Archive for March, 2010

This morning I received a comment about my last article which was entitled “I Hate Winter.” The lady wrote:

“Fred, you sent out an email tonight stating that you hate the Winter season. Wow, that one struck me hard because the use of the word “hate” is very serious, and I couldn’t believe it would come from someone who is supposed to very much deep into nature. What’s going on with this picture? I think you need to apologize to nature and all of your members. I did not appreciate that email and hopefully, in the future you don’t send out an email like that to me anymore. I do not like the use of the word, there is too much animosity there on nature.”

Now, it struck me that this person would actually take everything I write quite literally.

“Apologize to nature” she tells me!

You’ve got to be kidding me!

So let me explain for all of you wannabe Internet Marketers the reason of the use of the word “Hate”.

In case you don’t know, I have two websites, and two separate email newsletters.

One is my www.fredericpatenaude.com website and the topic is health and raw foods.

The other one is www.dowhatyoulove.com, and this is the ezine you’re reading now. The topic is “Making a living doing what you love”.

The emphasis here is really on earning a living with your own business, as in “starting your own website and selling products on the Internet.”

For most people, what I do is a dream job.

I write, I publish ezines, I get to do what I love, I travel around the world and I make a living with my passion.

And I’ve been doing it since 1998.

When I was younger, once people found out what I did for a living they would often ask me in disbelief, “And you’re able to earn a living doing THAT?”

Imagine them saying it with an emphasis with the word “THAT”.

They imagined that kid like me (remember I started when I was 21) couldn’t possibly create a life without a job, traveling the world doing something I loved, and earning a full-time living at that.

Another person asked me “Could you feed a family with what your little business earns?”

I translated that as: “Yeah, you’re young and single and you don’t have kids, sure you can live like a bum on 20K a year but I have a family to feed, so I need my day job to earn more.”

Once I looked older, enough people stopped asking me these questions and since they often met me in exotic tropical places, they figured that what I was doing was probably working! Many became really interested in what I did.

Don’t kid yourself, I’m not a millionaire, but hat’s not my goal.

And I also know that I could be making way more than I currently do if I compromised my values and started selling what people really WANT, as opposed to what they really NEED, such as miracle superfoods and supplements.

But compromising my values is really not my thing.

Bottom line, my business is still relatively simple to manage, allowing me and my future wife enough freedom to do what we want.

I’m not complaining. My business often generates in a month what many people make in an entire year, and all that selling information products that can change people’s lives, and without the hassle of a big business that would take up all my time.

I love what I do, and the reason I’m telling you this is that if you’re subscribed to the “Do What You Love Email Tips“, there’s probably a good reason you would want to try to do the same.

So when that lady wrote (and I often get similar emails) criticizing my use of the word “Hate”, I thought I could write up an article with a quick lesson in Internet Marketing.

I Don’t Literally Hate Anything

When I was sitting down and sending my ezines, at first my subject line for the email was “I Forgot About the Winter”.

Then I thought about it for a moment, and realized that this subject line, which I think of as a headline almost, was not interesting enough, and didn’t catch attention.

I don’t spend as much time as I should on all my email subject lines, but I knew this was a bad one.

So I replaced it with “I Hate Winter.”

I thought it would get a bit more attention.

Here’s a lesson in writing on the Internet:

You Cannot Be Boring!

If I look back at the articles I wrote that got the most comments, the most attention, that were the most forwarded and generated the MOST sales, they were all on topics that didn’t leave anyone indifferent.

For example, I wrote an article last year called “Why I’m MAD at the Raw Food Movement” that got posted all over the Internet, and generated probably 10 times as many sales as my normal ezines.

Why?

Because it was controversial. Because I took a strong stand on an issue, even if that didn’t please everybody.

Even then, some people wrote back to me because and were telling me that I shouldn’t be “MAD” at anything, because “anger” wasn’t a good thing!

Why do some people have to take everything SO literally!

Of course, I was not actually “mad” at the raw food movement. I was passionate about the issue, that’s for sure, but there was not a feeling of anger in my heart.

Yet, the title of that article was the best I could have used!

Can you imagine if I had titled my article, “Why The Raw Movement Makes Me Unhappy”…

Same thing for my “I Hate Winter” email.

I don’t actually “hate” winter like I would probably “hate” an enemy that might do something very bad to me.

No, wait a minute… revise that! To tell you the truth, I actually do hate the winter…

At least, that’s what I thought many times as I was freezing and fighting the elements during the heart of the winter in Canada, when just going outside for 5 minutes was a major endeavor!

But you know what I mean. The actual emotion is more “dislike” but the word “hate” sounds more convincing.

