I saw the following size-measuring question today:
“How big is your confidence in copywriting? I know this is the softest metric of one’s success, but I wonder greatly. How confident are you in your job and what’s your confidence based on?”
This is honestly not a question I’ve thought about ever.
I don’t worry about confidence. Instead, I think about having a system for moving forward, and about following that system. As long as I do that, I feel I’m safe.
(Or maybe I’ve been influenced too much by dating coach Tom Torero, who said something like, “Confidence is just when you’ve seen the same situation many times over.”)
But if you’re looking to start out as a copywriter, maybe this doesn’t help you.
So let me give you another quote, this one by Claude Hopkins, the great-grandfather of modern direct response marketing.
(About a century ago, Claude wrote a book called Scientific Advertising, which the famous David Ogilvy, the “King of Madison Avenue,” said is so important that “nobody, at any level, should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times.”)
Anyways, back when Claude was just a wet-behind-the-ears lad working for peanuts at the “Felt Boot Company,” he got to talking to a successful businessman in his town.
The businessman was impressed when he heard that Claude would work from 8 in the morning until after midnight, and be back the next morning for more of the same.
So the big businessman offered Claude a new, higher paying job. And here’s what Claude concluded from this:
“In the early stages of our careers none can judge us by results. The shallow men judge us by likings, but they are not men to tie to. The real men judge us by our love of work, the basis of their success. They employ us for work, and our capacity for work counts above all else.”
Maybe this will help you if you are agonizing about where you are on the copywriting totem pole.
And in case you want to grab a free copy of that “must-read” Claude Hopkins advertising Bible, so you can add a bit of length or girth to your copywriting confidence, then here’s where to go:
https://www.scientificadvertising.com/ScientificAdvertising.pdf