“Bro Flow,” and the unforeseen impact of a dedicated park tow rope in Breckenridge Colorado.

Posted by on February 12, 2012

It seems that every year I ride Breckenridge, I hear at least a couple hundred people suggest we install a tow rope at the top of Park Lane. Their reasoning is always the same. Too many gapers on the park chair. Too many gapers waiting in line for the Colorado Super Chair. Too many gapers falling in the middle of the run, becoming cannon fodder for the oncoming avalanche of Bro.

And it makes sense, at least partly, because the park chair does start and stop all day long for the ski school kids who keep tripping on their skis. Nevertheless, I believe these armchair resort managers have not properly taken their suggestion to its horrific conclusion. Have they considered the real impact a park tow rope would have on the triple set at the top of Park Lane? Have they stopped for a moment, looked past their noses, and envisioned the inevitable Orwellian future, a park populated with bros who won’t let you get an edge in trick-wise?

I think not. And to better understand why, I need to educate you on the emerging field of Gaper-Bro Fluid Dynamics. Only a few scientists have dared to enter this field, fearing their voices might be silenced by those who wish to bolster the already growing bro population. But fear not! This new research will soon see the light of day, and it will have an untold impact on the sports of snowboarding and skiing as we know them.

The central hypothesis of Gaper-Bro Fluid Dynamics is as follows. For any park P, there is a causally interrelated Bro Flow B and Gaper Flow G such that G mitigates B. In other words, as G increases, B must necessarily decrease. Whenever the mountain is populated with tourists, bros have a harder time getting through the lift line. Hence Bro Flow through the park must decrease.

Lacking a strong presence of G, B will increase without limit. This typically manifests itself as the unending “Sea Of Bro” at the top of Park Lane. Most people caught in the midst of this sea become so broverwhelmed that they lose all sense of personal identity. They become one with the bros, if only to get their shot at escaping the slow creep down the in-run of jump one.

The weather also has an impact on Gaper-Bro Fluid Dynamics. As a general rule, a snowstorm tends to result in a slight increase of G and a large decrease of B. Gapers, for the most part, are intimidated by a strong Bro Flow, so they tend to enter the park when the Bro Flow subsides. Bros, on the other hand, are notorious for going to all ends of the mountain to find any remaining traces of snow from a two inch storm. If you don’t follow them, they will cast you away from their tightly knit social group.

To ride park and do anything but straight airs on a pow day is to forfeit one’s status as a bro. These not-quite-bros fit into an intermediate group that can’t entirely be classified. Suffice it so say, their impact on Gaper-Bro Fluid Dynamics is negligible.

Now that we have a proper understanding of Gaper-Bro Fluid Dynamics, the ramifications of installing a Park Lane tow rope become quite clear. The new tow rope would act as a sort of “bro intake valve” that only adds more bros to the already broverwhelming Bro Flow. Lacking a corresponding increase in G to counteract the increase in B, the Sea Of Bro becomes an unstoppable ocean, a continually surging avalanche of tall tees and Skull Candy headphones destined to claim everything in its path.

There is a rhyme and reason to the age old wisdom of Love Thy Gaper. For without G, B becomes utterly uncontrollable. As much as they annoy us, as unpredictable as their gaperian motion is, gapers aren’t the real problem. The bros are. To fight Bro Flow with more bros is absurd.

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What Can Rick Astley Teach You About Being A Successful Freelancer?

Posted by on February 11, 2012

Listen, we’re no strangers to this business. You all know the rules, and so do I. A full commitment is what today’s clients are thinking of. You need to ask yourself: could they get this from any other guy?

Look. I just want to tell you how I’m feeling. I’ve gotta make you understand this one thing. Rick Astley knows a hell of a lot about more about being successful than you or I could ever imagine. He knows the game, and he’s gonna play it. Here’s what you can learn from him.

Never give up on your clients.
Even when the going gets tough, it usually doesn’t make sense to completely forfeit the business relationship. Try to end things peacefully if you can, and always be a resource for your clients in the future. I know it’s easier said than done. Even if a client hasn’t paid or is somewhat angry with you for whatever reason, don’t consider the book entirely closed. People cool down. Things get better. You never know what’s around the corner.

Never let them down.
Give every project your best shot. Don’t be late in delivering anything unless it is a complete and total emergency you can’t control. The day I get a project, I start on it right away because I know I’ll have a bunch of questions. This is the mindset you need to cultivate. Only deliver your best work, and always follow through on your word. Commit.

Never run around.
How focused are you? Do you answer all of your emails right away, or do you let things go for a few days before you finally get to them? People don’t like long lags in response time. While you’re running around doing other things, your clients are thinking about getting someone else. Be like Rick. Stick around, ask questions, and get the work done.

Never desert your clients.
O.K. I admit that this is pretty much the same advice as the first point. But I’ve done this before, and the consequences are never good. No matter how stressed you get, no matter how angry you are at someone, don’t just up and leave a project in the middle of the heat. It’s all too easy, and it solves nothing. Not to mention, word gets around when this sort of thing happens. You don’t want to be “that guy” or “that girl.”

Never make them cry.
Tears of joy are okay.

Never say goodbye.
“Final” is never final. You really don’t know who you will run into the future, nor in what capacity. People change. Businesses morph into something else. The person you politely told to screw off could come back to bite you later on in life. It’s awesome to move on to bigger and better things (as Rick Astley did when he gave up his music career). You’ve just gotta do it the right way. Always keep a door open.

Never tell a lie.
It’s all too convenient to say you can’t deliver on time for whatever made up reason. Nobody will believe you, and you’ll just get branded as a liar. Another common one is lying about your experience. It impresses nobody, and it makes you look like a fool. Be straight up. Tell ‘em how you’re feeling. Make ‘em understand that you’re the best candidate for the job (even though your heart is aching, and you are too shy to say it).

Never hurt them.
That is, unless you want the police breaking down your door at 4 A.M. with a warrant for your arrest.

Sage advice from the one and only Rick. You have to admit there’s a power you just can’t deny. Follow Mr. Astley’s advice, and you and your clients will be together forever.

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The Secret To Creating High Quality Content

Posted by on February 10, 2012

A huge part of my work involves partnering with graphic and web designers to help them write content for their clients. Companies, and frankly the rest of the world, are tired of canned content. They want something fresh and unique that will actually appeal to their audience. If you’re tired of hearing empty promises and bland slogans, you’re in good company. I’ll show you how to write high quality content that actually gets people thinking.

Are you a website, or are you a blog?

I want to start off with some confusion that I think needs clearing up. A lot of companies show me their website template and basically tell me to fill in the blanks. They’ll say, “we’re looking for search optimized content for all of these pages.” I say, “Great! But there’s one issue. What about your long term content strategy?”

It really isn’t enough to simply fill in the home page, the about page, the testimonial page, or whichever other pages you’ve got on your site. I would normally say you need to have a blog, but that’s not really my point either. Your entire site needs to be a blog! You need to update it at least once a week with something relevant to what you do.

The rest of the content on your site only makes sense in light of the articles you write. You can write the content for all of your other pages, but it carries so much more weight when it’s backed up by legitimately useful articles. I liken it to the difference between saying you provide great customer service and actually providing great customer service. Be active. Be an educator. Be more than a WordPress template you hired someone to fill in.

Consider your audience.

At this point, many of you are wondering what you should write about. I’m a big fan of mixing it up. You want to have some content that aligns with keywords, and you also want to have content that just comes off the top of your head. I’ll tell you from experience that my best posts are the ones I think up on my own. Keywords are important, but they can become a prison of sorts.

At the very least, do not simply copy the keyword and make it the headline of your article. The point of creating content is not to simply hit on certain keywords. You need to think to yourself, “Why would someone search for this? What other sorts of questions might this person have? How can I answer all of those questions at once?”

You are basically doing psychoanalysis on your website visitors. In this case, I would imagine you are looking for quality content. So now I’m answering your other questions too.

“Quality,” as we all know, is a subjective thing. One person’s rose is another person’s thorn. Yes, the writing has to be grammatically correct. Yes, it needs to flow. And yes, you most certainly need to do the basic things like appealing to peoples’ curiosity. All of that goes into creating quality content.

But the most important thing is…

You guessed it: tailoring that content to your audience. Answering questions is always priority number #1.

So this is what we do when I sit down with companies looking to build a website. We go through all of the different types of questions their customers or clients might have, and then we make a huge list of them. After that, we’ll head on over to the Google Keyword Tool, and we’ll try to find the keywords and keyphrases that best match those questions. It’s an iterative process that eventually gives us a huge list of content ideas.

In other words, if you think you don’t have anything to write about, you’re dead wrong. I guarantee you I can find at least 20 different topics you haven’t even thought of. Every piece will be high quality content your readers will appreciate.

Quality content comes at a price.

Beware! Some companies hire out these huge content farms, and they wonder why they haven’t received any traffic from search. In my mind, it’s a no-brainer. You can’t offer pennies and expect to attract the best talent out there. Good writers know not to accept any project valued at less than $50. To do so is business suicide. If you don’t see yourself as someone who is talented with words, make sure you hire someone who is.

This isn’t about putting content out there and hoping it gets into the search engines. It’s about engaging people who show up on your website. If people get to you through search, and the content appears to have been written by someone with limited English skills, they’ll go somewhere else. The traffic is useless if you don’t do anything with it.

At the end of the day, only your customer matters. You aren’t in the SEO business or the sales business. You are in the business of answering questions.

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Pow Sultan 2012 Glove Review -Active Junky

Posted by on January 19, 2012

It was sad parting with these gloves, but I figured my loyal users of Snow Dice could give them a good home. Check out my review. These babies are nice and toasty!

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POC Lobes 2012 Goggle Review -Active Junky

Posted by on January 5, 2012

POC makes a very rad goggle that I reviewed for Active Junky. If you’re looking for a very comfortable fit and extra peripheral vision, you really can’t go wrong. Plus you can get a ton of lenses for these. Read the review here.

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Oakley Airbrake 2012 Goggle Review -Active Junky

Posted by on December 29, 2011

The Oakley Airbrake is a revolution in the way skiing and snowboarding goggles handle different lighting conditions. You can actually swap out the lens in less than ten seconds. Amazing, I know! Check out my full review on Active Junky.

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Dew Motion iStick Wireless Armband 2012 Gear Review -Active Junky

Posted by on December 22, 2011

Finally, a way for me to change my music without reaching into my jacket and pulling out my iPod Touch. The Dew Motion iStick Wireless Armband is the solution to an age old problem. Read my full review on Active Junky.

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The Top 10 Mistakes Freelance Writers Make When Beginning A Freelance Business.

Posted by on December 13, 2011

It would be ridiculous of me to say I’m not guilty of any of these. In many ways, what I’m saying here should serve as a warning to everyone. These ten mistakes will set your freelance writing business behind. They will keep you running on the never-ending treadmill to nowhere. It’s one thing to scrape by, and another to grow your business. Don’t do these things, and you’ll avoid the former.

1.) Not getting a byline.

You know all of those ghost writing ebook projects you keep bidding on at Elance? They might be good for you now (they pay the bills), but they’ll come back to bite you in the future. Why? Simply put, you can’t publicly take credit for them. They’re attributed to someone else’s name, so it’s almost as if they flat out don’t exist in your portfolio. You know you did them, but your clients don’t, and that makes it hard for you to advertise yourself to others.

You need to search for opportunities outside of the bidding sites. They’re harder to get, but they’re worth it. You’ll get actual publicity that you can point to, live content that you can show to your prospective clients. It’s incredibly hard to build a portfolio on ghost written projects alone. Give it some hard thought the next time someone pitches one to you.

2.) Not building a website.

When all of your projects go through the bidding sites or Craigslist, you’re allowing those sites to control the conversation. That kind of sucks because I can tell you for a fact that a lot of people go to those sites to get a bargain. You can find good clients there, but the best ones are more likely come to you through your own website.

