Egalitarianism and Other Very Long Words

I spent a few days last week at the annual songwriter expo from ASCAP, one of two organizations tasked with collecting royalties for songwriters. It's a really awesome community of people, and it's one that reminds me in many ways of the community of programmers.

My favorite part of the ASCAP Expo is Thursday night's songwriter showcase. We heard Eric Bazillian tell the story of how he wrote "One of Us" to impress a Swedish girl (who he has now been married to for 20-odd years). Or Rob Hyman writing "Time after Time" with Cindy Lauper. Or Sarah Hudson writing "Dark Horse" with Max Martin, Dr. Luke, and Cirkut.

What I love about it is how down to earth it is. Of course, these writers are at the top of the heap. But there's no security, no mad crowds, no craziness. They're people of craft. It's a different game. Imagine Prince, Joan Osborne, Katy Perry, and Cindy Lauper were actually there? It would be mayhem. But we're not here for the celebrity. We're here for the love of the craft. That's what I love about this community, and it's what I love about the hacker community, and especially the open source community.

And it turns out great work comes of sharing with each other and learning from each other. It's not about competing, it's about creating the best work we know how to. That's always been what's driven me to do what I do, and it still is.

On the last day of the event, things changed a bit when Stevie Wonder showed up, and the whole egalitarian thing went out the window. I'm always amused when people go on a rant about how "people should love more" and that "people shouldn't hate based on race or sexual orientation or ideology", because if that's what you truly believe then obviously the first people you'd need to love are the very people that you think hate too much and don't love enough.

Personally, I'm much more in favor of dropping all of my "should"s. People should love or hate exactly to the extent that they do. That's their business. My business is to love as much as I can from wherever I am today. Until I can love everyone unconditionally, including the one I most vehemently disagree with, I have no business telling others how much they should or shouldn't love. Actually, even then I'll have no business telling anyone else how to live their lives.

At the end of the day, we're all equal. No matter how many hit songs you've written, no matter how good you are at playing the Harpejji, no matter how much money you've made or how much success you've had, we're all just bumbling our way through life, trying to figure out how this gift that we've been given called life works. In that, we are all equal.

Did You Know You Could Do This?

Discount Prices  and Coupon Codes are great feature of Simplero and making it easy and fun to sell your online content. Simplero "prices" make it easy to set up Early Bird Sales prices which end and are replaced by the main price or even a second tier sales price.  Once you set up the pricing, dates and replacement prices, you can walk away and let Simplero take care of it for you! You can learn more here about Discount Pricing.

Another wonderful feature of Simplero is how easy it is to make a coupon price.  You have a few choices when it comes to setting up a coupon.  You can create a coupon for a single product or a Global Coupon Code, which would the option to discount anything your Simplero account has for sale.  Utilizing the coupon code in a product gives you freedom to choose between a secret link, a personalize or auto-generated code or even a published coupon for your order form.  It even allows you to select how many times a coupon can be used!

The sky is the limit with Discount Prices and Coupon Codes.  With summer just around the corner, you may be putting your business on auto pilot.   Why not utilize some coupon codes and sell some courses that haven't been as busy as you may like. 
 
Watch the Prices vs. Coupon tutorial here and read more about Global Coupons here.

New Features in Simplero

Want to create a sense of urgency when selling your Simplero products? Or maybe you just don’t want your simplero sales page available for viewing open endedly but don’t want to delete the page from your account. Simplero has heard your desire and has answered the call with 2 new features! Landing page expiration and a countdown timer.

Now through the advanced settings when creating or editing a landing page you have the option to set a date for your page to expire, or to immediately expire a currently available landing page. With that comes the option to redirect your viewers. Sale for your product over? Then redirect the to an opt-in for an interest list when sales open again.

In the same advanced settings you will see the option to add a countdown timer to your page that will countdown to the time your page is set to expire. This is a great way to let possible buyers know how long they have to decide, reminding them that sales aren’t open forever and they should act now.

Check out our guide for step by step walk through.

Fresh Interviews

Join me in my interview with Gillian Rose Rodriguez on her show, Just Stay Curious! I share about my journey through building my business and how I began to explore working in conformance with pursuing my life purpose! (iTunes)

Random Links from around the Interwebs

Steve Jobs' resume. Done to show what you could do with the HomePage app back in the day. I love the part where he says he has a bit of that "vision thing". Talk about an understatement.

How to fool computer vision.

A guide to Italian pastries.

Have a fantastic week!

Lots of love,
—Calvin