Drum roll, please! The OFFICIAL name of the upcoming book is:

Upgrade to Free

The Guide to the Best Free (and Low-Cost) Tools and Apps

The jacket design is next, and we have three finalists. It’s tough picking a cover. I know what I like, but I showed it to some peers last night, and they preferred the one I disliked the most. Just goes to show you that it’s no longer about me. This blog, my promotions and basically my business model thus far has been built on the things that I like, and now I need to think beyond myself.

It’s all a learning process.

More updates coming soon!

I don’t know if you heard, but I wrote a book. It’s going to be out in October, and my publisher plans a 1st run of 3,000 books.

To me, this is BIG. The publisher thinks he may be able to package the book with another in their library, which means I should sell 1,500 books right off the bat. So I’ve been worrying and thinking and overthinking about how to sell the other 1,500. Wow — finding 1,500 people who find value in what I wrote is BIG, right? Well, I guess I only need to find about 1,499 people, because my parents are obliged to buy a copy.

And then this weekend I spent 9 hours in a car on a trip back from Tahoe with the amazing Mark Rosenberger, a cancer survivor, speaker, author and all-around superstar. He’s written three books, and I was picking his brain for the best ideas to market my book and get more speaking gigs. I told him about the plans I had to find those 1,499 people. And he told me about the tens and tens and tens of thousands he had found to buy his books.

Wow. That’s BIG. That’s beyond BIG. That’s COLOSSAL! He told me how he personalized books for corporations. How he worked to get his book into the top 50 best sellers on Amazon, a move that earned him tens of thousands of sales in a week. He gave me idea after idea after idea of ways I could increase my sales and get my name out there.

And all the while, my little inner voice was chanting, “You could never do that — that’s far beyond your capabilities.”

Do you have this little voice, the one who immediately puts you in the “not worthy enough” category? Mark’s an amazing guy for sure, but why did I instantly decide he can do things that I can’t? Where does that self limitation come from, and how the hell can we squash it?

I bet each reader of Life on Avenue Z battles with self-imposed barriers — ones that don’t really have a basis in reality. We’ve established these false ceilings based on our self images, right? So can’t we change our opinions of ourselves and reach further, go farther and truly reach our dreams?

In May I crafted an Avenue Z success plan that included my steps to find those 1,499 people. But after talking to Mark and realizing how limiting my plans are, I think my July plans should be more about evaluating my views of success and blowing up the barriers that keep me from thinking BIG.

Who’s with me? Share your self-limiting thoughts below and write about how you plan to think BIG.

Some of the biggest names on Twitter say in order to really participate on the site, you need to follow everyone who follows you. These people follow thousands and thousands of followers and deftly manage complicated lists to interact with as many as possible. And the more they interact, the more followers they get. And the more followers you get, the bigger your reach, and the bigger you get, etc. You can see how this is great advice, right?

For the past couple of years, I’ve tried to do what they say. I’ve followed back countless self-professed SEO experts, marketing gurus, extraordinary life coaches and super-motivating speakers. I’ve followed back dogs, running events, community fundraisers and more. I drew the line at the Reverse Vasectomy Clinic that wanted to be friends, as well as anyone whose avatars showed nothing but cleavage or dollar signs.

As a result, I ended up following almost 2,000 people. Have you ever tried to keep up with the chatter of 2,000 people? Better yet, have you ever tried to carry on meaningful relationships with 2,000 people? When I first got excited about Twitter, I followed maybe 350 people. Many of them were fairly quiet, so I had a great opportunity to have real conversations with the ones who were chatty. They asked about me;  I thought about them. They made me smile when I saw their Tweets.

As my list of Twitter contacts grew, my Twitter friends’ posts slowly got lost in the ever-growing ocean of Tweets. All of a sudden, most of my Twitter updates pages were filled with comment after comment from people I didn’t know. The people who started following me were frequently people who used Twitter software to find new followers. They’d follow a few hundred new people at a time, give them a few days to follow back, then dump the ones who didn’t and find more to follow. Their following/follower relationship was usually something like 1.1/1 because they were always trying to grow their numbers.

As my Twitter friends disappeared, replaced by SEO tips, motivational quotes and retweets of other people’s motivational quotes and SEO tips, I had less and less to say. And the less I talked on Twitter, the fewer real people followed me, and the more I lost my real relationships. I could use Twitter lists and other tools to track “real people” versus Twitter machines, but I find those difficult as well, and I’d have to sort through my hundreds of followers to put everyone in their basket.

I miss my friends. I miss real Twitter conversations. Thus, I’ve decided to take Twitter back. I’m slowly unfollowing people I don’t have much in common with. When I go to their profile and see that I’m one of 31,000 friends, I don’t think I will be missed. In a few days, they’ll use their Twitter software to unfollow me back, so my Twitter reach will shrink considerably. I bet some people may be miffed that I’m dropping them from my roster, and I guess this move may hurt my chances to promote the book. But I’d rather have a smaller reach and better conversations than a tremendous following that I can’t relate to.

What’s your social media philosophy? Do you use Twitter to grow your business? If so, how do you manage the volume?

Let’s talk about someone else’s drama for once, shall we?

My executive suite falls between two partners in some kind of a financial business. These are two very, very angry young men without proper knowledge of their inside voices.

“What the EFF? You EFFING hang up on me, your partner? You EFFING [this] and you EFFING [that] and it’s my EFFING money, you EFFING EFF!”

And on and on. Sometimes there was banging of furniture and frequently slamming of doors. And of course, there was lots of storming out of one office then the other. After the worst squalls, my other neighbors would peek their heads into the hallway and whisper, “Is everything safe?”

I never really felt threatened by their fights, even though I was scared to knock on their door to remind them they were among professionals. When it first started happening, I tattled to the building management, and the guys received warnings. The other tenants, however, were very unhappy with the mayhem. Today the partners broke up, and one of them (the one I actually liked) moved out of the office officially.

What struck me about this situation was how very, very peaceful I am in my business. I don’t yell, and I don’t get yelled at. I don’t fight. The only drama is that sometimes I have too much to do and miss a deadline or have to stay very late or work over the weekend. At my last job, there was always drama. People fought, conspired, manipulated and backstabbed. When my email dinged, I would cringe, fearing my boss’ wrath. One of my best friends is a project manager, and she sometimes has to mediate when the heads of two departments with different goals get together with penis rulers to see who wins an argument about the direction of the project (but her colleagues also bring in donuts, which helps).

My wish for you in your workplace is going to sound disgustingly sappy, but here is my sincere hope:

May you find a job with peace. May you work in an environment where you smile every day.

May your feedback be constructive, not cruel, and your disagreements feel like opportunities, not opposition.

No one deserves to be abused by bullies at a job, and I hope if you’re in that situation that each day you find a few moments to take steps toward changing your environment.