My celebrity look alikes!

This is so awesome! My buddy Forest just posted one on his blog and so I had to try it out too!

http://www.myheritage.com

AND these are the ones that came up for Gary Fong! No joke! Wow! Freaking hilarious!

Ed or ING

Tim Sanders is the man! He always gets stuff right on the money and so I always read his blog!

I am super careful who I get into businesses relationships with because it's kind of like a marriage (not that I know what that's like) but you definitely are bound to the people you're in business with and so all of my biz partners are people I've known for a long long time and so I know their work ethic and character.

As I start more and more businesses with different people I can't always spend a ton of time getting to know everyone involved and so one of the ways I filter people is by this same "ed or ING" principle.



hehe...Click here to read the rest!

Science Experiment #2

Reminder that the sale will end today so if you were wanting to order at the discount prices be sure to go to the Getit Store and get hooked up!

...and for today's science expirement we have something even more fun than coffee! FIRE! Yea!



CLICK HERE to watch the video!

*** Warning *** These experiments are done by a highly trained amateur so don't try this at home.

Showit Store is Active

The Showit Store is Active

and SuperMatt got OSP back up too!

I'm afraid to do a mailing though because people might shoot me if I did another mailing and then the site went down again...but it is possible to order with the special prices right now.

I had hundreds of emails yesterday from people wanting to order and even a few voicemails.

This one really cracked me up!

Click here to listen

:)
DJ

Morning Coffee

I now have email and if you're wonderfing if I got your email notifying me that the store was down the answer is yes and thank you. :) I wish I could read and respond to all the emails but I'm so sorry I can't. There was over 300.

We will run the promotion again as soon as the store is ready and thanks again for all your help and support through this.

Here is a video of me making coffee this morning.

Coffee and friends cheer me up so it was fun to make coffee and then go to MySpace and see all the friend requests because the MySpace link was one of the only links in the email that worked. :)

Have a great day!
DJ

Not Alone

Simple search on Google came across:

"Bliksem Ripped Me Off" from a guy with a strikingly similar story as me.

"fed up with bliksemhosting"

"BliksemHosting Stealing from their old customers!!"

"...And Another"

"Don't trust these crooks named Javier and Christina..."

Rumor has it that Javier Vidueira is trying to start a new company called hostingjoy.com and so it appears he's charging everybody who's credit card he can find to get capital to do it. Even people who haven't been using Bliksem for over a year have been charged.

This is really sad.

Bliksem hosting is terrible

As you've been witness of - this company, Bliksem Hosting, is terrible and I'd hate to see any of you make a mistake and have to go through what I've gone through with them.

The empty promises from Javier Vidueira and his staff at Bliksem Hosting have caused such a nightmare for me and I know it's been super frustrating for all of you as well not being able to get on the forum or the store and so as soon as I get email access back I will be moving all of my sites to a differet server.

Also, 2 weeks ago I noticed that they charged my credit card again for the year of hosting and so I notified them and they promised it would be removed and must've just been a glitch. Well the charge hasn't been removed yet and since the forum was down today, as well as email, and the store, I decided to look through and see if anything else was fishy. I noticed that there was not one charge from Bliksem like there should be but three. Wow. I never really look at my credit card statements and they are paid automatically so I didn't even know that these guys were charging me almost every month. It makes me wonder because I notified them of the problem and they knew there was a duplicate charge but wouldn't they have seen 2 duplicate charges in their system?

08/16/06 BLIKSEM WebHosting 877−3196600 FL $937.50
10/17/06 BLIKSEM WebHosting 877−3196600 FL $937.50
11/03/06 BLIKSEM WebHosting 877−3196600 FL $937.50

Oh yea...and I never really use the phone but everytime I've tried calling them this is what I've gotten - CLICK HERE to hear it.

What F are U?

You've gotta check out Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba's new book "Citizen Marketers"

If you came and saw me on the tour or at WPPI last year you'll remember this "Word-of-Mouth" and "Word-of-Mouse" slide.

It's from McConnell and Huba's 1st book "Creating Customer Evangelists" and It's in every presenation I give because I believe understanding this new way of marketing is what will determine your success - especially in our industry!





So if you're looking for Christmas presents pick up both copies for someone and they'll thank you!

In their new book and on their blog they talk a lot about social media and how it relates to the spreading of ideas and how everything is becoming democritized. It's crazy cool to think about this stuff and to realize that we're at the beginning of a whole new world of media and marketing.

They talk about the "F's" of social media networks and that's where I got the title of the post from. You can go to their blog to learn more.

Vacation time

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. All of you are amazing and I'm so blessed to have you guys in my life!

I've been avoiding email and the phone for the past week and spending a lot of time just wrapping up stuff around here. Getting prepped for next year which will be another great year! I've also been going back through some of the books I read over the past couple of years and finding my favorite quotes and here's one that I just heard in a speech too.

"The only difference between who you are today and the person you will be in five years will come from the books you read and the people you associate with." - Charles Jones

Just another friendly reminder to read books! Get smart yo!

Thanksgiving

I woke up and started my normal routine. I made coffee and then got cozy in my favorite chair next to the fireplace. I spent some time thinking and then praying (maybe I should reverse the order) and then I did some reading and more praying and then I clicked on some worship music and sang a bit (scary thought I know - I'm glad it was just me and God and he may have even snuck in the ear plugs - who knows!)

...but it was there that God really broke me down...and I've been praying for this because I think I live a relatively emotionless life. It's weird to say but it's really true and I think there's a reason for it but never the less it's hard sometimes. I layed there in front of my fireplace crying. Wondering about all the things I don't get to experience because of this life that God has given me. Wondering about having a family and kids to share today with. I admit I felt a bit deprived. Sad that I was alone.

So I left. I went to this spot at the beach where I used to go in college and I took some books and my journal and spent the afternoon just reading, thinking and praying.

I came home a couple of hours ago and pulled out the meal that I picked up from the supermarket yesterday because I knew most restaurants would be closed today. Cooked it up (it was a Stouffer's roast turkey breast), opened a bottle of wine and had Thanksgiving dinner.

It was during dinner that I came to the place where I think God was leading me all along...and that is that I'm incredibly lucky. I really feel that way, and I am so thankful for the life I've been blessed with. These are the best days of my life. And in five or ten years when I'm married and have a few little kids running around I won't be doing the things I'm able to do right now but ya know what - I'll still feel like I'm living in the best days of my life.

I am excited for those days but what I realized today was how easy it was for me to think about what I didn't have and when I did that I lost the ability to be thankful for what I do have. If you're not living in the best days of your life - change your life! ...Or change the way you think about your life! You have the power to do both.

For the past couple of years God has had me be alone, and maybe that will continue, I dunno, but through being alone I've been able to focus all my time and energy in one area and hopefully accomplish some good and help some people. I don't know what the next stage will bring but I'm thankful for all I have learned, the people I've met, and the life I've been priviledged to live.

I'm thankful for you and for the ability to share my thoughts, feelings, and Thanksgivings with you.

Yours,
DJ

I can do it myself!

I dated the cutest brunette back in college and one day her mom told me that when she was little and her parents would try and help her do something she'd say, "I can do it MYSELF" and it made me laugh because she really never grew out of that..lol..actually she never grew much period because she was just over 5ft tall, but absolutely gorgeous.

So even though all of you know what a big fan I am of outsourcing there are certain times when my stubborn "I can do it myself" attitude takes over and today was one of those times.

Originally I tried to put Windoze on my MacbookPro with bootcamp and jacked the whole thing and had to have the techs fix it and so today I had Kristin schedule a tech to come out tomorrow to put Windoze on but tonight I did it myself!


It's awesome having two operating systems on one machine and especially for me because I do a lot of testing with the Showit apps and I've also been testing other apps like Bridge, Lightroom, and Aperture and now I can just push a button and instantly have Windows to play with.

Learning so much!

