They promise revelations of “closely-guarded secrets” known only to their fellow gurus. They hint darkly that they may be blackballed for revealing this arcane knowledge to the unwashed masses such as ourselves, but will bravely forge ahead anyway (at least, as long as the unwashed masses are willing to fork over hundreds of dollars for the information). With their expert guidance, and the support of our fellow guru-wannabees (via a “Master Mind” group, subscription available for an additional monthly fee), we will learn to “skyrocket” our income. We will all be raking in fortunes from some nebulous “online business” while we lounge by the pool, dine at expensive restaurants or tool around in our luxury cars, yes, even while we sleep.

(By the way, since when did “skyrocket” become a verb? But I digress.)

Of course, as anyone who’s wasted hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on these “no-fail formulas” for success, they seldom (if ever) work as advertised. The steps aren’t as simple as they’re made out to be. There were a number of other factors at play in the guru’s initial success (factors that aren’t mentioned in the advertisement for the “program”) — assuming the alleged guru is telling the truth about his success in the first place. And even when everything seems to be in place, often the steps still don’t work.

I include a lot of freelance and small business ideas on this site, but you’ll notice I never shill for any of these “systems.” I just get a skeevy feeling about most of them. And I noticed too many of them have a snake-eating-its-own-tail quality: the guru tells you how you can become successful selling ebooks teaching others how to be successful by selling ebooks about how to be successful by selling ebooks. You start to wonder how many of these gurus have actually followed their own “no fail formula for success,” and how many of them are simply tossing out a bunch of garbage they gleaned from other ebooks they wasted money on, hoping enough suckers will fork over their hard-earned cash to cover the “guru’s” losses.

I dunno. Maybe they all are making fortunes overnight. But for my taste too many of them spend just a little too much effort “proving” how much money they’re supposedly making. It just doesn’t ring true, you know?

The worst part, from my standpoint, is that the lack of success is blamed on the victim. If you don’t experience the advertised level of success, the guru says, essentially, “I said this is a sure-fire formula. If it didn’t work for you, it must have been because you left something out or did something wrong.”

And people end up thinking there’s something wrong with them, because they’ve done everything exactly the way the gurus told them to, and they’re still not gazillionaires.

Only thing is, six months or a year later, the same guru will be back with yet another sure-fire formula. Different from the “old” formula. He’ll tell you all about how all the other so-called systems are shams. (Including, presumably, his own previous system? The one he was touting as no-fail just a few months before?) His new system, on the other hand, is The Real Deal. If you followed any of those other systems and they didn’t work, it’s not your fault. The systems were flawed. This time, though, you’re guaranteed to succeed if you will but follow these (new, improved) Few Simple Steps.

And, sadly, some folks will fall for this. Again, and again.

Now, along comes Nick Usborne. He’s a successful freelance copywriter whose work I’ve followed for years. And (maybe because he’s a professional writer ), he’s managed to express much of my frustration with these “one size fits all” just-follow-these-simple-steps-and-you’ll-get-rich-too programs. (He’s managed to do it a lot better than I could, too, darnit!)

The next time you’re tempted by one of those long sales pages with all the yellow-boxed testimonials promising a life of ease just counting the money you’ve raked in with your website… the next time you find yourself reaching for your credit card to pay yet another $297 for yet another “can’t miss formula” so you can tell your boss to take that job and shove it… the next time you actually open one of those “newsletters” that’s nothing but an affiliate sales pitch for the latest guru-generated “info product” that promises to set you free from the drudgery of working for a living if you will but follow the included “proven system”… read this first:

There Is No Single Recipe For Freelance Success

With any luck, it will save you that $297. Worst case, at least you’ll be throwing your money away with your eyes wide open.

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A member of the Small Business Ideas forum, a writer, asked how to get started advertising her new freelance writing business. I started thinking of ways she could get started with it, and before I knew it, my answer was waaay longer than a forum post. And I realized it also had advice applicable to almost any type of professional service provider, not just this one writer. So instead of just posting a forum reply, I decided to write this article.

The Problem With Online Freelance Sites

There are all sorts of freelance sites (elance, rentacoder, guru.com, etc.) which can give you access to a big volume of projects. They’re often recommended as a good place to get started garnering clients. One thing to keep in mind, of course, is that you’re bidding against people all over the world, so the level of competition is often pretty high.

