Year: 2015

More On Rule #1: Don’t Die

J Cleveland Payne Leave a comment

At the original time of this being posted, mortality is weighing heavily on my mind. About a week ago, Lyndae, a former co-worker, and all around bad-ass woman passed away after a short bout with cancer. The bout was short because there wasn’t much of a bout. She was a free spirit and set the terms for everything she did, so she just wanted to have a little more fun before her time was official done. Her wake-of-sorts was last night, with lively music and dancing and mandatory shots of tequila. Yes, mandatory.

Today, the world woke up the news of the death of Scott Weiland, the former lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver. He was 48, and he fell asleep on the tour bus after a gig in Bloomington, Minnesota, with his current band The Wildabouts, and didn’t wake up. That’s all we the public know.

So let’s go back about five weeks. I have been bummed about not releasing a book this year after releasing three last year. Even though most of my books (and the work I post on blogs and Medium) are basically retreated older material, I didn’t have the capacity due to life-circumstance-beyond-my-control to get any work out. And I was extremely bummed about still not having a book to showcase my ‘Rules of Life,’ which at this point is a 13-year-old project in the making.

My Rules of Life is currently a list of 12 life tips that I’ve been trying to puff up into a book-length something. The rules have changed over the years, with the main constant being the original rule, and standing Rule #1 was, “Don’t Be A ______,” with the blank being replaced by your personal expletive of choice. After a two-week health scare, I looked at my barely year-old daughter fumbling around my hospital room, and shifted “Don’t Be A ______” to a permanent Rule #2, and replaced it in the top spot with “Don’t Die.”

I wish I could say I have worked seriously at the process of not dying in the 2+ years since it became my supposed main rule of life. I would like to say it is not my fault, and ‘life’ has done a hell of a job trying to ensure my demise, but I know I can’t honestly blame my lack of focus and discipline on a bad cosmic poker hand. It’s been a rough few years, but I am still in the game, and playing the game is about playing the cards you are death to the best of your ability, not just folding while the pot is low and hoping for a hot hand to show up eventually.

Another current event that has me questioning my usefulness as I am feeling the effects of aging is the treatment of NFL quarterback Payton Manning. Manning owns many league individual records, but only one Super Bowl Championship title. His generational rival Tom Brady has won four with the New England Patriots, and his younger brother has won two with the New York Giants (both against Tom Brady’s Patriots).

What that has to do about not dying? Lyndae’s death gives a view of choosing your terms in your contract with Death, and Weiland is proof that when your time comes, Death is going to collect, Manning shows what most of us truly fear. Lyndae lived a long and adventurous life and didn’t want to soil the memories of last ditch efforts to extend life only to live a newly limited one. The story given on Weiland is that he passed away peacefully in his sleep. Manning is being publicly ridiculed as a 39-year-old man who is ‘too old’ to function at a job where he spent years setting the standard.

The sports cliché of ‘Father Time is undefeated,’ has been said about Peyton Manning a lot this season. And he is proving the cliché to be true. In the end, we all lose our mojo. We all slowdown, and we all will die of something.

There is something to be said of doing more good things and less bad things to enjoy a healthy and hopefully long life. It is foolish to think that even with all that effort, you’ve got all the time in the world. You don’t. No one does.

I just turned 41. I’ve been dealing with not dealing with serious medical issues for years. I’ve got a 20-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter that would like to have a father to be annoyed by/annoy for more time to come. I have a wife who is insisting that we ‘grow old together,’ whatever that mean. And I’ve got an ego to feed, that isn’t ready to let go of a dream, despite that dream being one of the co-conspirators trying to kill me.

My name is John Cleveland Payne. J Cleveland Payne is a horrible pen name, and Jay Cleveland is an even worse radio alter ego. I have been trying to be a successful writer for over 20 years and trying to make a successful effort with a list of ‘Rules of Life’ for about 13. A few years ago, after almost dying, I decided to make a concerted effort not to die. Or more specifically, not be the direct cause of my death.

That’s why rule number 1 is don’t die. Like all my rules, I can’t say I have mastered any, but they seem like good guidelines to ensure a pretty good life.
But I’m really glad to have Miss Lyndae as an example of just how to live. And that when the end is approaching, I too can negotiate exactly how I want my send off to be.

