23. That’s 11 more days of vote whoring.
2. On the right side, you’ll see a VOTE thingamajiggie. Click it.
3. Pass my profile around to all of your friends and family like a bong around a campfire and have them vote for me as well. (Every. Day.)
4. Vote early, vote often. Think Tammany Hall, but without Daniel Day Lewis playing the oddly erotic and charismatic Butcher in Gangs of New York.

I thank you for your support. The picture in that profile is from my last photo shoot with Darren. He’s incredibly talented and I’d love to see his work where it belongs – larger than life!

Item B for Your Consideration: OMFG – Tell Me How Much You Hate Buzzspeak!

My latest column in Entrepreneur Magazine is live on their website as of today. And given that many of you are out there dealing with (gasp) real people like I am every day, we all know that buzzspeak is bullshit. Stop by and have a gander at How to Break Out of the Business Buzzword Bubble and let me and the other folks already adding to this lively discussion your pet peeves, your pisses-me-offs and take on the direction of the article. Mad props to Entrepreneur Magazine for having me and thanks to all of you for your subscriptions and for reading each month!

***

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to bathe and meet a client. Then, it’s the gym and back to the office for another marathon session to finish out Book #1. And remember: if you can’t fix it, bacon can.

Sitting in bed with a migraine that could could bring a Republican to decorate his home with red, white and blue donkeys, I thought I’d peruse the news a bit. In days of yore, I’d open the paper and read what the press said was pressing, but the internet brings wider access, and all with a few keystrokes. Some of today’s top stories:

• Amy Winehouse kicked it. This is apparently shocking and front page news.
• The Norwegian terrorist suspect is “surprised” he killed so many people.
• Neither Obama or Boehner are backing down on the “debt crisis.”
• People are already filing lawsuits against New York’s new gay marriage law.
• Netflix customers are pissed. But Jimmy cracked corn and doesn’t care.
• Glenn Beck is, once again, making real Republicans look shitty by lipping off about “Hitler youth.”
• Some school in Arkansas appointed a co-valedictorian when the actual valedictorian turned out to be black (out of fear of upsetting a mostly white high school).

On a day where I wake up, migraine and all, and understand that I have plenty, I’m a bit perplexed about all of the hullabaloo and where people choose to spend their time and attention.

Yes, I said choose.

To start, I’d like to talk about the paint on your house. Anywhere. If you live in a home that you didn’t purchase new, there are bound to be a few coats on the walls, bricks and windowsills. You don’t really understand what’s on the sheet rock because, well, you can’t see it. Everyone who’s lived in that house had made a paint contribution. You don’t know if they used latex or acrylic, lead-based (oy) or non. If you keep pouring on the layers, the paint will eventually start to crack, peel and shed because there are too many layers and nothing will stick. That’s pretty much where our country is at.

We have a President leading our nation who walked into an inheritance of shit following the Bush administration. Political parties be damned, it’s time to have some common sense. It took a lot longer than four years to screw this country up and those of you who expect it to be fixed in four years are undeniably delusional. And if you think that the President actually runs this country, you’re also delusional. Ever heard the phrase “it takes and act of Congress?” Yeah. It really does. If you’re pissed about the state of things, it’s time to start in your own backyard.

The Backyard Economy

Many of us forget that there are state and local governments in that backyard. We ignore them. We skip elections for them and then we get pissed when things don’t go the way we’d like. And I’ll be the asshole and go ahead and say that change begins in our backyards and it’s not a concept that trickles down from Washington. If you think your city’s public schools suck so much, why don’t you take the $10 to $20k you’re oh-so-willing to dump into private schools and help make the public schools a better place? Get on the school board. Join your city council. Volunteer. Yeah, that takes time, but it’s action.

We’ve somehow arrived at being a culture of people who want to go around problems instead of work through them. And it’s diversionary tactics that have gotten us where we are today: bitching about everything except what’s happening in our own backyards, when that’s the one environment we can change. And now.

I understand that it’s easier to yell. Lord knows, we’re a nation of yellers. But for all the energy spent yelling, we could be doing. We scream for better health care yet scream for lower taxes (completely ignorant to the fact that our taxation rates, on a global scale, are quite normal and those countries with national health programs pay a hefty tax price in exchange). We run to Walmart and other big box retailers to get the best prices and then have the audacity to be shocked when we hear about corporations paying less taxes than we do.

I have an idea, and it’s pretty ballsy. Look in your own backyard.

We live in a hyperlocal to local community system. Dollars spent in your community stay in your community. That means you might pay more for a burger at a one-off restaurant, but McDonald’s isn’t getting your dough and sending it elsewhere. Spending locally supports other business owners who spend that money they earn in the community. That’s the strength of the backyard economy. When we begin taking care of our own instead of yelling, shit gets done. You have the temerity to mock those who stand on street corners asking for help, but you’re all too ready to send money via text to support Japan. We’ll help Haiti rebuild but you won’t contribute to a local politician’s campaign. And before you get all in a tizzy about tax deductions, most people don’t understand that a $100 donation isn’t a dollar-for-dollar deduction on your return (I know, shocker).

I wonder when we got to be so out of whack. We look to do all of these big things yet ignore the little ones in our own backyard that truly make a difference.

Rainbows and Shit

If we paid more attention to our own backyards, we’d be less apt to waste time on shit like keeping people from being able to form a legal union. Like gay people. While I’m confident that most of my readers have a firm grasp on the concept of separation of church and state, there are hordes that don’t. If you’re so concerned about the Big Gay Mafia coming and stealing your chickens and kissing at your garden party, don’t invite them. What’s funny is that they don’t want to be invited. Just like you, they’re capable of choosing their own friends, building their own careers and much to the damning’s dismay, building their own families. They don’t want to hang somewhere they’re not welcome. And frankly, if you’re like that, I’m straight and I don’t even want to come to your garden party. For all the groups putting their efforts into blocking gay unions, I want you to think about your backyard for a minute.