Further, you may find yourself bidding against people who are either doing this part time or working in areas of the world where the cost of living is very low — and who are thus willing and able to bid dangerously low on the projects.

Not to say you can’t get business from them (I have from time to time, myself) but you just need to be aware of what you might be going up against. Don’t bid lower and lower just to win the work; you’ll find yourself working long hours for peanuts.

Don’t Neglect Your Own Back Yard

You may find it more lucrative (and less competitive) to focus initially on local clients. Try to identify types of businesses that need your services on a regular basis. For instance, as a writer you could make the rounds of your local Realtors, see if they need any help with writing house listings, brochures, ads, etc. You might also want to approach web design firms and advertising/marketing agencies in your area to see if they might want to subcontract your services for some of their clients.

You just need to make sure when subcontracting you offer rates that still allow the contracting company some headroom to mark up the price before billing their customer. You can afford to do this because they’re doing the legwork for you of acquiring the customer — you don’t spend as much time on sales calls, so you spend a larger proportion of your time on productive (billable) work.

Once you do a few jobs for them and prove your worth, they may be willing to give you good testimonials, which (of course) you’ll post on your website for other prospective clients to see.

Other Ways of Attracting Direct Clients

If you’re comfortable with public speaking (or you can become comfortable with it) try putting on a presentation for your local Chamber of Commerce. For a writer, maybe you could say something about the importance of having well-written copy in their marketing materials, or how including informative articles on their websites can help position them as an industry expert.

Make the presentation informational — stay away from the overt sales pitches — but have your own marketing materials (brochures, business cards, etc.) available, and follow up with the attendees over the next few days, maybe offering them some kind of “attendee only” special to get them started.

If you’re not good at public speaking, at least join the local Chamber of Commerce. See if there are any professional associations or networking groups in your area you can join. Meetup.com is a good place to look for local get-togethers on just about any subject imaginable.

Your goal is not necessarily to meet with other writers. That can’t hurt, of course, not only because of being able to share ideas and inspiration. Some of the more successful writers may occasionally have overflow work — and if they know you and are aware of the quality of your work, you may be able to subcontract for them as well.

But the real goal is to join groups frequented by people who might use your services. Get to know them, get to know what problems they face, let them know (in a low-pressure non-sales-pitchy way) how you can help them out.

Once you get a client or two, ask for referrals. They probably know other business owners or managers who could use your services, but they may not think to recommend you to them unless you ask. You could even offer some kind of incentive (a finder’s fee, for instance, or a discount on future services they book with you) for every referral they send your way that turns into a gig for you.

More Information

There are zillions of other ways of getting the word out about your services to the people who need them (and more importantly, are willing and able to pay for them). For a whole lot more information about effectively marketing yourself as a professional services provider, I highly recommend Robert Middleton’s Action Plan website. He offers tons of free information, a free newsletter (a must-read!) and excellent quality marketing tools, audio programs, a website toolkit and more for purchase.

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When the economy is tight, you may be tempted to cut prices in an attempt to stimulate sales. But depending on what you’re selling and how you’re trying to position your business, big price cuts may not be such a good idea.

When you lower your prices too much, you affect how people perceive the quality of your offering. If you’re priced waaay lower than the competition, people are likely to think that’s because your quality isn’t as good. And, it turns out, perception is, indeed, reality — possibly in ways you might not have thought. It’s amazing what the power of the mind can do.

Trying to beat the Wal*Mart’s of the world at their own low-pricing game is almost certainly a losing proposition, especially for a small business that can’t muster the kind of purchasing clout Wal*Mart wields.

For an alternative strategy, read this article I wrote for Search Engine Guide: Marketing in Hard Times: Pricing. We’ll explore why “adding value” may be a better strategy in the long run.

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The Wall Street Journal (of all places) recently featured an article with four crucial tips for crafters who want to sell their wares online. So, what does the WSJ advise?

• Be true to your vision. If you simply try to follow trends, you’re likely to find yourself behind the curve as often as not, either totally out of fashion or facing a ton of competition. It’s tough being an also-ran. You’ll have more luck if you have the courage and vision to stand out from the crowd.
• Don’t skip marketing opportunities. Sign up for craft fairs. Tell your friends about your business. If your creations are wearable, wear them yourself. Engage people in conversation about your crafts. Always have your business cards on hand and don’t be afraid to spread them around.
• Socialize. Sure, you don’t want to ignore traditional publicity (press releases, an online catalog, printed brochures, etc.), but nowadays you can also get attention for your craft business through social media — blogging, Twitter and bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Mixx or del.icio.us. Blogs and Twitter allow you to maintain personal contact with your loyal customers, and all these resources can help get your name out in front of folks you might not otherwise reach.
• Charge what your crafts are worth. This is one of the toughest items for almost any small businessperson, not just crafters. The tendency is to price your products too cheap. You need to take into account overhead, labor and the cost of marketing — and allow yourself a profit margin. People tend to judge the quality of a product or service at least partly on the price. It takes guts, but if you want others to consider your work high quality, you need to price accordingly.

I hope these tips were helpful to you. Now, get out there and get creative!

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So, I just got back from the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston, TX. What a blast that was!

I picked up so many helpful tips and ideas it’s going to take me awhile to assimilate them all. But I wanted right away to pass one along I found tremendously inspiring and important for us as people working from home, or aspiring to work from home.

This tip came from Wendy Piersall, the owner of SparkPlugging (formerly known as eMomsatHome). She’s a work-at-home mom who started a blog as a hobby a couple of years ago to document her efforts at building a home-based business — and watched as the blog grew and blossomed until it became her business.

Wendy’s tip was to force yourself to step out of your comfort zone.

She said so many of the good things that happened to her happened when she did something she didn’t think she could do. Public speaking, making presentations to large companies, introducing herself to well-known bloggers — all those things and more added up to success for her beyond her imagination.

So, what is it about marketing or promoting your business do you think you “can’t do”? And what will it take for you to step out of that comfort zone and do those things anyway?

Einstein is supposed to have defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.”

As long as you continue to do the same-old, same-old, that’s what you’re going to get. If you want extraordinary results, you need to do something extraordinary.

Step out of your comfort zone. Do something that feels a little bit scary. Ask for what you want — the worst that can happen is they tell you no (in which case, you’re no worse off than you were before). And in the best case, they’ll give you everything you want (with manybe a bit more tossed in for fun).

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I received a spam email the other day claiming 70% of Americans use social media sites. I’m not going to link to the site they directed me to, because (A) I don’t want to give them any more publicity and (B) the site has a really annoying exit script installed that won’t let you close the window without clicking through several JavaScript alerts.

Frankly, I kinda doubt their stats, considering according to this chart of Internet usage statistics, only about 71% of the people in North America have Internet access to start with. Saying virtually everyone who has Internet access is also an active social media user, well, that just doesn’t match my observations. Certainly I know quite a few people who regularly use the Internet, but who don’t have any use for social networking or social bookmarking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, etc.

I mean, yeah, there are a lot of accounts on social media sites. But you know what? In a lot of cases, it’s the same people signed up for multiple accounts.

For instance, my husband has a personal MySpace page, and as a working musician he also has a professional MySpace page. And the recording studio he owns also has it’s own MySpace page. That’s three “users” of MySpace that all resolve to the same individual. I have personal accounts on MySpace, LinkedIn and FaceBook, and maybe a half dozen or so others, so I’m one individual accounting for “users” on multiple social media sites.

Let’s just say I’d advise taking that “70% of Americans use social media sites” claim with a huuuge grain of salt.

But I digresss. The point is, the spammer was trying to get me to sign up for some “system” that would teach me how to game social media sites to make money.

And the only thing I can say to that is, if you get this same solicitation or anything similar, please don’t. These folks and others like them offer high-pressure sales pitches with all sorts of attractive-sounding promises (like making hundreds of dollars a day without any work), but if you value your business or personal reputation, you wouldn’t touch this sort of thing with a ten-foot pole.

Members of social media sites don’t want to be bombarded by high-pressure sales pitches, endless ads and “once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.” They don’t want worthless “members” who try to manipulate the social networking site solely for the purpose of driving traffic away to the member’s own get-rich-quick website. They do not respond kindly to those who try to exploit their communities for profit without giving anything back.

Join an online community because you want to contribute something of value (and, yes, I’m talking about waaaay more than simply links to your own website content) to the community, and you just may be surprised over time by the value you can gain from the connections you make. The relationships you build can continue to pay dividends in unexpected ways for years to come.