Even more to come on Rule #1, and all twelve current Rules.

Three Types Of People You Should Think Of Giving More To

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One of the various famous quotables attributed to Zig Ziglar is, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” This is a statement that has launched many an entrepreneurial journey into a dragon’s lair with no hope of survival.

A good entrepreneur should offer goods or services that fulfill a need. A great entrepreneur is looking to solve a specific problem. All entrepreneurs are looking to help other people in hopes of those people helping out the entrepreneur by handing over their money, but how does this really work?

And who does an entrepreneur needs to help?

Begin With Having The Ability (And Resources) To Help

Another famous quotable repeated universally by airline pilots and flight attendances across the world is, “In the event of an emergency, please put on your oxygen mask before assisting others.” This quickly reminds anyone who might attempt cabin decompression heroics that these isn’t much you can do for anyone but be a burden if you pass out. The same reasoning applies when you decide to hang your shingle across a shop door downtown without the means to produce the goods or services you think could help the masses, and earn you a living. Your product and service, as stated above should at least fulfill a basic need and should aim to solve a real problem of a real customer.

Karma Is About Caring

For a moment, we need to back away from the sales aspect you offer a potential customer and just focus on the value of helping. You always need to help those who can’t help you. Even if you don’t believe in concepts of karma or ‘higher powers’ keeping tabs on us puny humans, there is a power that comes from sending out good energy. You don’t have to give indiscriminately, but you do need to give to people with little to give back to you that you believe are worthy–and can capitalize on–whatever help you can possibly provide. If this sounds a lot like charity, that’s because it basically is. You know how much publicity a good show of charity can generate?

Reciprocity Is The Word

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with helping a person that can open doors and grant you access special access. Having the ‘universe’ eventually pay you back for your efforts is great. Even better is having a real person for can offer real useful stuff due the ‘Law of Reciprocity,’ which kind of states a mutual exchange of privileges where a person who receives is compelled (by the universe, need to keep their ledger clean, guilt, whatever) to return the favor eventually. Reciprocity does not demand new retail value, but something that inherently useful. Assuming you have offered up something inherently useful to begin with. Just make sure to pay your park back when the Law of Reciprocity is played on you.

Provide Unseen Help For The Unseen And Needy

Offering up help to those unseen is not the hardest to do, but it is very difficult to score for both business and personal concerns. Think of a ‘Pay-It-Forward’ line at a Starbuck’s drive-thru or feeding parking meters in front of City Hall (which is actually illegal, and will cause more trouble than it is probably worth if you get caught). Why would you offer up hard earn stuff to the ether to not even know if it gets used possibly? Mostly, just because. Because you can, because it feels good, because the opportunity just arose at the right time. Because you got stuck doing it and didn’t want to look like a jerk, which is what you look like if you break a ‘Pay-It-Forward’ chain. You have every right not to give to the questionable those, but be prepared for a short bout of public shaming.

How Much Help Are You Offering To The World?

Think about the butterfly effect, the thought that a butterfly flapping its wings in Detroit can eventually become a dust storm in Phoenix (a haboob!) The thought about free and cheerful giving by one single person snowballing into world peace is a pipe dream for sure, but having the ability and willingness to give a little back in gratitude for all that you have been given not only makes sense for you as a person. It can add up to real, tangible dollars as a business owner when word of your generosity spreads between grateful and impressed customers.

Four Daily Habits To Consider If You Need A Boost Toward Success

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There are no shortage of lists of things to find on the internet. If you follow entrepreneurial or personal development feeds in social media or have stumbled upon one of those email newsletters that you can’t seem to unsubscribe completely from, then you have undoubtedly read your fair share of lists of tasks that successful people always follow that ensure their success.

We are skipping the lesson on correlation, causation and coincidence to later in this article, but there are some general consistencies that are at least anecdotally simple to spot in people who have some level of success and the habits and rituals that they perform religiously. Add the notion that these rituals are completed as early in the day as possible, before the monotony of daily tasks begin, and you can see how easy it can be to get yourself psyched up for a tough day by working through some of the possible stresses before they can form.

This article highlights four rituals consistently mentioned as key by those we view as ‘have made it.’ Remember, there are no guarantees that you will find fame or fortune by adopting any or all of these. But they certainly can’t hurt your efforts.

Meditate Without Getting Distracted By Semantics

The goal of daily meditation should not necessarily be about chakras and becoming one with the vast expanse of the universe. The goal is to spend a little quiet time with yourself, maybe with some positive thoughts, or even in quality conversation with your creator. Find a quiet, comfortable, and distraction-free place, and start with just five minutes of trying to keep your mind clear. If you find soothing background sounds or music necessary, add it. If you need a little help keeping your thoughts clear, download a guided meditation. If you fear you are opening up your soul to bad vibes, say silent prayers of protection. If you are completely lost on what you should be doing, just close your eyes and repeat to yourself in very low tones, ‘Thank you.’ Meditation should not hard and does not need to be that serious.

Get In A Workout Regardless Of Your Sweat Level

A popular excuse for not getting a good workout is a simply a lack of time. Many people are not blessed with free blocks of hours and access to classes, treadmills and Smith machines. While this does pose a problem for people working toward elite level fitness, a two-hour gym session is not necessary for the average person just trying to maintain a good level of strength and agility. In fact, your body doesn’t know the difference between a 50-minute aerobics class and five 10-minutes calisthenics sessions spread over the course of the day. A mile traveled is the same distance and mostly same effort, whether run in 6 minutes, jogged in 12, or walked in 20. You can get a lot of fitness mileage out of knocking out a quick set of pushups and jumping jacks, and you will not get too sweaty in the process. There are too many benefits from exercise and too many simple and quick ways to work it into any busy schedule to not do it.

Read Something Other Than Your Social Media Feed

People can make the argument that we collectively read more thanks to the invention of social media. Many people you know will boldly proclaim to have not read a physical book since high school while proudly showing off the random list of articles skimmed and ‘liked’ in various feeds on their mobile phones. The problem is the content being compared is not comparable. A quick list of 10 things made mostly of pictures is not the same as what is found in a bound book, regardless of the book’s content. From salacious romance novels to detailed autobiographies, even the shortest book will take a good amount of effort to create, which in turn requires a good amount of time to consume. A book can be a quickly read, but still a deeper read than a ‘you’ll never believe what happens next’ article. Set aside some time and read a few pages. If lugging a physical book is a problem, download a book reading app on that fancy smartphone you are so proud to own. Then, you can read as much ’50 Shades of Grey’ as you want in public with no shame whatsoever.

Make A List, Baby

One of the most powerful tools you can keep in your personal development toolbox is a daily checklist. The optimal way to work a checklist is to create it ahead of time for a specific need, such as a list of your important tasks for your workday created the night before. Creating your list gives you a game plan to work through, and a tool to reconcile your progress or lack thereof at the close of your mission. Tack on a regularly scheduled appointment with yourself for a detailed review of all your work and you will find you have created the ultimate progress report for yourself.

Try Them All, Or Try Them One At A Time

The four habits presented here can do a lot to advance you on the path of success. Or not. You must first remember to not let getting any of these things done get in the way of getting your regular stuff done. Second, getting back to that lesson on correlation, causation and coincidence we promised earlier. While correlation does establish a connection between two things based on their co-occurrence, correlation does not imply causation. That means just because it happens together, does not mean one always triggers the other. That is just coincidence, just the circumstances of events, with no real connection. Daily meditation will not make you as spiritual as Deepak Chopra. Daily workouts will not make you as intense as Tony Horton. Daily reading will not make you a quoted as Malcolm Gladwell. And making your daily list of activities will not make you a billionaire like Oprah Winfrey. Doing the work should help you toward greater success. You still have to rely on your hard work, a little bit of luck, and the pursuit of a solid and obtainable goal.

Tell Your Story (Someone Will Listen)

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Someone out there needs to hear your story. Unfortunately, that does not mean your story is worthy of becoming a bestselling novel that gets optioned for a summer blockbuster movie. That’s what keeps most people from putting the words to paper to preserve their stories in their purest forms (from their most recent memories) for the world to share and future generations to savor. Because most of the world won’t put forth the effort to share them, and the future generations will probably not care.

But there is someone out there that needs to hear your story. Your particular story. They may not be famous or influential, but the words that spin a tale of your life, with fear and faults, and successes and celebrations, are destined to be told to someone or a few some ones.

