All posts by Mitch Mitchell

I'm an independent consultant in many fields, so I have a lot to share.

It Pays To Be Bad Sometimes

December 15, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 33 Comments

You know, I really didn’t want to talk about this Tiger Woods thing because, overall, I don’t care who he’s been with or anything else. Yes, he’s let a lot of people down, especially with how he’d built himself up as this paragon of virtue and dedication only to his sport and his wife, and to see all of that come crashing down is depressing in some fashion.

But the truth is that he’s an athlete who owes none of us anything. He never had any moral authority like one of my childhood heroes Jesse Jackson, or a politician like Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina. Tiger Woods ends up being Muhammad Ali (another childhood hero) in a way; heck, that could end up paying off well for him in the end.

See, here’s the thing. Over the past two weeks, I’d been wondering why all these women were coming out saying they’d had sex with Tiger; let’s call it what it is, instead of saying he “slept” with women. Heck, I’ve slept with women in my lifetime and none of it involved sex; yeah, I’m pathetic, but trustworthy. 🙂 Anyway, it had been troubling me the first week. Then one of my friends on Facebook talked about it, so I came out saying I just don’t get what these skanks could get out of it; yeah, I called them skanks. She didn’t have an answer either. So I went and mentioned it on Twitter, and I got my answer; money!

Oh yeah, the mighty dollar. Most of these women got paid to tell their story. Some of them, it seems, had been paid before by Tiger; they got him co… no, I’m not going to say that, as that jokes way too easy. Let’s just say they’re getting paid twice for having sex with him, well, once, twice, twenty times… who knows?

Most of them are getting paid. Some are getting paid really well. Some say they’re not getting paid, but then why the heck would they come out and say this stuff? That’s really the main question at this point; if they’re not getting money, what’s in it for them to come out and admit that their tramps, skanks, and sluts (as opposed to ho’s, because ho’s readily admit they get paid)?

Tiger gets his share of the blame here, but, as I said, this really isn’t a story about him as much as it’s a story about being bad. Let’s take a quick look at our short list of sex scandals, shall we?

Kobe Bryant was accused of rape, got out of it by paying off the person accusing him, and is now not only the best basketball player in the NBA, but has endorsement deals paying him more than he was getting paid beforehand. Why? Because just being accused of that heinous act gave him what’s known as street cred (credibility, for those in other countries who might not be up on the lingo), and suddenly it was cool for guys in the ‘hood to wear his gear.

Ashley Dupre, the young prostitute that brought down the governor of New York Eliot Spitzer, is now writing a column for the New York Post. Of all things, she’s giving sex and relationship advice. Of course, I’m sure she sees this as a major fall in cash, since she was making about $5,000 a pop as a prostitute (man, I can’t help myself; the puns are there), but at least she now has a steady job, even if she’s prostituting herself in a much different way (it is the Post after all).

Jerry Springer was mayor of Cincinnati when he was arrested for soliciting a prostitute. That wasn’t the worst of it, though; he actually wrote her a check! Now Jerry Springer makes around $20 million a year at least, writes a column for some newspaper, has had a couple of legit TV gigs here and there, and, well, he hasn’t gone too far from the sex now has he?

Mark Fuhrman, the detective in the O.J. Simpson case who was quoted saying all those racial epithets on tape and pretty much sealed the case in O.J.’s favor has made quite a nice living as a fiction writer. A couple of his books have gone to number one on the best seller’s list; he wasn’t making that much on a cop’s salary, that’s for sure.

Who really knew who Paris Hilton (she’s “hot”; lol) was until a video of her popped up showing that she had some skills doing, uhhh… well, you know what she was doing. She was someone else who was already rich, though it was daddy’s money, but she turned that one indiscretion into her own multi-million money making venture which includes fashion, perfumes, TV, modeling, movies and music; okay, she’s not making millions off the albums, although she did have one song to to number one on the dance chart. But the thing is that this is millions she’s making on her own, to the tune of almost $35 million a year, thus she hasn’t had to touch her trust fund, which is estimated to be in the 9 figures somewhere.

