By the Ocean
Before Sunrise 72 Degrees
5:06 a.m.
My first year as a freelance copywriter, a LONG time ago, I made just over six-figures. For someone who grew up mowing the yard for $4 per week, I felt like I had hit the lottery.
There is no better feeling than going from struggling to flush with cash…until you realize that cash doesn’t quite change your life the way you dreamed it would all those years. You “get there” only to be given your next lesson: that life and business are things YOU must give meaning to. The money won’t do it. It’s not enough. It doesn’t matter how much. (This is difficult to believe until you experience it.)
While some of the specific tactics are outdated now, I wrote a book about my experience this first year of my business. I sold a lot of copies. Now I give it away here. I sent a copy to the great Jim Straw (RIP), a guy who sold over $400 million of products/services with direct mail, who responded, “I just read it. It is fan-dam-tastic. — On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a 15.”
My lack of interest in copywriting itself caused me to discover something very powerful about perception, positioning and why some people get paid well while others struggle.
(The thought of writing by myself for 30 days, locked in a basement, coming up only for air, food and water is not my idea of a good time. I am good at copywriting but I don’t love it.)
What did I learn?
That showing up as a pre-defined solution and showing up as a problem solver are two different things with drastically different pay scales.
Pre-defined solutions (e.g. I am a copywriter) are far less valuable than problem solvers (e.g. I can help you sell these and copywriting is one of my tools.) You already know what the solution is and you’re trying to sell it.
Pre-defined solutions also usually come with a limitation in that the solution is assumed to be able to solve every problem the client has.
- Need more customers? You need better copy!
- Need bigger average order value? You need better copy!
- Need more leads? You need better copy!
If you’ve ever actually RUN a business, you realize this just isn’t true. Copywriting is a tiny piece of the overall picture. The list is far more important. The offer is also more important. Copywriting sits LAST in that list of priorities. Great copywriting doesn’t fix a bad business. So when you show up acting like it can, no one gets excited except the clients with no experience.
In the copywriting business, it can even get worse should you decide to show-up as this pre-defined solution for hire. This is such a specialized art that, should you search out the people that hire copywriters regularly, you will be competing against a ton of other writers. You will be taking a specialized skill into a context where it is a commodity. This is how you get paid peanuts.
Oops.
When the client has seen the “magic trick,” the value of it decreases dramatically.
There are tons of business owners who can benefit from great copywriting who don’t even know what copywriting is. When THEY see the magic trick that great copy can create, the amount of perceived value can be enormous.
You can get paid a lot more for doing a lot less because, in that specific context, you are far more valuable.
So where does this leave you?
It leaves you thinking a lot. About why you’re really here. About what you really want to do. About how to creatively show up in the marketplace, in the right way, to maximize the perceived value of your efforts.
Business is a puzzle we put together without having the picture on the front of the box to show us what it’s supposed to look like. It’s part art, part science and completely based on WHO YOU ARE.
Some questions to ask yourself are:
- What am I on this plane to do? Why did I come here?
- What problems am I uniquely prepared to solve? For whom?
- What is different about the way I might solve those problems compared to others? Which of those differences might my prospective buyers deeply value?
These are not answers your mind will give you when you ask. Many must be discovered as a result of forward motion.
That means you START without knowing which way to go.
The Matrix tells you that’s stupid. My experience shows that’s the secret to finding your way.