“Listen, if you don’t talk big game, you never get anywhere. If you don’t think big, you don’t get big. Some people call it egotistical, some people call it high hopes, some people call it confidence. It’s all in how you want to dissect it.” – Robert Van Winkle, aka Vanilla Ice, Born Oct. 31, …
Winning Big Is Easier If You Rack Up Small Wins First Read More »
“In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king.” – Desiderius Erasmus, Born Oct. 28, 1466. One of the eternal worries of most freelancers is what they call “impostor syndrome”. It’s the deep seated fear that you’re a phony. That you’ll get called out as a fraud. That you’re not worth what …
Expertise Is Relative and You Should Aim Your Work Accordingly Read More »
“Think and grow rich.” – Napoleon Hill, Born Oct. 26, 1883. This guy? Huge phony. A scammer and a liar. It’s true. If I’m the first guy to tell you, I’m sorry. He’s real popular in bizopp self-help entrepreneur-bro circles. Some people swear by his written wisdom, and some successful people at that! So Hill …
“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” – Pablo Picasso, Born Oct. 25, 1881. We can all use a little more of Pablo’s kind of art in our lives and businesses. Are you getting bogged down on a project because of how you imagine it has to be? Look at it. Break it into a …
Distill Your Offer Down To Its Essence (By Boiling Away The Unnecessary) Read More »
“The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.” – Brenda Ueland, Born Oct. 24, 1891. I’m so bored of the public positioning of “hustle” as a virtue, which one MUST pursue to find success. Success, to me, is a combination of …
The Only Three Ingredients to Every Successful Human Endeavor In History (GUARANTEED) Read More »
“I’ve written in every imaginable location; a repurposed closet, the kitchen table, the bleachers while my kids had basketball practice, the front seat of the car when they were at soccer. In airports. On trains. In the break room when I was supposed to be wolfing down dinner. In the back of classrooms when I …
Destroy Your Writing Rituals to Set Your Skill Free Read More »
“Television has a real problem. They have no page two.” – Art Buchwald, Born Oct. 20, 1925. What Art was talking about is how TV can only give you the page one stuff. Deeper commentary and lengthier coverage, or less prominent stories get passed over. Or a least, they did. That was the nature of …
How We Can Provide “Blood” AND “Meat” to Feed Our Hungry Prospects Read More »
“You can’t make experimental work by copying past work.” – Trey Parker, Born Oct. 19, 1969. This is probably a lesson better suited to “advanced” practitioners of the persuasive arts, but it may well be useful to the intrepid beginner among the readers of these words. It’s becoming increasingly important to find and publish as …
“Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill.” – Shinichi Suzuki, Born Oct. 17, 1898. If you want to get good at something, study less and practice more. Study is great, don’t get me wrong. But practice is where improvement actually occurs. Discipline creates routine. Routine creates comfort. Comfort creates quality work …
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” – W. Edwards Deming, Born Oct. 14, 1900. A lot of people who get into copywriting mistake it for other kinds of creative writing. They believe it is all art, and invention, and creative genius. And hey, work …
Let Your Processes Become Your Secret Weapon Against the Betrayal of the Fickle Muse Read More »
