The story of my worst client ever

Maybe you’ve met her before? Bugged out eyes. Insanely loud typist. Lives on bean and cheese burritos—the kind that come with the tiny hot sauce packets. Hates the phrase “Want to go for a walk?”
(Making her my dog’s mortal enemy.)

In case she’s reading this–I want her to know I know she meant well.

I’m only sharing my story in hopes other creative types will see they’re not alone.

It started innocently enough when she approached me with a new project.

“I’m booked right now, but I’ve got some time in four weeks.”

She didn’t like this response. “JUST DRINK MORE COFFEE YOU’RE FINE.”

“Actually, I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee. And I don’t want to work on weekends again.”

“That’s fine, but don’t be surprised if you’re replaced by someone else! I’m just saying.”

I thought she had a point there. So we began working together. And thus began her campaign to improve my productivity in every way she knew how.

Like the thing with my workouts. I still don’t know how she did this (secret heatmapping technology?), but whenever I tried to get in a workout before 6pm, she’d stop me for some urgent email she wanted me to see. “No, really, I think there’s something truly important in there.” These emails never actually existed.

She also took issue with me writing blog posts more than once a month. “Your clients should really take precedence over your own stuff. Unless you were planning to get a side job somewhere else. I don’t know–was that the plan? I don’t mean to butt in.”

If I tried to eat breakfast away from the computer, she knew somehow. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT THE DINING ROOM TABLE? What if someone was trying to email you? Get over there! Go on, now!” (She didn’t like this post I wrote about Merlin Mann and Bob Bly eating waffles together.)

Speaking of food. One time, on Thanksgiving, she told me I had to work on this white paper. On Thanksgiving Day! But it did seem important. After I finished, she seemed to forget all about it. Said it was great I’d worked so hard, but there was still more work to be done. “Moving on!” She used those exact words.

After I got sick with the flu for the second time in 6 months, I finally caught on. I had a choice about all this.

I didn’t completely stop working with her. I don’t think either of us was quite ready for that.

Instead, I hired her. I positioned it as a lateral move.

Now she’s the Associate Vice President of Spelling Errors. I also put her in charge of A/R. She gets to mail the checks in to my bank, and to look up the special four-digit codes at the ends of zip codes. Knowing every envelope has the full, postal-service-approved zip code gives her great satisfaction.

Just last week, we discovered another fascination. Paperclips. She loves paperclips! I bought her a box of colored paper clips, and she spent the day just clipping random documents together. I take her with me to the office supply store now. This is like a vacation for her.

She’s gotten real quiet lately. I think she’s starting to accept my inefficiently roundabout way of doing things. She might even be starting to enjoy working for me even more than she enjoyed being my client.

Recently, I added a business adviser to my team, just to get another perspective during these meetings between myself and my client. To my surprise, I’m actually a pretty good business adviser to myself.

My business adviser and my former-client-now-Associate-VP-of-Spelling-Errors still don’t agree on everything. But they have finally come to an agreement on one thing. A 15-minute walk might not be the end of the world.

Read all 15 really smart comments. Posted by Kelly Parkinson on February 15, 2010.

Why I love guts

“I should have listened to my gut.”

Haven’t we all said this? It’s one of those skills people seem to learn by not doing.

A friend of mine recently had a close encounter with her gut. She and her gut had previously related on a strictly need-to-know basis: Don’t ask, don’t tell. If I’m about to run into a wall? Holler. Otherwise, I’ve got this, thanks.

Despite her gut’s rumblings, she decided to attend a weekend workshop for entrepreneurs. When my own gut saw the sales page, it covered my eyes with its gutty hands. No persuasion! Do not want! I should have warned her, but I didn’t want to presume. Turns out both our guts were right. She stuck it out, but she learned absolutely nothing new. And she was singled out for not being woo-woo enough.

