You should probably get out of here, stat. Or, you know, keep reading and take your chances.
There’s a new Karen in town, and I’ve dubbed her The Karen K-3000.
(Even though the “K” is redundant, it’s a head nod to the villain in the Terminator movies—clearly how all of my columns shall start now.)
If you still have no idea who Karen is, let me be the first to tell you: it’s an official Wikipedia entry. And since we all know “Wikipedia-entry official” is the nerd’s version of a blue check on Instagram, then rest assured: this is not a word I just made up. (You know, like the time you read my new book and came across the delightfully academic crotchscapade.)
Wikipedia’s definition of “a Karen” is:
“A pejorative term used in the Western world for a woman perceived to be entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is considered appropriate or necessary. …Depictions include demanding to “speak to the manager”, being an anti-vaxxer, or having a particular bob cut hairstyle.”
So, you know, exactly like Kate from Jon and Kate Plus Eight. Remember that Night King?
Historically the term has referred to that one gem of a woman you see causing a scene in her Vera Wang golf shirt over the fact that she has been served Pinot Grigio instead of Chardonnay—and can’t anybody get anything right around here? You can find her in her natural habitat at Starbucks or on somebody’s lawn bitching about a permit, and her mating call—at least how I imagine it—is that of an ejaculating hyena. (Then again, maybe I’ve skipped ahead a few steps there.)
The bottom line: if you feel like you’re getting called to the principal’s office, you’re dealing with a Karen—at least, the original prototype. Karens have always been the ulcers of society, but traditionally the term spoke more to an insufferable personality, rather than true malice. But just as we’ve seen some real human septic tanks come out of the woodwork with the election of Donald Trump, we’ve also seen some real pus-filled Karens come out to play too: and—probably not a spoiler alert—she’s wearing a MAGA hat in her mini van on her way to Bed, Bath & Beyond, where she will not only NOT be wearing a mask while snatching up all of the “Live, Laugh, Love” wall art and demanding that an hourly employee be fired, but she will be doing so with an all-new sense of indignant spite: a dangerous one.
Karen doesn’t like it when other people call her to the principal’s office.
And that’s exactly what this moment in time feels like right now for Karen: her privilege has been put under a spotlight and she’s being criticized and judged—by people she considers “less than,” mind you—so suddenly she feels backed into a corner, and her used-to-be-cute-in-the-year-2000 manicured claws are coming out. And Karen’s making herself out to be—ready for it?—the victim.
So she’s chosen to weaponize her white privilege instead of examine it. In fact, she’s doubling down on her privilege right now, protecting it, adding reinforcements, and reaffirming its very existence as “her right.”
My point here is that these aren’t just regular Karens: these are Trump’s Karens. This is the Karen K-3000. Not everyone who voted for Trump is like this, but everyone who behaves like this absolutely did. And that’s a key insight as to what society is up against: not just unconscious racism, but racism on purpose. Racism performed on purpose, as a weapon, used as a tool. It’s a verbal handgun; a way to “put ‘em in their place” and reiterate their supremacy.
If only humanity could walk out on them the way a battered woman can.
But, we can’t. We're stuck on the planet with ‘em. And eventually you’re going to encounter one—or many. So I’d like to suggest that we handle it the same way this street full of neighbors did in a story that just came out this morning:
Video: a Karen 3000 calling the police on her Black neighbors—while all of the rest of the white neighbors came out to defend them.
That’s civic responsibility. And it’s a responsibility that all of us must take upon ourselves: to use your voice—not just let it sit there, shaking in its boots. We talk a lot about using your voice here at The Middle Finger Project, because it’s the one tool we all have that costs nothing and can take you from a trailer park to Park Avenue. But the challenge now, however, isn’t just to build a business with it: it’s to build a world with it. To build safety. To build citizenry. To build integrity. To build a generation of humans who guard over one another, offering safe harbor in our actions.
If Karen wants to use her privilege as a weapon, then we must use our voice as ours.
You come for those Karens.
You stand up to those Karens.
You tell Karen to pick on people her own (privilege) size, and then you let her have it. You let her see that she’s not on a team. You show her that SHE’S the minority. And you use your voice, over and over again, to dismount that high, high horse she believes is under her as she gleefully trots over human dignity, decency, and all that is good.
Your job is not to change the world over night, but to be a tiny, torturous drip on the forehead. To create persistent moments of doubt and apprehension. To become a social conscience, relentless in moral compass. To challenge the status quo in more important ways than ever.
The word “no” can be the greatest protest of all.
This is your protest.
Your voice is a privilege, just like Karen’s skin.
But Karen’s gonna need a hell of a lot more than that to survive.
I have a strict rule about inviting people over to my house: only invite people with kids.
This might seem contrary to my identity as a childless 35-year-old who offers toddlers hot sauce and who very much enjoys addressing visitors as “burning piles of rotting mucus” when they beat me in Scrabble, but rest assured I’ve thought this through:
Parents with children are the only ones who eventually have to leave.
Ah, the strategy! The scholarship of this plan!
You see, were you to invite a childless schmuck like me into your house, you know what we do? We stayyyyy. Oh, do we stayyyyyyyyyyy. We stay because we have no obligation to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning with the baby, and we stay because we don’t mind if we have a headache the next day, and we stay because we are suddenly, wildly impassioned about this one RIVETING story you never knew about that one trip we took to Egypt, and we stay because your pool is better than ours, and because champagne is delicious, and because this is what life is all about, and because let’s face it: we do not have miniature milk dumpsters drooling all over our laps.
