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Blogging with a Learner’s Mind

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“¿Qué quiere para su desayuno?” she asked, inches from my face. I thought as quickly as I could, and managed to haltingly request a piece of toast. “Pan tostado, por favor.” It was the only breakfast food that I could remember from Spanish class. It ended up being all I ate for breakfast for the next week. Clearly, I hadn’t yet found my learner’s mind. Each of the first few nights I spent in Bogotá I curled beneath the covers with a pounding headache. Trying to think and speak in another language was physically painful. Of the six Americans going through exchange student orientation that year, my Spanish was the worst of the bunch. Those first weeks I spoke like a four-year-old. It was excruciating, especially for someone who took pride in her communication skills. Despite the painful beginning, I learned a valuable lesson that year. It didn’t have anything to do with the Spanish language. It had to do with losing my fear of looking like a fool . Public humiliation If you’ve ever tried to make yourself understood in a language you’re just learning, you’ll know what I mean. You’re proficient in your native language, but to learn a new one you need to start from the beginning. You have to be willing to speak like a toddler for a while. Once you’ve learned some basic vocabulary, you might begin to speak like a young child. All the while, you mangle words and raise eyebrows and send people into fits of laughter several times a day. It’s the public humiliation aspect to learning a new language that no one ever mentions. You’ve mastered your own language, but to master a new one you have to be willing to look like a fool for a while. A fool with a tool Fast forward … let’s say “many years.” As a blogger, I find it’s great to feel comfortable making a fool of myself. Blogging is a decidedly public venue to make beginner’s mistakes in, but the only way to become an experienced blogger is to be a beginning blogger for a while. You publish a draft post by mistake. You send out a link that doesn’t work. You discover — too late — that you’ve left out a crucial piece of information. The only way to get past blogging mistakes is to make them in the first place. When it comes to developing products to sell, we go through the same thing. Our first sales pages suck. The first products we develop may not sell . We cast about, trying to get a bite on our lines. Often we head home empty-handed. And it all happens in public. But each failure gets us closer to success, even if the only thing we learn is what doesn’t work. Baby chicks are easy to spot Twitter is another space where it’s easy to see who the beginners are. I know, because I was one of them not long ago. People start out talking about their breakfast. They check into Foursquare incessantly. They try to direct message someone, but post it publicly instead. After a while though, they observe how the power users make the most of Twitter . They figure out a way to fit it into their workflow so it doesn’t consume all their time. They master the language. Here’s the thing: if you want to master a new skill, you have to start somewhere. As uncomfortable as it is, you have to submit yourself to looking like a fool while you master the tool. There’s no use standing on the sidelines analyzing . You can’t study your way through the beginner’s phase. You can’t strategize yourself into mastery of a new skill. At some point, you have to dive in, make your mistakes, get them out of the way and move on from them. That’s where having a learner’s mind will help. A learner’s mind is fearless Children are wired to learn, which is why they make such huge developmental strides in their first years of life. In the space of a year, they go from unable to hold themselves upright to running; from crying to expressing their needs quite clearly. They fall, shed a few tears, pick themselves up, and keep going. They don’t worry about what people will think: they don’t give it a thought. All the while, they’re learning and making great progress. We can apply this attitude to the new skills we’re learning, too. We can expect mistakes and embrace them when they happen. We can pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, put our chins up and keep going. Plan to fall Blogging, Internet marketing, Twitter and all the rest of these newer technologies present great opportunities. You can learn a lot by studying them before you start to use them. You might be able to avoid some mistakes by doing that. But you can’t vault yourself from beginner to expert just by reading about it. You have to take the first steps, and prepare for the inevitable bumps and bruises that come with making real progress. It’s the only way to learn, really. And it’s the only way to get past plain toast for breakfast every day. Worth it, though, don’t you think? About the Author: Pamela Wilson helps small businesses grow with great design and marketing tips. Learn the basics with her free Design 101 e-course at Big Brand System.

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Captivate Your Readers with a Marketing Story that Sells

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I’ve never appreciated classic literature. I read Hawthorne and I get bored. I read Austen and I fall asleep. My wife likes Dickens, but I can’t stand it. Ask me who Tiny Tim is, and nine times out of ten I’ll refer you to the obsessive-compulsive ukulele player from the 60s. Literature snobs think I’m low-brow, and that my modern reading material is hollow. I disagree. A good story is a good story. Any good story can move you … but before it can do that, it has to grab you. It has to pull you into its world, to make you feel at home. (I just don’t feel at home in a Dickens story. They talk funny.) Different people have different taste in books. But we all like stories that we can imagine ourselves being part of. And we like characters we can relate to. What that means varies from person to person, but it’s almost always true — relatable stories sell . Your clients and customers feel the same way. If what you write doesn’t pull them into your story, they’ll run away like they’re escaping a high school summer reading list. In Latin. Writing copy with character I ran a post on my blog a few weeks ago on what I call Storyselling , or what sales copy can learn from fiction. It was all about pulling people into your world by telling (true) stories. See, stories are great marketing devices. They blur the line between entertainment and persuasion. They let readers relate to you and your business on a story level first — and then to see that your products and services are a good match for their needs. You’re able to show your reader why they should buy instead of telling them. You convey information by allegory , the way humans have done since they had stories to tell. Stories have a plot, a theme, maybe a dash of symbolism, and all that other good English class stuff. But what really makes a story sing are great, multi-dimensional characters. Most of all, a compelling story needs a compelling protagonist, or lead character — someone people want to follow and learn more about. And most of the time, dear online entrepreneur, that protagonist is you . Five elements of great characters So let’s get one thing out of the way: None of what follows is about fabricating tales or pretending to be something you’re not. The usual rules still apply in Storyselling. You need to be authentic, you need to be trustworthy , you need to keep your commitments. Also, your product or service should probably be excellent. But while you’re at it, go ahead and be authentically trustworthy and reliable the way your best inner protagonist would. As you read through the following, don’t think, “How can I pretend to be this?” Instead, ask, “How am I this, and how can I bring it out in my writing?” Got it? Good. Let’s talk about what makes great characters great. 1. Great characters cannot be defined in one sentence I challenge you to go out and find me someone who can be accurately and completely be described as “the hooker with the heart of gold” or “the all-American hero.” Real people don’t have only one or two attributes that define them. That gold-hearted hooker? She also plays the guitar like Stevie Ray Vaughan with a seizure disorder. That all-American is into amateur boxing. Both like ER reruns. Both are insecure from time to time. Thrillers are often filled with paper-thin, one-sentence characters (“the ex-FBI agent bent on revenge”), and they can sometimes get away with it because the plot is compelling enough on its own. But unless your business is as riveting as a Dan Brown novel, stop being “the SEO specialist” or “the consultant for ex-accountants.” Yes, you can be those things, but don’t end the story there . It’s great to have a USP … but don’t let your USP be all you are. Do you have a dog? Do you like sports? Do you get inspiration from your kids? Don’t blab on and on endlessly about tangential stuff … but don’t hide it, either. 2. Great characters cause the reader to reflect A character will only hold your attention for so long if all you read is exposition about their life and events. When a character is really great, it’s because the issues they weigh and the decisions they face make you think about the issues and decisions that you, the reader, face in your own life. When you’re telling stories in your copy, don’t do it diary-fashion, like “Here’s what I did today.” Instead, write about the reasons you did things and the choices you had to make. Include revelations and discoveries that reflect revelations and discoveries that others are likely to encounter. You want your reader nodding, thinking, “Yeah, I’m like this person. Maybe what he’s done would be good for me, too.” 3. Great characters are optimistic I run across what I think of as “wallowing copy” online all the time — stories of people in bummer situations who essentially use their platform to complain into the void. It reminds me of when I used to work for my mom and something would get messed up. I’d tell her, “Such and such situation went wrong,” and then expect her to take it and solve it for me. But she didn’t do that. Instead, she’d say, “Don’t just tell me what’s wrong. What are your ideas to fix it?” A great character never sits with a problem for too long. He eventually comes up with a way to solve it. And for sales copy, a product or service is usually a good way to solve that problem. 4. Great characters aspire We all enjoy reading about people who want to be bigger, better, stronger, faster. We like the story of the weak kid who wants to wrestle, or the old baseball player who wants to stage a comeback. We like stories of people believing they can do more than anyone would expect of them , and then finding a way to make it happen. As you write the story of your business or product, always be aspiring. Always demonstrate a desire to get better at what you do and to become more. (If you do this one right, you’ll become a leader that people will want to follow, because you’re showing them how to be better, too.) 5. Great characters aren’t always great One of my favorite TV shows over the past few years was the newer version of Battlestar Galactica , and it’s because the characters are so impossible to pigeonhole. Repeatedly, the “good” characters make morally and ethically wrong choices, while the villains do the right thing. The heroes are sometimes overly bold, or arrogant, or stupid. Now don’t get me wrong — over the course of the long story arc, certain characters are always more noble than ignoble and more selfless than selfish, but it’s never black or white. Remember tip #1 above? A lot of the same rules apply. Real people are conflicted, and real people are flawed. Characters who aren’t always perfect are usually much more relatable and likable. Most people try to only present perfection in their copy. My product idea was always perfect. I sold a zillion units the first time I tried. Everybody who’s used the product has done well with it, and nobody really seems to have failed. Every email goes out on time, my shopping cart never breaks, and I have never in my life looked stupid or been laughed at. Stop doing this. No, don’t paint yourself as an unredeemable screwup when you tell your story, but don’t feel you need to be perfect, either. Flaws (redeemable ones) make you believable and relatable, because your readers and customers aren’t perfect either. Storyselling takes some practice just like writing fiction does, but it can be very effective once you get the hang of it. People aren’t always interested in reading marketing copy, but most of those same people are a sucker for a good story. If your current copy isn’t engaging anyone, telling tales just might. You’ve got a story, even if you don’t think you do. Have a go at telling it sometime, and then let me know what happens. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. About the Author: Johnny B. Truant writes at JohnnyBTruant.com and is the creator of Storyselling 101 .

