I need to spend some time soon getting more copywriting-based blog posts put here for you. I’ve been so busy writing for John Assaraf and some of his clients, plus clients of my own, that I’m pretty much beat by the time I get the opening to write y’all.
Being busy is a good thing. I have worked, waited (patiently and impatiently, with white knuckles from time to time) and hoped for this opportunity for seven years, ever since I hung my shingle as a copywriter in 2008 after a year of learning the trade full-time in-the-trenches at an on-hold messages production company. By the time I launched my own business, I’d earned Employee of the Quarter the last two quarters running, so I felt I was ready to spread my wings and fly.
But getting airborne took a while…
(Hello! Anything worth doing takes a while…but most of my wait was caused by screaming self-doubt.)
I had to overcome the reality that I had no portfolio of work yet–except for a hefty document of very short 10 to 20-second long on-hold messages. Granted, the messages I’d written had been so well-received that clients told me that their clients had asked to be put back on hold so they could hear them all after their call was answered and the transaction had been completed. That was abundant confirmation that I knew what the hell I was doing when it came to writing well-crafted, riveting on-hold messages.
But I was still worried because I’d only been writing “short form” up-sell type copy; what did I know about longer-form sales copy? How well would I perform on a larger stage?
It took me months to finally pull the trigger and decide to engage forty hours a week in the pursuit of a full-time career as a copywriter. I didn’t know if I was ready, despite having read nearly every copywriting book in existence. I knew I was a good features writer after forty plus years of writing, but just how good was I as a copywriter? I was entering uncharted waters. It felt semi-crazy and enormously risky.
Would I be proven a fraud? Would I surprise myself and actually measure up? Did I really want to know the answer? Was my ego ready to absorb the truth?
Desperation finally reared its ugly head and became my friend. Ego be damned. I had to make a living and nothing else was going to satisfy me the way writing would–and everything else I was qualified to do would pay a lot less than writing would, so what was I waiting for?!
So I went for it, all barrels loaded.
When the answer came, I was relieved. 5 stars. 5 stars. 5 stars. 5 stars. 5 stars. Was I dreaming? I was receiving, time after time, the highest-possible ratings from the clients I served! WOO HOO!!!!
But…then the Negative Nellie inside me showed up again to ponder, “Do my clients even know what great copy is? Are they in-the-know enough to be able to rate the copy I write for them properly?”
Do you put yourself down like this, too? I did. I used to. These days when Negative Nellie appears in my cranium to second-guess my abilities, I tell her to take a flying leap until she’s helping as many people succeed in their businesses as I am.
That shuts her up pretty fast.
Unsolicited, uncompensated plug…
John Assaraf has a terrific program to annihilate the Negative Nellie inside your cranium in just 90 days. It works a helluva lot faster than the way I went about it–and with even better results. In his Brain-A-thon you can learn about the new science of re-training your brain so you can feel confident that it’s do-able and that it will work for you. I hope you’ll give the Brain-A-Thon a try. It’s free. It’s more than six hours of fact-based fun science. If it doesn’t convince you that retraining your brain for success is possible, I don’t know what will.
You can enjoy the next Brain-A-Thon on any Saturday you’re available. Register here the week before: http://www.yourbrainathon.com/