And I’m tame. I’m a granny! With high emotional intelligence! And a high sensitivity to other people’s boundaries! So trust me when I say: neither you nor I want other childless schmucks coming over. They’ll never leave.
Which is pretty much how I feel about Facebook.
Oh, glorious Facebook, hallowed be thy name! Specifically, the infamous Facebook business page. Or shall I say: hallowed be thy blame?
That’s one of the problems with Facebook: you’re never alone—at least not mentally. Sure, you can log out, but that’s really only akin to hiding in the bathroom for a while with a gin, isn’t it? As soon as you come back to reality, you’re smacked in the face with Jim Bob ripping a huge fart in your living room and some lady named Teresa gurgling all your cheese.
They aren’t mirages! They are there, waiting for you. Forever.
Until…
the..end…
of…
time.
At least, that’s how social media can feel. Mind you, it’s not (always) about the people: it’s about the platform. Most people are actually quite lovely (and I do like most people, to be fair—exceptions shall be listed on my tombstone); but the constant pressure of people waiting for you in your digital living room, even in solidarity, has to tendency to create a persistent low-level energy suck that feels akin to never being done with the dishes. Why are there always dishes to wash? Who made these dishes? I just washed the dishes, and now they’re back!
The never-ending digital dishes.
No, no, let's take it a step further: the never-ending digital dishes plastered in this morning's egg. OUCH.
Also, can we talk about the term “engage?” I hate this word. It reeks of forced, plastic, artificial conversation with a (not so) hidden agenda. That’s because anyone who is “engaging” with you on a Facebook page or group is doing so with a hidden agenda. That has to be the case, because this is business, and everyone’s got an agenda. Somewhere along the way, some deep-fried cousin of Voldemort told the online business world that they should hang out in Facebook groups and “engage” as a marketing tactic—AKA loiter around and cheer lead for strangers who are supposed to notice how helpful you are and ask to hire you instead of you actually doing work worth noticing—and I’ve been dodging them ever since. Similarly, every time I see someone calling others to “post your bumhole in the comments” (bumhole my emphasis), I cannot help but view this as “put your bumhole in the comments so I can be viewed as someone who engages!”
Granted, Instagram is not immune from this. I dislike phony peacocks on Instagram too. But at least my feed is filled with original photographs from creators, rather than yet another copy and paste meme that dramatically oversimplifies complex, nuanced subjects and acts more like fascist propaganda than thoughtful opinion.
Speaking of fascists, Twitter is actually my favorite social media platform because the focus—at least historically—has always been on contributing ideas. What’s important in your industry, what you’re working on, which conversations add to the greater corpus of your body of work. Keyword here being: corpus. Twitter feels like a large conversation hosted by humanity to which you may contribute, rather than tiny little gossipy enclaves. Twitter also has a slant toward career, companies and news—and maybe that’s another reason why I like it. (In case you missed the hot pink cover, I recently published an entire book about creating an unconventional independent career.)
But I also favor Twitter because of the crowd: written platforms attract writers, and writers tend to be critical thinkers. The arguments tend to be more sophisticated; the ideas a higher caliber; the perspectives better reasoned. And I learn things by being there. On Facebook, I learn nothing.
And perhaps that is the most important distinction.
So since how you spend your time is how you spend your life, I’m doing an interesting experiment: I’ve gone ahead and unpublished The Middle Finger Project Facebook page—which, by the way, you can do without full-on deleting—because I want to curate my energy intentionally. I want to be stimulated by the conversations around me. And I want to learn and actually engage, not pretend to.
And somehow, I feel like I’m coming out of the bathroom and, to my greatest surprise?
It was never that I wanted the people to go home: I just wanted a different crowd.
Ten years ago, on Apr 25, 2010 at 11:56pm, I first published an opinion piece to The Middle Finger Project blog called, “White Men Can't Jump, But They've Got Other Tricks Up Their Sleeves: The (Unearned) Privilege of Being White.”
I remember writing it because even though I was only twenty-five years old (and my writing style less, ahem, sophisticated), these are the conversations I’ve been having for a decade—which I’m proud to say. This isn’t something I’m bringing up right now because I’m supposed to: it’s the very fabric of The Middle Finger Project. It’s how this blog began: as a mission to critically consider and dismantle the unexamined beliefs and societal systems that harm us.
So I went back to re-read that original post this week, and was shocked at its timelessness. It's as if the post were written yesterday, if you substitute the name “James Byrd Jr.” for “George Floyd.” Moreover, however, I was shocked—but not surprised—to read some of the historical comments on the post. (A favorite: “Stupid article……like a twelve year old who discovers that the world is not perfect…welcome to puberty.”)
These comments, along with many others I’ve seen online, expose not only white delusion, but a part of the real battle we are fighting:
While overt racists are true, cold-blooded murderers—of bodies, of dignity, of basic human rights—it’s the ones who don’t see themselves as racists, but “realists,” who are the silent murderers. These are the folks who think that racism is historical and that now, everyone’s got the same opportunity and “The American Dream” works in everyone’s favor. But The American Dream was merely a marketing ploy for this country—the best marketing campaign in history, backed by the best brand promise in history—and it has made too many white people apathetic because they assume that others could help themselves, if they wanted.
That everyone has the same opportunity.
That it's about individual responsibility.
That The American Dream is up for grabs for anyone who wants to work hard to get ahead.
This is dangerous because it sounds logical. Things that sound logical are more likely to be adopted as truth and repeated—well, just like a virus. So even if you’re a person who has never had a critical thought pass through your brain, you can take this ready-made argument and use it…which is precisely the problem.
In effect, that’s what good branding does: it short-circuits critical thinking skills and makes you want to “buy” sight unseen. That’s what the brand of “The American Dream” has done to too many white Americans: it has made them follow blindly. Repeat blindly, like a parrot. And believe something blindly, regardless of how little truth there actually is.
Like: “We all have an equal opportunity.”
Really?
A population of people who started as slaves could never possibly catch up on their own when we had such a head start. As Nick Kristof so eloquently put it in his series “When Whites Just Don’t Get It“:
“We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We’re in a relay race, relying on the financial and human capital of our parents and grandparents. Blacks were shackled for the early part of that relay race, and although many of the fetters have come off, whites have developed a huge lead. Do we ignore this long head start — a facet of white privilege — and pretend that the competition is now fair?”
So no, nothing is equal. Nothing. We might have the same “opportunity” on paper, but we certainly do not have the same odds. People are biased in white people's favor, even if it’s unintentional. (One of my favorite illustrations of how white privilege operates behind the scenes is this three-minute video.) And over time all of that bias piles up, and piles up, and piles up, and soon past injustices become present disadvantages.
And I think most of us reading here get this: the TMF audience is overwhelmingly liberal and progressive. So I don’t write this to you: I write this to give you the facts that you need to educate others when they say to you, “Can we get over racism already? Black people are just whining. Maybe they should get off their ass and get to work.”
This, to me, is the work that must be done: that each of us picks a person we know who’s an “equal opportunity racist” and chooses to have a conversation about it, rather than ignore it. It is much easier to preach to those who you know will agree with you. It is much harder to speak up with someone you know will disagree and endeavor to change their perception of the issue.
Use it to influence those with whom you have real-world rapport, to increase the chances that the message will be heard. That’s my challenge to you, and the challenge I have taken upon myself: I’m having thoughtful conversations with people from my hometown who don’t get it, but who respect my opinion. That’s a way in. That’s the beginning of a ripple effect. And it all starts with having the courage to go outside and do the work. Preaching on the internet is cool (hi, I’m all about the internet), but be careful not to preach to the choir and then be satisfied with your efforts, merely checking a to-do off a list.
So much of what I’m reading right now feels like mere lip service, like sending out an obligatory GDPR email. “Here is a list of black people!” (Phew, did it, said something!) Good, but it’s cheap. And it’s empty, if that’s all you’re inclined to do.
Commit to changing one person’s perception every day. We must do the emotional labor every day for the rest of our lives as people who give a shit: as critical thinkers, as leaders, as action takers. Not as a one-time event this week, but as a lifelong commitment to using your privilege to sway the minds of those whom your privilege allows you to reach.
Have the courage to say what needs to be said to the people who need to hear it.
So yesterday I’m making this pathetic puddle of a salad, right? My salads are the worst. We keep TRYING to make good salads, but the salads always turn out tasting like a Greek man’s back sweat. Never tastes like a restaurant salad, which I figure should at least taste like a Greek man’s mistress.
But that’s okay because I’m really here to talk about the very important matter of Kalamata olives. Man do I love me some Kalamata olives. (Even though Evernote keeps trying to autocorrect them to “Kalamazoo” olives—amateur move, Evernote, amateur!) The problem, however, is that you can rarely find pitted Kalamata olives here in Costa Rica (where I am still quarantining with the spiders). All the Kalamatas are decidedly unpitted. So I find myself wondering: who wields this evil power? Who is the one who has decided that THIS is the product to stock on shelves? (Just sayin’: I bet the buyers at the little grocery store next door don’t actually eat Kalamata olives.)
So here’s me, right? Here’s me, for the last *de-cade* since we’ve had our place here, painstakingly taking each unpitted Kalmata olive and placing it onto my cutting board yelling, “Off with her head!” At which point I take my knife and perform sloppy rudimentary surgery, hacking away at the bits around the center seed, leaving me with a pile of pointy pieces of olive that look a lot like I’ve just severed a liver. I am also left with anxiety over the matter because, what if I cut off the tip of my finger? What if I end up with a pointy piece of pointer in the pile? ALL IN THE NAME OF TRYING TO MAKE A DECENT SALAD, WHICH I KNOW WON’T BE A DECENT SALAD, BECAUSE OUR SALADS NEVER ARE.
So yesterday I thought: you know what, motherfucker? There has got to be an easier way. I really enjoy the fact that it took me ten years to think to myself: maybe I should Google this? But alas, it took me ten years to think to myself: maybe I should Google this. And then I did. And then up popped this video. AND THEN I ALMOST FAINTED.
You don’t need to cut around the pit! You don’t need to let an olive best your wits! All you need to do is…(I really can’t believe this)…take the side of your knife…(still can’t believe it)…and press down on the olive…(what is happening!!!)…and IT’S DONE. Seed slips out out of its skin like I slip out of a négligé!
I put SO MANY OLIVES in our salad last night because I couldn’t stop doing it! Press, peel! Press, peel!
And then I realized what Book #2 is obviously going to be (picture the deep-voiced voiceover guy saying this in a movie trailer): Ash Ambirge figured out all the hard stuff early on in life: how to run a business, how to travel the world, how to carry deceased family members through security without being mistaken for a coke dealer. Now it’s time for her to go back to the basics and learn all the essentials adults are supposed to know: from pitting olives to using a drill to saving for retirement (hint: using sanitary napkins as envelopes not the best system)—and even discovering the eternal secret to WASHING CLOTHES. In this reverse coming-of-age book, Ambirge shows that even those without role models can still become their own…so long as they can figure out the instructions.
Telling you. I’m writing that. Or maybe it’ll be a column. “Some Day I’ll Drop Dead,” I’ll call it, which is exactly what my mom said to me in the kitchen once when I was a teenager and she tried to teach me how to make a meatball. “I’ll have private chefs!” I told her. (Plural.) “I’ll have a gardener, too!” And then the funniest thing happened: she did drop dead and I never learned how to make a meatball. Or, apparently, pit an olive.
I, Ashley Ambirge, am solemnly calling upon you, my reader, to bestow me with one essential life skill that you think I should know. Or maybe it’s not even a life skill: maybe it’s just an obvious fact, like how to cut an onion. I mean, Jesus, I just recently found out you can remove the pit of an avocado by hitting it with the sharp side of a knife. So many pit-themed lessons! So many things you can do with a knife! Who knew? (Answer: everybody knew. Everybody.)
And you never know: maybe I will write that column. Maybe we’ll help all the other young women out there without mentors. Wouldn’t that be the best column? I’d credit you for your contribution, obviously. And then we’d talk about things like hanging drapes! And sharpening your scissors with sandpaper! And the fact that there’s actually a little arrow on your gas gauge that tells you which side of the car the gas tank is on! (All of which blew my mind, by the way.)
So, whatcha got? Tip? Skill? Life hack? Essential tip that moms teach their kids that I should know? Seriously, I even made a form. Will you gift me with your knowledge? Be my mom for a day? My birthday’s coming up on June 24th, so I will throw myself a fiesta FULL of knowledge presents from you. 🙂
Love you long time!!!
It’s instinct—you know, like the repulsion you feel when other species eat their young?—which probably also explains why, when I go to the grocery store, I end up leaving with forty-nine boxes of cherry-flavored condoms. Not on the list, but how can you not?
It’s also why I’m persistently late at present-giving. I am absolutely that person buying your Christmas present online, the day before, and then paying the equivalent of a small trophy horse to have it overnighted—even when I optimistically write stuff in my calendar three months prior that says things like “BUY PRESENT NOW, YOU FORGETFUL FUCK.”
Then again, the American in me makes me slightly better at planning than, say, my Costa Rican counterparts. (If you’re just catching up, we have a place in Costa Rica where you can find me crushing the dreams of spiders jungle-wide.) If you tell me that somebody’s coming over today, I need to know at what time. This seems like a reasonable request, but it’s unlikely to be recognized. “Ahora mas tarde,” they’ll tell me, which roughly translates into: “This is your punishment for EVERYTHING.”
Being a “right-brained creative” (as I like to brand myself to all who dare look inside my closet) has its perks when it comes to imagination, originality and big ideas, but it’s less useful when it comes to, say, budgeting for quarterly tax payments. There is no greater pain than budgeting for quarterly tax payments. It’s like layaway for rich people, except you aren’t rich (because, quarterly tax payments) and you don’t get to pick up a Kmart lawn mower at the end of it all. All you get to pick up are broken pieces of profits that once were.
That doesn’t mean that the torture of it all exempts you from carrying out your Very Official Responsibilities As a Person in Business for Themselves. And in fact, there are five things that creative business people desperately need to get better at, as I have had to (hilariously, painfully, grievously) get better at myself.
So allow me to share five things that I am quickly approaching superstar status at, despite my humble beginnings:
Jesus Crip Gang: there’s nothing worse than up and down revenue that ISN’T PREDICTABLE. And yet! And yet! Most of us still run around just crossing our fingers and betting on our abilities to “make it happen,” as we need it, on-demand. What a terrible plan this is (trust me, I know): it’s like closing your eyes and hoping that through sheer willpower, a freshly baked loaf of sourdough is going to replenish itself in your kitchen every week. Sourdough doesn’t happen unless you make it, and shockingly, money doesn’t, either. Which means that, you need to get a whole hell of a lot better at budgeting for your business so you can operate several months in advance of your expenses. And let me tell you what: You Need a Budget is CHANGING MY LIFE. My assistant, Elizabeth, became obsessed with the app for her personal finances, and after hearing her say it enough times, I thought I would check it out for mine. That’s when I realized I could use it for my business, too: and by golly, Gene! IT’S A FRIGGING MIRACLE. It’s like having an envelope system, but digitized: you set up “envelopes” for each expense and/or goal you have, such as your quarterly taxes, and then as money comes in you distribute it. Once those envelopes are filled, you take the remaining money you’ve got and distribute it among next month’s expenses. The software tells you how much you need to put in each monthly envelope in order to hit your goal by September, say, so you can make sure you’re saving a little bit at a time each month (instead of getting whooped by a sudden $30,000 tax bill.) Life. Changing.
