Live call today, 3 P.M. Eastern time

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I will be on a live call today with Guy Kawasaki and John Jantsch. You can sign up to be on the call here.

John is the force behind the Duct Tape Marketing blog, which is a great example of how to use a blog to grow a whole business. Today, his blog looks like an empire.

Guy Kawasaki has a very popular blog that I link to a lot, and he’s author of a bunch of books about entrepreneurship, one of which we are talking about on this call: Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition.

15 replies
  1. prklypr
    prklypr says:

    Not too much advance notice on this, huh? I check back here periodically throughout the day (because lame Feedblitz is usually about 24 hrs behind) and by the time I read this, the time for the call had come and gone! What’s up with that, Penelope?

    * * * * * * *

    Yeah. Sorry about that. I did post this late. I think this is a result of me being hesitant to use the blog as a way to promote stuff. I’m always trying to figure out how to do that. What feels right. And, ironically, the call ended up covering the topic of how I do not use Twitter effectively to promote stuff, either. So maybe the next time I will post an announcement earlier on the blog… or on Twitter :)

    Penelope

  2. Jenn S.
    Jenn S. says:

    Great call, Penelope! I’d never heard you speak before, and to hear you bantering with the always-topical-and-entertaining Guy K., was an added bonus!

    And I don’t know why you don’t have more twitter followers – you’re always entertaining with your tweets, and it adds a different dimension to your online brand.

    @prklypr – if you subscribe to the mailing list on authorteleseminars.com, you’ll get access to the recordings from all their calls. They have some good ones!

  3. Michelle
    Michelle says:

    Hi Penelope,
    I love your blog — excellent, entertaining writing. Sorry I missed this call today — didn’t see the announcement until late this afternoon. Did you happen to record it, with podcasting an option?

  4. Ian
    Ian says:

    I love these calls from author teleseminar; I think you can still sign-up & get the record through e-mail. A few months back, I got a recording of another book series & sign-up late, but were able to get the records that I missed.

    I also missed this one as well, I’m pretty sure they will send a link of the recording out.

  5. Joselle Palacios
    Joselle Palacios says:

    Plug away! I’m so glad you mentioned the call on the blog and on Twitter otherwise I definitely would have missed it. You were very funny and stole the show as the Twitter Pupil. Also, you inspired me to do my first podcast interview. Someone invited me to do one and my immediate response was, “Ack. I’ve never done one. What will I say?” But they obviously think I have something to say so after listening to you, I said yes.

  6. Rachel
    Rachel says:

    When your twitters were on your blog, I loved reading them. I understand why you took them off. But maybe you could have just one link to your twitters?

  7. Celia
    Celia says:

    http://suburbanturmoil.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogher-part-i-penelope-trunk-rips-me.html

    MONDAY, JULY 30, 2007
    BlogHer Part I: Penelope Trunk Rips Me a New One, Edited with P’s Response!
    *Edited to add that Penelope apologized in the comments. Thank you, Penelope. Maybe next year, we can hug it out.

    It was my very first BlogHer session and I was all eager and attentive-like. I had my (free) notebook and my (free) pen ready to write down the many nuggets of wisdom I’d surely glean from the carefully chosen speakers assembled to discuss the topic of self branding and promotion. One of those speakers was Penelope Trunk. I had never heard of Penelope Trunk, but she’s apparently some kind of Internet superstar and so, despite the fact that her name made me suspect that she was actually a former castmember from Krofft Superstars, I decided to give her a chance.

    After the speakers introduced themselves, the rest of the session was opened to questions from the audience. Penelope, I’m guessing, had accidentally superglued her hand to the microphone, because she appeared to be unable to hand it to her fellow panelists. And boy! Was she helpful!

    Much of the session went this way: audience member asks Penelope a question. Penelope shoots audience member down with barbed one-liner like, “You can’t write about politics and knitting,” delivered in a withering tone. Mkay. This would all have been slightly more tolerable if the information were accurate- but much of it seemed just plain wrong, like when a mommyblogger was told that she’d have to write about just one subject, like diapers, to be really successful. Think about the most “successful” mommybloggers for a minute. Most of them will write about just about anything if the mood strikes them. We read them for their voice, not their specific subject matter. Gah!

    Much eye-rolling and whispering in the audience ensued. And then a woman named Jen Lemen asked a question. When I heard her say her name, I craned my head to see her. I had read glowing references to Jen on the Internet for years and was totally impressed by her eloquence.

    Penelope wasn’t. Penelope shot her down. I gasped.

    “You don’t shoot down Jen Lemen,” I whispered to Busy Mom beside me. She shook her head and grimaced.

    Of course, this wouldn’t be Suburban Turmoil if I hadn’t been possessed by some kind of malicious spirit that jerked my hand up in the air when the audience microphone was headed my way. In retrospect, it was incredibly stupid of me to ask a question in that kind of environment, but what can I say?

    I stood up, introduced myself, and said that while much of the discussion had centered around increasing Internet traffic, I figured that some of us in the room were happy with our blog traffic and wanted to know the next step in taking our blog beyond the Internet, whether we wanted to score a book deal or write a sitcom based on our blog or whatever.

    “You can’t get a book deal from a blog,” Penelope said to me with obvious disgust.

    From the back of the room, the marvelous Susie Sunshine shouted “Jen Lancaster!” Good one, Susie!

    Yes, we all know Penelope’s answer was totally wrong, but the book deal wasn’t even the point of my question. I tried to reword it for her, saying I was only using a book deal as an example. What I really wanted to know was how a blogger could take his or her success beyond the Internet. What was the logical next step? Penelope (who, incidentally, got a book deal from her blog) had no answer for me. Effectively, she only wanted to rip me a new one, just like everyone else. Damn, P-Nel. Bitter much?

    I sat down, feeling defeated. Was I really the bumbling idiot that her response had suggested? I had learned one thing from the experience- It would be a cold day in hell before I asked a question in a session again.

    The knife was really twisted when another woman raised her hand and informed Mrs. Trunk that she worked at HarperCollins, where plenty of bloggers had scored book deals. Rawk! And when the session ended, a woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said she had gotten a book deal from her website just last week. And literally dozens of people from that session (and plenty of others who had just heard about it) came to me afterward and ranted about Penelope’s hostility. Others wrote about it from their perspective. As far as I know, this particular session was the most contentious one of the whole conference. Gee, I really know how to pick ’em, huh?

    Luckily, things took a turn for the better the next morning, when I attended a session on how other bloggers have used their Internet writing to publish books. That session was so helpful that I ended up writing out a blueprint of what I want to do next (which, incidentally, is not necessarily a book deal at all). So no worries, BlogHer people. I totally got my money’s worth.

    Don’t worry… The BlogHer stories all get much, much funnier after this one, so stay tuned.

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