Copywriter | Marketing & Optimization Consultant | Customer Advocate
I feel like many marketing campaigns regularly devolve into a huge game of “follow the leader.”
Some marketing expert makes a comment or gets a successful result and we all rush to our own websites and funnels to make the changes this person recommends.
Which would be fine, if we all put our own spins to them.
[Read more…]Everyone understands having a fear of failure. It’s something instilled in us from childhood. We’re punished if we do something “wrong.” We’re ridiculed if we try something and we don’t succeed.
Many people don’t understand how they can be afraid of success.
But it’s true.
Success can be just as scary as failure, sometimes for the same reasons.
This blog post is all about the correlations I see between success and failure, and our very human fear of both. It’s also about how we can overcome those fears so we can learn from our failures (which we will all have) and enjoy our successes, large and small
First, let me make something clear. I am not a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or a therapist. I have not studied the human brain in any fashion. I am a marketer. I observe, and play on, human emotion. (Don’t judge, it’s how everyone in marketing makes their living.)
Everything I am going to say in this article, unless it is quoted, is based on my own experience and opinion. Please don’t take this as gospel.
Please do consider what I say here in terms of how you see success and failure, and how your fear of both may be holding you back. This is especially true if you own your own business. Small business owners and entrepreneurs can be insanely hard on themselves. (I’ll talk more about that later.)
We all have internal fears. This is normal and human. If anyone tells you they’re not afraid of anything, they’re deluded or lying.
Everyone, even the most successful people in the world, has internal fears. Most of these have to do with self-confidence. We all suffer from thoughts like “I’m not good enough to do XYZ” or “What happens if I can’t…”
It is just as scary to imagine success sometimes as it is to imagine failure.
If you’ve ever had a Tarot reading, you’ll know the card in the second to last position in one of the more common layouts is called the “Hopes and Fears” card.
Why are our hopes and fears the same?
Because they’re usually mirror images of each other.
We crave success and all the positive things we think it will bring. But deep down, we know there will be negative aspects as well.
We’re terrified of failing, of being exposed as a fraud or as ‘not good enough.’ Yet failing comes with its own benefits, like being able to look at how you failed and learn from it. Or picking yourself up and trying again (which is scary all by itself.)
Above all, we’re afraid of change. Success and failure both bring change. Sometimes that change can be drastic. For example, there can be as much change in a relationship after you get married as there is if you decide to get divorced.
If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, it is that change is the one true constant. You can’t avoid it, no matter how hard you try.
And a lot of people do. They refuse to change. They refuse to try something new that would shake up their world. Which in its own way, is an inherent failure.
Why?
That has to do with my next subject.
I have seen several opinions on this, both in my reading and from my own experiences. I’ll share a few of them here.
One theory on the difference between success and failure is that success involves risk.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You’ll never know unless you try.”
This is true. You won’t know whether you can do something unless you try.
A lot of people are so afraid of failing, so afraid of change, they’ll never take the first step to find out whether they might succeed.
Deciding to try is a risk in and of itself. If you take that risk, you’ve already achieved a small success, even if you fail in the long run.
For instance, if you audition for a play you may not make it into the cast. But getting up to perform in front of anyone who is going to judge you for any reason is intimidating.
Famous actors talk about how much they hate auditioning, because someone might say “No, you’re not what I want.” When it comes right down to it, the actor hasn’t failed if they aren’t cast for a part. They just don’t fit the image the director had in their mind.
My point is, just by putting in the effort to audition, you’ve succeeded. And you’ve learned something in the process from this perceived failure. You’ve learned how to get up in front of someone and be judged. (Which can be terrifying.)
I think this is one of the big reasons success and failure feel the same. There are small successes hidden inside every failure. You may not feel successful at the time, but because you took a risk and because you learned something by taking the risk, you succeeded.
The converse is also true. Many of us feel like failures, even when we succeed beyond many people’s wildest dreams.
This brings me to my second theory on the difference between success and failure.
Our goals.
Many fantastically successful people still feel like failures.
Why?
Because they haven’t achieved their goals.
