It’s Monday — that means it’s time to open up the mailbox and answer YOUR questions!
It’s Monday, which means it’s time to dig in the ol’ mailbox!
Remember, every Monday is Mailbox Monday where I answer YOUR questions on marketing, selling, copywriting, business-building, and more…
Just email your question to [email protected] and I’ll answer your question in an upcoming issue!
Today’s question is all about starting from zero…
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My question would be how do you market yourself when you are just getting started? I have don’t have enough confidence I guess you would say to talk about myself, nor the work experience.
Thanks,
DK Smith
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Let’s dive in with this reminder: we all start from zero!
Remember when you started walking? Well, you probably don’t. But if you have kids, you remember when they started walking.
They didn’t have any experience at it. They also didn’t have any confidence.
They tried. And they failed. They took a step. They fell — kaboom! They might have cried (or just shook it off)… Then, they pulled back up on whatever, and tried again…
Over and over and over again…
Through failures. Through mistakes. Through thinking they had it only to fall down again.
Sometimes it hurt. A lot.
But, they kept getting up over and over again, and eventually they learned to walk pretty dang well.
And, back to you, your experience in learning to walk went the exact same way.
You didn’t have confidence to begin with. You never start anything new with confidence. Because confidence only comes through experience. And you only get experience by acting. And usually, through a lot of failure. Or at least, sub-par results.
I’ve written before about Dan Sullivan’s 4 C’s to Unstoppable Confidence.
You never, never start with confidence. Confidence is actually LAST. First, you have to COMMIT to taking action. In spite of fear. In spite of self-doubt. When the risk of failure is very real, even very high.
Once you commit, you must act with COURAGE. Courage doesn’t come from knowing you can succeed. Quite the opposite. You’re being courageous when you act even though you know the risk of failure is there, staring you in the face.
By acting, you learn and develop COMPETENCE. That is, you get experience, and from experience, you have the knowledge, skills, and ability to repeat the action. You’ve learned what works. And probably more importantly, you’ve learned what doesn’t work.
Finally, after all of that, you’ll start to have CONFIDENCE. That’s your reward for taking on things you never knew you could achieve, and sticking with them long enough that you figured it out.
Those who wait for confidence to get started will never start at all!
And this applies to nearly everything worth doing in life.
It could be an entirely new career path. Or a new business. Or your next project. Or simply picking up the phone to talk to your next prospect.
(And that’s just in the professional realm. You can come up with your own examples for health and relationships and beyond!)
You can’t sit around waiting for the confidence. You won’t get experience sitting on your hands. You can’t let yourself be held down or stopped by any of this.
You must move forward, embrace the unknown, and be willing to make mistakes along the way, if you ever want to succeed!
Okay, with all that laid out…
Since I believe this question also specifically is asking about copywriting and marketing consulting, let me address some specifics around that, too…
Three points:
— Don’t make it about yourself…
— Get good at one thing that gets desired results…
— Be your own first client if you need to…
Here are a few thoughts on each.
Don’t make it about yourself…
If you look at how I talk about myself, or how other top copywriters talk about ourselves, we’re at our best when we’re not actually talking about ourselves. Rather, we are at our best when we’re talking about the results we got for clients.
Sometimes, that feels like bragging, or like self-aggrandizement, to someone who is coming up in the copywriting ranks.
And I guess, to a degree, it is.
But, it’s not just that.
To understand what I mean, you need to temporarily look at it through the eyes of a potential client. If I’m looking at hiring Roy Furr or some other copywriter, I want to know what he can do for a business like mine. I want to know what results he’s gotten in similar situations to the one I’m in.
And so stories that may feel to others like they are about Roy are not actually so, to the right client. If I’m talking about writing a control or making a million bucks for a financial publisher client, and another financial publisher client is reading that, it actually feels like it’s a story about THEM, and THEIR FUTURE, not about me.
That is, assuming I don’t just write it with the utmost cockiness and claim that redheaded Roy is the new king of copywriters. … Although if YOU wanted to say that… 😉
In all seriousness, the novice in any field is too focused on themselves. “I’m not experienced enough. Not confident enough. Not _______ enough.” You fill in the blank.
The pro looks outside of themselves, and says, “How can I get this client the result they want?”
It’s a shift-change in mindset that will turn you into a pro faster than you can imagine.
(By the way, my Think Like an A-List Copywriter webinar from Friday is packed with 17 mindset-shifting principles that go even deeper — the recording is live and you can watch it immediately after activating your BTMSinsiders membership. Click here.)
Simply by putting the other at the center of your attention, rather than yourself, you are actually creating one of the foundational conditions required for success…
In a strangely paradoxical way, the most selfish thing you can is to not make it about yourself.
