I have the flu.

Jaime just walked in from her massage appointment and handed me a bouquet of flowers.

I. Love. Her!

I signed onto my MySpace account earlier today. I very rarely go on MySpace anymore, and for some reason I decided to look through old pictures (will leave some at the bottom of this post). It was fun to go through and reminisce, and now I’m really looking forward to visiting home for a few days.

It also makes me happy to have a blog… one day I’ll come back, read all this stuff and feel nostalgic.

Annnyway, here’s some news:

1. I’m famous! And I love Andrew Wee. Find out why and how here.

(Bonus: You get to listen to a 25 year old who sounds like she’s 7! Rock on!)

2. I made some February financial goals. Actually, they were due February 26, which is the day this post will come out… so maybe I’ll meet them by then.

One of the goals was to have all of my credit card debt paid off, and the other was to be making a certain amount of PASSIVE income per month.

Annnnyway, as of right now (a few days before the 26th), I’ve officially paid off 5 of my 6 credit cards. I’ve been cutting them up one at a time, with no intentions of using them again (minus a random charge here and there that I’ll pay off immediately just to keep them active). It’s SUCH a liberating feeling.

As far as passive income – I haven’t met the goal just yet, but I had a fantastic idea yesterday morning (if I do say so myself ). I emailed a really awesome guy and fast implementer, and we should have the groundwork laid out and orders in by the time this post comes out. I can’t see how I wouldn’t be able to reach my goals after this… and I’m SO looking forward to it.

3. I drove to Vegas this weekend to meet up with a potential project partner for yayFOOD, Steve Clayton. It was a great experience. First of all, he’s just an awesome guy. I had a really fun time talking to him. He used to be a Vice President for a Fortune 500 company, and then decided to quit the corporate world and get into Internet Marketing. It was very interesting to talk to someone with such success in the offline world, and to see how he applies some of his corporate training principles to online.

More important than that though, he’s so fun! He ended up taking Jaime and I to Nine at The Palms for dinner, where we had the most delicious food ever. I seriously didn’t think I was going to eat for days after that meal…

And lastly, we came up with some AMAZING ideas for yayFOOD. That site is going to be ri-di-cu-lous.

I guess that’s it for now. It’s 3:44 in the morning and I still have a few things on my to-do list before I go to bed. I’ll leave you with some of those old pictures.

Jen and I on our “hick” road trip to Memphis…

A picture Nathan Gilder made last year when someone said I reminded them of Yoda…

My first job, back when I was 16 (pre-yayFOOD )…

When I first met my good friend Alison

Being silly on another road trip with Jen and Alison…

My prom Halloween costume 2 years ago (worked out much better than this year’s costume – a tree)

Some of my friends strategize on what type of blog they want to have. Should it be business? Should it be personal? etc.

I just kind of type whatever’s on my mind and hope for the best.

With that said, I have a weird question. I know at least a few people read this blog (it says so on MyBlogLog )… so please give me your opinions, guys! I’ve actually asked a lot of people about this specific one, and their responses have been fascinating to me.

(If I don’t get some opinions, I’m just going to start typing random people’s names so they come here via Google Alerts. I’d prefer you just save me the time. )

And a disclaimer: I’m NOT seeking dating advice… I’ve already made my mind up on the situation. I’m just curious about human psychology, to see what people put up with, how people view honesty, and if I’m just completely deluded (which is fine too. )

I’ll throw my opinion in here because even though I did it with friends, they all disagreed anyway.

Okay. So I meet a dude a few weeks ago. He’s seemingly really good at life. Successful, intelligent, cute, charming, etc.

(VERY charming actually. At one point he wrote down my favorite book, saying that I seem really intelligent and if I say it’s a good book, he wants to read it. Single guys, note that one. It’s a winner.)

So we talk via text message for a week. That week passes, and he says he’s going to text me next week about getting together for drinks.

I hear from him one time that week, and the text said “Happy Valentine’s Day”. Nothing about drinks.

Okay. So in my mind, I’m thinking the dude’s done with. If you say you’re going to do something… do it. And if you can’t even be honest NOW in the “initial impression” stage, what would happen 3 months from now? It didn’t even occur to me as an option to accept this, to be honest.

The story would have ended here, but somehow this comes up in a conversation with two of my friends. They both say I’m being too harsh. My one friend says she does the same thing as the guy did (says she’ll call and then doesn’t), and the other says there’s no way that would be a dealbreaker to him.

Fascinated, I called some other people. A third friend (who’s also a pickup artist and freaking TEACHES PEOPLE how to pick girls up!!!) said that this is part of the “L.A. Lifestyle”, and I’m going to have to get used to it. He said people make plans here, but you can’t consider them permanent until you get a confirmation call that day.

I asked people outside of L.A. too though, and they also said that I was being too stringent.

In all, I’ve probably talked to about 15 or so people about this (I’m really that interested). I’d say 88% say I’m being too harsh, 10% halfheartedly agree, and one person completely knew what I meant (he also went to Warrior Camp, I wonder if there’s a correlation. )

Tell me what YOU think please!