And we have Kim Kardashian, who turned her little home video into an empire that has made her a very rich woman. I mean, TV, modeling, fashion, and almost anything else you can think of, and that backside… let’s not go there except to say she replaced Jennifer Lopez in that area and leave it at that.

See, notoriety didn’t hurt any of these people. None of them, other than Kobe Bryant, were even in the consciousness of most of us until we heard about these indiscretions, and look where they are now. Heck, even Eliot Spitzer is now writing a column for Slate Magazine, a mag I’ve never heard of until he signed up with them, and now he appears on TV shows talking politics all the time, probably making more money than he ever was going to make as governor; not that he wasn’t already rich, by the way.

I guess this really is the way of the world, as even the prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, is dealing with his own sex issue, as well as a corruption scandal. But he’s 71; he might not have enough time to capitalize on his bad fortune, though he really doesn’t need to. After all, not only is he rich, but he got rich through sex, in a way, so he already knew the game before he decided to get into politics.

Man, why do I have my own sense or morals? Maybe I could be rich by now, flying all over the world having all sorts of fun because people want to know what I’m doing because of my indiscretion. Could I deal with a week or so of bad publicity to turn it around and make millions later on? Is there such a thing as bad publicity? Do we really think this little bit of negative publicity Tiger Woods is going through right now is going to make him less of a golfer, and thus earn him even more money later on? And, if his wife leaves him, he’ll be free to party like it’s 1999; we can still sing that song, right?

By the way, today it was announced the Accenture had dropped him as one of their spokesmen, saying he doesn’t represent their values. How many of you remember how Accenture came to be anyway; talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

After Sire’s big blog post last week that generated himself a ton of new publicity, maybe he can tell us how to do it honestly, although I’m betting these other folks had way more fun in how they generated theirs.

Motivation/Inspiration

Three Videos Of Motivation

December 12, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 10 Comments

Man, I’ve been on a tear. I figured it was time to slow things down, and it’s a Saturday, so what better time than to rest a little bit. So, instead of a lot of words, I hope you’ll indulge me in a little bit of sharing I’d like to do. Here are 3 videos of the motivational type. They’re relatively short, but they remind us of just why we’re all here on Earth, and why it’s a pretty nice place to be.

Marketing

Trying To Understand Squeeze Pages; Trial One

December 11, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 40 Comments

I keep reading about this concept of squeeze pages, and I’ll admit that I don’t quite have the concept down.

Yes, I know what a squeeze page is. Basically, it’s the main sales page which you hope to drive people to so that you can potentially sell your products.

Where my issue comes in is that I’m never quite sure what the look is supposed to be. I’m one of those people who really doesn’t like those long sales pages that have all the pictures and keep pumping the product over and over. I keep thinking that people aren’t really crazy about that type of thing.

However, I think I might also be incorrect on that front. I just don’t know. So, I want to look at this in stages, and I’d like to ask y’all to help me out, which, in a weird way, helps you out as well. I’d like you to comment, in general terms without hurting my feelings (yup, don’t make me come there), on two pages. Yes, it’s a product I’m marketing right now, which I actually have over there to the left, which is my very first book Embrace The Lead. I’m not asking you to buy it, unless you have a compelling reason to do so once you look at both pages.

The words are the same on each page. What’s different is the look of the page. On the one page, which I actually link to right now, it looks just like ever other page of my business site. I did that because I thought it was the more professional thing to do. On the other, it’s the first sales page I ever created, and it was based on what I’d seen many other sales sites do.

To be truthful, I’ve probably made the same number of sales from each advertisement, which isn’t a high number. So, it may not be the squeeze page or sales page at all. But it’s a good test, if y’all cooperate and take a look, and maybe we can learn this thing together.

