You want to make more money. To make more money, you can either work longer or you can charge more money. There’s not much of a choice, unless you find a way to clone yourself. But then you run the risk of the clone turning into an evil clone and killing you.

So you need to charge more money. (I already mentioned charging more money in fact – but never explained how.)

It’s almost a given that people need to be willing to pay you more, as well. That much is obvious. And that’s the real question here: how to get your customers to pay you more – willingly.

It’s simple. Not easy, mind you – but simple. You need to do work that demands more money. Your finished work needs to say to the customer, “Hey man – I’m awesome. You know it. And I ain’t cheap.”

I know someone who embodies this. He’s a general contractor, and presently he’s not only very much in-demand in my city but he’s also not “cheap”. If you’re a penny-pincher, and you’re watching your budget, and you would do the work yourself if you only knew how…well, he’s not the guy to call. Because he charges more money than other contractors that purport to do the same work.

But remember: he has no shortage of work. And, you will not find him in the phone book or listed in the paper under “Handymen”. He hands out cards to his clients…and they tend to pass those on to their friends. (Their rich friends!)

My contractor friend can do this because he made a decision a few years after starting his business: he would only do top-notch work, and insist on using high-quality materials. He did that, and met resistance from customers. He had only a few jobs at first, but his attention to detail and pride in his work paid off, because he started getting business from people who saw his handiwork in their friends’ homes.

Now, years later, he’s built up a reputation as an honest contractor who does the best work in the city. And he can charge what he’s worth.

So how do you charge more? Do work that’s worth more and demand what you’re worth. It will come.

I’ve learned a few things in my life. Some things – things you’d expect me to have learned a long time ago – I’ve only recently come to actually understand and integrate into my way of thinking. The lesson I’ve most recently realized has become a part of me is one of those simple and basic concepts you’d think any child would know: never play dirty.

It was probably two years ago when something happened that taught me this lesson; I supposed I would have agreed with you (before that) had you told me: “Shawn, never do things that are under-handed. Playing dirty is unacceptable.” I would have said, “Yeah, you’re right; ok.” But I’d never had to experience what that really meant. Until one day, at my new job.

Someone, somewhere, a person who wouldn’t reveal themself, was harrasing my boss and the employees. We were receiving mocking, critical emails about our websites. We saw intrusion attempts on other sites we ran. We looked for evidence, and we found a suspect in a previous unhappy (“disgruntled” I think is the word most often used for these people) employee who was fired.

I won’t go into how we knew…but we knew. Too many things pointed to this specific person as the culprit. This person even emailed one of our people to ask how a website was doing, as if a website needed checking-up on. That website was the same one we found compromised a short time previously.

So naturally, I was incensed (“pissed” is a word often used for how I felt). I looked up this person, and found a blog entry that attacked my place of employment and, on a personal level, attacked my employer. So…I decided to go black hat on ‘em. I spammed the search engine results every which way, and knocked him out of the top ten for his own name.

I thought it was kinda funny. My coworkers couldn’t believe it. My office had no idea such a thing was even possible. And then I felt bad about doing it.
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The well-known phrase, “knowledge is power” is taken as gospel truth. People say it as if somehow having knowledge places lightening bolts in your hands and you have “power”. Power to do what, exactly? No one usually asks that. And what sort of knowledge is required, anyway?
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So the NFL is sending “cease and desist” letters to local shop owners (here in New Orleans) because they print and sell “Who Dat” t-shirts. Why? Because (and this is news to me) the NFL supposedly owns (or copyrighted, or trademarked) the phrase “Who Dat”. At least, that’s what they claim.

So the shop Fleurty Girl is abiding by the legal threat handed to them by the NFL. Too bad that the NFL has to pick on this shop (and I have to assume a few other retailers have received similar letters).

I would agree with the NFL’s action in protecting their trademark…if it was something they came up with. However, I remember seeing the phrase “Who Dat?” used for virtually my whole life. As far as I can remember, it began as a home-grown rallying cry – locally thought up by who-knows-who and hand-printed on posterboard and such, to be help up during games, or scrawled on the back on car windshields with shoe polish. So now the NFL claims it’s theirs?

[In fact, the phrase "Who Dat" has been around way before the NFL or even football...it was part of the vaudeville/minstrel tradition for many many years, and only LATER become incorporated into New Orleans' football culture. Again: it's something that organically grew out of New Orleans' unique way of doing things. It should NOT be allowed to be another opportunity for the NFL to make some extra dollars.]

Ridiculous. Some things need to be left alone. Especially something dear and special to local New Orleanians. Leave us what is ours, NFL.

PS – Buy whatever else FleurtyGirl is selling. Support them!

There are a lot of “reasons” being given (on the news, in the papers, and from the honest truthful unmanipulative mouths of political leaders) for our failed economy. (And I do mean “failed” – not just failing. We have a corpse on our hands, I don’t care how many times you put the shock paddles on it.) And you probably just have a big-picture-type of idea of “why”. Something to do with the real estate bubble, gas prices, and the free market failing us.

Does this sound familiar? Because if you’re in the same boat as most Americans, it should sound familiar. We aren’t exactly sure what vehicle brought us to our current destination, but we know we don’t want to be here any more. And Uncle Sam’s coming to rescue us. We just have to wait for him to come pick us up.

Only thing is…from past experience, we know we shouldn’t really trust Uncle Sam.

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