The bottom line is this: if you want to make a living doing what you love on the Internet, and if you want to succeed in this field, you’re going to have to write.

You cannot just write boring little articles and tips.

Sometimes, you have to take a stand on an issue and be willing to speak your mind, even if that makes some people angry.

Remember, like Don Miguel Ruiz wrote in his awesome book “The Four Agreements”.

“Don’t take anything personally. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

Let me tell you, if I actually worried anytime someone disagreed with me on something that I wrote, I wouldn’t have had any time to live my life.

When I get an email like the one I just showed you, I just smile! Or laugh. I certainly don’t take things personally.

I’ve been doing what I do for too long to know that there are always people that take things too literally.

Like the great marketer Dan Kenney once said, “If you haven’t offended anyone by noon, you’re probably not working!”

If you’re telling me that nobody ever disagrees with you and you NEVER get any negative comments anywhere, then I will say, “you’re probably not earning a full-time living doing this.”

The one thing I know for sure that every full-time Internet market has in common is that they get negative comments from people who take things personally.

In fact, get four or five Internet Marketers in the same room and they’ll probably start ranting about the craziest comments they’ve ever received!

In conclusion, I will not apologize to Nature, because I’m sure Nature is pretty indifferent to my little email newsletter.

I’m quite certain that I did not offend “Nature” enough to take its revenge upon me and bring snow and cold all the way down to Costa Rica to punish me!

What do you think?

I might have told you this before, but in case you don’t know, I hate the winter!

I’m from Montreal, Canada, and one thing Canadians know very well is the snow. And the cold. And the long, dreary winters.

I never really liked wintertime, but as I spent more and more times in sunny and tropical places, I started disliking it even more.

At first, what I needed was at least a few weeks away from the cold and somewhere warm every winter.

Then, I increased that amount to a month or two.

At some point, it became clear that I wanted to avoid the months of January, February and March completely.

Then I realized that December also sucked, and so did April. So I made it a rule I would never come back to Canada before May.

But November is also pretty bad, so last year I decided to leave *before* the end of October.

So at this point, I’m avoiding winter completely.
And let me tell you, I’m not missing it one bit!

This morning I woke up and as usual, I went outside to take a dip in the pool.

I’m living at the moment on the pacific coast of Costa Rica, and it’s truly tropical. The temperature rarely goes below 72 Fahrenheit (22 Celsius), even at night!

Because my birthday is approaching, I was led to think that the weather was always cold on my birthday in Quebec.

At that point it struck me that I had completely forgotten about the winter!

Usually when I first get to the tropics, I compulsively check what’s the weather back “home” to see what I’m missing (for some reason it makes me enjoy the sunny weather even more).

But at some point I stop doing that, so I become completely out of touch with the reality of the winter.

I know the fantasy of moving to a tropical paradise is very real for many people at this time of the year.

My advice if you’re dreaming about this is to start slowly.

Do like I did and start a little bit at a time, rather than deciding to move somewhere completely like many people do (and often regret).

Do some research about certain countries, and then take a “field trip” there to investigate what it’s like to live there.

If you like what you see, consider staying for a longer period.

It’s not that hard to do if you work for yourself. The trickiest part is to find a place that you can rent for a few months only to keep your costs down.

But if you spend the winter in a place like Costa Rica, Panama or Thailand, you can save even if you keep your apartment and house back home!

Because the cost of living is much lower in these countries, even though you might spend extra on a plane ticket and extra rent, you’ll save in other areas such as food and entertainment — so in the end it often balances out and your total expenses stay the same.

If you’d like to find out more about my method to do so, make sure you check out my course: “How to Move to a Tropical Paradise”, available at:
http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/tropicalparadise.html

I was recently inspired by an article by Steve Pavlina (www.stevepavlina.com) on a method for productivity, which consists of working like crazy for a week, and then taking a week off to focus on your personal life.

Steve always has interesting articles and this one caught my attention. So this week I’m turning into a workaholic, working 10-12+ hours every day and doing almost nothing else.

Next week, I’ll be doing almost no work (except a few emails) and instead I’ll focus on all those personal projects I’ve put on hold for too long.

Even though I’ve never tried this particular technique before, I’ve experimented with various ways to separate my work and personal life.

For example, for a number of years a favorite method of mine used to be to rent a hotel room for the weekend and “lock myself up” to work on a single project.

Because of the different environment and also the pressure of having paid for that hotel room and needing to make good use of it, and the lack of distractions, I got a lot more done in that one weekend than I normally do in an entire week (or two!).

A friend of mine who also works at home follows a different technique: he works one day and then takes a day off. 

He’s been doing that for over a year and likes being able to focus intensely on his business for a day, and then take a day off.

Another variation of that is my previous method of working three days a week and then taking four days off.

Before that, I had a different method which was to work 3-4 hours a day and then take the rest of the day off.

What all these methods have in common is they allow you to focus more intensely for short periods of time on your projects, and then give you plenty of time to recover.

The method that does NOT work so well is what everybody does, which is to mix work with distractions all day long, and do that day in, and day out.

For example: work 30 minutes on something, then check your emails, then check your Facebook messages, then go back to what you were doing, then check out some blog on the Internet, and so on and so forth.

With that way of working, you’re distracting yourself all the time and are not spending enough focused time on ONE particular project.

If you want results, you’ll need to master the art of focused attention.

You’ll also need to master the art of recovery, so during your “off” time you’re not just watching TV shows and sleeping, but doing something active to advance your personal life.

That may mean read all those novels you’ve been meaning to read, or take a trip somewhere, or pick up a new language, or spend more time with your family.

The best way to understand this philosophy is in the saying:

Work Hard, Play Hard

I’ve noticed that people tend to be ruder and less polite and considerate when they’re behind a computer than when they are in person.

If you decide to start your own website and online venture, you’re bound to meet some pretty nasty, rude and “know-it-all” types of people.

This includes people who leave comments on your blog, comments on your social media sites (YouTube, Facebook etc.), customer service requests, etc.

Over the 10 years I’ve had my own website, I’ve seen pretty much everything, and let me tell you: it’s not pretty!

If you put yourself out there — especially in the natural health field — people will analyze your *every move*.

At times, you will be criticized for your appearance (even if you look healthy, some people will say you look “terrible”).

If you release any type of product, some people will return it because they don’t like it.

If it’s a book, some people would rather have it as an eBook.

If it’s an eBook, you’ll get angry comments from people who don’t like eBooks, and would rather have it as a book.

No matter what you do, some people will not like it, and will make it a point to let you know!

One recent example in our business comes from a very rude person who has left comments and questions everywhere they could to criticize the fact that our videos are not transcribed for hearing impaired people.

But that person didn’t make that request in a very nice way. He or she did it in an extremely rude, aggressive way.

We tried to explain to that person that our YouTube videos are NOT transcribed (like the vast majority of videos on the Internet) because we don’t have the time or resources to do so. But, most of our PAID audio products are transcribed.

I told that person that if she knows someone who’d be willing to transcribe them for us, we’d be happy to include the transcript. But at the moment, we simply cannot do that.

Yet, the same person went on to post nasty comments in every single video, she left multiple comments on our support site, wasting the valuable time of our customer service people…

And to top it off they went all over the web in various discussion forums to complain about the fact that Frederic is “inconsiderate” to the poor hearing impaired people who cannot watch his videos, and that he has “ignored” their multiple requests.

I don’t know about you, but to me this kind of behavior is not only aggressive but completely unacceptable.

The fact that someone has a special need does NOT entitle them to be nasty and request the rest of the world to accommodate to them, especially when what this person was complaining about was free information we put out for everybody on the Internet.

If they had asked in a nicer way, we would certainly have considered the request. But with this kind of behavior she certainly did not help her cause.

The bottom line is that if you’re going to have an online business, you have to be willing to take the heat.

Unfortunately, it seems that as soon as some people get behind a computer, they forget the basic rules of social interactions.

By the way, if you have a website and you’re NOT getting any nasty comments, then it is not a good sign either. It means you need to be more active and draw more attention.

If there’s one thing you want to avoid all the time online, it’s to be boring!

Are You Trying to Hide From Them?

In my travels, I meet more and more people who are trying to live off the grid. They think they can somehow avoid being part of the SYSTEM.

Who is the SYSTEM? Governments, banks, big business?

They are fooling themselves!

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Special Notice:

This week we have a special on the course “How to Write Your Own eBooks in 24 Hours or Less” to celebrate the three-year anniversary of the Do What You Love Email Tips, and my upcoming 34th birthday

Use the coupon EBOOKEZINE to get 30% off any version of the course paid in full. Use it at checkout.

Just go to www.fredericpatenaude.com/writeyourebook.html and use the coupon EBOOKEZINE

10 coupons are available total.
—————————————

I get asked advice all the time from people wanting to start a business online or trying to better support themselves in life, doing something that they love.

Unfortunately, a lot of young and not so young people nowadays would rather hide away in a cave, believing every single conspiracy out there and being AFRAID that the government is tracking their every move.