You know, I was recently thunderstruck when I looked at the details of one of my credit card agreements, and saw 23% interest being charged. (The Tall Costa Rican says that I should be grateful: credit card interest in Costa Rica is more like 45%—GASP.) When I was a kid, AKA minutes ago, I used to look at interest as just a cost of doing business: I didn’t mind plopping something on a credit card if I knew it was a good investment (which includes investments in my quality of life, ahem). It was like pay-to-play for me, no different than paying to stay in someone’s Airbnb. But then I started getting interested in investing. And I realized that no where on the planet am I going to get a 23% return on my investment—which meant that no matter how well I invested, even in the stock market, any dollars I put on my credit card were effectively wiping out my gains. This might be common sense to you, but for someone who looked at credit cards as merely access to large sums of money when required, my thinking needed a big adjustment! So I took the money I was going to invest one month—including into my emergency fund—and instead, used all of it to wipe out any existing credit card balances. Now, I’m starting fresh knowing that the money I’m earning in my investments is actually money I’m earning—not earning “on the surface” but losing over there. So if you’ve got some debt hanging out over there, definitely read this article from Ellevest that teaches “The Avalanche Method” for paying it off. Hint: start with the credit card with the highest interest rate and murder it for a few months, while paying minimum payments on the rest—rinse and repeat. Then check out Ellevest, once you’ve paid off those credit cards, because I am in LOVE WITH THEIR INVESTING APP.
My accountant and I were literally talking about this this morning, because I’m all balls-to-the-wall with traditional investing, but didn’t bother with, you know, AN “OFFICIAL” COMPANY RETIREMENT PLAN. (Even though I kinda sorta knew I needed to, grrrrrr.) So here’s the deal: there’s something called a SEP IRA that’s exclusively for business owners and and IS A TAX DEDUCTION FOR YOUR COMPANY. You can contribute up to 25% of your wages, which blows traditional IRAs out of the water, and then alllll the money isn’t taxed until you withdraw it at 59.5. (Unless you withdraw early, which you can do without penalty if you’re buying a house for the first time, need it for medical expenses, or you’re enrolling in higher education.) That’s kind of good if you imagine that right now you’re going to be making ALL the money now while you’re young—and therefore fall into higher tax bracket now than you will later. So you won’t pay taxes on that money now, you’ll pay on it later, when your tax bracket is lower because you’re making less money because you’re over it and ready to chill in your backyard with Better Homes & Garden. HOLLA. Read about SEP IRAs over hurrrrrrr.
If you’re like, this all sounds great but I have no real handle on what I’m actually earning after expenses and it’s all so volatile and unpredictable and who am I and what’s the president’s name?! (Never mind, don’t answer that.) Then darling, you NEED to have someone categorizing your transactions and you NEED it to be done by my favorite company on earth, Bench. They connect to your bank account and all of your transactions flow in automatically, and then you’ve got a real bookkeeper behind the scenes who’s manually categorizing everything and making your money super user-friendly. Which means? You can finally know how much actual profit you have, versus your costs (especially those hidden ones) and at tax time (which is now), all you have to do is click a button and voilà! Submitted! No more searching around for receipts and having no idea where to start with your taxes. It’s. All. Done. For. You. Bench is literally my superhero and no I will not stop talking about them. (Especially when their team was so cute and bought my book for the office!)
If you’re like, man, I really want to hire people and/or bring on contractors buttttt….isn’t that complicated? You need Gusto. Holy stinky doodles, do you need Gusto. This software is LIFE—especially for someone like me who is registered as an S-Corp, which means that I am an employee of my own company (and I need to get paid like an employee, AKA using regular payroll and tax deductions). So I’m using Gusto to process my payroll, and I can also pay contractors with it as well. In addition, you can set up all sorts of benefits for your people right inside, from setting vacation time and sick leave, to even letting them borrow money from their next paycheck to help fill in gaps in between pay cycles…all of which they can do through the app. Cool, huh? Gusto is saving my sanity day after day, and you definitely needed to know about it.
Because, hi, you have assets now. You own a business. (That’s worth something!) And you have bank accounts. And you might own property. And you might have a life insurance policy. And you might want to dictate what happens if you’re brain dead on a gurney. And alllllll of that needs to, you know, come with instructions. Most of us know they should probably have a will, but most of us don’t do it because it seems like this hugely complicated process involving lawyers and documents and blahblity blah blah blah, right? Enter: Trust & Will. I’m pretty obsessed with them. If nothing but a business exercise, take a look at their site and see how they’re disrupting the death industry in the BEST way.
So, listen, if you want me to throw you a birthday party, I might not be the best candidate. Then again, maybe all I need is an app. It’ll be called “How to be a Good Fucking Friend,” and not only will it automatically plan birthdays for you, it’ll also auto-answer your telephone and respond to texts before three days have gone by and you’re still sitting on the computer in your soiled pajamas, totally engrossed in another article by the New York Times, stopping only to pee and buy forty-nine boxes of cherry-flavored condoms. The ush.
I am in NO MOOD today. Nope, no mood for pussyfooting around—and don’t be offended by my usage of that word, as its etymology is related to little kitty cat paws, which are adorable and sweet, just 👏 like 👏 me. [Cue sinister laughter]
There’s one thing I have had it with, and I’m about to get out a giant alpine horn and shout it all over France. It’s not COVID-19 (though that over-seasoned crotch nugget* can hump right off), and it’s not this chin hair that KEEPS GROWING BACK NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I PLUCK IT, and it’s (surprisingly) not Wendy from the Netflix series, Ozark.
Oh, I’m vomiting! Vomiting all over some rich man’s shoes! This line of thinking absolutely MURDERS ME. Andyetandyetandyetandyet—you hear it all the time. And you’ve probably thought it yourself once or twice (or maybe every single night before you sleep while Dick Cheney blabbers on in the background of the TV as you realize you forgot to take your contacts out and WHAT IS THIS TORTURE THAT IS LIFE?).
The money’s too good to give up.
I’ll never make this kind of money doing something else.
I hit the jackpot with this salary / job / gig / business.
I’d be a fool to let it go.
AND SO PLEASE GIVE A DEAFENING ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO THE BOOB IN THE BACK OF YOUR MIND WHO’S POISONING ALL OF REALITY.
Because get this, fam! Get this! You ready for this? Are you ready? Here’s a big-ass helping of homemade truth stew:
I know! Crazy! Let that drop kick you right in the heart valve! I would underline that nine times if the internet let me. Imagine how much money you’d make if you were doing something you actually LIKED.
You made it this far doing nonsense you hate.
You made it this far slogging through it.
You made it this far doing things you don’t even want to be doing.
You made it this far with a forty-ton dumbbell on your back as you walk through the Egyptian desert barefoot with tons of itchy bug bites all over your legs. (My personal vision of hell.)
And so, yeah, you’re making good money.
But—imagine what you’d make if you actually cared.
*Insult courtesy of “The Ash Ambirge Insult Generator,” created by copywriter Justin Blackman, who I should probably marry. I’m not kidding: he really made an Ash Ambirge Insult Generator. Highly recommended for times when the customary “jackass” just won’t do.
SIX-HUNDRED DADDIES. That’s my shorthand for “dollars.” I don’t know why or when it started. Actually, just kidding, it just started right now. Not because I have daddy issues or anything (though clearly I do).
SIX HUNDRED DADDIES was what I paid. Six-hundred! And you know why?
Because I just had to import a slab of wood the weight of a small ocean liner. I just had to to send a ninety-million-hundred pound box all the way to the jungles of Costa Rica (where I am still quarantining alongside the monkeys and three-hundred dudes named Carlos—my darling partner included). (He’s making us eggs right now, even though I am the better egg-maker. He’ll tell you he is the better egg-maker, but I think anyone would agree that you don’t chop the scrambled eggs, you move the scrambled eggs. Gently. Consistently. With a spatula that IS NOT METAL. AHEM.)
So anyway, who knew standing desks were made of a thousand recycled bombs from World War 2? That’s what this box felt like. Here I was, thinking I was buying this cute little raised platform that would sit neatly on top of my existing desk, but instead I get this box the size of a moose—that I had to pay $600 to import—and even more concerning is what happened when I went to open it. Out we pull it and alas, there’s a lever. A little lever on the side that I think is something innocent, like adjusting the angle of the desktop. NOPE! One yank of that lever, and your desktop goes shooting into the air on hydraulics like Go, Go, Gadget on steroids.
However. I must tell you that—despite being a dangerous spring-loaded weapon I’m waiting to crack my jaw open any minute—I like my standing desk very much. She’s a beaut. And I didn’t pay $600 in import taxes just for her: I also got Pottery Barn curtains. The natural linen ones we spoke of before! They look fucking fantastic, may I say. And so worth it, after having been in our villa for something like six years with cheese cloth for curtains. Grommet-top sheers. 🤢 (I now am anti-grommet top anything. Oh, what adulthood has done to me!)
So I thought I’d (a) Recommend my standing desk if your neck is hurting like a bitch and/or you’re mad at your significant other and you decide to pull the lever on them while they’re having a cup of coffee; and (b) Tell you about some of my other favorite things right now, along with one or two announcements! YOU GAME?
Okay, I’ll let you go eat YOUR eggs in peace now. Good to see your face! I mean, I’m imagining your face. It’s all cute and squishy and making a sarcastic eyebrow raise. Just like mine! Sarcastic people are the best. I think we need to form a club. Can there be a club? YAY, WE’RE IN A CLUB!
Hope to hell you’re making it through.
Thinking of yo' ass.
Love and six-hundred fathers,
Ash
P.S. Seriously, what are these Amazon reviews?!?! They are LIFE. Thanks to everyone who's leaving them. Especially to these humans who so generously keep saying things like “best book in this space / that I've read / this year, etc.” It's like they got together and formed a pact to say that or something! WHAT A FREAKING COMPLIMENT. I love you like I love cheese doodles (which is more than basically everything). Thanks for helping me shine, fam. This feedback makes it all worth it.
You ever see people that look like your dead relatives and then you CAN’T STOP STARING?
I do that a lot. Like this fall, in Dublin, when I creepily tried to take a photograph of a total stranger in a pub without his knowledge by casually waving my phone around in the air—#PROTIP: do not drop mid-operation—because I was convinced he looked like the spitting image of the one photograph I have ever seen of my father.
This is why, when my top DNA match on 23 and Me kept showing up as a 60-something man with an Irish-sounding name, I had to send a message. But it was one of those messages where you’re like, DO NOT SOUND LIKE A NEEDY PAUPER, ASH. The message could not have the whole “standing here on your doorstep” vibe, because (a) social distancing, obviously and (b) I’m not trying to spook the only person I've ever found from that side of the family.
So there I am, acting all super caszh, and I fire off a simple note that sounds very “innocent family tree-ish.” Not needy at all! Just makin’ a tree over here! Which part of Ireland? Got any diseases?
And then the stranger whose name begins with J responded.