Marriage licenses create revenue that can be used to improve roads, build schools, fund parks and pools, maintain civic common areas and keep other civic programs up and running. So what you’re saying by opposing gay marriage is that your beliefs supersede the well being of your community and you’re so fucking selfish that you want to make your community suffer from this lack of low-hanging revenue.

For all that’s holy, why do you care who marries? They’re not going to hump in your bedroom and get Gay all over your 600-thread count sheets. My life is blessed because of my gay friends being a part of it and I’ll tell you this: I’ve learned more about how beautiful a marriage can be from my gay friends than my straight ones. Why don’t we stop wasting taxpayer dollars and start paying attention to our own backyards a bit more – stop hating and discriminating because of the people we love? That’s the beautiful thing about this nation of ours – we’re a culture that’s free to love by choice. Unfortunately, the hate boils over and its the taxpayers like you and me who bear the brunt of the shitty actions of others.

Get Your Own Shit Under Control

Pissed that you’re out of a job? Find a new one and stop thinking that you’re above certain types of labor. Do what you need to do to get by while you keep hunting for the next big thing. I’ve been there and done it – and this September will mark the two year point from the day where I sat on my sofa with less than $200 in the bank because another employer had gone belly-up. Once I stopped blaming people for the world of shit I’d gotten myself into, the most incredible thing happened: I realized that I was the only one who was capable of getting things done. So, I started getting things done.

It’s not the government’s fault you don’t have a job or are riddled with credit card debt. Blame is useless and energy draining. The Backyard Economy begins with you and if we put as much effort into ourselves and things we can change as we do yelling about the things we cannot, I think it’d be fair to say that we’ll find ourselves in much different positions than the yellers.

Quit spending money you don’t have. Credit limits aren’t double dog dares. How about this: if you can’t pay for it in cash, don’t buy it. I’ve done that for nearly three years now and lemme tell ya: it’s awesome. By getting my own shit under control, I’m able to do so many more things I want to do. And I have to do a whole lot less to achieve them.

I can’t fathom why my government is torn about a debt ceiling when I’m sitting here paying cash for everything. It’s the credit asshattery that led us here in the first place, so why do we, on a individual basis, continue to contribute to the problem? Learning to live with less – people do it all over the world. Certain people have the means to live with more. Let them. We owe it to ourselves to understand our respective tipping points, when we go from controlling our expenditures to letting them control us. An unpopular thought, I know.

So I Ask…

What are you willing to do to effect change and how will we each make our Backyard Economies thrive? I can’t think about the last time there was something passed in Congress or a decision made on the federal level that affected me and how I live in my day to day. Can you? While that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay attention, I think it does mean that we should be more cognizant of the beauty sitting right out of our back door. People need food, shelter and jobs here. There. Where you live.  And no one likes getting India on the other end of the phone when they call customer service – but that’s their backyard. They’re doing what they need to do as well.

Can we set aside donkey and elephants, signs of protest and rolled-up car windows for a certain period of time and rediscover our own backyards? Tell our servicemen and women that you appreciate them when you see them. Find out who your representatives are in your state and local governments. Identify what you don’t like and take an active step to change it instead of yelling. Hug your kids, spend time with your friends – after all, that why we’re on this ride: for the stuff that means more than the stuff we yell about.

If you stay out of my vagina, I’ll stay out of your church. I’ll run my business and you can run yours. Let’s be more human and less hateful and start cultivating what’s rich – those areas right outside our doors. And the damnedest thing is, those areas are accessible and waiting (begging) for us to put our feet in the grass, wiggle our toes and remember what a real community feels like. Community isn’t Washington DC and it doesn’t live in a big white house. It’s what we make of it, build from the resources around us. Resources we’ve ignored for entirely too long. So that means less attention paid to celebrity and sensationalism and more to people. We’re incredible creatures – let’s start acting as if.

Sincerely,

Erika (and anyone else who wants in on this)

What is North Social?

It’s probably best described as a magical yeti that bakes you calorie-free cupcakes all day long – something you never thought you’d find and entirely too good to be true. In a nutshell, North Social is a company that’s built a wide array of Facebook apps that help those with fan pages trick them out to their heart’s content, quickly and easily. They offer everything from apps that handle welcome page functions to sweepstakes, fan-only offers and more. They offer 18 apps in all along with North Contact, their own proprietary contact/subscriber management system (more on that later)

How Can I Preview North Social’s Suite of Facebook Apps?

If you’d like, you can bop over to the RedheadWriting fan page where I have the Signup App activated for my welcome/new fan sequence (a series of 3 screens), along with the Twitter app, RSS feed app and Partner Pages app all customized for my needs. You WILL have to become a fan of RedheadWriting in order to view everything, so if you prefer, you can check out North Social’s Facebook fan page instead since my brand ain’t for everyone. Their page show EVERY app they’ve created in action – just use the navigation on the left side of the page to review the apps in action. Their website also has a custom video demo of every app in their library, and the upside? It’s all in easy-to-understand English and yes – setting up the apps is as easy as the videos make it out to be.

What Does North Social Cost?

Simple – just check out their pricing page. It’s based on the number of fans your page has, which I think is quite reasonable. Plans are as low as $19/month (I use the $30/month plan) and can service one fan page with each subscription. If you’re an agency or consultant with multiple clients, the Enterprise edition might make sense because you can service up to 5 pages with that plan. And before you piss and moan about the lack of a free edition -yeah, we’re not even going to talk about that. You don’t go to work in the morning for free so why should they? Pay the nice people who just made your Facebook world THAT much easier.

The only other costs you’ll have to take into account are design costs for a graphic designer to create the images you’ll use in the apps. If you need a referral, just ping me and I’ll connect you with the gal who created my landing pages and custom headers. She’s bright, talented and quite reasonable on the pricing front. Just ask!

What’s With North Contact, the Proprietary CMS from North Social?

