Ciao, Lovely Simplerista!

I was just at SXSW in Austin, the huge film, music, and "interactive" festival/conference. I've been there three times before—in 2010, 2011, and 2014, but this was the first time where my interests spanned all three, rather than just interactive. 

In many ways, the experience reminded me of Burning Man. I went in with an idea about what I wanted to get out of it, but what I got was something completely different, and way more valuable.

Basically I got a completely fresh look at myself and my art. What I came to realize is, that the driving force behind a lot of what I do, including art and business, was about getting approval, from other people, as well as myself and my inner critic.

A lot of us do a lot of things in order to get love, approval, and appreciation, and what I've noticed is, it's a bit of a shit sandwich. You see, first we contort ourselves into crummy positions, doing things for the sake of getting the approval. Then we either get the approval or not. If we don't, we feel like shit. If we do get the approval, we feel good for about a minute, and then we feel bad again, and we need another hit of approval. Does that sound like a great way to live to you? Not to me.

Just tonight, in my bathtub, I was reading an interview with Ed Sheeran (one of my favorite artists and songwriters, btw) in Rolling Stone magazine, where he cops to doing music for love and approval: "The whole musician thing kind of comes from wanting to be loved and wanting to be liked".

It ended up being 10 days with a lot of learning, a lot of reading, audio books, and journaling, in addition to the conference sessions, meeting people, and, of course, partying. All in all, one of the most intense and transformative weeks I've had in a while.

I love it when you go into something open for life to intervene and show you what you most need to learn at this point. I want to create art (software, businesses, music, paintings, poetry, sculptures, prose, food, and more) from a place of giving love, not as a way to try to get love.

I am love. I'm where love comes from. So are you. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll feel better about everything.

Simplero Working for You

Have you set up your new Simplero site? We now offer a full featured website including a blog and pages that you can control the content of. You can really, truly have all your Simplero business under one roof now! We are excited to have a new guide to help you navigate setting up your new site. Among other things, the guide takes you through customizing the look and feel of your site to make it match your brand, as well as building pages using the many different sections available for you to choose from. If you haven't yet started using the new Simplero site, make sure you check out the complete site guide.

Another new addition to our Simplero help site is The End User Guide. We have taken some of our most frequently asked questions and common issues and created a guide for you to pass on to your users to help troubleshoot issues. The new section to the guide covers everything from finding an end user ID or a forgotten password, through how to manage payments and even how to access podcasts. We hope this addition will make it even easier to give your customers the great experience they deserve.

See the complete End Users Guide here.

Featured Customer Interview

This week we had the pleasure of having a chat with Dr. Robert McNeilly, who founded the CET in 1998 to introduce Ericksonian Hypnosis and the Solution Oriented Approach to hypnosis, counseling and coaching to Australia. Today, he offers online teaching programmes for therapists who want to learn about hypnosis and therapy – all through Simplero:

I looked unsuccessfully for a way to present online programmes, gather contacts and integrate these with a shopping cart and experienced increasing frustration ... until Simplero. Here I found a perfectly integrated programme that was flexible and reliable and about half the cost of the previous difficult components I'd tried.

Read the whole interview here!

Want to be featured in an interview like this? Come introduce yourself by emailing sherrie@simplero.com, or fill out the survey here. 

Fresh Interviews   

This week, I had the joy of having a great conversation with Alexandra Harbushka on Real World Woman...Sex, Money & Food (iTunes.)

Random Links from around the Interwebs

Who's Google's customer? Hint, not you.

And they won't be able to resist listening in on your conversations.

I'm a big fan of the vomiting emoji.

Embrace the love,
–Calvin