In case you missed this... Clayton Makepeace did a “Reality Copywriting” style article last Monday in the Total Package (click here for free subscription). I’m reprinting an excerpt from the article below, with permission.
It gives an hour-by-hour account of how one of the most successful copywriters on the planet, organizes his day. Lots of great details, advice and humour.
If his 11 hour work day sounds daunting, remember it's hardly a requirement. Clayton Makepeace juggles both a full time copywriting career and an information business helping other copywriters. He makes several million dollars a year.
So if he can make several million dollars with 11 hours a day... and you only want to make $100,000 or $200,000... you should only need to work about one month a year.
Here's the excerpt, enjoy...
A Day In the Life of Clayton Makepeace...
Question from Reader: "How do you organize your workday?"
Makepeace's Reply: Organize! My workday? Oh, that's RICH!
Organize my work day. Hey Wendy [his wife] -- take a look at this question! HAH!
What have I ever done to give you the impression that I'm organized -- much less that I have any control over how my day's going to go?
Sure: There was a time -- before The Total Package and before my one-man freelance copywriting business became a real direct marketing agency -- when it was still possible to control my workday.
Back then, my schedule was simple:
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Rise at 4:00 AM... |
| • |
Write until noon... |
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Turn telephone on and return calls until 2:00 or 3:00 PM... |
| • |
Ride Harley to Azure Tides -- a little tiki bar on Lido Beach -- and consume vast quantities of tequila with my friends. |
Nowadays, it's not so simple. I do, however, have a simple four-part plan I try to stick to:
| 1. |
Just as no battle plan survives the first engagement with the enemy, no work schedule I've ever used has survived the first interruption. For me at least, any attempt at detailed scheduling of my workday is an exercise in futility. |
| 2. |
Since early morning is the only time of the day I can expect to work uninterrupted -- and coincidentally, because my mental and creative powers are strongest in the wee hours -- the 480 minutes (eight hours) between 4:00 AM and noon are reserved for my clients' copywriting projects. |
| 3. |
Since keeping The Redhead in a good mood is always a good idea, whatever she needs from me (usually stuff for The Total Package) comes next. |
| 4. |
After that, the rest of the world -- copy cubs, web guys, JV partners, etc. -- gets its shot at me. |
So with that in mind, here's what a typical day looks like for me these days...
4:00 AM -- 5:00 AM: Stumble out of bed, throw on sweats and exercise shoes. Navigate down a flight of stairs to the living room … step out onto the deck, then trudge down the path that leads to my little cabin in the woods. Get the coffee brewing while checking how the Asian stock markets did overnight... tap into our main office network and mainline caffeine while answering e-mails...
5:00 AM -- 7:15 AM: Open the project du jour and begin reading. Reading quickly leads to editing; editing to the addition of new copy. Before I know it, I'm wide awake, deep into the work and have a blessed two hours and fifteen minutes to wail without a single interruption.
7:15 AM -- 7:30 AM: Cordial daily conference call with a beloved friend and client for whom I produce daily e-mails to promote various financial products to his customer file.
7:30 AM -- 8:40 AM: Trudge back up to the main house, crank up iPod and enter The Dungeon of Pain -- or as it's better known, "the exercise room."
Fifteen minutes on the LifeCycle... 50 crunches... ten minutes on the eliptical... 50 crunches... fifteen more on the LifeCycle... to hell with those last 50 crunches. Curse my aging body. Head up to the bedroom... give The Redhead her morning smooch... cool down, shower, don work attire.
8:40 -- 8:50 AM: Clamber into my li'l red Porsche... creep down the long gravel driveway through the trees, across
Winchester Creek, past the stables and through the pastures... roll down window and baby talk Ember, Cody, Flash and Micah as they respectfully interrupt their grazing to acknowledge my presence … wave at Tim "The Handyman" Jones as he climbs aboard the tractor to begin mowing whichever field the horses are not in.
Tool out onto the blacktop, crank up some Zeppelin (or maybe Jet), nail the accelerator and hang on for dear life. I never cease to be amazed at the breath-taking acceleration – let alone the beautiful music those twin turbos compose when they're making 500-plus horsepower.
9:00 -- 10:30 AM: Arrive at downtown office...... say "Hi" to John, Tony and Martha downstairs and to Dave, Graham, Forrest and Pete upstairs. Give Redhead her second smooch of the morning... fire up coffee pot... settle down at computer... crank out financial client's daily e-mail project and submit the copy.
10:30 AM -- 12:00 Noon: Open current major longer-term project -- probably a direct mail package selling nutritional supplements or a financial newsletter.
12:00 Noon -- 12:15: Wash down a Subway sandwich with green tea while getting an update -- and my Total Package marching orders -- from The Redhead.
12:15 PM -- 3:00 PM: Whatever happens, happens. If I'm lucky, I'll have a few more uninterrupted hours to work on a client's current longer-term, long-copy project -- a direct mail piece or web landing page.
Or, I may have a conference call with a client about a new project … critique a cub's draft copy... meet with staff on Total Package projects... convert a client's tabloid into a bookalog... create a couple of new headlines to test on one of my direct mail controls... interview a top marketer for our EasyWriters Roadhouse Rants... work with Julie to create some new traffic drivers for a client's web-based acquisition campaign... or, like today, slave over my weekly Total Package article.
