If you’ve never heard of Danny Wallace before, shame on you. He is a British author that wrote Yes Man (which was turned into a movie starring Jim Carrey) and a whole whack of other books. He has a very dry and very strange sense of humour which I find hilarious.
I stumbled across his work when I was in a thrift store in Nottingham. I picked up a copy of ‘Yes Man’ for less than a dollar and I must have read it 3 times before giving it to a friend of mine. It is that good.
In any event, Danny has come out with a new book called, “More Awkward Situations for Men”. Obviously, this is a sequel to one of his earlier books. I haven’t read it yet but I’m sure it is going to be just as good as all of his other stuff.
The thing that I really like about Danny is that he writes about his own life experiences. He’ll put himself into all of these awkward situations (which of course, turn out to be hiliarious) and gets you sucked into thinking “What if I was to do something like that?”
For example, the premise of “Yes Man” is that Danny commits to saying ‘yes’ to everything for a year. As a result, he gets himself in some fine messes but he also opens himself up to a world of possibilities that he never knew existed. While the book is funnier than a fart in a space suit it is also very much a self-help resource.
If you’ve ever read any of A.J. Jacobs’ stuff – especially “My Life as an Experiment” – you’ll find their writing styles and the situation they put themselves in quite similar.
Anyway, I haven’t read it yet and all of Danny’s stuff is hard to find in Canada so if you have had a chance to read it, please let me know how it is.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with one of Danny’s videos but beware, this tune is addictive and you might find that you’ll be humming it for days.
I first moved out to Vancouver just in time to witness the 1994 Stanley Cup riots. I vividly remember watching the TV in shock as yahoos destroyed their own city. I think it is safe to say that everyone was both shocked and horrified by the behaviour.
Fast forward to June 15, 2011. The city has since hosted one of the most successful Winter Games in history and a lot of the ugliness from 1994 was left in the rearview mirrow… until the Canucks lost another Game 7.
I wasn’t surprised last night by the reaction to the loss. The only thing that did surprise me was the fact that people were actually surprised. These people have obviously never spent any time on Granville Street on a busy Friday or Saturday night. There is definitely an undercurrent of anger and hostility in this city.
I can’t explain what it is but it definitely exists. Anyone not smashed out of their heads would tell you that they didn’t feel safe watching among the tens of thousands gathered on Georgia Street for the Stanley Cup final round games. It was like a volcano waiting to erupt.
Can someone tell me what it is about this city that causes this strange behaviour? We’re like a petulant, only child. We’re stuck on this side of the mountains thinking that everyone is so envious of us. We hate Toronto and think that they hate us but the truth is that they don’t even think about us.
We want to hate Calgary but they have their own Battle of Alberta and again, Vancouver is left alone… stewing and looking for a fight.
As another note, people that were in the chaos last night have told me that the police were as much of the problem as the solution. Apparently, they were very antagonistic towards the crowd and individuals trying to make their way across the city.
One thing that is different in 2011 compared to 1994 is the use of personal cameras and video cameras combined with social media. I think it is going to be very interesting to see some of the unedited footage that comes out as a result of last night’s idiocy.
Social media is the future, folks. Mark my words, the big news networks cannot move fast enough to get breaking news out before individuals are recording and posting real-time to YouTube and Facebook.
These are amazing times we’re living in. Personal privacy is a thing of the past. All of the idiots that thought they were cool looting and creating havoc last night were caught on someone’s camera somewhere and they will face the music.
Same goes with any police behaviour that wasn’t by-the-book. I didn’t see anything that would make me think that any wrong-doing was going on but thousands of cameras don’t lie and it only takes one shot to ruin a career.
Last night’s riot was dispicable and embarassing but the results are going to be a very interesting case study. I’m curious to see how the next two weeks shake out.
I’ve been a little down lately. It seems that everything is taking longer to get going than I had planned and is costing twice as much. Of course, that is life and when we get in these funks we need to just ‘keep on, keepin’ on’, right?
As I sometimes do for motivation I pulled out a dvd course that Vic Johnson put together. It was a live seminar recorded in Toronto and it had a lot of the big name speakers on it. One of them was Lisa Jimenez.
If you’ve never heard or seen her speak before I recommend that you do. She is pretty switched on and in this particular presentation she made a statement that totally hit home for me. This is paraphrased but it was essentially, “Most entrepreneurs are more concerned about looking good than being successful.”
What Lisa was saying is that we must be willing to be uncomfortable in order to succeed. We must be willing to risk failure and face rejection or we have no chance of success.
Of course, she was talking about entrepreneurs but it applies to everyone. How often have you seen someone you wanted to meet but didn’t introduce yourself? How often have you wanted to try something new but made an excuse at the last minute?