I can’t tell you how many of those types I’ve met. For example: one of my neighbours in a previous apartment in Costa Rica is so afraid that the economy will “crash” and that the US government will turn the country into a prison state, that he’s decided to live in Costa Rica, buy a plot of land  and try to grow his own food, living off the grid waiting for this *doomsday*.

The guy had no friends, no girlfriend, and lived off crackers and cheese, reading conspiracy theories on the Internet all day.

His face was so pale from the lack of sunshine that you’d think he was living in Alaska, even though he was under the sun of the tropics. At 31, he looked like he was 15 years older. Pretty sad, I know…

I think the government is already controlling his and affecting him negatively just by living this way, in fear and unhappy.

I get a lot of these kinds of people sending me emails, asking me questions or posting comments on my blog.

I got a comment the other day from an 18-year old kid who decided not to get a driver’s license because he doesn’t want to be on the “government’s radar”.

He was so afraid that as soon as he got a driver’s license, the government would be able to “track him down”.

For the same reasons, he didn’t want have a credit card, or “use banks”, or be part of the “system”, because “debt equals big corporation”, and he wants to stay as independent as possible.

He’s also conflicted about getting a passport, but because he wants to travel, he thinks he’ll probably get one someday.

Now I can tell you that this is probably a short-lived phase of youth rebellion, and that this kid is going to realize pretty soon that:

- As long as you’re born on this planet, you’re part of the system, whether you like it or not.

- If you want to be “out of the system”, the only way to do that is to live in a hut with no contact to human civilization whatsoever. But even then, this little idyllic world will be short-lived. Sooner or later, your interests will conflict with someone else’s interest (like the guy who owns the land where you live), and you’re going to have to be part of the system.

- If you want to travel, use airplanes and take advantage of what the world has to offer, you also have to play by the rules. Otherwise, it’s completely hypocritical to think that you can take advantage of the rules that are in your best interest while ignoring the rest.

- Ask any Personal Investigator and they’ll tell you than ANYONE can be found. The only limitation is how many resources are available to the person trying to track you down!

Of course, it makes sense to protect your privacy. There’s a great book out there called “How to Become Invisible” by JJ Luna that I recommend to read to discover basic ways to protect your privacy. Mostly, it’s about keeping your address private.

But don’t kid yourself that you can partake in what the world has to offer while NOT being part of the system.

Now, it’s not just young people who fall for that trap. I see it all the time with adults. Here’s a few examples:

- People who think they can get away with not paying their taxes because “there is no constitutional right for the Goverment to force people to pay taxes.”

- Some people even think they can get away with driving without a driver’s license because apparently an obscure interpretation of the law says “any person has the right to travel as long as it’s not for commerce.”

- People who think that they can hide their cash in a Swiss bank account where no one will ever know about it

Folks, it doesn’t matter what your interpretation of the law or constitution is. All that matters is what their interpretation of the law is.

Might is right!

If you don’t believe me, try speeding on the highway without a driver’s license and then when you get pulled over by the cops, recite that little paragraph you got on some conspiracy theory website about your “right to travel” and see how far that gets you…

If you want to not be part of the system, then go to the moon!

You can’t even end your life and not be part of the system. While dead, you’re still part of it.

You can dream about what it would be like to live off of the grid completely. Read “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Vernes if you want to dream away…

For those living in the real world, the only option left is to play by the rules, and make the best of it.

If you want to make a living doing what you love, you cannot be “off the grid”.

Instead of complaining about the way things are in the world, try to do something pro-active about it.

And surprisingly, the best way to do this is to be part of this world of commerce and business — yes, those “evil” things that every 18-year old kid from a rich family thinks they’ll do without.

Start your own business doing what you love, and offer a product or information that can really help the world — and do it with compassion, morality and love — while making a profit for yourself and earning a living — and you’ll do more in one year to improve the world than a hundred people living “off the grid” can hope to do in a hundred years.

This world isn’t so bad, after all, if you make the best of it.

Yours for health and success,

Frederic

PS: This week we have a special on the course “How to Write Your Own eBooks in 24 Hours or Less.” This is the best way to get started immediately selling products online.

Why the special? I want to celebrate the three years I’ve been teaching others how to start businesses in the natural health movement, and also my 34th birthday is coming up…

The coupon EBOOKEZINE gives you 30% off any version of the course paid in full. Use it at checkout.

Just go to www.fredericpatenaude.com/writeyourebook.html and use the coupon EBOOKEZINE

Only 10 coupons are available total.

Have you ever tried to buildy our own website? The task can be so daunting that it can completely drive you crazy. I know, because I’ve been there!

