Quote Originally Posted by basschick View Post

i guess what i don't get is WHY do people take this stuff personally? most of us here are professionals and we give professional advice when we do give it. FREE professional advice - that's fucking cool!
It's not at all that people don't want the advice they ask for (well, I can think of an exception to that, but...) I think, as Dean said, sometimes there's a lot of ego attached to something, particularly if they've put a bunch of time into it.

I'm sure when Dean put up the first draft of his DVD cover (on another board), he wasn't expecting people to say "Well, this doesn't work, and fix that, and this other thing isn't what people will want to see..." but... as a result of his listening to the advice, he came up with a cover that is MUCH stronger and will sell a lot better.

The people that are smart put their ego aside and take what's offered. The people that get stuck in their own ego waste a ton of time, and, in the worst case, come back and blame something else after they were told what mistakes they were making.

I am delighted to work with Patti on these issues because she does make it clear what's right and what isn't. And if everyone did that, the development cycle for a lot of us on tours, site ideas, etc would be much shorter.

The trade off is that it does sting sometimes when you realize that something you thought was really good actually sucks. But better to learn *before* you've spent money promoting it, pissing off sponsors, whatever.