FeedBurner vs. a Monthly Website Newsletter – It’s a Matter Of Time

A very long time ago, I learned that in order to get what you want, you need to take it. Now, I know this flies in the face of many lessons we may have learned during our younger years – give to others, share, don’t take things, etc…Well, the problem with lessons like that is that they weren’t taught by business people; they were most likely taught by our parents.

When we are young, our parents aren’t necessarily concerned with how well we’ll do in business. They’re probably more concerned with our sister crying because we took her swing on the swing set. Trust me, I get it. But there comes a time in every person’s life when they should probably sit down to learn some basic survival techniques. One such survival technique certainly isn’t giving things away.

Last night, I had a conversation with a friend of mine from Jiu-Jitsu class. I explained to him the basis of starting this blog. I said, “It’s not about giving. It’s about taking what’s mine. If I earn something or do something interesting, I am going to take the initiative to tell people about it. I’m going to rest it on a plate and slide it under someone’s nose. I am not a humble person and many successful people I think of often aren’t either.”

Trust me, it’s difficult to get that point across, but as I experience the personalities of more and more people on this planet, I come to conclude that very, very few people are just going to give you things. Their time and energy included.

Now, what does this have to do with the title of this post? Well, in a roundabout way, it’s about how to brand yourself – and how to take the time of others and transition that time from something they may have been doing – to something you want them to do. It’s simple branding, and it can easily transcend through everything in life.

So, how do I take time away from people? Well, for one, I try to write interesting things that people may want to read. If it takes you two minutes to read this post, I just earned two minutes of your life. It’s sort of like television commercials. The people who create fascinating TV shows don’t do it for the pleasure of the masses, they do it for the advertising. They bring you something you might like, in order for you to watch the branding they get paid handsomely to display. If there are only 24 hours in the day and they captivate you for 3 of them, how much paid programming, paid advertising and paid branding did you consume? Quite a bit, I would imagine.

Time is something many people don’t consider very often. I think about it all the “time” and believe me, it’s an insidious beast. You’d be surprised how many people out there are vying for your time behind your back.

Back to me – If I write three posts a day and distribute those posts to every person who voluntarily signed up for my FeedBurner email distribution list, how much time have I earned? Well, if I have 100 signups and the three post take a total of 10 minutes to read, I just took 1000 minutes, or 1.67 hours. That’s 1.67 hours I’ve added to my day. You lost it, I gained it. That’s why I don’t like to give people the time of day.

With FeedBurner, I get to distribute an email every single time I write a post. With a newsletter, I distribute an email every week, two weeks or maybe once a month. As you can clearly see, FeedBurner distribution is much more effective, when it comes to taking up people’s time.

I suppose none of this matters if you don’t grasp the reasoning behind why someone might want to take the time of others. Well, let’s think about two people I mentioned to my friend last night – Eddie Bravo and Joe Rogan. Both of these interesting individuals have taken a skill of theirs, branded it and have made huge amounts of money from it. Their skill isn’t the best in the world either, it’s fairly average. Well, it’s better than average, but where they differ from you or me is that they know how to transform what they are talented at doing into cold, hard cash. Joe Rogan recently alluded to the fact that he has more money than he knows what to do with.

Ask yourself, is Donald Trump the best real estate man in the world? Was Michael Jackson the best singer (some might argue yes) and was Steve Jobs the most technically inclined? The answers to these questions is most definitely “no.” But what they are and were masters at doing, is taking up the valuable time of others. And what they do with it is up to them. That’s where individual genius comes into play and we’ll have to save that discussion for another day.

To wrap this up, let me just express the importance of creatively maneuvering other’s thoughts to align more with your own. In order to do this, you are going to need to figure out a way to take one of the most valuable worldly commodities away from others. A salesman: “All I need is a moment of your time.” A boyfriend who was just broken up with: “I beg you to give me 5 minutes to explain.” On your death bed: “I just wish I had more time.”