Between work and FUN, I’ve been really busy lately. Here’s some things going on in my life…

1. EUROPE!!!! Dude. I’m planning out the different countries that I can go to via Eurail, and I’m SOOOOOO pumped.

Here’s some of the countries the Eurail covers: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland.

Ridiculous right!?

And even more ridiculous – I have not ONE – but TWO friends that want to meet me in London when I get there.

The one person, Tahir Shah, is someone that I just met at Vegas… he’s already found me two copy clients and has offered to drive to London, meet me at the airport, help me with accomodations, and hang out for a few days. I’m going to marry that guy.

And Alex Jeffries... he promises to show me how to party, London-style. He makes big promises, we’ll see if he can live up to them!

(BTW – I totally registered IMPartyGirl.com and InternetMarketingPartyGirl.com after multiple suggestions a week or so ago. They redirect to my blog at the moment. )

2. I love doing consulting. Sooo much fun. Random, but I just looked over at my to-do list and it was on there.

3. I have the photo shoot for my book soon!!! $#&#%$ I can’t wait! The Woman’s World photo shoot was a BLAST, I can only imagine what this’ll be like.

I have a hair appointment with Los Angeles’ #1 colorist on the 20th (I think this blog post comes out a day after). Those reviews for her are RIDICULOUS… people were calling their appointments with her a “spiritual experience”.

Love it!

4. Everyone always talks about reciprocation and how you need to give first… and I figured I’d share a personal story, because again, I’m seeing something on my to-do list that’s reminding me of it.

A while ago, on The Warrior Forum, I saw some dude offer a $197 sales letter Special Offer to “get his foot in the door”. He ended up giving 2 people in 2 different niches a 100 or so word article, at best… and the articles were almost exactly the same.

I kept watching the thread to see what was happening (the 2 customers and the dude were arguing in there and the guy refused to refund their money), and one of the customers ended up saying something like, “Come on… family man to family man, can you refund my money?”

Something about that made me feel really bad, so I wrote to him and offered to write him a free sales letter. I offered to write the other dude a sales letter too, even though I didn’t feel as bad with him… but I figured I’d be fair.

First interesting part of the story is that while both seemed excited – the family man guy never returned my questionnaire back to me, while the other one did.

So second dude gives me the letter, and it’s in the Forex market. Ugh. I never wrote a Forex letter before, and I slaved over that thing. It was seriously the hardest letter I ever wrote. I know nothing about Forex, it seemed boring, and I had to go research all these sales letters with Forex-language…

Annnnyway, like I said, I just did it because I felt bad for them. But what happened out of it was insane:

a) Turns out this guy’s a #3 seller on Clickbank for one of his products! I had no idea. His expertise is invaluable. I saw he was using a certain script on one of his sites and asked him about it, and it turns out that he had an in-house programming team make it. And…

b) He offered to give me that script for free (it’s normally $10 per sale recouped).

c) He went on to buy Phantom Opt In, another sales letter, and a package of autoresponders. Oh, and…

d) He referred me to another client.

And lastly,

e) That godforsaken letter converts at 40% for his prenotification list! Um, awesome testimonial?

In short… believe the reciprocation stuff. This isn’t the only story I have about it, but it’s one of my favorites.

5) I’m going to Vegas on the 22nd to meet with an INCREDIBLE guy that I was talking to via my Membership Challenge. I ended up writing a piece of copy for him, we were talking… turns out he gets 1000-3000 SALES for a competing product of yayFOOD’s per month via AdWords.

(SALES, not dollars.)

Annnnyway, we’re meeting to talk about project ideas. We’ve already exchanged a trillion ideas together, and we have a plan to completely dominate the weight loss market. And I’m soooo excited about it, because it means I get to help more people.

6) That reminds me of another reciprocation story, but there’s a good business tip included here, so I’ll mention it.

Whenever someone cancels their account on yayFOOD, I ask them a question that’s phrased the same way that Jack Canfield suggests in Success Principles. “What would it take for yayFOOD to get to a “10″ on a 1-10 scale?”

(I then chart the feedback and act appropriately.)

But anyway, when charting the other day, I offered certain people who gave me feedback free lifetime accounts. The one lady was really excited, and told me that “Word of mouth is the best form of promotion, and you have my word that I’ll be telling people about your site.” We talked a little more, and it turns out that the lady works with American Express. Even outside of that – even if she didn’t tell potential people on the phone – she said she works with 200 or so other people that sit down all day and want to know about how to release weight. Innnnnsane!

Alright, this is a long blog post. Again. I’ll leave here.

P.S. – I’m going to breakfast with Jaime soon… at a place where we saw The Rock a few weeks ago. L.A. rocks.

I was telling Jaime that I needed some excitement…

So I just booked a one-way ticket to London on March 18th.

Figure I’ll hang out in Europe for a few months.

SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!^##@^%$#@^$#@(*&

Spain, Italy, everywhere, here I come!!!

I decided not to go to Orlando so that I could focus on my February goals, which I think is going to be good… even though it was SO tempting…

Some great things that’ve happened this week:

1. I wrote a letter for someone in the Forex market a few weeks ago, and he just told me that for his pre-notification list, it’s converting at 40%!!

2. I OFFICIALLY HAVE A BED! I’d been sleeping on the floor this entire time… now I wake up, roll over, and still stay on my mattress – as opposed to the computers I’d been knocking into before.

This leads me to the next awesome thing…

3. I drove a U-Haul truck! As I’ve mentioned, I’m not the most stellar driver ever… but I had to pick up my bed (and desk!)… so I pushed myself WAY out of my comfort zone and drove that humongous truck. And I’m alive to tell the story!

4. I did an awesome interview with Andrew Wee the other day… that was actually a lot of fun, I’ll be posting it as soon as he puts it on his blog.

5. Random: I think I blogged before about how negative thoughts have a tributary effect, and how any time you think one negative thing, it’s easy to just keep going?

One way that I’ve learned to combat this is by forcing myself to think of 10 positive things whenever I get in that mindset. Not only does it get me out of my bad mood, but it completely changes my attitude for the day.

6. We had another great Altitude mastermind this week.

I was going to include my notes in this entry, but I’m going to end now instead, write up the Altitude comments, and post-date it for a few days from now. Yay for blog content!

Ohhh… and if anyone wants to be a part of the Mafioso Marketing re-launch with Jason James, email me at rachelrofe at gmail.com!         

First of all, I’d like to say that Andrew Wee has officially made my day/week/month/life. Look at his most recent post!

***

I’ve been going to seminars galore lately! First I went to the Altitude follow up, where I met some fantastic people (including Chris Haddad, whose sales letter I never cease to salivate over) and got some incredible insight.

The whole “Altitude” series is monstrously value-packed. Jaime, Chad Morris, Evan Peelle and I have Altitude dates every Tuesday now, where we rotate locations and watch the series.

Just from the first few hours last Tuesday, I got incredible insight. One thing that Eben says to do is *really* figure out what your customer’s biggest fears and frustrations are, what they’re embarassed to admit, and what irrational conversations they’re having in their heads.

So… I did that. I went to a forum and asked people, and got some INCREDIBLE feedback. Despite how much I thought I knew my market (especially since I *was* the market for such a long time), as usual, I was surprised. I highly recommend that you do this in your niches.

Actually, I think I’m going to blog about something else I learned each week from the DVDs… once you learn something, not only is it your mission to share it with others, but you learn it even better.

***

After Altitude, I went to Vegas for the Master’s Seminar. I went with Jaime, Chad, and Evan again… and it was a fantastic time. We mostly partied, but I did get to meet and reconnect with some people, including Brian McElroy and Brian Kosobucki, Jason Moffatt, Jason Henderson (didn’t get to see him enough!), Mike Morgan, Simon Leung, Harris Fellman, Howie Schwartz, Dr. Mike, Tahir Shah, Donna Fox, Donna’s boyfriend Joey (the most amazing human being on the planet), Scott Byers, Ben Mack, Lee Collins, Robin Collins, Amanda… man, it was just awesomeness.

It was Brian McElroy’s birthday on Thursday night, so we made sure he had a good time. He ended up sick the entire next day, which I’m strangely very happy about.

Jaime has to charge her camera, pictures should be coming soon from that.

***

On Thursday, Simon Leung texted me and told me about Idea Incubator, which was being held 47 minutes away. Jaime and I decided to go, and it was a GREAT time.

The seminar was different than most because it was small and intimate… which meant that people could take more time to talk with the speakers. In fact, on Saturday night, there were 9 roundtables, and each speaker spent 20 minutes at each table, answering any question that people could think of.

The speakers there were fantastic. Simon Leung, Alex Mandossian, Matt Bacak, Armand Morin, Michel and Sylvie Fortin, Rory Cohen, Jermaine Griggs, Ray Edwards…. all top top notch people.

I was shocked that Jermaine Griggs actually knew who I was! I had blogged about him before, Google Alerts picked it up, and he remembered. Craziness! Listening to him speak was incredible… you should hear about all the customizations that he does to his programs. Anything’s possible with him!

Alex Mandossian was AMAZING. Totally brilliant, a fantastic teacher, very passionate and insightful, ridiculously dynamic speaker… can’t speak highly enough of him.

Simon has the pictures from that event… here’s one from Stu McLaren’s birthday dinner:

Jaime, Simon, Jermaine Griggs, Brent Coppieters, Jeff France, Faye McLaren, Stu McLaren, Greg France

***

I was scheduled to go to a few other things in Orlando next week… but all these seminars, while fantastic, are taking me away from meeting my February goals, so I might reconsider.

***

Other than that, everything’s great. I’ll include more in the Altitude posts as this one has already gotten quite long.