Can you handle it?

Can you handle it?

Yesterday I got an email from “S”…

On Monday I published my “Mailbox Monday” issue answering S’s email that was basically about whether or not they should give up on copywriting after being rejected by a client.

Quickly summarizing, I told S that even in their email to me, they’d displayed a carelessness with their writing that wasn’t reflective of what I’d expect of a professional writer.

I said that if you’re going to be serious about making money as a writer, you have to — at a minimum — try to eliminate all errors from your writing that distract from the message. And that their email had a very large number of errors for its size, and this reflected poorly on them as a writer.

I also told them that the client was likely too harsh on them, having told them that they’d never succeed as a writer (absolutes are nearly always wrong).

And that the most successful people in the world didn’t get that way by never failing — rather, they got that way by not giving up in the face of failure.

And finally, that if S wanted to succeed as a writer, the most important thing they needed to do was to get up, brush themselves off, and try again.

All in all, I thought I was being pretty dang supportive…

But there’s one thing I REFUSED to do — which was to hide the truth…

I got a survey from Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach today, about The State of Entrepreneurship.

One of the questions in the survey was, “What is the #1 thing you’re doing in your business to ensure that you deliver a world-class experience to your customers or clients?”

And the single-best answer I can come up with for that — reflective of ALL my business dealings — is that I give my clients (and readers!) an honest assessment of where they’re at, based on my understanding.

It’s what I’d want from you, if our roles were reversed.

I’m NOT interested in going through life, thinking one thing is true because everybody’s lying to me, only to find out later that something else is true.

With my kids, I try to teach them a very important rule, “The only thing worse than a crime is a cover-up.”

This is critically important…

The truth liberates!

It’s incredibly painful to go through life stuck in lies… It’s so much easier — in the long run — to just deal with the truth.

In the case of S, I could have salved their wounds. I could have told them that it’s going to be alright. That they just needed to spend more time thinking of themselves as a professional writer. That the client was wrong. That they’d do better the next time around.

Or, I could give them an honest assessment based on what little information I had available — the email that they sent. A short email long on errors. That there were some things they’d need to do if they wanted to succeed as a copywriter, the first of which was to focus on writing better.

I chose the truth.

And I even tried to be far friendlier in my presentation of the truth than most in my position would be.

I could name half a dozen well-known copywriters who, in my position, would have raked S over the coals.

Still, S didn’t want the truth…

I don’t know if S had bought one too many information products on copywriting, selling the “dream” rather than the reality of what it takes to succeed…

I don’t know if they were too caught up in the big promises of an unrestricted schedule, no boss, and an unlimited income…

I don’t know why S didn’t want to hear what it would REALLY take for their copywriting dream to come true…

But yesterday I got an email from S basically telling me that they’d quit…

They were through…

And that they were unsubscribing from Breakthrough Marketing Secrets.

I told S they were doing exactly the wrong thing, but I’m NOT sorry to see them go…

Here’s what it comes down to…

I can sell you rainbows and unicorns…

I can sell you some made-up dream of unlimited freedom and unlimited riches…

I can sell you a whole lot of crap…

But it’s not in my nature to do that.

It’s in my nature to tell you the truth — for all its ups and downs.

From the very beginning of this site — almost exactly one year ago — I set out to teach about marketing with impeccable honesty.

I knew then and I know now that this truth-telling is NOT the way to make the most money the fastest in this biz.

I could certainly lie through my teeth, and have a lot more money today.

But it wouldn’t serve you. And it wouldn’t serve me in the long run, either.

So instead, I tell the truth.

If you don’t want to hear the truth, you can join S and head out the door…

But if you’re willing to take the truth about direct marketing, selling, business, life — even when it hurts a little bit — stick around.

There are more breakthroughs to come…

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr

Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets