#also as with the other book I’ve read by this author sudden dramatic danger???

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

In My Dreams

romcom novella

when the nature reserve she works at goes into lockdown due to dangerous fugitives in the area, an ace woman is stuck for two weeks with the childhood friend she was in love with as a teenager

[lokislastlove]

Come One, Come All (dark!Loki x reader)

Summary: A girls night out to the fair takes an insidious turn.

Warnings: Noncon/Rape, knife play, oral (m&f), smut, bondage, kidnapping.

This is a dark fic! 18+ ONLY! Explicit Adult content. Please READ THE WARNINGS! Do not continue if these matters upset you!

Authors Note: I wrote another one! No idea where this came from, but it was fun to write. Still working on improving my smut, huge thanks to @darkficsyouneveraskedfor for some tips and editing the shit out of it. 😘 also I know there is a creepy clown in the pic but I feel like I have to say there aren’t any clowns in the fic. I hate clowns.

Chapter 1:

It was the kind of summer night you dream about, warm enough to keep you comfortable in your shorts and peasant top, but with a light breeze that keeps you cool enough to fight the flush of alcohol in your veins. You look forward to these moments when you are able to go out with your girlfriends and let loose, forgetting about all life’s responsibilities, if just for a single night.

“Come on!” Ash calls over her shoulder, her hand tight around your wrist pulling you impatiently.

“Aww but that looks so good” you groan as you press your face longingly against the glass barrier of the hand dipped corn dog cart.

The sweet scent of the frying corn dough wafts tantalizingly through the air making your mouth water. You friends laugh at your theatrics, having just helped you scarf down a large sugary funnel cake and a platter of nachos, the evidence of which still stains the corner of your mouth. Really, it was their fault for getting you tipsy before taking you to the county fair, everything just smelled heavenly and if you could you would try one of everything.

“Just a slushee?!” You beg as Jen steps behind you and pushes you out of the food court, giggling the entire time.

“Come on, fight the drunchies! You promised you would try that new funhouse,” Jen whines, looping her arm through yours, Ash doing the same on the other side.

“Oh yeah,” you grumble.

“Oh stop it” Ash scolds playfully. “Everyone at work keeps talking about it - it’s like a mini escape room! And I’ve always wanted to do one, please.” She rants excitedly before giving you her best puppy dog eyes.

“Ugh that’s cheating. No one can resist those big brown eyes” you pout, but yield as easily as they knew you would.

“I know” Ash smirks, tossing back her long silky black hair over her slender shoulder.

“This is gonna be so much fun, I promise” Jen bumps your hip, giving you a wide encouraging smile.

You manage a strained grin as you let them lead you through the crowd. It’s not that you don’t like funhouses or the idea of doing an escape room, having always loved solving riddles and doing puzzles. It’s just you don’t like clowns, and every funhouse in your experience has at least one.

“Oh damn there’s a line!” Jen moans as you all stop in front of a large structure covered in flashing lights, the ominous ‘Tricksters Trap’ bathing your face in a violent red glow.

Garish contrasting colors somehow both attract your eye and make it hard to look at. Your pupils dilate with the lines of fluorescent bulbs burning into your retinas. The stereotypical circus music blares through the cheap speakers, reminding you of one of those old Jack in the box toys. And of course, without fail, was the obligatory clown statue hanging over the entrance, like some creepy sentinel there to guide you to your inevitable demise.

“Ugh fucking clowns” you grimace as you pass by the entrance, heading toward the end of the line.

“Yeah they definitely nailed the creep factor,” Jen agrees, her eyes shining with nervous excitement.

“I know isn’t it great?!” Ash squeals.

You stand there taking in the horrific detailing painted on the side of the metal structure. You are thankful when Ash explains there is a time limit, only ten minutes to complete the puzzle or else they kick you out and you have to try again. If you figure out the puzzle you get to leave through the mirror maze and you earn the coveted “I tricked the Trickster” sticker.

“Gotta get that sticker, or else that bitch Katie at work will never let me forget that she got one and I didn’t” Ash complains, causing you and Jen to share a look and snicker.

“Hey! Don’t laugh, this is serious! We gotta be smart and figure this out, failure is not an option” she urges dramatically before collapsing into drunken giggles with you and Jen.

“You ladies seem eager to prove yourselves,” slithers a low voice.

Startled you gasp and spin around quickly. The three of you look up at the tall lean figure standing behind you. He wears a perfectly tailored black ensemble, that matches the color of his slicked back hair. His eyes practically glow green against his alabaster complexion. His sharp cheekbones and angular jaw make your breath hitch, causing his thin lips to curve into a sinister smirk. He is stunning.

“Um, yeah. Well this place has the whole town buzzin’. Seems like everyone is talking about it” Jen is the first to speak.

“Ah I see. Wouldn’t want to miss your chance to take a stab at it” the mysterious man surmised, eyes focused on you.

“We got this shit. Right guys?” Ash assures him as she playfully smacks you and Jen.

“Well, I guess we’ll find out. Good luck,” he challenges with a raise of a brow.

You stare after him as he saunters away without another word. His hips and shoulders sway smoothly, his soft footsteps giving him a dangerous almost feline vibe, like he could rival even the most deadly of predators. As he turns to round the corner of the ride he takes one last look over his shoulder at you. Your eyes lock for only a fraction of a second but it’s enough to send a chill down your spine.

“That was weird, right?” You mutter, eyes still transfixed where he disappeared.

“Eh, just another creepy dude. If I had a nickel for every weirdo who tries to chat me up…” Jen jokes.

“You’d have like a whole 50 cents,” sasses Ash.

You are finally broken from your daze when Ash is pushed into you. You laugh and try to brush off the lingering effect of the handsome stranger, shifting your focus back to your friends. The line goes by quicker than expected, with only one group out of the three ahead of you making it out with stickers. The losing groups return to the line from a back door, bickering about where they went wrong.

Finally it is your turn. Ash claps her hands excitedly, dancing up the metal stairs to the costumed man at the entrance. His red and white stripped suit is expertly torn and painted with fake blood to make him look as intimidating as possible. With a tip of his top hat he welcomes the three of you and begins to explain the rules in his well practiced accent.

“Come one come all to the Tricksters Trap, if you’re feeling lost, just go find the map.” He sings with flair and a perfectly timed bow, directing you to the inauspicious black door.

Taking a deep breath you follow your squealing friends into the darkened hallway. Pausing to look back as the door creaks shut, cutting off the jovial sounds of laughter and chatter with a sudden slam. You flinch at the loud noise and turn back to the dim hallway. The short corridor is lined with wall to wall green velvet curtains barely visible with the green rope lights running along the ceiling.

“Guys?” You whisper when you don’t see them next to you, causing your heart rate to quicken

You call for them again, this time louder, your feet unwilling to move from the spot. It has only been thirty seconds and you are already about to call it quits. Get a grip. You take a hesitant step forward.

“You guys?!” You call shakily.

“Hey! Come on we found the map!” Jen pokes her head from around the corner at the end of the hall.

She disappears just as quickly, waving her arm for you to follow. You breathe a sigh of relief and rush after her. You enter a large room filled with all sorts of random objects. It’s as if it is designed to overload your senses. The green from the hall carried on into the room, more velvet green curtains hung on the walls that were not obstructed by shelves of books or other oddities. You saw everything from perfectly aligned glass jars filled with alien looking creatures, grandfather clocks, to treasure chests overflowing with grizzled toys.

Jen and Ash are hunched over a table with a map spread out smoothly. It was easy enough to see it was a map of the room and hallway, with what appeared to be three small rooms hidden along the wall behind the heavy green drapery. You go over and pull back a curtain and find a locked door, the other two also hiding a locked door.

“Ok so it looks like we gotta find a way to open these doors” you offer, your anxiety calming a bit as you focus on the mystery at hand.

“Hey look there is some sort of code over here by the lock on the door.” Ash hollers excitedly.

You each pick a door code and frantically search the room. It doesn’t take long for you to figure out you need to use the books on the large shelf along one wall. The first number tells you the book the second refers to a specific page. You find a slip of paper in the book with a riddle written in a blood red ink.

“I make two people out of one” You read aloud.

“You can hold me in one hand, but I’m used to fill the room” Ash reads hers, her face twisting in concentration.

You both look to Jen, “I have two hands, but I can’t clap.”

“Damn no wonder so many people failed, definitely wish I wasn’t drunk right now” Ash laughs.

“No no we can do this, it’s probably items in the room so let’s just focus. We’ll do one at a time.” You assert, pacing the room and trying to take in all the random objects.

“Two hands…” you mutter as you stop in front of a large grandfather clock. “Clocks have hands!” You yell excitedly and open the narrow door.

The heavy pendulums swing inside and you see a shining silver glint off the rounded golden end. You pull off the small silver key, stuck on by a tiny magnet, and jump in excitement.

“Holy crap! You’re a genius!” Jen exclaims running over to take the key and try it in the door.

The key slides in smoothly and the door opens with a gratifying click.

“Woo! Keep going, you are on a roll!” Ash claps as she cheers you on.

“Ok, ok” you giggle before taking a deep breath. “Two people out of one… maybe a camera? Or wait…” you realize as you stare at Ash currently checking her makeup in an antique mirror hung between two curtains.

“Ash! Try pulling on that mirror!” You yell pointing frantically at the mirror in front of her.

Her brows knit together briefly before understanding, grabbing the frame and tugging gently until it swings open, revealing a key hung on the wall.

“Yes!” You all shriek together.

Suddenly, the lights flicker and a loud maniacal cackle reverberates through the surround sound speaker, turning your elation into yelps of surprise.

“Two minutes left” a familiar polished voice echoes forebodingly throughout the room.

“Shit, that scared the crap out of me” Jen laughs clutching at her chest.

The warning gives you pause, managing to shift the spirit of the whole room. Ash giggles nervously as she watches the lights of the room transition from their previous dim yellow light to a menacing red hue. The mood lighting in addition to the increasing volume of the horror soundtrack playing over the speaker helps to put you back into your initial anxious state.

“Seriously? Is this fucking necessary?” You curse, shaking your head.

“Ok let’s get the last one guys! We can still do this!” Jen yells through the cacophony of sound effects.

“Yeah what can we fit in our hand but somehow also fills the room?” Ash reiterated the final riddle.

“These red lights make it so much harder to see” Jen complains bitterly as she rummages through the items inside a large chest.

“Lights… Jen that’s it! A lightbulb!” A smile breaks out on your face as you figure out the final clue.

“Look up there!” Ash points to a solitary darkened light bulb screwed into the ceiling.

“I got it.” Jen jumps onto the table and reaches up, unscrewing it quickly. “There is a key inside!” She shouts.

She unscrews the bottom of the fake lightbulb and received the key before handing it to Ash. Each of you run over to the corresponding doors and turn the key, squealing in delight when they all slide open.

“Is that it?” Jen asks looking into the cramped dark space behind the door.

It was little more than a closet. Barely enough room for each of you to stand in. You were at a loss. You could have sworn that would be the end.

“Guys there is a lever here on the back wall of mine, how about yours?” Ash’s muffled voice calls from inside her closet.

“Oh yeah mine too!” Jen replies.

“Do you think we have to pull them at the same time? ‘Cus mine did nothing when I tried it” Ash says poking her head out to look at you.

“Thirty seconds!” That haunting voice booms again as a tick clock sounds through the speakers, counting down your final moments.

“Ok let’s try it together!” You nod at both of them, before stepping into the tight dark space.

“THREE! TWO! ONE!” You shout, mirroring your friends calls, pulling down your lever with a snap.

There is a moment of silence as the lights of the room behind you suddenly go dark, the music and sound effects cutting off instantly.

“Did we get it?!” You yell.

You don’t get the chance to hear your friends response as the wood door slams behind you, locking you into the small space.

Tags: @darkficsyouneveraskedfor @caffiend-queen

[mimzy-writing-online]

Dear Mimzy, I can't begin to tell you how happy I was to find your advice on how to write a blind or visually impaired person respectfully. Thank you so much for doing that. It was very helpful. I'm currently writing a book and I'm about to start the editing phase. I'm writing you to ask if you would consider being a beta reader of mine? I'll pay you, of course. You can write me on Instagram: mettepeleikis if you're interested. Once again thank you for your helpful blog. - Mette

PART 1/2: Mette again. Even if you're not interested in beta reading my book, I do have some questions that I haven't found the answers to on your blog. I hope you can help me by giving me your opinion on these two things. 1. The love interest of my MC loses his sight from a head trauma accident (I did read you advice against that but it's unfortunately not something I can change now) but do you consider that "victimizing your blind character" like when you mentioned rape?

PART 2/2: Gosh, I'm sorry for spamming you. Here's my second question. I never wanted to cure my blind character, but I did have in mind that a surgery could partially restore a bit of it. Just enough for him to see a bit of color. Do you think that is as bad as curing them when partially restoring his sight? Thank you so much, Mimzy. Best, Mette

Mimzy answered: I’m so happy I could help your writing process! Hearing that I help makes every day much better, especially since this is part of what I’ll be focusing on in school.

I am considering taking a few beta-reading contracts in the winter between school semesters. I am going to put a note down with your Instagram contact.

As for your first question, I recently made a post going in-depth about writing whump and using blindness for plot purposes. It has far more depth and nuance to the subject than my initial post did in 2019, largely because that was (still is) a topic I struggle to talk about.

(The following paragraph is useful advice to all writers, not just Mette)

The concern about head trauma being the cause of blindness stems more from how rare it is compared to natural causes of blindness. Glaucoma, Macular Degeneration, Cataracts, and Diabetic Retinopathy are the most common causes of vision loss. The head trauma route is also a big sign that the writer took the lazy way out of researching the cause of the character’s blindness, which suggests to the reader that the character is more of a prop than a character. The best thing you can do to avoid this sentiment, avoid inaccuracy and insensitivity, is to deeply research the specific details of the injury and how that will affect your character’s vision.

I found an article for you with a wide variety of specific injury types that can follow a traumatic brain injury. It will be a good starting point in your individual research.

What Mette is describing doesn’t sound like victimizing, at least not as I would personally define it. Victimizing would be using the character’s trauma and blindness to teach the main character some kind of lesson, very much like the trend of violently killing off female characters to push the male protagonist’s storyline.

The message a plotline like that sends to a blind reader is that how our blindness affects our loved ones is more important than how it affects us, that we’re a burden to our loved ones, and that our feelings about vision loss don’t matter because we’re a plot device for our family’s story.

Or using the character’s blindness as a way to “set up” a plan to hurt the character. An example would be the character getting kidnapped and not realizing they were being stalked because of their blindness. A good exercise to test if you’re falling into this trap would be to ask yourself “if this character was a drunk teenage girl, would this look like victim blaming?” If the answer is yes, then you need to rethink that plotline.

The message this plotline sends is that being disabled makes you an easy victim to assault, that it’s only a matter of time before it happens, that it happens because you’re disabled and that it’s somehow your fault.

It’s also a reminder of a terrifying but very real statistic of how common it is for a disabled person to be a victim of a crime. I found a webpage discussing it if you’d like to further educate yourself.

So there’s a big difference between an author exploring the trauma around sudden vision loss, and an author turning that trauma into shallow dramatics for entertainment purposes. One has the chance to make you feel seen, and the other makes you feel objectified.

Ask yourself how your story compares to what I’ve described and if/how you can do better.

To answer your last question, I’m not 100% sure. Realistically, if offered a chance to surgically improve your vision when you were in the early stages of learning to adapt, you might very well jump at the chance. Some might, but there are plenty of reasons why you might decline the surgery. It’s very likely you might develop a phobia against medical care (iatrophobia) following a traumatic medical experience, and perhaps avoid doctors and medical procedures at all costs, even if it means potentially allowing conditions to get dangerously worse before seeking help. If your story is based in America, chances are that a procedure like that will be too costly, even with insurance. Double-check medical care costs in the country the story takes place in if you’re not sure. Hearing that the surgery might risk you losing more sight with very little promise of returning your vision, especially long term, would be a big motivation to decline. Resentment against how doctors and loved ones focused on wanting to “fix you” instead of helping you adjust might be a reason to decline. (It certainly was for me, especially when the proposed solution wouldn’t completely improve my vision. This was prediagnosis) Being far enough into your recovery due to a great support system and therapy might also be a reason to decline the surgery, stating that you’re happy with life as is.

Personally, I would hate to lose my color vision. Vibrant colors make me absurdly happy. However, if I did lose my color vision and a specific surgery was proposed to possibly restore it, it’s highly unlikely I would accept for almost all of the reasons stated above.

It’s a subject that will require more than one sensitivity reader, and possibly asking people within the blind community how they feel about that. A variety of responses will help you explore the nuances of the plotline.

I always recommend @blindbeta as a sensitivity reader because I love their work discussing different blind characters in media and their advice posts.

Thank you for the positive feedback, it made my night :)

(after post notes: dear god I hope this is coherent. This was written between the hours of 1 and 2 am. Yeah, this blog is called the Late Night Writing Advice Blog for a reason. Also (@ everyone, I shared some personal feelings tonight, please treat that with respect)

[bossbex]

5x06 Reaction

JARCHIE!!! I missed their interactions so much... like honestly in S4 they barely spoke.  I’m loving the “roommates” dynamic.  

Ok the kevin/fangs/toni apartment(?) is... amazing!!

I love how they hired actual teenagers (or close to it) to play the high school kids... since all the “teachers” were playing high school students, what, 3 episodes ago?? 

Ok mechanic Betty is SO HOT

DORITOS I AM CRYING AT THIS PRODUCT PLACEMENT

Veronica’s taking over the Blue Velvet!!! Why not reuse that set lmao

Thoughts on this initial barchie interaction: 

I’ve seen all the discourse about it seeming like Archie doesn’t care about Betty’s problems, or not taking them seriously, and people comparing Archie’s “oof - that sucks” to jughead’s “white noise” speech in 1x08 (which I thought was cringy AF and I even liked b*ghead at the time) and here’s what I’ll say: 

His “oof - that sucks” comment as MATCHING Betty’s tone - she says it kind of matter of factly and with a bit of an eyeroll, she does NOT seem very upset about it, and she is a grown ass adult who DOESN’T need Archie’s condolences in that moment - and Archie knows that. 

She then brings up Polly, and Archie ASKS A FOLLOW UP QUESTION: “didn’t your mom say she does this? Takes off for a couple of days” which shows that he is referring to a previous conversation about this - they’ve BEEN talking about it and he DOES care (not to mention they showed that he had texted her about Polly at the end of the last episode)

She says she’s trying not to panic - because she knows this is something Polly does and may not actually be in danger - SO HE OFFERS A DISTRACTION during a time when she is basically asking for one, and then SHE COMES UP WITH THE IDEA OF WHERE TO GO HAVE SEX

Anyway I have argued with enough people on twitter about this lol.. I feel strongly.  Also, this scene was super cute and both Archie and Betty look so good in it.  

I love Tabitha.  Smart, enterprising, witty... I’m all for the Jugitha pairing. (seriously though, is a ship name decided for them? I’ve seen Tabhead and Jabitha as well, lol.  

Uhhhhh ok this car sex scene? It somehow feels even more explicit than the shower scene?? The moaning and breathing?? HOW DARE THESE STONEWALL KIDS INTERRUPT THIS

LMAO NIGHT JOGGING

Is it just me or is Sheriff Keller looking really hot? Silver fox??  

I have to note that Archie’s hair colour looks SO BAD in this whole episode but especially this football scene with the Reggie confrontation.  It’s like, almost burgundy? But somehow bright orange at the same time? I hate it.  

Ok Cole is absolutely nailing this “down on his luck, beaten down” adult Jughead.  His character is funny all the sudden?? I love that he kept the money in the tip jar like OF COURSE

Ok Chad coming into Veronica’s class HE’S THE WORST!!! And then SITTING AT THE BACK I HATE HIM SO MUCH FOR THIS

Alright, now we have another scene that has people talking, which is where Archie meets Chad.  My thoughts: 

Archie clearly sizes up Chad.  I mean, he dated Veronica for 3-ish years (in the show’s timeline) so yeah, it’s normal to meet your ex’s new partner and size them up.  It read more like “he thinks Chads a douche” as opposed to “he’s jealous of Chad because he wants to be with V”.  

They show makes a point of showing Betty’s reaction to them meeting.  THIS SHOT IS NOT RANDOM.  Yes, I’m sure the show will go there, she’ll get jealous of V at some point.  Betty thinking that Archie is jealous of Chad is not the same as Archie actually being jealous of Chad.  

I kind of loved how Chad just jumps in here to join in the karaoke night - he didn’t redeem himself from the previous scene where he SAT IN THE BACK OF HER CLASS WHILE SHE WORKED but I like how they’re not playing him completely evil

Next scene: BETTY AND TONI ARE TALKING!!! I REPEAT!!! BETTY AND TONI ARE TALKING!!! Seriously, it’s so refreshing that they’re actually letting all kinds of new dynamics and character interactions happen this season.  

Also, NEDSLIST!!!! THIS SHOW!!!!

I am living for Cheryl being completely beautiful whilst yelling at construction workers.  

So like... she actually doesn’t have that much money. She couldn’t really afford the donation for the school... I kind of wish that once she says “I can’t afford it” people would like, not keep pushing? I’m looking at you Toni, whom I absolutely adore, I just wish the writers didn’t make it like Cheryl’s being squeezed dry.  I get that it’s needed for plot purposes but I don’t love it.  

Kevin and Betty are friends again!!! Love it!!! 

Karaoke night thoughts: 

At no point is Jughead hanging out or interacting with the rest of the group.  He stays separate from them - with Tabitha, which I appreciate, but I am just noting this because I’m sure it was done purposefully. 

“She probably forgot it’s Gekko now” uhhhh didn’t Toni announce V as “Veronica Gekko” in the last episode?? LOL THE SHADE

I love Veronica’s voice

Ok so Chad actually comes off so great in this scene?? I guess this is part of his manipulation - come off as such a great guy in front of all her friends to get them to like him? 

Jughead’s reaction to the duet is so me every time I’ve watched people do karaoke lmao

During the “or do you need more? Is there something else you’re searching for” they cut to Archie’s and Betty’s reaction.  Archie is not thinking about V in that moment.  

I am not seeing one iota of jealousy from Archie.  He looks genuinely happy for them.  

This Chad and Veronica bed scene makes me uncomfortable.  But I’m glad they’re showing their softer moments! 

The Archie/football recruitment sequence... Chad in the back of Veronica’s classroom again??? HOW IS THIS HAPPENING I HATE THIS!! Also, this is another scene where Chad looks jealous of Archie... not the other way around. 

Britta!!! I love her.  And I feel like the writers inserted her in specifically for Britta Lundin, former Riverdale writer and acclaimed author (read her book Ship It, seriously, it’s so good), and I love that. BUT THE WAY ARCHIE LOOKS AT BETTY IN THIS SCENE IS THAT EVEN LEGAL

We get the first glimpse Toni’s “Operation Bring Cheryl Out Of Hiding” plan here, when Archie asks her for funding for the football team and says its earmarked for something else (hmmmmmmm... this plan has been in the works for a while... and I’m here for it) 

Ok. This scene where Archie goes to ask Cheryl for money is... a mess.  My first reaction is that it was so OOC for Archie to bring up Jason in that way.  Then I got to thinking... Archie probably would want to honour his dad in that way and was genuinely suggesting that as something that might actually be helpful to her, as opposed to purposely trying to manipulate her.  He knows what it’s like to lose a family member, he just didn’t realize that Cheryl doesn’t grieve in the same way. The boy doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body.  Anyway, now he’s been banished from Thornhill! But don’t we see him (and everyone) there in a bts photo from possibly 5x08? Isn’t that at Thornhill? Will this be addressed or will the writers just forget it ever happened?

