How my innocuous “motivational” video turned me into Public Enemy #1 and made the Internet mad at me.
So, the other day I made a short video pretty much the same as all my videos about mindset. I meant it to be inspiring and motivational. Instead it brought an army of YouTube trolls down upon me. Actually it was only like 5, but since I never get any engagement on that account it seemed like a ton. The reason I only just started my YouTube account is this is how YouTube always used to be; no matter what you said every jerk on Earth would come out of the woodwork to try to own you. Recently YouTube added a filter to turn off negative comments but it’s apparently on the fritz. You can watch my oh-so-controversial video here. My video is about mindset and people who are so entrenched in their own distrust and negativity they’re actually trapping themselves in a miserable life. I touched on this a few months back in my blog post about the customer who got BIG mad at me for sending her a free tutorial link to complement her purchase (like, what). She kept sending me angry messages telling me she wasn’t paying for looks even though I explained over and over her physical product was on the way and this was just a free extra gift. Around the same time I was hosting a free challenge (again, FREE) about how I made money and started a business after my husband’s accident and a person ~ on YouTube of course ~ told me I should stop “preying” on people by telling them stuff that’s “too good to be true.” Now, if you know my story you know my business emerged from my frantic nighttime side hustles after my husband, Jerry, was disabled in a near-fatal work accident right after we bought our first home and became pregnant with our first child. I had NO money, NO experience running a business and I was pregnant and then had a newborn, working full time, and for a few months I had to help Jerry with basic care, like washing his hair. If I can start a business in that situation anyone can ~ it’s why I work so hard to communicate the importance of mindset in my messaging and why I made the YouTube video in the first place. What if I had just told myself this is how my life would be forever, that there was no escape from poverty? What if Jerry just signed up for disability and parked himself in from of the tv for the rest of his life? He could have; his hands are pretty significantly disabled now and he can’t go back to his former job as an electrical lineman. And I know a lot of people who did make those choices and their lives are pretty grim compared to ours. Instead, Jerry was a rock star. He went back to school with his GI Bill (he’s a veteran of the first Gulf War) while working full time and now he’s a very successful electrical engineer. He inspired me to work nights and weekends on side hustles until I could afford to quit my corporate day job and work from home. Was any of this fun? Hell no! It took Jerry seven long years of days starting at the crack of dawn and ending at 10PM to get his degree. It took me 18 months of near-constant work while I was pregnant and then with a newborn to make enough to quit my day job. Now we live in a lakefront neighborhood with an average $1.2 million home value, our own dock on the lake, we have a tiny cabin on an acre of waterfront property in the mountains, and we spend a week at a super-fancy Hilton Head Island resort every year ~ it’s a life I couldn’t EVER imagine back in 1998 when I started my business. Now, I never pretend I did this on my own. Jerry makes a lot more money than I do. But of course most families nowadays need two earners in the household. My business pays for extras like beach vacations and international adoptions but most significantly for me it allows to stay home with our children and take them wherever they need to go. I’ve been out of the shop almost this entire day because our youngest’s pollen allergy turn into walking pneumonia so I’ve been at the doctor’s office, the grocery, and the drug store (twice) getting everything he needs. Back in my corporate days I would’ve been an hour away from home with about 30 minutes to get all that done! I’m passionate about helping women, especially mothers, in similar situations find more time and freedom through entrepreneurship because I know it’s NOT too good to be true. It can happen for anyone! It’s why I’ve spent the past 13 years writing my free blog. Although it’s a pain to wade through all those posts you could literally learn to start your own doll hospital and shop without spending a dime! I guess what triggered everyone so much was some tough love I threw in when I said if you find yourself sinking into a poverty mindset you need to stop and apply all your energy to pulling yourself out of it, because if you don’t you’re never going to get anywhere, and if you don’t trust anybody the same thing’s going to happen. It took me 20 years to pay money to hire some business coaches ~ I was the Queen of teaching myself using free content. You can totally do that; I didn’t spend anything years and just used all the free platforms instead of buying a website or anything. Guess