I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Maria and I got back from vacation last week and since I’m a paranoid crazy person, I never post about my vacations until after they’re over.

Regardless of being away, I’m having tons of trouble writing since getting back.

It’s not writers block, because I can’t even get myself to sit down next to the computer or my writing pad, even though ideas are there. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not cool and it’s starting to take a toll on my brain.

The big reason is that we went camping on our trip and I didn’t write all week, including in my journal. I know I should have tried harder to do it and I would have been able to write, but I didn’t. Momentum is so important in writing, so I want to put out a challenge to myself out in public:

I’m going to write my journal and at least 1 page of something constructive for everyday for the rest of this month.

What does this mean for you? Well nothing really.

Most of what I write isn’t for the site, but I promise to start adding more soon and actually expanding the content. I want this site to constantly evolve with me and I have some ideas for additional content, but until that is ready I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing now. Well not what I’ve been doing recently, but what I was doing before I started sucking at life.

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I love this shit. I only buy store brand soda because I am cheap, but this week Throwback is on sale at Stop and Shop and I went ape shit on that aisle.

It’s amazing the difference between real sugar and corn syrup.

MMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Since I redesigned my blog, I gave myself the freedom to write about anything I want (except Social Media & business). With that in mind though, there are some things I don’t want to touch EVER, like politics.

So… I’m not going to mention that I am overjoyed that a Judge in California finally got some sense and overturned Proposition 8.  I can’t believe something like that could even pass in the first place.

Since I will not be speaking about any political issues, I’ll let Grafunkel & Oats do the talking for me.

Enjoy:

If you’ve never been to TOMS Shoes website, they are a cool company. For every pair of shoes you buy, they give one away.

I love the new Sunset Fade Shoes here, but the classics are always cool too.

Gabe Lacktman Sunset Fade Men’s TOMS Shoes


White Canvas Classics Men’s TOMS Shoes

I’ve been talking about it for a while, but now I’m fully committing to reshaping what my website is about.

I’ve struggled in the past finding a voice for my blog. I want to showcase my personality and I realized that isn’t possible to do correctly. I’m way too eclectic to balance the professional and the actual.  Most people who want to read a blog about Social Media, don’t want to also hear about new indie bands or listen to my rants about life and tyrannosauruses and vice versa.

Because of this, I’m removing Social Media from my blog entirely.

Now this doesn’t mean I am going to stop writing about Social Media altogether, but what it does mean is that my Work Focused side is going to be pushed to an entirely new blog that will be Zombie free (the bad jokes will remain though).

I know this might be a crazy move for all the Personal Branding people out there, but that’s fine with me. I’m proud of me and my personality and if I want to attach my name to a blog that is about cats, indie rock, and television bashing instead of my thought leadership blog, that’s my decision to make.

Having this focus now frees me to be more creative with what I write and keep each one focused on what it should have been about in the first place. You need to know the rules before you break them or else it’s just chaos.

The new site is being designed now and will launch in the next week or two, so if you’re here for Social Media, feel free to ignore me until then. If you’re here for the rest, I hear there are some good tunes below to check out.

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I love this song.

If you can’t tell, it’s been a pretty music intensive week. I promise next week I will post other things.

I will be the first to admit it; I’m a huge dork for Tony Robbins.

That’s not something I tell everyone, but if you’re one of the lucky few to read my blog welcome to my dark secret.

It sounds lame, but I was excited to watch this new show. Even though I look super tough on the outside (like an apple) I’m actually a bit of a softie (like ice cream) and I like watching people overcome adversity.

When push comes to shove the show did what it was supposed to do, make me cry, but I couldn’t get over the production of it. The whole time I felt like I was watching a Job Training video from the 70’s.

Right out of the gate Tony is talking to the camera in a way that could be easily changed over to an episode of Cheaters and you wouldn’t know the difference. He’s standing in front of a generic looking background and begins talking up the show on a basic level trying to add some drama.

I’m not bashing Cheaters here, it gets a pass when it comes to lackluster production because it’s a cheesy show. If Cheaters was as polished as a network reality show it would lose all of its luster, the opposite situation happened for me here.

I’m still going to watch it again next week, hopefully it was just the pilot that I didn’t like. If that episode doesn’t do it for me, I’ll just watch Cheaters on Demand.

Anyway, let’s forget I even made this post and forget the fact I’m a Tony Robbins fan.

This whole album has been playing non-stop on my iPod this week. Go download it NOW.

BONUS: The Gaslight Anthem’s “American Slang” Acoustic on SIRIUS XM

This album is really hit or miss, but I love this song.

This is my 4th take writing this post and I can’t seem to get it right, so fuck it, I’m just going to free write. I’m changing the website again and will be deleting all of the old content.

Welcome to the new BrianCarl.com. It’s a work in process, but it will be finished soon and will be the most amazing website you have ever seen. If you look for too long your head might blow up. Consider yourself warned.

Photo Credit: Tambako the Jaguar

I was talking to my friend Carter (Who I forced to join Twitter) today and in the middle of the discussion he said something that I had to copy.

Carter: How is that easier for me
me: I didn’t say for you
I said it’s easier
Carter: Well “for me” is what I’m concerned about

Although he said it in jest, it’s the way your customer actually thinks. Next time you start writing about your product, keep this in mind.

This is a reminder for most; however I like when inbound marketing comes up in real life so I felt compelled to post this.

P.S. you can’t plan this shit.

P.P.S. Okay, you can plan it, but I didn’t.

Photo Credit: dhammza

I get an e-mail every week from Threadless.com. If you’ve never been to Threadless before, you should leave my page right now and check them out.

Welcome back. As you now know, they make crowd-sourced t-shirts that are fun, affordable and sometimes cryptic until you read the title. I bring them up because they do permission marketing in way that you never see.

On Monday I received my weekly e-mail from Threadless and shortly after a second one. The first e-mail was their weekly e-mail and the second was an apology

They sent out an e-mail explaining that the opt-out link was not working in the original e-mail and then explained how to opt-out if you want to.

There are still a lot of CMO’s who would have a heart attack if someone at their company sent out an e-mail like this. The nerve of them, actually letting people know how to opt out!!

I hate that I need to write a blog about this being the right thing to do, but it’s still so rare.

Permission is all you have as a marketer, don’t squander it. In this case, don’t squander it and look good doing it. (That was way too cheesy even for me)

I stopped posting to Twitter a few months back and it felt really good. Today I’m making my first post in 142 days.

Before I get into why, I’ll quickly explain my history on Twitter.

I joined Twitter in August of 2007. I got on pretty early, but I couldn’t get any of my friends to join. I tried to explain the site, but I couldn’t figure out why it was better than Facebook (or why it should be used in conjunction). One friend joined and made one post.

Since none of my friends joined, I followed bloggers who I respected. They mostly tweeted about people I didn’t know and places I’ve never been. I didn’t have much to add to the conversation.

I got bored.

After this I let my account go dormant.

Around a year ago, I picked back up. I don’t remember what the catalyst was, but I came back and used it pretty hard. I started using it during marketing webinars and then I finally learned how to effectively use Twitter Search and Hashtags and everything changed.

Now I was finally earning followers and interacting with people. I was really getting into the network and meeting new people and I was enjoying it.

Over time this changed and I couldn’t put my finger on why. It dawned on me what the issue was; I was following too many people and way too many marketers.

Too many marketers. You know the type. They don’t want to interact. They want to promote themselves and retweet whatever Hubspot posts. Because of this, I stopped posting about marketing or myself and started posting about UFOs, Mega Man, and Kevin Costner instead and my followers started dropping.

I got bored again.

Fast-forward to now – I’m coming back to Twitter.

I was writing in my journal about why I left Twitter (everything you just read) and I realized why I really left Twitter: I wasn’t using it right.

It wasn’t everyone else. I know most people suck and only care about themselves, but I was doing the same thing. To make it worse I changed the purpose of my account, so it’s no wonder I lost followers. I guess marketers don’t like Kevin Costner posts.

I am going to come back into Twitter with a new plan and use it the way it was supposed to be used. I don’t know why I didn’t make this connection earlier; I was just as bad as the other “Gurus” I’m criticizing.

If I’m not going to connect with them and they aren’t going to connect with me, why am I following them?

Has anyone else had any realizations about how to use Twitter like I did?

Photo Credit: playerx

Like everyone who works in social media, I love Mashable Copyblogger (And strikethroughs).

I came across this post last week called 17 Easy Steps to Brilliant Blog Posts. It was a guest post by Jill Chivers, who I had never heard of. The post didn’t move me, but what she did on her website I thought was brilliant and is overlooked too often by guest writers.

I normally skip right over peoples bios. They are a good idea to write, but they’re boring. Weirdly, I read hers and I even clicked on the link back to her page. I guess I read it because right above it was a tip to always write a bio. (Subliminal message? I like it!)

Welcome Copybloggers.

That was the header I saw when I landed on her page. She made a post knowing she would get traffic from copyblogger and as the icing on the cake, she made the copyblogger header her post image.

Brilliant. Now I’m interested.

This is a great idea and one that I haven’t seen enough. Everyone promotes their guest post, but they aren’t optimizing the new traffic they’re getting from making the post in the first place.

Kudos Jill.

As much as I loved this idea and that she did it, there are some things I hated about how she did it.

• Please Proofread. The first thing I notice is you link to the post calling it “16 Easy Steps” and the actual post on Copyblogger is “17 Easy Steps”.

Shit changes so fast online and maybe the name of the post changed, but no matter what happened I’ve lost a little confidence in you in the first 5 seconds on the site. (The make or break time)

• Follow your own ideas. The second tip on her Copyblogger post was, “Make sure you have one idea per post”.

I didn’t understand the one idea from the post on her website. The post was ramblings about the different things she does. I got an overview of her, but I don’t know what her website is about or what she’s selling.

• Don’t ask me to sign up for anything. I’ve read through your page a few times and I have no clue what you do.

You are bringing in a whole new audience, you need to make sure they know exactly what it is you do and what you can help them with.

She says, “You might even want to sign up for our weekly ezine (and fabulous freebies).  At the very least, it will spike my analytics graph and give me something else to look at during my weekly site statistics seminar.”

I love humor online, but I still don’t know what your ezine is or more importantly why I should sign up for it

What am I getting at? Nobody is perfect and I still love what she did. I wish instead of a long post she told me why I should care about her product or her.

There is a lot of ways to do this, but I like the soft sale.

I would have made a short post about what the site is about and what’s in it for the reader. After that, post a list of the best posts she’s written, so the reader can get a better idea if it’s a site they care about and want to opt into. The ironic thing is in her copyblogger post she littered the post with links to other copyblogger articles, but on her site she only linked offsite.

(P.S. I tried my best to use Jill’s 17 tips in this post, they are good)

Photo Credit: antmoose

If you haven’t seen this already, you should.

The entire Star Wars original Trilogy told in less than a minute and a half………….. entirely with LEGOS!!!

Now if someone would just make one for Harry Potter. (Theres not enough geeky stuff for us Harry Potter fans)

Thumbnail photo credit: Shelley Panzarella

Sometimes when I want to be productive I set a time that I can’t turn the TV on until. The hope is if I get bored enough I’ll do something.

It usually works, but man, I do the weirdest shit when I’m alone and its quite. As I was half dancing/half chasing a cat/two-thirds singing, I passed a mirror and this became extremely evident.

As I watched myself spin into awkwardness, I wondered how many others became this crazy when there is silence and moreover how people were before television. Was the world some amazing place full of people being creative and having fun? Sounds like a pretty sweet place.

That point of view is optimistic though.  More than likely the world would be filled with eccentric people trying to kill their boredom in awkward ways. Oddly enough, this also sounds awesome.

Are there any old readers who can confirm what life was like back then? Maybe this will help…

Are there any old readers who can confirm what life was like back then?

No? Well I am sure it must have been like walking into Tim Burton playing charades with Forest Whitaker. It’s crazy, but they keep guessing the right answers so you go with it. Plus what else do you have to do?

With that picture now burned in my subconscious, I can safely say god bless you TV. Thanks for stopping me from thinking.

Photo credit: Looking Glass

This blog has been a good time and has taught me a lot, but it’s run its course in its current version. I have about 100 different posts on here (not all by me) and it’s time to simplify that down and start from scratch.

I have changed the format of this blog a number of times and now when you flip through the blog you can find reminisce of that. As you dig deeper you can watch it change like going through the layers of the Earth, except boring.

I’m not embarrassed about what is up here or what I’ve posted in the past, but it is necessary to keep this page consistent and that is something I have done a shitty job of.

The ironic thing is I’m happy about what I’m writing now and it’s moving in the right direction, but I can’t fully move on until many of the old portions of the page are removed.

This isn’t going to happen right away and I am going to keep posting until then, however it will happen shortly and a new website will launch that isn’t like anything you have ever seen before.

Photo Credit: veo_

Finally, the list will be revealed.

Before you read it, I want to explain my reasoning for choosing these goals (You can scroll down if you don’t care).

There are a lot of things that I want to do and narrowing the focus down has been hard.

One thing that’s helped is creating a bucket list. This put a lot of the things in perspective. I decided that none of the changes are going to help me professionally and all of them will be designed to help me enjoy life more instead.

I don’t mean this to sound like I don’t like my job or that I don’t want to excel at it. I enjoy it, however at this point I am much better at my job than I am at my life. Also jobs will change over time and creating habits for a healthier body and mind will always be important no matter where life takes me.

The other thing I noticed as I went through my bucket list, I want to spend more time on experiences. It’s so easy to go through life just working and watching TV and continue doing the same thing every day and I want to make avoid this whenever possible. Everyone needs a health balance of the comfortable and the new.

So without further ado:

1. Get in better Shape. (workout on a regular basis)
2. Begin carrying a notebook with me wherever I go and documenting experiences, ideas, and goals.
3. Begin writing on a daily basis
4. Start doing something entirely new as often as possible
5. Write a short story
6. Promote my work (video & writing)

Now some of these might not make sense right away, but all of them will be explained in detail.

The promoting my work can be seen as a professional goal, however I don’t see it that way. I don’t ever intend on making a living off of my creative works, but I still want others to see them and (hopefully) enjoy them.

So there it is, the list is written down and I intend on keeping to it.

Photo Credit: CarbonNYC

It’s been about 2 weeks since I wrote my last post on my 6 changes project. I discussed dropping my first project and moving on to getting in better shape. I am still slightly disappointed by this , but I know it is better for the project as a whole.

This step is going well. The initial goal is to get into the habit of going to the gym at least 2 times a week and 1 day of extra activity. I haven’t missed a week, but it is still early.

I am not where I need to be with this goal yet, but now I need to start preparing for the rest of them. I mentioned in my last post that I would be writing about the rest of my goals for the year, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

I have written them all down, however I didn’t want to jump the gun and throw them all up here without prioritizing them first. This is the problem I had that caused me to halt my first goal and start a new one and I don’t want to repeat that.

The next post will have all 6 goals written out in sequential order and why I am doing them in that way. After that I’ll post actual date and time lines for each goal and exactly what I want to achieve in that time.

Photo Credit: Maia C

I hit my first road block on my 6 changes project.

I should be upset, but I’m not. The reason why is that it’s due to a change in goals.

The writing project has been put back on the shelf, while I focus on getting myself in better shape. I know changing a project this early goes against the project itself, but here are the reasons I am okay with it.

• Getting in better shape will have a positive impact on all of the rest of the goals that I set out to accomplish. I’ve been more tired than usual and that is because I’m not as active in the winter. I snowboard, but that is not on a regular basis.
• I learned that prioritizing goals in my life is as important as prioritizing goals in business. I came into this project knowing that my first goal was to write more, but that wasn’t the end goal. As I said in the first post, I didn’t know what the other goals were going to be at the time and now that I have a better idea, I realize I need to change their order. If I had sat down and planned out the rest of the goals, I would have known that wasn’t a good one to start with.
• I plan on hiking a lot this summer and doing longer hikes. If I wait on getting into better shape, I will be behind the 8 ball when summer starts (or maybe even spring if the weather is good). This is another example of how long term planning in necessary in normal life situations.

I don’t consider this first stumble a failure in the plan and I will use this experience to make the rest of these changes more effective. This new goal is going along better than expected and I have no fears that anything will change that.

The next steps for me is to actually sit down and write out all 6 goals and prioritize them from now until the end of the year. My next post will focus on those goals.

Photo Credit: out of ideas