Therapists, success coaches, etc. recommend writing down your goals so you can look back later to see if you’ve achieved them.
If you set your goals ridiculously high (which many of us do) or if you’ve achieved so much that you have to stretch your goals even further, it may feel like you’ll never reach the level of success you truly want.
Goals are an incredibly useful way of measuring our success, or failure.
For instance, my goal for today is to get this blog post finished and posted. Not a huge, unachievable goal. Once I’ve done that, I can say I’ve achieved success because I’ve reached my goal.
However, this small goal is part of a much larger goal involving starting a new business venture.
Even though I’ve achieved my goal for today, (which I will have done if you’re reading this on Monday, January 21st, 2019) I still feel like I have a LOOONNNG way to go in hitting that ultimate goal.
I won’t say I feel like an abject failure because I haven’t reached that goal yet. But I don’t feel like a raving success yet, either.
But, as I’ve pointed out, I have achieved a small success. And this small success will lead to other small successes. These will accumulate and finally result in the success of reaching my ultimate goal.
For anyone who is wondering, that ultimate goal is a course to help small business owners build a strong foundation for their businesses, so they achieve the success they’re looking for in the short and long term. (See why I’m writing about success and failure today?)
If you’d like more information about this course, please opt in for the content upgrade at the end of this post and I’ll make sure you find out about the course when it’s ready. (Opt in anyway, there’s some cool stuff that comes along with the content upgrade.)
This brings me to my third theory on success and failure.
Mindset.
This quote from Henry Ford has always struck me as one of the truest statements ever made.
If you believe you can do a thing, you’ll do it.
If you believe you can’t do a thing, you won’t.
Either way, you’re right.
Having a positive mindset may be the most important difference between success and failure.
If you don’t believe you can, if you don’t believe in yourself, you’ll always look for ways to fail, or ways you have failed.
If you do believe you can, if you do believe in yourself, you’ll look for ways to succeed, or for ways you have already succeeded.
We all do both.
I know I regularly look back on my life and find failures left and right.
However, I also see the myriad ways I’ve succeeded. I have even written lists of my accomplishments to show myself how wildly successful I have been.
More importantly, I’ve made an effort to learn from my failures. Even to the point of analyzing them to see where I can improve next time and what I can genuinely consider “my fault” and can control vs. circumstances I have no control over.
I’d like to point out that I’m not talking about the “positive mindset” most of think of when we’re told to “be more positive” as in be more cheerful and happy.
I’m talking about deciding to work toward a positive result instead of a negative one.
We’re all going to have bad days where we hate everything and we’re convinced that everything we touch, fails. Welcome to being human.
To me, the difference is making the effort to change that feeling instead of wallowing in it. Making that effort is what leads you to success, even if they’re small successes at first.
Can I quantify how I’ve achieved success?
Candidly, no.
But I can tell you some of the things I’ve done that have worked. And I can also retell ideas I’ve heard elsewhere and am currently putting to good use myself. (I’ll let you know if they worked later.)
Here are the 5 steps I recommend to achieve success.
No really. Take risks and stretch yourself.
In that way of “you’ll never know if you don’t try,” try. Find out if you can. If nothing else, you’ll have an answer and you’ll stop wondering.
I think we can all safely say there have been things we’ve tried in life where we’ve decided that this was a horrible idea and we never want to do it again. (Eating liver comes to mind for me, especially after I found out what it does in 10th grade biology class.)
When you take risks, you do more than answer the question of whether or not you can.
You set yourself up for success or failure (which is a risk in and of itself.) If you succeed, then hey, you did it! Go you! Keep going and see how much more you can achieve.
If you fail, step back and figure out what you learned from this failure. Even if it was “I hated this experience,” you’ll know how to avoid that in the future. You’ll probably learn a lot more than that, which will give you information to use when you take future risks.
Go beyond, “That was awesome, I want to do that again!” Or “Well, I’ll never do that again.”
Sit down and think about the entire experience. Go through everything good and everything bad about what you’ve done and learn from it.
Military units do this when they’re practicing maneuvers. It helps them look at how they can perform better next time.
