I used to love Torrid. But I think their marketers need to be fired and replaced with Seth Godin, or someone on his team.

A while back, I accidentally subscribed to Torrid’s newsletter (which is almost impossible to un-subscribe from). I get something from them nearly every day. Too much! It’s become spam, and I never even look at it anymore!

On top of that, they do this horrible thing: they offer me $25 off^*.

*a purchase of $100 or more

This is not a reward. Gah! I don’t feel rewarded at all! I feel like they’re trying to trick me! The “fine print” is way down at the end of the image-intensive email, buried in a bunch of stupid crap stuff I never read, so I nearly missed it the first time around. The second, third, fourth, and so on times, however, I searched it out.

The offer varies, but the catch remains the same.

If you are going to reward me, actually reward me! If you want to tempt me into your store, give me $25 off with no catch - or even just $10 or $5. This fake reward with a catch not only doesn’t bring my business, it pushes me away. I won’t buy from them anymore because I’m super irritated at the spam in my inbox full of fake discounts.

Another thing that really gets me is the fake “handwritten” thank you. Last year, we’d ordered from Mr Gatti’s Pizza some ten times in as many weeks. (We don’t eat that way anymore, thank the gods.) On our last order, there was a handwritten note that simply said, “We appreciate your business! Thank you!”

Sweet, right?

Well, had it been real… The very same note, in the very same handwriting, was on the second pizza box. I was perplexed - who can write every letter exactly the same twice? Waaaaait a minute! This note is Xeroxed!

Yup. A fake note of gratitude, made to look real. Come on, people. A little real gratitude for your loyal customers would be a thing to remark on, something to make us talk about your company and you for a long time, and something that would likely bring far, far more business to you in the long run. I mean, really, how hard is it to write a little thank you note, personalize it, and send it to every order for a week (once, on one box)? Not that hard - and I know! We just signed and personalized 100 books!

Torrid may worry that I won’t spend enough money there to make giving me $25 off with no catch a safe bet. But had they done so, I’d've spent far more than $25 measly bucks there by now. Maybe there’s a few shmucks who’ll go in and spend exactly $25, use their certificate, and leave having spent not a single penny of their own money, but by and large, customers will go in and spend at least $50, because that’s how much a single frigging shirt costs there.

No catch, big benefits for your company. Put a catch on there, and not only do I not feel rewarded, I feel cheated. Bad move.

I’ve already gone on about our friend and illustrator, Martin Whitmore and his awesome business model. Today, I’m inspired by him again!

In addition to his awesome work on the Usual Error book, Marty also has many other awesome projects. Today, I’m inspired by my own guest appearance in his crazy zombie vs stripper webcomic, Tasty Flesh.

As I mentioned before, Marty is working on a community commission (now closed). The more you donated, the more cool stuff you got, all the way up to input in the drawing and a majorly awesome hug. I haven’t gotten my hug yet, but I know it’ll be awesome.

When he emailed his mailing list, way back at the beginning of this community project, it came with a special bonus offer: anyone on the mailing list who donated a certain amount within the first 48 hours got all the cool stuff and also got a cameo in his webcomic as a zombie.

He rewarded his biggest fans for being his biggest fans by giving them an offer no one else would get, making it limited, and making them feel special and cool and appreciated.

Now, I am somewhat ambulothanatophobic (afraid of the walking dead, i.e. zombies), so the idea of being drawn as one of them wasn’t so appealing to me. Did that keep me from being an early contributor? Nope. Why? Because I know Marty, and I know that he would work with me to reward me in a way that would be rewarding rather than horrifying.

And he did. We talked about it, and decided on making my cameo be less walking dead and more mysterious.

Marty (and his partner Megan) is brilliant. He constantly comes up with interesting and cool ways to support his art so he can keep producing it. He rewards his fans honestly and genuinely. He consistently inspires Pace and me, and we keep stealing his brilliant ideas (with permission, of course!) and implementing them in our own Usual Error Project. I’m proud to be his friend and business partner.

