The Real Lance Brown

The following will not appear in the “Lifestyles of the Natural & Professional” section of the upcoming issue of The Simplifier:

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Oh, to be the young upstart! The new guard, the fresh blossom; it’s so inspiring and exciting…to beat the crusty, lame, old, creaky…

I’m speaking, of course, of the feud between the Project Simplify and Natural Professional Facebook “fan pages”. We (The Natural Professional) are totally crushing Project Simplify! I mean, they’ve had a fan page since like 2009 (and I don’t mean December 2009)—and we already have more than twice as many fans. And we’ve only had a fan page since like 2009 (and I do mean December)!

Just to be clear, we (Project Simplify) are proud to see our little N.P. having such early success, and we’re totally not jealous at all. (Because, of course, we know we’re largely responsible for said success.)

Well, that’s very big of you, Project Simplify, and we (The Natural Professional) would like to point out that PS is totally not old and dusty and archaic at all. And we will absolutely try to remember them when we get rich and famous.

Hey—no need to get nasty! We Project Simplify have a few cards we could play too—you The Natural Professional might want to remember that…

You see what we (the Shawn Tuttle and Lance Brown) have to deal with here? Simplification can be so ironic!

I don’t know exactly how to settle this feud, but I can tell you—and this is confidential—that Project Simplify is genuinely happy to see the blossoming of The Natural Professional’s presence on Facebook, and would like to encourage you to become a “fan” if you aren’t already. It will work out its jealousy issues in time. ;-)

From Robin Mallery of HeartMatters:

Lance has provided unmatched attention to detail during the building of my website, not only from a technical perspective but also content related. He is witty, charming, and quite bright. Lance’s ideas are out of the box, he drinks a lot of Coke, and does not like banana bread.

-from “Robin Recommends…Freelance Lance”

Kudos for my eagle-eye editing from “serial entrepreneur” Allen Oelschlaeger:

“Honestly, I’ve never received more thoughtful and useful feedback on my copy than this. Thanks.”

A new testimonial, fresh from my inbox:

“You’ve been a great writing coach.”

-long-time client Shawn Tuttle (of Project Simplify and The Natural Professional)

Remember the giant-sized piano keys that Tom Hanks jumped around on in Big? Of course you do; you were just mentioning it the other day, remember? Anyway, aM laboratory’s Tone Matrix gizmo is way freakin’ cooler than that. Trying to describe it would suck all the art and wonder out of it, and still wouldn’t make it clear anyway, so just check it out. It takes about two clicks to understand how it works (and a potential afternoon to lose yourself in it).

From Makeuseof.com, a sweet overview of (drumroll…super-buzzword coming up!) SEO keyword tools:

6 FREE Tools To Get The Best Keywords For Your Site

There are many thousands of instances of the magic of the “social web”. Here is one:

How Twitter Got Me a 6-Figure Gig
By Karen Post
TalentZoo.com

In case you’re still wondering…

Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » 6 reasons why you need to get on Twitter

Filmmaker Magazine has a cool interview with industry pro Peter Broderick, where he outlines the many options available for independent filmmakers who want to get their stuff out there. It’s 14 minutes long, so he has time to really explain his take on the currnt playing field. Good stuff. Look for his excellent analogy comparing the changes in the industry to the New World pioneers breaking away from England/Europe.

Broderick and interviewer Scott Kirsner are offering a workshop on all this in LA in November; see the article with the video for details.

Angel Group Likes Lights, Camera And Action Of Indie Films – Venture Capital Dispatch

As an experienced tech entrepreneur and angel investor, Rizwan Virk was happy to see a solid return on one of his recent investments after just one year.

But the exit didn’t come from a software start-up or social media company finding a corporate acquirer. Instead, Virk’s quick payoff came from an independent film.

Virk is a member of FilmAngels, a Silicon Valley group whose members back film productions – mostly small, independent projects. Founded in 2005, Film Angels is made up mostly of tech executives and investors who apply their business and venture capital experience to the filmmaking world.

Read the full story at the WSJ blog