Marketing departments do this as well. It really helps to look at a campaign after it’s finished to see what went right, what went wrong and how you can make it work better next time.
Sit down with a piece of paper and pencil and write down your goals.
As mentioned earlier, this is a highly recommended activity by those “in the know” and studies have shown that people who write their goals down are more likely to reach them. If nothing else, it’s in black and white, where you can go back and read it every once in a while. Once you’ve reached a goal you can cross it off. (Always a good feeling.)
And to go back to point 1, make your goals risky. If your goals are easy to achieve, what is there to motivate you to achieve them?
A goal is something you should have to work to reach. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Not the “be happy and cheerful” nonsense that many people espouse. If you are happy and cheerful, go you. Nothing wrong with that and we need more happiness in the world. But I don’t want to force you to do that if it’s not how you work.
I’m talking about making the concerted effort to work toward positive results in your life.
Some of this ties into your goal setting. For instance, set goals that make you happy or excite you. More importantly, set goals that matter to you, not to someone else. These are your dreams and aspirations. Don’t let someone else create those for you.
The rest of it does require having a positive attitude and being willing to put in the time and effort.
I have this thing about doing the dishes. I hate doing the dishes, especially if I have to do them by hand.
But once I start doing them, I always find it to be peaceful and meditative. I take the time to listen to the radio, music, or catch up on marketing podcasts. I enjoy the feel of the water on my hands. When I’m done, I always have a feeling of accomplishment. And it’s one more thing I can cross of my list.
When I cultivate that positive attitude toward doing the dishes, or anything else, I am more likely to do it. If I achieve that success, I’m more likely to keep doing it.
This is the “positive mindset” I’m talking about. One where you find the good in whatever it is you’re doing and make it a win, instead of a chore.
When you can work this into every aspect of your life, you’ll have a much easier time being successful, because the small wins will build up and become larger and larger successes.
Silly, I know, but it’s worked for me and for others I know.
Look back at your life and examine your successes.
Write them all down. (Yes, this part is important.)
Having a record of the times you’ve succeeded really matters, especially when everything feels like it’s falling apart around you. That’s when you take this list out and remind yourself that you have succeeded in the past. (Then you invoke that positive mindset I talked about above.)
As you achieve new successes, add them to your list.
You will always need to set new goals as you reach your old ones. But showing yourself what you’ve achieved will keep your sense of self-worth and accomplishment buoyed up. This is especially important when that new goal seems impossible to reach. You can remind yourself that you’ve done it before, you’ll do it again.
Many of us work by ourselves, which can feel like working in a vacuum. There is no outside input on what we’ve achieved, so we don’t know whether we can call ourselves “successful” or not.
This can be incredibly frustrating. It can also cause us to be incredibly hard on ourselves and become our own worst critics. (Especially if no one else is showing us how we’re succeeding.)
Following the steps above will help you feel like you’ve achieved the success you’re looking for. It will also show you where you can improve so you can grow your business into the thriving, profitable entity you want it to be.
I’ve put together a more detailed list of these steps, including clearer instructions on how to act on each of them. Click on the button below to download your copy so you can track your own successes and learn from any failures that may happen along the way.
Again, you’ll also get information on the small business course I’m building, once it’s ready.
I hope this helps you achieve success in your business.
Tell me about your successes, and what you’ve learned from your failures, in the comments below.
A few weeks ago, I learned about a new tool called GoViral. It’s put out by Growth Tools, which is run by Bryan Harris of Videofruit. The best part? It’s free! Don’t worry, there’s a link to get your own account at the end of this post. Or, if you’re absolutely desperate to see how it works right now, click on the button below.
The idea behind this tool is you give away a lead magnet in trade for having people give you exposure to their friends, social media followers, etc.
Yes, this is a really standard method of growing your audience. But Bryan Harris and his team have made this ridiculously easy to use, and to track.
More importantly, they’ve made it ridiculously easy for people to share your lead magnets with their networks. It’s awesome.
I decided to experiment with GoViral to see how it works and what results I got from it.