I’m still digging into the details, but I’ll share what I’ve discerned thus far. If you’re using Feedburner to burn your blog feed, there’s a lot that’s out of your control, mainly marketing. If you’re trying to capture more subscribers for your blog or newsletter, North Contact is a free social CRM tool that can help you do just that. Here are the three main functions that North Social can help your execute:

• Capturing user information (name/email and more).
• Creating email campaigns, complete with tracking features and ability to use HTML email templates.
  • Their system also allows you to test an email design template across all of the major email providers to lessen then chance your messages are marked as spam. Totally sweet.
• Reporting on email campaigns.

Unfortunately there is no RSS integration, so for the meantime, I’m capturing email addresses of new subscribers here and importing them into Aweber. Hopefully, they’ll add this functionality, but for now, it’s a great place to build a database of Facebook page fans and build email marketing campaigns to them if you want to keep everything in one place.

In Closing…

North Social probably has one of the most brilliant email marketing drip campaigns on the planet and their blog The Drop is an endless supply of information you can actually use. I hope you’ve enjoyed the introduction to my latest geek out and hope to see you over on the fan page soon!

image via CreativeCommons

Always the sucker for a sick blues riff and wicked guitar lick, it occurs to me that there might be some fans out there just like me who learned more than they know from Stevie Ray. From the first moment I heard Lovestruck to the day I learned that Stevie couldn’t read music and beyond, he’s held a piece of this Texas girl’s heart in his talented hands.  As a marketer and writer, I think there’s plenty we can (and have) learned from music. It has a way of telling us we’re doing shit wrong, reminding us that we’re not doing shit, and calling us shits when we fuck it up. Lemme take you through my reasoning that all I ever needed to know about marketing I learned from Stevie Ray Vaughan and who knows – maybe you’ll feel the same way or find some wisdom in the music that makes your life a better place to live.

Couldn’t Stand the Weather

Like a train that stops at every station,
we all deal with trials and tribulations
Fear hangs the fellow that ties up his years,
entangled in yellow and cries all his tears

How often do we waste time wrapped up in our own bullshit? Marketing is an -ing verb. It’s not a noun, for all that’s holy. Sure, use it as one if you want, but in my world, it’s a doing kinda thing. If you let fear paralyze you from taking a leap, you’ll never have truly exceptional results, truly appreciative clients and you’ll find yourself crying because the competition is doing what you really want to be doing. So why not just do? If you got into business only to give up, you let yourself be washed up because you couldn’t stand the weather.

Love Struck, Baby

I still remember and let it be said
The way you make me feel take a fool to forget
I swore a ton of bricks had hit me in the head
And what you do little baby ain’t over it yet

This is what a good marketing creates: unforgettable impressions. Brands we remember. Words to live by and an emotional impact on your target demographic that a ton of bricks can’t make you forget. But after the initial woo, you can’t stop there. You have to create lasting impact that carries over. Your audience? They need to be lovestruck and under your spell. If you can’t do this, then you’re doing something wrong, Vern. Take yer ass back to the drawing board and figure out how to make your audience a fool for you.

Rude Mood

Sometimes you don’t need words to say what you need to say. The elements of some of the most successful marketing campaigns and brands have been what’s unsaid. Jingles, logos, unspoken moments and mere glances in the heat of the moment – those are things just as memorable as words.

Tightrope

Walkin’ the tight rope, steppin on my friends
Walkin’ the tight rope, was a shame and a sin.

You don’t walk on people to get business done. Great marketing requires a team of people to get the message out there in every possible channel. We’ve all run across the colossal douchecopter who thinks he or she is an island. We collide with shitty work ethics and have to pick up the slack, which at times isn’t unlike clawing your way back up a slimy, moss-covered ravine. But we do it. People help people and no matter if you dwell in corporate walls or your own living room, there’s no arguing that people are the reason you can get your job done for the client. Learn to walk the tightrope and ask for help when you need it – don’t step on people along the way because you fall out of balance.

Pride and Joy

Well I love my baby, like the finest wine
Stick with her until the end of time
She’s my sweet little thing, she’s my pride and joy
She’s my sweet little baby, I’m her little lover boy

It’s the song every marketer wishes a consumer would sing about what they pour their heart and soul into. Our brands, our customers – they’re our pride and joy and we do all it is that we do to hope that others will feel the same way, too. Maybe it’s your MacBook. A Mini Cooper. A custom Tiemeyer bicycle. Whatever your passion, we want our pride and joy to be the pride and joy of others. It’s why we do what we do.

And finally…while this isn’t originally a Stevie Ray Vaughan tune, it’s brilliance and it’s one of those songs that reminds me that things don’t have to be complicated. Simplicity is what we most often overlook when we’re trying to design the Next Big Thing. Maybe we can work with what’s already there and find a way to make it our own. Make people happy to see it again. And in the process, remind ourselves to stop making things so damn complicated for complication’s sake.

Hi…yeah – is Bullshit in? No, It’s okay. I’ll hold.

Bullshit always keeps you on hold, doesn’t it?

The lines of communication propriety have become inarguably blurred by technology. I addressed this awhile back in a diatribe/personal memoir on online stalking, but think it bears repeating in a slappier tone. So let me rack my Bitch Slapping hand like a shotgun and say this:

Our audacity is blinding.

The social web is a brilliant tool. If used wisely, it offers greater insight into those people who matter to us most. Friends, family, colleagues, customers and clients all now have the opportunity to share their lives to any degree they see fit – from conspicuous absence to annoying overshare and every iteration in between. But here’s the rub: just because you can see someone online doesn’t mean you know them. And it certainly doesn’t mean you have access to them.

I don’t know about you, but the level of faux-social intimacy bullshit I deal with every day is astronomical. There’s nothing I adore more than a personal note from a reader or having the opportunity to answer a question for anyone who asks, but my social networks are becoming overrun with people who think they know me. Well, ya don’t. Here’s what you know about Erika: the persona. There are a select group of people in the Inner Sanctum, the ‘hood. But the rest? You’re standing outside singing “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?” and looking at an Irish Setter.

