This is a video blog in response to a post over at Danny Brown’s website – Make a living with your tribe (without scaring them off) which was a guest article from Brandon Mendelson.

There’s been discussion lately on how you can benefit your tribe while still making money from it. At some point, your tribe will become too large to work on it full time – unless you’re filthy rich already and do not need to work. So what do you do? How can you go about making money from the tribe, but not “marketing” to them or “selling” to them? The ideas they went over were to give out affiliate links for products and make money from that, send out sponsored messages and encourage your tribe to visit your sponsors or integrate a brand into your tribe.

My ideas was, why not be the brand yourself? If you’re a writer, why not write a book and let your tribe know. If you design, let your tribe know that is what you do and if they ever need work done, they can get a discount for being a part of the tribe. If you’ve got products to sell that pertain to the tribe, let them know. Do not sell, just mention it. Make sure it’s known, and move on. If your tribe wants to support you, they will. Hell, you could even let your tribe get a cut of the profits if they promote your product/service for you to non-tribe members.

Below is my original comment posted on the article on Danny Brown’s website (I bolded the words I’d like you to read and re-read):

Nice article and very true. It’s funny, I just finished reading the Tribes book last night and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I agree with you, pushing advertisements on your tribe will KILL any credibility with them and pushing affiliate links could work, but as you said, you need to stick that out for the long haul.

I think that if there’s something you can personally sell that will benefit your tribe and is a genuine product/service, you can win this way as well. Building the product/service because it’s beneficial to your tribe is key though. Without the benefit, you’re not helping – you’re selling – and they’ll know it.

So what do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Today is Texture Thursday – and that means that you get a free set of textures to download! The texture set includes 12 high resolution concrete textures which are actually the inside walls of a car port in an apartment complex. This is the last texture set of July, so I figured I’d put up a set that would be very well rounded and could be used for a variety of projects.

Below are screenshots of three of the textures in the set. The size of each image in the set is 3648×2064 so you can virtually use the textures for anything from web designs to printable works like flyers and business cards. Below the screenshots are the download links from Rapidshare and Mediafire.

Download from Rapidshare (21.76 MB)

Download from MediaFire (21.76 MB)

Looking for more textures? Check out Design Shard for their awesome textures – you know, I had a set released there a few weeks back and also had another set of yellow grunge concrete textures released this week. I’ve also got free textures on my flickr account that I regularly post. And don’t forget the older free textures I’ve released here.

This video is a happy birthday note to Seth Godin’s TRiiiBES network. I only got accepted into the triiibe a few days ago, but I can already see how well this is going to benefit me. The book “Tribes” by Seth Godin has been my favorite book I’ve read thus far and has changed my entire thought process on business and life in general.

THANK YOU SETH!

View other blog articles written about the 1 year anniversary of the TRiiiBES launch.

• Triiibes – Beginnings of a Legacy
• More TRIIIBES article links

The message is simple; stand up, speak up and get what you want. Closed mouths don’t get fed. Plain and simple. Quiet people blend in, fall into the background and rarely get heard. Make noise. Call the potential client you’ve been putting off for the past two weeks (I’m a freelancer just like you, so I KNOW you’ve got a couple people on your “dream job” list – call them).

The video today is featuring the intro/outro which I featured yesterday as well. I’m testing things out and trying to get used to the video editing software, so my apologies if it doesn’t look right. I’ve also used my flip video for my last couple videos, so they aren’t in the HD like the previous ones have been. I’ll be switching things up a bunch until I find just the right set up. Oh, and I was holding the camera again today – I need to get back into recording in my office

Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy the video today. I’d love to get your feedback.

Today is Texture Tuesday – and that means that you get a free set of textures to download! The textures today were shot on two different days, but they’re all very closely related as far as the color of the sky goes. I’ve got another set of cloud textures to release soon – they’re more dark, storm type clouds.

Below are screenshots of three of the textures in the set. The size of each image in the set is 3648×2064 so you can virtually use the textures for anything from web designs to printable works like flyers and business cards. Below the screenshots are the download links from Rapidshare and Mediafire.

Download from Rapidshare (13.8 MB)

Download from MediaFire (13.8 MB)

Looking for more textures? Check out Design Shard for their awesome textures – you know, I had a set released there a few weeks back and also had another set of yellow grunge concrete textures released this week. I’ve also got free textures on my flickr account that I regularly post. And don’t forget the older free textures I’ve released here.

As a quick run down of what I posted about over the weekend, this GreenStar TV episode gives a run down of whats been going on with me and whats to come. I also make mention of Black Velvet Nation – more information on that is going to be coming soon.