I love Betty and Kevin investigating together. It’s so refreshing. 

Ok this place Jughead is going to is legit the creepiest shit I’ve ever seen.  I am having trouble making myself care about this “Mothmen” plot??

Betty’s “Straight to the Point” interrogation style is actually effective in this truck stop stakeout scene.  

Alice again with her wine... I wonder if there will actually be an “Alice is an alcoholic” storyline or is the wine just part of her personality now?

Ok like it’s so inappropriate for a teacher to be wearing an HBIC shirt BUT I AM HERE FOR THIS DRAMATIC VIXENS HALLWAY WALK!! And Toni is correct, Cheer is a sport so sit down, Archie.  Notably Toni adds in “not even Cheryl managed to do that” - I’m thinking she new Ms. Bell would be eavesdropping ;)

WHY IS THIS PORTAIT OF JASON WORTH SO MUCH?? 

Is this Minerva character going to be important?? I keep seeing people talking about how she and Cheryl are going to hook up but is that just because she’s a female character who interacts with Cheryl? I’m not seeing it yet but hey, it’s Riverdale.  

JUGHEAD BRINGING UP THE EPIC HIGHS AND LOWS OF HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL I SCREAMED

Seriously though, since we know Jughead wasn’t there when Archie said that, there’s two options: Either Archie told him he said it, or (my preferable theory) Archie used to just SAY THAT REGULARLY and has said it in front of Jug lmao.

Chad again seems legit supportive when she tells him about her jewelry store plan?? THEY’RE SO UP AND DOWN!!! 

Ok, so Betty is an FBI agent (trainee, whatever) and she JUST NOW THOUGHT OF TRACING POLLY’S CELL PHONE

This scene... when Veronica finds out Chad has been talking to Hiram behind her back... this is where she decides she’s done with Chad. 

Another scene with Archie - I am still getting zero vibes that he’s into Veronica? And zero vibes that Veronica’s into Archie? It makes complete sense that Veronica would want to help the bulldogs.  Chad is a total dick here and is definitely threatened by Archie... again, not the other way around.  Side note: Chad, if threatened by Archie, is a TOTAL IDIOT for suggesting Archie renovates the Pembrooke - like, he’s going to be working? All the time? Where Veronica is staying? And probably taking his shirt off because he’s sweaty from all the working?? WHYYYYY WOULD CHAD ENCOURAGE THIS

This little flirty scene between Jughead and Tabitha (and it’s the first that I would say has any flirty undertones whatsoever) is pretty cute.  

THIS BARCHIE PORCH SCENE I HAVE THOUGHTS

The fact that people are suggesting Betty showed up there because she wanted to talk to Jughead is SENDINNNNGGGGGG

Let’s be clear, she only asked about Jughead so she could make sure he wasn’t home so that she could bone Archie. There is no other interpretation for this. 

THIS IS THE BEST BARCHIE KISS TO DATE

They are playing the song from the porch scene in the pilot... DON’T TELL ME BARCHIE IS MEANINGLESS WHEN THEY ARE USING THIS SONG

I think the fact that this is the first time they had sex and we didn’t see it is meaningful - they are showing that the relationship is deepening and they are more than “just sex”

As Betty leaves, Archie looks like he wants to reach out for her and then stops himself - he is definitely falling hard and he’s afraid Betty isn’t feeling the same way

Ok, Cheryl is straight up wearing lingerie in Toni’s office!!! And the red lipstick is back - notably, throughout the entire show, she has worn the red lipstick as a kind of shield - she never has it for her “vulnerable” scenes.  Seems like that is still happening. AND this is where we see Boss Toni’s plan come into fruition - she started up the vixens and MADE SURE CHERYL FOUND OUT ABOUT IT because she knew that was the one thing that would make Cheryl come out of her Thornhill hiding spot.  Well played, Toni.  

Archie and Veronica announcing the bulldog funding... again, I’m not seeing ANY “romantic/attraction” vibes here? He does react when she says her last name is Lodge again but like, anyone would? 

MS. BELL YOU GOSSIP I’M OK WITH YOU REPORTING TO CHERYL BUT I DRAW THE LINE AT HIRAM

Is Reggie... filing his nails? Lmao

I really hope Polly isn’t dead?? Like I very much want a Polly redemption story!! 

Sooooo I guess Archie and Jughead are both going to die in this fire? Lol... well... they’re main characters so I’m sure they’re good.  

I’m doooone for this week! So far really enjoying the timejump? Obviously because of barchie but also, everyone is just - better. 

Well this turned out to be a novel.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading :) 

[manage-mischief]

Conjunctions

Summary: I wrote this drabble for @blisfvll on tumblr's writing challenge. Thanks for giving me a prompt for inspiration! I've been having a bit of writer's block lately so it was good to get creative. (also the next chapters of Regulus Black and the Darkest Shadows will be up next week, sorry for not posting this week my beta and I have both been insanely busy!) 

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Read on AO3 or FF.net

“Lils.”

“Hold on,” Lily said, holding up a finger. She was deeply engrossed in her Transfiguration textbook, doing some last-minute review before her morning exam.

“Lils.”

“Mhm.”

“Lily!”

The sudden shout shocked her. She dropped her book, exasperated. “What?!” she spat—a bit harsher than intended—at her boyfriend who was sitting across the breakfast table. James’s eye widened.

“You’ve got your elbow in your porridge…” 

Lily realized her left elbow did feel a bit wet. She looked down and, sure enough, she had been using her oatmeal as an arm rest. She cursed under her breath before swiftly cleaning herself up with a flick of her wand. Sirius, James’s best mate, snickered.

“Merlin, Evans,” Sirius teased, “Stressed out much?”

Lily rolled her eyes, but stuffed her book in her bag anyways. Sirius did have a point. She’d studied enough. Still, she could feel her leg bouncing wildly with nervous anticipation. This wasn’t just an exam: it was a NEWT. It was one of a series of tests that would determine the rest of her life. Her job, her happiness, her ability to support herself and a family…Lily shook herself out of her spiral of worrying. It wouldn’t do her any good.

“You should eat something, Lil,” said James, kindly. “Erm…maybe not that porridge though…”

Lily smiled in spite of herself and plucked James’s bagel out of his hands. “Thanks,” she muttered with a mouth full of warm bread. James feigned indignation.

“Oi, Prongs, that’s the price of dating Lily. She steals your food,” said Sirius, as he proceeded to swipe a sausage from James’s plate.

“A bargain price to pay for Lily’s affection,” said James. “But not for you, you wanker!” James locked Sirius in a playful wrestling match, attempting to retrieve his stolen food from Sirius’s fork. The two boys caused quite the ruckus, drawing the attention of many of the surrounding students, who had suddenly noticed their cutlery dancing across the table as the two boys fought.

“Stop hurting me, or I’ll write your mum!” Sirius wailed, stretching his arm just out of James’s reach. “You know she loves me best!”

“Hey!” said James, “I know it’s true, but hey!”

Remus, who had been quietly observing the scene, struck out with lightning fast reflexes and grabbed the fork from Sirius’s hand, promptly popping the coveted sausage into his mouth with a satisfied grin. James and Sirius looked properly affronted.

Lily chuckled. “Boys,” she muttered. She smiled gratefully at James. He and his friends never failed to cheer her up.

“I had to fight back!” James earnestly explained. “It was a matter of honor!”

“You don’t have to explain yourselves to me,” said Lily. “I know Remus just can’t resist grabbing Sirius’s sausage.”

Remus choked on his pumpkin juice, red as a tomato. James and Sirius laughed heartily.

“Evans! I knew there was a reason we kept you around.” Sirius nodded at her, approvingly.

“Merlin, Lil! See, this is why I love you!” James froze as soon as the words left his mouth. His eyes widened in shock, as did Lily’s. Her face flushed as red as Remus’s had. She was speechless.

Remus cleared his throat. “C’mon, Sirius, we’ve got to get to that…thing.”

Sirius stayed put. “No, I wanna know…Ow!” The table rattled as Remus obviously kicked the other boy in the shin, flashing a warning look.

“Oh,” Sirius stammered, “oh yeah. Right. The thing. Let’s go, Moons.’”

The two boys departed, leaving James and Lily alone at the breakfast table. Neither would meet the other’s eye. Lily tried to force herself to say something, anything, however, her vocal chords stayed obstinately stiff. She was too shocked. After a few seconds silence, James stood. He looked mortified. “You know what,” he said, hastily, “I’d better go help them with the…thing…Good luck on the exam, you’ll ace it I’m sure…I’ll see ya later, yeah?”

“James—” Lily tried to call after him as he rushed from the hall. She felt awful. She hadn’t said it back. She should have. She’d wanted to. But, she had been so surprised and, in the moment, had panicked. And now, James thought she didn’t love him. Before she could ponder her mistake any further, the bell rang. Dammit. It was exam time. This debacle would have to wait.

---

The exam had been a breeze. Lily was relieved. Now, she had a week before her next NEWT. And, this meant she had time to brainstorm how to make it up to James.

She was laying on her bed, making random objects float around her head. She had no idea what to do. James was always the hopeless, dramatic, romantic type. And, frankly, he was usually the one apologizing to her. If their roles had been reversed, he’d have concocted some elaborate scheme to win back Lily’s affections—likely involving plots, dramatics, and the help of his gang of friends…His friends…that was it! Lily shot up from her laying position, invigorated. She was concocting a plan. Yes, yes, Lily now had a grand plan to declare her love for James Potter. She dashed down the stairs, clear on what she had to do next.  In order to perform her grand, elaborate gesture, Lily would need the help of James’s best friends.

Luckily enough for Lily, the boys were all lounging in the Common Room—sans James. Lily knew he would be at Quidditch practice for the next hour and a half. Hopefully, this would give her enough time to organize her gesture.

“Remus!” Lily called out from across the room. “Sirius! Peter! I need your help!”

“Well, if it isn’t ‘heartless Lily Evans’ herself?” Sirius teased. He leaned back in his chair dangerously, resting his feet on the small wooden table. Peter chuckled until Lily flashed him a death glare. The runty little boy fell silent.

“I’m serious—I swear if you make a joke I’ll hex your balls off, Black!” Lily warned, just as Sirius had opened his mouth to make a pun about his name. He paled and shut it immediately.

“What do you need, Lily?” Remus asked kindly.

“I…well…you clearly know what happened this morning with James…” Lily looked down, embarrassed. The boys nodded. “I messed up. Royally. I need your help to make it right.”

“Our help?” Sirius asked, raising an eyebrow. “Why do you need our help?”

The three boys leaned forward, curious to hear what she had to say.

Lily grinned cunningly. “Well, I had this idea…”

---

Lily and the boys scrambled around for the next hour, making sure every little detail of their plan was set. Finally, the Gryffindor Common Room was ready for James’s arrival. Lily felt a little guilty abusing her Head Girl authority to throw the rest of the students out, but this was for the greater good.

“Hush, and get into positions!” Lily hissed impatiently at her three companions. They quickly scrambled away, ducking behind the chairs and suits of armor in the Common Room, out of sight.

“Wands at the ready!” She ordered, checking her watch for the thousandth time. James would be arriving soon. He must be close. Her heart began to pound anxiously.

A moment later, Lily heard the Fat Lady’s muffled voice as she conversed with someone else outside the door. It had to be James. But, what if it wasn’t? Lily stupidly hadn’t planned on encountering any of his other Quidditch mates. What if one of them had arrived before James did?

Luckily for Lily, the top of a messy head of hair emerged from the portrait entryway. She breathed a sigh of relief. It was James. This was it.

“Lily?” James asked, raising an eyebrow. She stood alone in the middle of the atrium. Her legs felt like jelly. Perhaps she should have dressed up more. “What are you—”

“James Fleamont Potter,” Lily proclaimed, raising her wand above her head. The signal.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the infinitesimal movements of Remus, Sirius, and Peter, as they began casting their spells. The light in the Common Room turned pale pink. Fireworks began erupting over her head, spreading out around the room as they danced in the air. A flock of songbirds burst from the tip of Remus’s hidden wand flew promptly into a heart formation, chirping merrily. Two cherubs holding harps fluttered near them. Heart shaped bubbled filled the air. The scene was, in Lily’s opinion, utterly sickening with cliché. She hoped James would love it.

“I love you, too.” Lily said, just as the fireworks regrouped in above head, spelling out the same message in flashing lights. Gooey harp sounds echoed through the air. The birds clumped together in a tight formation and flew to James, turning into a bouquet of roses before his eyes.

Lily held her breathe as she watched her boyfriend take in the scene before him. James looked up from the bouquet, grinning madly.

“Well?” Lily asked. “Say something?”

“WOOHOO!” James shouted, rushing to Lily and taking her in his arms. He lifted her off of the ground as he spun her around. Lily laughed as he set her back down.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier,” she apologized.

“Lily,” said James seriously, “Don’t ever apologize. This way was much better. I feel like the belle of the ball.” He winked.

“Only the best for you, your majesty,” Lily teased back. She was staring into James’s eyes as he held her hands when a chorus of cheers erupted from behind them.

“What the hell?” James jumped back, startled to find his three best friends who had materialized beside them.

“Nice one, Evans,” Sirius clapped her on the back. “I knew Prongs’d fall for this sappy romantic crap, the big softie.”

“Who’re you calling a softie?” James pouted.

“You, idiot. Look, you haven’t even snogged your girlfriend yet. You’ve just gazed lovingly into her eyes. It’s gross!”

Remus and Lily shared a look. “Come on, Sirius, Peter, let’s give these two some privacy.”

As the three boys walked off towards their dormitories, James grabbed Lily by the waist and pulled her close. “Just for that, I’m gonna snog her extra hard now!” He shouted into the distance. Sirius’s laughing reply echoed down the stairs.

Lily shook her head affectionately. “You’re an idiot.”

James smiled back, running a hand through her hair. “But you love me.”

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Temper by Chantal Fernando

Knights of Fury #3

Looking for a tame biker romance without explicit violence? This book might be for you. It is NOT your typical biker romance but a rather sweet story of an ongoing annual request for a date when Temper rolls through town and that request has always been turned down by abbie...until...one day Temper comes into Abbie’s bar and says he might not ask her out this year, she decides that would NOT be good thing at all and so they do go out on their first date...finally.

The date is splendid till it is not and then her life changes dramatically. Given a chance to leave her town, state, controlling mother and a life that was not the one she chose she spreads her wings, meets new people. Does the tourist thing and gets to know Temper better.

Of course there is a bad guy to thwart, some surprises, twists and turns with the expected HEA.

What I liked:

* Temper: rugged, mature, commanding but with a tender heart

* Abbie: a woman who needs change and is willing to take a chance with Temper

* The Knights of Fury and their women

* Learning the back stories of both main characters

* The thwarting of the bad guy

* That there is a HEA for the two

* The potential for more stories in the series

What I didn’t like:

* The overly tame nature of this not so gritty MC romance

* The way Abbie moved from mouse to wannabe Wonder Woman

* Abbie’s mother

Did I like this book? Yes, as a romance

Did I like this book as an MC Romance? Not as much as others I have read

Would I read more in this series? Maybe

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin-Carina for the ARC – This is my honest review.

3-4 Stars

Title: Temper

Author: Chantal Fernando

Series: Knights of Fury MC series, #3

Length: approx. 60,000 words (256 pages)

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Imprint: Carina Press

eBook On-Sale: April 20, 2020

eBook ISBN & Price: 9781488054037, $4.99 USD

Book Description:

New York Times bestselling author Chantal Fernando returns to the Knights of Fury series with her most complicated hero yet. He may be the epitome of cool, but this MC president isn’t called Temper for nothing…

Every year, the hot, tatted biker comes into Abbie’s bar, orders whiskey and asks her out. Every year, Abbie turns him down. After all, dating a man that goes by Temper seems like a really bad idea, no matter how attracted she is to him.

But this year is different. Abbie’s different. Older, wiser and tired of being stuck behind the bar in a sleepy town. This year, she’s ready for whatever adventure the sexy but sweet biker has in store for her.

Or so she thinks…until an elegant candlelit dinner ends with a dead body.

Now Abbie finds herself on the ride of her life, whisked away to the big city in Temper’s protective custody. She should be scared, but—despite his nickname—it’s clear the last thing Temper would ever do is hurt a hair on her head. And when danger catches up with them, Abbie soon realizes that holding tight to her man while straddling a Harley may be the safest place of all.

Buy Links

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YCQPTBW

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/temper-chantal-fernando/1133792899

iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/temper/id1481346510

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/temper-13

Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Chantal_Fernando_Temper?id=e-WxDwAAQBAJ

EXCERPT

It’s been a while since I’ve seen [Temper], and he looks good. It’s like the man doesn’t age. He’s tall, strong, and kind of mean looking, but he’s been nothing but nice and respectful toward me. We kind of have a routine going every time we see each other. We chat, we flirt, he asks if he can buy me dinner, and I say no. He ac­cepts that and leaves, until next time.

I don’t know why I always say no anymore. The first time was a combination of him being a biker and feel­ing so much older than me. But the age thing doesn’t bother me that much anymore. Truth is I’ve never said yes, to any man, to any date. I get asked out by people coming into the bar, but you don’t have to be experi­enced to know what they are really looking for, and it’s not a loving, long-lasting relationship. My experience is severely lacking, aside from prom and the mistake I made after it, and there’s no saving me now. I’m going to be a spinster. Hopefully Ivy will give me some nieces and nephews I can claim as my own.

Temper places money on the table, with a huge tip, like he always does. “Seriously? Who tips that much?”

His lip twitches. “You can take yourself out to a nice dinner with it, since I know you’re never going to let me take you out.”

“You giving up that easily?” I tease, giving him a flirtatious smile. I don’t know where this sudden bold­ness is coming from, other than the fact that I don’t want him to stop asking me out, and I’ve only just re­alized this.

I’ve never met another man like Temper, and I don’t think I ever will. I see how people treat him, avoid him, and make sure not to challenge him. Hell, my own mother warned me to be friendly with him, but never too friendly. He has this air of menace about him, but over the years I’ve also seen how he treats his MC brothers like family, and he’s always respectful, even to the people who work here. I’ve seen him vulnera­ble when he talked about his Prez… Hammer was his name, I think. He’s never rude, or arrogant—to me, anyway—and he’s always generous and polite. When he speaks to me, he always uses a humble, gentle tone, one that I’ve come to enjoy listening to. I know there is another side to him, and I can’t help but want to get to know that more.

“It only took a few years of rejection,” he jokes, lifting the whiskey glass to his lips. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him make a joke before.

“Maybe this was the year I was going to say yes,” I reply, clearing my throat. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I have the feeling like if I truly do want to take a chance and go on this date, it’s now or never. I’m stuck here, in the same job, doing the same thing every damn day, and I deserve to have a little fun and do something reckless for once in my life. I’ve always been the good girl, the trusted daughter, and the responsible older sister, taking care of my family as much as I can, since my dad has never been around. I know his name, Cohen Pierce, and that he lives in California somewhere. But he wanted, and still wants, nothing to do with me, and that’s fine. I’ve accepted that.

But what have I ever done for me? Other than college, which I had to drop out of anyway, I can’t think of one single thing.

Temper lowers his glass and studies me, brown eyes filled with surprise and suspicion. “You want to go on a date with me? Why now?”

Shrugging, I lower my eyes to the counter before returning them to him. “Time for me to live a little.”

Being safe hasn’t gotten me anywhere in life.

AUTHOR BIO

Chantal Fernando is the New York Times bestselling author of the Wind Dragons Motorcycle Club series, the Cursed Raven Motorcycle Club series, and the Maybe series, along with several other novels. She lives in Western Australia, where she is working on her next book. Find her online at AuthorChantalFernando.com, and on Twitter and Facebook.

Connect with Chantal Fernando

Website: http://www.authorchantalfernando.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorchantalfernando

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChantalFernando

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7056719.Chantal_Fernando

AUTHOR Q&A

Your latest release, TEMPER, is the third book in the Knights of Fury series. What three words best describe TEMPER the novel?

Fate, alpha, suspense.

Now on to Temper the man. What is his most surprising quality?

His loyalty, and his protective side. He will do anything for those that he loves.

Abbie has been turning Temper down for the last five years. What prompts her to finally give him a chance?

Abbie gets tired of doing the same thing every day, and her life not working out the way she had once envisioned. She wants adventure and to take a chance, and Temper ends up being that chance.

What do you love most about Abbie?

Abbie is resilient, and she becomes stronger and stronger with each obstacle life throws at her.

What would you like readers to take away from Temper and Abbie’s story?

I want them to just enjoy the ride and to feel the love between the two main characters.

Where did the inspiration for the Knights of Fury series come from?

I actually had a dream about the first chapter of Saint, and the rest just flowed from there.

What do you love most about writing MC romances?

I love that there are no limitations and I can go wherever the characters take me.

What can readers expect from you next?

A spin off series, maybe? ;)

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Hello! Do you have list of your all time favorite or current favourite books? Would you mind sharing it? I need some recommendations, because lately every book I pick up turns out to be awful.

MarHere’s a dangerous question. :) I read A LOT. So giving you a list of what I like right now would be a LOT of books. So, let’s start with authors I generally enjoy.

Barbara Kingsolver--I especially love “The Bean Trees,” “Poisonwood Bible” and “Flight Behavior.” Kingsolver writes multi-layered, interesting characters who learn about environmental and cultural issues in very real ways. “Poisonwood Bible” is always very high on my list of favorite books because it does a stunning job of investigating the sudden freedom of the Congo from the Belgium from a group of white missionary daughters.  Each of them takes turns telling the story, and each of them are very affected by events. It is not in any way a white savior story. It is the absolute opposite. These women are in this situation because their father thinks he has to save the tribes of Africa from themselves. They take away many different lessons from living under his roof.

Ed McBain--Fucking awesome, old school police pulp. He wrote the 87th Precient for 52 years, and his characters are vivid. The cases are also interesting. Be warned: He started writing them in the 50s, so there’s some problematic stuff (and Fat Ollie is a lazy, fat cop stereotype in a lot of ways), but if you like a solid mystery, he’s a good guy. 

Erik Larsen--Non-fiction guy. I’ve only read two of his books, but they were both fantastic. He likes to take two things happening in the same time and place and weaving them together into a larger cultural examination. “Devil in the White City” is about creating the Chicago World’s Fair while also investigating how that creation assisted H.H. Holmes, America’s first defined serial killer, in getting victims. “In the Garden of the Beast” is about an American ambassador in Berlin in 1933, and how he saw first-hand and early exactly how bad Hitler was going to get. It’s juxtaposed with his daughter falling in love with the city and culture of Germany and becoming slowly disenchanted. Larsen writes in a very friendly style that makes his books super easy to read.

K.J. Charles--Historical m/m romances that sometimes include magic. A+ porn and lots of feelings.

Heidi Cullinan--Modern m/m romances that include characters with disabilities or mental issues. A+ porn and lots of feelings.