I know I’m not the only one who deals with this, so before I go from Erika to see-you-next-Tuesday in five paragraphs flat, let’s get to some common sense rules for the social web. These are my rules and perhaps not yours, but I think much of it is common sense. Let’s take a spin on the Train to Communication Propriety and stop this epically fucked devolutionary process back to knuckle dragging Neanderthals that club Jane on the head and drag her back into the cave so we can sneak a look at her Facebook profile when no one’s looking.

Text Messaging

If you get someone’s phone number, that’s a pretty coveted thing these days. Don’t blow up their phone with multi-part text messages. If it takes more than two texts to get your point across, pick up the goddamn phone and have a 30-second conversation. For fuck sake, if your fingers work to text, they work to dial. And yes, I am occasionally just as guilty of this as anyone else. Texts are great for where are you, what time, which brand of ketchup do you want? queries, but they suck ass for dialogue. Dial. The. Phone.

Facebook Profiles

I’ve been pretty lax with this but that’s about to change. My personal Facebook profile is for my family and friends. If I haven’t met you IRL (In Real Life), do you really need to see the pics of me and my girlfriends having dinner? No. Because that’s personal and requires a certain level of intimacy. I love connecting with my readers and hearing their stories and truly respect anyone who sends me a friend request with a clarification on how I know them. Just ask one of my besties, Merredith – I’d met her at a conference and was knee deep in shit, couldn’t remember and even denied HER friend request on Facebook. Alas, I’ve also now spent last Thanksgiving and Christmas at her family’s house. I also know quite a few people who use their personal Facebook profiles for their business colleagues and communications as well. That’s fine. That’s your decision.

But the moral is this: understand what you’re doing. Think about what you’re asking when you click “Add to Friends” on Facebook. It’s a pretty big level of ask. It’s not just a button. I built a Facebook Fan Page so people could reach Erika without seeing the things that really aren’t quite their business. And the same goes for you – you probably don’t think I need to see the pictures of your daughter’s birthday party or your brand of political rants. If someone you see online offers a link to their Fan Page on their blog, but not a link to their personal profile (ahem…coughs…points), maybe there’s a reason. It’s pretty audacious to ask to be let into someone’s personal life. Just think of who you’d let inside the front door of your house – any yahoo selling magazines or the person you share three yoga classes and carpools with each week? Methinks yoga person wins out.

Relationships Are Earned

This digital access we enjoy – it makes things way too easy. With a Google search, we can find most anyone and the only way to avoid being found is to stop putting it out there. But we should never forget that relationships are earned. Just as flinging a business card at someone doesn’t mean you’ll get them as a client, seeing someone online doesn’t mean you know them. Relationships built over the social web take time and nurturing, just as with any in-person relationship. Why should anyone “be your friend” after exchanging a few blog comments or tweets? After shaking your hand at a conference? I think a good rule of thumb is this: if you’d invite the person to a dinner party where you could only have 20 guests, would you invite them? Granted, the parties are different for both business and your personal life – you have to be the one who decides the boundaries – but we only have so much bandwidth.

Use your bandwidth wisely. Take the time to bask in deeper relationships instead of skipping rock after rock across the surface of human interaction. Stop collecting people in your personal life. In my eyes, I need a select group of incredible relationships, not a plethora of mediocre ones that detract from the time I can spend on the ones I truly want to nurture.

The Desire to Connect – Go Forth and Don’t Be a Douche

We want to feel connected and now we have all of these buttons (Like, Digg, Stumble, Reddit, Add to Friends, Follow, Buy) that give the illusion of connection – but how are we truly connected? When the shit goes down (as it has on this blog), who’s going to be there and have your back? Who’s going to notice if you’re gone?

More importantly – who will YOU notice when they’re gone and reach out to help when needs must?

My readers – you – you’re the reason I get to do what I love. You make me laugh, you’ve been there when all hell’s broken loose. And many of you have come to be my friends and I hope I get to meet each of you one day. I never expected to be invited to your weddings and I don’t know your parents. I only know the persona – what you choose to share with me. And I respect that. How can we change the culture of People Collecting into one where we keep building relationships, but on different levels? I treasure that I’ve earned each of you coming back, post after post. I wouldn’t trade that for the world. But no offense – I don’t really need you to listen in while I chat with my mom, y’know?

So, you’ve been slapped. And I have, too. Enough with the over-asking and false senses of familiarity because a button says we can have it with a click. It’s time for me to rethink just clicking a button and consider what those clicks mean. I tell my clients all the time: it’s not how many fans you have on the boat – it’s how many who would jump in to save you when the shit goes down. Even the Titanic had a max capacity, y’know?

You might have noticed that the blog was unusually quiet last week, and for that, I apologize. Monday mid-day, I was on a plane to Atlanta where I’d be teaching the marketing teams at the American College of Rheumatology (WTF? Yup.) for the next two days. (Oh, and for the record, they’ve been long-time readers of the blog and found me on Twitter. Business gets done via social media, once again.) I also promised I’d name the winner of the signed copy of Gary V’s “The Thank You Economy” from the Business Unicorns contest, which I sucked at getting done as well. So congrats to Darcie Newton for this comment and her take on being financially smart in your business. I’ve dropped you an email so I can get your book on its way (Unicorn Gun included).

So why did I suck so much last week? Maybe the lyrics from a Ben Harper song will say it better than I ever could:

“I have an ability
It’s pounding at my door.
Screaming for more…

Standing at the edge of your life.
At the edge of our lives.
Don’t hold on
There’s no fighting back the years
so hard to unlearn fears.

Now your caught between
what you can’t leave behind.
And all that you may never find.”

