Note from Nick: this is a guest post from my friend Rebecca Tracey, of The Uncaged Life. Her blog is unmitigated genius – great holiday reading, if ever there was any. I asked Rebecca to share with you something straight from the heart. Told her she could even swear if she wanted. And this is what she came up with – enjoy!

When Nick asked me to write a guest post, I sorta freaked out. My business is new, I’m still establishing my own website, and I don’t have nearly as much ‘expertise’ as he does.

Yet not once did he ask for my resume, my credentials, or check up on me to make sure I really know what I’m talking about. Why would he want me to write for him?

I mean, I know I’m a great coach. I have fantastic insight, amazing life experience, and a finely tuned bullshit meter. Of COURSE I’m valuable to Nick’s readers.

Thing is, on paper… I’m not so hot. My resume – it sucks. Sure, I have an undergrad degree (in a totally unrelated field), I did post-grad training as a nutritionist (so what, right?), and I’ve gone through a few intensive coach trainings (Finally! But – I don’t even list those on my website/resume).

I don’t have 10 years of coaching under my belt. I don’t have an MBA or any particular entrepreneurial skills training. I’m not an expert on blogging, or internet marketing, or technology. I have more than one series of year-long gaps on my resume where I chose to drop out of life as I knew it and focus solely on travel, play, and neglecting all my responsibilities. Not exactly a marketable skill, right?

In the traditional sense, on paper, I’m crap.

But in life, where it really counts – I’m more than “qualified” to be doing what I’m doing.

And, true story – many great innovators are in the same boat. Mark Zuckerberg. Bill Gates. Einstein. Disney. Oprah. Dropped out of school, fired from jobs, kicked out of college and told their ideas were shit.

We seem to have this insane want for more education, more degrees, more time spent in the classroom, more training, more courses, more hours and dollars spent to prove to the world that we are worthy.

We use the excuse that we just need to learn a little bit more before we can be great.

And it’s a fucking cop out.

What if you chose (yes, voluntarily) to leave your education out of the equation. What if you focused on what you have to offer, in real life skills rather than obscure letters after your name? What if everything you’ve ever done and everything you know NOW is all you need to create the dream job you crave?

Stop putting it off because you’re not perfect on paper yet. Start believing in more than what’s on your resume and what letters fall after your name.

Save your money, save your time, and have the balls to just GO FOR IT, regardless of how qualified you are on paper. Because if you really wanna go places in this world, your resume means jack shit.

xx becca

Rebecca Tracey | The Uncaged Life
As a Life-switch + Career-shift Coach, Rebecca Tracey helps cubicle-phobic crusaders bust out of their self-imposed cages, by taking big risks + bold swings—the kind that pay off, in more than just cash.

Explore Rebecca’s rule-bending riffing on radical life design, road-tripping + rock climbing at TheUncagedLife.com… and schedule your no-cost Uncaged Chat, to see if 1-on-1 coaching is the awesome-sauce you need to activate your dreams.

(Header Photo: This is happening without your permission)

If you weren’t aware, I’m a huge geek.

In the very rare moments when I have spare time, I like to write Star Trek fan fiction in audio drama form. Think old-school radio programs like The Shadow and you’ve got the general idea.

Technically, doing that – publishing and distributing a work of fan fiction the way we do it – breaches all sorts of copyright laws. It’s not like it’s a parody or something that could be considered protected first amendment speech. It’s copyright infringement, pure and simple (even though we don’t make a dime from it).

Even so, Paramount and Viacom leave us and others like us alone. Why?

Because we’ve stolen like artists. We might be breaching copyright, but we’re feeding the beast – the drive to buy the DVDs and costumes and books and movies and pay insane amounts of money to go to conventions and wait hours in line for a chance to say hi to William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks, and Scott Bakula. We’ve taken our favorite series and expanded on it. We made our own characters, created our mark on a universe that was otherwise limited to what you saw on TV and in the movies. We’ve expanded on the original work, created something new and valuable, and made the original works that much more powerful.

I’ve taken to licensing most all of my work under Creative Commons. It’s a bolt-on to copyright – it doesn’t eliminate the copyright you hold on your work, but allows others to remix your work without having to seek out permission every time. Depending on the license, as long as they credit you for the original work you did, they can use your work to create new works of their own. To me, this is the future of creative processes – it’s the start of new markets, new mediums, new methodologies.

