Staying Paid

My Conscience and My Cheerleader: The Story of Friends

Posted on June 6th, 2008 in General Clearing Doubt, Friends, Handling Fear, Overcoming Self Objections, Taking Action, The Trenches, World Wide Audience

This particular blog post isn’t about marketing, in the strictest sense. It’s the before-and-after part of marketing. Without being too figurative, this is a conversation about friends. Two of them. Not saying that I have only two friends, but I speak so little of them (while discussing my net-twitter-blog-irc-im people) that it embarasses me. These two people are the living 80/20 rule, and they deserve their own blog post. Since neither of them have given me permission to put them online, I will refer to them as my conscience and my cheerleader, respectively.

My Conscience

behind every niche happy marketeress is a friend pointing out what you least want to hear. My conscience happens to be a 30something computer fanatic, passionate about technology. He’s also my complete opposite, preferring to have information for information’s sake. I’m an unapologetic capitalist, a “hey, can we monetize this?” versus his “can we NOT monetize this, and make money elsewhere?” I’ve been teaching him marketing, showing him what I do and how I do it out here in the trenches, while he has shown me something more important: balance.

I’ve known my conscience-friend for about five years now. As the saying goes, we’ve been through death and life together: broken relationships, anger, agony, sickness, health, joy, misery. When I quit my job two months ago, he was one of the loudest voices saying that I could do this, even though it would mean increased stress, extra worry, and more tension.

Between the stress in his life, and the stress in mine, we watched tension grow like weeds and patience thin like paint. There were angry conversations, words thrown about, two people throwing words like knives.

I asked him the other day if he believed in me. He pointed out the fact that he’s already gearing up for my trip to the infamous city where he lives (over 3 mill, I’m sure you can guess which one), and that he’s excited.

My conscience-friend doesn’t seek to replace my real conscience, but he would rather risk my temper than see me get hurt. I couldn’t ask for a better friend.

My Cheerleader

I haven’t known my cheerleader as long as my conscience, but I think I am totally enjoying our talks. J is my newest action partner, cheerleader, and ultimate reminder. She reminds me that not everyone is a marketer that lives, breathes, eats, and plays in marketing / infoproduct selling. We come from two opposite spectrums — J is in her 40s, and is just getting started with this internet business game. Half sideline master, half complete honkin’ newbie. I accept her as is, but I’m excited to watch her go from newbie to oldbie minute by minute as she begins to really “get” what this whole internet business game is about.

I camped out at her place last week overnight — if the walls could talk, they’d be telling you about two women gabbing, stuffing their mouths full of lasagna, talking about men, business, marketing, traveling, and experiences. It’s amazing how rich the journey becomes when you realize how many people are in the trenches and you didn’t even know it! So much to think about sometimes.

I call her my cheerleader because when I see her face light up about the possibilities of making money online, it gets me fired up again. I’m here all the time, really doing a lot of repetitive things, so to see that someone else receive the “same ol’, same ol’” as new again reminds me that for every Isa, there’s a J out there, still trying to figure all of this out.

I needed to write this today. I had been digging around in a niche, and saw some competition that I didn’t see previously. I paniced, and had some doubt about my product. Thinking it over, I realized that not everyone is a marketer — not the seller, and certianly not the buyer I’m marketing towards. They may well be an Isa, with a “been there, done this already” mode. Or you know, they might be a ConscienceFriend, who hasn’t seen this particular angle, and wants to see why it’ll work for them. And as much as we marketers like to believe that we’re talking to a kindred spirit in that salesletter, chances are you most likely will be speaking to several J’s, who want something real, real information and they need you to go slow and start from square one. Don’t be afraid of square one.

See y’all on Tuesday with hopefully a better action report.

Today’s blog song:  Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

but it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough // I just knew too much…