As I work to help people ‘master their message,’ formulating their stories to present to mass audiences, I look at my own life and my own story, and the frustration that more people don’t seem as interested in my life as I happen to be. I have an interesting life. More real than any B-list actor trying to keep their fame alive and mortgage paid by living a semi-scripted life on a Reality TV show. Few people care about the details of my life, and fewer want to hear me tell it to them as a way to be entertained on a Friday night.

My story may not be the greatest ever told, but I intend to make sure it is told with as much splendor as I can muster every time my daughter hears it. And every time I get the chance to share a few tales of my experiences, I give a performance as clear and concise as possible. Because I have learned one thing from listening to so many stories in my lifetime, and now training others to share their stories over the past decade. You never know what tidbit of information or what sound bite of advice is going to resonate with other people. You never know what small shred of your story someone else will actually remember. I know I am surprised by the bits as pieces of stories I have heard that I actually retain.

So save your complaints about a lack of an audience. There is an audience. There is always an audience. Craft your words. Master your message. Tell your story to anyone who will sit still long enough to listen. Keep telling your story as they stand up and walk away. Someone will listen. And someone needs to hear it.

Things I Learned From Publishing My First Book (And Second) Book

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In 2014 I published two books, “Welcome to your Monday” and “So Forty Happened.” Their success was relative, as in they successfully exist in physical and digital form and are available for purchase. Critical or financial success wasn’t expected, but the $20 I declared in my 2014 taxes as royalties was a very much needed source of amusement to what turned out to be a very hectic year, personally and professionally.

The experience also became a turning point in my life as an ‘expert’ on things. I didn’t necessarily acquire any epiphany worthy new information to share with the world in 2014, but the new existence of the title ‘published author’ was enough to impress a few people for a few weeks. And it got others who have spent years purposely ignoring what I had to say to take just a moment and actively listen.

So what did I really learn from publishing my first two books last year? Well, here is a list. I hope it helps you, as it did me a lot of good just writing them out:

The Hard Part Was Getting Down All The Words – The truly difficult part of the journey into publishing a book, whether on your own or with the backing of a corporate entity, is getting started. Looking at a blank screen waiting to craft words with no real idea how it will end is frightening. People who participate in National Novel Writing Month every November are required to reach a mark of at least 50,000 words to count their book as ‘complete.’ That’s about 200 pages, which was the mental ‘standard’ I had to shake off to publish my first books. But before you can get to page 200, you have to complete page one, with the ability to ensure the narrative can still make sense on that final page.

Editing was a pain, but it couldn’t happen until the initial batch of words were finally put on paper. And editing just made the work better (whether it was good from the start is relative). Self-publishing through Create Space and Kindle Direct Publishing took trial and error to get the finished product as close as you desire, but you are just filling and re-filling forms.

Your Book Should Have A Purpose Other Than ‘Hopefully Will Make Me Rich – I have been actively working on publishing a book on something since High School, I just needed the right material to make it come together. After having crafted 18 months’ worth of weekly Twitter-sized missives, I had the perfect amount of source material to write “Welcome to your Monday,” and the right spin to make the book an enhancement to the material already released online. “So Forty Happened” answered a few challenges. The first challenge was to write a book about my view on my world and the greater world around me. It also stands as a legacy writing for my kids to someday cherish or be embarrassed by (only they will ultimately make that choice, and I intend to be dead by then so my vote won’t count for much at that point).

But none of these books were created for the sole purpose of putting money into my bank account, or they would have been complete failures. I intend on using what I have learned from the first two to ensure future book are more commercially viable, but if the point is just to make money, there are easier ways to do that which don’t set oneself up for as much public scrutiny, or can make so much money with little effort that you don’t particularly care. As a big fan of money, I’ll sell you as many books as you want to pay me for. As an effort spread a message to allow me to achieve some sense of intellectual immortally, that task is done.

You’ll Never Make Any Money If You Keep Giving Away Books – Friends and family need to help support your endeavor not by just reading your book and telling people about it, but by buying a few books and suggesting that other people buy them as well. To hit The Wall Street Journal’s Bestseller list, you need to sell about 3,000 copies of a book in the first week. For the New York Times Bestseller list, you need to sell about 9,000 copies of a book in the first week. By the nature of the internet, making Amazon’s Top 100 list is much easier, selling about 1,000 copies of a book within the first few days of its release, and top five titles average sales of 1,094 print copies sold across all of Amazon’s channels on a ‘typical’ day.

The current trend to make yourself into a bestselling author is to offer copies of the book ‘for free’ to your ‘tribe.’ Here, free equals cost plus shipping and administrative handing and the optional a slight markup so that you do make some money if you can get away with it. So this quote from Patrick Snow stating, “Bestseller” is a manipulated term. If you want to be a bestselling author, take out a $100,000 loan and buy 15,000 of your own books from Amazon,” is entirely too true. Unless you’ve got the backing of an established company trying to game the system, you need as many real people to buy your book as possible to make a blip on the radar for mid-level to major sellers to pick it up and give it a shot.

You’ll Never Make Any Money If You Are Not Willing To Give Away Books – See what I did there? You absolutely cannot hand out books like candy at a parade. But if you give a book to a person with real influence, along with a few extra copies for them to share and give away, you’re doing marketing and promotion, not just giving away the inventory. Your influencer will talk about your book and tell the members of their ‘tribe’ just how grand it is. And if they are paid for the endorsement (which most seemed to be these days), you can expect a glowing one, to be followed by a slew of low rated reviews from people who will on the back end feel scammed by the influencer. This is the nature of the game, but you get your sells and status, the influencer gets some cash and status, and the consumer get a product to consume, although it is your job initially to make the product worth consuming.

Trust me on this one. I work in radio, and have seen firsthand that the more tickets you give to a station to give away for an event, the more times the event gets mentioned. It is not free advertising. It is not ‘giving away a seat for free that I could have sold for full price,’ as many of our less successful promoter clients think they can convince us to believe. It is the most cunningly effective promotional vehicles that one could dream up. If you can provide a good enough product that people who can’t win will want to buy outright, those that don’t win will talk about it. And the more people you have actively talking about your event and asking questions, the greater the pool of potential full-price buyers grows, quickly outpacing the ones who just beg for more chances to win your comp tickets.

The More You Work At It, The Easier It Gets – Again, better is a relative term that is based solely on the person holding and reviving the product, but the ability to produce the product gets easier as you make more and more of them. The first book came out in the spring, and while the process wasn’t difficult (allowing just about anyone with the ability to put 200 pages worth of words in book form the ability to publish and sell books), it did take a little time to figure out how to do it so that the final outcome was as appealing as possible. The first printed and e-book product were nowhere near perfect, but when I set out to abruptly publish the second book in the fall, it was much easier to process the information and set up the look and feel of the book to produce a better looking (but still not publishing house perfect) product.

I have at least three planned releases for 2015 (and yes I am very much behind on the sequel book, “Welcome to More Mondays”). The steps to get this thing done are now, well, all done. Oddly enough, the real holdup for this mostly completed work is finding the time for proper editing and reformatting. As I said earlier, the hardest part is getting the words out, but it doesn’t make the finishing of the product a cakewalk by comparison.

Once You Hit ‘Submit,’ It Now Exists, For Good Or Ill – “Welcome to your Monday” and “So Forty Happened” are available for purchase on Amazon.com. There are a few dozen physical copies circulating the country, a few hundred living as data in the cloud of the Kindle e-book system, and a box of each title tucked away in a corner of my living room. Both books have ISBN numbers to make them ‘real.’ And As I mentioned earlier, I have received royalties for the purchase of copies of the book from people other than myself. So no one can take away my title as ‘Two-Time Published Author,’ even if that title means very little beyond marketing of myself.

On the flip side, my words and opinion at the time of their publishing are now an official part of the public trust. I cannot delight the stories I put into those books as false after stating in their initial publishing as true without severe consequences. After facing four awkward exchanges with girlfriends from long ago inquiring on whether I was writing about them as either ‘the one who really broke my heart’ or ‘the one who really got away,’ I was reminded that for a guy who couldn’t keep a steady girlfriend in the past, I did date a significant quantity of women. But what means something to you reading this is the reminder that the words you say, write, or imply at the moment meant something specific at that moment. If you have them documented, you better mean them. And if you no longer mean them, you better have an explanation for your then words and your now words. You will never know how far in the future you will be questioned on them.


This post can also be viewed as a part of a collection at Medium.com.