“You KNOW the sheik who is holding my husband hostage! You also know he’s not a patient man. God only knows what he’s doing to my husband right now. So I don’t have the time. What I want you to do is call the network affiliate in Morocco and get a camera crew here right away.”
–Eden, Santa Barbara, 1991

You have a movie inside you.

And, like the Poltergeist, it needs to come out.

What form will it take? If you have a business, movies usually take the form of sales pages.

I hope you weren’t expecting Mark Ruffalo.

We don’t read sales pages with as much interest as we watch movies. But we do scan them. We’re optimists at heart. “Maybe this sales page will be the one for me.”

And, if your headlines look as dramatic as a soap opera plot, people might actually read that sales page. And then they might do something about that call to action at the end. We can hope, right?

As the director of your own sales page, you get to create your story, and you get to decide what happens next.

So, you want to direct. Let’s get started.

What I want you to do is call your camera crews in Morocco.

Now, do you have popcorn made? I’ll wait. You like popcorn.

Take a seat on your big, plush director’s couch. There are no director’s chairs for sales pages. Only couches.

Also, turn off the internet. Hit the lights. Close your eyes.

Well, read the rest of this post first, then close your eyes.

Ready to get started? You’re probably not ready. How about a nap first?

Go ahead and take a 10-minute nap. You like naps.

When you wake up, insert the movie of your Clients and press PLAY.

Don’t forget to play your favorite movie soundtrack. Mine is Beaches.

Now that the movie is playing, you’re not thinking about benefits and features and pie charts and problems.

You’re not thinking about what words to use.

All you’re doing is watching the movie in your head.

Bette Midler’s character doesn’t want to make more money in less time.

She wants to become a performer, and part of her wonders whether anyone will ever take her seriously, and even though her mother drives her crazy with the over-managing and stress, she wants fame so much she’s willing to do anything to get it, even put up with her mother, and she doesn’t care if she sings too loud on the boardwalk. She has feelings and she needs to let them out.

Bring the drama! Let it all play out.

As you watch The Client, you’re making director’s notes.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself:

• What did they want?
• What did they really want, underneath all that?
• How did you know that’s what they wanted?
• What was at stake?
• What happened when they finally got what they wanted?
• Why was that so surprising?
• Why was it so important?
• How difficult was it for them to decide to work with you?
• What came up along the way that made everyone keep watching?
• Where are they now?
• What do you think is possible now that wasn’t possible before?
• What’s something they used to do that they’re no longer doing anymore?
• What are their friends telling them? What are their friends and family noticing?
• What happens next?

When you feel moved by a story, you write differently. You stop worrying so much about whether you’re bragging or whether you’re using the right words.

You’re just watching, taking it all in. You’re starting with those feelings, those images in your mind’s eye of what your clients’ lives look like. Once you know that story, you can tell it in a sales page. You can address the problems, the benefits, the uniqueness, without resorting to awkward questions that spoon-feed the obvious right back to people.

Like sand through the hourglass, so are the sales pages of our lives.

Psst. Can you keep a secret? Then you’ll fit right in with the rest of the Secret Discount Scouts. Secrets! Discounts! Adventure! Just don’t tell anyone. Coming soon…a new product that will take you by the hand up Website Copywriting Mountain. Join today–but quietly. Quietly.

Why is writing so hard, and why does it take so long?

Writing is not hard. Writing is fun. Riffing, rambling, and brainstorming are like skinny-dipping for your brain.

What most people find hard is not writing, but editing.
Like the Swamp of Sadness in The Neverending Story, editing is grueling and depressing.

Me, trying to coax a transitional sentence out of the first draft swamp.

Unless you know a few tricks to make it less so.
Headline Jeopardy is one of them.

How do I know if I need Headline Jeopardy?

I don’t know if you need Headline Jeopardy, but I do.

Maybe it can help you, too.

Here are a few signs you can benefit from Headline Jeopardy:

Let me show you a trick that works for me.