However, it does have a dark side – stealing like an artist can backfire when the new work devalues or damages the intent of the original. Take the commercials from the car dealerships featuring loud “occupiers” demanding cheaper cars and higher Miles Per Gallon. When mindless overspending was partially responsible for the mess that led to the anger which led to the protests, you’re not doing your business any favors by pretending you understand what the movement is about.

All of the header photos you see on my blog are Creative Commons licensed. All of the books I release are Creative Commons. All of my new projects have a creative commons component to them.

I challenge you to steal like an artist in December – taking the best bits and pieces, mingling and merging and molding disparate domains of work together into a new, amazingly complex hybrid. Whose ideas will you improve on? Tell me in the comments!

(Header photo: Sorry Today)

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This post is part of the November Word Carnival series. For more on the Word Carnival, and for more great posts from my friends – check out the Carnival.

Schadenfreude.

Get to know this word – because it’s the thing that may eventually cause your movement to fail. It’s a German word for the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. It’s why TMZ is so popular, and it’s why – despite evidence that the economy is leading us directly towards a civil war – some folks continue to post snarky comments about the Occupy Wall Street movement on Facebook, Twitter, and giggle while the nightly news shows recaps #OWS arrests.

Let me be clear here: I do not want you to fail. I do want you to get a hell of a lot more organized so you can do this thing right.

Schadenfreude only comes into play when there’s an “us vs them” mentality. Our enemy slips up. Someone much more wealthy or powerful than us gets caught doing something naughty. We’d never be that silly. We could never do those things. But when something happens to mom, dad, or our little sister, suddenly we can empathize. It’s personal – it’s just as bad as if it happened to us.

While almost everybody could empathize with the feeling of not being able to pay a bill, losing a job, or thinking that it’s time to whack some high-level bankers like piñatas until no more money falls out, here’s the problem you’re facing (and it’s a big one): occupying a park is not something that everybody can do. Most of the 99% still has jobs (they might not be the best jobs, but we still have to work). A lot of the 99% run their own businesses. And trust me, while I’d have no reservations about chilling in a park all day, working on my laptop – a lot of folks don’t have that kind of time or luxury. Meanwhile, we wish we could do something to help, but we don’t know what – and then we get on with our day while you’re getting zip-cuffed in the park.

So, while we should be empathizing with you, we end up dissociating from you instead. You become “the protesters” and not Mary the 32 year old spinster who barely scrapes by in her apartment on Prospect Road since losing her job at the bank while her former CEO decides whether or not to buy a third gold-lined umbrella holder at Bed, Bath, and I’ve Got Too Much Fuckin’ Money. And it’s not the media’s fault. Got it?

Don’t believe me? What did I just say about a banker piñata? Didn’t you get that, “Hell yes” feeling? OK, how about if our banker’s name is now Gary from Littleton, father of two and avid donator and volunteer to the foodbank? Now it’s a little harder to justify whipping out the whiffle bat, right? He might be a rich prick at work, but I can’t shake down a volunteer dad of two.

Schadenfreude is what enables us to disconnect from our morals and justify harm to marginalized groups. It’s why ordinarily rational white folks did nothing while black folks were getting firehosed for sitting in the wrong chair. And it’s why folks who should be supporting you may just be changing the channel instead.

While a mass occupation is great and all – hey, it worked for Woodstock, right? – you’re running out of time to make this personal. You have a serious marketing problem.

You desperately need a leader. Someone who can stand up – someone well-spoken – and deliver a speech that makes these things personal. Remember Obama’s 2008 campaign? He took this country by storm, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. Why? Because he was the guy who understood our problems. The guy who told us stories about people just like us - who came from roots just like us - and had a plan to try and fix the problem. You need an Obama. And you need a plan.

What’s #OWS’s plan? I’ve been watching for a while now and I don’t see one. If you (and even if you aren’t a part of the #OWS) want to get sh!t done, you have to get activation.

The public’s lack of activation for your cause is not a sign of laziness, but instead a lack of clarity on how to help. Any project must have that clarity to succeed.

