facing your fears

Michael Babcock interviews me on blab Continuing to push my comfort zone

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Hello again; I know its been a while since you have heard from me. I haven’t been posting new articles, recording new videos, or releasing my email newsletter. I won’t go into the reasons behind it, but let me just say I apologize. I know that many of you find my work inspiring and depend … Read more

Why I sing and how I can help you free the song in your own heart

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Hello again; I just recorded another video for my podcast about the amusement industry and the equipment my clients have for sale. Its called Calliope Corner, and you can find my videos on youtube.

For those of you who haven’t seen any of them I should tell you that I start off each one with me singing and then I introduce the show, mention the website and contact information; then go into whatever ride, game, inflatable, etc I’m talking about.

Its been a while since I recorded one of these videos. I was launching the new site and dealing with some minor health issues. But I had forgotten how much I enjoy recording the videos. More importantly I forgot how good I feel when my friends write to say how nice my voice is and how good I sound. One friend even suggested that my singing could make me famous.

I am happy with my singing, but it wasn’t always that way. A very short time ago I wouldn’t have had the confidence to sing in public much less on youtube where millions of people could see and hear me.

Some history

You see, on my dad’s side of the family most everyone can sing or play a musical instrument or both. My grandfather J. V. Ivey was a great finger picker guitar player. He also sang mostly country and had a radio show in their home town of Union, South Carolina.

My dad Maxwell Ivey Sr. played the guitar and sang too. He was more of a strummer. Him and his brothers and friends had at least one band when he was a teenager.

Being a daddy’s son I wanted to do what he did. When me and my brother Michael were young he bought us both starter guitars. He put different colored finger polish on the frets of mine to help me make the chords. i could make the sounds but couldn’t make music.

I could sing or at least my mom and dad never complained. Me and my dad would sing along to radio, 8 tracks, and later cassettes while driving to and from events, family outings, scout meetings etc. We liked the same music and sang together.

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What I learned about myself from my first ebook

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Hello again; This week I’m here to share something very exciting and to ask for your help. Some of you may have heard that I have been working on my first ebook. It will be a short motivational one that I plan to expand upon later. On Friday I sent it to my editor the very talented Lorraine Reguly of Wording Well. She told me that she should have it ready to publish in about two weeks. However, this isn’t the end. I still need to choose a book cover image, set a price, and decide upon whether or not to offer it free to subscribers. And this is where I will need your help.

Some background

I always like to start with a little background, so first I’ll tell you how this all came about. A while back I left a comment on a post at Eve Koivula’s site. The post was about creating online products, and I had asked for suggestions on creating your first one. She was good enough to write back and offer to work with me. She even sent me a copy of her recently released ebook hoping it would help me focus on my target audience and their needs.

Later, she asked me if I wanted to participate in an online summit. She said that if I did I would need to have a product ready in time to offer it to the viewers. She also informed me that I would need to have an email auto responder by then. This is why I signed up with aweber. At first I thought about saying no because the deadline was coming up very fast by then. But Eve explained that it didn’t have to be a huge deal especially for my first effort.

So, I decided to go for it hoping I could meet the deadline. I started writing the book and had about half of it done when she informed me that they had decided to make it an all female event. I didn’t have a problem with this as I understand the value of inviting people who can put buts in front of the screens. But you know me I believe in finding the good in anything. I decided that it was way past time for me to create an online product of my own. So, I kept working on it.

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