@ Roberta – I knew you’d be proud

Good for you.

As someone who resonates with Naomi’s style (and thanks for introducing her blog to me!), I understand where you’re a perplexed as to how much to reveal, especially in a business blog. For me, I generally don’t discuss my politics, my religion or my family except where applicable to a specific marketing/business/world view post.

But I don’t hide my views either. Doesn’t take more than half a brain to guess where I side on most issues, but in a business blog what I think about the coming US presidential election in 2008 doesn’t matter … except as fodder for a particular marketing viewpoint.

So here’s my marketing viewpoint – use the Pareto Principle (80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers.) Who IS your target marketing – what’s their persona/profile? Direct yourself to the segment most likely to love you/your work and the rest? Well, they weren’t going to hire you anyway :=)

Be bold, be brave, be – dare I say – ballsy

But James, controversy sells. Presumably, one of the points of having a business blog is to sell by proving your expertise with the content you write. My numbers go up whenever I take a really big swing at some company or school of thought or institution.

And the larger the institution, the more aggravated people are about it and have sublimated that outrage. I give voice to that unexpressed outrage.

I started out making my case with a couple of paragraphs here, but it blossomed out of control. Here’s a link to the rest of this comment: http://roicopy.com/2007/11/28/controversy-or-avoidance-which-sells .

Thanks for the food for thought, James. Apologies for the disjointedness, but I’m short on time.

@ Naomi – Thank you. Told you I had balls And I’m cocky, too.

@ both – For me, it’s not a question of picking battles. It’s a question of continuing to be the person I was before the virtual world opened my borders beyond Canada. The alternate option was to continue as is, stay quiet, shut my mouth, following Harry’s advice, and feeling very emprisoned. No. I am free. (Okay, smart enough to be diplomatic, but hey. You know what I mean.)

Reminds me of that creed, “This is what it means to be a Canadian…” (Of course, replace Canadian with any frickin’ country, seems like that creed’s gone the world over!)

I couldn’t agree with you more and in the end, it’s all about choosing your battles. As I’ve told Jamie, some things just aren’t worth getting worked up about. You’re going to run into people who, no matter how valid your points are, won’t hear a damn thing you say. So why waste your breath and risk your reputation? I also have a house mate who lives by the same creed as your husband. He’s a firm believer in speaking his mind and not caring what people think about it – but (and this is a big but) he doesn’t do it often, so when he does do it, it tends to carry more weight. I think too many people spout off far too often and they end up with problems.

It’s an incredibly tough balance to strike. I’m lucky in that I have a husband who says that if people don’t like me, screw ‘em. That helps. I’m also lucky in that I was really, really broke for a long time. When you’ve accepted that level of brokeness, getting fired doesn’t really seem like such a bad thing. (This is not an attitude I recommend for people who have children who require either orthodontia or a college education.)

I think, for me anyway, I came to the conclusion that I would rather make $30K that doesn’t feel like work than make $60K by squeezing myself into the mental version of a business suit. In my admittedly not-very-representative sample of the freelancing world, it’s actually worked out in my favour, but even if it hadn’t, I like to think I’d keep doing it anyway.

Thank you. This was a lovely post and I’m highly impressed. It takes a lot of balls.