So here’s a plan of action for you – and anyone else who wants to make something happen – because you need it:

- Get Your Message Straight and Align it with What Your Audience Wants to Hear: Stop the political preaching on your blog. We get it. Instead, I want you to start posting the personal stories (video if you can) of every single person you can – always include a photo – hopefully of the person with their family. Once a day, non-stop. Use a secondary Tumblr blog if you have to. Make this thing personal. For the titles of those blogs, first name, town name, age, and family stats.

- Get Your Message to the Right People and Be Consistent: Send these out as press releases. Flood the media with them. Give Obama-type online talks and post them online for all to see once a week.

- Develop the Right Platforms and Design a Clear Path: Create a newsletter. Your website is not enough. Get people to sign up to your newsletter and give them a weekly course of action, not just events or marches, but 5 small things they can do that week to help the movement and raise awareness.

- Make Spreading the Message Simple: Create a guidebook that you can use to educate the general public with stats directly from the Government on why things are so bad. I’m also working on an ignite-style video with those same stats. Release everything you do under Creative Commons so anyone can reprint and share it without asking for permission.

- Generate Sympathy and Camaraderie: Nominate a leader in each city who can speak for their movement. This person should be well-spoken, well-groomed, and very sympathetic. No political preachers, no lecturers, just a plain-jane-family guy or gal. Then have them share the stories that came out of the occupation that day. Have them give a speech twice a week to rally support, to give followers a list of tasks to take on that week.

- Find Allies to Help You: Start courting small businesses. Don’t expect handouts or freebies, but promise to shop in their stores in exchange for spreading the word or standing by you if they get interviewed (or, better yet – ask them to do a video interview for you and post it on the blog: the more business support you have, the better you will do).

- Change Your Tactics to Leverage the Element of Surprise: Silence works better than any other method of intimidation. Instead of loudly protesting outside of a bank, instead, line up, side-by-side, five rows deep, and *stare* at folks who cross the line. That’s creepy as all hell and will get you all sorts of attention.

- Engage the Desire to Belong to Something: Give everyday joe’s an ability to show solidarity. A bumper sticker, a t-shirt, something… and a check-list of activities to perform (ie: join a credit union, don’t shop at xyz) so that we can help you, even if we can’t occupy with you (as an aside, this will help you raise some money to afford to sit around in a park all day).

With all that even marginally attempted, Occupy Wall Street (and all the other Occupy movements) would become an unstoppable force, so what’s stopping you?

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This post is part of the October Word Carnival on productivity. Check it out for more great advice on being productive!

(Header photo: Occupy Wall Street)

Seth Godin had an awesome blog post today about aiming for infinity in your outreach – that is, no number of fans is ever enough. No number is really ever satisfying.

There is a really important lesson between the lines of Seth’s blog post: you don’t have to reach everybody. Nobody can reach everybody. So, I put it to you:

You just have to reach one.

One really dedicated, committed fan. Make them feel special, because they are special. They’re an activator – and you only need one.

To clarify: Activation = Attention + Action – a simplification of the AIDA model.

Our brains can only hold a certain number of connections to the people that matter at once, it’s called Dunbar’s number. And we ignore this fact as we reach for increasingly ridiculous numbers of subscribers, followers, friends, fans, and views – like they’re marshmallows in a game of chubby bunny. We forget that at some point, with enough marshmallows shoved in your pie hole, you choke. You can’t possibly please or activate more than Dunbar’s number at any given time, because folks who want to interact with you – and are subsequently ignored because your bandwidth is too low – will not activate.

Here’s what happens, though, when you reach for one: you use one of your Dunbar’s number slots for this person. You make them feel valued and become an activator for them – because they’re buying from you, they’re activated, they’re participating. In turn, they use a Dunbar slot for you – but they also spread your information to their other Dunbar connections. That is the only way you ever increase your network beyond your Dunbar connections. That’s it. The only way.

Going beyond your significant other, family, friends, and colleagues, you only have so many Dunbar slots to utilize for building your business network. You maybe have 25-50 Dunbar-level connections to use – and all of them can be activators, given that they’re the right people that should be in those Dunbar slots. As an aside, I advocate relentlessly cutting non-activators out of your life as fast as possible – you must become an activator for your own activators, or they’ll stop. I would guess that for most people, the actual number is closer to 5. We’ve all heard that saying: you are the amalgamation of the 5 closest people to you.

That sure as hell takes the pressure off, doesn’t it? At maximum capacity, you only ever have to delight 5 folks at a time.

