EXCELLENT interview with Ernie the Attorney by Shel Israel. Read the whole thing.
Snippet:
His father was a psychoanalyst, and as a child he was fixated on figuring out what exactly his father did. Other kids’ parents had jobs that were easily understood, even by young children. The grown-ups who surrounded him, discussed comfortable matters, like the weather. But he sensed that his father’s profession dealt with things that no one wanted to discuss, certainly not in casual conversation. One day, at about the age of 11 Ernie snuck a peek at his father’s notes—case studies that were two-page summaries of a patient’s history, without the names of the patients identified and was stunned by the sorts of personal things people were willing to tell his father. “I learned then that what most people talk about as being ‘personal’ in ordinary conversation is a far cry from the really serious personal stuff that we all like to keep concealed. “So what seems highly personal to some who read my blog is not really the kind of stuff that I am wary of revealing.”
Of the people we interviewed for this book, Svenson was the most reluctant to participate, particularly for a section called, ‘consultants who get it.’ “I don’t blog to market myself. It isn’t about self-promotion. I write because I’m not sure what I’m thinking. I discover insight about myself by writing and growing up with a shrink for a dad seems to have made me comfortable sharing a lot of personal stuff with others. I just hate the thought of being seen as Mr. Marketing Guy. I think that sort of stuff fails on blogs. People just want a story: What’s the deal? Just tell me how it works. That’s the best thing you can do if you want to market on a blog is don’t. Just talk.”
No, really, read the whole thing.
From Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's Red Couch book project: http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2005/04/interview_with_.html#comments
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