Killing the Vanilla (or 15 Useful Things You May Not Know About Me)

Image (c) Mellissa Thomas, 2010.

Imagine reading a blog that provides you great value, but no insight about the author. You wouldn’t feel connected at all, would you? 

Sure, you’d bookmark it and revisit once in a while for new posts, but ultimately it would be a dry experience for you because you’re not emotionally invested in any way. You probably wouldn’t even recommend it to anyone you know.

Well, we writers sometimes come across as “shielded” on our blogs for two key reasons. 

For one, humans are mean creatures sometimes, so it takes cojones to expose ourselves; and once we publish something online, it’s there permanently – stored on a server somewhere for future blackmail use – so we tread very carefully.

Sometimes our second block is our content: when we’re talking about something stiff like ROI metrics, it’s probably not a good idea to inject our guacamole preference. Wrong conversation.

So just as we turn on and off certain parts of ourselves in live interactions according to context, we do it online as well. My only hope is that I haven’t come across as vanilla to you so far because of it, and if that is the case, I’m breaking out the Rocky Road today. 

The Geek Strips – and Leaves a Business Lesson You Can’t Afford to Ignore

I’m sure you read that title thinking, “what the…”, so let me just add to your wince with a nasty little stat that’s been haunting me since entertainment business grad school: the Small Business Administration reports that 3 out of every 10 startups die in their first two years of operation.

I don’t know about you and your business, but that bothers the fire out of me. Especially since I’m going into my second year.

No pressure at all, right?

Well, if you’re freaking out like I am, there’s one very simple way to beat that stat and overcome the panic, but you’re going to have to look over my broken model first to find it – warts and all.

(Literally.)

Read on carefully and learn from my fail, okay?