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The Simple Tricks Experts Use to Always Get Paid For Their Time

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When I think about it, I still get that feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was chatting with a woman with an interior design business about the changes she needed to make in her website. The conversation was going well — she loved all my ideas and was ready to rebuild her site. I started getting excited, thinking I had found my next project. I was already putting together her proposal in my head. Then she uttered those dreaded words … “I’d love to take you to lunch and pick your brain sometime.” I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt my face turning red and I stammered out an excuse about getting back to her when I checked my calendar. Requests for “brain-picking” are rampant in any business, and they’re never fun if you’re the one whose brain is being picked. It used to happen to me so much that I found myself becoming resentful. Every time I spoke with someone new I heard a little voice in the back of my head saying “Ugh, I bet they’ll never hire you, they just want a bunch of help for free”. That little voice was not very helpful for landing clients If you’ve ever been in this situation, there is a way to turn this around. There is a way to handle these situations with grace and without frustration. There’s even a way to make those freebie requests go away — or, even better, turn into paying clients. It is your job, and your job alone, to set appropriate boundaries and clear up what you’re happy to give for free and what you charge for. That might be hard to hear. But if you want to move through these situations with grace (and encounter them less often) you have to stop placing blame — and start making it a policy to get paid for your time. Sound impossible? It’s not. Here’s how: 1. Take full responsibility The most important thing you can do is stop being angry at the prospect for asking. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. If you were given the choice between getting a new computer for free or paying for the same computer, you’d pick free every time — and you’d never think about the company who doesn’t get paid for the sale. Why would you? I know free is my favorite price for everything. It is your prospect’s prerogative to ask for your time for free. Let me say that again — it is their prerogative to ask . In fact, they’d be missing a golden opportunity if they paid for something when they didn’t have to. You can’t blame the prospect for taking the smart route. You’re also missing the subtle compliment that goes with being asked for advice. When someone asks you for your time for free, be grateful that they view you as someone who can offer valuable advice . Gary Vaynerchuk constantly says how grateful he is to get thousands of emails a day — he doesn’t take it for granted that every one of those people thinks that he is worth taking time out of their life to write to him. Everyone asking for your time is already “sold” on you to a degree — they must be or they wouldn’t be asking you for more! Instead of viewing them as a dead-end cheapskate, see them as someone who is so invested in you that they’ll either be a potential client or a source of referrals. 2. Clearly establish your service offerings Sometimes people ask you to work for free because you haven’t given them anything to buy. When I offered web design I didn’t have any packages for ongoing support. I charged clients a per-project fee, and considered the project done when the client signed off on the design. Invariably, people would contact me after the project was officially “over” with some tiny request — things that literally took 5-10 minutes of my time. Crafting a new invoice for this small request seemed silly, yet all of these requests were starting to seriously eat up my time. I started to feel like I had to provide free service for life for each one-time purchase, and I felt like people were taking advantage of me when they asked for these small favors. Looking back, I can see that they weren’t taking advantage of me. The issue was mine. I should have had a clearly-defined ongoing support package to offer in response to those requests. That would have made things clear — either you had purchased my ongoing support or you hadn’t. As it stood, everyone was in the grey zone. If you don’t like people asking