Join an online community with the intention of exploiting the members to make money and you’re throwing away those long term benefits for an unlikely shot at short-term income — which will dry up as you are blacklisted, booted out or ignored by the influential members of each community you try to spam.

This would not be acceptable behavior in real life, and it’s not acceptable online.

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Have you considered offering live chat on your website? You may have seen it on other sites — you know, the little button or text box that offers to let you chat in real time through the website with a customer service rep.

I know some business owners who swear by it. Of course, I know others who’ve tried it and swear it didn’t do anything for them.

Cool thing about live chat: it lets your customers ask you questions right away, while the questions are still fresh in their minds. This could help increase your sales by allowing you to deal with their objections almost as if they were standing right in front of you in your store or office.

Not so cool thing about live chat: it can be a bit pricy to implement, and it doesn’t help increase sales for everyone — so you could end up spending a fair chunk of change only to see no tangible results. Bummer, eh?

Well, Google’s come through for us cheapskate webmasters before, with free high-end tools like Google Analytics. (Highly recommended, by the way.) And now they’re doing it again, with the Google Talk chatback badge.

Google Talk is their free instant messaging service, sort of like Windows Messenger, AIM or Yahoo’s chat service. But now Google has implemented a “badge” you can install on your website, which will allow visitors to chat with you via Google Talk in real time — even if they don’t have a Google Talk account!

And it’s free!

Now, in order to make this work, you need to have a Google Talk account, and you need to be signed in to Google Talk in order for the chatback badge to display your status as online and “available.”

So now you can experiment with live chat, see if it makes a difference for your business, without it costing you a dime. Now, how cool is that?

Read here for more information from Google, including a link to get your own chatback badge for your website.

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I participate in several online discussion forums targeting small business owners. Very often, new members want guidance about what kind of business to start. Of course, the more experienced among us usually advise them to think about their interests, talents and experiences, and build a business based on those.

That’s because building a new business takes time, money and effort, and it’s going to be a lot easier to invest the amounts of each you need to when you’re working on something you really enjoy.

Occasionally, though, someone comes along who doesn’t want to hear that answer. They claim they have no interests. No talents. No skills. Yep, nothing they feel passionate about. They simply want a business that will make them lots of money, preferably quickly and with minimal effort.

Of course, if we knew the answer to making lots of money fast with little to no effort, we’d all be doing it. And we probably wouldn’t be too quick to share the secret with every random stranger who showed up.

One day, such a person showed up at the High Rankings Forum. He wanted us to give him an idea for a website that would make him rich. When we asked what his interests were, he said the only thing he was interested in was in being rich. So here’s an expansion on what I posted in response:

Everybody has interests and skills. Really. The trick is to find them, and believe in them.

So, let’s say you did find a way to make tons of money. What would you do with the money, once you made it? If you had enough money to do or buy anything you wanted, what would you do? Where would you go? What would you buy? That’s a good way to determine your interests.

Oaky, so now you know your real interests, come up with a way to turn that interest into a business. Brainstorm:

• What do other people who are interested in those kinds of things do?
• What do they need?
• If you were in the position to indulge your passion, what sorts of products would you be looking to buy?
• What kinds of services would you want to have available?

Those are the kinds of things that you’ll want to incorporate into your business plan. Doesn’t have to be fancy, but you must have a plan. As the old saying goes: if you don’t know where you’re going, how can you tell when you get there?

So what if you come up with more than one interest? Some people become paralyzed in fear of making the “wrong” choice. Maybe it’s easier to claim you don’t have any interests at all than risk making a choice you might come later to regret.

Don’t be afraid of choosing. It’s tough, I know. But until you make choices and start taking action, nothing will happen.

Back when I was young, while waiting for the Earth’s crust to finish cooling, I used to fret about making decisions. I was laboring under the delusion that the choices I made then would inevitably lock me in to a path, and I was afraid of choosing the wrong path.

Turns out, while the choices I made back then definitely influenced the direction of my life, very few of them were irrevocable. The job I do now didn’t even exist when I graduated from college. (Heck, personal computers didn’t exist when I graduated from college. Yes, I am ancient.)