What is Headline Jeopardy, please?

Headline Jeopardy makes it easy for you to scan what you’ve written so you can organize and edit it. I wouldn’t call the editing process fun, but at least it won’t drain you of hope before you sink into the Swamp of Sadness.

Where did you learn Headline Jeopardy?

Thanks for asking. It all started in 7th grade biology class. Our weekly homework was to write 25 questions for that week’s textbook chapter.

Memorizing facts is boring. Questions made memorizing easier so we could practice with flash cards.

Q: What’s the innermost part of a cell called?
A: The nucleus

And on, and on. Still boring.

Every week there was a test.

People who got an A were rewarded with a jawbreaker.
People who got an A+ received a giant, baseball-sized jawbreaker.

It was disgusting watching those A+ students dripping drool onto their desks and their papers. And, yes, one time I was one of them, and that was the only time it was not disgusting.

Without the questions to assist me, I never would have won any jawbreakers.

After a while, I started making up questions for everything I read or wrote. I SEE HISTORY QUESTIONS.

That’s what inspired Headline Jeopardy.

How does Headline Jeopardy work?

Follow these steps:

1. Start at the beginning. Read through the first paragraph or sequence of ideas and ask yourself, “If this idea was answering a question, what would that question be?”
2. Insert the question as a headline for that section.
3. Treat yourself to a jawbreaker.
4. Continue to the next set of sentences or related ideas. Repeat.
5. Once you’ve given questions to every idea, scan them. Look for how the questions interrelate. Which question would logically go first? Which would go after that?
6. Put the questions in order—not the long, rambling answers.
7. When the questions flow logically, you can do one of three things:
   • Take them away and keep editing without them.
   • Replace the questions with real headlines.
   • Use the questions as headlines. Questions are real headlines, too, you know.
8. Have another jawbreaker. No one’s looking.

Why is editing by making up questions so much easier?

Questions give us a break from focusing on all those bright, shiny, idea toys. They gently remind us to make a point. Curiosity takes the place of self-imposed logic. It’s a nice mindset to have when your ideas feel vulnerable and small, and aren’t quite ready for the editorial chopping block.

Can you give me an example?

How about this blog post? Editing took half as much time because Headline Jeopardy helped me structure it fast.

I want to learn more about how I can write my website–can you help?

Sign up to become a Secret Discount Scout and be the first to know about a new product that will take you by the hand up Website Copywriting Mountain.

I like it. While it doesn’t make me feel any better about losing integers followed by zeroes, it does help me to accept the lesson and move on.

People who have lost houses probably tell themselves this.
I tell myself they tell themselves this whenever I think of my own desire to have a house.
It’s a desire that pops up whenever King Kong and the upstairs bowling committee have one of their daily gunny sack races.

But Failure University has gotten enough tuition. They owe me a diploma by now. As long as this website* keeps telling me I should pay cash for a house, I’ll keep on saving and living in this flat.

*Warning: Don’t click there if you’ve just bought a house. You don’t want to know.

But I still want a house. A house! I want it! Right now!

In the spirit of instant gratification, I bought a train.

I’m on a train right now.

It’s my favorite sound on my new white noise machine.

It’s not the kind of train you hear passing through your neighborhood. It’s the kind of train you’re actually on.

I love the feeling of being contained for several hours in a cozy space with plenty of legroom, ice cream, a window, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Whenever I get lonely, I can mosey on down to the dining car. On what other form of public transportation do they let you eat hot dogs and ice cream, family-style, around a big table?

While I have never been able to love yoga the way people who love yoga love yoga, I love the way being on a train feels like yoga.

There is no multitasking on a train. There are no interruptions.

Only a lazy scroll of landscape that patiently waits for you to take it all in before disappearing.  For now, the train has saved me from my manic desire to buy a house so I could be free from King Kong’s clutches.

I like having my freedom, and that includes freedom from banks.

The train helps me hold on to that freedom—in much the way a real train does. Better than a house ever could.

My train and I have become quite attached.