3:00 PM: Beginning to plan my escape. Hey -- I've got 11 hours under my belt; I deserve it! Usually, I get out of here early -- but only if I'm at a good stopping point on all my projects... and if I ask real nice... and if The Redhead's in a good mood. Otherwise, I could be stuck here until 5:00 or even later.
Until 8:00 PM: Jump in the 911 Turbo for the second half of the 20 most viscerally exhilarating minutes of my day. Once home, I say "Hi" to Margaret, who's usually cleaning or cooking something, ask the kids how their day went and accept their one-word answers at face value.
Then, I usually head down to my little cabin office to decompress and maybe do a little reading for a couple of hours. When The Redhead gets home (usually after 5:00) we have dinner and hang for a couple of hours. Finally, we watch TV in bed from 8:30 or 9:00 until I doze off.
So that's what works for me. Usually. Sometimes, changing it up some is good, too. But whatever your work situation or personality type, there are some solid concepts I hope might help you here...
| 1. |
Early to bed, early to rise works. You'll be amazed at how much more productive and creative you can be when you get several hours of uninterrupted work out of the way early in the AM. |
That's when your brain is freshest and at its most creative -- and when your conscious mind is quiet so you can still hear your subconscious brain serving up solutions to the problems you thought about the night before.
| 2. |
Compartmentalize. Block off more time in the mornings for intense concentration on projects at hand. If you're here in the States and your phone usually begins ringing once it gets to be 8:00 or 9:00 on the East Coast, turn the bugger off. |
Have a voice mail message that says you're "on deadline" and you'll return the call that afternoon. Then, inform anyone in your home or office who might consider interrupting you that doing so would trigger consequences too painful to contemplate.
| 3. |
Create opportunities for chaos. Just as you set aside time for your most intensive work, it's important to set aside time each day to handle the billion little things that come up. |
Your clients and/or work associates won't mind your predilection for playing the hermit until noon so long as they can count on you getting with them as soon as you come out of hiding.
In fact, the ONLY way I get time to work alone is to bribe The Redhead with the promise that if she's patient, she'll definitely get her shot at me later in the day.
That's what afternoons are for. If you're a writer, you've been alone and intensely focused on one or maybe two projects for several hours. Now, with your creativity spent (or at least waning), the afternoon is a great time to handle things that require interaction with real, live people -- and to take on the left-brain tasks like signing up new clients, scheduling, finances, bookkeeping, personnel, purchasing and all the rest.
| 4. |
Delegate -- and mean it. My job is to pay for everything around here. That means meeting with clients, conceptualizing products, consulting on marketing strategy, writing sales copy, directing designers, analyzing the final results, making whatever adjustments are called for -- and then doing it all over again. |
That's what pays the bills. And frankly, it's a full-time job that requires pretty much every ounce of energy and focus I can give it.
Wendy's job is to do everything else -- and I do mean everything:
She found our office building and negotiated the lease… selects and purchases all our office furniture, phone system, workstations, printers and office supplies… interviews and hires new employees… schedules and manages our in-house copywriters, web designers, fulfillment and customer service -- and with her assistant Tanya, makes sure our receivables get received and our payables get paid.
The Redhead's in charge at home, too. She makes sure Margaret always has plenty of the right kinds of foods in the pantry and that the kids are picked up and dropped off at the right places at the right times.
She's "executive in charge" of making sure Tim knows exactly what must be done each day to keep our little estate up to snuff... that the cats, dogs and horses are fed and healthy... that our munchkins' homework is done and done well and that they have fun stuff to do every weekend.
Me? I don't even know how much money I have in the bank.
I'm not kidding. And frankly, I don't want to know. And I especially don't want to know about the thousand decisions The Redhead has to make every day. Not having to give these things a minute of my time frees me to focus on my clients, improve my copy and make more money.
My advice: If you're a copywriter, pay someone else to mow the lawn and to do the other little chores someone can do as well or better than you can. Use the time you save to hone your craft, attract new clients and produce bigger winners for them.
If you're an employer, hire people who can do their jobs better than you can, and then, for Buddha's sake, turn 'em loose.
If you can't trust an employee to do things right, it's nobody's fault but yours. You either failed miserably at communicating your employee's responsibilities to him or her, or worse -- you hired the wrong person for the job.
That means you're paying someone to do a job -- and then doing his job for him. That's pointless for you and painfully humiliating for your employee.
If this sounds familiar to you, there's only one humane thing to do: Either get your management act together or replace the employee who can't do it right with one who can.
| 5. |
Do NOT forget to loaf! During the week, I try to give my businesses 12 to 13 hours of quality time a day -- about 60 to 65 hours a week. I figure that earns me the right NOT to work on weekends or holidays. |
Sure -- if a client's in a bind, I will occasionally break my weekend work ban, but it almost never happens. Instead, I use that time to be with my loved ones, to re-establish contact with popular culture (read, watch TV, see a movie), to have a little fun and to give my poor old tired brain the time it needs to recuperate.
On days off, I try hard NOT to think about work -- and Wendy and I try hard not to talk about work. But sometimes we can't help it. And you'd be surprised at how many of our best ideas bubble up to the surface when we're doing our dead-level best to think and talk about other stuff.
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To receive a free subscription to The Total Package, which runs Monday through Saturday, and starts each week with a full length article by Clayton Makepeace, click here.
Capture, captivate convert,
John C. A. Manley |