Here’s the sales page I use now.

Here’s the original sales page.

Which one works better, and why? Thanks for playing; it should be interesting.

Blogging

Be Sure You Know Your Audience Before You State Your Case

December 10, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 15 Comments

You know, since September, I’ve decided to be a bit more personal in how and what I write about on this blog. I feel it’s served me well, and since my subscribers went up, I guess y’all feel okay about it. I sometimes take on controversial subjects, as I’m wont to do because I don’t shy away from stuff that’s getting on my nerves. I’m ready to put myself out there and state my opinion, and not worry all that much whether someone agrees with me or not.

Emiliano via Compfight

However, I do have a limit. For instance, if I believed dogs and cats should marry and move in with each other, I might not write on it because I’d know from the get-go that it would be a controversial thing to say (or funny, but go with me for a minute here). Or, if I decided to get on my high horse and spout something about that I thought I’d find a lot of agreement on without thinking about it first, such as if I said that I believe Tiger Woods didn’t have sex with nearly enough women (oh man, there goes my Tiger-free zone cred), while I knew the world was pretty much thinking that he’s a horn dog who doesn’t appreciate the hot wife he already has (that, plus his choice of women after that certainly shows a lack of taste and discretion), and expected everyone to agree with me just because I said it, I’d be living a delusion that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Such is the case for an internet marketer named David Risley, who I guess is also a professional blogger. I have to admit that I’d never heard of this guy until yesterday, but supposedly he’s a big time blogger. Our friend Sire wrote what I thought was a great post called Why I No Longer Link To The Likes Of Problogger And John Chow, where he basically said that these guys are so big that he doesn’t need to go out of his way to support them any longer, since it seems they don’t appreciate their readers enough to ever comment back to any of them. Now, he is going a step further than I am in not even reading their blogs anymore, but I agree with the sentiment that it’s nice for even the top guys to respond to their commenters every once in awhile, especially since they hope these commenters are also buyers of their products from time to time.

Anyway, someone mentioned David’s name, and I guess he’s got something set up where whenever his name is mentioned, he gets notified through Backtype, something else I’d never heard of, but after looking at it actually looks pretty cool overall. I’m not going that route, because I get way too much email already, but I also use Google Alerts to tell me whenever my name is mentioned somewhere; well, my websites and blogs anyway, because whenever it finds Mitch Mitchell it’s that other guy, and people are still talking about him way more than me. 🙂

Anyway, someone mentioned his name and he popped over to Sire’s blog and left a comment basically defending these guys, and himself, for having the right not to respond to comments because they see their blogs more as a business than as a “fun” or less serious blog. Of course, I got into it myself, being nice in my way, and we bantered back and forth, as he wanted me to quote where he’d said something and I wanted him to quote where Sire had said something; stalemate. My main point overall was that both of the guys Sire mentioned have written in the past on their blogs that responding to comments is the way to build up your community, and both seem to have forgotten that.

A quick disclaimer here. I have noticed that every once in awhile Problogger will respond to a quick comment early on in a post. He actually responded to something I wrote once when I was one of the top 3 responders because I kind of, in my own nice way of course, went after him for saying something in his blog post that, in my mind, seemed to run counter to what he was doing on his own blog. Sometimes one just has to call a… no, I’d best not go there. lol

Today, David went the next step. He decided to kind of write a blog post about it, and he put up a video explaining his position. Then he asked the people what they thought about what he had to say. Lo and behold, at least at the time I looked, being alerted through Twitter about it, only one person supported his position. Even in his response back to these folks, it just seems that he’s somewhat missing the overall point, that being people want to feel like they’re part of a community, no matter who it is.

Now, to his credit, he did respond back to people, though I don’t know if that’s a regular thing because, at least for now, I don’t see myself subscribing to a blog where I know someone feels they have a right not to respond to anyone, whether they do or not, as long as he’s making money, which is also why I’m not giving a link to his blog through here, but you never know long term. You can find it on Sire’s blog, I believe, or he’ll tell you if you ask him where it is so you can see it for yourself.