I’m also delighted to be in the strip today (though I suspect I became a meal for those other zombies). It’s amusing and beautifully drawn. Check it out!

We want to reward and appreciate our biggest fans, too. If you join our mailing list, you’ll always be the first to know about everything we’re doing (without getting too many emails, we promise!), get big rewards and lots of appreciation - and we might even offer awesome hugs, too!

Being an entrepreneur is like being transgendered.

No, seriously. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about here. (:

First, you need to think really hard about what you want.

Becoming a new gender? Becoming a new business owner? First you’d better be sure that you’re following your heart. Search deep inside to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.

Once you know what you want, you’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it.

There are lots of obstacles to both entrepreneurs and transgendered people, especially low-income transgendered people. But when you know what you want and are passionate about achieving it, you’ll do your best to overcome each and every one of those obstacles.

You’ll need to become good at learning new things.

Estradiol. Progesterone. How your body will change. The thrice-bedamned Harry Benjamin Standards of Care. How to find a good therapist. Surgery. How to come out to friends and family. How to come out at work. How to come out to someone you’re interested in dating (or are already dating). Clothes. Makeup. You can talk in the restroom now! Eye contact. Speech patterns. How to change your voice. How to change your body language. Sex. Orgasm. Social gender roles. How to be a lesbian. How to date women as a woman. How to be bisexual. How to date men as a woman.

Accounting. Distribution. Fulfillment. Marketing. Permission marketing. Tax law. How to incorporate. Social networking. Blogging. Podcasting. Vidcasting. Skype. Pricing. SEO. Web design. Wordpress plugins. Marketing copy. How to tell people about awesome stuff without being annoying. How to make friends with awesome people without being annoying. How to ask for help. Self-publishing. Business planning. E-commerce. Credit card machines. Referral/partner programs. How to find a good venue.

You will recreate yourself, and it will be painful.

When I transitioned from male to female, I created a new social persona for myself, one that better fit my internal self-concept. My friends and family had gotten used to interacting with Boy Pace for 20-odd years. When I became Girl Pace, I changed in many ways, although in many ways I stayed the same. Everyone’s social expectations were flummoxed because I no longer fit into the same social role. It was uncomfortable and awkward, both for me and for everyone else. I would sometimes spend less time with my friends who had a hard time adjusting, to avoid having my feelings hurt due to male pronouns, social awkwardness, and feeling misunderstood. This shift was difficult and painful. I spent more time with some of my new friends who hadn’t met me before I transitioned, because I didn’t have to deal with their old, stale expectations. Also I hung out with several other trans people because we were interested in talking about similar things.

Becoming an entrepreneur was surprisingly similar. I created a new social persona for myself, one that better fit my internal self-concept. In this case, my self-concept shifted from “a smart, creative computer geek” to “a passionate, effective lightworker who turns her dreams into reality.” My friends and business associates had gotten used to interacting with Geek Pace for almost 30 years. When I became Lightworker Pace, I changed in many ways, although in many ways I stayed the same. Everyone’s expectations were flummoxed because I no longer fit into the same role. It was uncomfortable and awkward. I would sometimes spend less time with my friends who had a hard time adjusting, to avoid becoming demotivated or depressed by negativity, because we shared fewer common interests, and because I felt misunderstood. This shift was difficult and painful. I spent more time with some of my new friends who hadn’t met me when I was Geek Pace, because I had more in common with them and we were interested in talking about similar things. More of my new friends were also entrepreneurs and lightworkers, whereas my old friends were living lives more like Geek Pace’s life that I had joyously left behind.

You will face your fears.

