Bouncing Back Fast
From a $1 Million Mistake

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

T'S hard to believe I haven't sent out a live broadcast since June the 19tth. Things have been a bit challenging this year, and at sometimes frustrating.

Before I get into that, I wanted to tell you a short story I heard about how to handle "failure." You won't be disappointed. This is a good one...

Time to Hand in Your Resignation?

A young executive at IBM made a big mistake resulting in over a million dollars being lost.

Now, I'd say my mistakes at copywriting and marketing have run me up anywhere between $20,000 to $40,000 in lost profits — nothing close to $1,000,000 (even, though, an extra $40,000 right now would not be turned down).

Well, this guilty executive was called into the top dog's office. Upon entering, he immediately said, "I guess you would like me to hand in my resignation?"

"Resignation!?" exclaimed the CEO. "Why would we want you to resign? We just spent over a million dollars EDUCATING you!"

Wow! Isn't that the ONLY way to look at our mistakes?

Between tuition and board, students spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a degree in some high-paying field. Then they graduate, start working in the real world, and feel their education has only begun.

The stuff I have learned from losing or wrongly investing money has been one of the best educators. It's made me really see what works and what doesn't and what goes where and why.

Profits Up 167% With THREE Months of Work
Only to Crash 47% the Next Month

Case in point: Since January I've been writing copy for a small business on a 10% retainer deal. I got 10% of the gross income for each month.

Sounds good, huh?

Well, it was good for the first three months. PROFIT increased 167%.

Then (don't ask me why) they started changing the way my copy got used. Downsized their mailing list. Crazy things like that. Trying to save some money on expenses.

The result? Revenue went down. First 33%. Then 47%. And, of course, so did my 10% retainer cheque.

Lesson: Don't do a royalty/retainer deal, unless you are 99% certain that the people handling your copy know how to exploit it. Otherwise, charge a proper, up front fee.

Anyway, I got out of that before it got any worse.

Now I'm receiving the same amount of money from the same client, for about 10 times as less work. I was putting in two hours a day, 20 days a month = 40 hours (1/4 of my work time). Now, I just got paid the exact same amount I was receiving for 40 hours, to do 8 hours of work (with free supplements being mailed to my family to boot).

Other Big Lesson:
Don't take on too much.
Charge more instead.

I had a full load of work from October, November and December, when my wife was in the hospital. I could handle it pretty well. Everybody was happy.

Come January, when Jonah was born, and both wife and child back home, things got rough. Nicole wasn't recovering fast, and Jonah had some sleep-depriving gut problems. Many nights I'd only get four hours of sleep.

It just became impossible to keep up with everything.

First, I ended up having to abandon a monthly newsletter I invested A LOT of time and money selling to doctors.

What's worse, again, I had taken on a large project for another client, to which I was accepting $7,500 plus a 7.5% royalty on sales (whenever the project got done and started selling—if it sold well at all). This wasn't just one small web page. This was a massive funnel system, which involved rewriting the product itself. Easily worth $50,000 up front.

Didn't charge that, though—which meant I ended up having to juggle other projects to keep income coming in, while I worked for the future royalty on this big project.

Yet with everything else, I couldn't meet the deadline.  Got a lot done, mind you. Worth more than I was charging.

I walked away with only my $5,000 deposit. Didn't get the remaining $2,500. Won't see any royalties. Project was sent over to another copywriter (or so they said, last I checked, the copy doesn't look any different than where I left it). I easily lost $20,000 to $50,000 in royalties from that project.

"Ouchy!" as my wife says when Jonah pulls her hair.

Worse still, it messed up my credibility. I certainly wasn't going to ask for a testimonial.

So what's the plan now?

I'm moving forward with a lot of projects. Despite having built up some unwanted credit card bills (for the first time in my life) I'm not looking back.

It's a little frustrating, as by the end of last year, everything was doing quite well. But illness plus a newborn can turn a family upside down pretty quickly. Its unusual circumstances, but such things happen when we least need them to.

I'm sure most entrepreneurs run into some type of trouble, early on, unrelated to their business/marketing abilities, that feels like someone just shot their tires.

I'm still doing work for naturopathic doctors. I may crank up my efforts there, as I enjoy it and it pays well. The projects tend to be smaller and spread out, so it's necessary to have plenty of prospects on hand.