When you build your own website, you start to grab ahold of the conversation. You appear as an authority figure in your discipline. Add in a nice big portfolio, and clients will start to take you more seriously. Why get paid pennies for work you can’t be proud of when you can become a leader and truly get noticed?

3.) Charging too little.

I once spent nearly a month doing a project that amounted to 500 dollars. I will never ever do that again! Do you want to know what the worst part of it was? It was some stupid ebook project, so I never got a byline. I pretty much gave up a chunk of my life and walked away with nothing to show for it.

Think of it this way. There isn’t a chance in hell that a low-paying project will have any degree of prestige attached to it. Don’t think about how you feel right now. Think about how you’re going to feel in a few years. When all you’ve got in your portfolio are these low-paying article spam jobs, you’ll wish you’d spent your time doing something else.

4.) Burning bridges.

This is a hard one because you sometimes need to burn a bridge that’s genuinely making your life difficult. Just realize that there’s a cost attached to it, and it’s greater than the mere pay you’re getting. You want clients who will refer you to others. You want a badge of pride you can put on your website to show others that you did a great job. If you burn a bridge, you can’t do that anymore. What a bummer.

5.) Not being prolific.

I’ve already got 52 blog posts and counting. I keep adding more and more content to this website because I just have to do it. There was once a study conducted on artists. They found that the artists who made twenty paintings in a very short period of time had a better overall technique than those who focused intently on just one painting.

I think the same thing applies to writing. To get really good at it, you just have to write and write and write. I write at least a thousand words a day, and I think nothing of it. That’s the sort of mindset you need to have to be successful.

6.) Wasting time on uninspiring projects.

Have you ever had a project that just made you yawn the moment you began? That’s a big sign you need to do something else. My worst writing happens when I’m tired and uninspired. My best writing happens when I get the spark of an idea and just run with it.

Don’t do uninspiring projects. You’ll spend all day napping on the sofa, and you’ll have nothing to show for it.

7.) Not killing bad client relationships before they turn into something worse.

Some clients will drive you up the wall with multiple revisions and crazy deadlines. If I ever feel a constant pressure from a client, I think of a way to end the relationship. I want my clients to be critical, of course, but I don’t want them to be so critical that they’re tearing apart everything I write. If they’re that unhappy all the time, they should probably be working with someone else.

Don’t do what I’ve done and continue to work with these people, hoping everything will be fine. It won’t. You’ll just end up miserable when you get a project back and they’re angrier than ever before. These relationships are a cancer. They must die, and it must happen sooner rather than later.

8.) Not taking the occasional break from writing.

I started up an iPhone app development company because I wanted to have an extra source of income that wasn’t based on writing. I couldn’t be happier that I’ve done it. It’s made me more sane overall, and now that I’m back in the swing of things and blogging regularly, I feel a lot more inspired.

Writing is great and everything, but iPhone apps and computer code know no emotion. There are no revisions. They either work or they don’t work. If you get them to work, you win. Simple as that. I need more of that in my life.

9.) Freaking out when you don’t have any work.

Trust me, it’s going to be okay. The clients will come rolling in soon. If you don’t have any work right now, take your time and do something genuinely productive with it. If you sit around and worry about who is going to respond to your bids and emails, you’re wasting time you could be spending on more important things like building your web presence.

The Chinese have a saying. “No man who rises before dawn 365 days a year fails to make his family rich.” Just keep chipping away at this. Eventually you’ll get what you want, and it will happen when you least expect it.

10.) Not using the power of deadlines to work faster.

I am by no means saying you should procrastinate. What I am saying is you need to work somewhat close to your deadlines while spending the rest of your time on marketing yourself. I find that if I begin a project too early, I just end up doing it more slowly. I’d much rather feel the pressure of a looming deadline. It makes my time more productive.

Now there is one case where this doesn’t work to your benefit, and that’s when you’ve got a new client. New clients will want you to correspond with them right away. This is when you should impress them with your speed. Get it done as fast as possible, and there’s a good chance you’ll get more work from that client. If you wait until the last second, you’ll leave a bad impression.

