Hi Lovely Simplerista,

Good morning, America!

It's Wednesday morning here, the day after election day. It's raining, and the fog is hugging the mountain tops here in upstate New York where I spent election day.

I have to be honest: I did not see this coming. I was following along at FiveThirtyEight.com and for a long time they kept saying Hillary had a 90% chance of winning. Until the last week, when it went down to around 70%.

And then there were the signs. The actual signs. These past couple of days where Nomi and I have been driving around Connecticut and upstate New York, I've been really surprised by just how many Trump signs people had on their lawns or on their businesses. Very few for Hillary. Something was definitely going on.

Would Bernie have been able to beat Trump, and did the meandering by the Democratic party actually cause its ultimate defeat? Quite possible. Did Russian hacking tip the election? Also possible. It was a very close election.

The big take-away for me, though, and a big lesson for all of us in this business, is the triumph of being real.

You can disagree with Trump, you can think he's a disaster, a racist, misogynist, a con man, and many other things, but you can't say he's not real. He speaks his mind. He tweets in the middle of the night, unfiltered.

It's gotten him into a lot of trouble. A lot. It's gotten him ridiculed. A lot. But at the end of the day, it looks like people would rather vote for someone who's being real, and speaking their mind, however crazy, than someone who comes off as polished or filtered or fake.

To me, I would have loved to see the first female president. But I was never excited about Hillary. I just don't believe a word she's saying. I hear someone saying what she thinks I want to hear, what she has to say to sell me. I hear someone whose message has been filtered and measured and evaluated and tested.

You can't accuse Trump of saying what he thinks people generally want to hear. This election has proven just how hard it is for someone who's real to beat someone who's not.

It's scary to let yourself be unfiltered. You might get into trouble. It can be hard sometimes to walk back. Trump has definitely experienced that.

But at the end of the day, it's just so much more powerful.

I'm reminded of the TED talk that Tony Robbins gave a decade ago, following a talk by Al Gore. As I remember it, he says to Al Gore something along the lines of: "Mr. Gore. If six years ago, you had spoken to us with the conviction that you just demonstrated, you would have won the election."

That's the lesson for you and me: Be real. It may get you in trouble, but it's just so powerful, it's going to win you many more fans.

Even people who may be offended or upset by something you're saying are likely to at least respect you for being honest and real.

We're all starving for real. We've been bullshitted and lied to and talked down to for so long. We crave real.

In terms of the presidency, I'm hoping for someone real and compassionate and intelligent. To me, Bernie was that. Alas, that was too much for the Democratic party. Oh, the irony that they meddled with the primary election (see also Larry Lessig), and ended up losing to Trump!

Perhaps next time?

In the meantime: Be real.

New Features in Simplero

You know the check-box on the order form that asks people if they want to receive news and offers? 

We just launched a small new feature that lets you change which list they get subscribed to when they check this box, for a specific product. You can also choose to turn off the box entirely for any individual product.

This is useful when you're marketing a product that's for a different niche than your main business.

More details here.

For those of you with open spaces, we've now also added Facebook and Twitter sharing meta data to categories and forum and blog posts, so the previews now much better reflect what's on the page.

Last, but not least, I wanted to give you yet another sneak peek at some of the exciting things you are very soon to see coming to Simplero:

Random Links from Around the Interwebs

Here are some beautiful thunderstorms to soothe your mind.

Here's a bunch of unsatisfying things, just in case you want to focus on something unsatisfying on a smaller scale.

The surveillance state is real and it's pervasive. Sorry, but I think it's important that we do something about this.

Have a great week.

Lots of love,
–Calvin, and the incredible Simplero team