Recently I had a conversation with another copywriter about working your business. (He’s a copywriting coach.)
We joke about a famous tagline from a writing organization: “Live ‘the writer’s life.’”
Because they paint such a beautiful picture:
Imagine sitting on a beach with your laptop… Relaxing near a pool with some fruity cocktail that has an umbrella in it…
“If you can write a simple letter to a friend” goes their sales copy, “you can make a living working for yourself as a copywriter.”
My friend and I know the truth.
Writing for a living is hard work. Really hard work.
And people get sucked into thinking that if they can write a ‘simple letter,’ then by golly… this writing thing ought to be as easy as falling off a log!
They learn quickly that not only is business writing difficult (Muse? No time to wait for one…), but selling yourself presents its own set of challenges.
Selling yourself?
Eww… isn’t that kind of… icky?
Not if you want to eat and pay the rent.
Sitting on a beach, my foot.
The truth is that any business opportunity you are chasing at this very moment is hard work.
You could be chasing a client.
Or an entrepreneurial idea.
Or a lucrative partnership.
The bottom line is that these things aren’t easy.
Especially if you’re a writer.
You know that success doesn’t walk across the beach, grab you by the hand and say, “Hey! Let’s go for a swim!”
No.
Your success is intentional.
It requires discipline.
Determination.
Courage.
And if you’re in sales, perhaps a small amount of masochism.
Because you get beat up a lot.
If you want to survive another day, you have to learn how to get back up and say: “Oh, yeah? That’s the best you’ve got? Think you’re gonna keep me down? Think again, sucka!”
It’s called resiliency.
The strength to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.
This is why I often say that marketing isn’t a contract. It’s an experiment.
Here’s what I mean: Many business owners think they can upload some marketing copy to their website, sign off on the project and BOOM! Done.
Then the leave their website alone for years.
You really can’t do that, anymore. I’m not sure you ever could, although plenty of businesses did when they first jumped on the Internet.
Marketing is a constant cycle of experimentation.
You test things. Tweak stuff. And sometimes you even break stuff and then re-assemble it to see if the second version works better than the first.
All of the “big successes” I’ve seen in marketing only happened when the person was determined not to be satisfied with ‘average’ but kept striving for ‘better.’
If you’re someone who gets this, then I’d love to talk with you.
Together we can bring your marketing to a bigger, brighter level that brings clarity… and sales.
Check out my Firestarter Packages to get an idea of the marketing projects you should be doing in order to make a dent in your universe. And if you’d like more ideas, reach out.
We’ll discuss how to get your marketing running like a well-oiled machine.
After you’ve achieved some big wins, then you can take a trip to the beach.
And send me the paper umbrella from your drink, just for luck.
(Not writing from a beach)
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Photo credit: Giorgio Montersino via ChairsHunt / CC BY-SA