“Your father was my first cousin,” he said. “He was a Philadelphia police officer, as was his father—they used to come by on Sunday mornings for coffee. I never knew you existed.”
And then I sat here for a long while, staring.
*
My best friend has cancer.
I wish I could say she’s gone through the hard part, but there is no easy part, and there never will be. I wonder how scared she is, versus how scared she seems. I wonder how scared I am, versus how scared I seem.
I think back to the day the man who became my father got the news. I was with him in the car. “What does terminal mean?” I asked. “Outlook not so good, kid,” he replied.
I sat there for a long while, staring.
*
My partner refunded another $1,400 today. Businesses in the Costa Rica tourism industry require tourists, after all. I see the worry on C’s face every time he checks his email. Will there be another punishment awaiting?
I think about my birthday coming in June. I don’t want him to get me anything. I don’t want to be another punishment.
He sat here for a long while today, staring.
*
I released a book with the biggest publisher in the world. Days later, a worldwide pandemic closed every bookstore in the world. I only got to see my book in the wild once.
I think of how this feels like another loss I have suffered.
My book has sat there for a long while staring, too.
*
My closest friends have not read my book. The people who have read it—for the most part—are people I have not seen in fifteen years, or people I do not know at all. I have never understood this paradox. And yet, I know it to be painfully true: the people who are closest to you are often the farthest away.
I think of how this feels like having a baby, and no one commenting.
I sit here for a long while staring, thinking about all the baby showers I’ve been to.
*
When I started blogging, no one commented. They thought me silly, perhaps a bit eccentric. It was an eccentric thing to do, at the time.
But that did not mean it was the wrong thing to do.
I think of how glad I am that I trusted my voice—though I sat there for a long while staring then, too.
*
Right now I’ve sat here for a long while staring as I write this. I’m staring at the paper, my life, my business, my hobbies, my health, my habits, my routines, my desires, and the fact that, apparently, I’m a writer who sucks at Scrabble. (Yesterday, C put the word “Siberian” on the board and used all his letters and got 50 bonus points and I wanted to shiv him.)
Maybe you’ve been doing a lot of staring, too. Into the abyss. Into the kitchen. Into the fabric of your life. Right now is a time for lingering thoughts; for lullabies; for simplicity and returning to a time of innocence. (Says the girl who just wrote about shivving someone.)
And it’s also a time for seeing things more clearly than ever: when you strip back all of the busyness, what are you left with? Who are you left with? And does any of it actually matter?
Oh, these are hard questions to ask.
But the worthwhile ones always do bring you to tears.
*
It scared me when a quarantine didn’t noticeably change my life. At a time when everyone else is trying so desperately to figure how how to adapt to this new reality—indoors, quietly, without so much of the hullabaloo—I’ve hardly noticed. Has online business made me a recluse?
And then I think about the good. I think about how my life has been so full, I have never made space for hullabaloo. I don’t value artificial interactions at the coffee shop. I don’t care about gossip at the water cooler. I don’t care about the superficial comings and goings that mark so many people’s days. I’m fiercely focused. I lock my eye on a ball and I MOVE. And given that what I do is build and invest in properties online, it makes sense that my reality would remain largely undisturbed: unless they quarantine us off the internet (god fucking forbid), I’m going to keep coming in hot.
And I gotta say: I hope you will, too. I hope you’ll use this time to keep staring, but also keep moving. Just remember that you don’t have to keep moving in the same direction. Now, more than ever, is the time to pivot if you’ve secretly been coveting a change.
Start the friggin’ website.
Buy the friggin’ URL.
Hop on Squarespace—it’s fun to use.
Turn an idea into a reality.
Play.
Experiment.
Pixel flirt.
And recognize that you can have a whole new life in two hours flat if you really want it. A business you didn’t have before. A project. An idea. Something that you can build. And something that will give back to you, after you’ve put time in.
I think of how this is often called “enterpreneurship,” but what it really is is ownership. Ownership over what happens next. The way you use your time, your talents, your skills, your desires, and even the hard—right now, more than ever. Use the heavy as motivation. Use the shit sandwich as a reason to do something beautifully drastic.
You do have ownership—I want you to know.
Things may be heavy, but heavy builds muscle.
A virus can keep you inside, but it can’t keep your ideas there.
You know how you sit down to write a sales page—and all of the sudden YOU FEEL LIKE THE MOST BASIC BETCH ALIVE? Like, wow, I have absolutely nothing brilliant to say, I’m a dime-a-dozen dingflicker, I sound like one giant, festering cliché, and NOBODY IS GOING TO BUY THIS. NOBODY.
This kind of self-consciousness is the worst. You mean-talk yourself because you know that the words on the page don’t even come close to representing you the way you wish they would. You want to be unique! Inventive! Clever! Fascinating! Compelling! Persuasive, with a capital P! But all you’re left with is a bowl of lumpy Cream of Word Wheat—and it’s hardened. Hardened Cream of Word Wheat. (Which we all know is the edible version of stiff khaki pants.)
Copywriters cost five grand, ten grand, ninety grand.
And would they really capture your voice anyway? (This is always a fear.)
More importantly, you can’t spend that kind of coin right now, or maybe ever, especially as you’re bootstrappin’ your way to the top.
So that leaves you with the most common course of action: you throw up your hands and let your sales page grossly underperform and cost you thousands in lost income every month. (Imagine if you’ve got a product that only costs even $100—just ONE extra sale PER DAY is equals another whopping $3,000 every month. At five extra sales per day? That's another $15,000 each and every month.)
