Interview Knight Project
Yesterday afternoon I did an experiment by sending 15k people on our email newsletter that I’m going to make myself available for 10 email-based interviews on September 7th… and they could ask me any questions regarding article writing or marketing as it applied to their niche.
The first 10 interview slots were taken up in 1 hour and 18 minutes. Many of the interview questions were very interesting…and you just never know how your market is thinking until you start asking them to ask you questions! :-)
Here are a few of the questions I’ll be answering:
Did you ever consider throwing in the towel?
Never. If I threw in the towel, then I’d have nothing to dry the sweat from my forehead and all of the foreheads of our team members…and then we’d be dripping all over the floor and it’d be messy.
Seriously, We’ve had web projects that were failures…by the dozens. Sometimes throwing in the towel saves you; but in this case, we knew from August 4th of 2004 on (when we destroyed the existing site and rebuilt it from the ground up) that our core competencies had just aligned with a market perfectly waiting for us to interact.
How long have you been writing Chris?
I think I discovered that I enjoyed creative writing in 7th or 8th grade… writing fiction was fun even though I don’t enjoy reading fiction. 100% of what I read is non-fiction, or at least that’s the attempt. Today, I enjoy writing non-fictional works.
What does it feel like to wake up every morning as YOU and get going on your day?! Are you energized? Are you passionate about what you do?
First, I like waking up as “ME” because if I didn’t, I’d be someone else and then that’d be an odd feeling. I like being me. I hope everyone likes being themselves. To thyn own self be true.
How much luckier can I get that I get to wake up each day and play for work.
I normally get up around 4:30-6am and I spend the first 90 seconds visualizing what I want for my day, my body, my life and how I want to respond to others.
Then, it’s full throttle by minute 2 of being awake because there are too many things not done yet in this lifetime that need to be done.
One of the things that keeps me energized is how I’ve been able to create a life that allows me to spend 1-3 hours every day in fitness activities. Last night I had a 30 minute session with my trainer and then an hour of intense racquetball. Other days I’ll run a 2.5-3.5 mile sprint or bike for 90 minutes at race speed or attend a Pilates core training class… and I enjoy swimming also. Without the strong fitness component to my days, I’d never be able to bring an intensity to my job. Since April when I re-committed to my fitness self, I’ve dropped 12.5 lbs of fat and added 3-5 lbs of lean muscle (I don’t measure my progress in body weight, but rather body fat percentage).
Another energizer at work is getting to work with a very talented team. They are my keys to freedom and often they execute their roles better than I could. I’m amazed at some of the stuff our dev guys pull off and our editorial team is innovating their way to improved efficiencies every day.
Am I passionate about what I do? Heck yeah. This is fun. If I can’t have fun doing something, then I know it’ll be doomed to failure.
There are activities that I don’t find as ‘fun’ and I have very little passion for daily operations, basic accounting, etc… but I’ve surrounded myself with smart people and excellent managers that allow me the entrepreneurial freedom to create more opportunity for every stakeholder attached to this business.
I’m energized about planning for the future and then seeing those plans realized. We have much ceiling in this lifetime to explore together.
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Many of the other hundred+ questions that came in were very specific to article writing & marketing mechanics… so I look forward to answering them all on September 7th.
Do services that distribute articles to multiple e-zines really work?
If so, which one(ones) do you recommend?
Many thanks…Ramon
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