Michael Hyatt & Chris Guillebeau, Linchpins – Linchpin Podcast #22

Posted by Andy Traub on Dec 19, 2011 in podcast | 13 comments

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This episode highlights two Linchpins that you should know about, Michael Hyatt and Chris Guillebeau. They were not live guests but I do have audio clips from other speaking they’ve done.

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Running Time: 39:07

Michael Hyatt
@MichaelHyatt
MichaelHyatt.com

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Too much noise; Why I’m dropping most of my Facebook friends

Posted by Andy Traub on Dec 12, 2011 in advice, Personal, seth godin, Social Media | 10 comments

Healthy Envy

You envy intentional people and you should.  People who live their lives with intention know what they want and achieve it because they follow a process.

1. Stop letting distractions distract
2. Write down your dreams/goals
3. Write down steps to reach them
4. Stop often to check your progress on reaching your dreams/goals
5. (Rinse and repeat) 

Goals don’t make sense but I like them

Posted by Andy Traub on Dec 7, 2011 in Social Media | 14 comments

Every book I’ve read on success talks about setting goals. Up until I bought Pick Four (Zig Ziglar + Seth Godin) I had avoided taking the advice of writing down goals. When ink hits paper and leaves goals in its wake I’m left with something bigger, more difficult and more real than the ideas in my head. Writing down your goals is not only dangerous to your way of life, it starts an internal work that I do not understand. My Pick Four set arrived over three months ago and I started to write goals down. There were manageable goals and ridiculous goals.

The Craziest Goal

The craziest goal I wrote down is pretty close to becoming reality.

What to do with your heroes

Posted by Andy Traub on Dec 6, 2011 in Social Media | 6 comments

• Follow people you idolize by reading and listening to their content repeatedly
• Create your own content even if you think it stinks, it probably does for now but it won’t get better till you create more
• Offer help to as many people as you can as often as you can
• Ask your heroes for advice and don’t make it difficult for them to give it to you
• Focus on doing your thing well and if you don’t know what you do well then start trying stuff now

Chapter 1 Preview – You can always blame your parents

Posted by Andy Traub on Dec 5, 2011 in family, Long Forks Book, Permission, Writing | 0 comments

Here’s another preview of my book about marriage entitled, Why didn’t you tell me that?  What no one told me about marriage.

Chapter 1 – Section 2 – You can always blame your parents

You can always blame your parents. There are a lot of pillows with pretty sayings sewn into them but I’ve never seen that saying on one. If you do sew and have some free time please send me one because that saying is true. Who we are and how we act as married people is greatly influenced by our parent’s behavior. My dad’s name is Jerry and he’s talkative, friendly to strangers, helpful to friends and generous with his time and money. I’m most of those things (except my name’s not Jerry). He’s also got a potty mouth, gets personally offended when a bad driver crosses his path, saves his anger for those closest to him and would rather watch football than talk about his feelings. I’m most of those things too. 

Voldemort – “Why didn’t you tell me that?” marriage book excerpt

Posted by Andy Traub on Nov 30, 2011 in Long Forks Book, Social Media | 2 comments

This section of my upcoming book “Why didn’t you tell me that? What no one told me about marriage” is titled Voldemort.  The title will make sense once you read the section.  I did no editing. I just barfed all my thoughts onto the page. Tell me what you think.

Voldemort

Please set aside your disdain for Harry Potter if you have any, and follow my analogy. Voldemort is the villain in Harry Potter. He is so despised and feared that his name is rarely spoken. He is constantly referenced but his name seems to carry extra weight, making him too real for listeners, so it not to be vocalized. My wife and I treat the word divorce the same way. Can you imagine a word that you never want your children to utter? Is there a word that is so disgusting because of its meaning that it cannot be spoken in a positive way? That’s how we treat the word divorce.

My failure of a marriage book – Free preview

Posted by Andy Traub on Nov 28, 2011 in How I work, Long Forks Book, seth godin, Writing | 9 comments

Is your book really a failure?

OK, my book about marriage isn’t a failure…yet.  I was listening to a great interview with my favorite author Seth Godin and he talked about his new publishing project called Domino Project.  He said they were trying to fail often.  He meant that.  They have done a lot of different things with pricing, collectibles, special editions, digital and print editions, 5 and 50 packs and even giving digital copies away thanks to a corporate sponsor.  He said that they were trying to learn so they were trying new things.  I’m positive that some of them didn’t “work” so they were failures.  It’s a good failure though because they’re learning. That’s what my book is, a learning tool.

What’s the book about?

I’m writing a book about all the stuff no one told me about marriage before I was married and it might fail.  Very few people may read it.  I may sell six copies.  I may spend more time on it than I should, use poor sentence structure and it could be too short (or too long).  When your goal is to test things then you can’t really fail.  Thomas Edison didn’t just discover how to make a lightbulb.  He said,