Worse, every word counts more than ever, right now, because of the other capital P word: pandemic. You can’t afford to let people who were gonna buy from you? Decide to buy from someone else.
Soooooo, you and I are going to team up. And I’m going to help you transform your sales page from slow sales to WHOA, SALES. Because copywriting is my professional background and words are my superpower, and they’re the one thing you can change instantly without spending any more money on things like design, or software, or bells and whistles, that will have a SIGNIFICANT impact on how well your sales page performs—and how much money you make.
And all you need to do for that to happen?
Is change the words on the screen.
Enroll in my new masterclass, happening THIS FRIDAY, MAY 1ST (and available on-demand thereafter), called: “Transform Your Sales Page From Slow Sales to WHOA, SALES!” Because I wasn’t kidding about the name: that’s exactly what it’s designed to do. 🙂
You can check out all of the details here (I think you’ll be shocked by some of the math you’ll discover over there) >>>.
I hope this helps you optimize your maximum income potential and earn more from the same things you’ve already got. (Or the things you’re planning on launching soon.) Because you don’t always need to reinvent the wheel: sometimes you’ve just got to grease ‘er up and make ‘er DANCE.
Hope to see you there, Rambo.
A giant gin and elderberry tonic,
Ash
P.S. Over the years I’ve probably written and edited 1,000 sales pages on behalf of all types of online businesses owners, from tech companies to life coaches to private universities to marijuana farms (really!), and all the way back to dayplanner designers to accountants to social media consultants and more. And turns out? They’ve ALL got the same bad habits. 😉 Come join me in this masterclass, fam, and I’ll teach you the four secret ingredients you’ve never heard of that make a huuuuge difference in your sales.
WRITERS WILL BE PAID LIKE DOCTORS.
I’ve been predicting this for a long time, in part because I’m a creepy writer monster, but also in part because I’ve been watching the internet carefully for eleventy hundred years, now, and I saw the direction it was going: words are business FUEL—and businesses need more fuel now than ever.
(What is a chumpy chomper, you ask? A snooty, well-manicured man wearing light blue Tommy Bahama shorts with little whales all over them, obviously.)
Now that prediction has just been accelerated by 500,000,000%. Now that we’ve all been forced into one giant room online, rather than many separate meeting rooms happening in buildings across the world, all business is happening online: which means that companies need to get much better at selling online.
I started writing to you about this earlier this week, but had to do a couple of make-up sessions of my “How to Create and Sell Your First Online Workshop” workshop (very meta), SO ALAS, I’m sending this missive along now because:
(a) For my writer friends out there, your career is about to take off.
(b) For my non-writers friends out there—by which I mean anyone who doesn’t fashion themselves a writer but writes anyway because business demands it (hello sales pages and emails and Instagram posts!)—your career is about to take off, too…so long as you learn how to sell with your words.
Right now, there is no in-person schmoozing, networking, wheeling, dealing. There are no stores to walk into. There are no sales happening OUTSIDE of the internet, right now.
So the only way that anything’s going to sell right now?
Is because of words on a screen.
Try selling a baseball to your 7-year-old kid. Then try selling one to your 70-year-old aunt. You’re going to take two very different approaches, right? This is only natural. And yet, the minute you hop online to sell something, everyone’s like, “I’M GOING TO SAY THE ONE THING THAT WILL APPEAL TO EVERYONE!” As if that were a thing. You’ve only got two choices here: figure out whether you’re selling a baseball to a 7-year-old or a 70-year-old. Or, sell it to both, but do it on two separate pages.
Let’s test it out. If I tell you that it took me 100 hours to make a course on bowling, and inside the course comes twelve modules, and each module is three hours long, and you’re also going to get a million-page PDF, and there are all of these bonus FAQs, am I really whetting your whistle over here? GUESSING I’M NOT—yawn, yawn. Do not lead with these types of details, because other people care about that as much as you just did there. These are logic-based details that come later. But front and center? Less description, more prescription. AKA, you need this course if: (a) Your ball is constantly going in the gutter (despite your best attempt to aim straight—what gives?!); (b) You aren’t sure which is better: a heavy ball, or a light ball (and when should you use each?); (c) Your fingers keep getting stuck in the holes when you try to throw the damn thing (hint: there’s a tactical reason you want them to be much bigger than you’d guess!); (d) You want to learn how to do fancy things, like make it spin all fancy and curve at the last minute so you can actually go on a date and not embarrass yourself.
Notice in the prescription above, I didn’t just plainly say: (a) Learn how to throw your bowling ball straight; (b) Pick the right weight bowling ball; (c) Discover the difference between large holes and small holes; (d) Learn how to throw a spinner ball. (Assuming “spinner ball” is what the bowling crowd calls it? HAHA.) This is a common mistake: just telling people what they’ll learn / accomplish / get / know / do. And that’s great if you aren’t intent on actually selling anything. But if you are? You’ve got to use words to compel. You’ve got to make your customers actually curious! Don’t just tell them what they’ll know afterward; show them all the things they DON’T know. Illuminating all the things a person doesn’t know they don’t know is one of the most important pieces of any sales page—so don’t leave home without it, kid. [Insert me winking like a 1950’s television ad man.]
Whip those words into shape, babies—now is the time when it matters more than ever. Your online presence IS your presence.
And whatever you’re saying on your website?
Damn well better be just as smart as talking to you in person.