Matt Fraction--He wrote my very favorite version of Tony Stark in “Invincible Iron Man.” “Sex Criminals” is fucking hysterical. “Hawkeye” landed at exactly the time I needed to watch a depressed superhero attempt to unfuck himself. “Satellite Sam” was drawn by Chaykin (fuck Chaykin), but the story is worth your time. 1950s live tv sleeze.

Kelly Sue DeConnick--”Bitch Planet” is a fantastic prison explotation feminist critique on life, love, and patriarchy. Her “Rescue” one-shot where Pepper Potts gets her own suit is everything I ever wanted. Her “Captain Marvel” makes me want to punch the sky.

Jen Van Meter--”Hopeless Savages” is a goddamn gift, and we should all give thanks.

Greg Rucka--Greg can write anything. He can also always write women well. This man is a gift.

Carla Speed McNeil--”Finder” is the science fiction you want in the world. Don’t let the brick-thick volumes 1 and 2 intimidate you. Pick up “Tailsman” or “Voice” to see if it’s your bag. 

Beverly Cleary--Re-read them. Trust me. Even as an adult they fucking rock.

Gonna stop there for authors, or I’ll be here all day. Some other stuff I’ve enjoyed:

YA

The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowery--I’m not a huge fan of “The Messenger,” but I think it’s worth reading to have the background to read “Son.” Overall, I think it’s a strong series. 

Shadow Children Series by Margaret Peterson Haddix -- What I found lacking in world build in “Hunger Games,” Haddix absolutely gave to me in this series. I haven’t finished it yet, but I fucking love it so far. The premise: There was a food shortage. People were only allowed to have two children. There are to be no third children. There are totally third children. They are ready to fight to exist. Haddix pulls no punches, so be ready for people to get hurt and die. 

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness -- I have PTSD related to cancer. This amazing book helped me out a lot. I still have PTSD, but this book gave me a catharsis I cannot put into words. It is deeply important to me.

Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu -- a young woman in a fundamentalist patriarchal Christian family starts questioning her place in her religion and her family. This one’s gonna punch you in the gut, but it is so worth it.

Fiction

Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews -- Southern gothic cranked to 15 with all the incest you never needed. The writing is particularly over-dramatic, and I fucking love this book. 

The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Bejamin -- A historical fiction account of the life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh told from her perspective. Includes direct confrontation with Charles Lindbergh’s Nazi beliefs and a very good take on the kidnap of their baby. 

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg -- lesbians in the 1930s and the very best of second wave feminism (and I hate second wave feminism) combine in a book that I could read forever.

Flannery O’Connor the Complete Stories--Oh, to be able to write like this. 

I am going to stop there for now, since the list could go on for a long time, and there’s a lot of stuff here. I have tried to keep it fairly light in comics (but I do love comic writers, so they’re there) but also light on non-fiction, since I don’t know what you read. If you want a longer list of both, just drop me a line.

[fae-fucker]

The One: Chapter 21

America and the other girls goof around all cutesy and even the queen gets to join, the poor useless bitch. 

BUT THEN!!! DUN DUN DUUUN! America gets called away to meet with Clarkson and Maxon.

I swallowed. Every awful thing ran through my head. My family was in danger. The king had found a way to punish me quietly for all the ways I’d wronged him. He’d discovered we’d sneaked out of the palace. Or, perhaps worst of all, someone had figured out my connection to Aspen, and we were both about to pay for it.

You heard it right here folks. The thought of her and Aspen getting punished for breaking the law is WORSE than the thought of her family in danger. 

OUR HEROINE. OUR SELFLESS PROTECTOR OF THE PROPLE. 

I hate her so fucking much and everybody who likes her is a sheep brainwashed by KCass.

Luckily for Americunt, it’s something to do with the Italians, and America thinks that Clarkson found out about her super secret super epic super politically savvy super strategic deal with Nicoletta. 

It’s not. 

It’s even dumber. 

“We have been trying to make an alliance with the Italians for decades, and all of a sudden the royal family is quite interested in having us visit. However”—the king picked up the letter, searching for a specific section—“ah, here. ‘While it would be more than an honor to have Your Majesty and your family grace us with your company, we hope that Lady America will also be able to visit with you. After meeting all the Elite, we can’t imagine anyone following in the queen’s footsteps quite like her.’”

The king raised his eyes back to me. “What have you done?”

Suddenly, a huge burning skeleton burst in through the wall. I screamed and instantly pooped myself and almost fainted. 

“SHE DID NOTHING!” the terrible spooky skeleton screeched and pointed a scary bony finger at me. “SHE’S THE AUTHOR’S PET, AND HER MEAGER EFFORTS ARE REWARDED WITH EXCESSIVE PRAISE! SHE, ALL OF YOU, WILL PAY FOR THIS NONSENSE!” 

Then the skeleton killed all of us. THE END. 

I fucking wish. Anyway, the king continues with his praise. We all know it’s meant to be read as badass, so don’t even fucking argue with me, KCass.

“Then how did a girl of no means, no connections, and no power manage to get this country within the reach of something it’s been trying to achieve for years? How?”

In my heart, I knew that there were factors here that he was oblivious to. But it was Nicoletta who had offered assistance to me, who had asked if she could do anything for a cause she wanted to support. If he’d accused me of something that was actually my fault, his rising voice would have been frightening. As it was, he came across like a child.

In response, I spoke quietly. “You were the ones who assigned us to entertain your foreign guests. I never would have met any of those women otherwise. And she’s the one who wrote, inviting me to come. I didn’t beg for a trip to Italy. Maybe if you were simply more welcoming, you’d have had your alliance with Italy years ago.”

AMERICA IS SUCH A BADASS!!! EVERYONE KNEEL IN FRONT OF HER GREATNESS AND KISS HER FEET TO SHOW YOUR SUBMISSION!! 

Seriously though, this is fucking dumb. I can’t even be assed to take it apart because we already know this is sloppily put together “politics” constructed in such a way that America’s bare minimum and idiotic stumbling are seen as clever and calculating. What I will complain about is the fact that Clarkson says that they “need” the Italians because they’ll open a lot of doors for Illéa. 

Again, you don’t need FUCKING FRANCE, but Italy is apparently super powerful now? You know there’s a reason people are scared that France will leave the EU, right? Does KCass have relatives in Italy or some shit? What is this nonsense? 

Anyway, apparently they can’t kick America out now because it’ll upset the Italians, so the king wants to bring all the girls to Italy so they can get to know them better and forget all about the totes badass rebel sympathizer America. 

Because apparently, you can just do that during a war, idk. I feel like KCass forgets the whole war thing until it’s needed for a dramatic line.

The king looked at Maxon, venom in his eyes. “Are you declaring your choice right now then? Is the Selection over?”

My pulse stopped altogether.

“No,” Maxon answered, as if the very thought was ridiculous.

BUT WHY?!?!?!? WHY DOESN’T HE JUST END IT?! WHAT IS KEEPING HIM FROM CHOOSING AMERICA RIGHT NOW?!?!?!

I’m so tired.

The king says America has to prove herself trustworthy before Maxon can choose her, which goes against literally THE WHOLE ENTIRE SETUP THAT RELIES ON CLARKSON HAVING ZERO CONTROL OVER MAXON’S CHOICE.

KCASS, DID YOU EVEN THINK ONCE WHILE WRITING THIS? 

Anyway, Clarkson wants America to read some shitty propaganda to tell the castes to calm their shit, which isn’t the dumbest idea he’s had, but don’t you think IT’S A BIT TOO FUCKING LATE TO START PULLING THIS NOW, WHEN THE REBELLION’S ALREADY HAPPENING AND PEOPLE ARE GETTING MURDERED?!

WHY DIDN’T YOU THINK OF DOING THIS FROM THE START?!

I’m so tired.

“The lower castes tend to get unruly from time to time—it’s natural. But we have to subdue the anger and squash the ideas of usurping power quickly, before they unite and undo our great nation.”

“BEFORE”?!?!?!?! “BEFORE”??!?!?!??!?!??!

IT’S ALREADY HAPPENING.

Maxon stared at his father, still not fully comprehending his words.

I’m glad Maxon’s still reliably stupid. 

The king was planning to divide and conquer: make the castes absurdly grateful for what they had—even if they were being treated like they didn’t matter—and tell them not to associate with those outside of their castes, for they certainly wouldn’t understand the plight of anyone outside their own.

I love how this is framed as some sinister epic final attack when it’s like Dictatorship 101. 

This is so sad and pathetic. So obviously written by a white middle class American woman who has no fucking clue about how politics or dictatorships work and clearly she didn’t even bother looking it up. Who needs that when you have BOYS.

“This is propaganda,” I spat, remembering the word from Dad’s tattered history book.

Baby’s first Politics. 

This is laughable.

They argue about ... fucking basic propaganda tactics like it’s some epic political stategy and I’m just kind of tickled. The king spouts some evil dictator crap, that’s still like super duper basic and idk supposed to make us dislike him, and America has a huff and puff about how she refuses to read the stuff.

Clarkson finally does something mildly competent and actually clever and uses America’s only weakness, BOYS, against her. He says that if she doesn’t do it, it proves that she doesn’t love Maxon.

“Do you? Do you love him at all?”

This wasn’t how I was going to say it. Not at the end of an ultimatum, not for business.

The king tilted his head. “How sad, Maxon. She needs to think about it.”

Do not cry. Do not cry.

I’m cackling, this is hilarious and pathetic at the same time. Though I hate that this book is successful and that idiots adore it and praise it as clever and feminist.

“I’ll give you some time to find out where you stand. If you won’t do this, then rules be damned, I’ll be kicking you out by Christmas Day. What a special gift that will be for your parents.”

“Rules be damned” YOU’RE KING! YOU MAKE THE RULES!! AREN’T YOU ALREADY BREAKING THE RULES BY NOT ALLOWING MAXON TO CHOOSE?!

Uuuuuugh.

She angsts herself out of the room but Maxon doesn’t let her off that easily. He catches her and makes it aaaaalll about himself again.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded.

“He’s insane!” I was on the verge of tears, but I held them in. If the king came out and saw me that way, I’d never live it down.

Maxon shook his head. “Not him. You. Why didn’t you agree to do it?”

I looked at him, gob-smacked. “It’s a trick, Maxon. Everything he’s doing is a trick.”

“If you had said yes, I would have ended this now.”

Incredulous, I fired back. “Two seconds before, you had the chance to end it and didn’t. How is this my fault?”

“Because,” he answered, his whole demeanor urgent, “you are denying me your love. It’s the only thing I’ve wanted in this entire competition, and you still hold back. I keep waiting for you to say it, and you won’t. If you couldn’t say it out loud in front of him, fine. But if you had simply agreed, that would have been good enough for me.”

“And why would I when, for as far as we’ve come, he could still push me out? While I’m humiliated over and over again, and you stand by? That’s not love, Maxon. You don’t even know what love is.”

BUT WHAT ABOUT MEEEEEE?!?!?!?

NO WHAT ABOUT MEEEE!!!!!

BUT MEEEEEE!!

NO NO MEEEEEEEE!!!

Can a Selection fan just ... contact me and explain to me why they like these selfish, cruel, self-absorbed, entitled, petty, small-minded characters? And think of them as good people? Are we really that easily manipulated as a species? Or are the tweens reading this really this fucking stupid?

Let’s just hope they grow out of this bullshit.

I stormed away. What was I still doing here? I kept torturing myself for someone who had no idea what it meant to be faithful to one person. And he never would, because his whole concept of romance revolved around the Selection. He wouldn’t ever understand.

Did I just... read that with my own eyes. 

Does America have some serious brain damage?

HE LITERALLY JUST SAID THAT HE’S ALWAYS WANTED ONLY YOU, AND YOU’RE THE ONE WHO KEPT CHEATING ON HIM WITH ASPEN!!

HOLY SHIT.

This book somehow keeps getting dumber and dumber. It’d be almost impressive if it didn’t cause me immense psychological pain.

She tries to run away again but he grabs her and forcefully holds her there. Romance. 

He sighed. “I know that you spent years pouring yourself into another person who you thought was going to love you forever; and when he was faced with the realities of the world, he abandoned you.” I froze, taking in his words. “I’m not him, America. I have no intentions of giving up on you.”

I shook my head. “You can’t see it, Maxon. He might have let me down, but at least I knew him. After all this time, I still feel like there’s a gap between us. The Selection has forced you to hand over your affection in slices. I’ll never really have all of you. None of us will.”

When I shrugged myself free this time, he didn’t fight me.

Fuck this book. 

[truehealthcanada]

Sleep Apnea – Types, Causes and Treatments

An epidemic of Sleep Apnea

  Why didn't I learn about sleep apnea in medical school? It's because it hadn't even been described until 1965. It still hadn't made its way into my course curriculum by the mid-1970s when I was in medical school. Now sleep apnea is so common that a New York travel agent tried to argue that sleep apnea was the reason she stole $25 million from her clients.

The most common type is obstructive sleep apnea, which describes individuals with severe hypoxemia (lack of oxygen) and hypercapnia (increased carbon dioxide). Central sleep apnea is rare where brain damage stops the signals to the lungs that initiate breathing.

Initially tracheostomy - cutting a hole in the neck to insert a breathing tube - was the recommended treatment. It could save lives but had many side effects including fatal infections.

The treatment of obstructive sleep apnea became far less dangerous with the invention of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines by Colin Sullivan in Sydney, Australia in 1981. By the late 1980s CPAP was widely adopted. The technology has improved greatly over time with sleep clinics on every block touting the new treatment.

So what causes sleep apnea? The upper throat muscles help keep our airway open allowing air to flow into the lungs. And even though these muscles usually relax during sleep, the upper throat remains open enough to let air pass. But medical researchers tell us that some people actually have narrow throats that may completely close when their upper throat muscles relax during sleep. This prevents air from getting into their lungs.

When I read about collapsible throats I found it incredible that doctors believe that the human body was created with such a serious design flaw that makes it impossible for us to breathe properly at night. I don't think we were created that way but maybe it's the way we've molded new bodies with an imperfect diet and imperfect nutrients.

The major symptoms of sleep apnea are loud snoring, 10-second (or longer) breathing gaps and labored breathing. The gaps turn to gasps as if you are holding your breath. The gasping can wake you up, interrupting and fragmenting your sleep. People can have breathing pauses from 10-30 times per hour. Other symptoms are associated with severe daytime sleepiness. They include:

1. Awakening unrefreshed in the morning 2. Falling asleep at inappropriate times 3. Possible depression 4. Memory problems 5. Headaches 6. Personality changes 7. Poor concentration 8. Restless sleep 9. Insomnia 10. Hyperactivity

Obesity seems to be a major contributor to sleep apnea. But you don't have to be obese to have this condition. Please know that I'm not minimizing or trivializing this disease. It's a horrific feeling to wake up choking and gasping. However, if obesity is the major contributor to sleep apnea, what is being done about that? With 66 percent of the population overweight and obese I don't believe there are enough attempts by doctors to reduce the obesity factor with diet and lifestyle intervention. And, of course, obesity doesn't only cause sleep apnea but it's a major contributor to diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.

Sleep clinics promote CPAP machines and surgeons promote throat and palate surgery. I've yet to hear a client with sleep apnea tell me that weight control was the first line of treatment. Often surgery is offered first with no mention of diet.

How many people suffer from sleep apnea? According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, 18 million people have this condition and probably a similar number go undiagnosed. It's under-diagnosed because a doctor can't detect it on a routine examination and there are no blood tests for sleep apnea.

If you have all or some of the following symptoms, you could be experiencing sleep apnea. However, it really struck me that many of these symptoms can be related to stress and overwork and lack of magnesium!

1. Taking more than 30 minutes to fall asleep at night. 2. Waking at night and having trouble falling back to sleep. 3. Feeling sleepy during the day and taking short cat naps. 4. Tingling in your legs when you try to fall asleep. 5. Having vivid, dreamlike experiences while falling asleep or dozing. 6. Episodes of sudden muscle weakness when you're angry, fearful, laughing. 7. Feeling as though you can't move when you first wake up. 8. Your legs or arms jerk often during sleep. 9. Needing stimulants, such as caffeine, to stay awake during the day.

When I look at the following list of conditions that can be promoted by untreated sleep apnea, I also think of magnesium deficiency...except maybe for MVAs.

With untreated sleep apnea there is and increased risk of:

1. High blood pressure 2. Heart attack 3. Stroke 4. Obesity 5. Diabetes 6. Worsening heart failure 7. Worsening arrhythmias 8. Work-related accidents 9. MVAs

TREATING SLEEP APNEA

1. Lose Weight When you are lying down, excess flesh and fat around your neck can put undue pressure on your airway. Abdominal weight can also push on your stomach affecting your breathing and also cause heartburn and reflux. Losing weight is much easier when you join a weight loss program like Weight Watchers or my Future Health Now! Online Wellness Program.

2. Exercise Aim for a strong healthy body turning fat cells into muscle cells and conditioning your body so it has optimal levels of oxygen.

3. Change Your Sleep Position Doctors say that sleeping on your back may allow your tongue to fall back into your airway and cause an obstruction. Again, I think that's a pretty significant design flaw in the body. You would have to be very out of condition for that to happen. Personally, I think some people use way too many pillows under their head at night. This can scrunch your neck up so it almost touches your chest - providing a serious airway challenge.

Try lying on your side. Hug one pillow and put another flat pillow between your knees. To stop yourself from rolling onto your back you can cut a tennis ball in half and sew each half into your pajama top - put one near your neck and one in the middle of your back.

4. Inclined Bed Therapy Propping your upper body up with pillows might work but if you slide down during the night you could further twist your neck and compromise your breathing. I have a module about Inclined Bed Therapy in Future Health Now! If you're not a member you can go to http://heal-me.com.au/ibt.html to find out more about sleeping with the head of your bed raised 6 to 8 inches.

5. Limit Drugs You may not be aware that medications prescribed for headaches, anxiety, and other common problems can affect sleep and quality of breathing.

6. Limit Alcohol Alcohol slows down your brain's respiratory drive during sleep causing further relaxation of your throat muscles, which increases obstructive sleep apnea. Eliminating alcohol dramatically reduces the number of sleep apnea episodes, increases the oxygen saturation levels of the blood, and leads to deeper, more restful sleep. Avoid alcohol within four hours of bedtime if your suffer from sleep apnea.

7. Avoid Sleeping Pills Sleeping pills depress breathing, relax the muscles of the throat, and generally make sleep apnea worse.

8. Learn How To Breathe There are several yoga breathing techniques that can be used to improve your breathing. Practicing them may give you temporary relief from obstructive sleep apnea. You can learn more about them at holisticonline.com infocenter on Pranayama.

9. Stay Calm People panic when they wake up unable to breathe. It's instinctual to try and force a deep breath. However, this only worsens the problem and the fear. Instead, sit up straight or stand up and forcibly blow out your breath, then breathe in very slowly.

10. Take Magnesium If, as medical researchers say, sleep apnea occurs when the upper throat muscles relax during sleep, I'd say you definitely need magnesium. Magnesium is necessary in any muscle problem because magnesium regulates the way muscles function. I would love to see people with sleep apnea treated with magnesium before having to resort to bulky breathing machines or surgery. The recommended dosage of magnesium citrate powder is 300 mg twice daily.

11. Take 5-HTP Scientists recommend serotonin precursors such as 5-HTP for people suffering from sleep apnea. Decreased serotonin levels can lead to sleep apnea. The nerves that control breathing require an adequate supply of serotonin. Incidentally, serotonin production depends on magnesium. The recommended dosage is 100 to 300 mg of 5-HTP at bedtime.

12. Join Future Health Now!. It's my two-year Online Wellness Program. Staying healthy is the best defense against all the lifestyle diseases.

About the author: About the Author: Carolyn Dean MD ND is The Doctor of the Future�. She is a medical doctor and naturopathic doctor in the forefront of the natural medicine revolution since 1979. She is working on several patents on novel products including the iCell in RnA Drops. Dr. Dean is a leading expert in magnesium and she has created a picometer, stabilized-ionic form of magnesium, called ReMag that's 100% absorbed at the cellular level and non-laxative making it one of the only magnesiums that can be taken in therapeutic amounts with no side effects. ReLyte is her multiple mineral product that is also completely absorbed at the cellular level and contains the 9 minerals necessary for supporting proper thyroid function. RnA Drops help make perfect cells via RNA through Chromosome 14 affecting DNA. ReNew, which is highly concentrated RnA Drops is a powerful skin serum and ReAline is a safe detox formula with methylated B's, l-taurine and dl-methionine (the precursor to glutathione), all available at www.RnAReSet.com Dr. Dean is the author/coauthor of 33 health books (print and eBooks) and 106 Kindle books including The Magnesium Miracle, Death by Modern Medicine, IBS for Dummies, IBS Cookbook for Dummies, The Yeast Connection and Women's Health, Future Health Now Encyclopedia, Death by Modern Medicine, Everything Alzheimers, and Hormone Balance. She is on the Medical Advisory Board of the non-profit educational site - Nutritional Magnesium Association (www.nutritionalmagnesium.org) continue reading

The post Sleep Apnea – Types, Causes and Treatments appeared first on True Health Canada.

source https://truehealthcanada.ca/sleep-apnea-types-causes-and-treatments/

[vidmrkting75038]

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is sponsored by Podcast Bookers. Podcastbookers.com. Podcasts are really hot, right? But you know what’s also really hot? Appearing as a guest on one of the many, many podcasts out there. Think about it. Much easier than writing a guest blog post. You get some high quality content. You get great back links. People want to share that content. Maybe you can even transcribe that content. Being a guest on podcasts, getting yourself booked on podcasts is a really, really great SEO tactic, a great brand building tactic. Podcast Bookers can get you booked on two to three to four podcasts every single month on auto pilot. Go check it out. Podcastbookers.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is John Corcoran. He is a former writer in the White House for presidents … I knew I was going to mess that up, but anyway, I’ll start again. Presidential letters and messages during the Clinton administration and a speech writer in the California Governors Office during the Davis administration. And we’re not going to talk about politics because he was … I think you’re also a lawyer too, right John?

John Corcoran: That I am, yeah. Lots of reasons to hate me. Politics, lawyer.

John Jantsch: What a mess this show is going to be. So welcome. Thanks for joining me, John.

John Corcoran: I’m glad to be here, John.thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So you were … Last time I was out in Santa Barbara we got together. You, I think you paid for my dinner, which was awesome. And you told me a little bit about something that is somewhat new for you. And, we’ll kind of air all this out. But let’s start off by talking … Tell me a little bit about this Rise 25.

John Corcoran: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, so I, like many of your clients, was trading hours for dollars as a lawyer. And when you’re a lawyer you realize that you can only work on one client at a time. You can only charge as much as the market will bear and where do you go from there? And so long story, but got into blogging and podcasting and doing those sorts of things in order to expand my reach and eventually teamed up with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weiss. What we’ve been doing is helping other professional services business owners who were much like ourselves and did one-on-one type of work and help them to kind of make the shift to one to many so that they can free up more of their time and that they can impact a larger community of people.

John Jantsch: So, everyone today is being advised to become an expert in their field. How do we afford to have everyone be an expert? I mean, what does that even man anymore?

