Squidlog.net

Open letter to Seth Godin, Megan Casey, Kimberly Dawn-Wells and the Giant Squid Organizers: bdkz, rms, and GypsyPirate

Dear Friends:

Thank you for taking the time and sending me your birthday wishes. That was very kind of you!

I have to say, I’m still a bit overwhelmed by the incredible out-pour of love. HB greetings are one (very kind) thing, but the sheer number of tributes and notes of appreciation took me completely by surprise.

We know that we never know just how many lives we may touch when we share ourselves. It speaks for the human greatness of our lensmaster community that this gratitude for peer support became a written record for the world to see.

Make no bones about it – I’ve contributed my own few ingredients to our squid stew. But mainly I’ve passed on what was given to me before – so freely.

This reminds me of something I wrote to Megan within my first months on Squidoo: The genius of Squidoo’s design lies in the built-in realization of the universal law of giving AND receiving. Not only shall you receive after giving – you will receive…abundantly – it’s the law. But you need to give first (for-give)!

In a very fundamental way – this principle is the only guideline we need for success on Squidoo.

Thank you for your generous friendship.

Achim (Chef Keem)

Open letter to my dear SquidLog co-authors and beloved friends in our lensmaster community

What am I going to do with you rascals?

You’ve been sneaking up on me with a concerted effort to “blow old Keem’s mind!”…to “make him bawl like a babe!”… Is that what you’ve set out to do? Well, you’ve succeeded.

If you didn’t hear much from me during the last 3 days it’s because you’ve rendered me speechless. I got up on Thursday morning and logged on to Twitter where AJ had just tweeted about her tribute lens and Anne’s RentTheNews website. I clicked on the links and basically fell off of my rocker (cheap office chair, mind you). I couldn’t believe my eyes!

At the same time, email notifications from the Squid Angel basecamp forum and personal email greetings started pouring in, in batches of ten or more. I threw up (no – not that way!)…my hands! What’s going on? What’s happening?

It was like a dream: beautiful, yes – but also confusing and somewhat numbing. I had barely scrolled up and down AJ’s lens for a couple of times, disbelievingly scanned across Anne’s rentthenews page, and suddenly discovered Julie’s tribute posts here and here, with Poddys and Deb chiming in on their blog – when I had to leave for the DPS office to get my drivers license renewed. I was glad to have this distraction in my state of overwhelmed emotions. I needed a breather!

By the time I got back home, my inbox was overflowing with B’Day messages. It was almost too much – I couldn’t figure how the word had gotten out so widely. (You know who you are!)

Thursday through Saturday (today) were extremely busy for me – I had a ton of candy orders to fill. I didn’t really have the time to answer your notes, although I was thinking about you all the time.

Never before have I felt so much gratitude for all the love coming from my friends!

I’m all this: floored, humbled, honored, over-joyed and plumb happy…

But let’s give credit where credit is due!

You are what drives the energy of our remarkable community. You are my inspiration!

I could never find the motivation for giving of myself without your examples of pure friendship and personal integrity.

Paula’s consistent quality content, Alex’s unique personality, MiMi’s devotion to lensmaster success, Bonnie’s and AJ’s personal strength and inspiring insights, Margaret’s no-nonsense judgment and generous support, the blossoming beauty of our new contributors Victoria, Jennifer, Correen, Erica, Charly…

…GhostSquid/Admin/Squidster/Anne’s incredible creativity, inner beauty (and ‘outer’, too!), generosity, kindness and loving friendship…

…Squidoo Grand Dame Julie’s absolute greatness of heart and mind…Bambi, Spirituality, Susan52, Comfortdoc, Joan, Sittonbull, A_Willow, Tipi, NanLT, KarateKatGraphics, Pastiche, Jewelsofawe, lollyj, stargazer, Lizzy, nDee, JJNW, CherylK, jfield, Just-Bon, sandyspider, makingamark, LindaJM, anetteghallowell, ArtSiren, Micky_G, BevsPaper, Brenda, cappucino136, kiwisoutback, kab, Heather426, Janusz, tandemonimom, OhMe, EverythingMouse, lwhitelaw, hlkljgk, Gia, oneskms, hexagon, Rewards4life, inkserotica, mulberry, Rajays, Spook, mukunda22, alteredkat, seegreen, and many more…(I’m sure I forgot to list some names here, but that doesn’t mean I won’t notice your kind presence in my life!)

You all do something that is much bigger than Squidoo or my puny little wrinkled 60th birthday – you share your soul with the world!