We all do this and we’re all motivated by one thing – FEAR. The fear of looking stupid in most cases. This is the reason I don’t like to make cold-calls for business even though I know I have to. It doesn’t make any sense and I’m working on changing it.
The fact is that the fear never goes away. Anyone that says they’ve conquered all of their fears is lying to you – and to themselves. The key is to follow the old addage “Feel the fear and do it anyways.”
Of course, it is much easier said than done but it must be done. Failure is the only other option.
I was recently speaking with my buddy Cheda. His cousin Dragan (who I met in Brazil) was in Egypt when after a night of heavy drinking he decided to go for a swim in the ocean. Before his friends even knew what he was doing Dragan handed his beer to a friend, climbed the ladder and took a running leap off a high-diving platform.
His friends commented that it was odd that there wasn’t much of a splash. Turns out that he landed on the head of a shark. He sprained his ankle and killed the shark. That same shark had been terrorizing the city and had killed a swimmer a couple of days before.
Dragan was so drunk he doesn’t remember any of it. The resort covered his accommodation costs, paid his medical expenses and treated him as a hero. This is a picture of the very large shark taken from an article about the story (written in Portuguese) via the link below.
Is that the most bizarre thing ever or what? Even I cannot make this up. Dragan had an entire ocean to hit yet he landed on the only two square feet (pardon the pun) that could have ever caused this outcome. In fact, I shudder at the more likely outcome of him landing beside the shark and becoming a meal but that didn’t happen. What are the odds, really?
I’m blasting through a book by Mike Lipkin called “Luck Favours the Brave” and in it he shares a great story. It is the amazing true story of Australian speed-skater, Steven Bradbury and it first appeared in the Globe and Mail on February 18th, 2002.
=======
The luckiest man at the Winter Olympics is an Australian speed-skater who once sliced his leg open and almost bled to death on the ice only to recover and break his neck.
In the men’s 1,000 metre short-track event, everybody fell down and Mr. Bradbury won. It happened in the quarter-final, in the semi-final, and it happened again, for the third time on the same night, on the last corner of the final. Everybody fell down and Mr. Bradbury won.
Short-trackers have a habit of falling down and taking each other out like pins in a bowling alley. But what happened for Mr. Bradbury was beyond anything that anyone had ever seen before. In the final, Mr. Bradbury was so far behind hit rivals, he could have stopped and asked for directions. He looked like a guy trying to hail a cab. Then all of the sudden, China’s Li Jiajun went down. Then Korea’s Hyun-Soo Ahn went down and took out Mr. Ohno and Mr. Turcotte, and Mr. Bradbury cruised past thinking, “Hang on. This can’t be right. I think I won.”
Mr. Bradbury’s career has produced as many near-death experiences as accomplishments. At a 1994 World Cup event in Montreal, he slipped and impaled his right thigh on a skate blade. The gash was so severe he lost four litres of blood and required 111 stitches. He said he would have died if it hadn’t been for the fast work of the paramedics who treated him.
Then in 2000, he fell while training in Australia and crashed headfirst into a barrier, breaking the C4 and C5 vertebrae in his neck. For six weeks he wore a metal halo.
But even after two horrific injuries, Mr. Bradbury refused to pass on a sport that had taken him to the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Winter Games. Instead, he wanted to one last go at the Olympics so he could, “walk away satisfied.” Never in his wildest dreams did he expect to walk away as an Olympic champion, the guy who stayed on his feet when everyone else was skating on banana peels; Australia’s new Olympic hero, whose brilliant strategy was to stay behind the leaders in case they all fell down.
=================
The moral of the story? In order to finish first, you first must finish.
During the time Eric spent working with our firm, we recognized an immediate increase in web presence, which translated to genuine sales opportunities. Eric manages to bring creative thinking together with an eye for return on investments to his projects. I would not hesitate to use his services again.
Dallas Macas
President, Trek Escapes
Eric is a pleasure to work with and brilliant online marketer. What he doesn't know is not worth knowing.
Lee Phillips
Amiqus Consulting
Without fail Eric was available to guide our blog and to overcome any marketing problems we've encountered along the way. I don't know where we would be without his help.
Susan McCord
BeaverTalk.com
Even after 13 Months the sales leads that Eric generates still provide a greater return than any other source we buy from. I have no intention of looking anywhere else.
Jim Duval
Able Acceptance Corp.
I've never had an easier sales job than when I worked with Eric at Sao Paulo English. Our online lead generation and email follow-up system allowed me to simply follow-up with prospects that already knew exactly what we did. Most often, I just needed to ask when they wanted to start.
Cheda Mihajlovic
Business Development Mngr.
SaoPauloEnglish.com
If you’ve never heard of Danny Wallace before, shame on you. He is a British author that wrote Yes Man (which was turned into a movie starring Jim Carrey) and a whole whack of other books. He has a very dry and very strange sense of humour which I find hilarious.
Facebook
Twitter