Please note: My experiments are far from scientific, or thorough. But even this little foray into playing with this tool will show you how well this tool works.
Here’s what I did…
I have a very modest email list, which I email every weekday. (Even copywriters should get time off.)
GoViral gives the option to share on several social media and blogging platforms. So, I asked my email subscribers to share one of my old blog posts on their Facebook walls.
If you’re on my email list, you’ll recognize the email I sent below. If not, you really should be. Sign up here, or subscribe via the popup box at the bottom, right corner of this window.
Subject line: Would you share this for me please?
Hi there,
I’m testing out a new tool to grow your email list. I want to see how it works for me, then I’ll report back here next week.
The best thing about this particular tool? It’s free!
The best thing about this test? I’ll give you an awesome cheat sheet to build a better relationship with your potential customers.
Here’s what I need you to do:
Collect your Customer Relationship Cheat Sheet after you’ve shared the blog post.
Tune in next Wednesday when I tell you the results of this experiment.
Thanks very much!
Tanya
To be fair, I really wasn’t done playing around with this tool yet, so I didn’t report in the next Wednesday. Instead, I’m reporting in the following Wednesday, via this blog post.
Of the 39 people who read my email, 6 of them shared the blog post.
That may not seem like a lot, and I did mention, my email list is small.
The results were noticeable.
My Facebook post reached 298 people. (I don’t know why Facebook registers this post as having been shared 5 times instead of 6, but there you are.)
Now, compare that to my last blog post, which only reached 80 people, and wasn’t shared at all.
Or this one from last year, which only reached 22 people, with no shares.
This is why GoViral is so effective. You get more exposure by sharing with your current audience, and asking them to share with their audience, and so on and so on and so on. (Which is why it’s called GoViral.)
Personally, I’m thrilled with the results, even though they’re small so far.
Again, if you’re on my email list, you know that I performed this past weekend at the Carleton Artist Lofts Spring St. Paul Art Crawl.
All week long, one post a day, I posted Facebook Lives of some of the songs I’d be performing at this show and asked folks to share them with GoViral to get more exposure for my performance and for the Art Crawl itself. I offered 2 different free songs as lead magnets for 4 posts during the week. (Okay, I missed a day because of unexpected scheduling conflicts.)
The first Facebook live post I shared got 3 shares via GoViral. (Looks like some folks shared without clicking on the GoViral link, which is fine by me.) This post was shared a total of 8 times (according to Facebook), reached 568 people and got 243 views.
My second Facebook Live post was only shared once by GoViral (which was probably me) but according to Facebook, it got 4 shares, which netted 107 views and reached 319 people.
The third Facebook Live post got 3 GoViral shares, 5 total on Facebook, and reached 310 people. It was viewed 96 times.
My fourth and final Facebook Live post that was shared via GoViral only once (again, probably me) but got a total of 5 shares on Facebook, had 93 views and reached 239 people.
Now, compare this to the Facebook Live I did at the show itself, which I didn’t offer a GoViral download for. That one reached 142 people and was only viewed 57 times. And I know I’m the only person who shared it.
Now granted, the longer a post is out in circulation, the more it will be viewed and shared. The first post had a full week from the day this blog post was written to get more views, shares and reach more people, compared to the last post, which I apparently forgot to share myself until today.
By the way, if you want to hear any of these, visit my music Facebook page.
There are a lot of things that will affect how much exposure any given Facebook post will get, including how many people know you and/or like what you’re doing, so they view or share your post for those reasons, versus just sharing a post because they thought it was cool.
But the fact remains that the posts that were shared via GoViral did much better than the one that wasn’t, for this test.
Again, I do not claim that this test was scientific, accurate or precise. It is me playing around with a new tool. But it’s a really fun new tool!
So, here’s the cool thing. You can share pretty much any digital lead magnet, including:
You do need a place to store your downloads online, GoViral doesn’t store them for you. But that’s pretty easy to set up. To be candid, I’ve got mine in a Google Drive folder. You can also use your website or other online storage like Dropbox.
Here is the list of places you can share lead magnets with GoViral.