what? THAT’S why it took me 20 years to be a real business and not just a side-hustle odd-jobber. You get what you pay for in business just like everything else. And the reason a lot of people are sitting around in someone’s basement being YouTube trolls is their crappy scarcity mindset is keeping them from living the life they want. I know it’s easier to call other people scammers and shady and liars than it is to acknowledge you might be the person holding you back. It’s a lesson I’ve had to learn for myself, often painfully, many times over the years. The crazy thing is, I’m not selling a course or anything right now. I am working on one (so stay tuned if you’re interested) but I’m really just trying add value to people’s lives. And I have to thank my haters because, though they think they’re attacking me, they are actually telling YouTube my video is getting a lot of engagement, which means YouTube will show it to even more people. That’s more people I can help! I used to delete hateful comments but now I know (thanks to my business coaches) they drive engagement. I just try not to read comments unless I’m in a really good headspace. Other comments veered off into weird territory attacking my Pixie Dust filter and MLM business (um, my business is not an MLM!). So about the filter, which is supposed to make you look like the animated Tinker Bell… I LOVE it because it applies perfect fake makeup. Look, I’m gonna turn 50 in a couple months, I’m a mom, I run 14 online stores… I don’t have time for makeup a lot of days. Most of the other people making video content online are literally young enough to be my children and I often feel less than confident about my face. HOWEVER, as a woman I’ve spent my entire life comparing myself with manipulated photos of women that are made to look real. So I don’t use realistic makeup filters because I want it to be very obvious it’s not how I really look. No one old enough to be online is going to believe my face sparkles and has animated eyelashes and that’s why I use it. As for the current trend of hating on MLM (multi-level marketing) companies, I have some thoughts. While I was learning doll repair so I could start my business I worked for an MLM and I was really good at it. I rose to the top 5% of the company, worldwide, but then the founder died and it was sold to L’Oreal, who shut it down. I decided to start my own business rather than do another MLM but I know my success has been largely due to the skills I learned from my MLM business. I learned essentials like public speaking, email marketing, team leadership, customer service, and bookkeeping. The trick with MLMs is to pick a good one… I’ll talk more about that another time. So what do you think? Do I deserve all the hate for my video? Does talking about mindset anger you? Have you ever held yourself back because you were stuck in a victim mentality? Hit the comments and let me know.
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Do you practice manifestation? I never used to, at least not intentionally. Back in high school my boyfriend and I used to lie on the hood of my dad's old Oldsmobile 442, gazing up at the stars and watching jets flying overhead. If your lawn furniture isn’t a broken-down car at least some point in your life can you really call yourself an American? We would imagine where those people were going ~ was it a vacation? Commuting to glamorous jobs? I would think of all the places I’d like to go in the future. Italy (check ~ I even worked there one summer) California (tiny check; I’ve had two long visits since we moved away in 1977). I would plant the life I was going to have: live at the beach, lots of kids (with names all picked out), artist and writer… The problem is, I didn’t plan on the husband part of the equation. Turns out they don’t just do whatever you tell them! Another thing I didn’t count on is how much the things I want change over the decades. I did become an artist and writer, but working for myself and not the big fancy publishing company I once envisioned, since all the publishing companies basically went down in flames in the Y2K era. Fact is, although running my own business and publishing my own art and books is a lot of work and a little scary and much less reliable than a paycheck, if I could go back in time and change my career path I wouldn’t. I cherish my freedom too much. And my husband and I find our tiny cabin in the mountains better than the swanky destinations I once aspired to. When I got older the Harry Potter books came out and I fell in love with the idea of that magical universe. How wonderful would it be to wave a wand and create whatever you wanted? Mrs. Weasley’s dishes washing themselves especially appealed to me! I never bought into “The Law of Attraction” or “The Secret” or vision boards or things like that but as it happens, even rejecting those notions, an amazing number of things I envisioned have come true. I had an epiphany a couple years ago when I attended a virtual summit where we were supposed to write out our life goals and rate ourselves on how satisfied we were with our progress in each area.