This is what social media is. It’s not a race for fans, followers, friends, views, or subscribers, like those things are a scarce and limited resource. They’re not. Here’s what is rare: actual relationships that require and earn attention from both parties.

Social media allows us to break through the barriers that once existed between us and those five activators. The only thing big numbers allow you to do is find and replace potential activators faster – beneficial, but not a necessity; and certainly not something worth placing significant effort toward.

How will the knowledge that you only need one activator (and can only ever delight 5) change your business? And how are you going to become a better activator for someone you believe in?

(Header photo: Hugs)

Here’s something I’d like you to think about. According to most of the social psychology we know, especially the work of Albert Bandura, one word can make a critically important difference.

In an experiment performed by Bandura, subjects were asked to give electric shocks to quiz-takers who they couldn’t see, whenever a quiz-taker got a wrong answer. The subject (or, who I like to call – the Zapper!) would be able to decide when and how severe a shock to give.

After getting some instruction on the use of the shock button, one of Bandura’s assistants would mention something in front of the Zappers.

The control group heard, “The subjects from the other school are here.”
The positive-bias group heard, “The subjects from the other school are here. They seem nice.”
The negative-bias group heard, “The subjects from the other school are here. They seem like animals.”

Guess what happened next? Those party animals for their asses zapped off compared to the neutral group, while the nice folks got zapped significantly less than the neutral group.

Great, so aside from being really nice to research assistants the next time you participate in an experiment, what can we learn from this? I’ll answer that question with a question:

When you see a skankily dressed girl, the first word that probably comes to mind is “Slut!” or, alternately, “Hoebag!” What if, instead, you switched that word to: “Daughter” or “Sister”? I didn’t use “Mother” here because the jump from Slut to MILF is a pretty short one.

If you’re like most people, the negative connotation goes away – she’s not “asking for it”, instead, she’s just unfortunately dressed. It shifts away from anger, jealousy, or disgust (maybe all three) and straight to empathy for a girl who’s over-compensating, sympathy for her parents and her siblings, and remorse that you probably can’t say anything to help her.

That’s the power of positioning. You just removed that walking fashion nightmare away from an unsympathetic, inhuman bias (WHORE!) to something you could readily identify with: your sister, your daughter, whatever. I’m not picking on the ladies here, either – gentlemen do this too: dumb jock, gym monkey, manwhore, whatever. Right?

Now, I want you to play a different game – word association. Think about your business. What does the word Client mean? How about Customer?

Chances are, you said one of the following: Work, Support, Service, Complaints, or – and this is what most people say – Cash.

When a person interested in doing business walks through your door – you don’t see a person. You see dollar signs. And that’s fucked up.

So what can be done about this? The same thing we just did for the skanky hoebags.

What if you stopped calling them customers or clients – what if you called them Friends instead? Unless you’re an anti-social douchebag, you like your friends. And you don’t see dollar signs, in fact – you give them a lot more leeway than any other human (and perhaps even your family) gets.

How would your business change if you just switched up one word?

I had a crackhead-esque craving for an Orange Julius the other day. Like, gotta have it, spare no expense, must get that damn treat kind of craving usually reserved for Star Trek paraphernalia.

So I headed to the obligatory mall (there are no stand-alone Orange Juliuses in Fort Collins). I walked through the rows of closed shops and aged interiors of a previous age of consumerism.

Orange Julius is a tribute to a past age. Don’t get me wrong – malls can be, and in some places, still are, relevant. But big picture – most malls get it wrong. And Orange Julius is inextricably linked to the aging image of the American shopping mall.

This isn’t the big problem. The big problem facing Orange Julius is complacency. And that complacency allowed them to fuck with a fat kid’s food – and that’s a big problem. (I’m the fat kid, in case you were wondering).

I was “greeted” by a generic teen mall employee who took my order, my cash, and then pulled a strawberry Orange Julius blender container from an ice chest. Instead of making one fresh, on the spot, to-order, she poured the half-melted pre-made Orange Julius and served it up.

I stuck around a bit to see if this happened to any other customers (what few there were) – and discovered it was pretty much the same story across the board until a flavor ran out. Once every six or seven customers, someone would get a 100% fresh Orange Julius. Any other time, the new was blended with the old or only the old was used.