You’ll notice at the bottom you can have someone email a friend or send them to a specific URL, which is a great way to share sales announcements, landing pages, your website and more.
Personally, I can see dozens of uses for this tool, for my clients’ businesses and for my own.
Once you’ve signed up for your free account, you do have to add a tracking script to your website. That way you can see how many people share a lead magnet or landing page on your site. Instructions for doing that are on the GoViral website.
Next, you click on the bright orange button on the main page that says Create Campaign.
Now, choose your goal for this campaign from the list.
You customize the landing page for your visitors and add the name of the bonus (or bonuses) they’ll receive for sharing.
Click on “more options” to add your own background image and change the overlay color to your preference. You can also create a “No Thanks” message and link to another page to give people a way to decline to share and still get another message, if you want to take them to a final Thank You page or another page on your website.
Next, you’ll choose the call to action you want to use, as per the dropdown menu above. You’ll link to the page or post you want to share and (depending on your CTA) choose the advanced settings to verify that someone has shared your post.
Finally, you’ll customize your download page by adding the link to your downloadable item(s). You can even add a special “Ghost Item” as an extra bonus.
Once you click “Next,” you’ll have the link to your GoViral campaign. You get the option of a standard link, which you can hide behind text or a button, or a “pretty link” which you can leave exposed. FYI, I used the “pretty link” option for all of my Facebook Live posts.
Add that link wherever you need to, including:
You can create multiple campaigns, depending on what you want to share and how you want to share it. You can duplicate a campaign, which makes it easy if you want to share the same lead magnet with different CTAs (so you can share it on different social media platforms, for example.)
By the way, the customer support folks at Growth Tools are fantastic and will help you get up and running ASAP.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t give you a content upgrade for this post. So I’ll give you a checklist of steps and marketing collateral you’ll need to set up a GoViral campaign.
After you opt-in for this content upgrade, you will be asked to share this post with your audience to get another lead magnet, my Lead Magnet Idea List. So, you’ll see how this works in the real world.
Finally, you’ll be taken to the GoViral website, so you can sign up for your own free account.
Click on the button below to get your free setup checklist and see GoViral in action.
The only true constant is change.
This is one thing I’ve learned over and over again in my life, and especially in my businesses.
Having some ability to adapt to change is necessary for every small business owner.
Maybe one of your suppliers runs out of, or stops making, a part you need for your product.
Maybe federal regulations change your ability to import a necessary ingredient.
Maybe the partner or spouse of a person who is critical to the functioning of your business gets an offer to work somewhere fantastic, but that offer requires them to move, taking your critical person with them. (And that “critical person” could be you.)
There are all sorts of situations that cause change in your small business. The real question is, how quickly can you adapt, so you can keep moving forward?
This is one of those weird situations that you can’t really “plan” for but you do need a “backup” in place when it occurs. However, you rarely know what that backup may be, because typically, you have no idea what change is coming your way.
For a business that creates a product of some sort, you either find a new supplier, or you learn to make that part yourself. Sometimes, you have to create that new supplier, by going to a company that already makes something similar and asking them to modify their process to make your part.
If an ingredient in a recipe becomes unavailable, you either find a new place to get that ingredient, or you find a new ingredient. Sometimes you have to go as far as changing your menu.
When you’re a freelancer, change usually involves a sudden increase or drop in your work. This is either because of an increase or decrease in the number of clients you have, or in the amount of work they’re sending you.
(By the way, the following is also true for businesses that produce products, just change clients to customers and work to sales.)
If you suddenly have more work than expected, you spend a lot more time working than you had intended. Sometimes this involves pushing back other clients’ projects, or your own work. Times like these are great in terms of income, but they can be frustrating with regards to your personal life.
The alternative is to find another freelancer you trust to do the work for you. Then you review the work before it goes back to your client to make sure it’s done to your standard. Sometimes this works, sometimes you end up redoing the entire project, and you have to pay someone else for work that isn’t up to snuff.
Again, if you have enough work (and therefore money) coming in, it’s usually worth it.
When you suddenly discover that you don’t have enough work coming in, you have to hope you’ve put the right systems in place to make up for that.