What if I turn out to be an ugly girl? What if my family disowns me? What if I don’t have what it takes to make this happen? What if I can’t do it because I don’t have enough money? What if I go broke? What if all my friends hate me? What if I lose my job? What if I lose the respect of my friends and peers? What if someone uses male pronouns for me in front of everyone? What if they laugh at me? What if I look ridiculous? What if they see through me and realize that I’m terrified? What if I lose my true self in a jumble of newly practiced body language and speech patterns? What if my voice is too deep? What if no one will want to date me? What if no one will accept me as I am? What if no one will love me?

What if no one wants to buy what we’re selling? What if no one finds our services valuable? What if no one cares? What if I don’t have what it takes to make this happen? What if I go broke? What if I get a lot of flak and negative comments? What if someone criticizes me in front of everyone? What if they laugh at me? What if they see through me and realize that I’m terrified? What if I lose my true self in a jumble of dollar signs and business plans? What if I lose my friends because I accidentally turn them into networking acquaintances? What if I burn out due to overwork? What if I fail because I don’t work hard enough? What if no one likes what I have to offer? What if no one likes me?

You will fail without self-knowledge and inner strength.

These fears will eat you alive if you let them. The only way to succeed is to truly know yourself — to grow into a person who is knowledgeable and self-confident enough to be able to handle those fears. Let your fears inform you, thank your fears for guiding you to a touchy spot, and then dig in. Figure out what the root cause of your fear is, and then use that as fertilizer for personal growth. Grow bigger than your fears. Embiggen and destuckify! (:

Entrepreneurship and gender transition are crash courses in fear-facing. Your issues will come up. Your landmines will be stepped on. Your triggers will be triggered. Each of these disasters is an opportunity for growth. (”Another fucking opportunity for growth”, as my friend Reesa says.) If you can maintain a positive attitude even through the toughest challenges, if each time you fall down you learn a little more about how to get back up, then your self-work will eventually manifest in outward success.

I wish you the best on your path of becoming.

My friend Oliver recently read Naomi’s post on how we killed social media and wrote a reply that inspired me to share my own opinion on the matter.

Naomi’s point is that unscrupulous marketers found the loopholes in social media like Digg, Twitter, and del.icio.us, and filled them full of crap. Now they’re not helping anyone anymore, because everything is so full of crap. The loopholes have been closed. There’s no free lunch and there are no corners to cut. You can no longer interrupt people into paying attention to you.

It seems hopeless, doesn’t it?

It seems like an endless spiral of greed and oversaturation. But it’s not hopeless, and here’s why.

As spammy marketers flood social media more and more, people are getting hungrier and hungrier for real quality and real people. The people who are honest and have something of value to say and to offer will shine through like diamonds in the rough. They may not shine through on Digg, Twitter, or del.icio.us, but they’ll shine through where it counts — in the opinions of your friends and other people you trust.

Now that social media is broken, people will fall back to the old way of doing things: having conversations with their friends. And if your friends find a diamond in the rough — if they find something remarkable — they’ll tell you about it.

So, if you’re a small business owner, what does this mean to you?

Your friends telling their friends about you seems irrelevant, right? I mean, you can only have so many friends, and each of them can only have so many friends. So how do you get your small business to grow?

The answer: There are just two things you need to succeed. You need to be REMARKABLE and AUTHENTIC.

You need to be remarkable to get people to make remarks about you. You can’t pay for fake remarkableness anymore, because the only remarks that people listen to these days are remarks that come from trusted sources. To be remarkable, you must be valuable and you must be worth talking about.

You need to be authentic to get people to trust you. People have been burned too many times by fake viral marketing campaigns and corporate blogs that preach transparency while actually lying through their teeth.

Seth talks about how criticism hurts his feelings and gets him down. Naomi posts sweet things about her son. Havi talks about feeling lonely. Steve admits stupid things he did when he was a teenager.

These things make you human. These things make you real. These things let the person on the other side of the screen know that they’re interacting with a real human being and not just some faceless marketing whore. And yes, people can trust brands, but for small businesses, that’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that people trust people.