Here's a Yellow Pages ad I just finished recently for a naturopathic doctor. Best one I've done yet. Not only did I really start to use the Yellow Pages LEAD GENERATION tool (versus a SALES tool) but thanks to Clayton Makepeace's recent EasyWriter's Marketing Club webinar on design, the layout was much improved. (By the way, we did a audio on Yellow Pages advertising in the February 16, 2007 ecolumn titled Only Two and a Half Grand for One-Page of Writing.)

Clients are a great way to keep money coming, while you work on creating more automatic sources of income with your copywriting skills.

And often you can tie it together.

Make Money From Copy
You've Already Written

I'm going to be taking many of the marketing pieces I've made for naturopathic doctors and creating fill-in-the-blanks templates that any doctor could use to market their clinic.

I have  a reactivation letter, for example, that I could EASILY (from a pro-marketing standpoint) sell the rights to for $45 each. Sell that to 100 doctors, I've made $4,500 off a two-page letter. And that would only be the first in a series.

I've also teamed up with one of my clients, and we are creating an ebook on how to reduce or eliminate the symptoms of a particular ailment. I've just started writing the product and website for this, and expect it will do quite well. At least $1000/month on autopilot, to start.

Selling Fiction (Not an Easy Venture)

I've also redone my other website www.MetaphysicalStories.com where I just released my first metaphysical novelette. I'm giving it away free as a viral tool. Took me two years to finish that story, and I'm quite happy to see it out there.

I'm also very happy with the new site, itself. The revised-from-scratch copy on the home page is much closer to what I wanted. I love the headline (the result of much brainstorming). And, as you can see, the design has improved significantly...

Before (left) and after (right) of the home page to my fiction site, www.MetaphysicalStories.com. This is the first time I've seen direct-response marketing and copy used to sell fiction.

So, I'm continuing forward with my balance of client based work and writing copy for my own websites.

Why Would You Want to
Make a Million Dollars?

No matter what happens, I'm keeping my mind programmed for success. I don't want undreamt of wealth. In fact, I'd question my sanity if I was still working 8 hours a day, and making a million dollars a year. There are other things I'd like to do with my time.

But right now, breaking the $100K/year mark would be a welcome place to be, and one I visualize for 12 minutes at the beginning of every workday.

"Theatre of the Mind" visualizations are what keeps me going when things are not going the way I think they should. Visualizations are a science which may or may not have anything to do with metaphysics, but certainly a lot to do with psychology.

The Reason Why So Few Copywriters
Make It Fulltime...

Most people quit as soon as they start failing (AKA getting a REAL education). Jim McCann of 1800 Flowers said that the one thing that makes us different from the rest, is we bounce back faster.

Most people try to do the copywriting thing—doesn't come out, or doesn't’t convert, or they can't even get a client... so they quit.

They don't "officially" quit. No, they just decide they aren't going to bother today. Take a break. Watch some extra TV. Forget their schedule (if they even have one).

I grind my teeth when people write me and say, "I know I could do well at copywriting if I'd just put pen to paper."

No comment there.

But BEFORE you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), apply Dr. Maxwell's Psycho-Cybernetics. Then go forward with concentration and speed like your hair is on fire.

Copywriting ISN'T Golf!

You don't write a line, and then see how it did.

It's more like soccer. You plough through every doubt that falls on your psychological path with a smile on your face.

It's about feeling alive.

It's about failing nine times, so you can succeed one time. (If you get a coach than you need only fail six times).

But one success is worth 100 times more than each of those nine (or six with a coach) failures.

P.S. I'll be writing you soon with part two of the column, Is the Copywriter's Keyboard Mightier Than the Dentist's Drill? that I started a while back and never finished. You'll see how I used Psycho-Cybernetics to stop a client from ripping me off $1,650.

P.P.S. I said in today's ecolumn that I had no real drive to become a millionaire. But I certainly would like to make between $200,000 to $500,000 a year. Now, some of you write, saying you don't even want to make $100K. You'd be happy with $50K. Well, unless you're single, live in your parents basement, and are content with never going anywhere, that might be more than you could ever need. But for the rest of you, stay tuned for a future ecolumn, where I tackle the financial realities of freelance copywriting.

P.P.P.S. In a few days I'll be announcing a new resource that is just being released that can help the most rookie copywriter create ads, websites and sales letters that work, faster and easier.