John Corcoran: Right. Yeah. Right. How do you become an expert? I don’t know that it would be possible for everyone to be viewed as an expert. Because then if everyone’s viewed as an expert there’s got to be someone that is at a higher level. But it certainly … What’s valuable, I think, is elevating your profile. Whether that means just in your local community. Whether that means something nationally. Whether that means expressing yourself through content. I know that you’re a big advocate of content. But I certainly think that establishing your bonafides as an authority and someone who knows your stuff in your field that’s never going to harm you, whether you decide that you just want more high quality one-on-one clients or whether you want to make the shift like you have with your business, or others have, like I have, into more of a leverage type of model where you’re serving people in a one-to-many capacity.

John Jantsch: So I’ve been doing this long enough, you see these things come and go. And it seems like all of a sudden the advice to carve out a very specific niche and just become and expert in that niche seems to have resurfaced lately with the online kind of Facebook advertising crowd. In your mind is that really one of the best paths to go down if you do want to sort of stand out and position yourself as an expert?

John Corcoran: You know, I think that it can be fraught with peril if you choose the wrong niche. But I do agree; I think that there are too many people who try and be everything to everyone, or something. But most people don’t start off that way. Most people start off with a particular expertise in one particular field and that also helps them get referred, which is a huge engine of growth, as you know. You wrote the book on it. It helps people to know what type of business they should send towards you. If you define your scope, if you say, “This is the type of person that I want to work with, this is a limited field.” Now, you and I both are somewhat generalist, right? And that we both, it’s not like you and I are both working with flower shop owners and yoga studio owners in only that niche; we’re working in wider areas. So I think you can always feel like, “aw, man! I need to narrow it even further.”

But I think that the bigger danger is when you’re way too broad and you’re just trying to serve anyone who comes in. Because then people just don’t know who you are. They don’t know who to refer to you, they don’t know what you stand for, what type of market you’re serving for. I think that’s the bigger danger for people.

John Jantsch: I think a lot of people, certainly the people that got burned when they became social media experts and all of a sudden we didn’t need social media experts any more. I think that’s, when people focus on a platform or something of that nature that can change, there’s a lot of danger in that. Or even, I think some cases even industries. The one thing I’ve always advocated is, if you get known as somebody who solves a certain kind of problem, that’s probably never going to go away. So for business owners, I like to say that we solve a certain type of problem, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years and that problem has never changed. The way we come at it maybe has changed, but we’re not really, we’re not kinda putting ourselves in that peril of getting, becoming obsolete. Because I don’t think problems will ever go away.

John Corcoran: I agree. Yeah, and if you become the expert in Vine, and one day Twitter comes along, acquires Vine, and then shuts it down entirely, your business is gonna crumble, right? So there is a real danger in that, or other people might have picked the wrong platform. They decided to pick Google+ instead of Facebook or something, and a bunch of years’ effort crumbles. But if you focus on transferrable fundamentals like copywriting, for example, and you understand copy, you understand how to communicate to a market in a compelling way that will draw people to you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re teaching people how to do copywriting in the context of a medium like YouTube videos, or whether you’re teaching people how to use copywriting in an effective way in the medium of a postcard that is mailed to people in the mail. Right? Those are transferrable fundamentals.

I agree, I think that it’s about those larger, underlying skills that you can then apply to whatever medium it is, is the trending popular medium at the time, because they’re gonna come and go. People are saying it about Facebook now, they’re like, “Oh, Facebook will never leave!” C’mon. Please. Right. At some point, in the future maybe Facebook won’t be here so you want to make sure that everything you do is not entirely just this one, connected to this one platform.

John Jantsch: Well, and certainly, I mean the internet may go away even, right? But certainly you’ve gotta build your own real estate, if you’re gonna be an expert. You’ve gotta own that. I still see a lot of small business owners putting their stake in Facebook and certainly it’s an important awareness channel, maybe it’s even important place for you to convert folks, but you’re never gonna own it.

John Corcoran: Yeah, I remember I was working for a law firm, this was before I became an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur for about seven years now, but before then I was working for a law firm as a lawyer and I was writing regularly, blogging regularly for the law firm’s blog. Then I read some advice and it said ‘you need to own your own real estate, you need to not be a sharecropper.’ And this wasn’t just talking about law, but just as a writer, if you’re blogging for an employer’s blog, then when you leave, all that content’s gonna be left behind. So that’s when I thought, ‘okay, this is smart. I should start my own blog and create my own, then start to build my own land, so to speak.’ So I shifted everything and it really, it took me down a much different path and I’m glad that I did that.

John Jantsch: So, I know that you do a lot of work with folks on more effective networking. Again, networking, back in the day, it meant you went to the first Wednesday of the month meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and certainly that platform has changed dramatically, so how has that impacted networking in the fact that we can do so much now without ever getting in a car and driving over and giving somebody a hug?

John Corcoran: Right. Well, I still think there’s huge value in meeting face to face. I mean, I’ve known of you for years, but it wasn’t until October that we finally got to connect face to face, and you never build quite the same relationship with someone until you meet up with them face to face. So I think that’s critical. I think that’s important these days, to go out to meetups and conferences and industry socials and things like that in order to connect with people. On the other hand, we can connect just as easily with someone who lives in Kansas City or Paris or Dubai as easily as we can someone who lives down the road, thanks to the prevalence of social media platforms that give us an ability to connect with people. I think because of that our world is changing.

I think that we don’t have to engage in this old fashioned, going down to the Wednesday night, as you said, or Wednesday morning Chamber of Commerce meeting or whatever it is, where you’re essentially looking for a needle in a haystack. There might be 100 people there, if you’re lucky, at this chapter, and 99 of them might not be a good fit for you. It takes a lot of time, versus you can go and target a lot more, and a lot more focused way, lot more narrow way, you can target the specific market that you’re going after, and you can immerse yourself. I call it going after a big pile of needles instead of the needle in a haystack, you’ve got a big pile of needles and it’s just a lot more effective.

Imagine going to a conference with 10,000 of your perfect, ideal prospects. That is such a better, more effective use of your time, if you went to that once a year rather than just going down to your local Chamber of Commerce every month or every week or whatever. Not to just, I don’t want to just beat on Chamber of Commerce, but there are other business meetups of similar types, so I agree, I think that you can, if you’re smarter about it, you can target a more specific group and you don’t need to do this old-school networking that people think of when they think of the word networking.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I never enjoyed that.

John Corcoran: No, so many people don’t! They hate it!

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think you’re, but I do think that, to your original point, there’s nothing like meeting face to face. I think the one thing that is really great about what we have in the online tools is that you can do that face to face meetup and then that, in many cases, opens the door, the online tools then open the door to do some things maybe quicker than you, instead of waiting around till next year’s conference when we’re gonna see each other again, something like that.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. What we’re doing right now, I think everyone should have a podcast. I don’t even, you shouldn’t even care whether you’re getting listeners or not. Yeah, usually it’s nice for people to listen, but a podcast is such an effective tool for being able to connect with someone.

I was just having breakfast with my wife earlier today and was saying to [Sarah 00:11:55], “I think everyone should have a podcast,” because it gives you such a great tool to reach out, develop a relationship with the influencers in your field, or peers, or colleagues, or clients, or prospects. It just gives you an excuse to have a conversation. By the way, it doesn’t have to be for a podcast, it could be for an article that you’re writing, or it could be, you recorded it on video and you throw it up on YouTube or something like that. The point is to do it in an easy way where you’re gonna do it frequently enough and where you’re gonna be able to use it as an excuse to build or further a relationship even further down the road.

John Jantsch: Long time listeners to The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast will have heard me say, numerous times, that my podcast has actually been probably one of the biggest assets of my business. I do actually generate a significant ad revenue stream, but, today anyway, but when I first started, it allowed me to send an email to Seth Godin and say, “I’d like to promote your book, come in [crosstalk 00:12:51] next month, would you talk to me for 20 minutes?” And he would return my email. Whereas if I’d said, “Hey, I’d love to pick your brain for 20 minutes,” well, you know, we know where that would go.

John Corcoran: Right. “Hey, Seth, I’m gonna be in New York, would you meet me at Starbucks? Just take the train in. Just meet me at Starbucks and we’ll just get a cup of coffee.” Never gonna happen, right? But because of the podcast, because of your helping them, you’re promoting them, it’s a completely different conversation.

John Jantsch: And now, again, since we’re on this podcast topic, now I’ve been actually telling people, I think it’s the number one SEO play right now, to be a guest on podcasts. Because everybody’s been given the advice for the last couple years that to get links back to your site you’ve gotta do all this guest blogging and guest blogging is a real pain. You’ve got to write an article, you’ve got to pitch it to 2000 people to get one to say yes, in a lot of cases, but if you go on a podcast, that podcaster quite often is really, really happy to promote that show and put it out there and they’re probably gonna give you three or four links back, so that’s where I get to put in my ad for podcastbookers.com, which is a service I started just for that, just for that reason. We’re using it now as an SEO ploy.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. I mean, I-

John Jantsch: Isn’t that awesome? I just got an ad, right in the middle of the show. It was awesome.

John Corcoran: It was smooth as silk. Yeah, I mean, it’s such an effective strategy and it can, it is such a good use of your time, because we were talking beforehand, you could record it as a video and you could publish that on YouTube or some other platform; you can use D-audio, obviously, as a podcast on the different podcasting platforms. You can publish a blog post on your site every time that you do it, and I totally agree with you on guest posting strategy and I say that as someone who wrote, I don’t know; dozens, hundreds of guest posts when I first started out, when I was still building my presence online, including one on your site, years ago. I wrote one on your site years ago, and it is a ton of work. A lot of work, and wouldn’t you rather just pontificate and just speak your mind for a couple of minutes?

John Jantsch: Show up and throw up, for 20 minutes. It’s awesome. So, let’s go there, to that thought leader idea, because obviously that’s something that is a piece of what you’re teaching and helping people with. How do we do effective outreach today? Again, I think the podcast is a great way to do outreach, but I will tell you, I get five or six, probably closer to 10 a day, pitches from people that want to either guest post or want to do something or want me to talk about their product. It seems like there’s this, somebody has written a software program.

John Corcoran: Oh, I know.

John Jantsch: That sends out six emails for everyone. So how do we get away from that? Because that’s gotten so bad I don’t even look at them any more.

John Corcoran: I know, it is, there must be some software out there, right? They just plug in the name of the most recent episode, the guest on the most recent episode, the platitude about why they love that episode, transition into why they, either them or their client should be a guest on your podcast, and I get those same emails. It’s just like, it’s not that much additional effort in order to be a lot more effective. So the first thing I say is don’t just go out there pitching yourself. I did do that years ago, I think now it’s a lot less effective, but I did it at one point. I had an e-book out and I wanted to get myself on some shows, and it did work for a little while. But now I think it’s a lot less effective because anyone who’s been podcasting for longer than a week and a half is receiving a ton of these types of emails. I think a better approach is to deliver value first, long before you ever pitch yourself, or really never pitch yourself. Ideally you’d get to know the person and once they get to know you, they want to have you on, your podcast.

Or, start your own! Honestly, some people say, “aw, I don’t want to start my own podcast, that would be too time-consuming.” But which is more time-consuming? Sending a thousand emails in order to get effectively 10 guest spots? Or starting your own podcast, which if you delegate some of the other work of the actual running, the post-production, which I think you should, it’s not that time-consuming. It’s the same amount of time consumption as just normal conversation that you have with peers and colleagues and that sort of thing. And then that will lead to interviews.

John Jantsch: Well, and I always tell people I’ve been pitching podcasting to every kind of business. Obviously the experts get it, but if you sell software to medical practices, interview your doctors. They’re your customers. Or they’re your prospects. It is, it’s having conversations with your customers is never gonna hurt you, you’re gonna learn more about what you’re doing, they’re gonna become more loyal, they’re gonna get plugged in, they’re gonna tell their friends, “I was on this podcast.” So there’s so many reasons for ever business to do it, you’re absolutely right.

John Corcoran: And that’s how I first got started, actually, before it was even a podcast, I just started interviewing some of my past clients and current clients, and I remember, this was about six, seven years ago now, I had an entrepreneur that started a company that eventually went public. He was actually a pretty successful entrepreneur, but he hired me only to write like an hour’s worth of work to write a small little lease for a room he was renting out in his house. Today it would be handled by Airbnb, but back then I wrote a lease. I researched this guy, I was like, “Wow, this is a really interesting guy! I’d love to have him as a client, how can I get more?” So after I did that I said, “Hey, can I come interview you afterwards?” And I ended up interviewing him and I just literally published it on my blog. I think I transcribed it, put it on my blog, and then what do you know? Like a month or so later he ends up contacting me and saying, “Hey, is there anything, is there something else you can do? Can you help me with something else?” And I’m certain that that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me taking the relationship further by doing that interview.

So starting with your clients and your past clients and your prospects is a great place to start. You don’t need to reach out to the Seth Godins of the world, or the Tim Ferrises of the world, which is what everyone does, they try and get those sorts of people. You don’t need to do that. Maybe you do that eventually, but you don’t need to do that when you’re getting started.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about mentors. That’s a topic I haven’t really covered for a while. It seems like that idea, and maybe it’s because we don’t really need to go and curate a mentor relationship because we can have mentor relationships with anybody who has a podcast, maybe, I don’t know. But what’s your take on the value and process of mentorship?

John Corcoran: I think that the old-school notion of mentorship, as in it’s someone who is gonna take you under their wing, you’re gonna meet with them on a weekly basis, they’re gonna teach you to be a master craftsman or something, that’s not what people expect these days. I think you’re gonna scare someone off if you approach them and you say, “Hey, can you be my mentor?” Because they’re thinking, “oh man, this is gonna be a huge burden, huge responsibility.” But I’ve got lots of people who I would consider my mentor. They’re people who I go to from time to time, and I also try and keep the relationship one as much close to parity as possible. In other words, I want to deliver as much value to them as possible so that they want to help me. So that they want to turn around and give me advice. I think that’s a critical one. Look how you can help them. The worst thing you can do, if you want to be mentored, especially by someone who’s very successful in their career, very busy, is to try and get as much out of them as possible and to not deliver value to them.

I think delivering value to them is the way that you get mentorship these days, and I also want to just second what you said about ‘you can get mentorship from anything these days.’ From listening to a podcast, YouTube, books, that sort of thing, and actually you will annoy those successful people who have put out books, who’ve spoken on stage, who have content out there, who’ve put a lot of content out there. They’re trying to speak in a one-to-many capacity and get their message out. You send them an email for something that they’ve answered 100 different times through their blog, their speeches, and videos and all that kind of stuff, and they’re just gonna be annoyed by that. You have to be sure that you take advantage of all those resources that are out there.

John Jantsch: All right, another hot topic: mastermind groups. Again, I think they have tremendous value, and unfortunately it’s one of those things that I, you see the internet marketing crowd really sucking up, and so now it’s become a big business to run mastermind groups, but I think in their purest sense, and I believe that you actually have that as part of Rise 25, is that right?

John Corcoran: Yes, yes we do.

John Jantsch: I think in their purest sense, they can be extremely valuable, but how do you find and nurture that mastermind group..

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Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is sponsored by Podcast Bookers. Podcastbookers.com. Podcasts are really hot, right? But you know what’s also really hot? Appearing as a guest on one of the many, many podcasts out there. Think about it. Much easier than writing a guest blog post. You get some high quality content. You get great back links. People want to share that content. Maybe you can even transcribe that content. Being a guest on podcasts, getting yourself booked on podcasts is a really, really great SEO tactic, a great brand building tactic. Podcast Bookers can get you booked on two to three to four podcasts every single month on auto pilot. Go check it out. Podcastbookers.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is John Corcoran. He is a former writer in the White House for presidents … I knew I was going to mess that up, but anyway, I’ll start again. Presidential letters and messages during the Clinton administration and a speech writer in the California Governors Office during the Davis administration. And we’re not going to talk about politics because he was … I think you’re also a lawyer too, right John?

John Corcoran: That I am, yeah. Lots of reasons to hate me. Politics, lawyer.

John Jantsch: What a mess this show is going to be. So welcome. Thanks for joining me, John.

John Corcoran: I’m glad to be here, John.thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So you were … Last time I was out in Santa Barbara we got together. You, I think you paid for my dinner, which was awesome. And you told me a little bit about something that is somewhat new for you. And, we’ll kind of air all this out. But let’s start off by talking … Tell me a little bit about this Rise 25.

John Corcoran: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, so I, like many of your clients, was trading hours for dollars as a lawyer. And when you’re a lawyer you realize that you can only work on one client at a time. You can only charge as much as the market will bear and where do you go from there? And so long story, but got into blogging and podcasting and doing those sorts of things in order to expand my reach and eventually teamed up with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weiss. What we’ve been doing is helping other professional services business owners who were much like ourselves and did one-on-one type of work and help them to kind of make the shift to one to many so that they can free up more of their time and that they can impact a larger community of people.

John Jantsch: So, everyone today is being advised to become an expert in their field. How do we afford to have everyone be an expert? I mean, what does that even man anymore?

John Corcoran: Right. Yeah. Right. How do you become an expert? I don’t know that it would be possible for everyone to be viewed as an expert. Because then if everyone’s viewed as an expert there’s got to be someone that is at a higher level. But it certainly … What’s valuable, I think, is elevating your profile. Whether that means just in your local community. Whether that means something nationally. Whether that means expressing yourself through content. I know that you’re a big advocate of content. But I certainly think that establishing your bonafides as an authority and someone who knows your stuff in your field that’s never going to harm you, whether you decide that you just want more high quality one-on-one clients or whether you want to make the shift like you have with your business, or others have, like I have, into more of a leverage type of model where you’re serving people in a one-to-many capacity.

John Jantsch: So I’ve been doing this long enough, you see these things come and go. And it seems like all of a sudden the advice to carve out a very specific niche and just become and expert in that niche seems to have resurfaced lately with the online kind of Facebook advertising crowd. In your mind is that really one of the best paths to go down if you do want to sort of stand out and position yourself as an expert?

John Corcoran: You know, I think that it can be fraught with peril if you choose the wrong niche. But I do agree; I think that there are too many people who try and be everything to everyone, or something. But most people don’t start off that way. Most people start off with a particular expertise in one particular field and that also helps them get referred, which is a huge engine of growth, as you know. You wrote the book on it. It helps people to know what type of business they should send towards you. If you define your scope, if you say, “This is the type of person that I want to work with, this is a limited field.” Now, you and I both are somewhat generalist, right? And that we both, it’s not like you and I are both working with flower shop owners and yoga studio owners in only that niche; we’re working in wider areas. So I think you can always feel like, “aw, man! I need to narrow it even further.”

But I think that the bigger danger is when you’re way too broad and you’re just trying to serve anyone who comes in. Because then people just don’t know who you are. They don’t know who to refer to you, they don’t know what you stand for, what type of market you’re serving for. I think that’s the bigger danger for people.

John Jantsch: I think a lot of people, certainly the people that got burned when they became social media experts and all of a sudden we didn’t need social media experts any more. I think that’s, when people focus on a platform or something of that nature that can change, there’s a lot of danger in that. Or even, I think some cases even industries. The one thing I’ve always advocated is, if you get known as somebody who solves a certain kind of problem, that’s probably never going to go away. So for business owners, I like to say that we solve a certain type of problem, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years and that problem has never changed. The way we come at it maybe has changed, but we’re not really, we’re not kinda putting ourselves in that peril of getting, becoming obsolete. Because I don’t think problems will ever go away.

John Corcoran: I agree. Yeah, and if you become the expert in Vine, and one day Twitter comes along, acquires Vine, and then shuts it down entirely, your business is gonna crumble, right? So there is a real danger in that, or other people might have picked the wrong platform. They decided to pick Google+ instead of Facebook or something, and a bunch of years’ effort crumbles. But if you focus on transferrable fundamentals like copywriting, for example, and you understand copy, you understand how to communicate to a market in a compelling way that will draw people to you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re teaching people how to do copywriting in the context of a medium like YouTube videos, or whether you’re teaching people how to use copywriting in an effective way in the medium of a postcard that is mailed to people in the mail. Right? Those are transferrable fundamentals.

I agree, I think that it’s about those larger, underlying skills that you can then apply to whatever medium it is, is the trending popular medium at the time, because they’re gonna come and go. People are saying it about Facebook now, they’re like, “Oh, Facebook will never leave!” C’mon. Please. Right. At some point, in the future maybe Facebook won’t be here so you want to make sure that everything you do is not entirely just this one, connected to this one platform.

John Jantsch: Well, and certainly, I mean the internet may go away even, right? But certainly you’ve gotta build your own real estate, if you’re gonna be an expert. You’ve gotta own that. I still see a lot of small business owners putting their stake in Facebook and certainly it’s an important awareness channel, maybe it’s even important place for you to convert folks, but you’re never gonna own it.

John Corcoran: Yeah, I remember I was working for a law firm, this was before I became an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur for about seven years now, but before then I was working for a law firm as a lawyer and I was writing regularly, blogging regularly for the law firm’s blog. Then I read some advice and it said ‘you need to own your own real estate, you need to not be a sharecropper.’ And this wasn’t just talking about law, but just as a writer, if you’re blogging for an employer’s blog, then when you leave, all that content’s gonna be left behind. So that’s when I thought, ‘okay, this is smart. I should start my own blog and create my own, then start to build my own land, so to speak.’ So I shifted everything and it really, it took me down a much different path and I’m glad that I did that.

John Jantsch: So, I know that you do a lot of work with folks on more effective networking. Again, networking, back in the day, it meant you went to the first Wednesday of the month meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and certainly that platform has changed dramatically, so how has that impacted networking in the fact that we can do so much now without ever getting in a car and driving over and giving somebody a hug?

John Corcoran: Right. Well, I still think there’s huge value in meeting face to face. I mean, I’ve known of you for years, but it wasn’t until October that we finally got to connect face to face, and you never build quite the same relationship with someone until you meet up with them face to face. So I think that’s critical. I think that’s important these days, to go out to meetups and conferences and industry socials and things like that in order to connect with people. On the other hand, we can connect just as easily with someone who lives in Kansas City or Paris or Dubai as easily as we can someone who lives down the road, thanks to the prevalence of social media platforms that give us an ability to connect with people. I think because of that our world is changing.

I think that we don’t have to engage in this old fashioned, going down to the Wednesday night, as you said, or Wednesday morning Chamber of Commerce meeting or whatever it is, where you’re essentially looking for a needle in a haystack. There might be 100 people there, if you’re lucky, at this chapter, and 99 of them might not be a good fit for you. It takes a lot of time, versus you can go and target a lot more, and a lot more focused way, lot more narrow way, you can target the specific market that you’re going after, and you can immerse yourself. I call it going after a big pile of needles instead of the needle in a haystack, you’ve got a big pile of needles and it’s just a lot more effective.

Imagine going to a conference with 10,000 of your perfect, ideal prospects. That is such a better, more effective use of your time, if you went to that once a year rather than just going down to your local Chamber of Commerce every month or every week or whatever. Not to just, I don’t want to just beat on Chamber of Commerce, but there are other business meetups of similar types, so I agree, I think that you can, if you’re smarter about it, you can target a more specific group and you don’t need to do this old-school networking that people think of when they think of the word networking.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I never enjoyed that.

John Corcoran: No, so many people don’t! They hate it!

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think you’re, but I do think that, to your original point, there’s nothing like meeting face to face. I think the one thing that is really great about what we have in the online tools is that you can do that face to face meetup and then that, in many cases, opens the door, the online tools then open the door to do some things maybe quicker than you, instead of waiting around till next year’s conference when we’re gonna see each other again, something like that.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. What we’re doing right now, I think everyone should have a podcast. I don’t even, you shouldn’t even care whether you’re getting listeners or not. Yeah, usually it’s nice for people to listen, but a podcast is such an effective tool for being able to connect with someone.

I was just having breakfast with my wife earlier today and was saying to [Sarah 00:11:55], “I think everyone should have a podcast,” because it gives you such a great tool to reach out, develop a relationship with the influencers in your field, or peers, or colleagues, or clients, or prospects. It just gives you an excuse to have a conversation. By the way, it doesn’t have to be for a podcast, it could be for an article that you’re writing, or it could be, you recorded it on video and you throw it up on YouTube or something like that. The point is to do it in an easy way where you’re gonna do it frequently enough and where you’re gonna be able to use it as an excuse to build or further a relationship even further down the road.

John Jantsch: Long time listeners to The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast will have heard me say, numerous times, that my podcast has actually been probably one of the biggest assets of my business. I do actually generate a significant ad revenue stream, but, today anyway, but when I first started, it allowed me to send an email to Seth Godin and say, “I’d like to promote your book, come in [crosstalk 00:12:51] next month, would you talk to me for 20 minutes?” And he would return my email. Whereas if I’d said, “Hey, I’d love to pick your brain for 20 minutes,” well, you know, we know where that would go.

John Corcoran: Right. “Hey, Seth, I’m gonna be in New York, would you meet me at Starbucks? Just take the train in. Just meet me at Starbucks and we’ll just get a cup of coffee.” Never gonna happen, right? But because of the podcast, because of your helping them, you’re promoting them, it’s a completely different conversation.

John Jantsch: And now, again, since we’re on this podcast topic, now I’ve been actually telling people, I think it’s the number one SEO play right now, to be a guest on podcasts. Because everybody’s been given the advice for the last couple years that to get links back to your site you’ve gotta do all this guest blogging and guest blogging is a real pain. You’ve got to write an article, you’ve got to pitch it to 2000 people to get one to say yes, in a lot of cases, but if you go on a podcast, that podcaster quite often is really, really happy to promote that show and put it out there and they’re probably gonna give you three or four links back, so that’s where I get to put in my ad for podcastbookers.com, which is a service I started just for that, just for that reason. We’re using it now as an SEO ploy.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. I mean, I-

John Jantsch: Isn’t that awesome? I just got an ad, right in the middle of the show. It was awesome.

John Corcoran: It was smooth as silk. Yeah, I mean, it’s such an effective strategy and it can, it is such a good use of your time, because we were talking beforehand, you could record it as a video and you could publish that on YouTube or some other platform; you can use D-audio, obviously, as a podcast on the different podcasting platforms. You can publish a blog post on your site every time that you do it, and I totally agree with you on guest posting strategy and I say that as someone who wrote, I don’t know; dozens, hundreds of guest posts when I first started out, when I was still building my presence online, including one on your site, years ago. I wrote one on your site years ago, and it is a ton of work. A lot of work, and wouldn’t you rather just pontificate and just speak your mind for a couple of minutes?

John Jantsch: Show up and throw up, for 20 minutes. It’s awesome. So, let’s go there, to that thought leader idea, because obviously that’s something that is a piece of what you’re teaching and helping people with. How do we do effective outreach today? Again, I think the podcast is a great way to do outreach, but I will tell you, I get five or six, probably closer to 10 a day, pitches from people that want to either guest post or want to do something or want me to talk about their product. It seems like there’s this, somebody has written a software program.

John Corcoran: Oh, I know.

John Jantsch: That sends out six emails for everyone. So how do we get away from that? Because that’s gotten so bad I don’t even look at them any more.

John Corcoran: I know, it is, there must be some software out there, right? They just plug in the name of the most recent episode, the guest on the most recent episode, the platitude about why they love that episode, transition into why they, either them or their client should be a guest on your podcast, and I get those same emails. It’s just like, it’s not that much additional effort in order to be a lot more effective. So the first thing I say is don’t just go out there pitching yourself. I did do that years ago, I think now it’s a lot less effective, but I did it at one point. I had an e-book out and I wanted to get myself on some shows, and it did work for a little while. But now I think it’s a lot less effective because anyone who’s been podcasting for longer than a week and a half is receiving a ton of these types of emails. I think a better approach is to deliver value first, long before you ever pitch yourself, or really never pitch yourself. Ideally you’d get to know the person and once they get to know you, they want to have you on, your podcast.

Or, start your own! Honestly, some people say, “aw, I don’t want to start my own podcast, that would be too time-consuming.” But which is more time-consuming? Sending a thousand emails in order to get effectively 10 guest spots? Or starting your own podcast, which if you delegate some of the other work of the actual running, the post-production, which I think you should, it’s not that time-consuming. It’s the same amount of time consumption as just normal conversation that you have with peers and colleagues and that sort of thing. And then that will lead to interviews.

John Jantsch: Well, and I always tell people I’ve been pitching podcasting to every kind of business. Obviously the experts get it, but if you sell software to medical practices, interview your doctors. They’re your customers. Or they’re your prospects. It is, it’s having conversations with your customers is never gonna hurt you, you’re gonna learn more about what you’re doing, they’re gonna become more loyal, they’re gonna get plugged in, they’re gonna tell their friends, “I was on this podcast.” So there’s so many reasons for ever business to do it, you’re absolutely right.

John Corcoran: And that’s how I first got started, actually, before it was even a podcast, I just started interviewing some of my past clients and current clients, and I remember, this was about six, seven years ago now, I had an entrepreneur that started a company that eventually went public. He was actually a pretty successful entrepreneur, but he hired me only to write like an hour’s worth of work to write a small little lease for a room he was renting out in his house. Today it would be handled by Airbnb, but back then I wrote a lease. I researched this guy, I was like, “Wow, this is a really interesting guy! I’d love to have him as a client, how can I get more?” So after I did that I said, “Hey, can I come interview you afterwards?” And I ended up interviewing him and I just literally published it on my blog. I think I transcribed it, put it on my blog, and then what do you know? Like a month or so later he ends up contacting me and saying, “Hey, is there anything, is there something else you can do? Can you help me with something else?” And I’m certain that that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me taking the relationship further by doing that interview.

So starting with your clients and your past clients and your prospects is a great place to start. You don’t need to reach out to the Seth Godins of the world, or the Tim Ferrises of the world, which is what everyone does, they try and get those sorts of people. You don’t need to do that. Maybe you do that eventually, but you don’t need to do that when you’re getting started.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about mentors. That’s a topic I haven’t really covered for a while. It seems like that idea, and maybe it’s because we don’t really need to go and curate a mentor relationship because we can have mentor relationships with anybody who has a podcast, maybe, I don’t know. But what’s your take on the value and process of mentorship?

John Corcoran: I think that the old-school notion of mentorship, as in it’s someone who is gonna take you under their wing, you’re gonna meet with them on a weekly basis, they’re gonna teach you to be a master craftsman or something, that’s not what people expect these days. I think you’re gonna scare someone off if you approach them and you say, “Hey, can you be my mentor?” Because they’re thinking, “oh man, this is gonna be a huge burden, huge responsibility.” But I’ve got lots of people who I would consider my mentor. They’re people who I go to from time to time, and I also try and keep the relationship one as much close to parity as possible. In other words, I want to deliver as much value to them as possible so that they want to help me. So that they want to turn around and give me advice. I think that’s a critical one. Look how you can help them. The worst thing you can do, if you want to be mentored, especially by someone who’s very successful in their career, very busy, is to try and get as much out of them as possible and to not deliver value to them.

I think delivering value to them is the way that you get mentorship these days, and I also want to just second what you said about ‘you can get mentorship from anything these days.’ From listening to a podcast, YouTube, books, that sort of thing, and actually you will annoy those successful people who have put out books, who’ve spoken on stage, who have content out there, who’ve put a lot of content out there. They’re trying to speak in a one-to-many capacity and get their message out. You send them an email for something that they’ve answered 100 different times through their blog, their speeches, and videos and all that kind of stuff, and they’re just gonna be annoyed by that. You have to be sure that you take advantage of all those resources that are out there.

John Jantsch: All right, another hot topic: mastermind groups. Again, I think they have tremendous value, and unfortunately it’s one of those things that I, you see the internet marketing crowd really sucking up, and so now it’s become a big business to run mastermind groups, but I think in their purest sense, and I believe that you actually have that as part of Rise 25, is that right?

John Corcoran: Yes, yes we do.

John Jantsch: I think in their purest sense, they can be extremely valuable, but how do you find and nurture that mastermind group..

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Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is sponsored by Podcast Bookers. Podcastbookers.com. Podcasts are really hot, right? But you know what’s also really hot? Appearing as a guest on one of the many, many podcasts out there. Think about it. Much easier than writing a guest blog post. You get some high quality content. You get great back links. People want to share that content. Maybe you can even transcribe that content. Being a guest on podcasts, getting yourself booked on podcasts is a really, really great SEO tactic, a great brand building tactic. Podcast Bookers can get you booked on two to three to four podcasts every single month on auto pilot. Go check it out. Podcastbookers.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is John Corcoran. He is a former writer in the White House for presidents … I knew I was going to mess that up, but anyway, I’ll start again. Presidential letters and messages during the Clinton administration and a speech writer in the California Governors Office during the Davis administration. And we’re not going to talk about politics because he was … I think you’re also a lawyer too, right John?

John Corcoran: That I am, yeah. Lots of reasons to hate me. Politics, lawyer.

John Jantsch: What a mess this show is going to be. So welcome. Thanks for joining me, John.

John Corcoran: I’m glad to be here, John.thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So you were … Last time I was out in Santa Barbara we got together. You, I think you paid for my dinner, which was awesome. And you told me a little bit about something that is somewhat new for you. And, we’ll kind of air all this out. But let’s start off by talking … Tell me a little bit about this Rise 25.

John Corcoran: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, so I, like many of your clients, was trading hours for dollars as a lawyer. And when you’re a lawyer you realize that you can only work on one client at a time. You can only charge as much as the market will bear and where do you go from there? And so long story, but got into blogging and podcasting and doing those sorts of things in order to expand my reach and eventually teamed up with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weiss. What we’ve been doing is helping other professional services business owners who were much like ourselves and did one-on-one type of work and help them to kind of make the shift to one to many so that they can free up more of their time and that they can impact a larger community of people.

John Jantsch: So, everyone today is being advised to become an expert in their field. How do we afford to have everyone be an expert? I mean, what does that even man anymore?

John Corcoran: Right. Yeah. Right. How do you become an expert? I don’t know that it would be possible for everyone to be viewed as an expert. Because then if everyone’s viewed as an expert there’s got to be someone that is at a higher level. But it certainly … What’s valuable, I think, is elevating your profile. Whether that means just in your local community. Whether that means something nationally. Whether that means expressing yourself through content. I know that you’re a big advocate of content. But I certainly think that establishing your bonafides as an authority and someone who knows your stuff in your field that’s never going to harm you, whether you decide that you just want more high quality one-on-one clients or whether you want to make the shift like you have with your business, or others have, like I have, into more of a leverage type of model where you’re serving people in a one-to-many capacity.

John Jantsch: So I’ve been doing this long enough, you see these things come and go. And it seems like all of a sudden the advice to carve out a very specific niche and just become and expert in that niche seems to have resurfaced lately with the online kind of Facebook advertising crowd. In your mind is that really one of the best paths to go down if you do want to sort of stand out and position yourself as an expert?

John Corcoran: You know, I think that it can be fraught with peril if you choose the wrong niche. But I do agree; I think that there are too many people who try and be everything to everyone, or something. But most people don’t start off that way. Most people start off with a particular expertise in one particular field and that also helps them get referred, which is a huge engine of growth, as you know. You wrote the book on it. It helps people to know what type of business they should send towards you. If you define your scope, if you say, “This is the type of person that I want to work with, this is a limited field.” Now, you and I both are somewhat generalist, right? And that we both, it’s not like you and I are both working with flower shop owners and yoga studio owners in only that niche; we’re working in wider areas. So I think you can always feel like, “aw, man! I need to narrow it even further.”

But I think that the bigger danger is when you’re way too broad and you’re just trying to serve anyone who comes in. Because then people just don’t know who you are. They don’t know who to refer to you, they don’t know what you stand for, what type of market you’re serving for. I think that’s the bigger danger for people.

John Jantsch: I think a lot of people, certainly the people that got burned when they became social media experts and all of a sudden we didn’t need social media experts any more. I think that’s, when people focus on a platform or something of that nature that can change, there’s a lot of danger in that. Or even, I think some cases even industries. The one thing I’ve always advocated is, if you get known as somebody who solves a certain kind of problem, that’s probably never going to go away. So for business owners, I like to say that we solve a certain type of problem, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years and that problem has never changed. The way we come at it maybe has changed, but we’re not really, we’re not kinda putting ourselves in that peril of getting, becoming obsolete. Because I don’t think problems will ever go away.

John Corcoran: I agree. Yeah, and if you become the expert in Vine, and one day Twitter comes along, acquires Vine, and then shuts it down entirely, your business is gonna crumble, right? So there is a real danger in that, or other people might have picked the wrong platform. They decided to pick Google+ instead of Facebook or something, and a bunch of years’ effort crumbles. But if you focus on transferrable fundamentals like copywriting, for example, and you understand copy, you understand how to communicate to a market in a compelling way that will draw people to you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re teaching people how to do copywriting in the context of a medium like YouTube videos, or whether you’re teaching people how to use copywriting in an effective way in the medium of a postcard that is mailed to people in the mail. Right? Those are transferrable fundamentals.

I agree, I think that it’s about those larger, underlying skills that you can then apply to whatever medium it is, is the trending popular medium at the time, because they’re gonna come and go. People are saying it about Facebook now, they’re like, “Oh, Facebook will never leave!” C’mon. Please. Right. At some point, in the future maybe Facebook won’t be here so you want to make sure that everything you do is not entirely just this one, connected to this one platform.

John Jantsch: Well, and certainly, I mean the internet may go away even, right? But certainly you’ve gotta build your own real estate, if you’re gonna be an expert. You’ve gotta own that. I still see a lot of small business owners putting their stake in Facebook and certainly it’s an important awareness channel, maybe it’s even important place for you to convert folks, but you’re never gonna own it.

John Corcoran: Yeah, I remember I was working for a law firm, this was before I became an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur for about seven years now, but before then I was working for a law firm as a lawyer and I was writing regularly, blogging regularly for the law firm’s blog. Then I read some advice and it said ‘you need to own your own real estate, you need to not be a sharecropper.’ And this wasn’t just talking about law, but just as a writer, if you’re blogging for an employer’s blog, then when you leave, all that content’s gonna be left behind. So that’s when I thought, ‘okay, this is smart. I should start my own blog and create my own, then start to build my own land, so to speak.’ So I shifted everything and it really, it took me down a much different path and I’m glad that I did that.

John Jantsch: So, I know that you do a lot of work with folks on more effective networking. Again, networking, back in the day, it meant you went to the first Wednesday of the month meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and certainly that platform has changed dramatically, so how has that impacted networking in the fact that we can do so much now without ever getting in a car and driving over and giving somebody a hug?

John Corcoran: Right. Well, I still think there’s huge value in meeting face to face. I mean, I’ve known of you for years, but it wasn’t until October that we finally got to connect face to face, and you never build quite the same relationship with someone until you meet up with them face to face. So I think that’s critical. I think that’s important these days, to go out to meetups and conferences and industry socials and things like that in order to connect with people. On the other hand, we can connect just as easily with someone who lives in Kansas City or Paris or Dubai as easily as we can someone who lives down the road, thanks to the prevalence of social media platforms that give us an ability to connect with people. I think because of that our world is changing.

I think that we don’t have to engage in this old fashioned, going down to the Wednesday night, as you said, or Wednesday morning Chamber of Commerce meeting or whatever it is, where you’re essentially looking for a needle in a haystack. There might be 100 people there, if you’re lucky, at this chapter, and 99 of them might not be a good fit for you. It takes a lot of time, versus you can go and target a lot more, and a lot more focused way, lot more narrow way, you can target the specific market that you’re going after, and you can immerse yourself. I call it going after a big pile of needles instead of the needle in a haystack, you’ve got a big pile of needles and it’s just a lot more effective.

Imagine going to a conference with 10,000 of your perfect, ideal prospects. That is such a better, more effective use of your time, if you went to that once a year rather than just going down to your local Chamber of Commerce every month or every week or whatever. Not to just, I don’t want to just beat on Chamber of Commerce, but there are other business meetups of similar types, so I agree, I think that you can, if you’re smarter about it, you can target a more specific group and you don’t need to do this old-school networking that people think of when they think of the word networking.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I never enjoyed that.

John Corcoran: No, so many people don’t! They hate it!

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think you’re, but I do think that, to your original point, there’s nothing like meeting face to face. I think the one thing that is really great about what we have in the online tools is that you can do that face to face meetup and then that, in many cases, opens the door, the online tools then open the door to do some things maybe quicker than you, instead of waiting around till next year’s conference when we’re gonna see each other again, something like that.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. What we’re doing right now, I think everyone should have a podcast. I don’t even, you shouldn’t even care whether you’re getting listeners or not. Yeah, usually it’s nice for people to listen, but a podcast is such an effective tool for being able to connect with someone.

I was just having breakfast with my wife earlier today and was saying to [Sarah 00:11:55], “I think everyone should have a podcast,” because it gives you such a great tool to reach out, develop a relationship with the influencers in your field, or peers, or colleagues, or clients, or prospects. It just gives you an excuse to have a conversation. By the way, it doesn’t have to be for a podcast, it could be for an article that you’re writing, or it could be, you recorded it on video and you throw it up on YouTube or something like that. The point is to do it in an easy way where you’re gonna do it frequently enough and where you’re gonna be able to use it as an excuse to build or further a relationship even further down the road.

John Jantsch: Long time listeners to The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast will have heard me say, numerous times, that my podcast has actually been probably one of the biggest assets of my business. I do actually generate a significant ad revenue stream, but, today anyway, but when I first started, it allowed me to send an email to Seth Godin and say, “I’d like to promote your book, come in [crosstalk 00:12:51] next month, would you talk to me for 20 minutes?” And he would return my email. Whereas if I’d said, “Hey, I’d love to pick your brain for 20 minutes,” well, you know, we know where that would go.

John Corcoran: Right. “Hey, Seth, I’m gonna be in New York, would you meet me at Starbucks? Just take the train in. Just meet me at Starbucks and we’ll just get a cup of coffee.” Never gonna happen, right? But because of the podcast, because of your helping them, you’re promoting them, it’s a completely different conversation.

John Jantsch: And now, again, since we’re on this podcast topic, now I’ve been actually telling people, I think it’s the number one SEO play right now, to be a guest on podcasts. Because everybody’s been given the advice for the last couple years that to get links back to your site you’ve gotta do all this guest blogging and guest blogging is a real pain. You’ve got to write an article, you’ve got to pitch it to 2000 people to get one to say yes, in a lot of cases, but if you go on a podcast, that podcaster quite often is really, really happy to promote that show and put it out there and they’re probably gonna give you three or four links back, so that’s where I get to put in my ad for podcastbookers.com, which is a service I started just for that, just for that reason. We’re using it now as an SEO ploy.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. I mean, I-

John Jantsch: Isn’t that awesome? I just got an ad, right in the middle of the show. It was awesome.

John Corcoran: It was smooth as silk. Yeah, I mean, it’s such an effective strategy and it can, it is such a good use of your time, because we were talking beforehand, you could record it as a video and you could publish that on YouTube or some other platform; you can use D-audio, obviously, as a podcast on the different podcasting platforms. You can publish a blog post on your site every time that you do it, and I totally agree with you on guest posting strategy and I say that as someone who wrote, I don’t know; dozens, hundreds of guest posts when I first started out, when I was still building my presence online, including one on your site, years ago. I wrote one on your site years ago, and it is a ton of work. A lot of work, and wouldn’t you rather just pontificate and just speak your mind for a couple of minutes?

John Jantsch: Show up and throw up, for 20 minutes. It’s awesome. So, let’s go there, to that thought leader idea, because obviously that’s something that is a piece of what you’re teaching and helping people with. How do we do effective outreach today? Again, I think the podcast is a great way to do outreach, but I will tell you, I get five or six, probably closer to 10 a day, pitches from people that want to either guest post or want to do something or want me to talk about their product. It seems like there’s this, somebody has written a software program.

John Corcoran: Oh, I know.

John Jantsch: That sends out six emails for everyone. So how do we get away from that? Because that’s gotten so bad I don’t even look at them any more.

John Corcoran: I know, it is, there must be some software out there, right? They just plug in the name of the most recent episode, the guest on the most recent episode, the platitude about why they love that episode, transition into why they, either them or their client should be a guest on your podcast, and I get those same emails. It’s just like, it’s not that much additional effort in order to be a lot more effective. So the first thing I say is don’t just go out there pitching yourself. I did do that years ago, I think now it’s a lot less effective, but I did it at one point. I had an e-book out and I wanted to get myself on some shows, and it did work for a little while. But now I think it’s a lot less effective because anyone who’s been podcasting for longer than a week and a half is receiving a ton of these types of emails. I think a better approach is to deliver value first, long before you ever pitch yourself, or really never pitch yourself. Ideally you’d get to know the person and once they get to know you, they want to have you on, your podcast.

Or, start your own! Honestly, some people say, “aw, I don’t want to start my own podcast, that would be too time-consuming.” But which is more time-consuming? Sending a thousand emails in order to get effectively 10 guest spots? Or starting your own podcast, which if you delegate some of the other work of the actual running, the post-production, which I think you should, it’s not that time-consuming. It’s the same amount of time consumption as just normal conversation that you have with peers and colleagues and that sort of thing. And then that will lead to interviews.

John Jantsch: Well, and I always tell people I’ve been pitching podcasting to every kind of business. Obviously the experts get it, but if you sell software to medical practices, interview your doctors. They’re your customers. Or they’re your prospects. It is, it’s having conversations with your customers is never gonna hurt you, you’re gonna learn more about what you’re doing, they’re gonna become more loyal, they’re gonna get plugged in, they’re gonna tell their friends, “I was on this podcast.” So there’s so many reasons for ever business to do it, you’re absolutely right.

John Corcoran: And that’s how I first got started, actually, before it was even a podcast, I just started interviewing some of my past clients and current clients, and I remember, this was about six, seven years ago now, I had an entrepreneur that started a company that eventually went public. He was actually a pretty successful entrepreneur, but he hired me only to write like an hour’s worth of work to write a small little lease for a room he was renting out in his house. Today it would be handled by Airbnb, but back then I wrote a lease. I researched this guy, I was like, “Wow, this is a really interesting guy! I’d love to have him as a client, how can I get more?” So after I did that I said, “Hey, can I come interview you afterwards?” And I ended up interviewing him and I just literally published it on my blog. I think I transcribed it, put it on my blog, and then what do you know? Like a month or so later he ends up contacting me and saying, “Hey, is there anything, is there something else you can do? Can you help me with something else?” And I’m certain that that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me taking the relationship further by doing that interview.

So starting with your clients and your past clients and your prospects is a great place to start. You don’t need to reach out to the Seth Godins of the world, or the Tim Ferrises of the world, which is what everyone does, they try and get those sorts of people. You don’t need to do that. Maybe you do that eventually, but you don’t need to do that when you’re getting started.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about mentors. That’s a topic I haven’t really covered for a while. It seems like that idea, and maybe it’s because we don’t really need to go and curate a mentor relationship because we can have mentor relationships with anybody who has a podcast, maybe, I don’t know. But what’s your take on the value and process of mentorship?