Yuck.

Your only job is this. You exist only to delight your customers. Thats. Fucking. It. How on earth do you delight your customers when you can’t be bothered to do the work? If only one out of six of your customers is delighted, you’re doing something wrong.

Don’t argue the cost savings issue – surely it wastes more money to waste left-over old Orange Julius at the end of the night. And don’t give me the “disconnected low-cost teenage employee” issue either – if the Porn Industry is any indication, the “barely legal” crowd is doing just fine “delighting” customers world-wide.

Let’s parallel this story with two others: Dairy Queen and Berry Blendz.

Dairy Queen also made some headway through the malls back in the day, but they also built an outstanding external presence which serves them well to this day. They don’t make everything fresh (though, can you imagine how amazing that would be? I’d wait 3 hours for that Blizzard) – but they do make everything to-order. There’s no pre-made Blizzards under teenage guard anywhere, ever. I can’t speak for every DQ out there, but they’ve usually always done a great job greeting me and making small talk while they whip up whatever belt-notch-adding-treat I’ve paid for.

Berry Blendz is like the local coffee shop of smoothie stores. It’s like they’re fruit baristas. Everything is made to order and as fresh as possible. There’s no ice chest with pre-blended smoothies. Would that make it faster? Probably. Would it be worth the shorter wait? Have you ever tasted a smoothie past its prime?

This story is not unique to any one industry and it almost always starts with complacency.

What are some businesses you wish would freshen up?

(Header photo: Mallwalking Photo Shoot Rejects by Chip Harlan)

I’m not apologetic about the fact that I run a business called WTF Marketing.

Beyond making me giggle every time I get to introduce someone new to my business, I use it as a filter to screen for the types of people who will be receptive to the off-the-cuff marketing perspective I bring.

What kind of business has a swear in their name? Mine does. And I like it that way. It’s irreverent, not disrespectful. There’s a difference. I’ve generally accepted that I’ll lose about 25% of prospective clients because of this stance.

Does it bother me that I’ve lost potentially big clients? Not really. That’s their loss and I’m better off; I stick to my guns because my hair turns gray less quickly when those kinds of people opt-out. And being 25, I don’t want to start using my Just For Men coupons until I really have to.

The Fuck in my business name doesn’t diminish the awesome things I’ve done to market small businesses. It doesn’t stop me from running circles around my competition. It does make me more efficient by dealing with only the kinds of clients I want to serve.

There’s room for guile in business; I’m not talking about deceit with harm in mind – that’s wrong, plain and simple.

I’m talking about purple cows – a purple cow is still a cow, it just looks deceptively funky. Only the bravest of the brave will attempt to milk one. These are the businesses that I’m targeting; those brave individuals who understand that there’s inherent risk in doing things the new way, but that the reward is there for those willing to take the chance. And if you’re looking for a guide, you won’t find many better than someone willing to go to the very edge.

In the words of Q, “If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires, both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid.”

It’s true in life and in business.

The question is, in your business story – how far are you willing to go to stick to your guns?

(Header photo: Stand Out by PDBreen)

This morning there was a promo on 99.9 FM. The basic premise was that the station was going ad-free. It went on for about 20 seconds before revealing that by ad-free, they meant that between the hours of 9AM to Noon on weekdays, they won’t play ads.

I almost wrecked my car.

In other words, they spent 20 seconds (an eternity in radio) to lavish themselves with praise and tell me that – when people in their key demographic are at work and not listening – the station won’t play advertising.

I was a DJ for three years on 90.5 FM KCSU, where the only advertising was no-call-to-action, no-music, no-effect, flat-read underwriting. That’s about as ad-free as you can go. And my year as Production Director is enough for me to know that refraining from playing ads for 15 hours a week is hardly worthy of a 15-20 second back-patting “going ad-free” promo.

Before you start high-fiving yourself too hard for this amazing act of generosity to your listeners – consider doing something that requires some element of risk on your part. Something that your listeners will actually appreciate and value – something that isn’t just a marketing ploy.

Forget this campaign and go 100% ad-free on Mondays. Mondays suck enough already for your target demographic – if you’re going to cut ad spots anyway, you’ll get more bang for your buck this way. Give your listeners something they can look forward to – no ads on their drive there, no ads on their drive home. That would be really generous and worthy of 20-second promos.

