…and Brausch is too?
James Brausch’s latest post shows the power of perception and mindset.
Brausch recently closed his mentoring program to avoid negativity. Yet he has let himself get sucked into a horrible vortex of negativity surrounding recent events with the CDBaby contest. I think the most ironic part of this is that Brausch himself has voiced the difference between causality and correlation.
I was going to address the selective perception and attributed meaning to each of his complaints. I’ve already started to feel the yucky state building and so I’m done with that train of thought. (James if you want my perception get in touch and I’ll take the time and energy to frame it in such a way that I can share.)
I have no way of knowing if the contest was rigged or not — and it doesn’t really matter. Brausch is now asking for opinions on what he should do about his perceived slights. He has outlined several possibilities including suing, reporting to the FTC, and writing it off as a learning lesson. I think those are all cop-out lose-lose solutions.
First off Brausch you need to pull your head out of your associations [I was being tactful but he is not so…]. You could double disassociate and treat it as a question from one of your protege’s students. You could also go back and pop all the unwanted emotions off your timeline for the last month. You seem to know something about NLP — physician heal thyself.
Next go back to why you decided to participate in the contest in the first place. I was under the impression that you set out to get the record deal. That or the warm fuzzy feeling of decimating the competition or whatever else — have the glitches (human or technical, intentional or circumstantial) honestly had an impact on your initial goal? You’re allowing what seemed like good fun (woohoo! comes to mind) to be tainted by your interpretation of arbitrary events. The deck has always been stacked against you and yet you’ve become one of the 2%. Why should this contest be any different? (Hint, it isn’t.)
Someone claiming to be Derek from CDBaby posted a reply that Brausch has a factor of two lead on the second place. Independent of who is announced winner of the contest I think everyone has won. Well, everyone will win when Brausch recognizes how many more people (800?) he will be reaching and helping. That is what you love to do, isn’t it James.
Many other win-win-wins are obvious to me. All of Brausch’s new customers (like myself) won with the help embodied in his CD and bonus products. You won by being exposed to CDBaby and Brausch. CDBaby won from the exposure and sales. All the bands who participated won more sales, more exposure, and more momentum.
Finally, I think the biggest win for CDBaby and the other bands (and you if you’ll accept it) is expanded vision of what is possible. Before Brausch showed up on the scene Derek thought that selling 100 CDs would be winner material. Instead, with Brausch raising the bar, the second place band seems to have sold about four times the expected highest seller. I’m going to guess that the rest of the top ten are similarly skewed for the better by Brausch’s pace setting.
So what should Brausch do? I think he should drop the negativity and do what he had planned to do a month ago when he committed to this contest. Or several years ago when he started his blog to help others succeed. Besides, it’s time to think Costa Rica not CDBaby.
But that’s just my opinion. Feel free to share yours.
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Hello Wayne!
My part of the answer to James is also, “Reconsider why you wanted to win that contest in first place”. You say, “Drop the negativity”. You probably did notice that James dropped a lot of advice that he usually gives. Well, in some specials he gave his readers the opportunity to earn some cash, but did you notice. “Resell at your own risk, handling shipping, and customer returns yourself; work an affiliate-like- program, offering bonuses big time.
That’s what James usually doe not recommend. The whole contest was kind of strang, indeed.
Adios
August 30th, 2007 at 5:20 pmjohn
Hi Wayne –
James thought that we were going out of our way to work against him personally, doing everything we can to keep him from winning a contest.
If that was true… what time we must have on our hands! What evil malicious people we must be!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_Razor
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
(1) – After 2.5 years of programming, I finished a total CD Baby software rewrite, and published it. The site was down for 30 minutes when doing so.
(2) – I didn’t do this “during the contest”, because the contest is for all future time : every day from now on. If I was not to make any changes ever “during the contest”, I would never be allowed to make any changes ever again.
(3) – Our mistake : Someone must not have seen his email sending his tracking numbers telling us his CDs were on their way, and so the site remained in its “out of stock” status.
I’ve deeply apologized to him repeatedly for #3, and even had a meeting with all 25 customer service reps explaining the seriousness of this problem. Unfortunately nobody remembers getting that email with the tracking numbers.
But to think that any of this was some kind of giant calculated effort to make James lose a contest is just very very wrong.
It’s a shame that he took it that way, but a great reminder how personally a client can take one malfunction in the system.
James and I have already worked everything out by email, and he has won the contest by far.
I just wanted to let you know.
Sorry for the trouble.
—
August 31st, 2007 at 5:46 amDerek Sivers, president, CD Baby
http://cdbaby.com derek@cdbaby.com
Well said…
I’m convinced this is by FAR the best comment related to James’ posting — whether he agrees or not.
Tom
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:56 am[…] I would encourage you to go and read Wayne’s entire post. It’s excellent and I have nothing to add or clarify. It’s well put and right on. […]
September 7th, 2007 at 10:44 pm[…] Brausch gave what I consider to be a great compliment. “I would encourage you to go and read Wayne’s entire post. It’s excellent and I have nothing to add or clarify. It’s well put and right on.†[…]
September 8th, 2007 at 1:18 pm