As I listened to everyone else’s goals I realized how many of my dreams I had already achieved, many before I was 30 years old. The other people (mostly younger than I) wanted to own a home, travel to China, write a book, start a business… all things I’d already done. I was like, wait, am I good at this? And a little while later I was like, this is what I do! It hit me ~ how much faster could I make to the finish line if I was acting with intent rather than just puttering along, reacting to life? How much more successful could I have been if I hadn't rejected visualization? That very day I started meditating. Now every morning I spend at least 20 minutes envisioning my ideal outcome for that day and the future in general. I got over myself and read The Secret and found out everything I could about manifestation. If you're religious it's like praying, but very intense prayer, with a deep focus on gratitude for the gifts you already have. A lot of fitness trainers say, "If you fail to plan you plan to fail". I have always agreed with that as far as meal planning, home organization, workout plans and things, but I never before thought of applying it to the future. I just sort of blundered into things as they happened. Now I find planning out my life in advance makes me more successful. Does everything I want just fall into my lap now? No, not yet. But I find all kinds of unexpected opportunities have opened up. Now when I’m focused on a goal unconventional paths appear before me. Remember in my last email I told you how bad I felt my first attempts at webinars and challenges were and how I was trying to improve? Guess what? Today I had a free one-on-one call with a new coach to help me plan out a new one and he set up another meeting for us because he thinks my idea has great potential! And if you enroll to be a Beta Tester for the new AI funnel builder you'll get a free discovery call with a coach to validate your business idea as well! Things like that happen all the time now. I don’t know if I’m calling them forward or if it’s just that my eyes are open to recognizing them. It’s kind of like being a magician (I always have been so disappointed I’m just a muggle!); I think about my destination and a map appears! It’s just a tiny bit like having a magic wand. I invite you to explore this idea of manifestation. I know at first it might sound weird or crazy, but I can tell you firsthand if you can suspend your disbelief and try it you might find it helps you. I recommend the Mindvalley YouTube channel. It’s free and they have a series of guided meditations for everything from making money to getting a good night’s sleep. I am not a Mindavalley affiliate and this isn’t a sponsored post: it’s just a practice that helps me and I want to share it with you. And of you try it out, let me know ~ how did it go? What goals are you working toward? Drop a comment and fill me in! Just call me "leprechaun" because, just in time for St. Patricks Day I have a pot of gold for you! The Mandaline Lucky Sale is happening now on eBay and Etsy. Don't miss this chance to score great deals on one-of-a-kind dolls and other great pieces. Shop using the buttons below.
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My team just put the finishing touches on our BRAND NEW AI webinar funnel builder software!! And I wanna invite YOU to be one of the beta testers!!! See, if you’ve run even a single webinar in the past… you know how much time it takes to set everything up and write all the copy. I used to have to hire a dozen people just to get one launched (and it still took WEEKS…) But it was always worth it since webinars can be so insanely profitable. (It was a webinar that built ClickFunnels from $0 to 9-figures!!!) Well with our new AI software, you can skip all the headaches… And get right to the profits!! Leave the rest of the webinar funnel (pages AND copy) to our brand new generative AI software — I’m talking about the slides, webpages, emails, order-forms, everything… Written FOR you. And all based on PROVEN webinar hacks that have continually proven to make massive sales for over a decade. And done in as little as 60 mins from now!! Sound too good to be true? If you go sign up to be a beta tester… you can go see the magic for yourself!! I’ll even let you build out your full webinar funnel for FREE… AND unlock the $297 Perfect Webinar Training for FREE as well! Frankly, I can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t go try it out. ;) Doors are open right now… But won’t be open forever. So go and create your FREE account now (and get your webinar funnel launched in the next 60 mins!!!) Ah, it’s a tale both horrifying and heartwarming… Do you have a favorite pair of shoes? I do ~ my Fly Flot sneaker mules from Italy. They are SO comfortable and very hard to find in the USA. Today as I write this my shoes are sitting in the trash. Why, you ask, are they in the trash? Well, that’s thanks to Ming, our Himalayan rescue cat. Ming has recently taken to hiding in our closet. She’s very good at it. Even though I know she’s probably in there I can’t find her when I try to shoo her out before bed. Then, in the morning you open the closet door and she comes whipping out. We went through this last week and while she was trapped in the closet overnight she needed to relieve herself. My Fly Flot shoes were her litter box replacement of choice! I could smell as soon as I opened the closet she’d peed in there but the light is on the fritz and it was blinking and dim and I couldn’t see where. I stuck my foot into my shoe, planning to go out in the garage and get a flashlight and… it was wet! More than once the cat targeted my husband’s shoes, leaving dead or nearly-dead mice inside them. I think I would rather have that since it doesn’t smell as bad! I washed and washed my shoes but the smell just would not come out so I ended up throwing them away. Life is kind of revolving around shoes here, lately. I am in the middle of a months-long project listing doll shoes. I got a huge tub of Barbie and similar dolls and accessories and there are many, many shoes in the mix. A lot of them are unsold deadstock, evidently straight from the factory and never packaged. I’ve been researching them and listing them for sale with the Mattel item number whenever possible so collectors can complete their outfits with the proper shoes. So if Barbie’s your jam check it out below. Then there’s our track star. He’s 15 and growing like a weed. It seems like he outgrows his running shoes every week. So my shops are also getting full of barely-worn, very expensive athletic shoes. One pair of Nikes is still new because he outgrew those before he ever wore them! If you’re in need of men’s running shoes you’ll want to look below. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful we can provide these shoes for him, but I do wish I could slow time down just a little bit! Shoes have a special place in our family. My great-grandfather came to America from Norway when he was 17, speaking no English and penniless. He found work as a sailor on Lake Michigan and worked all the way up to First Mate when he was struck by polio and paralyzed. My grandfather could remember riding piggyback around the yard one day and then his dad unable to walk the next. After that great-grandpa became a shoe salesman. He wasn’t very good at it and they had 8 kids so they were very poor.
My grandfather grew up and went to visit Norway in 1980. His own father had never returned or saw his parents or siblings who stayed there again. Grandpa was surprised when he arrived to meet a cousin he’d never heard of and find out he had an aunt no one ever mentioned. It seems his cousin, Anna, was born out of wedlock. In Norway that’s no big deal (traditionally once a couple became engaged they slept in the same bed with a ribbon dividing the two halves) but in America at the turn of the 20th Century it was a scandal, so my great-grandfather just never mentioned he had a sister and niece. It turns out he never forgot them, however. When Anna, by then a very old woman, met my grandfather she started to cry. She explained his father had sent her shoes all through her childhood because her family was too poor to buy them. She told him she could still remember the fin skoen (“fine shoes”) he sent her. So, Great-Grandfather, despite being so poor people left bags of food on the doorstep, sent shoes to Norway for the rest of his life unbeknownst to anyone in the family to the niece no one knew existed. It’s hard to imagine our abundance compared to the lifestyle most people had just a couple generations ago. We are truly blessed, even if sometimes we stick our foot into a wet-with-WHAT shoe! Years and years ago when I learned to re-string dolls I never imagined where that one skill would lead. At the time I was just trying to fix my mother’s dolls. Once I learned how I began buying dolls to repair and resell. It was a little hobby business; my children were very young then and I didn’t have enough time to make a living at doll repair.
I began recounting my adventures in doll repair in my Mandaline Artful Living blog, mostly just to keep in practice with writing as I felt I was becoming rusty. All of a sudden, people all around the world wanted to send me their dolls to repair. I became overwhelmed with work, so I decided to sell stringing kits with instructions and supplies to enable others to repair their own dolls. Still I had people wanting to send their dolls to me. I raised my prices to encourage people to buy the kits. And I raised them, and raised them, and raised them… and now I’m charging $100 per hour to string dolls and people are STILL sending them to me. Right now I have a studio full of dolls being repaired and I am expecting 18 more next week! It’s too much work for one person. I have now prepared a comprehensive stringing kit, with materials to string at least 5 dolls of all types and sizes and I’ve prepared and included a course to teach all the fundamentals. The stringing kit materials alone are worth $150 and it will save you over $200 in professional repair fees by teaching you to do it yourself. The course value is $197. I usually sell these kits for $65 but right now you can get your for $40 with free shipping (within the USA). Restore your dolls to their former glory, or start your own doll stringing business. Believe me, there’s plenty of demand! Just click the button below to get your kit. Happy Valentine's Day! Please be my Valentine... today only, I'm offering special treats for my closest friends. Click the button below to sign up & get your gifts delivered straight to your inbox.
How do you handle days when your only desire is to hibernate under the covers? That’s all I want to do today: sleep, or maybe curl up with a book or watch Harry Potter movies in my bathrobe. I certainly don’t want to stir myself into working.