The first place you typically turn when you’re a freelancer is to your email list.
You do have an email list, right?
If not, you should.
Here’s a post on why you should have an email list, how to set one up, grow it, and what to write about.
Why do I encourage you to use your email list first?
These people all know you (hopefully because you’ve been emailing them on a regular basis). More importantly, at some point they’ve all said “yes” to something you’ve offered them. They’ve opted into your email list and expressed interest in your product or service.
Everyone on your email list is what’s referred to as a “warm lead” in the sales world. They know your name (or your business’s name) and they have some inkling of what you do. They may have worked with you before or bought your products.
This is the best place to start when you need to increase your workload.
And you can do it with a simple email that looks something like this:
Hey Samantha,
Tanya Brody here, you contacted me a while back, asking about my availability for an upcoming project. Unfortunately, I had to turn you down at the time. But things have changed since then, so I’m writing to let you know some time has opened up in my schedule in the next couple of months.
If you’d like to discuss that project, or different one, please schedule an appointment with me by clicking on this link. It will take you to my Calendly page, where you can choose a time at your convenience.
I look forward to the opportunity to work with you in the near future.
Cheers,
Tanya
Obviously, if you’re a business making a product, you’d adapt this email to invite someone to try your product (or to buy another one, or an additional product).
If you’re a service-oriented business, you can offer a coupon for a discount on the price of the first service. If you’re courting customers who haven’t come in lately, you can do the same thing, but phrase the email so you’re offering them the discount for their next service.
What I’m trying to say here is, your email list is a very valuable asset, so make sure you use it when you need to increase your business.
Social media is a great way to let the world know that you suddenly have time on your hands and you’re looking for clients. One quick post and you can reach hundreds of potential clients.
Ideally, you have a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, an Instagram account and a Twitter account for your business. (In the interest of full disclosure, I only have the Facebook page and the LinkedIn profile. I was going to make a business-only Twitter account, I just never got around to it. And I don’t do Instagram.)
If you don’t it’s still an effective way to spread the word via friends, family and those people you only know in the digital world.
Most people post about their daily lives. That includes changes in their work status. I’ve seen hundreds of people successfully land new jobs shortly after losing theirs. I’ve also seen freelancers fill up their schedules quickly by announcing they have time available.
When I started my freelance copywriting business, I wrote a post about how supportive my community was as I was starting. It all started with a “vaguebooking” post I put on Facebook and turned into an incredibly long and amazing post of people saying, “I’m so sorry to hear this” or “you can do this” or “hey, these folks are looking for a copywriter.” Check it out at the link above.
If you reach out to your social media community, you’re sure to get a positive response. You may not get work immediately, but word travels fast and you may have new clients knocking on your virtual door, saying “Hey, such and such person mentioned that you have time available to take on a new project…”
Again, for those of you with more traditional businesses, you can also announce your special, discount or other exciting news on social media to get customers in the door.
This is a tactic particular to freelancers.
Because there are so many freelance job boards, bidding services and places to promote yourself as a freelancer, you need to go update your profiles. Yes, all of them. At least the profiles where you’ve gotten work in the recent past.
This is just another way of letting your clients know you’re available to take on more work.
For some of these services, you’ll just have to go in and change your status to available or post something saying you’re taking new clients. For others, you’ll need to look through the long lists of jobs available, make bids on those jobs and hope yours gets accepted.
These freelance websites are not my favorite way to get work, but they are effective when it comes to making sure the bills are paid.
You will always encounter changes in your business. The more prepared you are to weather them, the better off you’ll be. And to be completely candid, if you can’t handle change, you may not want to run your own business.
That’s why you’re better off preparing for it whenever you can. When you can’t, make sure your business is agile and adaptable enough to survive whatever comes your way and thrive, once the crisis is past.
If you haven’t guessed yet, all of this is a very long-winded way of me announcing that I suddenly have time in my schedule. I am still working for FunnelDash, but my position has been reduced to part-time. I work for them on Tuesdays and Wednesdays now. The rest of my week is up for grabs.
I am looking for clients to fill in that gap.
If you have a copywriting project coming up in the next few months, please schedule an appointment with me by clicking on the button below.
I am also offering a new business development and marketing consultation service. We meet weekly or monthly and I walk you through the process of setting up and marketing your business. I’ve done this for a few people now and they’ve found it very helpful. More about this service in next week’s blog post. (You’re welcome to make an appointment to find out more about it in the meantime.)
For those of you on my email list, you’ll be getting an email similar to the one I wrote above.
For those of you who are friends with or follow me on social media, you’ll be seeing posts soon.
And yes, I’m going to go update all the online profiles.
As always, thanks for following along on this crazy journey of mine.
Tell me about it in the comments. I’m always interested in how business owners weather the ups and downs of their industries.
This month marks one full year since I started writing this blog.
I can’t claim I’ve been incredibly consistent, or that everything I’ve written has been perfect, but I’ve kept it up to the best of my ability, as I’m growing my own freelance copywriter business.
It’s been a little over a month since I wrote a status report on what I’m doing. My last one reported that I’d made my goal, without realizing it, months ago. Yay me! Thank you again, all of you, for your congratulations, whether they came in the comments on that blog post, on my Facebook page or Twitter feed, or in a private email. They mean the world to me.
Suffice it to say, things are picking up around here. One of my new clients, a company called FunnelDash, brought me out to the Traffic and Conversion Summit earlier this month. It was fantastic. I met lots of folks, learned more about FunnelDash’s product and had a wonderful time.
Meanwhile, I continue working on projects for other clients and am currently booked through mid-April, if not further out (which is great for me, but hard if you need something done quickly.)
I’m closer and closer to making my goal a regular occurrence, instead of a spike in activity, which makes me even happier. For those of you who are wondering if you can “make it” yourselves, the answer is yes. You can. It takes time and determination, but if I did it, you can do it!
For the record, I’m going to save personal blog posts until the end of the month from now on. They used to come out around the 13th of each month, which is when I started this blog, March 13th, 2016. I don’t want to do that anymore, so, from now on, you’ll have to wait until the end of the month to find out what’s going on in my world.
Ultimately, this blog is not about me. I enjoy reporting in on my progress, and I’ve gotten good feedback from many of you, telling me that I’m an inspiration to those of you who are starting your own businesses, or who have your own businesses and are struggling to make them work.
Really, this blog is about you. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t write a blog post every week. I’ve got a lot going on and sometimes, I feel like I don’t know what to write about. Or I feel like I’m shouting into an echo chamber, writing about the same things everyone else writes about, just from a different voice.
I write this blog for you. All of you. Whether you’re my friends and family who humor me as I walk down this crazy path, or you’re on your own, similarly crazy path and are trudging along with me. I do this for your benefit, not mine.
So, tell me what you want to know. Tell me where you’re having problems and how I can help. Tell me what experiences of mine you want to hear about. I am here to serve you, my fellow small business owners and folks who are kind enough to follow what I’m doing.
Stop behaving like a typical Minnesota audience, who give the polite golf clap and come up to you to tell you that they love what you’re doing, then walk away with a bemused look on their faces. (I grew up in Minnesota, I live here now, and I’ve been a touring musician and performer. I am licensed to say these things.)
Tell me what you like about my blog posts. Tell me what you hate. Tell me what you want to see more of, so I can give it to you. Really. I want your feedback. Either leave it in the comments below or fill out this survey.
I want to help you get to where I am now, and continue on to where I’m going. I want all of us to be successful in our own spheres. (I’m weird like that. I think everyone deserves to make it. Success isn’t a pie that diminishes the more others take. There’s plenty to go around.)
Yes, I’m always interested in helping you be successful by writing your advertising copy. And I’m aware that I can’t handle all of you as clients. I need to sleep occasionally. But I can help you with writing techniques, ideas and marketing advice.
Help me help you. What do you need? What will get you to that next step on your path to success?
I look forward to hearing from you in the comments, or on the survey.
Thanks, as always for following along on my crazy journey as I grow my freelance copywriter business.
