Brush my shoulders off

I think I did a good job brushing the shoulders off this xmas. Less good at work the previous month. But whatever. Why are there so many haters?

No doubt, this is not what brushing your shoulders off is supposed to look like.

Dear Josh Petersen,

thank you very much for your email.

Based on a market research we decided to redesign our website 2 weeks ago because of the fact that a large proportion of the German users don`t understand our original idea: “to match people and their goals and help them to achieve these goals”. The average German user is not familiar with concepts like technorati, meetup, et al. As a conclusion we will improve the user guidance and add more serious content. A comparison between your and our website has shown that a few users see similarities concerning the homepage but not concerning second level sites. Nevertheless, the redesigned website will be very much different on all levels and since we are already working on the new design you are kindly invited to visit our website in 2-3 weeks but please understand that we don´t see the necessity for any kind of “reporting”.

Best Regards from Germany
David Kuczek / Dr. Berit Ernst

I woke up today to find 6 strange people had tried to move into my house. Excuse me! I’m living here! These screwballs created a company, copied 43 Things, and didn’t even bother to change the fonts. Hello?

Our site poses a simple question “What do you want to do with your life?” Want it in German? “Was willst du im Leben erreichen?” Copying our site is not a good answer. Changing a few words around is not innovation. I’d love some suggestions and help on sorting out what to do with these characters at aimido and I’d love help spreading the word in German speaking countries about the real site http://de.43things.com

In the mean time – we aren’t sweating the copycats. This week is busy rolling out our newest site, signing up beta testers and getting ready to make people ask “Why hasn’t this been done before?”

But the German version of 43 Things? That has been done – so get out of my house!

I bought the acapella version of “dirt off your shoulders” and Maggie’s right, Ladies is pimps too.

I was telling my colleagues today that this goal is getting easier. Today I read a news article about how we were creating an insidious advertising vehicle. It didn’t even bother me. Water off a duck’s back.

Damn the slings and arrows. This has been a good week for parcticing the art of “brushing your shoulders off”. I owe it to Nicole M for educating me on this line – and I swear it’s become my mantra. When the press calls, you’ve got to brush your shoulders off!