Don't just tell me how to build a landing page.  Show me one, and then let me ask questions as I analyze its components.

Don't just give me a tutorial on writing a sales letter.  Show me the very best, and then sit there and tell me it's my job to figure out why they make a reader's "mouse-trigger-finger" quiver.

Don't ever think the real-life examples don't matter as much as the teaching.  

Please don't mistake what I'm saying.  I love being taught the fundamentals, and I love being encouraged to go do my own panning for gold.

But I am going to make some egregious and completely avoidable mistakes if I get the rudiments without the concrete real-life success examples.

And I find myself gravitating toward mentors who are willing to share their sites, their production processes, their mistakes, their stats, their theme choices, their plugin lists, their sales pages...and even their own mentors.  When a teacher is willing to share at that level, it tells me...

"I am so confident in my own ability to keep popping out great stuff that there is no need to be secretive."

AND

"I care so much about your success that I'll put myself out there as a model."

Sure, it's a little risky to take that attitude, because there are some really jerky and unimaginative types who might go after the example niche or whatever.

Nothing can take the place of mentoring.  Nothing.  Mentoring includes being humble enough to share one's failures and explain what failed.  In my mind, there's a world of difference between the "guru" mentality and the mentoring outlook. 

• A mentor is a servant--one who cares more about the "mentee" than the next product sale.    
• A mentor is really, truly thrilled about another person's learning process--and knows how to balance correction with encouragement and praise.

• A mentor is transparent--willing to hold up his or her own work for questions, "reverse-engineering" and even constructive criticism.

• A mentor tells a mentee more often NOT to buy something than to buy something. 
• A mentor reminds a mentee all the time how much the riches of the mentee's own experience and common sense matter.   
• A mentor is willing to have natural dialogues without worrying about charging a monthly fee.  Not that a mentor shouldn't charge.  But there is something so refreshing and different and wonderful about a person who is willing to begin sharing just to be gracious.  And then to offer services for a fee once a solid time commitment has been requested.

Here are the rewards that a genuine mentor can expect from a grateful student:

• Word of mouth promotion to other hungry would-be mentees.
• An automatically (and eagerly) opened email.  Every single time.  Even when it's a list email promoting a product or service.
• "Insider status" when the student branches out and begins discovering great stuff the mentor didn't know existed.
• Friendship

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now.  On a lighter note...

In two hours my house is being photographed for a design website. Never having been a particularly good housekeeper or decorator, this represents one of those "Ha!  Like that would ever happen" moments.  I'm tickled.  I love living in a place that feels beautiful to me.

In four hours I head to NY with my kids.  A couple of days with my brother-in-law in Brooklyn's gorgeous Cobble Hill neighborhood.  Last time I was there, it was the dead of winter.  This time it'll be perfect for a ferry ride over to Governor's Island.  And an outdoor table at the little French bistro where I get the best-ever moules frites.  (That new pic is of me with my brother in the bistro back when it was too cold to be outside!)

This weekend I heard the funniest after-the-movie comment by a kid who looked to be about 16.  He and his buddies were walking out of the movie Inception with my kids and me.  (Great movie, guys!  See it on the big screen if you can.)  

Anyway, this 6'4" jock kind of kid in a basketball jersey says to his friends....

Damn, I think I THOUGHT through that whole entire movie.  

(Kind of shakes his head a little bit like that's just too weird.)

"Like, I mean I really THOUGHT.  I feel like going home and doing math right now or something."

And on that note, I shall finish dusting my humble abode and practice saying, "Oh, my alabaster egg collection?.  Just some trifles I picked up in my extensive travels."