John Corcoran: I think that the old-school notion of mentorship, as in it’s someone who is gonna take you under their wing, you’re gonna meet with them on a weekly basis, they’re gonna teach you to be a master craftsman or something, that’s not what people expect these days. I think you’re gonna scare someone off if you approach them and you say, “Hey, can you be my mentor?” Because they’re thinking, “oh man, this is gonna be a huge burden, huge responsibility.” But I’ve got lots of people who I would consider my mentor. They’re people who I go to from time to time, and I also try and keep the relationship one as much close to parity as possible. In other words, I want to deliver as much value to them as possible so that they want to help me. So that they want to turn around and give me advice. I think that’s a critical one. Look how you can help them. The worst thing you can do, if you want to be mentored, especially by someone who’s very successful in their career, very busy, is to try and get as much out of them as possible and to not deliver value to them.

I think delivering value to them is the way that you get mentorship these days, and I also want to just second what you said about ‘you can get mentorship from anything these days.’ From listening to a podcast, YouTube, books, that sort of thing, and actually you will annoy those successful people who have put out books, who’ve spoken on stage, who have content out there, who’ve put a lot of content out there. They’re trying to speak in a one-to-many capacity and get their message out. You send them an email for something that they’ve answered 100 different times through their blog, their speeches, and videos and all that kind of stuff, and they’re just gonna be annoyed by that. You have to be sure that you take advantage of all those resources that are out there.

John Jantsch: All right, another hot topic: mastermind groups. Again, I think they have tremendous value, and unfortunately it’s one of those things that I, you see the internet marketing crowd really sucking up, and so now it’s become a big business to run mastermind groups, but I think in their purest sense, and I believe that you actually have that as part of Rise 25, is that right?

John Corcoran: Yes, yes we do.

John Jantsch: I think in their purest sense, they can be extremely valuable, but how do you find and nurture that mastermind group..

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Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is sponsored by Podcast Bookers. Podcastbookers.com. Podcasts are really hot, right? But you know what’s also really hot? Appearing as a guest on one of the many, many podcasts out there. Think about it. Much easier than writing a guest blog post. You get some high quality content. You get great back links. People want to share that content. Maybe you can even transcribe that content. Being a guest on podcasts, getting yourself booked on podcasts is a really, really great SEO tactic, a great brand building tactic. Podcast Bookers can get you booked on two to three to four podcasts every single month on auto pilot. Go check it out. Podcastbookers.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is John Corcoran. He is a former writer in the White House for presidents … I knew I was going to mess that up, but anyway, I’ll start again. Presidential letters and messages during the Clinton administration and a speech writer in the California Governors Office during the Davis administration. And we’re not going to talk about politics because he was … I think you’re also a lawyer too, right John?

John Corcoran: That I am, yeah. Lots of reasons to hate me. Politics, lawyer.

John Jantsch: What a mess this show is going to be. So welcome. Thanks for joining me, John.

John Corcoran: I’m glad to be here, John.thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So you were … Last time I was out in Santa Barbara we got together. You, I think you paid for my dinner, which was awesome. And you told me a little bit about something that is somewhat new for you. And, we’ll kind of air all this out. But let’s start off by talking … Tell me a little bit about this Rise 25.

John Corcoran: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, so I, like many of your clients, was trading hours for dollars as a lawyer. And when you’re a lawyer you realize that you can only work on one client at a time. You can only charge as much as the market will bear and where do you go from there? And so long story, but got into blogging and podcasting and doing those sorts of things in order to expand my reach and eventually teamed up with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weiss. What we’ve been doing is helping other professional services business owners who were much like ourselves and did one-on-one type of work and help them to kind of make the shift to one to many so that they can free up more of their time and that they can impact a larger community of people.

John Jantsch: So, everyone today is being advised to become an expert in their field. How do we afford to have everyone be an expert? I mean, what does that even man anymore?

John Corcoran: Right. Yeah. Right. How do you become an expert? I don’t know that it would be possible for everyone to be viewed as an expert. Because then if everyone’s viewed as an expert there’s got to be someone that is at a higher level. But it certainly … What’s valuable, I think, is elevating your profile. Whether that means just in your local community. Whether that means something nationally. Whether that means expressing yourself through content. I know that you’re a big advocate of content. But I certainly think that establishing your bonafides as an authority and someone who knows your stuff in your field that’s never going to harm you, whether you decide that you just want more high quality one-on-one clients or whether you want to make the shift like you have with your business, or others have, like I have, into more of a leverage type of model where you’re serving people in a one-to-many capacity.

John Jantsch: So I’ve been doing this long enough, you see these things come and go. And it seems like all of a sudden the advice to carve out a very specific niche and just become and expert in that niche seems to have resurfaced lately with the online kind of Facebook advertising crowd. In your mind is that really one of the best paths to go down if you do want to sort of stand out and position yourself as an expert?

John Corcoran: You know, I think that it can be fraught with peril if you choose the wrong niche. But I do agree; I think that there are too many people who try and be everything to everyone, or something. But most people don’t start off that way. Most people start off with a particular expertise in one particular field and that also helps them get referred, which is a huge engine of growth, as you know. You wrote the book on it. It helps people to know what type of business they should send towards you. If you define your scope, if you say, “This is the type of person that I want to work with, this is a limited field.” Now, you and I both are somewhat generalist, right? And that we both, it’s not like you and I are both working with flower shop owners and yoga studio owners in only that niche; we’re working in wider areas. So I think you can always feel like, “aw, man! I need to narrow it even further.”

But I think that the bigger danger is when you’re way too broad and you’re just trying to serve anyone who comes in. Because then people just don’t know who you are. They don’t know who to refer to you, they don’t know what you stand for, what type of market you’re serving for. I think that’s the bigger danger for people.

John Jantsch: I think a lot of people, certainly the people that got burned when they became social media experts and all of a sudden we didn’t need social media experts any more. I think that’s, when people focus on a platform or something of that nature that can change, there’s a lot of danger in that. Or even, I think some cases even industries. The one thing I’ve always advocated is, if you get known as somebody who solves a certain kind of problem, that’s probably never going to go away. So for business owners, I like to say that we solve a certain type of problem, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years and that problem has never changed. The way we come at it maybe has changed, but we’re not really, we’re not kinda putting ourselves in that peril of getting, becoming obsolete. Because I don’t think problems will ever go away.

John Corcoran: I agree. Yeah, and if you become the expert in Vine, and one day Twitter comes along, acquires Vine, and then shuts it down entirely, your business is gonna crumble, right? So there is a real danger in that, or other people might have picked the wrong platform. They decided to pick Google+ instead of Facebook or something, and a bunch of years’ effort crumbles. But if you focus on transferrable fundamentals like copywriting, for example, and you understand copy, you understand how to communicate to a market in a compelling way that will draw people to you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re teaching people how to do copywriting in the context of a medium like YouTube videos, or whether you’re teaching people how to use copywriting in an effective way in the medium of a postcard that is mailed to people in the mail. Right? Those are transferrable fundamentals.

I agree, I think that it’s about those larger, underlying skills that you can then apply to whatever medium it is, is the trending popular medium at the time, because they’re gonna come and go. People are saying it about Facebook now, they’re like, “Oh, Facebook will never leave!” C’mon. Please. Right. At some point, in the future maybe Facebook won’t be here so you want to make sure that everything you do is not entirely just this one, connected to this one platform.

John Jantsch: Well, and certainly, I mean the internet may go away even, right? But certainly you’ve gotta build your own real estate, if you’re gonna be an expert. You’ve gotta own that. I still see a lot of small business owners putting their stake in Facebook and certainly it’s an important awareness channel, maybe it’s even important place for you to convert folks, but you’re never gonna own it.

John Corcoran: Yeah, I remember I was working for a law firm, this was before I became an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur for about seven years now, but before then I was working for a law firm as a lawyer and I was writing regularly, blogging regularly for the law firm’s blog. Then I read some advice and it said ‘you need to own your own real estate, you need to not be a sharecropper.’ And this wasn’t just talking about law, but just as a writer, if you’re blogging for an employer’s blog, then when you leave, all that content’s gonna be left behind. So that’s when I thought, ‘okay, this is smart. I should start my own blog and create my own, then start to build my own land, so to speak.’ So I shifted everything and it really, it took me down a much different path and I’m glad that I did that.

John Jantsch: So, I know that you do a lot of work with folks on more effective networking. Again, networking, back in the day, it meant you went to the first Wednesday of the month meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and certainly that platform has changed dramatically, so how has that impacted networking in the fact that we can do so much now without ever getting in a car and driving over and giving somebody a hug?

John Corcoran: Right. Well, I still think there’s huge value in meeting face to face. I mean, I’ve known of you for years, but it wasn’t until October that we finally got to connect face to face, and you never build quite the same relationship with someone until you meet up with them face to face. So I think that’s critical. I think that’s important these days, to go out to meetups and conferences and industry socials and things like that in order to connect with people. On the other hand, we can connect just as easily with someone who lives in Kansas City or Paris or Dubai as easily as we can someone who lives down the road, thanks to the prevalence of social media platforms that give us an ability to connect with people. I think because of that our world is changing.

I think that we don’t have to engage in this old fashioned, going down to the Wednesday night, as you said, or Wednesday morning Chamber of Commerce meeting or whatever it is, where you’re essentially looking for a needle in a haystack. There might be 100 people there, if you’re lucky, at this chapter, and 99 of them might not be a good fit for you. It takes a lot of time, versus you can go and target a lot more, and a lot more focused way, lot more narrow way, you can target the specific market that you’re going after, and you can immerse yourself. I call it going after a big pile of needles instead of the needle in a haystack, you’ve got a big pile of needles and it’s just a lot more effective.

Imagine going to a conference with 10,000 of your perfect, ideal prospects. That is such a better, more effective use of your time, if you went to that once a year rather than just going down to your local Chamber of Commerce every month or every week or whatever. Not to just, I don’t want to just beat on Chamber of Commerce, but there are other business meetups of similar types, so I agree, I think that you can, if you’re smarter about it, you can target a more specific group and you don’t need to do this old-school networking that people think of when they think of the word networking.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I never enjoyed that.

John Corcoran: No, so many people don’t! They hate it!

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think you’re, but I do think that, to your original point, there’s nothing like meeting face to face. I think the one thing that is really great about what we have in the online tools is that you can do that face to face meetup and then that, in many cases, opens the door, the online tools then open the door to do some things maybe quicker than you, instead of waiting around till next year’s conference when we’re gonna see each other again, something like that.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. What we’re doing right now, I think everyone should have a podcast. I don’t even, you shouldn’t even care whether you’re getting listeners or not. Yeah, usually it’s nice for people to listen, but a podcast is such an effective tool for being able to connect with someone.

I was just having breakfast with my wife earlier today and was saying to [Sarah 00:11:55], “I think everyone should have a podcast,” because it gives you such a great tool to reach out, develop a relationship with the influencers in your field, or peers, or colleagues, or clients, or prospects. It just gives you an excuse to have a conversation. By the way, it doesn’t have to be for a podcast, it could be for an article that you’re writing, or it could be, you recorded it on video and you throw it up on YouTube or something like that. The point is to do it in an easy way where you’re gonna do it frequently enough and where you’re gonna be able to use it as an excuse to build or further a relationship even further down the road.

John Jantsch: Long time listeners to The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast will have heard me say, numerous times, that my podcast has actually been probably one of the biggest assets of my business. I do actually generate a significant ad revenue stream, but, today anyway, but when I first started, it allowed me to send an email to Seth Godin and say, “I’d like to promote your book, come in [crosstalk 00:12:51] next month, would you talk to me for 20 minutes?” And he would return my email. Whereas if I’d said, “Hey, I’d love to pick your brain for 20 minutes,” well, you know, we know where that would go.

John Corcoran: Right. “Hey, Seth, I’m gonna be in New York, would you meet me at Starbucks? Just take the train in. Just meet me at Starbucks and we’ll just get a cup of coffee.” Never gonna happen, right? But because of the podcast, because of your helping them, you’re promoting them, it’s a completely different conversation.

John Jantsch: And now, again, since we’re on this podcast topic, now I’ve been actually telling people, I think it’s the number one SEO play right now, to be a guest on podcasts. Because everybody’s been given the advice for the last couple years that to get links back to your site you’ve gotta do all this guest blogging and guest blogging is a real pain. You’ve got to write an article, you’ve got to pitch it to 2000 people to get one to say yes, in a lot of cases, but if you go on a podcast, that podcaster quite often is really, really happy to promote that show and put it out there and they’re probably gonna give you three or four links back, so that’s where I get to put in my ad for podcastbookers.com, which is a service I started just for that, just for that reason. We’re using it now as an SEO ploy.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. I mean, I-

John Jantsch: Isn’t that awesome? I just got an ad, right in the middle of the show. It was awesome.

John Corcoran: It was smooth as silk. Yeah, I mean, it’s such an effective strategy and it can, it is such a good use of your time, because we were talking beforehand, you could record it as a video and you could publish that on YouTube or some other platform; you can use D-audio, obviously, as a podcast on the different podcasting platforms. You can publish a blog post on your site every time that you do it, and I totally agree with you on guest posting strategy and I say that as someone who wrote, I don’t know; dozens, hundreds of guest posts when I first started out, when I was still building my presence online, including one on your site, years ago. I wrote one on your site years ago, and it is a ton of work. A lot of work, and wouldn’t you rather just pontificate and just speak your mind for a couple of minutes?

John Jantsch: Show up and throw up, for 20 minutes. It’s awesome. So, let’s go there, to that thought leader idea, because obviously that’s something that is a piece of what you’re teaching and helping people with. How do we do effective outreach today? Again, I think the podcast is a great way to do outreach, but I will tell you, I get five or six, probably closer to 10 a day, pitches from people that want to either guest post or want to do something or want me to talk about their product. It seems like there’s this, somebody has written a software program.

John Corcoran: Oh, I know.

John Jantsch: That sends out six emails for everyone. So how do we get away from that? Because that’s gotten so bad I don’t even look at them any more.

John Corcoran: I know, it is, there must be some software out there, right? They just plug in the name of the most recent episode, the guest on the most recent episode, the platitude about why they love that episode, transition into why they, either them or their client should be a guest on your podcast, and I get those same emails. It’s just like, it’s not that much additional effort in order to be a lot more effective. So the first thing I say is don’t just go out there pitching yourself. I did do that years ago, I think now it’s a lot less effective, but I did it at one point. I had an e-book out and I wanted to get myself on some shows, and it did work for a little while. But now I think it’s a lot less effective because anyone who’s been podcasting for longer than a week and a half is receiving a ton of these types of emails. I think a better approach is to deliver value first, long before you ever pitch yourself, or really never pitch yourself. Ideally you’d get to know the person and once they get to know you, they want to have you on, your podcast.

Or, start your own! Honestly, some people say, “aw, I don’t want to start my own podcast, that would be too time-consuming.” But which is more time-consuming? Sending a thousand emails in order to get effectively 10 guest spots? Or starting your own podcast, which if you delegate some of the other work of the actual running, the post-production, which I think you should, it’s not that time-consuming. It’s the same amount of time consumption as just normal conversation that you have with peers and colleagues and that sort of thing. And then that will lead to interviews.

John Jantsch: Well, and I always tell people I’ve been pitching podcasting to every kind of business. Obviously the experts get it, but if you sell software to medical practices, interview your doctors. They’re your customers. Or they’re your prospects. It is, it’s having conversations with your customers is never gonna hurt you, you’re gonna learn more about what you’re doing, they’re gonna become more loyal, they’re gonna get plugged in, they’re gonna tell their friends, “I was on this podcast.” So there’s so many reasons for ever business to do it, you’re absolutely right.

John Corcoran: And that’s how I first got started, actually, before it was even a podcast, I just started interviewing some of my past clients and current clients, and I remember, this was about six, seven years ago now, I had an entrepreneur that started a company that eventually went public. He was actually a pretty successful entrepreneur, but he hired me only to write like an hour’s worth of work to write a small little lease for a room he was renting out in his house. Today it would be handled by Airbnb, but back then I wrote a lease. I researched this guy, I was like, “Wow, this is a really interesting guy! I’d love to have him as a client, how can I get more?” So after I did that I said, “Hey, can I come interview you afterwards?” And I ended up interviewing him and I just literally published it on my blog. I think I transcribed it, put it on my blog, and then what do you know? Like a month or so later he ends up contacting me and saying, “Hey, is there anything, is there something else you can do? Can you help me with something else?” And I’m certain that that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me taking the relationship further by doing that interview.

So starting with your clients and your past clients and your prospects is a great place to start. You don’t need to reach out to the Seth Godins of the world, or the Tim Ferrises of the world, which is what everyone does, they try and get those sorts of people. You don’t need to do that. Maybe you do that eventually, but you don’t need to do that when you’re getting started.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about mentors. That’s a topic I haven’t really covered for a while. It seems like that idea, and maybe it’s because we don’t really need to go and curate a mentor relationship because we can have mentor relationships with anybody who has a podcast, maybe, I don’t know. But what’s your take on the value and process of mentorship?

John Corcoran: I think that the old-school notion of mentorship, as in it’s someone who is gonna take you under their wing, you’re gonna meet with them on a weekly basis, they’re gonna teach you to be a master craftsman or something, that’s not what people expect these days. I think you’re gonna scare someone off if you approach them and you say, “Hey, can you be my mentor?” Because they’re thinking, “oh man, this is gonna be a huge burden, huge responsibility.” But I’ve got lots of people who I would consider my mentor. They’re people who I go to from time to time, and I also try and keep the relationship one as much close to parity as possible. In other words, I want to deliver as much value to them as possible so that they want to help me. So that they want to turn around and give me advice. I think that’s a critical one. Look how you can help them. The worst thing you can do, if you want to be mentored, especially by someone who’s very successful in their career, very busy, is to try and get as much out of them as possible and to not deliver value to them.

I think delivering value to them is the way that you get mentorship these days, and I also want to just second what you said about ‘you can get mentorship from anything these days.’ From listening to a podcast, YouTube, books, that sort of thing, and actually you will annoy those successful people who have put out books, who’ve spoken on stage, who have content out there, who’ve put a lot of content out there. They’re trying to speak in a one-to-many capacity and get their message out. You send them an email for something that they’ve answered 100 different times through their blog, their speeches, and videos and all that kind of stuff, and they’re just gonna be annoyed by that. You have to be sure that you take advantage of all those resources that are out there.

John Jantsch: All right, another hot topic: mastermind groups. Again, I think they have tremendous value, and unfortunately it’s one of those things that I, you see the internet marketing crowd really sucking up, and so now it’s become a big business to run mastermind groups, but I think in their purest sense, and I believe that you actually have that as part of Rise 25, is that right?

John Corcoran: Yes, yes we do.

John Jantsch: I think in their purest sense, they can be extremely valuable, but how do you find and nurture that mastermind group..

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Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is sponsored by Podcast Bookers. Podcastbookers.com. Podcasts are really hot, right? But you know what’s also really hot? Appearing as a guest on one of the many, many podcasts out there. Think about it. Much easier than writing a guest blog post. You get some high quality content. You get great back links. People want to share that content. Maybe you can even transcribe that content. Being a guest on podcasts, getting yourself booked on podcasts is a really, really great SEO tactic, a great brand building tactic. Podcast Bookers can get you booked on two to three to four podcasts every single month on auto pilot. Go check it out. Podcastbookers.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is John Corcoran. He is a former writer in the White House for presidents … I knew I was going to mess that up, but anyway, I’ll start again. Presidential letters and messages during the Clinton administration and a speech writer in the California Governors Office during the Davis administration. And we’re not going to talk about politics because he was … I think you’re also a lawyer too, right John?

John Corcoran: That I am, yeah. Lots of reasons to hate me. Politics, lawyer.

John Jantsch: What a mess this show is going to be. So welcome. Thanks for joining me, John.

John Corcoran: I’m glad to be here, John.thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So you were … Last time I was out in Santa Barbara we got together. You, I think you paid for my dinner, which was awesome. And you told me a little bit about something that is somewhat new for you. And, we’ll kind of air all this out. But let’s start off by talking … Tell me a little bit about this Rise 25.

John Corcoran: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, so I, like many of your clients, was trading hours for dollars as a lawyer. And when you’re a lawyer you realize that you can only work on one client at a time. You can only charge as much as the market will bear and where do you go from there? And so long story, but got into blogging and podcasting and doing those sorts of things in order to expand my reach and eventually teamed up with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weiss. What we’ve been doing is helping other professional services business owners who were much like ourselves and did one-on-one type of work and help them to kind of make the shift to one to many so that they can free up more of their time and that they can impact a larger community of people.

John Jantsch: So, everyone today is being advised to become an expert in their field. How do we afford to have everyone be an expert? I mean, what does that even man anymore?

John Corcoran: Right. Yeah. Right. How do you become an expert? I don’t know that it would be possible for everyone to be viewed as an expert. Because then if everyone’s viewed as an expert there’s got to be someone that is at a higher level. But it certainly … What’s valuable, I think, is elevating your profile. Whether that means just in your local community. Whether that means something nationally. Whether that means expressing yourself through content. I know that you’re a big advocate of content. But I certainly think that establishing your bonafides as an authority and someone who knows your stuff in your field that’s never going to harm you, whether you decide that you just want more high quality one-on-one clients or whether you want to make the shift like you have with your business, or others have, like I have, into more of a leverage type of model where you’re serving people in a one-to-many capacity.

John Jantsch: So I’ve been doing this long enough, you see these things come and go. And it seems like all of a sudden the advice to carve out a very specific niche and just become and expert in that niche seems to have resurfaced lately with the online kind of Facebook advertising crowd. In your mind is that really one of the best paths to go down if you do want to sort of stand out and position yourself as an expert?

John Corcoran: You know, I think that it can be fraught with peril if you choose the wrong niche. But I do agree; I think that there are too many people who try and be everything to everyone, or something. But most people don’t start off that way. Most people start off with a particular expertise in one particular field and that also helps them get referred, which is a huge engine of growth, as you know. You wrote the book on it. It helps people to know what type of business they should send towards you. If you define your scope, if you say, “This is the type of person that I want to work with, this is a limited field.” Now, you and I both are somewhat generalist, right? And that we both, it’s not like you and I are both working with flower shop owners and yoga studio owners in only that niche; we’re working in wider areas. So I think you can always feel like, “aw, man! I need to narrow it even further.”

But I think that the bigger danger is when you’re way too broad and you’re just trying to serve anyone who comes in. Because then people just don’t know who you are. They don’t know who to refer to you, they don’t know what you stand for, what type of market you’re serving for. I think that’s the bigger danger for people.

John Jantsch: I think a lot of people, certainly the people that got burned when they became social media experts and all of a sudden we didn’t need social media experts any more. I think that’s, when people focus on a platform or something of that nature that can change, there’s a lot of danger in that. Or even, I think some cases even industries. The one thing I’ve always advocated is, if you get known as somebody who solves a certain kind of problem, that’s probably never going to go away. So for business owners, I like to say that we solve a certain type of problem, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years and that problem has never changed. The way we come at it maybe has changed, but we’re not really, we’re not kinda putting ourselves in that peril of getting, becoming obsolete. Because I don’t think problems will ever go away.

