NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Archives for April 2012

How to get out of a slump

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Me and Noah talk about how to get out of slump:

I know what you’re thinking:

“Neville….what’s wrong with your hair??”

Well….at the beginning of the month my hair color was “bright blue“ …..but now faded into “i-don’t-know-what-the-hell-is-on-my-head” color.

People just copied this….and it worked!

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For the SumoBusinessBlueprintLIVE I wrote this particular email (below) as part of a sequence of emails.

What’s funny about this one, is that people literally COPIED AND PASTED the ad I made….and put it on Craigslist themselves (changed contact info obviously).

After that, I’ve got at least FOUR EMAILS that said, “I put this ad up on Craigslist just to see what would happen, and within a few hours I got people calling to schedule!”

I love when people have this “lightbulb” moment that this stuff (despite how simple it seems) ….REALLY works!

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EMAIL STARTS RIGHT HEREEEE:
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Every time I hear a wantrepreneur talk about how they can “Make this cool idea and it’s goona be soooo great!!”

..I flip the hell out.
….and kick a trash can.
…….and sometimes even kick a puppy.

It’s because they’re THINKING about their idea too damn much, and doing NO ACTUAL real-world tests.

I can already hear you say,
“OK Neville…..then show us wantrepreneurs what you’re talking about if you’re soooo smart.”

Fine….I will.  In the next few minutes this email will show you how to make a basic page to validate your idea.

Let’s pretend we’re trying to sell WordPress design services to people in our area.  Before we “design a portfolio” and “try to cold-call clients” …..let’s do some simple tests:

LET’S START:
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If you’re trying to measure if people will pay for your idea or service…..try something like this…..it’ll be a quick ad on Craigslist.

Craigslist is easy & free…..and it gets a shitload of traffic….so it’s perfect for us.

The point of this to see if people call us up and want to PAY $money$ for our services:

So we’d make a simple ad like this:

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I MAKE WORDPRESS SITES IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE.

Do you need a WordPress site put up and customized….but don’t know how to do it?

Let ME do it for you!

I have 2 years of WordPress experience and know how to customize themes.

I can even work with you personally, and we can design your site together.  I’ll even train you how to use your brand-new site (WordPress is really easy once setup)!

I charge $25/hour and can meet you anywhere in Austin.
Call Neville at 713-301-1546
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Here’s a mockup of the ad I put up on Craigslist (took me 2 minutes to make in photoshop):

(click hereif you can’t see the image)That’s it!

Just put that bad-boy up on Craigslist….in this case we’d place it in the SERVICES → COMPUTER section.

I’ve done this before, and started getting calls within a few hours of people wanting to meetup and PAY me!

Most “wantrepreneurs” will do useless stuff like:

  • Make a portfolio (and spend a lot of time).
  • Register an LLC company (and waste money).
  • Try to set themselves up as a “We-Do-Everything” company and lose a lot of niche-power.

…..instead….just GET THE DAMN BALL ROLLING FIRST!

Within the first few clients you’ll make money PLUS get insanely-great feedback on what clients want and need (not to mention you’re getting PAID this whole time)!

See how easy that was to validate?
If we start getting calls and emails requesting our service….BOOM….we’re in business.

If no one bites….then we may have a service most people don’t need.

Peace,
-Neville – A Fatass Sumo

P.S.  Tomorrow I’m showing you my #1 go-to place for validating ideas right away (and fo FREE)!  Watch for the email tomorrow morning.

 

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UPDATE (5-1-2012): I got  several MORE people using the same ad, but this was my favorite email from it:

Hey Neville,

Just wanted to let you know I used your Craigslist Ad example to grow my SEO business.

Within 12 hours I had 2 leads. One closed today – $300 for 4 hours of work, not bad. The other one will close later this week.

Before posting your ad it took me 6 months to make my first $300.

If you ever want to grab burritos let me know. I live in Austin. I owe ya one or two or three!

Cheers,

Joel

Losing —- In a good way

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Over the last few months I’ve been trying to GAIN weight.

During my previous six-pack experiment I realized that losing weight was also great because I FELT GOOD all the time from eating healthy food.

However with this weight gain stuff……I’ve been feeling like CRAP all the time.

In fact, I did a pretty bad job of gaining much weight since I simply couldn’t eat as much as I was supposed to everyday!

Adam from MyBodyTutor (who was helping me out) told me:

Eating is your JOB when you’re trying to gain weight.

I thought that sounded FUN!  I mean…..who wouldn’t want to stuff their face every 3 hours with lotsa food??

Well I’ll tell you this:  IT…..COMPLETELY….SUCKED.  

Eating became such a damn chore.

For starters, I always had to be around food…..and relatively healthy food at that (can’t simply eat fast food all the time).

I was supposed to eat at least 3,500 calories per day.

And at least 175 grams of protein a day (I weight about 175lbs right now).

Here’s what I looked like every time I realized how much food I’d be eating:

Plus I had to cut down on cardio exercises, and focus on weight training.  That meant less biking and outdoor stuff, and more pumping weights…..which isn’t all THAT fun on it’s own.