Seth, Naomi, Havi, Steve — Kyeli and I consider all these people our friends, even if it’s only a one-way deal. (That’s how you can break through the monkeysphere.) We trust them. We recommend them. We tell our friends how awesome we think they are. We’re doing so right now, in fact. (:

Next time you find yourself knee-deep in SEO or with your nose to the social media grindstone, just remember: Be remarkable. Be authentic. That’s all you need.

If it wasn’t, you never would have found this article. (;

Dear readers,

Remember the 30-day blog-o-thon? Where we promised Steve Pavlina that our blog would be in the top million websites within 30 days?

We reached our goal today! 913,398, baby!!! We reached our 30-day goal on Day 11! Obviously, this means we need a bigger goal. Let’s see how much higher we can get in the next 19 days! (:

Thank you all very much for reading. We appreciate you!

When we first started talking about making the Usual Error Project a big part of our lives, we felt conflicted between our goal of helping people and our goal of making money. Not only did we argue about the priorities of these goals, we argued about whether it was ethical to charge money for it at all!

Our situation reminded me of what I’d read about conscious capitalism — I thought it sounded pretty skeezy. It sounded like commoditizing spirituality; selling things that really “ought” to be given away for free. Commoditizing helpfulness and goodwill felt like the same sort of thing to me.

This is the story of why I changed my mind.

After many discussions, some arguments, and at least one drastic life change, we finally agreed on our goals for the Usual Error Project. Here they are, from highest priority to lowest.

1. Help people
2. Enjoy the journey
3. Make money, so we can do more of #1 and #2

When we run our business according to these goals, when we live our lives according to these priorities, amazing things happen. We feel wholeheartedly awesome about making more money (no longer ambivalent or skeezy!), because every dollar feeds our highest priority goal of helping more people. It creates a positive feedback effect, an upward spiral of positive energy and awesomeness!

We’ve found that this upward spiral only manifests if it’s put into action, not just words. If you talk about helping people later, or enjoying the journey later (the deferred life plan), you’ll end up making money later, too. Run your business at the beginning like an itty bitty version of what you envision it being in the future.

Putting this into action has been really fun and rewarding! We took the majority of our startup capital and gave it to a friend to help him achieve his dreams. When another friend generously loaned us some additional money, we agreed on a fun interest rate and he decided to do “something awesome” with the money so gained. We’re rearranging our personal budget (which, in a small business, has a big impact on our business budget) so we can help out a couple of our family members in what we hope will be a win/win situation.

It feels really good, and it makes our priorities concrete. Before we’ve even made a single dollar in profit (in this incarnation), we’re helping people. And now we know, concretely, that when we make more money, we will help more people.

Knowing this — feeling it in your gut — changes everything. I no longer have twinges of guilt when telling potentially interested people about the Usual Error Project. I used to worry about bothering people or being perceived as a spammer. I’m still just as strongly against annoying people and just as strongly against spamming and other forms of interruption marketing, but I no longer feel any twinges when I talk about the Usual Error Project (or our blog) with potentially interested people, for example on a relevant mailing list. Because I’m not doing anything bad, I’m not trying to sucker people out of a buck, I’m not acting selfishly. I’m trying to help people, first and foremost.

What are your goals and priorities in your business? Are you making them real? Are you living according to them? Or are they just words on a piece of paper labeled “Mission Statement” or “To-Do”?

Steve Pavlina, one of our favorite personal development bloggers, posted a cool offer last week. In return for blogging a review of his upcoming book, he’ll link to our review on our blog. That would be great, and would get our blog a lot of new traffic!

Here’s the catch. One of Steve’s criteria was: “Your publication has a non-embarrassing level of traffic or readership… For example, your website has an Alexa.com ranking of 1,000,000 or better… I just need some way of verifying that your publication is more than a ghost town.”