John Corcoran: I agree. Yeah, and if you become the expert in Vine, and one day Twitter comes along, acquires Vine, and then shuts it down entirely, your business is gonna crumble, right? So there is a real danger in that, or other people might have picked the wrong platform. They decided to pick Google+ instead of Facebook or something, and a bunch of years’ effort crumbles. But if you focus on transferrable fundamentals like copywriting, for example, and you understand copy, you understand how to communicate to a market in a compelling way that will draw people to you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re teaching people how to do copywriting in the context of a medium like YouTube videos, or whether you’re teaching people how to use copywriting in an effective way in the medium of a postcard that is mailed to people in the mail. Right? Those are transferrable fundamentals.

I agree, I think that it’s about those larger, underlying skills that you can then apply to whatever medium it is, is the trending popular medium at the time, because they’re gonna come and go. People are saying it about Facebook now, they’re like, “Oh, Facebook will never leave!” C’mon. Please. Right. At some point, in the future maybe Facebook won’t be here so you want to make sure that everything you do is not entirely just this one, connected to this one platform.

John Jantsch: Well, and certainly, I mean the internet may go away even, right? But certainly you’ve gotta build your own real estate, if you’re gonna be an expert. You’ve gotta own that. I still see a lot of small business owners putting their stake in Facebook and certainly it’s an important awareness channel, maybe it’s even important place for you to convert folks, but you’re never gonna own it.

John Corcoran: Yeah, I remember I was working for a law firm, this was before I became an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur for about seven years now, but before then I was working for a law firm as a lawyer and I was writing regularly, blogging regularly for the law firm’s blog. Then I read some advice and it said ‘you need to own your own real estate, you need to not be a sharecropper.’ And this wasn’t just talking about law, but just as a writer, if you’re blogging for an employer’s blog, then when you leave, all that content’s gonna be left behind. So that’s when I thought, ‘okay, this is smart. I should start my own blog and create my own, then start to build my own land, so to speak.’ So I shifted everything and it really, it took me down a much different path and I’m glad that I did that.

John Jantsch: So, I know that you do a lot of work with folks on more effective networking. Again, networking, back in the day, it meant you went to the first Wednesday of the month meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and certainly that platform has changed dramatically, so how has that impacted networking in the fact that we can do so much now without ever getting in a car and driving over and giving somebody a hug?

John Corcoran: Right. Well, I still think there’s huge value in meeting face to face. I mean, I’ve known of you for years, but it wasn’t until October that we finally got to connect face to face, and you never build quite the same relationship with someone until you meet up with them face to face. So I think that’s critical. I think that’s important these days, to go out to meetups and conferences and industry socials and things like that in order to connect with people. On the other hand, we can connect just as easily with someone who lives in Kansas City or Paris or Dubai as easily as we can someone who lives down the road, thanks to the prevalence of social media platforms that give us an ability to connect with people. I think because of that our world is changing.

I think that we don’t have to engage in this old fashioned, going down to the Wednesday night, as you said, or Wednesday morning Chamber of Commerce meeting or whatever it is, where you’re essentially looking for a needle in a haystack. There might be 100 people there, if you’re lucky, at this chapter, and 99 of them might not be a good fit for you. It takes a lot of time, versus you can go and target a lot more, and a lot more focused way, lot more narrow way, you can target the specific market that you’re going after, and you can immerse yourself. I call it going after a big pile of needles instead of the needle in a haystack, you’ve got a big pile of needles and it’s just a lot more effective.

Imagine going to a conference with 10,000 of your perfect, ideal prospects. That is such a better, more effective use of your time, if you went to that once a year rather than just going down to your local Chamber of Commerce every month or every week or whatever. Not to just, I don’t want to just beat on Chamber of Commerce, but there are other business meetups of similar types, so I agree, I think that you can, if you’re smarter about it, you can target a more specific group and you don’t need to do this old-school networking that people think of when they think of the word networking.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I never enjoyed that.

John Corcoran: No, so many people don’t! They hate it!

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think you’re, but I do think that, to your original point, there’s nothing like meeting face to face. I think the one thing that is really great about what we have in the online tools is that you can do that face to face meetup and then that, in many cases, opens the door, the online tools then open the door to do some things maybe quicker than you, instead of waiting around till next year’s conference when we’re gonna see each other again, something like that.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. What we’re doing right now, I think everyone should have a podcast. I don’t even, you shouldn’t even care whether you’re getting listeners or not. Yeah, usually it’s nice for people to listen, but a podcast is such an effective tool for being able to connect with someone.

I was just having breakfast with my wife earlier today and was saying to [Sarah 00:11:55], “I think everyone should have a podcast,” because it gives you such a great tool to reach out, develop a relationship with the influencers in your field, or peers, or colleagues, or clients, or prospects. It just gives you an excuse to have a conversation. By the way, it doesn’t have to be for a podcast, it could be for an article that you’re writing, or it could be, you recorded it on video and you throw it up on YouTube or something like that. The point is to do it in an easy way where you’re gonna do it frequently enough and where you’re gonna be able to use it as an excuse to build or further a relationship even further down the road.

John Jantsch: Long time listeners to The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast will have heard me say, numerous times, that my podcast has actually been probably one of the biggest assets of my business. I do actually generate a significant ad revenue stream, but, today anyway, but when I first started, it allowed me to send an email to Seth Godin and say, “I’d like to promote your book, come in [crosstalk 00:12:51] next month, would you talk to me for 20 minutes?” And he would return my email. Whereas if I’d said, “Hey, I’d love to pick your brain for 20 minutes,” well, you know, we know where that would go.

John Corcoran: Right. “Hey, Seth, I’m gonna be in New York, would you meet me at Starbucks? Just take the train in. Just meet me at Starbucks and we’ll just get a cup of coffee.” Never gonna happen, right? But because of the podcast, because of your helping them, you’re promoting them, it’s a completely different conversation.

John Jantsch: And now, again, since we’re on this podcast topic, now I’ve been actually telling people, I think it’s the number one SEO play right now, to be a guest on podcasts. Because everybody’s been given the advice for the last couple years that to get links back to your site you’ve gotta do all this guest blogging and guest blogging is a real pain. You’ve got to write an article, you’ve got to pitch it to 2000 people to get one to say yes, in a lot of cases, but if you go on a podcast, that podcaster quite often is really, really happy to promote that show and put it out there and they’re probably gonna give you three or four links back, so that’s where I get to put in my ad for podcastbookers.com, which is a service I started just for that, just for that reason. We’re using it now as an SEO ploy.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. I mean, I-

John Jantsch: Isn’t that awesome? I just got an ad, right in the middle of the show. It was awesome.

John Corcoran: It was smooth as silk. Yeah, I mean, it’s such an effective strategy and it can, it is such a good use of your time, because we were talking beforehand, you could record it as a video and you could publish that on YouTube or some other platform; you can use D-audio, obviously, as a podcast on the different podcasting platforms. You can publish a blog post on your site every time that you do it, and I totally agree with you on guest posting strategy and I say that as someone who wrote, I don’t know; dozens, hundreds of guest posts when I first started out, when I was still building my presence online, including one on your site, years ago. I wrote one on your site years ago, and it is a ton of work. A lot of work, and wouldn’t you rather just pontificate and just speak your mind for a couple of minutes?

John Jantsch: Show up and throw up, for 20 minutes. It’s awesome. So, let’s go there, to that thought leader idea, because obviously that’s something that is a piece of what you’re teaching and helping people with. How do we do effective outreach today? Again, I think the podcast is a great way to do outreach, but I will tell you, I get five or six, probably closer to 10 a day, pitches from people that want to either guest post or want to do something or want me to talk about their product. It seems like there’s this, somebody has written a software program.

John Corcoran: Oh, I know.

John Jantsch: That sends out six emails for everyone. So how do we get away from that? Because that’s gotten so bad I don’t even look at them any more.

John Corcoran: I know, it is, there must be some software out there, right? They just plug in the name of the most recent episode, the guest on the most recent episode, the platitude about why they love that episode, transition into why they, either them or their client should be a guest on your podcast, and I get those same emails. It’s just like, it’s not that much additional effort in order to be a lot more effective. So the first thing I say is don’t just go out there pitching yourself. I did do that years ago, I think now it’s a lot less effective, but I did it at one point. I had an e-book out and I wanted to get myself on some shows, and it did work for a little while. But now I think it’s a lot less effective because anyone who’s been podcasting for longer than a week and a half is receiving a ton of these types of emails. I think a better approach is to deliver value first, long before you ever pitch yourself, or really never pitch yourself. Ideally you’d get to know the person and once they get to know you, they want to have you on, your podcast.

Or, start your own! Honestly, some people say, “aw, I don’t want to start my own podcast, that would be too time-consuming.” But which is more time-consuming? Sending a thousand emails in order to get effectively 10 guest spots? Or starting your own podcast, which if you delegate some of the other work of the actual running, the post-production, which I think you should, it’s not that time-consuming. It’s the same amount of time consumption as just normal conversation that you have with peers and colleagues and that sort of thing. And then that will lead to interviews.

John Jantsch: Well, and I always tell people I’ve been pitching podcasting to every kind of business. Obviously the experts get it, but if you sell software to medical practices, interview your doctors. They’re your customers. Or they’re your prospects. It is, it’s having conversations with your customers is never gonna hurt you, you’re gonna learn more about what you’re doing, they’re gonna become more loyal, they’re gonna get plugged in, they’re gonna tell their friends, “I was on this podcast.” So there’s so many reasons for ever business to do it, you’re absolutely right.

John Corcoran: And that’s how I first got started, actually, before it was even a podcast, I just started interviewing some of my past clients and current clients, and I remember, this was about six, seven years ago now, I had an entrepreneur that started a company that eventually went public. He was actually a pretty successful entrepreneur, but he hired me only to write like an hour’s worth of work to write a small little lease for a room he was renting out in his house. Today it would be handled by Airbnb, but back then I wrote a lease. I researched this guy, I was like, “Wow, this is a really interesting guy! I’d love to have him as a client, how can I get more?” So after I did that I said, “Hey, can I come interview you afterwards?” And I ended up interviewing him and I just literally published it on my blog. I think I transcribed it, put it on my blog, and then what do you know? Like a month or so later he ends up contacting me and saying, “Hey, is there anything, is there something else you can do? Can you help me with something else?” And I’m certain that that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me taking the relationship further by doing that interview.

So starting with your clients and your past clients and your prospects is a great place to start. You don’t need to reach out to the Seth Godins of the world, or the Tim Ferrises of the world, which is what everyone does, they try and get those sorts of people. You don’t need to do that. Maybe you do that eventually, but you don’t need to do that when you’re getting started.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about mentors. That’s a topic I haven’t really covered for a while. It seems like that idea, and maybe it’s because we don’t really need to go and curate a mentor relationship because we can have mentor relationships with anybody who has a podcast, maybe, I don’t know. But what’s your take on the value and process of mentorship?

John Corcoran: I think that the old-school notion of mentorship, as in it’s someone who is gonna take you under their wing, you’re gonna meet with them on a weekly basis, they’re gonna teach you to be a master craftsman or something, that’s not what people expect these days. I think you’re gonna scare someone off if you approach them and you say, “Hey, can you be my mentor?” Because they’re thinking, “oh man, this is gonna be a huge burden, huge responsibility.” But I’ve got lots of people who I would consider my mentor. They’re people who I go to from time to time, and I also try and keep the relationship one as much close to parity as possible. In other words, I want to deliver as much value to them as possible so that they want to help me. So that they want to turn around and give me advice. I think that’s a critical one. Look how you can help them. The worst thing you can do, if you want to be mentored, especially by someone who’s very successful in their career, very busy, is to try and get as much out of them as possible and to not deliver value to them.

I think delivering value to them is the way that you get mentorship these days, and I also want to just second what you said about ‘you can get mentorship from anything these days.’ From listening to a podcast, YouTube, books, that sort of thing, and actually you will annoy those successful people who have put out books, who’ve spoken on stage, who have content out there, who’ve put a lot of content out there. They’re trying to speak in a one-to-many capacity and get their message out. You send them an email for something that they’ve answered 100 different times through their blog, their speeches, and videos and all that kind of stuff, and they’re just gonna be annoyed by that. You have to be sure that you take advantage of all those resources that are out there.

John Jantsch: All right, another hot topic: mastermind groups. Again, I think they have tremendous value, and unfortunately it’s one of those things that I, you see the internet marketing crowd really sucking up, and so now it’s become a big business to run mastermind groups, but I think in their purest sense, and I believe that you actually have that as part of Rise 25, is that right?

John Corcoran: Yes, yes we do.

John Jantsch: I think in their purest sense, they can be extremely valuable, but how do you find and nurture that mastermind group..

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Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today

Transcript of The Evolution of Networking and How It Can Benefit Your Business Today written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is sponsored by Podcast Bookers. Podcastbookers.com. Podcasts are really hot, right? But you know what’s also really hot? Appearing as a guest on one of the many, many podcasts out there. Think about it. Much easier than writing a guest blog post. You get some high quality content. You get great back links. People want to share that content. Maybe you can even transcribe that content. Being a guest on podcasts, getting yourself booked on podcasts is a really, really great SEO tactic, a great brand building tactic. Podcast Bookers can get you booked on two to three to four podcasts every single month on auto pilot. Go check it out. Podcastbookers.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is John Corcoran. He is a former writer in the White House for presidents … I knew I was going to mess that up, but anyway, I’ll start again. Presidential letters and messages during the Clinton administration and a speech writer in the California Governors Office during the Davis administration. And we’re not going to talk about politics because he was … I think you’re also a lawyer too, right John?

John Corcoran: That I am, yeah. Lots of reasons to hate me. Politics, lawyer.

John Jantsch: What a mess this show is going to be. So welcome. Thanks for joining me, John.

John Corcoran: I’m glad to be here, John.thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So you were … Last time I was out in Santa Barbara we got together. You, I think you paid for my dinner, which was awesome. And you told me a little bit about something that is somewhat new for you. And, we’ll kind of air all this out. But let’s start off by talking … Tell me a little bit about this Rise 25.

John Corcoran: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, so I, like many of your clients, was trading hours for dollars as a lawyer. And when you’re a lawyer you realize that you can only work on one client at a time. You can only charge as much as the market will bear and where do you go from there? And so long story, but got into blogging and podcasting and doing those sorts of things in order to expand my reach and eventually teamed up with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weiss. What we’ve been doing is helping other professional services business owners who were much like ourselves and did one-on-one type of work and help them to kind of make the shift to one to many so that they can free up more of their time and that they can impact a larger community of people.

John Jantsch: So, everyone today is being advised to become an expert in their field. How do we afford to have everyone be an expert? I mean, what does that even man anymore?

John Corcoran: Right. Yeah. Right. How do you become an expert? I don’t know that it would be possible for everyone to be viewed as an expert. Because then if everyone’s viewed as an expert there’s got to be someone that is at a higher level. But it certainly … What’s valuable, I think, is elevating your profile. Whether that means just in your local community. Whether that means something nationally. Whether that means expressing yourself through content. I know that you’re a big advocate of content. But I certainly think that establishing your bonafides as an authority and someone who knows your stuff in your field that’s never going to harm you, whether you decide that you just want more high quality one-on-one clients or whether you want to make the shift like you have with your business, or others have, like I have, into more of a leverage type of model where you’re serving people in a one-to-many capacity.

John Jantsch: So I’ve been doing this long enough, you see these things come and go. And it seems like all of a sudden the advice to carve out a very specific niche and just become and expert in that niche seems to have resurfaced lately with the online kind of Facebook advertising crowd. In your mind is that really one of the best paths to go down if you do want to sort of stand out and position yourself as an expert?

John Corcoran: You know, I think that it can be fraught with peril if you choose the wrong niche. But I do agree; I think that there are too many people who try and be everything to everyone, or something. But most people don’t start off that way. Most people start off with a particular expertise in one particular field and that also helps them get referred, which is a huge engine of growth, as you know. You wrote the book on it. It helps people to know what type of business they should send towards you. If you define your scope, if you say, “This is the type of person that I want to work with, this is a limited field.” Now, you and I both are somewhat generalist, right? And that we both, it’s not like you and I are both working with flower shop owners and yoga studio owners in only that niche; we’re working in wider areas. So I think you can always feel like, “aw, man! I need to narrow it even further.”

But I think that the bigger danger is when you’re way too broad and you’re just trying to serve anyone who comes in. Because then people just don’t know who you are. They don’t know who to refer to you, they don’t know what you stand for, what type of market you’re serving for. I think that’s the bigger danger for people.

John Jantsch: I think a lot of people, certainly the people that got burned when they became social media experts and all of a sudden we didn’t need social media experts any more. I think that’s, when people focus on a platform or something of that nature that can change, there’s a lot of danger in that. Or even, I think some cases even industries. The one thing I’ve always advocated is, if you get known as somebody who solves a certain kind of problem, that’s probably never going to go away. So for business owners, I like to say that we solve a certain type of problem, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years and that problem has never changed. The way we come at it maybe has changed, but we’re not really, we’re not kinda putting ourselves in that peril of getting, becoming obsolete. Because I don’t think problems will ever go away.

John Corcoran: I agree. Yeah, and if you become the expert in Vine, and one day Twitter comes along, acquires Vine, and then shuts it down entirely, your business is gonna crumble, right? So there is a real danger in that, or other people might have picked the wrong platform. They decided to pick Google+ instead of Facebook or something, and a bunch of years’ effort crumbles. But if you focus on transferrable fundamentals like copywriting, for example, and you understand copy, you understand how to communicate to a market in a compelling way that will draw people to you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re teaching people how to do copywriting in the context of a medium like YouTube videos, or whether you’re teaching people how to use copywriting in an effective way in the medium of a postcard that is mailed to people in the mail. Right? Those are transferrable fundamentals.

I agree, I think that it’s about those larger, underlying skills that you can then apply to whatever medium it is, is the trending popular medium at the time, because they’re gonna come and go. People are saying it about Facebook now, they’re like, “Oh, Facebook will never leave!” C’mon. Please. Right. At some point, in the future maybe Facebook won’t be here so you want to make sure that everything you do is not entirely just this one, connected to this one platform.

John Jantsch: Well, and certainly, I mean the internet may go away even, right? But certainly you’ve gotta build your own real estate, if you’re gonna be an expert. You’ve gotta own that. I still see a lot of small business owners putting their stake in Facebook and certainly it’s an important awareness channel, maybe it’s even important place for you to convert folks, but you’re never gonna own it.

John Corcoran: Yeah, I remember I was working for a law firm, this was before I became an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur for about seven years now, but before then I was working for a law firm as a lawyer and I was writing regularly, blogging regularly for the law firm’s blog. Then I read some advice and it said ‘you need to own your own real estate, you need to not be a sharecropper.’ And this wasn’t just talking about law, but just as a writer, if you’re blogging for an employer’s blog, then when you leave, all that content’s gonna be left behind. So that’s when I thought, ‘okay, this is smart. I should start my own blog and create my own, then start to build my own land, so to speak.’ So I shifted everything and it really, it took me down a much different path and I’m glad that I did that.

John Jantsch: So, I know that you do a lot of work with folks on more effective networking. Again, networking, back in the day, it meant you went to the first Wednesday of the month meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and certainly that platform has changed dramatically, so how has that impacted networking in the fact that we can do so much now without ever getting in a car and driving over and giving somebody a hug?

John Corcoran: Right. Well, I still think there’s huge value in meeting face to face. I mean, I’ve known of you for years, but it wasn’t until October that we finally got to connect face to face, and you never build quite the same relationship with someone until you meet up with them face to face. So I think that’s critical. I think that’s important these days, to go out to meetups and conferences and industry socials and things like that in order to connect with people. On the other hand, we can connect just as easily with someone who lives in Kansas City or Paris or Dubai as easily as we can someone who lives down the road, thanks to the prevalence of social media platforms that give us an ability to connect with people. I think because of that our world is changing.

I think that we don’t have to engage in this old fashioned, going down to the Wednesday night, as you said, or Wednesday morning Chamber of Commerce meeting or whatever it is, where you’re essentially looking for a needle in a haystack. There might be 100 people there, if you’re lucky, at this chapter, and 99 of them might not be a good fit for you. It takes a lot of time, versus you can go and target a lot more, and a lot more focused way, lot more narrow way, you can target the specific market that you’re going after, and you can immerse yourself. I call it going after a big pile of needles instead of the needle in a haystack, you’ve got a big pile of needles and it’s just a lot more effective.

Imagine going to a conference with 10,000 of your perfect, ideal prospects. That is such a better, more effective use of your time, if you went to that once a year rather than just going down to your local Chamber of Commerce every month or every week or whatever. Not to just, I don’t want to just beat on Chamber of Commerce, but there are other business meetups of similar types, so I agree, I think that you can, if you’re smarter about it, you can target a more specific group and you don’t need to do this old-school networking that people think of when they think of the word networking.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I never enjoyed that.

John Corcoran: No, so many people don’t! They hate it!

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think you’re, but I do think that, to your original point, there’s nothing like meeting face to face. I think the one thing that is really great about what we have in the online tools is that you can do that face to face meetup and then that, in many cases, opens the door, the online tools then open the door to do some things maybe quicker than you, instead of waiting around till next year’s conference when we’re gonna see each other again, something like that.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. What we’re doing right now, I think everyone should have a podcast. I don’t even, you shouldn’t even care whether you’re getting listeners or not. Yeah, usually it’s nice for people to listen, but a podcast is such an effective tool for being able to connect with someone.

I was just having breakfast with my wife earlier today and was saying to [Sarah 00:11:55], “I think everyone should have a podcast,” because it gives you such a great tool to reach out, develop a relationship with the influencers in your field, or peers, or colleagues, or clients, or prospects. It just gives you an excuse to have a conversation. By the way, it doesn’t have to be for a podcast, it could be for an article that you’re writing, or it could be, you recorded it on video and you throw it up on YouTube or something like that. The point is to do it in an easy way where you’re gonna do it frequently enough and where you’re gonna be able to use it as an excuse to build or further a relationship even further down the road.

John Jantsch: Long time listeners to The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast will have heard me say, numerous times, that my podcast has actually been probably one of the biggest assets of my business. I do actually generate a significant ad revenue stream, but, today anyway, but when I first started, it allowed me to send an email to Seth Godin and say, “I’d like to promote your book, come in [crosstalk 00:12:51] next month, would you talk to me for 20 minutes?” And he would return my email. Whereas if I’d said, “Hey, I’d love to pick your brain for 20 minutes,” well, you know, we know where that would go.

John Corcoran: Right. “Hey, Seth, I’m gonna be in New York, would you meet me at Starbucks? Just take the train in. Just meet me at Starbucks and we’ll just get a cup of coffee.” Never gonna happen, right? But because of the podcast, because of your helping them, you’re promoting them, it’s a completely different conversation.

John Jantsch: And now, again, since we’re on this podcast topic, now I’ve been actually telling people, I think it’s the number one SEO play right now, to be a guest on podcasts. Because everybody’s been given the advice for the last couple years that to get links back to your site you’ve gotta do all this guest blogging and guest blogging is a real pain. You’ve got to write an article, you’ve got to pitch it to 2000 people to get one to say yes, in a lot of cases, but if you go on a podcast, that podcaster quite often is really, really happy to promote that show and put it out there and they’re probably gonna give you three or four links back, so that’s where I get to put in my ad for podcastbookers.com, which is a service I started just for that, just for that reason. We’re using it now as an SEO ploy.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. I mean, I-

John Jantsch: Isn’t that awesome? I just got an ad, right in the middle of the show. It was awesome.

