I’ve got an inspirational or perhaps sobering message for you today.
To tell you about it, let me first say that last week’s Copy Riddles launch was fantastic. Beyond all my expectations. It’s now time for people who signed up to see how I deliver on the promises in the sales letter.
But there’s one person who won’t see any of that. He wrote me about 3 hours before the deadline to say:
1. He only found my list two days earlier, so he doesn’t trust me.
2. He’s willing to give Copy Riddles a try since there’s a money-back guarantee.
3. He has read Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets. So unless he finds something new in Copy Riddles in the first few weeks, he will ask for a refund.
4. He’s been getting ready to start working as a copywriter for two years. If Copy Riddles gets him his first client, he will want to become an affiliate. Otherwise, again, refund.
5. Right now he only has cash on hand. He needs to go to the bank to deposit it. But his kids are asleep at home, plus the car is in the shop, and it’s near midnight anyhow. So he would like to sign up tomorrow, 12 hours after the deadline.
This reminded me of a girl I went on a date with once.
As soon as we sat down at the bar, she informed me that most guys are terrible — her last date put his hand on her knee. But she has a good feeling about me.
Then she launched into her education history (very smart)… work history (very successful)… current job (very important, yet underpaid).
She finished up her sales pitch by saying she is a great cook. In fact her father (she still lived at home) much preferred her cooking to her mother’s cooking.
She crossed her legs and she sighed. “I really feel like we have a connection,” she said with a smile. “When do you think we can meet again?”
On that date, as today, I glanced at the clock on the wall and calculated how many seconds separated me from safety.
Fortunately, the seconds today passed quickly enough. I closed down the Copy Riddles cart in time — at the exact time I said I would. I wrote back to the 2-year-old copywriter above. “The offer is now closed,” I said, “and it wouldn’t have been a good fit anyhow.”
So let me get to the sobering/inspiring thing I promised you:
Not long ago, I examined the things in life where I’ve succeeded. This includes copywriting.
“What were the common elements?” I asked myself.
There were three. I wrote about number one a while ago. I’ll tell you about number two today. It was this:
I had no other options. Maybe not in reality… but in my head.
And so it’s clear, this doesn’t mean I was shouting SPARTAAA as I charged off into battle. Or that I gritted my teeth and set fire to the boat that could take me home. Or that I staked my future first-born child on a lotto ticket… because “I’m all in.”
No, none of that.
Instead, all I had each time was a subtle and quiet voice, somewhere in the back of my head. I wasn’t even aware of this voice at the time. It whispered that the only possible way is forward. That I should focus my energy in looking for ways to succeed, rather than bracing myself against failure.
I’m not sure if this “forward only” voice is the only way to get what you want.
But I do know that every time I had the opposite of this voice in my head… like the guy above has about copywriting right now… every time like that, the end was always failure. A waste of time. A waste of money. A waste of emotional energy. It would have been better to recognize that early on and go do something else.
So that’s the sobering message. The inspirational message is this:
If you’ve got this subtle and quiet “forward only” voice whispering to you, or if you’ve got the self-discipline to cultivate it, then as Shakespeare said, the world’s yer erster.
There might be setbacks and humiliations and difficulties ahead. But you will succeed. At least that’s how it’s been for me, every time this blessed voice landed on me.
And on that note, I want to tell you about a book I won’t be offering much longer.
It’s my how-I-made-it-as-a-freelancer-on-Upwork book. I wrote it two years ago. It’s up on Amazon for a grand total of something like $5. And it’s got my best advice for the early years of being a copywriter, whether you’re on Upwork or not. Sometimes I still reread it, to remind myself of valuable client lessons I’d learned and since forgotten.
And like I said, I won’t keep this book available much longer. One reason is that the how-to info inside is underpriced by a couple of factors of magnitude. I’ve got other reasons too, and maybe you can guess them.
So to wrap up:
The book won’t go away today or tomorrow. But if you want to get it, I suggest you get it now.
Because if it’s gone, then no amount of “I was cooking spaghetti in the kitchen and so I couldn’t hear the deadline” excuses will work.
But if you’re working on that “forward only” voice, I guess I don’t need to tell you that. So let me just point you where to go for more information: