“Excuse me. You can’t have dogs in here.”
That’s what everyone with a dog was told at the Silverlake Farmer’s Market in LA when I was visiting last year.
Not by a cop.
By my 4-year-old nephew, Samson.
It’s not that he worries about food safety or crowd control. He just likes rules. They’re very important to him. And “no dogs at the Farmer’s Market” was a rule he’d heard.
(He’d also heard “no taking thumbtacks off the kitchen cork board and then putting them in your bed as a joke and then not being able to find them,” but ignored that one.)
It’s not just 4-year-olds who are arbitrarily into rules.
People in the online business world? Whoo! It’s a rule-lover’s paradise. They’re self-appointed Biz Cops, wandering around the virtual halls with flashlights and writing up citations for bizarre infractions.
Like Bobby in that Brady Bunch episode where he becomes a hall monitor and gets carried away writing up everyone for every little violation and then nobody in his school or family likes him. (And then he has to break a rule to save some girl’s cat and then he overflows the laundry room with suds trying to wash his soot-covered pants. Plus, a B-plot where Mike buys a fixer-upper boat that we never see again.)
Everyone’s a Bobby Brady these days.
I get emails like: “Just wanted to point out that you’re [sic] About page has a lot of information about you. But as a rule, you’re [sic] About page isn’t about YOU. It’s about your customer! Hope that helps, love your brand, have a great day! :)”
Or unsubscribes that say: “This newsletter didn’t have any actionable advice. Therefore, it didn’t deliver value.”
Because they read some blog post called “5 Rules For Delivering Massive Value In Your Newsletter” and #4 was “Provide 3-5 Actionable Tips.” IT’S A RULE, YOU GUYS! Meanwhile, has this person ever followed any of those tips? Doubt it.
I’m so glad I didn’t know any rules when I started this business.
I just put up a website, and then some services. I wrote my blog about whatever. I still do.
I’f I’d known the rules, I wouldn’t have a business yet. I’d still be taking the word “I” out of my About page.
In fact, I have my own business because I hate rules. “Work starts at 9 am.” Oh, does it? Middle manager, please.
Now you.
What rules do you wish you’d never heard?
What rules are you following just because you heard they were rules?
And if you break them, who’s going to arrest you?
‘Member when Bobby’s pants split at the end of that episode? And Carol made a joke about a “draft, aft”? Who here thought “aft” was a Brady Bunch word for “ass”?
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS.
ps Samson is now almost 6. Not that he’s going to read my blog, but I don’t want him hearing that I called him a 4-year-old.
“Just wanted to point out that you’re [sic] About page has a lot of information about you. But as a rule, you’re [sic] About page isn’t about YOU. It’s about your customer! Hope that helps, love your brand, have a great day!” LOL, that’s hilarious!
I like to know the rules because I’m curious to see how other people solved this or that problem or creative challenge before, but then I usually don’t follow them — or at least never blindly. I much prefer to play and explore things freely, without getting constrained by someone else’s solutions.
Normally I’m a rule breaker – at my very own wedding I said SCREW a receiving line. I want to DANCE. In my old job I was sick of being told what to do all day so I said I’m creating my own business and it’s gonna be AWESOME and I’ll never have to sit in a cubicle again. Or have to go to lunch at 12:23 because Sally doesn’t get back from her lunch at 12:20 and I’ve gotta give her 3 minutes to get to her cubicle before I’m allowed to leave.
The rules that are pissing me off royally right now are Google’s totally arbitrary rules for ranking. How the hell am I supposed to know what algorithms they’ve decided to change to today? I think they do that because they think it’s funny to screw with people. July 14th rolls around and I’m thinking gee, this is great, I’m getting tons of traffic finally after years of hard work. And then July 15th hits and bam. Traffic tanks. WTF?
I think I just digressed there.
Next time someone complains that you’re not delivering “actionable” tips, you could point out that, just yesterday, the word meant “grounds for a lawsuit,” and still does with lawyers and their friends/family/neighbors/enemies. Much unintentional comedy in the blogs of these rulers.
I have been having an e-mail newsletter purge as I am overwhelmed with the high volume of self appointed gurus sending me frequent emails throughout the week telling me how I should be running my business, what I am doing wrong and what I should be doing. I admit Laura I was about to hit ‘unsubscribe’ with you too (!) but your catchy text made me read your post and I’m so glad I did. I have been self employed for a total of 12 years and recently realised I know a thing or two about business already. I don’t need to tie myself up in knots trying to re-invent every single wheel because of the new technology. I will continue with my e-newsletter purge, though yours is welcome. Have a great day!
I like this. I like it a lot.
Laura, you’ve done it again! You’ve made me throw my fist in the air (next to Maggie Marie).
It’s true! I started my business bc the RULES didn’t work!
I even thought recently that the more educated I am about online business,
the more scared & held back I feel.
Thinking back to the beginning when I was going on ENERGY (anger, mostly) and ETHICS (there was a niche that wasn’t filled in my industry and my clients were coming in more sick)…
I got so much more done with gumption & a few guidelines. Thanks, Laura, you’ve given me momentum!
I’m so glad I read this post! Rules are probably the biggest reason I get stuck with launching my business. It’s just me, folks! I don’t have a freakin’ entourage of people who can constantly be working all the angles for me. Thank you, Laura. Thank you. Screw rules.
Yes! Yes! Yes! I recently un-subscribed to a bunch of newsletters because I realized my emails were making me feel guilty and stressed out! But clearly yours survived the cut. After all, the whole reason I blog is to inspire others My way right? Right!
Wait a second… is not following the rules an actionable tip? 😉
I am mid email newsletter purge too. Too many gurus. Laura’s nearly got the chop, but I kept it for the same reasons. 🙂
This is the best!
I love to use exclamation points in my writing. It’s the Italian/Irish in me not being able to create “tone” in things like email or blogs or tweets.
So imagunna use the exclamations! And anyone who gives a fiddley foo can suck it.
Ps normally I’m always following the rules so this feels very vigilante for me.
Pps I get the strangeness of a psychic following rules…
Oh gawd I can’t take any more business rules. Like this one: “Don’t post smoothie bowls on Instagram 5 times a week unless you’re a 16-year-old health coach in California. Pollutes your brand.”
Puh-lease. Don’t police my fruit soup.
😛
And I think the fact that your newsletter doesn’t follow the rules makes it WAY more entertaining (and not stressful like the ones that tell me I’m forgetting something crucial and my career will be over if I don’t open the email…soon!).
I love me some rule-breaking Laura Belgray blog posts! 🙂
When it comes to “rules” in the online space… it kind of feels like it’s something in the water. Like we drank the kool-aid and it’s hard to remember what life was like before we read blogs, attended webinars, and spent so much time in this “bubble”.
I find it easier to recommend to my clients how they could break rules, like not posting 3x per day on their Facebook page if they don’t have a huge following yet… Or not redesigning their entire website, but instead creating a simple 1-page landing page that they can use to describe their new direction.
This reminds me, I’ve got some rules to break right about now… 😉
From what I’ve seen, the most successful people break rules all the time. I’m thinking of Howard Stern, for one, who was fired from/kicked out of every radio station and now makes $100 million a year.
Donald Trump. I’m not a fan, but he’s broken every Don’t Be a Business Douchebaggery rule and somehow manages to do alright (or is that all right? See? I probably broke some rule right there).
And what about Lady Gaga? Is there a rule she’s ever actually followed? Doubtful. And she’s not doing too shabby, either.
So I say bring your dogs into the supermarket, use “I” on your About page and you’re one step closer to making billions. 🙂
Why I love you so much Laura. I am so sick of rules. Like you must sell something to a new subscriber right off the bat. You have to post fun family pics on FB. Must love dogs. (that one is unwritten and sorry i don’t want the responsibility). Keep breaking the rules your blog posts are pretty much the only ones I’ll actually read the whole thing.
God I love you. YES TO ALL OF THIS. I recently just read this horrible article on Slate about how young writers are taking to the internet and GOD FORBID talking about “shameful” topics under their own names. Think sites like xoJane, Jezebel, Gawker, (Slate), etc. And editors are taking advantage of these young writers because these kind of salacious blog posts get lots of clicks and they sort of feel like tabloid fodder. So I started feeling super guilty about that blog post I wrote for xoJane just last week about an abusive boyfriend. And that personal blog post where I talked about my job at a sex museum. I felt like that to be a Real Writer I had to follow these rules about what makes true, literary content. WHICH IS BULLSHIT. Because those types of personal posts are what made me want to be a writer. They help me feel less alone and less weird and just, more, human. So fuck you Slate editor. Oh, and GO LAURA.
I love this. Rules suck. There is no one way to do anything. Reeeebbbbbbbellllliiiiooon. (Holding fist high in the air, for you!)