My own close encounter with my gut happened ten years ago on a remote bike path by the beach. Suddenly, even though I couldn’t see anyone, I knew I wasn’t alone. Every cell in my body screamed GET OUT OF HERE! AND DON’T STOP PEDALING UNTIL YOU’RE SAFE! But my know-it-all brain urged, KEEP GOING, YOU’RE JUST PARANOID. So I continued biking down the path, away from the safety of the road. My gut was right. I’d been followed, and ended up having to out-pedal a bad guy. Escape didn’t come easy, but let’s just say I’ll always be grateful for hybrid bicycle tires.

Ever since then, my gut and I have been close. We conversate regularly. I tend to give my gut the benefit of the doubt—rather than giving it to someone who says they once manifested a phone call from Sean Connery, for instance. (True story.) Even if I don’t always do what my gut wants, I try to remember to listen. ‘What do you mean by that, Gut? Tell me more!’ Yes, I treat my gut very much like one of my clients.

This is why I will never put persuasion first–
whether for myself or for my clients.

When persuasion comes first, we stop trusting our own guts about what to write. We stop trusting our readers’ guts about what is best for them to do. And we encourage our readers not to trust their own guts, either. We perpetuate a cycle of violence against guts.

Sales pages that put persuasion first tend to look like this:

  • “You’ll develop a clear roadmap and a customized blueprint.”
  • “Now you can create the lifestyle you desire.”
  • “Are you struggling to make enough money every month?”
  • “What got you here, won’t get you there.”

Stop the violence against guts! Stop it right now!

We can all start by throwing away our swipe files. I’m hereby manifesting a blueprint of my desire to never see the words “manifest” and “blueprint” in sales page copy. Unless manifest is used a metaphor, like a manifest for your shipping container. I like that! And unless it’s a literal blueprint.

Swiping and repurposing copy might feel like a shortcut to some. But it’s a chute, not a ladder. Customized roadmaps start popping up everywhere. Readers begin to click away because they’ve seen it all before. This won’t bring “the lifestyle we desire.” There are plenty of other metaphors in the sea.

Swiping “proven copy” also reflects a mindset that values only those ideas that can bring the most customers, regardless of whether they’re the right customers. And only valuing people who will become customers, or who could refer them. Anyone else isn’t worth talking to. Any other idea isn’t worth mentioning. The only words worth writing are profitable words. All other words are snubbed.

Make no mistake, I am all for direct response.

If direct response wanted to meet for a beer, I would totally be there. Without responses, we don’t have profits. And without profits, we can’t make delicious fried chicken from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc Cookbook.

But do we really need to limit ourselves to what five other sales pages have already done?

What if, instead of trying to figure out which words were most scientifically persuasive, we focused first on making truly great stuff? That would be a start.

One direct response copywriter I really like is Ben Settle.
A year ago, I bought his Copywriting Grab Bag book (not an affiliate link), and it was just as useful as it promised to be. Also, I just like him. We share a loathing for swipe file addiction. He recently wrote in his newsletter that by relying on swipe files, people are making marketing about copy. And it’s not about the copy! It’s about the ideas behind the copy.

Yes, Ben Settle, yes!

I’ve found the best ideas come not from a swipe file, but from stepping away from the computer and scribbling and mindmapping my guts out onto a gigantic notebook. My gut loves gigantic notebooks. I think a lot of “successful entrepreneurs” get so focused on pushing towards a revenue goal that they don’t give their programs the space they really need to become incredible. Instead, they hope the word “incredible” will suffice. And then they wonder why they’re not getting enough sign-ups.

The thing with testing is it’s not forever.

We can’t always write by what tests well. Because what we think will test well today won’t test well tomorrow. People can only be excited by the term “customized roadmap” so many times.

Pure originality doesn’t exist–that’s true, too. The air we breathe now is the same air dinosaurs breathed millions of years ago (and now we even know what color they were!) Ideas spread so fast we forget where they came from. It’s the nature of the universe. But the world is vast. And no one will ever be able to tell your story the way you can. We could all write sales pages that rigorously followed the elements of persuasion without a single sales page sounding like anyone else’s. Snowflake sales pages!

Forget about the right words. Let’s craft the right offer. And the right packages for your services. And the right messages. And let’s make sure that program is fully baked, and that it’s what your people want. Then we can start on the words. They can even be persuasive.

