I want you to cheat on me.

Seriously.  I want you to register on the Ashley Madison of the bloggin’ community and have an affair.

As a blog writer, I also have to be a blog reader, and I read a bunch of them.  And I have to say that when I started my own personal bloggin’ adventure seven years and over 5,000 posts ago, there weren’t many theater blogs out there.  And now, well, we’ve got a whole gaggle of them (including the Shuberts themselves), plus tons of tweeters, and Instagrammers, and more.

But the three blogs I want you to look at have nothing to do with theater.

I’m a big believer in looking for inspiration outside of the world we live in every day.  A common question I hear from people in the Broadway world is, “Why do we keep doing the same thing over and over?”  Maybe that’s because we’re too inside our own little bubble.

It’s time to burst that bubble and see what the rest of the world is doing.  And that’s why I encourage you to read folks who write about other subjects besides the theater.

Here are three blogs I recommend you read and why:

1.  Seth Godin

Seth’s is the first blog I ever read.  His seminar was the first seminar that I ever took (and I modeled my own after his).  And his fingerprints are all over everything I do.  He preaches customer service, the power of the crowd, and most importantly, how being unique or remarkable in your marketing or your product development is the key to success.  Read his blog here.  And if you want a quick summation of his teachings, read this book.  It helped define my style.

2.  James Altucher

James is a newbie on my reading list.  He’s a straight shootin’ guy who made a lot of money, and lost even more.  He was broke, divorced, suicidal . . . and turned it all around.  Several times.  He has a simple plan of how to achieve success (hint – a lot of work, a little at a time), combined with practical advice on everything from starting your own business, investing in the stock market (hint – a lot of work, a little at a time), to just getting up every day, and taking on whatever challenges the world throws at you.  I find myself nodding a lot when I read his posts.  Read the blog here (and check out his podcast too).

3.  Copyblogger

Now this is where we get technical yo.  Copyblogger is one of the great and early granular marketing blogs on the web . . . mostly focused on, well, copy.  Although they’re going through a platform shift (soon to be Rainmaker) it is one of the greatest blogs I’ve read about online marketing.  You’ve heard me preach before how one of the things that I think Broadway shows are overlooking entirely is building an email list and marketing to that email list.  Instead we depend on buying other people’s lists.  Why should we buy other people’s if we have our own, right?  Copyblogger teaches you how to build a list and how to get people on that list to buy.  Read it here.

So it’s ok.  Click those links.  Cheat away.  I don’t believe in blog-onomy.  And our relationship will be even stronger for it.  Just be safe.

And always come home to me.

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