Get good at one thing that gets desired results…
Since we’re now focused on the client’s needs, wants, and desires rather than our own, we can think about what that really is.
Of course, that can vary quite a bit from client to client, but in terms of marketing, the big desires are: more leads, more customers, more sales, more profits.
From a consulting/copywriting perspective, you probably shouldn’t start by trying to be a generalist. You should start by being as specific as possible about the result you’re going to get, and be as specific as possible about the client you’re going to get it for.
So, for example, you could focus on helping financial publishers make more sales to their past customers.
Or you could get dentists new appointments from their inactive customer file.
Or you could help local restaurants pack the house on off-nights.
I don’t know what you want to do, or who you’re interested in working with.
Here’s what I can tell you…
If you actually find someone who is willing and able to invest in getting more leads, more customers, more sales, or more profits… And you have even a fighting chance of getting that for them… And you offer to do so…
Odds are incredibly high they’ll at least give you a small shot.
Don’t expect a big shot. You don’t get the big shot if you haven’t made some small shots first.
Forgive my dated sports reference, but Joe Montana didn’t pass the football to the rookie hanging out in the end zone in the last 10 seconds of the Super Bowl. He passed it to Jerry Rice. Because Jerry Rice had made 10,000 small shot catches before. So when it came time for the big shot for glory, there was no question, it was going to Rice.
But if that same rookie is open in the end zone, five minutes into the Super Bowl? He might get a chance. Same 7 points. But the rookie’s not getting the chance for the most important pass until he’s caught a whole lotta less important ones.
So, what are you going to get good at? Focus on that. And focus on getting experience first, even if it means it’s a little less glorious than your desired destination.
Study more, but don’t let that get in the way of taking action. We study marketing and learn what works so that we can implement. Not as a buffer against taking action. You read these essays not as intellectual entertainment, but so that you can go out and do something with them.
Once you have at least a bare-bones understanding of that one thing that gets results, that delivers value to clients, then find or make opportunities to practice it.
Be your own first client if you need to…
“But Roy, I don’t know who will let me practice my marketing skills on their business!”
First and foremost, is that an excuse? Is that something you tell yourself so you don’t have to face rejection and failure? How many people have you asked? One? Three? Five? Fifty? One hundred?
If you’re serious about making this work (whatever this is), and you are fully committed, you must persist. Persistence is a funny thing. It seems like it’s not paying off, for the longest time. The more you practice it, the more it can feel like you need it.
But if you’re paying attention, you’ll be learning. Every conversation you have, every rejection, can lead to more understanding. Of those things you’re doing right. As well as those things you’re doing wrong, and can improve upon.
Remember, babies don’t learn to walk the first time they take a step.
Get a room full of successful entrepreneurs together, poll them on how many failures they worked through before they created a successful business, and the average number is usually at least a dozen.
You need to keep trying. And in everything you try, stay open to learning. Especially if you hit failure. Especially if things are harder than you think they should be.
And along the way, consider what you can do to fail even more! That is, what are you willing to try, and try again, purely in the name of gaining that experience you think you need?
One of the most valuable things I ever did as I was learning marketing was create my own little site to sell my dad’s video on how to cut foam wings for model airplanes. Financially, it was nothing. The market for that is so small, it would never sustain even my dad and I.
But I had 100% control. So I could try things, experiment, fail, learn, try new things, and succeed — and pay attention to what made the difference.
We made thousands of dollars from that. But more importantly, I got experience and confidence that I knew what to do, on my own, to create a profitable business 100% on the strength of my own marketing.
I wrote the sales letter on my own. I put up the site. I wrote all the email marketing. I crafted the offer. I paid for advertising out of my own pocket.
It was my sandbox, and I was king. Success or failure was mine and mine alone.
Was this my first experience in marketing? No. I actually applied the 4 C’s from above before I’d ever heard them, and had a job in marketing within six months of discovering direct response (that’s another thing you can do to get confidence and experience — consider full-time employment, even if it’s only for a couple years).
But in terms of developing a real sense of my own capabilities, being my own boss in that tiny little niche business that would never make me a living was one of the best things I could have ever done.
Ultimately, it all comes down to take action…
Radical implementation.
The most successful entrepreneurs I know practice it, in pursuit of their entrepreneurial goals. Even when they don’t have the confidence. Even when they don’t have the experience.
Most people do the opposite. They wait for someone to tell them they have enough experience (which never happens). They wait for someone to tell them they can have confidence now (which never happen). And so they don’t take action, they don’t implement.
The results show which approach creates breakthroughs.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