Here’s a book recommendation even your gut will love:

It’s called Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. And it is forehead-slappingly good. After I bought it, I realized why those signs in fast-food restaurants to “only take one napkin” never work. I also discovered that many of the people I respect had already read this book, and simply hadn’t told anyone. Tricky! Well, now you can join our secret club.

Go ahead and persuade—but remember to be kind to guts. Because I love them.

Read all 11 really smart comments. Posted by Kelly Parkinson on February 10, 2010.

How I won a dance contest at the Marriott

Disclaimer: This is the first of an occasional series of posts with no business purpose whatsoever. If you’re interested in business, marketing, and copywriting, but not interested how I won a dance contest at a teacher convention, then you’ll want to skip this.

I spent last week at Havi Brooks’ Destuckification Retreat, but I’m not going to talk about that here. (You’d be reading 150 pages about epiphanies and conversations with Monster, the three-inch-tall, stuffed monster who lives in a fire station in the front of my head.) Instead, this post tells the story of what happened the night before the retreat, when I managed to win a dance contest at a teachers convention at this hotel by the airport.

By the way, did you know teachers have dance contests at their conferences? I guess it’s one of those secrets we were never meant to discover.

I don’t usually crash teacher conferences. But my teacher-friend was in town, so my dance partner and I drove down to see her. (Yes, I have a dance partner. Yes, this is his full-time job.)

In the elevator on the way up to my friend’s room, we were joined by a quiet, gray-haired man (8th-grade-social-studies?). He looked set to retire for the evening, with a green canvas conference bag in one hand and a Corona with lime in the other. Two older ladies with their own green conference bags got on just as the doors were closing. “Nightcap?” they said. Everyone laughed knowingly, as if this was just the beginning of the debauchery about to unfold.

When my teacher-friend informed us there was a buffet and a dance party taking place downstairs, I knew we had to be there.

Luckily, I had come prepared with Saran-wrapped Stilton cheese and an apple—just in case someone asked for teacher ID. My teacher-friend said it would also help if one of us was carrying a water bottle. I decided to risk it and just go with the cheese. To me, being a teacher is a mindset. Something you inhabit from within.

We glided through the doors and into the ballroom as I repeated the mantra, “I am a teacher. I know all. I am powerful and wise. I belong.”

The dance party was just getting started. Teachers were beginning to flood the dance floor in their turtlenecks and high-waisted slacks. We watched them do the YMCA. We watched them do The Hustle and The Electric Slide. We even watched them do Thriller. It felt so wondrous, but adorable at the same time. Like coming upon a tribe of lions doing calisthenics.

Then a slow Journey song came on, and everyone evacuated the dance floor.

I realized we were the only people who didn’t know anyone in a room full of people who all kind of knew each other—and no one would ever see us again. It was like dance amnesty!

My dance partner and I raced over to the completely empty dance floor. We danced more badly to that song than we had ever danced before. Epileptically. You know the Journey song that goes from slow to fast? It was that song. By the end of the song, I could feel hundreds of teacher-eyes watching us, questioning, wondering. ‘What subject do THEY teach? Why are they dancing TOGETHER?’

Just when I thought I couldn’t dance any longer, the DJ (11th grade biology teacher?) walked up and thrust a home-made CD into my hands. Just the CD—no cover.

“Congratulations!!!!” he said. “You won the dance contest!!!!”

As soon as we won the dance contest (I’ve always wanted to say that), I decided we should quit while we were ahead. We couldn’t risk it. Plus, we needed to give the real teachers a chance.

We walked out of the ballroom as I repeated the mantra that had brought me this far. “I am a teacher. I know all. I am powerful and wise. I belong.” We escaped, undetected.

Strolling through the hotel that evening, basking in the soft glow of the words “dance contest winners!!!”, we would pass teachers, their gazes lingering in recognition. We were famous—but only for one night! Which is the best kind of fame there is.

Is this conference the highlight of every teacher’s year, professionally? It was definitely the highlight of mine (so what if it’s only February?)—and the perfect way to spend a night before a perfectly destuckified retreat.

Read all 18 really smart comments. Posted by Kelly Parkinson on February 2, 2010.