Archives for January 2009

01-15-09_Hello Debbie:

You commented on my wall about the chat project and what a great feat that was to compile the chat posts whilst paying attention to the presentations in Ross’ Seminar. I relied very heavily on the replays. I also had to work which severely interrupted my attendance in the Seminar. I had “scribes” help me. Our combined efforts literally brought together in print about 98.9% of the entire chat! I am happy to have met you because you do see what I also see.

Just a few words here…

The chat ebooks were a failure! Now before you wonder what I meant by that… When Ross gave me the idea to SELL the ebooks, I set out with this and I failed. I did not know what I was getting myself into. Originally they were meant to be given away and timing was not so important. The project bombed right from the get-go because there was no planning. It was an idea I got very soon after the chat started. I learned my first marketing lesson from this project … better get it whilst it is hot! I didn’t know that in the internet marketing, or in any marketing, you must move very quickly! Selling the the ebooks went out the window faster than I could turn my head – or complete the first one! However they are not a failure if looked at in the original sense. I had intended to give them away. It is still not too late to do that. I don’t need Ross’ list, I have my own – Twitter.

I never realized how long it would take to assimilate all the fragments into a continuous manuscript from beginning to end. That was phase one – a great big puzzle! Color-coding the names and bolding them became the other enormous task I had no idea would be so voluminous. I’m STILL doing this. Ross letting it be a free-for-all for members to log in any way they pleased from day-to-day, even moment-to-moment resulted in the creation of many hundreds of macros to achieve the desired effects in the ebooks. I’m not kidding when I say this…one name in the list is verbatim, “guess who!” It would literally take months to do this by hand! Wonderful thing this Visual Basic…that I had to learn on the spot!

Ross got heavily involved in his product launch and told me he couldn’t do anything with regard to letting his list know about the project until after the holidays. I had a hunch this would affect sales and stopped. I now had other things pressing and could no longer account for the “irresponsible use of my time” to people around me in the physical world who insisted I needed to be out pounding the pavement looking for work rather than being at this computer all this time playing around with foolish things.” After the holidays I told Ross that I stopped the project and he said that was the most foolish thing he’d ever heard! I went back to the project and plugged away at it again, telling Ross my progress from time to time. Little did I know stopping the project had caused him such despair and that my short messages were annoying the tar out of him. I did not know the gravity of a “$1,000 product launch” until he bluntly told me off to stop bothering him. My last message to him was, “OK. I’m gone!” I brooded in the fact that I “brought out the worst in such a kind person which is something I am great at doing!”

But I looked at it completely wrong!

Why all this? We are taught in school that mistakes are terrible, ugly things to do! We got punished, sometimes pretty severely for making mistakes! That’s why you will never get anywhere if you think it a terrible thing to make mistakes. As you can see, I’ve made a lot of mistakes with this project already and it isn’t even finished yet! I’m going to plough forward with it still because I promised people, I will deliver on it if it is the last thing I do! A mistake is one thing, failure is another. I learned recently that a failure results when you quit something. I don’t believe in the saying, “fail forward.” When you fail, you fail. That’s not nice if it is unavoidable. If you continue in something you have not failed. Yes, in regard to the project, it was a failure — in sales — but not in its original intent, though I’ve made loads of mistakes.

It would have been a failure if I deleted my work and unsubscribed from Ross’ list, like I thought about doing after Ross dumped on me. But even the reason he dumped on me is a learning experience. I had no idea what was involved in a product launch because I’ve never done one and had no idea what he was going through at the time. I would have hurt myself by doing the above. Mark Strickland helped me here. It was another lesson — negativity. And I’ve even written articles on negativity myself!

Let me share with you what I found when I ran upon a video Ross did. One of the points in it concerns subscribing to as many newsletters as possible. Someone responded with a video telling the world what a dumb idea that was. It was even a bit sarcastic about the name Immortal” and the lightening in the header image. As one would expect, Ross had a response to that video with yet another of his own.

I wanted to see Ross tear this person apart but you know what? He didn’t! He admitted his error instead which shocked me and said nothing about the deriding of the content in the header! He then turned out a report which clarifies both points of views and who would and would not benefit from subscribing to as many newsletters as possible. Ross teaches a great lesson to the world with his example of dealing with negative criticism.I must say I re-learned a great lesson. When I was very young I saw our next-door neighbor, Steven Yahn, put a rock (or a baseball) through a window of the one-car garage. I thought to myself, “Wow! Wait till his father gets home and sees this! I thought from my own viewpoint of what my own father would do to me for breaking a window. I’d gotten a beating for it and would have hidden myself. I watched when his father came home and the young Steve walked right up to his dad – the owner of an asphalt paving company – a man great in stature and quite powerful in physical strength. He boldly said,

“Dad, I broke the garage window.”

Thinking his father would lay him out right there, I was shocked that all he got was that he would have to pay for the damage. That same voice still resonates within the annals of my memory forty years later…

Now, do I take the cake for having the longest facebook post on your wall?

Go at it Debbie! We all have 24 hours per day. No, I don’t like how some of my time is spent. I’m employed and is exactly what I am now writing a book on! We can change but that means MISTAKES. Please don’t let this stop you in anything you do that is new and unfamiliar. If you died trying at something that would not be a failure. But if you quit…that’s another story. And if you never get started because you are afraid of making mistakes…it’s the same another story.

Thanks to you I have an article for my blogs!

With love, Daniel

The following is a letter I wrote today to a close friend who attended Florida College when I did during the mid 1990s.

Hello again Mike:

I need to elaborate more on my last letter…

Foremost, the file I sent you is a result of quickly writing out thoughts so what you have a bare bones and crude representation of what will be put into the book and it is subject to editing.

This letter will serve as additional notes for the book as well as more thought for your consideration.

As for the apparent stance on Christianity, I’m writing the book to the general public which includes unbelieving individuals. I would like to write a book especially written for Christians. The current book is not about Christianity though I found it necessary to bring up certain biblical passages as they are associated with certain implications regarding employment. The issues here are not particularly those of Christianity as it stands in its pure sense, but on people’s beliefs in what it teaches.

The book for Christians would explore what God has to say about the implications found in my current book. I thinking of using a title much like this, If A Man Will Not Work: Implications of Employment and It’s Alternatives. That’s a crude throw-together of a title, but may be a good one. The passage (along with others) would be extensively studied and their what they mean carefully considered.

The book would also serve as a back end product for the current one I am now writing.

The way I am writing my current book is very much the same way a campaign on evolution vs. divine intelligence was recently held at USF. The best way I can relate to that is like that of a chameleon. It changes its color to match the environment it is in, but it is still a chameleon. The meeting at USF was conducted very differently than it would have been in front of an audience of Bible believers. So if my treatment to Christianity appears watered down in my book, it is an answer to the respect for readers who are not religious.

Among the churches of Christ there are people who strongly feel that the passage in the Bible, “If a man shall not work neither shall he eat” means that the one ethical thing to do is to secure employment. I have not elaborated upon this fact in the file, that some people have not known anything more than securing income via employment for a multiplicity of reasons. Therefore when they see the passage, they interpret it such that this only implies going out and getting a job like you would working for a company, commuting, and all that. This brings up the fact that sometimes people are inadvertently closed-minded about other possibilities which may be acceptable alternatives to obeying commands associated with the passage.

That there are other alternatives out there for which folks can secure income is the very core of why my book now exists though still under development.

Other issues that come up as a result of beliefs of what the Bible says are such notions that it is unethical to dream (because this is considered childish) and that poverty is a virtue. I’m now paraphrasing but Paul says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11) When talking about my aspirations to some bretheren, I’ve had this passage thrown in my face as if my discourse on pursuing dreams and imagining is an immature thing to do.

I would add that, unlike ancient Greek educational systems, imagination does not come into as high a priority in today’s educational systems and I say that to its shame. One only need to look at the curriculum of most school systems and how budgets affect it.

Yet another issue comes up when others tell me such things that it is the poor who will inherit the earth, etc. I realize priorities being out of line and poor attitude about wealth can apply here, but again, the historical implications come into play here again. Furthermore I do not believe the Bible teaches that poverty is a virtue like others claim. Even the appearance of those who attend worship testify to this fact though occasionally that poverty is virtuous is silently taught.

For people who hold such beliefs, employment perfectly fits in. You will not get rich from it, you will, in most cases, be very controlled and the ceiling of prosperity is indeed very low. For the undisciplined, it is the perfect answer to controlling idleness. I have run into opposition right in the church that I’m looking at employment very negatively and that I need to change my beliefs on it. If employment keeps a soul from Hell, I recommend it. Otherwise, no.

That I dislike working for a company does not make me an undisciplined or irresponsible person. I have never fit into that kind of lifestyle very well and have been accused of not having my life right with God. I suggest that some people do not do very well being under such constraint. That the different modes of occupation in life does not necessarily take high priority in the Bible doesn’t mean it’s wrong to concern myself with it. In fact, breaking off from employment in my life would give me the withal to put out books and let them earn my money for me while I develop myself for better service to God and to humanity. I believe in letting the books work for me, thus money working for me rather than putting in vast quantities of my time working for money. It just does not fit who I am and it is only out of expedience I now am employed.

If I can prod people with my book to do the things in their lives that they aspire instead of the drudgery of doing something everyday that is mismatched with their purposes in life, I’ve accomplished what I meant to. This does not mean I’m totally against the existence of employment. I realize it has its place and not everyone has the ability or wants to assume the propositions found in my book.

There are many reasons why people believe this. It is not to say they get their beliefs from the Bible, but how they interpret it with respect to their beliefs previously formulated by others around them..

They go so far as to bind these things upon others. This is the issue here. Before the book gets released it will be carefully scrutinized to make sure what I say here is accurate. In fact, I’m attempting to show virtues that indeed come from God though the direct sources filtered so as not to turn off folks who have an aversion to the biblical view of things. In the mean time I can use biblical insight without offending them.

I appreciate the great things you have said with regard to my book. Whatever you do not agree with I’d appreciate the feedback. There may be things there that need clarification, rewritten, and downright omitted if it is indeed out of line with reality. All your thoughts are welcomed. You are the first to submit some sort of testimony about the book. I would include you in the Acknowledgments for your contributions in thought to this book.

Gratefully, Daniel

P.S. You can see my blog at http://www.euergetes-publishing.com I am proposing a separate blog for Christian readers for the purpose of discussion on the topics I bring up. I happily say you have caused me to come up with the idea. I’m thinking of giving the domain name the title of this post.