Now, I respond to almost every comment I get here. Every once in awhile, I’m not sure what to say back to someone, so I’ll just let it hang, especially if it’s a one line comment that I don’t believe is spam. And, after engaging someone, I’ve learned that I don’t have to always have the last word on this blog, so I’ll let some of those go also. I think that’s only fair.

But it’s funny how folks can forget some of those simple lessons in life. One, don’t forget where you came from and how you started. Two, don’t ask people to support your position without really knowing that people will support it; if you care, that is. Be controversial, yes, at times, because controversy can be fun. But try not to be “right”, only to find yourself being very wrong in the court of public opinion unless you’re wearing your position on your sleeve.

Now here I go; right or wrong?

Personal

My Top 12 News Stories Of The Decade

December 8, 2009 Mitch Mitchell 11 Comments

You know, doing lists like this one are hard because there’s just so many news stories to pick from, and at the same time there’s a lot to try to remember.

There will be a lot of top whatever stories coming for this first decade of the century, even though there will also be debate as to whether the decade ends on 12/31/09 or 12/31/10. In my mind, the first year of the millennium was 0, not 1, so 2009 is the end of this decade. Heck, my blog, my post, my rules. 🙂

Here’s the thing with my list. These are actually my top 12 topics as much as my top 12 news stories. By that, I mean it might have been one specific thing, or it may have been a lot of things that made the story so significant in 2009. Also, I’ll own up to this right now; this is obviously from an American perspective, though I tried to make all of my stories pertinent to the world in some fashion. I believe that only a couple are specifically American news stories, but in their own way they affected the rest of the world.

So be it; it’s another topic to generate conversation and controversy, and I’m betting it’s not going to get a lot of conversation. I think, overall, that I enjoy these posts more than other folks do, because they make you think more than just teach you something. I guess we’ll find out. So, without more ado, here we go:

12. Michael Jackson – Some people might wonder why Michael Jackson merits news. If there’s one person who was more than just an entertainer for decades, let alone one decade, it was Michael Jackson. The decade began with his last released studio album of his career, Invincible. Critics called it a failure; that “failure” sold more than 13 million copies worldwide, the best selling album of 2001, and won him a Grammy, to date his last. Then there was the interview with Martin Bashir that almost brought his career down. There was the child molestation trial, which exonerated him, and encouraged him to leave the country and never live here again. And finally, there was his passing this year, shockingly, in June, weeks before he was going to be doing his last live performances, and 2 months before his 51st birthday. He immediately became the number one best selling artist of the year, his funeral was the 3rd most watched funeral in history. He’s the only artist in history who had one album sell more than 100 million copies; that’s more than 50 million albums than anyone else. He’s won more Grammy’s, American Music Awards, and world music awards than any other person in history. He’s up for more Grammys this year. And he’s my favorite singer of all time. If he’s not one of the top news stories of the decade, then people have no concept of what news is.

11. Y2K – The beginning of the decade changed a lot of things without really doing anything. There was so much worry that big and small businesses went out, changed their computer systems, bought new electrical equipment, and had people sitting by waiting for the world to come crashing down at midnight wherever they were in the world. Some airlines even stopped flying until after midnight, just to make sure nothing happened. It was the biggest news story that ended up not really being news, but it was fun while it lasted.

10. Space – There was so much that happened in the past decade regarding outer space or the concept of how the universe was created that to not talk about it would be a fallacy. Scientists found the coldest place in the universe, and it turned out to be our own moon. We saw it snowing on Mars. There was water found in both places. There were planets found circling other stars in other galaxies in other solar systems. They landed a module on an asteroid; they put another one in the path of a comet. We saw some amazing pictures; we learned that there’s a black hole in the middle of every galaxy. They declassified Pluto as a planet, creating a major uproar. China joined the space race. We had another space shuttle disaster, this time as one was coming back from space, Columbia. And we started flying civilians into space, turning it from being primarily a government thing to more of a citizens event, meaning anyone with guts and at least $20 million of expendable cash can go into space. Man, think of what the next decade is going to bring us.