“Oh no!” we thought. “Our blogs are scattered to the four winds, and all of them are ghost towns! And our new awesome mega-blog doesn’t even exist yet!” (Because this was a week ago, you see.) But did we let that stop us? NO! We wrote Steve the following email:

> Hi!  My name is Pace Smith.  My wife Kyeli and I really admire
> you and Erin, and we aspire to similar awesomeness.
>
> Currently we have three blogs: http://connectionparadigm.net,
> http://pacesmith.wordpress.com, and http://kyeli.wordpress.com.
> We're about to merge them all into one blog at the newly-
> registered http://paceandkyeli.com, but we haven't done so yet.
> Our blogs are currently ghost towns.  pacesmith.wordpress.com
> has a traffic rank of: 5,355,272.
>
> However, we promise that by October 15th, our new blog will not
> be a ghost town.  We assure you that it will be in the top
> million at least.
>
> If you wish to take a chance on two passionate and dedicated
> bloggers who are just now kicking it into gear, our mailing
> address is:
> [redacted]
>
> If not, we completely respect that and we'll be happy to buy a
> copy and review it anyway. (:
>
> With love,
> Pace & Kyeli

And he said yes!!!!!!

Steve Pavlina believes in us! Is there anything we can’t do?!

So now begins the 30-day PaceAndKyeli.com blog-o-thon! We intend to keep our promise to Steve, and to do so, we’ll need your help! We don’t want to spam anyone, annoy anyone, or do any interruption marketing. All we want is to get readers and subscribers who are interested in what we have to say.

If you want to help us, here’s what you can do.

1. Subscribe to our RSS feed.
2. Talk about PaceAndKyeli.com. Tell your friends about the kinds of things we post about (communication, self-improvement, ethical entrepreneurship, and the connection paradigm) so they can visit the site if they’re interested. Again, we don’t want any spam on our behalf, but we do want to share this information with interested people.
3. Link to posts on PaceAndKyeli.com, if you feel they’re worth talking about.
4. Download the Alexa Toolbar (if you don’t find it annoying). This will help Alexa get accurate information on our site’s traffic.

Thank you, friends, for supporting us and for supporting the Usual Error Project. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without you, and we intend to go much, much farther. (:

Today, one day before launch, we posted an introductory post and crossposted it to our LiveJournals.

We signed up with Alexa and DMOZ. Megan set up Google Analytics.

Kyeli went through her entire LiveJournal and we pulled over some posts on self-work and growth.

Last but not least, we found a nice WordPress theme (HiFusion 1.1). It’s not perfect (especially at very high screen sizes) but it’s only temporary — Megan will be doing the real design in a month. That wasn’t soon enough for the blog-o-thon, though, so we needed something good in the meantime.

We’re really excited about starting the blog-o-thon tomorrow!

Kyeli and I have lots of blogs. We have the Usual Error blog, the Connection Paradigm blog, a Pace blog, and a Kyeli blog.

Now that we’re making the Usual Error Project our career, it’s important to get the word out about what we’re doing so that interested people can find out about it. We care a lot about doing business ethically, and we don’t want to be annoying, so that means that most forms of traditional marketing and advertising are right out. We don’t want to do interruption marketing; we want to do only permission marketing and connection marketing.

One important part of our marketing plan is blogging. We talked a lot with Megan and others, and we decided that the best thing would be to merge all our blogs into one mega-blog!

Introducing… PaceAndKyeli.com!

We’ve merged a ton of content from our old blogs into the archives, deleted all our old blogs, and we’re starting to post new content as of yesterday! In fact, we’re about to start blogging like MAD, and I’ll tell you why in my next post.

Today, two days before launch, I went through my LiveJournal from the present day all the way back to 2006 and merged some relevant posts onto PaceAndKyeli.com. There were some good posts on motivation and self-improvement that were worth pulling over. This brought us up to 100 posts stretching back over two and a half years!

I friends-locked my entire LiveJournal, because I want PaceAndKyeli.com to show up in search results, not LJ. From now on I’ll use LJ mainly for talking about personal things with friends and keeping folks up to date.