So far, I’ve run through a whole bunch of “careers” in a whole bunch of industries, and I’m not through yet. Maybe one of these days I’ll find something to settle down with. Then again, maybe not. Maybe I’ll just spend the rest of my life reinventing myself every few years.

So, you put in a lot of hard work on something and it turns out you’re not as interested in the topic as you thought you were, or it turns out to be less lucrative than you’d hoped. Well, then, you’ve learned something and you’ve had some practice at starting a business and you’ve honed your marketing skills, so at least the time wasn’t wasted. Maybe the next thing you try will be “the one.”

Or maybe you’ll get lucky and hit a bullseye on the first try.

Or maybe you’ll have to try several more times. Could even be nothing will ever be the one end-all-be-all “business of your dreams,” and you’ll spend your whole life starting businesses, building them up and then selling them and starting all over.

Maybe it turns out you have tons of interests. Well, there’s nothing stopping you from pursuing all of them, you know!

Just don’t try to start them all at once, or you’ll lose focus.

Pick one to start, and once you’ve got it ticking along, pick another. Then another. And another. Even if none of them individually make you a ton of money, in the aggregate they could be quite lucrative. And since you’re interested in them all, it will never be a chore to work on any of them.

However it turns out to be — acknowledge and move on. As long as you’re moving, you’re still in the game. You don’t lose until you give up.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee. You just have to take your best shot with whatever you’ve got. Don’t sell yourself short — we almost all have more going for us than what we think we do.

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Are you currently marketing your business through blogs using “pay per post” (PPP)? Have you thought about it? If so, here are a few things you might want to take into consideration.

What is PPP?

For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, “pay per post” is where bloggers agree, for a fee, to write blog posts about a company’s product or service. These posts are mixed in with other non-paid posts on a personal blog and basically masquerade as “normal” blog posts.

So why would advertisers buy posts on an individual’s blog to start with? There are basically two reasons:

1. The blog has statistics to indicate it has a good number of subscribers or traffic. The advertisers believe the blog posts will drive customers to their site.
2. The blog has a strong displayed PageRank in the Google Toolbar and a strong backlink profile. The advertisers think they’ll get a search engine ranking boost from the links the blogger puts in the post pointing to their website.

Concerns about PPP

Some people have concerns about this from an ethical standpoint. The expectation many people have is that a blog will represent the real opinions of the person writing the post. When they read a positive post about a product or service, they assume the blogger is honestly recommending it based on their own experiences or observations, not that it’s a paid advertisement.

The problem these people have is that generally the disclosure of the paid post is not very obvious. Some blogs I’ve seen simply have a single page that says, in essence, “some posts on this blog have been paid for, but I’m not going to tell you specifically which ones.”

For these folks, this equates to, say, a newspaper allowing companies to buy space on its editorial pages without disclosing which posts are actual editorial opinions and which are paid ads.

A second concern is how effective PPP is. Do the advertisers get a good return for their money? Well, there are a few potential concerns:

• Does the blog get any real traffic? Some of the PPP blogs I’ve seen are mostly paid posts, with only a few “real” posts scattered here and there. Maybe they started out as interesting personal blogs, but they’re now more like a newspaper advertising insert. Traffic stats can be manipulated. What kind of real human visitors does a blog such as that likely attract?
• How many of the blog visitors read these paid posts? Bottom line, it doesn’t matter how much traffic the blog gets, if everybody simply skips over the paid post, it has little potential to send traffic to the advertiser’s site.
• Does the blog actually pass link popularity? Google and the other search engines have the ability to blog individual pages and entire domains from passing link popularity (or in Google, PageRank). They don’t publish a list of blocked pages or domains anywhere. So if you’re buying a post for supposed increased link popularity, how do you know you’re getting what you paid for?

The future of PPP?

Some people I talk with swear PPP has worked for them. And, you know, it’s quite possible it does, at least in the short term. For some businesses, at least, it might be worth a test.

But there are reasons to be cautious. Google, in particular, is on the rampage lately against paid links, and according to a recent post at TechCrunch, it seems Google now has PPP bloggers it its sights.

Nobody really knows the effect of these PageRank reductions. Could be they’re just a “cosmetic” adjustment to the displayed PageRank on the Google Toolbar — sort of a shot across the bow, putting PPP bloggers (and their advertisers) that Google ain’t happy. (And, like mama, if Google ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.)