9. Fidel Castro resigns as Cuba’s president – Who can say they saw this one coming? Fidel has been in the crosshairs of America for almost 50 years, defiant as anything as he took his country into poverty but stuck to his principles. He finally stepped down “officially” as president of the country in 2008, and now his brother Raul is president. We’re not really sure who’s running the country, because Fidel is still sending out missives and commenting on world events, but Cuba is starting to progress, albeit slowly, and finally an American administration is talking with them about the possible thaw in relations. I guess soon we won’t be seeing any more of these Cuban cars.

8. Bush 2000 election – Man, was this ugly or what. For the first time in American history, a president was actually elected by the Judicial branch of the country rather than the people of the country. It all came down to Florida and 16 votes, Florida being the state where the president’s brother was governor. There were allegations of voter fraud and we all had to learn the term “hanging chads”, but in the end Bush won the presidency by a 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court while losing the popular vote to Al Gore by more than 540,000 votes. We all have to wonder how different things might have been if Bush hadn’t been in office then, or with both #3 and #1 on this list.

7. Social Media – This was probably the quickest change in history, and has brought the world closer together in a big way. When the decade started we only had newsgroups, some instant messaging, and most people still were on 52K dial up. By the end of the decade most of us are on some kind of high speed internet connection, are connected via Twitter or Facebook, blogs are the rage and are more than just diaries for the love lorn, and we have multiple business sites for different industries or blanket business ventures for everyone.

Many people around the world can connect via Skype for free; there’s video conferencing also. And, with the release of Windows 7, computing could become more interactive with touchscreen technology; yeah, we had it with those weird thick pens and green CRT monitors in the 80’s, but this is something much different.

I guess we could tie in text messaging and the demise, at least in my opinion, of instant messaging, but it’s probably modifying instead of just going away for good. Social media has taken over our lives, and as we migrate into Web 3.0, I’m sure there are going to be some amazing changes in the next decade.

6. Avian, West Nile, Swine Flu – As we deal with this supposed pandemic (lots of people are getting sick, but few are dying) known as H1N1, or swine flu, we have to remember that the decade started out with something known as west nile virus, then the avain or bird flu virus. We were suddenly looking at animals as the ends to our destruction, and people went nuts all around the world.

Of course, none of these compare to the ebola scare or bubonic plague, but the thing that’s made all of it much more scary is that the news gets out faster, there’s more news sources to keep pumping it into our consciousness, and therefore people are panicked beyond belief. I hate to think of what might be coming in the next decade.

5. World Recession – We’re dealing with this now, but anyone who had their minds open saw this one coming as early as 2006. Gas prices shot up, then jobs started leaving America and going to other countries, which meant high unemployment here and no buyers for products coming back into this country. Around the world jobs were lost, houses were lost, people started going hungry, stock markets crashed, and many banks started to close.

When things really got bad, it proved something I’ve been saying for a long time, that all that money that was being lost wasn’t being lost; it never existed. Bernard Madoff proved that, as did banks that lost their existence because those bad loans they made to people who didn’t see it coming came due, and no one had that kind of money to pay things back, and we all learned once again that the stock market in every country was overvalued.

Right now, “experts” are speculating that it could be as long as 2012 before things really get better. I’m a bit more optimistic than that, but that’s because I believe in people, and believe that, somehow, world governments are going to step up and help people and businesses do the right thing. And what is the right thing? I haven’t written that post yet on my finance blog, but it’s coming.