(Header photo: 388 by Shovelling Son)

Yesterday my wife and I went to the Avalanche game. That is a team with a big problem – I’ll go into that in tomorrow’s post, but today I’m concerned about marketing and attitudes.

We started off at the Pepsi Center three hours early, which is smack-dab in the middle of Downtown Denver. They don’t let you get in to your seats until an hour before the game so we decided to head to the 16th Street Mall to do some walking and window shopping.

About Blake and Speer, we heard it. A primal, guttural hollar. It took a moment to realize the source: a homeless man, begging for change on the next street up. Yelling at cars. But not just yelling – screaming. Shouting. Pulling a William Wallace. Whatever you want to call it, this guy was doing it.

My wife and I promptly turned around before we got in range of his tirade, but it got me thinking.

First – this is not the beggar’s problem. They are not the ones at fault. Instead, they’re a side-effect of a culture and community that has forgotten that – crazy off their ass or not – people are people and have basic needs like medical and mental healthcare, regardless of who foots the bill. How is someone like Homeless William Wallace supposed to productively pitch back into society if he can’t even get help to get his life together in the first place?

If we build the foundation a little higher to avoid the floodwaters, even if the house is a tiny bit more expensive – doesn’t it raise everybody up?

What’s more, in a world filled with noise and a limited attention spectrum, how is Homeless William Wallace supposed to compete with all the other corner beggars out there besides get flashier? Or take some voice classes so he ends up like Ted Williams.

As an aside, and not to sound heartless – I’m happy that Ted is finally getting help and rehab, but it shouldn’t have come because of pity. That’s a pathetic statement about our modern society; instead of making it a priority to bring everybody up together because we believe in it, we’re highlighting the most pathetic of the pathetic and rewarding them for “sticking it out”. Meanwhile the guy on the opposite corner continues to starve and beg. Drug-addled rejects (sorry Ted) are being preferred over equally talented, non-drug-addled college students with golden voices who give up their dreams and work fast food.

We’re rewarding those scraping the bottom of the bucket and treating it like some fairytale rescue story when there’s so, so many hard-working people out there who deserve the same chance but don’t have nearly as sad of a story.

By this same logic, we only care when the straits are dire; in the best traditions of a caring, responsible American public, we give a shit when the shit hits the fan. American or not – from Haiti to New Zealand – we cry, we pray, we hope, we donate, we volunteer.

But when it comes to prevention most people just sit idle on the sidelines until the breaking point cajoles them into action. Not to weave too crazy of a tale here, but we behave exactly the same way in our business lives.

My less-than-politically-correct point: as a small business owner, I have occasionally behaved like Homeless William Wallace. I’ve seen a lot of other business owners do the same thing. It’s high-time to stop this bullshit.

I’ve screamed my marketing at people; I’ve screamed into the void and added to the noise. All in the hopes that someone listening will drop some change in my bucket and pay some attention. In doing so, I (and my fellow business owners, who have all been guilty of this at one point or another) have single-handedly driven potentially dedicated, helpful customers away from entire business segments.

So what does the alternative look like? How do we do it better?

We focus on prevention and forward thinking. We can’t fill the the void with noise. Generation Y is largely ad-blind. Unless you can grab our attention with something funny, unexpected, or unless you already have a pass into our attention stream, you’re hosed – and it’s our own damn fault. It’s like that party where everybody screams louder and louder until nobody can hear a damn thing.

The only moment of clarity is connecting with our friend across the room and heading outside to have a quiet drink together. A one on one connection. No noise. No shouting. No posturing.

What if we actually shut up for once and let our customers and friends to the speaking for us, to the people who mattered – and were most likely to buy and care? People who will be honest about our benefits and faults on our behalf.

I’m working on this. I don’t know what it looks like, yet, but I think it can be done. And when I’ve got it down, I’ll teach it.

In the meantime, let’s work on building the house a bit higher. Soylent Green is not the solution, but it’s where we’re headed if we don’t fix it.

(Header photo: Homeless Lady by JPhilipson)

If you don’t know Logan, take some time and read his blog – any doubt as to the value of his advice or his class will vanish pretty quickly.

All you have to do to win is leave a comment telling me who and what you’re thankful for this holiday season and I’ll give it to the best comment!

Good luck!