In case you were wondering, there’s a few things going on that I’d like to chat with you about. Below are the notes from each of the items. I hope you’re interested

Where’d the videos go?

If you hadn’t noticed, the videos for Thursday and Friday are not here. They weren’t posted & they weren’t recorded. In short, my camera didn’t fail, but I did. I had some issues with my computer loading up videos and just decided to skip out on the videos – with plans to shoot weekend videos to make up for it. As you can see now, there are no weekend videos either. Sorry for that. This week we’ll pick up right where we left off though… which brings me to my next piece of news

I’m going to be video blogging about MMA

The great guys over at MMA Mafia and I are talking right now about doing an MMA Mafia TV for their site. A weekly round up video of what’s been happening in MMA. I think it’s an awesome idea and as one of the owners and I were talking about, I think that video blogging will be the future of MMA blogging – we’re just getting a jump start on it.

The video’s won’t be posted here, but I will make sure there’s a section in the sidebar of this site that you can click to check them out. I’d love to have readers from here check out the videos there as well. We’re still in the process of setting everything up, but I’m hoping to have the first episode done and live within the next week or so. It’s going to be fun

The third tie-in

So, in semi-related news, I’m working right now on a manifesto. A manifesto for a group (or Tribe) that I am looking to start networking with. The group is already out there – my goal is to just bring them together. If you’ve been following me on twitter, you should have seen this quote (it’s also in my twitter background design now too):

We are not the leaders of the future, we are the leaders of today

It’s part of the manifesto I am writing and it kind of embodies what I’m looking to do here. There’s not too many details yet, but I hope to collect the members of this already hidden tribe and help shine some light on it. Keep your eyes open to the site and subscribe to make sure you don’t miss future updates. I’ll be doing a video blog about it this week as well.

The textures you might have missed

I’ve been putting textures up on my flickr account now for a while and figured I’d showcase some of them here so you can see them and check them out. Below are screenshots of various textures I’ve got live. If there are any you’d like to see a full 20-30 texture set of, just let me know. *a quick note, these pictures are all from sets of 5-10 textures – so make sure you check out the entire flickr stream to see the rest.

So yeah, that’s the news for now. I hope you’re all enjoying the weekend.

Today is Texture Thursday – and that means that you get a free set of textures to download! The textures today were shot by both myself and my girlfriend (we’re not sure who shot what – but she swears she did all of the good ones ). The texture set includes 20 high resolution red grunge textures which are actually the ground at a tennis court.

Below are screenshots of three of the textures in the set. The size of each image in the set is 3648×2064 so you can virtually use the textures for anything from web designs to printable works like flyers and business cards. Below the screenshots are the download links from Rapidshare and Mediafire.

Download from Rapidshare (41.70 MB)

Download from MediaFire (41.70 MB)

Looking for more textures? Check out Design Shard for their awesome textures – you know, I had a set released there a few weeks back and also had another set of yellow grunge concrete textures released this week. I’ve also got free textures on my flickr account that I regularly post. And don’t forget the older free textures I’ve released here.

Have you ever come across an opportunity to grow your business or do something great? How many times have you let that slip through your fingers? Today’s episode is about just that – and it features the recent news of Fedor not being able to fight Josh Barnett because Barnett tested positive for steroids. What a huge opportunity gone to shit because of Barnett doing something stupid – don’t let that happen to you!

Thanks to everyone who’s watching the videos – and don’t forget about Texture Thursday tomorrow!

Lets sit for a minute and pretend that the advice everyone gave you was wrong. Lets pretend that the idea of “completing the big tasks first” is good for productivity. Lets just pretend for a minute, ok? What if I said that they were wrong (in my opinion)? Thats what today’s video is about.

I am not saying that it’s wrong to go through the big tasks on your to do list first, but I am saying that for some, it might be easier to knock out the smaller tasks to build up momentum and motivation to complete the final tasks. Have you tried that before? My analogy in the video was that it’s like rolling a snowball down the hill – it’ll pick up speed and also pick up more snow along the way, just like if you were to start small and get to the bigger stuff later. And have you tried rolling a snowball UP a hill? I don’t think it works out as well.

As a freelancer, I find it hard to focus sometimes and I find that I am unmotivated a LOT of the time that I know there’s a ton of things to do. So I knock out the smaller stuff first because it’s easier, and along the way I build that happiness to see check marks on my to do list. So here’s to you trying something different – it just might work out for you, I know it does for me.