While Others Zig in 2024, You Zag

Well, hello. 👋 And Happy New Year. 🥳

This is the first issue of this newsletter for 2024 and ready to kick it off again.

I hope you had a a great time during the holidays. For me, it was some work, some RV camping, a wedding to attend, too much eating, renewed shock at what the hell I weight, and the stereotypical intention to eat healthy again in the new year.

LOL. 😂

But, we’re back! And ready to rock and roll.

To kick off the year, I’d like to share a few thoughts about the upcoming year. Because… I’ve seen many people out there predicting a bit of an odd year coming up. Which could be true… who knows. But, that presents a big opportunity, too.

More below…

While Others Zig in 2024, You Zag

Well, we’ve started a new year. And with a new year, we always get the annual wave of predictions.

I want to make 2 points here. Just big picture stuff. Something to consider…

This year, I’ve seen a lot of people predicting… chaos. Some of have even already referred to 2024 as a “year of chaos”.

And look, let’s just be real with each other here…

There Will Be A Lot Of Noise

Worldwide, 2024 is going to be a year of a lot of elections. The US is likely to have a chaotic, weird election season due to the personalities involved. But, the US isn’t the only country having elections. And all you need to do is look at Argentina to see that elections can end up being sea shifts.

With the elections, the misfits, the power struggles, economic stuff, the propaganda… yeah, I do think 2024 is going to be kinda chaotic. There will be BS flung in all directions.

But, always remember…. during times like these, you will always have the merchants of chaos.

These are the people who make money and benefit from you being scared. These are doomers who go around predicting doom and gloom everywhere. Be very scared, buy your survival food, and hunker down for what’s coming. Right? And a year like this just gives these people all kinds of fodder to work with.

They’ll blow things out of proportion, too. Because it is in their interest that you are freaked out.

But, keep this in mind…

These merchants of chaos have existed forever.

Many of these folks making their doomer predictions are just doing what they’ve always done. They’ve been doing it for years. People predicting chaos and “collapse” have existed forever. It is literally content marketing for them. The more freaked out you are, the more you buy.

But guess what….

Most of them are wrong CONSTANTLY. Most of their predictions end up being complete bullshit.

I mean, eventually, some of what they say will be correct. But, most of the time, it ends up being a load of BS. But, people are so busy moving onto the next dose of fear that they don’t even notice how much they’ve been lied to.

Doomsayers are wrong almost all the time. If you bother to look, you’ll see how stupid they look. They have a really poor track record.

There are some names I know of in the economic arena who have been predicting “economic collapse” for so long they sound like a broken record. And if you had bothered to listen to them, you’d be poor. They’ve been predicting market crashes, yet the market has done nothing but keep truckin’ upward!

So, that’s my first point. 2024 will be what it will be, but don’t sit there and pay much attention to the fearmongers and the merchants of chaos. They’re not your friends.

Your year will go way better the less you let that attitude consume you.

While They’re Distracted, You Focus

Unfortunately, you’re going to have a fair number of people who won’t be able to keep their head out of the weeds.

They’ll be distracted by the election. By the noise. By the propaganda. They’ll be busy sitting there being little keyboard warriors wasting their life on social media arguing.

But, what do people do when they’re scared?

They become too fixated on preservation. They become hyperfocused on bare survival. Not thriving, but just hanging on.

Businesses will stop pushing because they think they need to hold onto cash for later. Business owners may find themselves spending more time preparing for doom than they do on growth.

You’re going to see some entrepreneurs and businesses take their foot off the gas.

And yes, we may even seem some economic turmoil. I kinda expect it, actually.

But, what does this mean?

While others are wasting time consumed with the noise, it makes for the BEST time for you to buckle down and expand.

2024 could be an incredible time of growth for you.

You’re going to see the herd going one way and being distracted by a lot of shiny objects this year. So, don’t follow the herd. While they’re consumed with noise, put your head down and plan ahead, grow, expand and dominate.

You can grow and compete… while others have taken their foot off the gas.

That’s my “big idea” for 2024. If you’re willing to accept it and ponder it.

Yeah, 2024 may be kinda crazy. But, it doesn’t mean you have to follow the herd and be distracted by it.

Things are rarely as bad as the doomsayers say it will be. Not only that, mankind has been on an incredible trend of affluence for many decades now. While there are legit problems going on, there are some incredibly powerful trends happening that will lead to a very bright future. It is inevitable.

But, you know what…

Better to spend your time growing and living your best life… than to sit there and wade in a pool of fake fear that others created for you in order to lead you in different directions or make you buy crap.

You get to decide which game you’re going to play in 2024.

While others zig, you zag.

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A New Way To Do Code Snippets In WordPress

A lot of times, in order to make some custom functionality with WordPress, you use a little snippet of PHP code. You can either make it yourself, you can copy/paste it from a number of sites across the internet that share these things.

Then you use a snippets plugin. Something like Code Snippets or WP Code (←- don’t use this one as it is Awesome Motive and blimpware, basically). You could hard-code it right into functions.php, but that’s a bit nerdier. Code snippets plugins are convenient.

Thing is, they have a hit on site performance.

They’re not too bad, but basically all of those little CSS and PHP code snippets are being stored in the database. Then they have to be queried back out again and executed.

When you get right down to it, that’s not really the best way to do code snippets.

Well, right before we went into the holidays, a new plugin came out. It is called FluentSnippets.

As you mighta guessed, it is indeed from the same folks who did FluentCRM, Fluent Forms, etc.

But no worries. This plugin is 100% free and always will be. And… it’s cool!

See, you can manage your code snippets inside of WordPress conveniently. However, the plugin will store all the code in a file-based storage system. There are literally no database queries involved. It isn’t much different than coding it right into functions.php, except you can manage it via the admin panel.

There’s also some seriously awesome functionality here.

Like, conditional logic. Only run a snippet on certain pages. Or even (get this)… run a snippet only for people who have a particular TAG in their profile in FluentCRM.

Honestly, this snippets plugin just changed the game. I see no point in using any other one, at this point. And it has features that even the paid options don’t have.

Here’s a video I recorded about it:

I’ll say again… don’t use WP Code. They grossly overcharge for it and it is basically blimpware from Awesome Motive. If you use the free version, they’re just going to pump ads into your WordPress admin panel. You can use FluentSnippets. It’s better. And it is and always will be free.

WordPress Quick Bits…

The world of WordPress updates and news has been a bit slow since everybody was taking time off for the new year. So, let’s see…

FluentSMTP Gets More Features. FluentSMTP is the free plugin I use and recommend for hooking up your site to outgoing SMTP email services. Don’t waste your time buying one. FluentSMTP got updated to now include the ability to use multiple email addresses with one Amazon SES connection. It has also gotten integrations with Discord, Slack and Telegram. Check out the update.

Yeah, we’ll just roll with this little bit for this week. We’ll watch as the developers speed abck up again. LOL. 😝