THE GOOD OF GAINING WEIGHT:

  • I gained muscle and got “bigger”
  • It was interesting to at least experience the weight GAIN part.
  • Could eat WAY more at restaurants.

 

THE BAD ABOUT GAINING WEIGHT:

  • I was full all the time, and usually tired because of all the food.
  • I wasn’t as “clear” in my head.
  • I had to use the bathroom a lot more….and things weren’t as “efficient” when going (picture THAT in your head)!
  • I had to actually cook stuff….don’t think I’ve used a stove for over a year before this.
  • I had to buy a lot of food all the time….I was going to Whole Foods pretty much every single day to get ready-made food that was healthy.
  • Every heavy meal zonked me out.
  • I enjoy meat…..but eating SO much meat concerned me.  Every meal was lots of protein which usually meant some meat.

I was actually REALLY BAD at following my diet requirements for gaining weight.  Almost every single day I missed my target calorie or protein intake since it was so damn much.

I just couldn’t do it sometimes.

I even called up Adam half-way through and told him I’d be cutting down my intake because it was interfering with my work (I had WAY less energy everyday).

 

WELL AANNYYYHOWWW….I’ve decided to start shedding the excess weight and get a bit more “cut” in the next few weeks/months.

I know posting shirtless pictures of yourself in the mirror is extremely douchey…..but it’s necessary as a point-of-reference….so here they are!

I can finally start eating healthier again….like this!

The least-scammy affiliate ad I’ve ever seen

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I’m not a fan of most “affiliate” bullshit I see on the net….but here’s a cool example I’ve seen over and over on Reddit:

I’ll be browsing Reddit, when I see this little ad:

I’ve actually clicked it a few times, and almost didn’t know it wasn’t an Amazon site…..but it had a lot of cool products, including some I clicked and BOUGHT! (so whoever runs this site has actually made money off me):

But this is a pretty non-scammy, and pretty damn simply example of an affiliate site that….I actually LIKE!

It was fun just browsing through the top products across multiple categories all in one page.

I’ve seen it posted many times for a long time, so it MUST be working!

Interesting eh?
-Nev

The Blue Hair

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Posted a survey to see what color my hair should be dyed, and here were the results:

GREEN: 62 votes
BLUE: 45 votes
RED: 43 votes

Sooooo….I should be dying my hair GREEN right?

WRONG!

You see, a day before getting my hair done, I came to the VERY obvious conclusion that I DO GREEN SCREEN VIDEO ALL THE TIME!
For example, THIS video screenshot was filmed on a green screen and digitally replaced with a background image:

Obviously dying my hair green will pretty much NOT allow me to do green screen videos without them looking all jacked up, so I went with the runner-up….BLUE!

Here’s the quick photo-journey of it turning from BLACK to BLUE:

DAMN THAT’S SOME BLUE HAIR!

But I’m calling this color “Chameleon Blue” because the color constantly changes depending on the light.

For example, in the pictures above, I’m in the sunlight which makes the hair REAALLLLYYY BLUE.

But inside, you can almost miss the blue, like this picture I took while making this post:

Also the blue KEEPS ON CHANGING everyday!  Every time I take a shower blue literally POURS out of my hair (apparently this is supposed to happen for about a week).

Here are some unexpected results of this weird hair color thing:

  • Homeless people are starting to recognize me.
  • I can’t take a shower without worrying about staining the shower blue.
  • I can’t go into the pool or hottub without a huge trail of blue following my head.
  • I can’t sleep on white pillows.

Anyhow….thanks for voting on the new hair color.  I’m sure this will make me look insane and lose all credibility in any new product I put out :-)

-Nev

 

 

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UPDATE: (5-1-2012)
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So after a few weeks, the hair keeps changing color because the blue fades with every shower.  NOW my hair isn’t blue at all, it’s like this GRAY color!

It actually looks like I have a full head of gray hair, NOT blue!

In the sunlight you can still sort of tell there’s hints of blue:

Although now my hair just looks weird.  Look at this screenshot from an upcoming video I shot on green-screen…..you can see how odd the hair looks:

….not so cool eh :-/

 

ANYHOW……every time I get my hair made some weird color it always goes through phases.  While the awkward faded-blue-green-yellow stage lasted longer than I’d like, it’s now fading into a browish/yellow color which doesn’t look all that bad.

It’s part of the fun to watch the hair change everyday :-)

Which hair color

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I want you to vote what color my hair should become:

BLUE, GREEN, RED….or enter your own color suggestion:

Whatever color wins, I’m going to dye my hair that color!

One time before I turn 30 (Nov. 17th) I wanna make my hair a weird color.

I have no idea why.
I’ve just want to for a while.

In fact this is probably an all-around bad decision since I do a lot of video stuff….and I’ll be talking about a serious subject with dumb-ass looking green hair!

Keep in mind I’ve made my hair “blonde-ish” many times:
https://www.nevblog.com/the-blonde-hair/

….and not one person has EVVEERR told me, “Wow, that looks really good on you.”

But I’m still gonna do it.  Vote for what color you wanna see in the form above!