I’m afraid we’ll become too attached. That I won’t be able to relax without bringing it with me.

I’ll need to play the ocean sound at the beach, because the real ocean won’t be relaxing enough. Camping in the woods will require a supplementary campfire sound, because I can’t risk any stray, unexpected coyote howls.

Or what if the real train sound just reminds me of the stomping it’s supposed to eliminate, like how the sweetness of cough syrup never lets you forget the taste of dextromethorphan? Or like the chimichanga I ate before I got the flu, which ruined chimichangas forever?

The train doesn’t think I should worry about things like that.
It’s busy developing my “I’m on a train” muscles. (Mindfulness? Is that what the yoga people call it?)  As long my train keeps me in a moment of complete absorption most of the time, we’ll be fine, I think. Even when it’s not there.

I am here to make sure no one thinks about my clients’ businesses the way I think about houses.

Potentially risky investments probably best avoided. Instead, I want them to think of my clients the way I think of trains. With love and affection and with a fear of ever losing that mindful feeling.

Maybe people think they want a house. But maybe you’re the train. They need to see you can bring them closer to what they really want than what they thought they wanted ever could.

That sounds like a nice kind of tuition to pay. Not at Failure University, but at the one on the other side of town. Starts with S.

Psst. Can you keep a secret? Then you’ll fit right in with the rest of the Secret Discount Scouts. Secrets! Discounts! Adventure! Just don’t tell anyone. Coming soon…a new product that will take you by the hand up Website Copywriting Mountain. Join today–but quietly. Quietly.

I believed its patented steam technology had the power to change my life. And life itself was precisely what was at stake at the age of 13.

Developed by a prominent Hollywood hair stylist, the Hairsetter’s steam technology promised the best of both worlds. More power than a curling iron, hair-conditioning instead of hair-damaging.

It wasn’t just a hairsetter. It was a hair curling system—complete with foam rollers and a steaming device that also gave facials.

Really, the Hairsetter wasn’t about your hair. It was about the way you felt about your hair. My new Hairsetter would give me confidence in all-weather conditions, in Santa Ana winds and 90% humidity alike. Even if I wore the same acid-washed stretch jeans every day and chipped my tooth on a rock, my hair could atone for all.

I needed this system badly.

I have the hair equivalent of conjoined twins.

People tell me I’m lucky to have two heads of hair on one head. But they don’t know what it’s like to have the hair you spent 45 minutes curling fall flat by 2nd period. All that effort. For what? One single, solitary bus ride of glory? I wanted consistency! Consistent glory! With no follicular damage! Was that too much to ask?

I became obsessed with the steam curling system.

It was the kind of obsession I kept to myself. No one knew I wanted this product, which only intensified my longing.

There was probably something they weren’t telling me. But the possibilities were irresistible. Better curls without heat damage, as if you’d never curled your hair at all? Isn’t that almost like time travel?

Just because other infomercials sold useless stuff didn’t mean this infomercial sold useless stuff.

I couldn’t just ask my parents to buy the Richard Caruso Molecular Hairsetter.

My parents did not order products sold through toll-free hotlines on TV.

They would sooner buy a Greek goddess statue from a Tijuana outdoor market, or enter (& win) a raffle for a free sofa set at the Pomona County Fair, or order illegal fireworks from Mexico through the mail. All of these things they did, but they drew the line at toll-free hotlines.

Ordering products through toll-free hotlines was something my grandmother did.

Her house was a catalog of things seen on TV. I thought that made her so cool. She was free! Free to buy stuff! Free to realize her full potential! There was Tony Little’s exercise system. An ab exerciser. Fish oil vitamins and life-extending supplements. Even faith in a higher power. My grandma had it all. She had more books than I did. Her personal library was so vast you needed a rolling ladder to reach all of it. She had one of those, too.

I longed to be protected by stuff, by faith, and by my faith in my stuff.

But I had neither stuff nor faith.