I love it when I don't have to work because then I can do the real work like reading and thinking and I came across this yesterday and it sounds exactly like what I talk about it my "Creating Freedom" talk!

Isn't it crazy that people go to starbucks 18 times a month and probably spend close to $1000 a year there...

How does this change the way you think about your business and what it delivers?

Blog training :)

This is cool! Whenever you link to a post on somebody elses blog be sure to link to the PERMANENT LINK otherwise if that person posts again and somebody clicks on your link they won't know what you were directing them to.

In order to find the PERMANENT LINK just click the little time-of-post link below like you see in the picture and it'll take you the right page!



...and now if you like something on my blog and post a link to it people can track back to your blog because it'll automatically show up in this technorati search but you have to post directly to the PERMANENT LINK.



Try it out now and see how it works!

...and if you are wicked smart you can put code like this in your blog but don't ask me how to do it because I dunno.

:)
DJ

Deyl's gas problem

My buddy Deyl used his gas problem to make a receptionist laugh.

Click here and read more!

:)
DJ

Don't confuse...

I just read a great article in Business Week about Kodak and a couple of other companies and it gave this great reminder!



Are you guilty of only thinking about how you conduct your business?

:)
DJ

21 Countries

I've been learning and lot about digital retail from the book "The Long Tail" and so I was curious how far Showit Web 2 had spread and so I did a quick search and these were the countries I could find where somebody had ordered Showit Web.

It blew my mind to see how in just 7 months it could reach 21 countries.

Africa
Brazil
England
France
Israel
US
Mexico
Germany
Canada
Philippines
Sweden
Japan
Australia
New Zealand
Ireland
Malaysia
Hungary
Singapore
Netherlands
Switzerland
Panama

Good Saturday!

I hope everyone is having a great day. I love hanging out at home on Saturday. It's the best feeling in the world to wake up and just get to hangout.

Anne's OSP South Video

Hey Everyone! My friend Anne Ruthmann just put together a video from OSP-south and it's so fun! What an awesome memory!

***Click here*** to watch the video!

I can't wait for the next one!

:)
DJ

Ah Sweet!

So here's a pic of the wonderful Kailee who I posted about below. :D

When I first found out that I had a picture of the wrong girl I was a bit nervous but then when Scott Bach hooked me up with the real Kailee I was happy again...and she's only 5 feet tall!

I remember when I was growing up I always wanted to stay small because I loved to hide (Remember I'm a Ninja so hiding is part of what I need to do) and the bigger I got the harder it was to find good hiding spots.

For those of you that are short is it awesome? I always wanted to be short.

Kailee is sweet :)

***EDIT**** Charles just informed me that the pic I had posted here was not of Kailee! Ah! hahaha! ooops...lol. Sorry. It's so funny though because that picture is all over the blublog so I just assumed it was her.
-----------------------
Kailee always makes me blush a little bit when I read her posts so I figured I'd post her picture up here and show everyone how gorgeous she is and maybe make her blush too!

Click here to stalk her
(and read what's up with Jack!)

Who are You?

Are you who you are?

Kind of an odd question I know, but think about it for a bit. One of the books I'm rereading right now is called "Let Your Life Speak" and it's about vocation which is a word I had never heard until I started hanging out with Dane Sanders.

Frederick Buechner defines vocation as "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."

The author, Parker J. Palmer, says

"The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril."

He then suggests looking back at your childhood for clues into who you are and what your gifts are.

A story from my life comes from elementary school when I saw some of the students selling candy bars for $2 a bar. I thought this was silly that kids were spending this much money on these lame candy bars when I could get a 4 pack of Reeses (on sale on Sundays) for .25 cents and sell it to them for $1 and make a pretty good profit and now they could buy twice as much good chocolate.

I was kind of ignorant of the whole "sell candy to support your school" concept but I knew that my Reeses candy was making kids way more happy because it was what they really wanted and we were 12 years old so what do we care about supporting our school and so I was selling these things like crazy. I'd put all my books at the front of my desk and then keep a huge stash of Reeses in the back. It was a good operation but once the school got wind of it I was informed that I needed a permit to sell things on school property.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting and I wonder how that will play out in my future.

What about you! Do you have any stories from your childhood that you think will help you understand who you really are (instead of who our culture has tried to mold you into) and how do you think those gifts will play out in the future?

:)
DJ

Dude! I totally Miss you!

Charles Bordner is a stellar photographer from South Carolina and he just posted this hilarious slideshow titled "Dude, I totally miss you" I was laughing so hard my stomach hurts. :)

***CLICK HERE*** to watch the show!

Tim Sanders is Cool!

As many of you know Dane gave me a copy of Tim Sanders book, Love is the Killer App, a couple of years ago and his philosophy of escaping the life of scarcity and living in abundance totally changed my life!









He's become a huge hero of mine and earlier this year I went out to Chicago to watch a Maximum Impact Simulcast that he was a part of.

So what an honor it was to have him thank me on his blog! I couldn't believe it.

Click here and give him some love for all that he's shared and for the way he's changed the biz culture today by encouraging business people to love those around them and share their knowledge.

OSP is BACK

Once again a special thanks to Matt Antonino who is the OSP doctor! :) He also has admin access so he can help you with stuff if I die. Sweet! I'm so glad we're back!

Click the OSP Forum link ------------------>

LaCour

I had a chance to meet the original "LaCour" (Rachel) :) in New York and then spend some more time with the crew in Atlanta. This is a phenominal group of four photographers who are leading this next generation of wedding photographers and the reason they're leading is because they're asking the right questions and reading the right books!

Rachel gave me a great book, The Call, by Os Guinness and I'm really enjoying it. The first chapter is titled "The Ultimate Why" so it fits perfectly into what I've been thinking a lot about.

... and on their blog they talk about the role that the E-Myth played in their business. The E-myth is a brilliant book that I think Dane Sanders probably gave to me.

Click here to read their blog post.

:)
DJ

Do you fear failure?

Watch this video by Tim Sanders!

At the end he talks about the need to make "new" mistakes and how if we're not taking risks and making new mistakes we'll never be a leader.

Web hosting nightmares

I've had the worst luck with web hosting. I've been through four webhosts in four years and non of them were reliable. They were all recommended to me and what I've heard from my friends is that they usually have the same problems from other hosts so I've hesitated moving again b/c it's kind of a pain but I think I might have to.

Anyway, Steve from Movingpixels is looking into some other options for us and again my apologies for the downtime on the forum and I also am not getting any email.

On the bright side I've gotten some killer new books that I've been reading and so I'll post them up later.

:) Happy Monday!
DJ

Why did you come to the party?

Well I'm home now. Sitting in my cozy little apartment drinking an egg nog latte from Starbucks. It's Sunday morning and for the first time all year I have nowhere to go and nothing that I have to do. It's an interesting feeling. One I both love and hate. Because it's in these vacant moments that I'm forced to revist this question of Why.

Those of you who heard me speak this year know how passionate I am about encouraging people to ask themselves the Why questions because I've learned that if I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing I'll spend my whole life spinning my tires trying to figure out what to do or how to do it.

It's in this why question that I'm beginning to find my purpose and it's this purpose that motivates me when I don't feel like doing what I'm doing.

I've flown over 100,000 miles this year and most of it has been alone. If I didn't remind myself often of "Why" I'd be tired, burned out, and incredibly lonely.

So hopefully you'll have some downtime this winter and I want to encourage you to think about "Why you came to this party." Because it is a party and it's incredibly fun and freeing and if you feel bogged down or tired then find the answer to that "why" question and it will energize and motivate you and remind you of why you're doing what you're doing.

Think about your friends and think about your family because it's in other people that we find our purpose.

Yours,
DJ

A Surreal Life

Sometimes I feel like I'm living outside of my body and I can see what's happening but can't really believe it's real. This happened the first time when I went to Mike Colon's workshop and asked him very seriously for his autograph and instead he wrote his cell phone number and a week later Dane Sanders and I were hanging out with him in Santa Barbara and I remember him giving us some great advice and encouraging us to keep our expenses low as we grew our business.

Then just over a year after that I was with him and another huge inspiration of mine, David Beckstead, staying at a living legend's house - Gary Fong. I remember looking around thinking "how did I get here and what on earth am I doing here!" (I'm sure Missy is rolling her eyes right now - she gets bothered when photographers say stuff like this)

And this week has been another one of those experiences because Gary Fong invited me out to dinner in NY last week to celebrate the huge success of the Lightsphere at the photoplus show and while at Dinner Denis Reggie invited me to stay at his house for a few days in Atlanta and here I am - staying at the house of the man who created the industry of wedding photojournalism. It's crazy!

Denis Reggie was the first photographer I ever heard speak. I went to a workshop of his in LA a few years back and then I went to Mike Colon's a few months after that and then just earlier this year I went to Gary Fong's One Step Ahead tour and those are the only three people who's workshops I've been too and they are all incredible.

...and there are many things that these guys have in common but one thing that I noticed right off the bat is how incredibly generous they all are. These guys just never stop giving. Honsetly! I've seen it in Colon and Fong for the past year and the same is true for Mr. Reggie! Ever since I got here there have been people coming by the house and chatting and I got to talking with a few people at the PUG group in Atlanta and they all just raved about how Denis Reggie had helped them at some point along the way.

Sorry for the long post but I just had to write about how amazing these guys are and how blessed I've been to be able to watch their careers and learn from them.

Here's a little video that's really just fun and it shows just a small glimpse of Denis Reggie's guest house that I'm staying in. I'll try and get some pics of his main house tomorrow because it's absolutely incredible. He built it brilliantly with a special space for his studio and all of his staff that is attached but still very separate from his home and he also built in the most incredible wine cellar I've ever seen. It must have several thousand bottles of wine in there...and a game room with a TV that's as big as my car. I've never seen a TV so big in my life.

Tomorrow I head home and I'm excited.

:)
DJ

A Revolution.

Click to see it bigger.

I think of OSP as much more than a forum - more than a community - even more than the wonderful family of friends it has become. OSP is a REVOLUTION. It's a complete (and quite radical) shift in how people used to go about their art, their business and even their life... and it's incredible to see how quickly everyone has adopted this new mindset and have experienced the joy and success that comes from living with an attitude of ambundance and sharing all that you have!

Robert Kiyosaki in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad said, "When it comes to love, happiness, sales, and contacts first give what you want and it will come back in droves."

So in more DJ type language - OSP just ROCKS! There's really no other way to put it and to see 100 people come out for two days of hanging out, learning, shooting, and simply playing together is just awesome! ...and of course in true "Open Source" fashion this whole shindig was free! Wow! That's REALLY incredible!

...and a special thank you to everyone who put so much time and energy into making this happen. To be honest I can't even name all the people who put in time and energy to make this such a wonderful couple of days but I know that Garrett and Joy Nudd, Amber and Nathan Holritz, and the team from Lacour did a fantastic job giving and sharing and once again they did it all for free because they truly believe in the value of sharing ideas and building a community based on giving.

...and I know that many of you couldn't come and so if ya'll (I've temporarily adopted the southern accent ;) want let's do more of these next year! I think one get together a year isn't nearly enough!

I love you all and thank you for being the most amazing people, photographers and lovecats so keep giving and be blessed!

Yours,
DJ

Yea!

Yea!, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

OSP south 2 is rocking! Yesterday Nathan Holritz rocked the house in the morning and today Garrett Nudd gave a killer presentation. I actually missed them but I heard they were great!

So now we're out at lunch and Liana is sporting her shirt from the osp gift exchange!

Awesome!
DJ

Sleepy Sarah - lol

Last night Max took us to Mortons for some good steaks and apparently George Straight was there....and tonight is the CMA awards in Nashville so the only rental cars were really little ones and I had a lot of work to do so I really didn't want to drive today but finding a limo service was even harder because I guess country music people took all the cars.

The concierge called 10 places but all the limos were going to the awards so I called around myself and found one and I'm so glad because I've been testing some new Showit stuff and that is way more fun than driving. Apparently Sarah is tired though - lol.

Sites back up! Yea

:) We're live again folks...and we'll be updating the server next week so we can continue to grow as fast as we are without having downtime.

Sweet!
DJ

Sites down

Sorry about the OSP Forum and ShowitFast site being down. They are both database driven and we had too many people accessing them at one time so they crashed but they're being worked on right now and should be up soon.

:)

NY to Nashville

I had an early flight from NY to Nashville this morning at 11am and I went through Chicago and picked up Sarah Barlow! Sarah busted her leg a couple of weeks ago so that gave me a good excuse to have a quick visit to Chicago and see part of the fam! :)



Having a broken leg has it's perks. Sarah got a full body massage right there at the security checkpoint (see how relaxed she looks) and then had a nice lady wheel her right to the gate...but because we checked in late her bag didn't make it on the plane. lol....it's ok though because I have a couple of extra outfits I can loan her.



Anyway the last time I was here I stayed by the airport so this time I wanted to stay downtown and it's pretty nice and my room has a nice view of the sunset and I think Sarah's room does too. The people here are so sweet and I'm just meeting up with my friend Max Hsu about music stuff and then heading to Chattanooga tomorrow for OSP-South! Yea!

PhotoPlus 2006 Video

Well PhotoPlus 2006 was a blast! I had so much fun and I wish I could show you more but I forgot my charger so I only have video from the 1st couple of days.



The tradeshow was amazing and such a success. Gary Fong's booth was slammed all day every day and so was the Pictage booth! They both had to order in more stuff after the first day which is always a good thing!

I spent some time at the tradeshow but a lot of time just resting during the day and then hanging out with friends at night which is really why I came and one night Liana and Crystal came and we just drank coffee and hot chocolate in my room until like 2am and I just love the family that's been created and we talked about some fun things we want to do together next year.

Here are some pics below of old and new friends and there were lots of you that promised to send me pictures but I only have a few so send'em over so I can post'em up! :)

Nathan Holritz snapped this pic of us at dinner but come on man! Less of us and more of the ladies please! :) lol
Sofia Negron, Liana Lehman, me, Nathan Holritz


me and Matt Wagner


me and David Olde


Crazy Fong Booth!

Astonishing Stats!

I heard a good quote the other day that went something like,

"Successful people get ahead in the time that other people waste."

(which makes me feel a little guilty for sleeping in until noon yesterday and then taking a nap all afternoon today but I haven't been feeling great...)

...and one of my favorite blogs to read is my buddy Brett Austin's! He's always got cool random stuff to put up there and today he put a post about an article in Time Magazine which talks about how Americans spend their free time and it was astonishing to me that the national average for TV watching per day is over 3 hours higher than time spent reading.

I don't even own a TV and I flipped on the TV here in the hotel yesterday and I couldn't even find anything interesting to watch for even 5 minutes so what could people possilby watch for 3.5 hours everyday?

Live Frogger

So last night I wasn't feeling that well and so I went to sleep and woke up at noon today. I never set an alarm unless I have a flight or a meeting and so I just sleep until I'm ready to wake up and it's usually 7-8 hours but I guess last night I needed more sleep.

So now it's 1:35 and I'm just hanging out relaxing today and one of the video games I used to enjoy was Frogger...and NY is like a giant game of live Frogger and when I'm here I love to sit up in my hotel room and watch people down on the street run and stop and risk their lives to get across the street a little faster. It's a miracle that they don't die.





Also, I'm amazed at how many people grabbed the Brilliant settings! 105 in one day! Whoa! Why didn't you guys tell me you needed them. I wasn't even considering selling them until Dane Sanders told me I should because it would save people a day or two of making them on their own. I will keep adding videos to the Video Vault about how to use the different settings.

Ok...well I better go. I have some fun video from the trip in so I'll try and put that up tonight or tomorrow.

:)
DJ