Every writer…artist…singer…musician…painter…creative type in general gets scared when they find out that (omg) people seem to like what they’ve been doing. Yeah – welcome to my world. Y’all are picking up what I’m puttin’ down by the metric ton and some people noticed. Hell, I’m still shocked as daylights when I meet someone who says they read my blog. (true story)

Last week, I signed my columnist’s agreement with Entrepreneur Magazine and two book contracts. Three pieces of digital paper that give me all I ever wanted professionally – the ability to write for a living – and for a few days, it turned out to be one of the most paralyzing things that’s ever happened to me. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of being a guest star in your own life, but for me, the script has looked a lot like this since Tuesday of last week:

That’s great, Erika. You did it. You got it. You called your mom. She’s proud. But if you tell people about it, will it sound like you’re being the big swinging dick? Like you’re bragging. Will you be the douchecopter? Should you even BOTHER tell people about it? Yeah, they know about the column, but the books. Lots of people write books. Why are you special? Who the fuck is going to buy the goddamned book? What if it sucks? That’s great – you’re already thinking about writing a book that sucks. What if they both suck? Oh, that’s precious, Erika. Now both books suck. Neither of them sucked, then only ONE of them sucked and now they BOTH suck. EVE! Your fourth face is ready! What are you so proud of anyways? Now, you have to sit down and WRITE the fuckers. Unicorns don’t shit books and even if they did, you killed off all of the unicorns last week. So now, you’re batting zero: you just signed two contract for books you haven’t written that already suck, you’re fresh out of book-shitting unicorns and you have to find time in the next six months to write two books that are already predestined to suck. Balls of fucking dammit.

In the role of the Self-Deprecating, Neurotic Redhead: Erika Napoletano, ladies and gentlemen.

Today is Sunday, and the first thing I do on Sunday mornings is troll YouTube. A geeky tradition, I’m looking for music videos to watch. Studio sessions are my favorite, yet today, I stumbled across the video for a Ben Harper song I’d nearly forgotten about: Fly One Time (some of the lyrics for which appear above). And with an unprecedented ease, I removed my head from my ass and decided to fly. One time. So here it goes:

It’s because of YOU that I get to live my dream. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: without readers, a writer is nothing more than thoughts screaming for asylum. Stories need other people to come alive and the reason mine come to life is YOU. Many of you have been along this crazy road I’ve traveled and stood by me through times where there was nothing I could do except write then hide in a blanket cave. And life? What a fucked up, unpredictable yet simultaneously delightful little unhousebroken pet. It makes you laugh at the most unexpected times and something about it makes you mind the times it pisses on your rug a little bit less.

So here’s the skinny, I hope you enjoy, and there’s nothing more important to me about these books than the ability to tell you “thank you.”

The Power of Unpopular: a counter-intuitive guide to selecting your audience, building your brand and rising above the “me too” economy (publisher: John Wiley & Sons / acquiring editor, Shannon Vargo) While the final title is pending, I’m pretty sure you can glean the what’s what. God knows, I’ve never been the popular girl and the  way I go about business is anything but ordinary. A special thanks to Shelly Kramer for the initial introduction to Wiley late last year, a personal introduction by Amber Naslund (author of The NOW Revolution) to her editor at Wiley, Shannon Vargo, whose enthusiasm for my wild and wooly redheaded ways brought my message to the Wiley imprint. Additional thanks goes to Amy Fandrei at Wiley, without whom we might never have a look at what unpopular looks like. This will be littering books store shelves and hopefully, your bedside tables, in early spring of 2012, just before SXSW.

Cracking the Egg: An Insider’s Guide to Egg Donation (publisher: Demos Health / acquiring editor, Noreen Henson) Most of you don’t know this, but I’m a ten time egg donor and there are more than ten little half Erikas running around in the world. I met my co-author, Wendie Wilson-Miller in 2001 when I wanted to learn more about helping infertile couples have children. Not only did it result in a now nine-year friendship (Wendie was one of my first cycle coordinators for my egg donor procedures), but Wendie now owns her own egg donation agency in Studio City, California. The book is the first of its kind to address egg donation from both the donor and agency perspective and you can look for it on shelves in spring of 2012.

And one final note: if you’re any sort of creative, you’ve heard (and possibly experienced) the horrors of agents. I’m here to tell you that I have the best literary agent in the world, no contest: Stephany Evans of FinePrint Literary Management in NYC. I first learned about FinePrint by following the delightfully snarky Janet Reid on Twitter, and when the time came to send out queries on Cracking the Egg, I did my research through Writer’s Market and dug deeper into the FinePrint website. Stephany was our number one choice to represent that project, and thanks to a query letter that didn’t suck, she emailed back asking for the proposal not seven hours later. Eight months later (Think books move fast? Think again.), we’ve now placed two projects with great publishers together. Her guidance has been invaluable – she’s my “creative lawyer.” And if you need a take on why your business and efforts might need some sort of lawyer, watch this incredible presentation (Fuck You, Pay Me) by Mike Monteiro.

“Contracts are designed to protect both parties.”

I have a contract with you, my readers: I spare you the bullshit and expect you to call me out if I phone it in.

I have a contract with my clients: we each deliver what we promise.

I now have two new contracts, and I’m gonna fly. One time. Well, two times, actually. Discovering and subsequently admitting you have wings is a pretty scary thing, if only because the reality of falling becomes all the more clear. But fuck it. I’ve fallen before and if there’s one thing I can do, it’s get up and dust myself off (and I surprise myself quite often by not falling at all and creating something pretty damn niiiiiiiice instead). I might be a mediocre bike racer and suck inconceivably at installing wallpaper, but if I were going to fail at the writing thing, I’d have crashed, burned and called the fire department by now.

We’d all do ourselves a favor if we’d let ourselves fly, one time. Soooo…thank you for reading. Following. All the emails you send. For coming back post after post,replying tweet after questionable tweet. But most of all, thank you for sharing (the single biggest compliment a writer can receive). I don’t claim to write for everyone, and that’s why I keep writing for you.