4. 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake/Tsunami – This was the day we all learned where Phuket was, and that it really existed, but rich people have always known. Within hours of a massive underwater earthquake, a killer tsunami came through the Indian Ocean and killed more than 230,000 in 11 countries. It was scary because a lot of it was caught on tape, and we could see the devastation occurring before our eyes. It had a magnitude between 9.1 and 9.3, the second worst earthquake in recorded history, fourth largest since 1900, lasted nearly 10 minutes, and caused earthquakes in other areas around the world. We really saw what nature can do to us and there’s nothing we can possibly do to keep it from happening anywhere.

3. War – I thought about selecting one specific war, but I decided that two wars in particular had to be talked about. Yeah, there were some other skirmishes here and there, but the war in Afghanistan and Iraq are the two biggies because each involved more than two countries. Both, in their own way, were related to the #1 news story of the decade, in my opinion, although in different ways.

One seemingly had an air of legitimacy to it; the other seemed more vindictive, with false information generated to convince us and the world to join forces and go after Saddam Hussein. I don’t weep for him, as Bush Sr. should have taken him out when he had the chance, and in my opinion, would have lessened the possibility of the first attack on the Twin Towers of NY in 1994 and other attacks around the world. The problem now is that we’re still conducting both wars, with little sign that either one is going away, although there’s a supposed time frame for each one to wind down. For two wars that seemingly were resolved so quickly, they’re turning out to be really costly and the loss of life almost doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Almost, that is, because terrorism has changed and the world has changed. But we also have to acknowledge that the war has probably contributed to the recession.

2. President Barack Obama – When Rep. John Lewis of Georgia announced he was switching his support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, he was asked why. His answer summed up the entire election: “It’s hard to go against a movement.” The campaign of Barack Obama was more about the dream and vision people had of America than anything else. My dad would have been proud.

Every one who supported him had something they wanted. I supported him because he was a black candidate; I’ll admit that, mainly because he wasn’t my first choice, and I didn’t decide I was voting for him until he won the Democratic primary. For once, I wasn’t voting against someone, but for someone, though that was my only reason (otherwise, I would have been voting against someone, so my vote wouldn’t have changed). Some people supported him because they thought he would end the war. Some people voted for him because they believed he’d get a national health care plan pushed through. Some people voted for him because they thought he’d support gay rights.

Whatever it was, it was a movement, and it was euphoric the night he won, and again on the day he was elected. Right now, he’s proving why most of us would never want to run for president; it’s ugly, for sure. But for one night and one day, he changed history, and over the course of this year, he’s helped the United States raise its standing in the world, helped bring some peace in international relations, and I’m still giving him the benefit of the doubt. For now, that is.

1. 9/11/2001 – What really needs to be said? This was the biggest act of terrorism in history. More than 3,300 people were killed on this day. We saw the attacks on the Twin Towers, the second one live. We saw the remnants of the attack on the Pentagon. We later learned about the plane crash in Pennsylvania, when a bunch of heroes decided they’d rather down the plane, Flight 93, and give up their lives instead of allowing a bunch of stupid hoping-to-be martyrs crash their plane into another building, supposed aiming for the Capitol or the White House, which they’d have never gotten close to because, finally, military planes had been scrambled and were ready to shoot down any plane approaching Washington D. C.

That one act of terrorism defined the decade, setting the stage for most of what came afterwards around the world; war, recession, and more terrorism from extremists who think they’re actually winning. It was the first time the Stock Exchange was closed, for six days no less, and other stock markets around the world closed. Planes didn’t fly for 3 days or so. It was an attack on America, but the world felt it and still feels its effects, and I still have this image of Arafat laying on a table giving blood that was supposed to be sent to America. How weird was that? And yeah, 8 years later I’m still mad.

There you are, my top news stories of the decade. Did you see anything there that you want to comment on? Is this one too long for you? Luckily, you can listen to it if you want, so lay back, close your eyes, and enjoy it. Then comment; I’m sure some of you have something you think should be on the list.

I'm Just Sharing