I have found that by far, the biggest obstacle towards success with an Internet Business for beginners is launching a first website.

Most people waste precious time and energy and take too long to get their website done.

The best way to get your website going is to lauch WordPress blog immediately, and start writing 2 or 3 articles per week in it. This website doesn’t have to look very good, but it has to be functional. Working on it will help you understand how WordPress works and will train you to add regular content to your website.

However, eventually you will need to make your website look professional and beautiful. It has to be something that you’re proud of, and something that reflects a good image for your business.

For that, you have two options:

1) You can hire a designer and programmer to create a theme for you from scratch. This is the best option if you want a beautiful website that reflects exactly what you want to project. Your expected budget for this should be realistically between $3000 and $6000. Expect to spend a lot of time working with designers and programmers and lots of frustrations along the way. But in the end, it is worth it.

2) You can buy an existing theme and hire a programmer and/or designer to customize it a little for you. This is by far the best option for most people starting out. If you find the right theme and right designer, you can bring costs down tremendously. This is what I’ve done for the site you’re currently looking at, the www.dowhatyoulove.com website.

Today, I want to tell you about the first option, and how I gave my website www.fredericpatenaude.com a complete makeover.

How I gave My Website a Complete Makeover Using 99Designs.com

There are many ways to get that website done. You can work directly with a web designer and programming team (I’ve done that very often), or you could post your project on one of the many freelancing sites out there.

Elance is very popular, but recently I tried a new one called 99designs. The concept is very simple: you describe your project and write a little brief about it, decide how much you’re going to pay for it, and then designers from all over the world will submit designs. You can rate the designs and add comments, and then in the end choose a winner.

Although I wasn’t sure what to expect, I found the experience of working on 99Designs very rewarding.

Here’s what my website looked like at first:

It wasn’t a bad design, but I knew it wouldn’t take me all the way through 2010 and beyond. I was using a SEO-optimized theme called Semiologic that promised a lot, but delivered little. So I knew I needed to create something different. My goals were:

1) I wanted this website to totally blow me away (I had to be 100% pleased with it).

2) It had to be better than ALL of my top competitors!

3) It had to stay simple and effective.

I posted that project on 99Designs:

Blog Redesign Needed!

I’ve been involved in the raw food/health movement since 1998. I’ve written several books and a lot of people come to me for honest, common sense advice on the subject. I’d like my website to look very professional while remaining accessible and friendly.

I liked both designs almost equally, so in the end I decided to ask my Facebook list what they thought of it.

Most people think of Facebook as a marketing tool. I personally see its value more in “micro-surveying”. Because of the instant feedback you get, it’s easy to run quick surveys on Facebook. I just updated my status saying I needed ideas to select a winning design, and within minutes people started replying and leaving their comments.

In the end, it became clear that one design seemed to win the approval of most people. This is the design you see below..

It seems to emanate the right kind of “energy” that resonates with my list. And THAT, beyond design considerations, is the most important thing!

Taking it to the Next Level

Although I liked the design, I felt that it didn’t meet two of my top three goals:

1) It didn’t completely blow me away.

2) It wasn’t WAY better than some of my top competitors.

In order to make that happen, I decided to take that design and hire another higher-end designer to work on it.

What she came up with completely blew me away! It was exactly what I had imagined originally.

The next step was to transform that design into an actual website. For that, you need a team of programmers to do the job.

The ones I decided to work with are absolutely AMAZING. They can be found at www.psd2html.com

They did an amazing job transforming our design into a website.

Because I wanted perfection with this site, I had to come back many times to ask them to redo several aspects of the blog to give the functionality that I wanted. In the midst of that, we also had a big CRASH on our server and had to move everything over to a new server. It was a complete nightmare, but in the end, well worth the efforts.

The results is what you see at www.fredericpatenaude.com/blog

In the end, I created the blog I’ve always wanted to have, custom-designed, for under $5000. I paid a lot more than if I had stayed with just one designer, and I had to pay more to create the functionality I wanted, and a lot of work was spent on this, but it was worth the efforts.

Since that website has been up, I’ve even heard from other marketers that I work with that some people who don’t even know me have been asking to find a way to copy my design for the blog!

How to Create YOUR Ultimate Website

For the person starting out who has less than 100 articles of content on their website, building a custom website from scratch like I did is an overkill. You’ll be better off starting with an existing theme and customizing it to your needs.

By popular demand, my team of designers and programmers and I are about to launch an amazing WordPress theme and “turn-key” solution for people who want an BEAUTIFUL-looking website but without the hassle of having to do everything themselves.

I’ll tell you more about this soon, stay tuned…