John Corcoran: It was smooth as silk. Yeah, I mean, it’s such an effective strategy and it can, it is such a good use of your time, because we were talking beforehand, you could record it as a video and you could publish that on YouTube or some other platform; you can use D-audio, obviously, as a podcast on the different podcasting platforms. You can publish a blog post on your site every time that you do it, and I totally agree with you on guest posting strategy and I say that as someone who wrote, I don’t know; dozens, hundreds of guest posts when I first started out, when I was still building my presence online, including one on your site, years ago. I wrote one on your site years ago, and it is a ton of work. A lot of work, and wouldn’t you rather just pontificate and just speak your mind for a couple of minutes?

John Jantsch: Show up and throw up, for 20 minutes. It’s awesome. So, let’s go there, to that thought leader idea, because obviously that’s something that is a piece of what you’re teaching and helping people with. How do we do effective outreach today? Again, I think the podcast is a great way to do outreach, but I will tell you, I get five or six, probably closer to 10 a day, pitches from people that want to either guest post or want to do something or want me to talk about their product. It seems like there’s this, somebody has written a software program.

John Corcoran: Oh, I know.

John Jantsch: That sends out six emails for everyone. So how do we get away from that? Because that’s gotten so bad I don’t even look at them any more.

John Corcoran: I know, it is, there must be some software out there, right? They just plug in the name of the most recent episode, the guest on the most recent episode, the platitude about why they love that episode, transition into why they, either them or their client should be a guest on your podcast, and I get those same emails. It’s just like, it’s not that much additional effort in order to be a lot more effective. So the first thing I say is don’t just go out there pitching yourself. I did do that years ago, I think now it’s a lot less effective, but I did it at one point. I had an e-book out and I wanted to get myself on some shows, and it did work for a little while. But now I think it’s a lot less effective because anyone who’s been podcasting for longer than a week and a half is receiving a ton of these types of emails. I think a better approach is to deliver value first, long before you ever pitch yourself, or really never pitch yourself. Ideally you’d get to know the person and once they get to know you, they want to have you on, your podcast.

Or, start your own! Honestly, some people say, “aw, I don’t want to start my own podcast, that would be too time-consuming.” But which is more time-consuming? Sending a thousand emails in order to get effectively 10 guest spots? Or starting your own podcast, which if you delegate some of the other work of the actual running, the post-production, which I think you should, it’s not that time-consuming. It’s the same amount of time consumption as just normal conversation that you have with peers and colleagues and that sort of thing. And then that will lead to interviews.

John Jantsch: Well, and I always tell people I’ve been pitching podcasting to every kind of business. Obviously the experts get it, but if you sell software to medical practices, interview your doctors. They’re your customers. Or they’re your prospects. It is, it’s having conversations with your customers is never gonna hurt you, you’re gonna learn more about what you’re doing, they’re gonna become more loyal, they’re gonna get plugged in, they’re gonna tell their friends, “I was on this podcast.” So there’s so many reasons for ever business to do it, you’re absolutely right.

John Corcoran: And that’s how I first got started, actually, before it was even a podcast, I just started interviewing some of my past clients and current clients, and I remember, this was about six, seven years ago now, I had an entrepreneur that started a company that eventually went public. He was actually a pretty successful entrepreneur, but he hired me only to write like an hour’s worth of work to write a small little lease for a room he was renting out in his house. Today it would be handled by Airbnb, but back then I wrote a lease. I researched this guy, I was like, “Wow, this is a really interesting guy! I’d love to have him as a client, how can I get more?” So after I did that I said, “Hey, can I come interview you afterwards?” And I ended up interviewing him and I just literally published it on my blog. I think I transcribed it, put it on my blog, and then what do you know? Like a month or so later he ends up contacting me and saying, “Hey, is there anything, is there something else you can do? Can you help me with something else?” And I’m certain that that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me taking the relationship further by doing that interview.

So starting with your clients and your past clients and your prospects is a great place to start. You don’t need to reach out to the Seth Godins of the world, or the Tim Ferrises of the world, which is what everyone does, they try and get those sorts of people. You don’t need to do that. Maybe you do that eventually, but you don’t need to do that when you’re getting started.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about mentors. That’s a topic I haven’t really covered for a while. It seems like that idea, and maybe it’s because we don’t really need to go and curate a mentor relationship because we can have mentor relationships with anybody who has a podcast, maybe, I don’t know. But what’s your take on the value and process of mentorship?

John Corcoran: I think that the old-school notion of mentorship, as in it’s someone who is gonna take you under their wing, you’re gonna meet with them on a weekly basis, they’re gonna teach you to be a master craftsman or something, that’s not what people expect these days. I think you’re gonna scare someone off if you approach them and you say, “Hey, can you be my mentor?” Because they’re thinking, “oh man, this is gonna be a huge burden, huge responsibility.” But I’ve got lots of people who I would consider my mentor. They’re people who I go to from time to time, and I also try and keep the relationship one as much close to parity as possible. In other words, I want to deliver as much value to them as possible so that they want to help me. So that they want to turn around and give me advice. I think that’s a critical one. Look how you can help them. The worst thing you can do, if you want to be mentored, especially by someone who’s very successful in their career, very busy, is to try and get as much out of them as possible and to not deliver value to them.

I think delivering value to them is the way that you get mentorship these days, and I also want to just second what you said about ‘you can get mentorship from anything these days.’ From listening to a podcast, YouTube, books, that sort of thing, and actually you will annoy those successful people who have put out books, who’ve spoken on stage, who have content out there, who’ve put a lot of content out there. They’re trying to speak in a one-to-many capacity and get their message out. You send them an email for something that they’ve answered 100 different times through their blog, their speeches, and videos and all that kind of stuff, and they’re just gonna be annoyed by that. You have to be sure that you take advantage of all those resources that are out there.

John Jantsch: All right, another hot topic: mastermind groups. Again, I think they have tremendous value, and unfortunately it’s one of those things that I, you see the internet marketing crowd really sucking up, and so now it’s become a big business to run mastermind groups, but I think in their purest sense, and I believe that you actually have that as part of Rise 25, is that right?

John Corcoran: Yes, yes we do.

John Jantsch: I think in their purest sense, they can be extremely valuable, but how do you find and nurture that mastermind group..

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is sponsored by Podcast Bookers. Podcastbookers.com. Podcasts are really hot, right? But you know what’s also really hot? Appearing as a guest on one of the many, many podcasts out there. Think about it. Much easier than writing a guest blog post. You get some high quality content. You get great back links. People want to share that content. Maybe you can even transcribe that content. Being a guest on podcasts, getting yourself booked on podcasts is a really, really great SEO tactic, a great brand building tactic. Podcast Bookers can get you booked on two to three to four podcasts every single month on auto pilot. Go check it out. Podcastbookers.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is John Corcoran. He is a former writer in the White House for presidents … I knew I was going to mess that up, but anyway, I’ll start again. Presidential letters and messages during the Clinton administration and a speech writer in the California Governors Office during the Davis administration. And we’re not going to talk about politics because he was … I think you’re also a lawyer too, right John?

John Corcoran: That I am, yeah. Lots of reasons to hate me. Politics, lawyer.

John Jantsch: What a mess this show is going to be. So welcome. Thanks for joining me, John.

John Corcoran: I’m glad to be here, John.thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So you were … Last time I was out in Santa Barbara we got together. You, I think you paid for my dinner, which was awesome. And you told me a little bit about something that is somewhat new for you. And, we’ll kind of air all this out. But let’s start off by talking … Tell me a little bit about this Rise 25.

John Corcoran: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, so I, like many of your clients, was trading hours for dollars as a lawyer. And when you’re a lawyer you realize that you can only work on one client at a time. You can only charge as much as the market will bear and where do you go from there? And so long story, but got into blogging and podcasting and doing those sorts of things in order to expand my reach and eventually teamed up with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weiss. What we’ve been doing is helping other professional services business owners who were much like ourselves and did one-on-one type of work and help them to kind of make the shift to one to many so that they can free up more of their time and that they can impact a larger community of people.

John Jantsch: So, everyone today is being advised to become an expert in their field. How do we afford to have everyone be an expert? I mean, what does that even man anymore?

John Corcoran: Right. Yeah. Right. How do you become an expert? I don’t know that it would be possible for everyone to be viewed as an expert. Because then if everyone’s viewed as an expert there’s got to be someone that is at a higher level. But it certainly … What’s valuable, I think, is elevating your profile. Whether that means just in your local community. Whether that means something nationally. Whether that means expressing yourself through content. I know that you’re a big advocate of content. But I certainly think that establishing your bonafides as an authority and someone who knows your stuff in your field that’s never going to harm you, whether you decide that you just want more high quality one-on-one clients or whether you want to make the shift like you have with your business, or others have, like I have, into more of a leverage type of model where you’re serving people in a one-to-many capacity.

John Jantsch: So I’ve been doing this long enough, you see these things come and go. And it seems like all of a sudden the advice to carve out a very specific niche and just become and expert in that niche seems to have resurfaced lately with the online kind of Facebook advertising crowd. In your mind is that really one of the best paths to go down if you do want to sort of stand out and position yourself as an expert?

John Corcoran: You know, I think that it can be fraught with peril if you choose the wrong niche. But I do agree; I think that there are too many people who try and be everything to everyone, or something. But most people don’t start off that way. Most people start off with a particular expertise in one particular field and that also helps them get referred, which is a huge engine of growth, as you know. You wrote the book on it. It helps people to know what type of business they should send towards you. If you define your scope, if you say, “This is the type of person that I want to work with, this is a limited field.” Now, you and I both are somewhat generalist, right? And that we both, it’s not like you and I are both working with flower shop owners and yoga studio owners in only that niche; we’re working in wider areas. So I think you can always feel like, “aw, man! I need to narrow it even further.”

But I think that the bigger danger is when you’re way too broad and you’re just trying to serve anyone who comes in. Because then people just don’t know who you are. They don’t know who to refer to you, they don’t know what you stand for, what type of market you’re serving for. I think that’s the bigger danger for people.

John Jantsch: I think a lot of people, certainly the people that got burned when they became social media experts and all of a sudden we didn’t need social media experts any more. I think that’s, when people focus on a platform or something of that nature that can change, there’s a lot of danger in that. Or even, I think some cases even industries. The one thing I’ve always advocated is, if you get known as somebody who solves a certain kind of problem, that’s probably never going to go away. So for business owners, I like to say that we solve a certain type of problem, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years and that problem has never changed. The way we come at it maybe has changed, but we’re not really, we’re not kinda putting ourselves in that peril of getting, becoming obsolete. Because I don’t think problems will ever go away.

John Corcoran: I agree. Yeah, and if you become the expert in Vine, and one day Twitter comes along, acquires Vine, and then shuts it down entirely, your business is gonna crumble, right? So there is a real danger in that, or other people might have picked the wrong platform. They decided to pick Google+ instead of Facebook or something, and a bunch of years’ effort crumbles. But if you focus on transferrable fundamentals like copywriting, for example, and you understand copy, you understand how to communicate to a market in a compelling way that will draw people to you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re teaching people how to do copywriting in the context of a medium like YouTube videos, or whether you’re teaching people how to use copywriting in an effective way in the medium of a postcard that is mailed to people in the mail. Right? Those are transferrable fundamentals.

I agree, I think that it’s about those larger, underlying skills that you can then apply to whatever medium it is, is the trending popular medium at the time, because they’re gonna come and go. People are saying it about Facebook now, they’re like, “Oh, Facebook will never leave!” C’mon. Please. Right. At some point, in the future maybe Facebook won’t be here so you want to make sure that everything you do is not entirely just this one, connected to this one platform.

John Jantsch: Well, and certainly, I mean the internet may go away even, right? But certainly you’ve gotta build your own real estate, if you’re gonna be an expert. You’ve gotta own that. I still see a lot of small business owners putting their stake in Facebook and certainly it’s an important awareness channel, maybe it’s even important place for you to convert folks, but you’re never gonna own it.

John Corcoran: Yeah, I remember I was working for a law firm, this was before I became an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur for about seven years now, but before then I was working for a law firm as a lawyer and I was writing regularly, blogging regularly for the law firm’s blog. Then I read some advice and it said ‘you need to own your own real estate, you need to not be a sharecropper.’ And this wasn’t just talking about law, but just as a writer, if you’re blogging for an employer’s blog, then when you leave, all that content’s gonna be left behind. So that’s when I thought, ‘okay, this is smart. I should start my own blog and create my own, then start to build my own land, so to speak.’ So I shifted everything and it really, it took me down a much different path and I’m glad that I did that.

John Jantsch: So, I know that you do a lot of work with folks on more effective networking. Again, networking, back in the day, it meant you went to the first Wednesday of the month meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and certainly that platform has changed dramatically, so how has that impacted networking in the fact that we can do so much now without ever getting in a car and driving over and giving somebody a hug?

John Corcoran: Right. Well, I still think there’s huge value in meeting face to face. I mean, I’ve known of you for years, but it wasn’t until October that we finally got to connect face to face, and you never build quite the same relationship with someone until you meet up with them face to face. So I think that’s critical. I think that’s important these days, to go out to meetups and conferences and industry socials and things like that in order to connect with people. On the other hand, we can connect just as easily with someone who lives in Kansas City or Paris or Dubai as easily as we can someone who lives down the road, thanks to the prevalence of social media platforms that give us an ability to connect with people. I think because of that our world is changing.

I think that we don’t have to engage in this old fashioned, going down to the Wednesday night, as you said, or Wednesday morning Chamber of Commerce meeting or whatever it is, where you’re essentially looking for a needle in a haystack. There might be 100 people there, if you’re lucky, at this chapter, and 99 of them might not be a good fit for you. It takes a lot of time, versus you can go and target a lot more, and a lot more focused way, lot more narrow way, you can target the specific market that you’re going after, and you can immerse yourself. I call it going after a big pile of needles instead of the needle in a haystack, you’ve got a big pile of needles and it’s just a lot more effective.

Imagine going to a conference with 10,000 of your perfect, ideal prospects. That is such a better, more effective use of your time, if you went to that once a year rather than just going down to your local Chamber of Commerce every month or every week or whatever. Not to just, I don’t want to just beat on Chamber of Commerce, but there are other business meetups of similar types, so I agree, I think that you can, if you’re smarter about it, you can target a more specific group and you don’t need to do this old-school networking that people think of when they think of the word networking.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I never enjoyed that.

John Corcoran: No, so many people don’t! They hate it!

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think you’re, but I do think that, to your original point, there’s nothing like meeting face to face. I think the one thing that is really great about what we have in the online tools is that you can do that face to face meetup and then that, in many cases, opens the door, the online tools then open the door to do some things maybe quicker than you, instead of waiting around till next year’s conference when we’re gonna see each other again, something like that.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. What we’re doing right now, I think everyone should have a podcast. I don’t even, you shouldn’t even care whether you’re getting listeners or not. Yeah, usually it’s nice for people to listen, but a podcast is such an effective tool for being able to connect with someone.

I was just having breakfast with my wife earlier today and was saying to [Sarah 00:11:55], “I think everyone should have a podcast,” because it gives you such a great tool to reach out, develop a relationship with the influencers in your field, or peers, or colleagues, or clients, or prospects. It just gives you an excuse to have a conversation. By the way, it doesn’t have to be for a podcast, it could be for an article that you’re writing, or it could be, you recorded it on video and you throw it up on YouTube or something like that. The point is to do it in an easy way where you’re gonna do it frequently enough and where you’re gonna be able to use it as an excuse to build or further a relationship even further down the road.

John Jantsch: Long time listeners to The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast will have heard me say, numerous times, that my podcast has actually been probably one of the biggest assets of my business. I do actually generate a significant ad revenue stream, but, today anyway, but when I first started, it allowed me to send an email to Seth Godin and say, “I’d like to promote your book, come in [crosstalk 00:12:51] next month, would you talk to me for 20 minutes?” And he would return my email. Whereas if I’d said, “Hey, I’d love to pick your brain for 20 minutes,” well, you know, we know where that would go.

John Corcoran: Right. “Hey, Seth, I’m gonna be in New York, would you meet me at Starbucks? Just take the train in. Just meet me at Starbucks and we’ll just get a cup of coffee.” Never gonna happen, right? But because of the podcast, because of your helping them, you’re promoting them, it’s a completely different conversation.

John Jantsch: And now, again, since we’re on this podcast topic, now I’ve been actually telling people, I think it’s the number one SEO play right now, to be a guest on podcasts. Because everybody’s been given the advice for the last couple years that to get links back to your site you’ve gotta do all this guest blogging and guest blogging is a real pain. You’ve got to write an article, you’ve got to pitch it to 2000 people to get one to say yes, in a lot of cases, but if you go on a podcast, that podcaster quite often is really, really happy to promote that show and put it out there and they’re probably gonna give you three or four links back, so that’s where I get to put in my ad for podcastbookers.com, which is a service I started just for that, just for that reason. We’re using it now as an SEO ploy.

John Corcoran: Absolutely. I mean, I-

John Jantsch: Isn’t that awesome? I just got an ad, right in the middle of the show. It was awesome.

John Corcoran: It was smooth as silk. Yeah, I mean, it’s such an effective strategy and it can, it is such a good use of your time, because we were talking beforehand, you could record it as a video and you could publish that on YouTube or some other platform; you can use D-audio, obviously, as a podcast on the different podcasting platforms. You can publish a blog post on your site every time that you do it, and I totally agree with you on guest posting strategy and I say that as someone who wrote, I don’t know; dozens, hundreds of guest posts when I first started out, when I was still building my presence online, including one on your site, years ago. I wrote one on your site years ago, and it is a ton of work. A lot of work, and wouldn’t you rather just pontificate and just speak your mind for a couple of minutes?

John Jantsch: Show up and throw up, for 20 minutes. It’s awesome. So, let’s go there, to that thought leader idea, because obviously that’s something that is a piece of what you’re teaching and helping people with. How do we do effective outreach today? Again, I think the podcast is a great way to do outreach, but I will tell you, I get five or six, probably closer to 10 a day, pitches from people that want to either guest post or want to do something or want me to talk about their product. It seems like there’s this, somebody has written a software program.

John Corcoran: Oh, I know.

John Jantsch: That sends out six emails for everyone. So how do we get away from that? Because that’s gotten so bad I don’t even look at them any more.

John Corcoran: I know, it is, there must be some software out there, right? They just plug in the name of the most recent episode, the guest on the most recent episode, the platitude about why they love that episode, transition into why they, either them or their client should be a guest on your podcast, and I get those same emails. It’s just like, it’s not that much additional effort in order to be a lot more effective. So the first thing I say is don’t just go out there pitching yourself. I did do that years ago, I think now it’s a lot less effective, but I did it at one point. I had an e-book out and I wanted to get myself on some shows, and it did work for a little while. But now I think it’s a lot less effective because anyone who’s been podcasting for longer than a week and a half is receiving a ton of these types of emails. I think a better approach is to deliver value first, long before you ever pitch yourself, or really never pitch yourself. Ideally you’d get to know the person and once they get to know you, they want to have you on, your podcast.

Or, start your own! Honestly, some people say, “aw, I don’t want to start my own podcast, that would be too time-consuming.” But which is more time-consuming? Sending a thousand emails in order to get effectively 10 guest spots? Or starting your own podcast, which if you delegate some of the other work of the actual running, the post-production, which I think you should, it’s not that time-consuming. It’s the same amount of time consumption as just normal conversation that you have with peers and colleagues and that sort of thing. And then that will lead to interviews.

John Jantsch: Well, and I always tell people I’ve been pitching podcasting to every kind of business. Obviously the experts get it, but if you sell software to medical practices, interview your doctors. They’re your customers. Or they’re your prospects. It is, it’s having conversations with your customers is never gonna hurt you, you’re gonna learn more about what you’re doing, they’re gonna become more loyal, they’re gonna get plugged in, they’re gonna tell their friends, “I was on this podcast.” So there’s so many reasons for ever business to do it, you’re absolutely right.

John Corcoran: And that’s how I first got started, actually, before it was even a podcast, I just started interviewing some of my past clients and current clients, and I remember, this was about six, seven years ago now, I had an entrepreneur that started a company that eventually went public. He was actually a pretty successful entrepreneur, but he hired me only to write like an hour’s worth of work to write a small little lease for a room he was renting out in his house. Today it would be handled by Airbnb, but back then I wrote a lease. I researched this guy, I was like, “Wow, this is a really interesting guy! I’d love to have him as a client, how can I get more?” So after I did that I said, “Hey, can I come interview you afterwards?” And I ended up interviewing him and I just literally published it on my blog. I think I transcribed it, put it on my blog, and then what do you know? Like a month or so later he ends up contacting me and saying, “Hey, is there anything, is there something else you can do? Can you help me with something else?” And I’m certain that that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me taking the relationship further by doing that interview.

So starting with your clients and your past clients and your prospects is a great place to start. You don’t need to reach out to the Seth Godins of the world, or the Tim Ferrises of the world, which is what everyone does, they try and get those sorts of people. You don’t need to do that. Maybe you do that eventually, but you don’t need to do that when you’re getting started.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about mentors. That’s a topic I haven’t really covered for a while. It seems like that idea, and maybe it’s because we don’t really need to go and curate a mentor relationship because we can have mentor relationships with anybody who has a podcast, maybe, I don’t know. But what’s your take on the value and process of mentorship?

John Corcoran: I think that the old-school notion of mentorship, as in it’s someone who is gonna take you under their wing, you’re gonna meet with them on a weekly basis, they’re gonna teach you to be a master craftsman or something, that’s not what people expect these days. I think you’re gonna scare someone off if you approach them and you say, “Hey, can you be my mentor?” Because they’re thinking, “oh man, this is gonna be a huge burden, huge responsibility.” But I’ve got lots of people who I would consider my mentor. They’re people who I go to from time to time, and I also try and keep the relationship one as much close to parity as possible. In other words, I want to deliver as much value to them as possible so that they want to help me. So that they want to turn around and give me advice. I think that’s a critical one. Look how you can help them. The worst thing you can do, if you want to be mentored, especially by someone who’s very successful in their career, very busy, is to try and get as much out of them as possible and to not deliver value to them.

I think delivering value to them is the way that you get mentorship these days, and I also want to just second what you said about ‘you can get mentorship from anything these days.’ From listening to a podcast, YouTube, books, that sort of thing, and actually you will annoy those successful people who have put out books, who’ve spoken on stage, who have content out there, who’ve put a lot of content out there. They’re trying to speak in a one-to-many capacity and get their message out. You send them an email for something that they’ve answered 100 different times through their blog, their speeches, and videos and all that kind of stuff, and they’re just gonna be annoyed by that. You have to be sure that you take advantage of all those resources that are out there.

John Jantsch: All right, another hot topic: mastermind groups. Again, I think they have tremendous value, and unfortunately it’s one of those things that I, you see the internet marketing crowd really sucking up, and so now it’s become a big business to run mastermind groups, but I think in their purest sense, and I believe that you actually have that as part of Rise 25, is that right?

John Corcoran: Yes, yes we do.

John Jantsch: I think in their purest sense, they can be extremely valuable, but how do you find and nurture that mastermind group..

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