Then the Internet came along, changing the rules about buying stuff seen on TV. The Internet was technology. Technology was always okay to invest in. Anything purchased via this technological advancement known as the Internet was therefore okay, too. If you saw an infomercial but then made your purchase online, you weren’t really buying it directly from TV anymore.

No one needed to tell me this. It was a part of the mindset stew in which I had been raised.

At around the time things began to be sold on the internet, I began to have money to spend on things sold on the internet.

I was finally able to secure my very own Richard Caruso Molecular Hairsetter.

The results were just as I had hoped they’d be. But there was just one catch. The system didn’t include enough foam rollers to accommodate all of my hair, so curling became a 2-hour process completed in 15-minute stages.

I was older and didn’t care that much about my hair anymore.

I blamed myself and the future international wig factory on my head for my disappointment—not the Caruso system. Besides, I hadn’t ordered it directly from TV. This was a legitimate store-bought purchase. Nothing to be ashamed of.

It was the end of my own personal steam age, but not the end of my idealism.

I needed to believe in something, so I decided to believe in my own capacity for improvement.

I embarked on a 10-year period of improving myself in the mode of a 19th century schoolteacher.

• I read the classics, and a book on how to read the classics.
• I increased my protein intake.
• I became a runner.
• I joined the Peace Corps.
• I bought several books on Amazon on how to start a business.
• I quit my job and started a business.

Somewhere along the way, I got better at buying stuff off the internet.

And now I help people sell it. Only the “stuff” is really services.

And most of those services somehow relate to improvement. Either for people, businesses, or both.

And everyone knows how badly we need to believe in our potential to improve.

Otherwise, it’s back to steam hairsetters and facial exercisers for all of us.

I’ve been there. I’m not going back.

Psst. Can you keep a secret? Then you’ll fit right in with the rest of the Secret Discount Scouts. Secrets! Discounts! Adventure! Just don’t tell anyone. Coming soon…a new product that will take you by the hand up Website Copywriting Mountain. Join today–but quietly. Quietly.

1. This is brilliant. I am on fire. A natural talent!
2. There is so much great stuff in here. I can feel it!
3. I can’t wait for someone to read it!
4. This isn’t my own genius. It’s coming through me, but it is not me.
5. This is terrible.
6. This is probably the worst thing I’ve ever written.
7. This doesn’t even make sense.
8. This is a professional embarrassment.
9. I’ll never write again.
10. I never could.
11. How can I let anyone read this?
12. Maybe it’s not so bad, if I delete 80 percent.
13. Okay, that part is not bad.
14. It’s pretty good.
15. No, it’s still not good. It’s not good at all. It’s bad.
16. I’m afraid to look.
17. I am finished, professionally speaking.
18. I can’t possibly show this to anyone.
19. The shame!
20. I have to turn this in. There’s a deadline.
21. It’s good enough. For now.
22. I can fix it later.
23. Maybe no one will notice how irritating I am.
24. This part is actually kind of good.
25. Funny. How did I think of that?
26. This is good. I’ll probably never write this way again.
27. I will never write this way again. I might as well accept that. It was a different time.
28. No, this is terrible.
29. This is a mediocre piece of writing, at best.
30. Definitely not my best work.
31. This is terrible.
32. I never want to read this again.
33. I should probably just start over.
34. I don’t know—what do you think?

Psst. Can you keep a secret? Then you’ll fit right in with the rest of the Secret Discount Scouts. Secrets! Discounts! Adventure! Just don’t tell anyone. Coming soon…a new product that will take you by the hand up Website Copywriting Mountain. Join today–but quietly. Quietly.

And then one Friday night you’re eating Chinese take-out and truck drivers come up.

You realize the person you thought you knew knows more about truck drivers than you’d ever imagined, including exactly what it takes to earn a truck driver’s trust.

Apparently, when someone becomes a large-scale sculptor, he also becomes immersed in the trucking subculture. Whenever he needs to take a treehouse or a rocket somewhere, he needs a trucker.