Or they could indicate a real adjustment in these blogs’ ability to rank well and pass link popularity — in which case, as an advertiser, I’d have to be at least a little worried about the blogs’ ability to deliver value for my advertising dollars.

My opinion? Well, personally, I’m not comfortable with PPP, so I probably won’t be using it as an advertising vehicle myself, and I’m certainly not going to sign up any of my blogs as publishers.

But if you think it has potential to help your business, I can’t honestly tell you it won’t work (depending on what you mean by “work”). But if it were my business, I’d be pretty cautious, at least until we have more information about the real effects of the latest Google smack-down on PPP blogs.

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I attended a motivational seminar yesterday. It was a huge all-day affair at the local sports arena. Somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 people attended. It was one of those deals where they promise you’re going to be “inspired” and perhaps have your life changed forever.

Now, my problem when it comes to these sorts of things is I’m a pretty tough sell. It’s got to be pretty extraordinary stuff to impress me.

Judging from the number of real-estate name badges I saw and some of the conversations I overheard walking around the arena at lunch, I’m guessing that I, a non-salesperson, was in the minority there. And you know, it’s been my experience that some of the easiest people to sell things to are salespeople themselves. My husband loves to tell stories about his dad — a skilled lifelong salesman — practically handing over his wallet to car salesmen. (My father in law’s idea of “dickering” was apparently to ask if the price on the sticker was the best they could do, and when they said “yes,” to simply pay it.)

Which is weird, because you might think a salesperson, being in sales themselves, would be on to all the tricks. I know as a copywriter, I certainly do key in pretty quickly when somebody’s pulling out all the stops with hard-sell copy techniques, for instance. (And the techniques seldom work on me — I’ve studied the “inner workings” too closely, I guess.)

Likewise, this seminar didn’t — for the most part — move me, or even particularly hold my attention. I couldn’t tell you the names of half the speakers.

But the folks I saw at the seminar yesterday seemed thrilled and inspired and I saw an awful lot of them rushing down to sign up for the services some of the speakers there were hawking.

So I started wondering if maybe there was some value in all this stuff after all. As I sat last night, after I got my son in bed, reviewing and thinking over what I’d heard during the day, I came to the conclusion, no, I was right. Most of what went on was dreck.

But I did come away with at least one insight, so I suppose the day wasn’t a waste.

One of the speakers talked about breaking through your barriers, and used breaking a board with your bare hand as an analogy. Many of us think we can’t break a board with just our hand, and so we can’t. But if you believe you can, with just a few minutes of coaching on the right technique, you can.

As it happens, my husband studies martial arts, so I know this is true. Breaking a board isn’t all that hard. But it’s still pretty scary, and it is a very true fact that if you don’t believe you can do it, and nobody’s taught you the “secret trick” your chances are much lower.

Another of the speakers told the story of an ancestor of his, an immigrant to the USA, who had a hard time finding a job when he arrived. The speaker told how his grandpa did an end run around this barrier by offering his services for a few weeks for free to a man he wanted to work for. His work was of such high quality, the man agreed at the end of that time to hire him.

Now, I thought the first illustration was an excellent example of how to break through a barrier. And I thought the second was a wonderful story of how to go around a barrier. And several of the speakers made the point that the one thing to do when confronted by a barrier is to not simply give up.

And I do agree with that.

But how do you know when a barrier is something to break through (like a board)? And how do you know when a barrier is something to tunnel under, climb over or find a way around (like a brick wall)? Guess wrong and you either hurt yourself trying to break a brick wall with your bare hands, or you waste a lot of time digging a tunnel under a small piece of wood.

I pondered this for awhile.

And then I remembered another piece of advice I’d heard a lot recently (but, for some reason, not at this particular seminar). The advice was on the importance of having one or more “mentors.” And how important mentors are, not only to people looking to build a corporate career (which is where you usually hear the term used) but also for entrepreneurs looking to build a business.

I remember reading if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, one of the things to do is to associate with already-successful entrepreneurs. Network with them, observe them, emulate them, ask them questions, learn from them. Seems to me, if you have a mentor or two, they can help you learn how to distinguish those brick walls from the boards, and devise a good strategy for dealing with each one.

I can agree with that, too.

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