Aside from being one of the only other human beings I’ve ever met who’s as comfortable with the f-bomb as I am when speaking in front of an audience, Gary’s got the knack for dropping mad knowledge in a way that makes it accessible. It’s the other A-word, and if you’re a marketing professional not tapping into the fundamentals of accessibility, you’re the A-word everyone usually thinks about. He was in Denver last night on his book tour for his book The Thank You Economy, and there was one line from his entire talk that made me send an email to myself so I wouldn’t forget:

“Execute in the reality of the marketplace.”

I’ll drop the Gary Vee fan girl ooze and instead, give him a hat tip for putting something so succinctly (read: accessible) that it inspired a Bitch Slap. (Holler, good sir!)

Today, you will kill the unicorns in your business.

Where are you doing business – Disneyland? Fucking Narnia? Is the case of your Macbook made of adamantium and are you followed around by a rat named Nicodemus? I doubt it. So why the hell are you managing your business like it’s a sanctuary for unicorns? I see it every day. Businesses clinging to rote ways, colleagues not wanting to acknowledge that there’s a morbidly obese woman in the background churning out a tune, a cliche brought to life while they haphazardly fumble with shit that will get them nowhere. Wishes and unicorns are great if you’re talking about a twelve-year-old girl’s birthday party, but they’re worth absolutely nothing for your business. And there’s this common misconception that unicorns feed on flowers and marshmallows, but they can only truly thrive on a diet of bullshit.

When you take the bullshit out of your business, you kill the unicorns.

So, let me throw out some ideas as to how you, too, can hunt this mythical creature that can only (given its diet) have horrific breath. The Business Unicorns must die, and you won’t even be subject to Go Daddy-like chastising for your sporting ways. Let’s get down to the reality of  YOUR marketplace. This is a great conversation spin off from 19 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Business. Killing unicorns? #20.

Unicorn #1: I just need to get caught-up.

How far behind are you? (really) Let’s cut the crap and lay it out: if you’re so busy that you’re not sleeping and feeling snowed under 25/8 (that’s beyond 24/7), there is no amount of “catching up” that’s going to help you get caught up. Working weekends and 16 hours a day isn’t facing reality. For fuck sake, hire someone. Delegate. Make less money, sleep more. You’re of no use to anyone until you can feel you can pay the right amount attention to the things and people who need, pay for and require your attention. And damn, did I learn this one the hard way. We owe it to ourselves to feel that we service each of our clients with the same fervor and attention to detail. On the other side of the coin, we owe it to our competition to slam the door on them so hard that there’s no way they could ever have an “in” because we service the everloving shit out of our clients. It’s possible to get caught up, but we need help in order to do it and stay on top of the pile on a regular basis. Beats the hell out of being trapped underneath it.

Unicorn #2: It worked for so-and-so.

You know what? You’re not so-and-so. You’re Bob. Or Jane. Or (gasp) Erika. I hear this from startups pitching all the time: Well, Facebook/Twitter/TwitPic (blah blah blah) did it. So can we! No, jackass – you can’t. Here’s what you’re missing: each company and person has its own unique ecosystem, comprised of circumstances, emotions and qualifications. In order to thrive in business, you have to operate in the realities of YOUR marketplace, not one you’ve bogarted from someone else. If Pepsi tried to pull a Moosejaw, how successful do you think they would be?

Think back to when you were in school (I know – it hurts me to think about when I was in school, too. FML.) and when you saw a classmate wearing or doing something cool. You went out and bought it or tried that thing and here’s what happened to me in that case: it looked like stir-fried ass on me or I fell on my face trying. It’s like Bobby from the Brady Bunch – pork chops and applesauce isn’t a business model. When you take the time to be honest with yourself about the market you want to dominate, you’re already 50% ahead of the other yahoos out there. Given that we’re our own worst critics, be your own naysayer so that when you’re asked, “What about _____?” you can respond with confidence (as opposed to arrogance) about what you’ve done to be different and why it matters. There will never be another Facebook, just like there will never be another Coca-Cola. It’ll be something else – and wouldn’t it be shit-howdy if it were YOU?

Unicorn #3: We have something for everyone.

Bullshit. Not even Walmart has something for everyone. Why the hell are you any different? I’ve covered this issue before, but it’s definitely a unicorn and bears mentioning once again (and again…and…). Your business has a style. A personality. You do some things really well. And others, quite frankly, not so much. Stop deluding yourself into thinking everyone is your customer and start listening to your favorite, most vocal ones. Why do they love you? Why do you love them? Take THAT and build a business model from it and stop trying to be Joe’s Mortuary and Fine Sausage Emporium. This is a unicorn that’s not unlike a tribble – they spontaneously regenerate and turn up everywhere. The only way to kill ‘em for good is to build the one thing they hate the most: a solid business strategy.

And now, I pass the shotgun over to your side of the table. What unicorns will you kill today? And I don’t ask idly. Go ahead and leave a comment for me and next week (sometime), I’ll pick one of the unicorns you offer up to win a signed copy of Gary V’s The Thank You Economy. Tell me what’s getting strapped to the roof rack of your Range Rover on your business safari.

You’ve been slapped.

I never cease to be amazed by what moves me. On Sunday night, it was a place on the couch, dogs sprawled haphazardly at my feet like clothes I’d stripped off in a frenzy and remote in hand, bouncing back and forth between “The Wizard of Oz” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”

When’s the last time YOU rewound “The Wizard of Oz?”

I always found it a bit strange that once the man behind the curtain is revealed, he turns into a wisdom-spewing sage. Yet on this gazillionth viewing in my 38th year, I found myself rewinding to hear again the quote I posted above.

“Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.”

I smiled.

I’ve never been a practical woman. Believing in true love, fairy tales, the impossible – things that don’t really satisfy a pragmatist’s idea of solid foundations. I love shoes that make my feet hurt, dresses you can’t sit down in and breakfast burritos so big they require a knife and fork.