We stayed up late to watch the Super Bowl’s overtime conclusion and I could barely drag myself out of bed this morning. And it’s rainy and dark and colder than it has been. And my Hashimoto’s Disease has been flaring up lately, leaving exhausted. I am supposed to be building my new funnel. I was doing great with it at the end of the week but then I put it aside and never picked it back up again. What, you ask, is a funnel? It’s a special type of website that sends customers directly to your offer instead of to your store or traditional URL with a maze of choices that misleads or distracts them. I wasn’t sure I needed a funnel until my mother brought home its importance to me. A few months ago I published my new Ultimate Zucchini Cookbook. I listed it for sale on Amazon, in my shops, and on my website and promoted it (with links to the sale page) on all my social media channels. This cookbook is a re-write of my grandmother’s original, which she wrote and “published” in the mid-20th Century ~ she typed it out on her typewriter and had it copied and bound into little paper booklets at a copy shop. I rewrote it with low-carb adaptations of the recipes included and published it as a much-sturdier hard cover book. My mother decided to buy one. I don’t know if hers fell apart over the years ~ more certainly did! ~ or if she wanted the low carb recipes but she tried to order one from my website. I was planning to give her one for Christmas so I would have told her not to buy it but she didn’t tell me about this until afterward. Anyway, one night my mother caused me some angst because she called to tell me she pre-ordered my book when it was still in the pre-order stage. I hadn’t gotten any notice of her order so I asked for details and she said she didn’t have to pay because it was a pre-order. (That’s NOT how pre-orders work! She should definitely had to pay and it was discounted during that period due to the wait). Then she said she saw a notice when she ordered her book that my son also ordered a copy. I didn’t have a record of that either. Visions of hundreds of undocumented cookbook orders coming into my website flooded my brain ~ unfulfilled orders, customer complaints, Squarespace shutting me down… In a panic I texted my son to ask if he ordered my cookbook, which I thought would be rather odd because I don’t think he even knew about it… like most 25 year olds he doesn’t breathlessly follow his mother’s career! Turns out, he did not order it. Neither did my mother. What did she do? Why did she think she ordered it when she didn’t? Why did she think my son ordered it? We may never know. You would think following a direct link to a product and ordering it would be simple but for a lot of folks, it’s not. A great many people just aren’t used to online shopping. Then if you have a storefront with a ton of choices they might get distracted and start switching between products and become overwhelmed with choices. And then many platforms try to offer suggestions of similar products a customer might want before they’ve even completed their first order. Sometimes these are helpful but I’ve noticed they often have nothing to do with the thing I’m ordering. They might even show buyers a lower cost for the same product which ends up in a race to the bottom, price-wise, for sellers. You may know the cheaper product will take 2 months to arrive or doesn’t include all the pieces yours has but many consumers don’t look at anything beyond the price. They may not even realize they are going to a different seller if they click on one of those links ~ I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve gotten an angry message from someone who insists they bought something from me when they didn’t ~ even products I don’t offer at all! So, a funnel allows you to control the narrative, explain why your product is superior, and send buyers to an order form right there on the page without any distraction. It works for any type of business, from local services and restaurants to online stores. I’m making funnels for my best-selling products and then suggesting my stores for complementary items on the Thank You page. I am such a big believer in this concept I partnered with ClickFunnels to bring you a 5-day business training from industry leaders, including Daymond John of Shark Tank. It’s free and it comes with a free trial of ClickFunnels 2.0. Just click the button below to register. I am really optimistic this will be my best year yet, but only if I can manage to get myself back to work on this funnel. So please hit the comments and give me all your best motivational tips! Oh, and don’t worry about Mom ~ I gave her a cookbook for Christmas. Here at "Amanda's Adoption Agency" (aka Mandaline shops; I renamed us temporarily to reflect the huge number of dolls currently available), we take immense pride in offering a remarkable collection of vintage and antique composition dolls meticulously repaired by our skilled artisan, Amanda Boggs.
Each doll undergoes a meticulous restoration process, where they are lovingly repaired by hand, re-painted, re-strung, and re-sewn to restore their original beauty and charm. What sets our dolls apart is the attention to detail, as some even feature handmade alpaca or mohair wigs, adding a touch of uniqueness to each one. Adorned in exquisite clothing, these dolls are not only aesthetically pleasing but also ready to find their forever homes. However, it's important to note that there's only one of each doll available, so if you find a special companion that speaks to your heart, don't hesitate to make them a part of your family before someone else does. Welcome to the world of Mandaline dolls, where each creation is a unique and cherished masterpiece. We are thrilled to present to you an extraordinary rare gem - a fully restored full-composition 12-inch doll with the delightful Horsman Precious Baby face.
Introducing the newest addition to the Mandaline collection of precious dolls ~ a rare full-composition 12-inch doll with the adorable Horsman Precious Baby face. This little darling has been lovingly restored with meticulous repainting and craze concealing, bringing baby back to its original beauty. This baby can be a girl or boy, as the new mother wishes. Now available from Mandaline shops, this doll comes complete with a cozy layette set, including a soft flannel bunting blanket, cloth diaper, and a working rattle, all vintage. Fall head over heels in love with this enchanting baby, ready to bring joy and delight to any doll enthusiast. Don't miss your chance to welcome this extraordinary treasure into your heart and home. This one-of-a-kind beauty has been meticulously brought back to life by the talented Amanda Boggs, also known as "Mandaline." With her expert touch, this doll has been lovingly repainted and craze concealed, ensuring that Baby's original beauty shines through. The petite size of this doll makes it easy to hold, perfect for cuddling and displaying. There is only one of these magnificent dolls available, so don't miss your chance to bring her home. Click the adoption button now to make this lovable treasure yours today. |
AuthorMy name is Amanda, but my childhood nickname was "Mandaline". I am a mother of three turning my passion for creating into a full-time business. Archives
March 2024
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