Pardon our dust

Sometimes a remodeling project happens when you finally can’t stand it any more.

For two-plus years I’ve heeded excellent advice to concentrate on writing quality content for TBYB! instead of fussing over aesthetic details. The result is an archive of over 100 substantive articles that explore and develop the theory and practice of personal marketing.

Each week during that time I have:

• Gone to my day job
• Researched and written these articles in my spare time
• Hated the look and feel of the site, but sucked it up and attended to other, more pressing matters
• Assumed I would spiff up the WordPress theme when I “had the time”.

Meanwhile TBYB! has sometimes felt like an intellectual fairy princess trapped inside a hideously ugly, rusted, double-wide tower parked up on blocks. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s kind of embarrassing when you’re a web developer.)

I’ve finally decided to quit waiting for a “good time” and just go for it. In a perfect world these changes would have occurred discreetly, behind the scenes, and been rolled out gracefully when they were ready for prime time. Hello, (imperfect) world!

So I’m going to fire up big, fun, destructive power tools, and let the chips fall where they may. It won’t be pretty. You might even want to grab a hard hat in case a rogue CSS selector or HTML blockquote falls on your head.

When things basically work again and the WordPress theme doesn’t make me cringe any more I’ll get back to writing articles about personal marketing. In the meantime you might enjoy reading some of the best material from the last two years that you may have missed:

• The psychology of persuasion (8-part series)
• Target your hierarchy of needs (3-part series)
• How to write an effective ad on a Post-It note
• Put yourself in the picture
• Make a motivational poster at Big Huge Labs
• How to rotate picture ads with the Vista Sidebar Slide Show
• How to send yourself text messages with Backpack
• How to plant a mental cover crop
• 10 steps to powerful personal marketing
• How does your marketing stack up to Super Bowl ads?
• Aren’t these just affirmations?
• The battle for your mind

If you have any questions about how to apply personal marketing to your own life, feel free to submit a question any time for Dear Brain, who is wisely riding out this whole remodeling thing at a luxury web 2.0 condo.