It occurs to me that everything I love is impractical.

The Math of Impracticality

I’ll preface this by saying that perhaps what will follow isn’t real math, but it’s my blog and I’ll call it witchcraft, alchemy or whatever the hell I want. I can only speak from my experience, but the things I tend to love are the ones that offer challenges, surprises and unbelievable joy and pain (and often simultaneously). If we break it down into and equation of Erika Math, it might look like this:

things we set out to do + shit we didn’t expect = life’s memorable moments

And given that memories aren’t always good, they are one thing for certain: remarkable. There’s nothing practical involved when it comes to being surprised or coping with unbearable pain. Then again sheer bliss is also completely impractical as well. Perhaps it’s time, along with a renewed perspective on unpopular, we begin to embrace impractical as well.

Practicality Has Its Place

Gadgets are practical. I’d give my left tit for a Roomba, which is uber-geeky AND practical. Basic black pants, shoes and skirts? Practical. Clothes hampers? Practical. Dictionary.com offers this: “inclined toward or fitted for actual work or useful activities.” That describes the bike rack on my car, not really anything in my life that I love.

Everything we value in life – all that we love – be it our business, our families, our children, boyfriend/girlfriend, relationships, hearts, souls and minds…can be broken. They’re fragile. They require attention, nurturing, love, kindness and humility to foster. While practical things can break, they’re replaceable. There’s no replacing the impractical, however.

Emotions? Impractical. Apologies? Practical.

Falling in love? Dear christ, certainly impractical. Breaking up? A matter of practicality for our hearts most times.

Taking the corporate job for the stability, predictability and camaraderie? Practical and comforting (and great parking). Launching a business to pursue what we love? Highly impractical, considering the availability of a paycheck with taxes taken out and benefits a few blocks down.

Practicality Isn’t Bad

It’s the water of our lives, the foundation on our house, the chassis of our car. But it’s the nature of impracticality – the shifting sand that moves beneath our feet – that makes the people who drink the water, architects who design feats of structural wonder on top of those foundations and that are the gas in our cars that get us from where we are to where we want to be. It’s never practical to dream of what might be – as for me, it’s what gets me through the bullshit some days. And how I love to dream. They’re my what could have beens and what ifs, and more often, my what could bes and what I wants. Being a highly impractical woman is what made me who I am today. While capable of glorious fuckups and subject to broken hearts and failures beyond compare, it’s the upside of impracticality that rules above all every day when I crawl out of bed.

I’ll continue to be impractical and put my hand on the stove to learn its hot. The shittiest days of my life are those where I let practicality rule, because I lose feeling. Go numb. Sometimes you have to walk around barefoot in the grass and step in the dog crap to realize…shoes are practical.

The laughter that comes from the person watching you wash the shit off your feet? Highly impractical. And memorable, too.

I left the breezy, sunny, early spring evening behind me and walked into the lobby of the auditorium. Tweens and teens running everywhere. I had to pee. I made a beeline for the bathroom and when the door swung open, I was met by a chorus of giggles and “Uh mah gawwwwwwds” dripping from a group of girls all trading and changing clothes.

And then I couldn’t breathe. Panic attack.

For the first time since Jason died last year, I couldn’t breathe. And it all came rushing back to me: I hated high school and hadn’t step foot in one since the day before I graduated in 1991.

I was always the girl whose glasses were a bit (okay, a lot) too big with lenses tinted too lavender (shut up). I thought silly t-shirts were cool. I never had the latest fashions and hated that I had to roll up my shirts so they were the same short length as all of the other girls. Girls who were cheerleaders and on the drill team – they were cool. Girls like me…weren’t. And it made school, from elementary all the way to high school, a living hell.

I coped with academics. I have a photographic memory (I see words), so studying wasn’t much of a challenge. I read fast, got bored faster and was the girl one grade below in the AP U.S. History classes that all of the popular kids wanted to sit next to on test day so they could copy off my paper. I played volleyball but was never good enough for anything other than the JV squad. I managed the varsity softball team.

I never got asked to Homecoming.  I also got pregnant late in the summer before my senior year and spent the first Friday of that school year playing hooky so I could get an abortion. The girl who never had a boyfriend until her senior year of high school fucks it up first time out of the gate. He broke up with me a week before the prom.

But holy shit, could I take a test and write a paper.

A’s were easy. Well, except when it came to calculus my senior year of high school. I was a wiz with proofs. Unfortunately, we only spent 2 weeks on them. And then I pulled a D for my first six-weeks. That’s also when the assistant principal told my mom that if she spent less time working and more time in the home, maybe I’d be different. I could mentally hear my mom telling him to go fuck himself.

My friends were the freaks. The goth kids who wore funky clothes and all black and we had an ongoing contest to see who could bleach their hair the whitest. And the day of the honor graduates reception, nobody expected to see me walk in. Sure, I was a geek, but I looked funny. I wasn’t popular. I was pretty forgettable. And that day, a classmate asked, “What are you doing here?” with regards to my audacity to show up for the (invitation-only) honor graduates reception. My reply?

“Graduating above you.” (And it was true.) 9th out of 360 students. But I was unpopular. I had lots of time to study.

The best day of my life was the day I walked out of that school, never to return, because I got to leave behind over 300 students who had followed me for the past eleven years. I got to go be someone I never had the chance to be: me.

And Friday night, it all came rushing back. The pop show was stunning (some amazing talent – whoa), but it was everything I could do to stay until the very end because I just wanted to be able to breathe again.

For eleven years, I found ways to survive. I thought it would end there, but it didn’t. I spent the next five (I took a year off) at college, wanting to fit in with all the cool actor kids in the Theatre department at the University of Houston. I eventually said fuck it and went to the scene shop and costume shop and never looked back, opting to build things instead of try to compete in the games for which I didn’t know the rules. And while I graduated with a solid knowledge of costume history and proper use of pneumatic tools, it didn’t end there, either.