At the end of the day, you have to think of your future self. You don’t want to find yourself looking through all the work you’ve done over the years, only to find out that there isn’t much you’re proud of. This is your career, after all. The projects you’re bidding on might pay the bills today, but what will they do for you tomorrow? You can’t build a career on spammy SEO articles. You need real writing samples. You need to work for companies and clients that matter.

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Elance vs Odesk

Posted by on December 12, 2011

A lot of people ask me what the difference between Elance and Odesk is. After all, the two sites are the largest online freelance marketplaces you’ll find. There are a few others that are worth looking into, like Vworker, but once you get beyond that, the number of listings on the sites drops quite dramatically. As a freelancer, lots of listings are your friend -even if most of them don’t pan out. You don’t want to have to sign up for a bunch of different sites in order to get just a few extra clients.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to do a series on all of the different freelance websites, what’s good about them and what’s not so good about them. All of this is based on my experience working on each site, as well as a bit of research I’ve done on the side. Each site has its own strengths and weaknesses, largely based on the separate visions of their CEOs and management teams. Here’s what I’ve discovered.

What Odesk is trying to be.

In case you haven’t noticed, Odesk is the largest online freelance marketplace. To even say that they are a place for mere “freelancers” alone is a bit of a misnomer because I think they want to break free of that mold. I would say they’re trying to reinvent work as we know it. In the past, we called that freelancing. Perhaps we’ll continue to call it that in the future, but I don’t think the team at Odesk wants it to be limited to that.

Odesk grew to its size because it was the first of the online freelance marketplaces to successfully implement a pay for time worked feature. For many years, that was their unique selling point. Their motto was “an hour worked is an hour paid,” and it contrasted greatly with the fixed price projects you’d see on sites like RentACoder.com (now Vworker) and Elance.

Over the years, both Elance and Vworker built their work-for-time features in order to compete with Odesk. The idea was ripe for the times, but Odesk made sure to take full advantage of it while it was their primary selling point.

The key advantage of a work-for-time scheme is the ability to do virtually what most managers do in the office. They can hire a virtual team to handle whatever tasks they delegate, and they can do it in a secure way. If a manager wants to wean an employee onto the team, he or she can limit the amount of hours that person is allowed to work. Once the employee has demonstrated competency, the manager can increase that person’s hours.

Odesk’s goal is to make it easy to create virtual teams. For the most part, that goal hasn’t changed over the years, and it reflects quite strongly in the types of jobs you’re likely to find on Odesk. In my experience, nearly all of my Odesk jobs have been hourly. I join a team and get paid the hourly rate that I request. I have done a few fixed price jobs on Odesk, but they are few and far between.

The one thing I like about Odesk is that they seem to have built a better referral engine. That is to the say, the clients who are referred to me through Odesk tend to be pretty decent. I sometimes get a few bad eggs, but that’s usually better than searching through a bunch of project listings trying to find what I’m looking for.

By the way, there’s one thing you can do to stop the bad referrals from coming through. Just make your payment terms and minimum project size very clear at the top of your Odesk profile. Mine are in all-caps, and I give a strongly worded rationale for what I charge. If you do the same, you’ll get clients who understand what you expect from them.

The one thing I don’t like about Odesk is searching through the listings. It’s hard to separate the good ones from the bad ones, and once you’ve entered a bid, it takes you right back to page one. I’ve found myself going through numerous pages over and over again just to pick up where I left off. The listing section could use a site redesign for added simplicity.

What Elance is trying to be.

Elance started off as the premier place for online freelancers. They offer an hourly option as well, but it’s not as emphasized as it is on Odesk. The Elance site design evokes a more upper crust sort of feeling. This was more of a selling point in the early days of Elance, but it now appears as though the site wants to grow to be the size of Odesk.

One thing I really used to love about Elance was their enforced minimum project size for a fixed price project. They used to set it at $50, and it served to weed out a lot of bad listings. I also like that, as a freelance writer, Elance acknowledged that there’s a time cost to going after the smaller fish, and we deserve to be compensated for it (o.k. maybe that’s me putting words in their mouths, but it was nice).