for your time for free, but also don’t have any sort of well-defined offer in place to charge them for that time, the blame falls squarely on you. 3. Decide what you’ll give away … What are you willing to give out for free? This is where content marketing is your friend, because you offer plenty of valuable free resources like your blog or newsletter. It also may be appropriate to do brief introductory phone calls, or host one group in-person session per month for people who are interested in working with you. Whatever it is for your business, get clear. For the record, you do not have to offer any time for free. It is possible to get hired without any kind of free consult beforehand if you do a great job building the relationship ahead of time with your content marketing . In my business people sign $5,000 contracts with me without any kind of free introductory consult. 4. … but don’t assume that free advice is all they want We often make the mistake of assuming that someone isn’t willing to pay just because they ask to “pick our brain.” Again, they’re asking because we all love free. That doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to pay, it means they’re hoping they won’t have to. They’ve expressed interest in learning more from you, which means they are a potential client and should be treated as such. Remember that you are in business here, which means that you exchange value for money. Don’t let “free” become your default mode. It is your job to take the lead. If you lead them down the free path that’s exactly where they’ll go. Lead them down the customer path instead. 5. Respond with confidence Here’s a script for how to handle someone asking you for coffee or lunch to “pick your brain”: I’m glad to hear you’re interested in getting deeper into this. The next step is my one-hour consultation. Would you like me to tell you how that works? Notice that you’re asking permission and putting the prospect in the driver’s seat. You’re also using the clear service offering that you established in step two. You’re not explaining why you’re charging, because there’s no need: your time is valuable . That’s a given. Even if you’re not used to thinking of it that way yet, get used to responding to these queries as though you are. If they want to hear more about your consult, that’s great! You have the green light to sign a new client. Some people will backpedal and start saying they’re tight on money. Here’s another script you can use in that scenario: I completely understand, you have my card so just get in touch with me when you’re ready. You can also take a look at the articles on my blog if you’d like some more general advice that can tide you over until you’re ready to embark on this project. What you don’t want to do is hedge, waver or discount. Stand firm with full respect for your business and you’ll find that the prospect will share that respect. Hold firm and freebie requests will fall off You’ll notice that the people at the very top seem to struggle with this topic less, even though they get the most requests. Why? When you’re clear and confident in what you offer, paying for your time becomes the natural progression. Get clear, get confident and start being honored by those “freebie” requests. That’s how you become an expert that always gets paid for their time. If getting all of those requests because you’re the top expert in your field is a problem you would like to have, check out my course Creating Fame . It’s a step-by-step guide to making you and your business famous using social media. Enrollment opens for a limited time on Thursday, October 7th. About the Author: Laura Roeder is a social media marketing expert who teaches small businesses how to create their own fame and claim their brand online. She lives in Venice Beach, California, where she video blogs, makes frequent trips to the library, and volunteers with local middle schoolers.

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Effortless LeadGen

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Feature Product Review:There are many ways to get email addresses of webmasters and build an email opt lists, but those methods are not easy. Why? Because those techniques involve a lot of hard work and a lot of the time, those who try these email marketing techniques fail a lot. However, there are a few

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Discover Your Strengths and Supercharge Your Business