I went to work, like most of us do after college. In my biggest year, I had seventeen (one-seven, 17) W2s at tax time. Nothing fit.

Now, this whole story isn’t to gather up attendees for a pity party thrown in my honor. I have a feeling that many of you are all to familiar with the tune I’m hummin’. Being where I am today, I wouldn’t trade 30-some-odd years of unpopular for anything because I learned an invaluable lesson: how to survive.

What Unpopular People Have That Popular Ones Don’t

We can identify opportunities and slink off into the background to tap into them. No one is paying attention to us anyways. And by the time you figure out what we’re doing, you’re already relegated to playing a game of catch up if you decide to play any game with us at all.

The unpopular kids don’t rely on the opinions of others in order to deem whether something is a success or not. It’s why we love science, competitions, academics and research. Information offers validation.

We’re resilient. You can kick us time and time again and we’ll find ways to hide, morph, adapt and thrive.

We’re made to be entrepreneurs. There was a kickass article in Forbes not so long ago that speaks right to this. When no one’s your champion growing up, something really cool happens over time: you find ways to get things done without a whole lotta help. We’re born bootstrappers and have a lot of time to strategize since we know we’re not getting asked to the dance. But we’re all about organizing our own little Bootstrapper’s Ball.

And Wouldn’t It Be Lovely…

If we changed the way we thought about being unpopular? As kids, we’re awkward and always on the offense because kids are mean little shits. We’d rather be a Freak than a Shitkicker, because any label is better than none at all. Someone is always going to dislike us. But some of us have better tools for dealing with that (perceived) rejection than others.

There will always be kids like me (like us) who don’t get asked to Homecoming and who get dumped a week before the prom. Even though in my case, I got dumped for two girls (yes, two, dos, 2) and I enjoy to this day the irony of him wanting me back after the threesome had lost its charm. And yeah, it would have been really nice to be asked to a dance. To be someone’s date (which actually happened once in all those secondary years). But given where I am today, I like the unpopular route.

I did a poll on my Facebook page asking: “What’s the one thing that’s made your business more successful? Is it blogging? Networking? Hiring great people? Lay it one me and tell me why.” Do you know that not one person said that it was being the prom king or queen or being “well-liked?” The top responses, hands-down, were:

• Networking
• Relationships
• Referrals

The first two are things that are second nature to The Unpopular. We have to make our own networks because we didn’t get them by simply buying the right pair of jeans. Our networks bring us relationships. Relationships are real, multilayered things that require attention and nurturing. Perhaps we pay better attention to our relationships because no one paid attention to us. But those relationships earn us business and then, the referrals come.

Symbiotic, ain’t it?

Finding My Breath

So, for the first time since dealing with Jason’s death, I was without breath on Friday night and wondering when I could escape. I’m glad I stayed as long as I did and even more glad I got the serendipitous chance to revisit something that apparently scared the living shit out of me. Come 11pm that night, my heart had stopped racing and I was laughing that being on a high school campus alone had freaked me out to completely. Whodathunk? I’m never above being scared, so long as I walk away with some benefit from it. The takeaway this time? What makes us and a reminder of everything that makes me. And moreso, what doesn’t (and never will).

Why is your business successful and what do you struggle with? We all have our demons and if you’ve stayed this long, you’re pretty well acquainted with one of mine. But I figure if I’m going to have my demons on the payroll, they’re going to do some work, dammit.

I think that’s peculiar – our school systems encourage uniformity, yet those who are better cut out for something less conventional get crammed into a square-peg-round-hole scenario. It took me 17 years in the business world to embrace that The Man wasn’t my ideal mate and I was much better off Just. Being. Me.

And being me? Well, it pays. Take Tuesday.

If you read this blog at all, you know that I don’t have a filter. I say what comes to mind, yet my vernacular has its fans and enemies alike. But that’s me. My clients and colleagues like working with me because I don’t have the capacity for bullshit. I make people laugh while they learn. I help them understand why things are important and am the first to admit when I’m wrong (and I’m wrong, much like the rest of you are, on a regular basis). And that’s my business model. I am my business model.

What’s your business model?

If it’s to be a dork nugget and troll the interwebz and business world for people who don’t do it just like you, that’s a pretty shitty business model. if it’s to run a business identical to something you picked up at a laptop-and-a-lunch workshop, equally shitty.

Isn’t it time that you were honest with yourself about who you are, what you love and why the hell people should care? From gigantic brands to bootstrapped startups, we spend entirely too much time fucking around with people who will never love us, buy from us, or tell a friend or colleague anything positive about us.

So why do we do it?

Because of school.

No one likes being the unpopular kid. Dateless at homecoming (raises hand), wearing second-hand clothes (hand is still up), nerdy (whistles…hand – over here, third row) and four-eyed (yep – hand is still up). You wanna break you off summa dat, dontcha?

Get out of school and get into business. Businesses that make a difference are the ones that are human. Humans are different. Quirky. They’re unpopular with just the right audience. Some wear designer jeans…some don’t. Sometimes they say exactly what we wish we could say. Others, they teach us lessons and make our lives better. But the best businesses are the ones you’d want to sit down and have dinner with because you can see the people behind the brand. Lovable yet flawed, ready to learn and grow.

So thank you to my readers and followers who made the below screenshot from my Facebook page possible. You make me laugh and remind me each day that I’ve built the best business model possible.

OH! And I promised a contest. I was lucky enough to score a signed copy of The Now Revolution by Amber Naslund and Jay Baer while at SXSWi, so that’s the ossum possum prize o’ the day. All ya gotta do is leave a comment and tell me your favorite HUMAN brand and why. I will choose the winner based on where I am at in my menstrual cycle, my bank account balance and phase of the moon. You have until tomorrow at midnight (3/25/11, 11:59pm MST). Go.