Sadly, that $50 minimum is gone. I think it’s largely because Elance wants to expand, and they know they simply need more listings in order to do so. Some people are willing to go after those super small projects too, especially when it’s their first fish. It’s a double edged sword because Elance and Odesk end up annoying the crap out the more experienced freelancers who have a hard time finding what they want in an increasingly crowded sea of projects.

Hopefully, a better referral system will help both Elance and Odesk. I’ve gotten a few good referrals through Elance, but because there are less projects on the site overall, I tend not to get as many. I still find it valuable to go through listings on Elance when I’m running low on work. Elance’s site design is better for this process than Odesk’s site design.

Recently, Elance appears to be making more news on the technological front. They’ve appeared on several news channels to talk about the state of online freelancing (at one point mentioning my friend Ben Gran). Fabio Rosati, their CEO, talked about connecting Elance workers to telepresence robots to do jobs that might only require someone’s presence for a few hours. A person in Illinois could logon to Elance and hop into a robot (just like Avatar) to be the office receptionist. Pretty cool when you think about it.

Elance vs Odesk. Which should you choose?

It ultimately depends on how you prefer to work. If you prefer to clock in and work on an hourly basis, Odesk is the better choice. If you prefer to work more like a freelancer and take some risks on fixed price projects, you’ll find some good ones on Elance. I should also mention that Elance uses escrow, and Odesk currently does not. Escrow protects you from the clients who take a while to pay. They have to fund the project before Elance will allow it to begin.

Over the long run, you should have profiles on all of the freelance sites. Don’t just pick one. I spend more time looking through listings on Elance, but I get a lot of referrals through Odesk. To do well, you need to be everywhere.

I’d like to end by saying your online freelancing career doesn’t stop at Elance and Odesk. There are lot of other opportunities out there, and one of the best ways to get them is to start building your own website (just like this one). When you create content that targets the right keywords for your industry niche, clients will come to you on your terms. This is much better than getting clients through Elance and Odesk because you don’t have to pay any commission. The sale is 100% yours.

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Don’t Be So Afraid To Offend.

Posted by on December 10, 2011

How many times have you had a client or potential client say something that just strikes you as flat out wrong? How many times have they wasted your time? Have you ever wanted to call them out for it? I certainly know I have, and that’s why I do it all the time. Here’s why.

In life, the angry and the dissatisfied are the ones who ultimately run the show. They’re the leaders. Just look at someone like Steve Jobs. He was a complete and total asshole, and yet everyone respected him. Better yet, they downright feared him. His power over that organization, his unwillingness to settle for whatever was put in front of him, led Apple to create some of the best devices this world has ever seen.

I’m not so sure I agree with all this “professionalism” crap you keep hearing career experts spouting all the time. Maybe professionalism works for professionals, but I want to be more than that. I want to be a leader, and leaders are almost always total assholes when they need to be. They could give a rip about “professionalism.” Why? Because they’re the leaders. They get to do what they want.

Just look at a show like Shark Tank with Kevin ‘O Leary. I love that guy because he says exactly what’s on his mind, and he never apologizes for it. One time, a contestant appeared on the show, Kevin verbally ripped her business plan to shreds in mere seconds, and then she thanked him for his time. Kevin’s response was, “what are you thanking me for?”

When people waste your time, don’t thank them for it. Show them your anger. They just wasted your time. What are you going to do about it?

Oh, I can just see all the career experts circling up above. Here’s my advice to them. You’re career experts because you didn’t have the chutzpah to actually lead. So now you dole out advice on how to stay stuck in the same rat race everyone else is in. Those who can’t do teach. If you don’t do something to stand out of the crowd right now, you’ll be forgotten.

The world remembers people like Steve Jobs because he had the courage to offend.

And guess what, some of those people you insulted come right back to you with job offers. Why? Because they can see your passion. When you really know how to argue a point, to show them why you’re right, you are demonstrating the skills of a true leader. Sure, some of them will get really angry and walk away. They might even cry to their mommy and try to bring in Big Brother shut you down. But do you really need people like that in your life?

Get mad. Say what you feel. The world needs more of it. That’s the first step to being a real leader.

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I'm Ted, a snowboarder by day and copywriter by night.

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