“We have nowhere else to go… this is all we have.” – Margaret Mead, Born Dec. 16, 1901.
What are you waiting for? Some new software to be released? A new laptop to work on? One more big client to fund your escape? A perfect idea to put your passion into? Another golden once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change your life?
It's now.
We are here.
It's this moment.
This is the place.
Start now.
Don't go looking for tools or doing more research or analyzing every damn thing. Set all that aside.
Take an action. Publish a post. Make an offer. Pitch a product or service you really want to sell. It will be imperfect. Incomplete. Ugly. That's okay.
What's important is to treat this moment right now as though you're in a survival situation and what you have at hand is literally all there is to work with.
No excuses. No delay. No procrastination. Take a forward action right now. Don't sleep on it. Don't make a pot of coffee. Don't take a walk.
Sit your ass down and do the first step. And then the next. Do every step you can do right now before getting up or logging off or leaving the place you are right now.
You'll be amazed how much you can do with so little.
When you make a practiced habit of it, you become proficient at it.
Soon your audience of fans and followers and buyers all notice your effortless minimalist approach to drop-dead awesome. They wonder how you do it without a mountain of prep and cutting edge tools and you must be some kind of mutant genius.
But no. It's a habit you develop of doing what you can, right now.
Because this place is all there is. What you have is what you have and if it's not enough to get started, nothing will change it in your favor. Because YOU are not in the right place.
Oh, FFS! You’re a benevolent taskmaster, and it’s just what I needed to day. And tomorrow. I’m gonna have to make this one a post or desktop background, ’cause I’ll need to remind myself daily!
I've been reading your posts for some time now (and yes, will continue to do so). Once you wrote about learning to write copy, gurus and such. It's here somewhere, do you remember what you wrote? I'm considering John Carlton's direct marketing copy writing course, but how important is this 'certification' thing.
Advertorials (do they still do those, haven't seen many lately) is my drug. Read them, figured out how they're put together and want to do them. Any suggestions, other than 'just write the dang thing'?
I don’t remember specifically what you mean – I have a lot of posts about writing and add more every day! But here are the answers I do have. How important is certification? Not at all. Ability to deliver effective work on deadline is the main thing. How to make sure you’re effective? Pick or pitch projects where you’re competing with nothing. Easy to beat nothing! Certification may matter if it matters to the person doing the hiring, but I can’t see that being a widespread issue. As for advertorials, yeah, they are still a thing. I would find a few places doing them, and contact them (and their competitors) and see if it’s in-house and see if you can get plugged in. Other option is to pitch it to businesses who aren’t doing it, but that seems hard and I am very lazy. A hustler might find success doing that, though.