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Have you ever been kept awake until 2 in the morning having an imaginary conversation with one of your blog readers who thinks you’re great and left a long comment telling you so? Or spent hours obsessively trying to figure out how to do better work, spurred by a fan letter from a customer about the terrific job you did? Or is it maybe more likely that your late-night solo conversations and obsessive problem-solving go to the trolls , the complainers, and the folks who just plain can’t stand you? Don’t worry. If you give an undue amount of attention to negative comments and feedback, to the extent of almost ignoring the good stuff altogether, it doesn’t mean you’re neurotic. It means you’re exactly like the rest of us. Chip Heath and Dan Heath in their marvelous book Switch make this observation: Imagine a world in which you experienced a rush of gratitude every single time you flipped a light switch and the room lit up. Imagine a world in which after a husband forgot his wife’s birthday, she gave him a big kiss and said, “For thirteen of the last fourteen years you remembered my birthday! That’s wonderful!” This is not our world. But in times of change, it needs to be. Play to your strengths I’ve long been fascinated by the advice to those who tell us to focus on our strengths, not our weaknesses, in order to create breakthrough success. It’s so appealing. You mean I don’t have to learn to cold call, balance my checkbook, or know how my RSS feed works? Sign me up. But it seems like it might be contradicted by another idea that’s gained a lot of attention recently: there’s not really any such thing as talent. Researchers like Carol Dweck and brilliant nonfiction writers like Malcolm Gladwell tell us that what we call “talent” is really the result of a heck of a lot of hard work. What are strengths, anyway? Until recently, I never realized this was a trick question. I thought that your strengths were things you were good at, and your weaknesses were things you sucked at. But Marcus Buckingham, who’s made a career out of writing about strengths, put it this way: A strength is “an activity that makes you feel strong.” It is an activity where the doing of it invigorates you. Before you do it, you find yourself instinctively looking forward to it. While you are doing it you don’t struggle to concentrate, but instead you become so immersed that time speeds up and you lose yourself in the present moment. And after you are finished doing it, you feel authentic, connected to the best parts of who you really are. Your strengths are the activities that give you the juice to put your 10,000 hours in. They’re the work you love enough to become the best in the world at. I’ll give you an example I recently heard Yo-Yo Ma giving an interview about how he got started as a cellist. As it happens, Yo-Yo’s parents are both musicians, and had high musical expectations for their little son. So when Yo-Yo was three, they gave the boy a violin. And Yo-Yo hated it. Wouldn’t practice. Wouldn’t focus. Didn’t have any zest for it. His frustrated parents finally gave up in disgust. And then little Yo-Yo saw and heard something amazing, something that surprised and delighted him. Something that he knew was exactly what he wanted to play. It was a double bass — the violin’s really, really big brother. Now that was more like it. He and his parents split the size difference, and Ma began to study first the viola and then settled (at four years old) on the cello. By seven he was a recognized prodigy, performing for Eisenhower and JFK, and by eight he played on national television, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. To have become so skilled between the ages of four and seven, he must have put in untold hours of practice. But they were hours spent on something he adored. One thing that interests me about Ma is that he isn’t just a brilliant cellist. He isn’t just world-famous and in-demand and a name brand. He also seems to be a remarkably happy and kind human being. He loves working with children. He’s been married a long time to the same person. He radiates kindness and a certain goofy charm. He’s got a great sense of humor, referring to himself at times as an “itinerant musician.” And he’s known for boundless energy. If I’m going to be a nationally-famous virtuoso, that’s the kind I want to be. Build your business like Yo-Yo When you see someone busting her tail to build a business, writing tons of great content, reaching out to potential customers, speaking and podcasting and doing everything we’re supposed to do to build a terrific content-based marketing program , it’s easy to ask: How does anyone find the time to do all that? The truth is, it’s not a time management problem — it’s an energy management one. When you focus on your strengths, you do the work that gives you energy. You do the work that drives you, that makes you giggle, that keeps you up late because you’re just having too much fun to stop. When you’re starting out, you do everything. You build the blog site and write all the content and do the bookkeeping and answer the support emails. Some of those things build you up and some wear you down. Pay attention to which is which. As soon as you can (it could be today), find partners who are energized by the tasks that exhaust and deplete you. If you can’t find the right partner, outsource the aspects of your business that make you want to crawl back into bed. And put your time and attention on what the Heath brothers call the “bright spots” – on what’s really working today. Put your time on the work that gives you juice. Do more of what’s working well. Do more of what energizes and strengthens you. Do more of what your readers and customers adore. Do more of what you can do better than anyone on earth. I know it sounds too simple to be real. But it’s how every genuinely great business — of any size — is built. About the Author : Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger, CMO of Copyblogger Media, and founder of Remarkable Communication . Share your bright spots with her on twitter .

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