It’s amazing how many people make life more difficult than it has to be.
I’m talking about copywriting, freelancing and getting clients mostly. So you can consider this a follow on from yesterday’s article on recalibration.
But mostly, this applies to anything in life.
You’re probably making it more difficult than it has to be.
Take exercise for instance.
Example
There are one million and twelve different techniques, strategies and hacks you can read about online to improve your health.
Micronutrients and secret ingredients and protein-intake timings and the like make great fodder for sales letters, but really, do you need to know any of that?
Most people go wrong in two places:
- They have unrealistic expectations
- They’re looking for the secret edge
Now… don’t get me wrong. It’s good to have lofty goals and an edge can mean the difference between success and failure.
But think about the specific example of fitness.
Everyone and his brother gets in their head that they want to look like Arnold, be as strong as a powerlifter and be able to beat everyone at hula hooping or whatever the current fad sport is.
In reality, they’re never going to get that far. Nobody really looks like Arnold and unless you’re willing to go the real distance by injecting steroids, dedicating your life to fitness and dialling down all the other stuff, you’re not going to either.
So that’s where people go wrong.
The second place is that they think that to get an approximation, they need to compensate for the fact they’re not injecting steroids and dedicating their life to it. So you get guys eating chicken and broccoli six times a day and popping all kinds of over the counter supplements.
And in the end, they look nothing like their goal target.
In almost every case, they’d have been better off just picking an exercise regime, getting a slightly clean diet, revising their expectations to a healthy yet attractive shape, and getting on with life.
Keep it simple, make it easy to win.
Back To Business
I saw another forum thread about getting clients, and it’s one of those things that people ask me about quite regularly.
And I struggled for years getting clients, so I understand.
You’re making it too difficult for yourself.
If you are on this site, you know it’s all about copywriting. We’re selling with words.
So it stands to reason that if you’ve read the archives, you know how to sell yourself and what to sell yourself.
So don’t make it any more difficult than it has to be.
Find someone who wants what you’re selling and sell it to them.
If you can’t do that, then you need to learn the fundamentals more fully.
So in the forum thread I saw today, it devolved into complexities really quickly.
This shouldn’t be the way.
If you have something that people really want and you can offer it to them, what more is there to do?
People were talking about getting the right mix of personal brand authority and talking about the customer and all sorts of other weird stuff…
Too difficult.
You should be writing simple emails to people.
“Hi. I’m Bill. I looked at your business and thought you could do with my services. Here’s what I offer. Last time I worked with someone I had this result. My expectations for working with you would be higher. If you’d like to know more, contact me.”
It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
If it is more complicated than that, then you’ve got something wrong:
- You aren’t selling as you need to be
- You have picked the wrong customer
- The service you’re offering is wrong
Luckily, those three things are easily corrected.
Final Thoughts
People don’t talk about angles nearly enough, and when they do, they think they’re some magical thing that’ll allow you to slip by a person and break all the rules.
You’re not looking for an angle, you’re looking for a magic power.
An angle isn’t magical. It’s taking the above equation and changing one of the elements (skill, customer, service) and providing something completely new.
The act of selling is still the same, and it’s still simple.
Find someone that wants something, find a way to give it to them, convince them that your solution will fix their problem.
Don’t make it harder than it has to be.