And that’s why ‘the good’ will always win in the end, no matter how messed-up things seem to be right now.

You change the world. Yup.

Thank you for including me.

Your Achim.

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For most Saturdays in the past 7 years or so, I’ve sold my specialty food products at one of the top ten farmers markets in the country – the Sunset Valley Farmers Market in Austin, Texas. Today’s special event attached to our regular market grounds – the bi-annual Austin Artists Fair attracted a ton of new visitors to marvel at the art pieces and watch demonstrations by jewelry makers, wood carvers and other great talent.

One sculptor in  particular caught my attention – a middle-aged woman working all morning to extract the dazzling shapes of abstract gorgeousness from a big chunk of rock. She seemed to be entranced by her work, and I felt honored to silently witness the creation of something so beautiful.

At one point during my almost meditative experience with this artist, a couple of ladies with two noisy kids walked up from behind to my sculptor and asked her: “Say, what’s the shortest way outta here?” Smiling, the friendly artist pointed them in the right direction. Then, she took a deep breath and went back to work.

Insensitivity? Disrespect? Ignorance?

I’ve had people walk up to me at my booth (without as much as a glance at my offerings) and ask:

“Got any taster samples?”

I’m thinking – of what? (Sometimes I say “of what?”. That’s when they look semi-curiously at my products and reply something along the lines of “well, whatever it is that you’re selling here…”

Do you know anything about what you want to try, or do you eat everything as long as it’s free? Are you shopping or are you free-loading?

Why do you place yourself into the uncomfortable situation of having to lie to me with your “I’ll have to think about that”, or “I’ll come back later”, when you never had any intention to buy something in the first place?

Do you ever consider that I’ve worked all week to create my items for sale today?

I’ve spent good money on ingredients, packaging, the vendors booth fee, the taster spoon you just dropped on the ground before quickly grabbing another one…all that for feeding you a free breakfast come Saturday morning?

Greed? Superficiality?

Someone left a guest book comment on one of my lenses:

“Great lens! Very informative! Starred! Feel free to visit…(link)!”

Sorry, I won’t feel free to visit your link. Matter of fact – you’ve just ensured that I will probably never look at your stuff!

Because what you’ve told me (with your generic, pasted comment) is that you are not interested in my sculpture. You don’t care about interrupting my creative process with your spammy email. You haven’t even looked at my offerings but you want something for free in return. This is not how life works – online or offline.

Share yourself with me!

Attention. Respect. Consideration.

I’ll gladly feed you back with beauty and chocolate samples. How about seconds…thirds…?

Image courtesy of Chill. Thank you.

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I‘ve seen a lot of discussions lately about pitch pages and the best sales techniques, e-mail lists, you know – the whole shebang.

One (free) trainings video from a few weeks ago specifically stayed on my mind. A well-known internet “Millionaire Marketer” analyzed a pitch page, sentence for sentence, word for word – down to the last details on doubling up some phrases and highlighting certain passages. One of the most famous “experts” even teaches that the longer the pitch text – the better your conversions.

This and many other materials hammering home the “proven methods” to manipulate your visitors into closing the sales made me think… and here are some questions I asked myself:

• How much longer are these “proven methods” going to work?
• What will happen when people stop paying attention?
• Why do we complain about loud, repetitive, and annoying pitch pages – yet we insist on using them for our own marketing efforts?

I’m not sure about the first two answers. But for number three, one word popped into my mind: Fear!

We’re afraid that if we don’t offer our wares through the same tired old “proven methods” that have worked for years – we won’t make any sales.

Wow. What if Michael Dell had felt that way? Or Zig Ziglar, Henry Ford, Seth Godin?

Anyone who has ever achieved any innovative, trend-setting success had abandoned tradition and created brand-new “proven methods”!

We might say: this is all nice and good but we are no geniuses. We have to work with what we have and try to make a living right now!

Sure. But we can play. And we need to eliminate fear from our lives!

• What if we designed one of our marketing campaigns with nothing but the tools of our own unique persona.
• We all know something about something.
• We all are intelligent, interesting human beings with lots of valuable experience to share.
• We all have our own target audience that’s waiting for us to speak up.
• No manipulations, no “proven methods” and tricks of persuasion.
• Only our specific message for only our specific audience that won’t need to be persuaded – only addressed.

I have the feeling that somewhere in these thoughts we’ll find the answer to the second question from above.

What are your thoughts on this?

Another powerful image from the Heather Katsoulis Collection. Thank you.

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