You never really thought about that, but it makes sense.

And now you’re curious. How do you earn a trucker’s trust?

You’ve always wanted to be Margaret Mead or Ira Glass or Terry Gross. To dive into another culture, to ask probing questions, to better understand yourself in the process of studying someone else.

Now that you’ve got an iPhone voice recorder, this is your chance. This is definitely going in your book. Or blog. Whatever.

Plus, marketing is really about building trust, and truckers are a tough crowd.

If we can get a truck driver to trust us, we can get anyone to trust us.

Following is a transcript of an interview with artist-scientist Alan Rorie, an irregular guest of this blog whose discomfort around puppets is matched only by his surprisingly deep knowledge of truck drivers.

Me: So, how do you earn a trucker’s trust?

Him: You need to be into how things are strapped down. Ask about what he hauls and show an interest. Ask him, ‘So, what kind of stuff do you haul?’ Because to just assume that all truckers are the same, that they all haul stuff and it doesn’t matter what he’s hauling, that he’s just a truck driver…

Me: Right.

Him: And you have to hustle and do work, and not make them do anything. You have to let them just stand there. You can’t bother them too much. Also, you need to have your own ratchets.

If they’ve got strapping, of course you would use their strapping.

Me: Of course.

Him: Just be respectful of them, and don’t expect anything. Load the truck quickly and efficiently, because they’re waiting for you.

Me: Are they really interested in talking about what they haul?

Him: Sure. Are you interested in talking about what you write about?

Me: Yes, but that’s because I think about it all the time.

Him: Well, that’s what they think about all the time.

Me: Why do they think about it? They can’t just drive the truck and drop it off?

Him: If you’re hauling big, steel sculptures, the truck will act very differently than if you’re hauling really light loads. If you do a lot of wide-load stuff, that’s more work, and you’ve got to know. There’s a whole world of truckin’ out there.

Me: What kinds of things do they haul?

Him: Everything. Furniture. Dead bodies. Everything that needs to get moved. How do you think things move around in this country? They either go on an airplane, on a train, or on a truck.

Me: What’s the dead body story?

Him: The trucker we met today used to own his own truck, and he did a lot of military contracting for a while. One time he had to haul a bunch of frozen bodies.

Me: Why did the military have frozen bodies?

Him: I don’t question why the military has frozen bodies. I assume they have frozen bodies.

Me: How do you know when a trucker trusts you?

Him: I don’t think you can ever really know for certain. I imagine a good trucker would always remain a little suspicious.

Me: Then how do you know when he kind of likes you, and doesn’t think you’re a douchebag?

Him: When he starts helping and asking you a lot of questions about what it is you’re loading into his truck.

Me: I still don’t understand. How does that affect him? Does what he’s hauling affect his route or the way he drives?

Him: I think on some level they’re curious. Especially with us.  A lot of people they have to deal with are other truckers and construction people. They get really into working with us because they usually have to do the same thing every day. This guy mainly hauls furniture these days.  So, when you get to do something different, like strapping down a giant steel sculpture that’s irregular and is shaped much differently than your average load, and if you’re a trucker who’s into strapping stuff down, that’s fun because it’s different.

Me: Do they like being truckers?

Him: I never ask. I just kind of assume they do.

Me: Do they seem like they like it?

Him: Some of them seem to like it more than others. They’re all different.

Me: Tell me about the different kinds of truckers.

Him: Most of them are the same in a lot of ways. They’re white and they’re round. They usually have some kind of facial hair.

Facial hair and/or jowl.

They all like to start early in the morning. There’s never a trucker who’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll pull in around 4pm.’ They always like to start early—6am, 7am.

Me: Why do they like to start so early in the morning?

Him: I do not know.

Me: Is that so they can drive all day and sleep at night?

Him: Probably. I know there are a lot of rules about how long they can be on the road. They probably prefer to drive during the day.

Me: It’s safer.

Him: So they’re all morning people.

Those are the good truckers.

Me: The good truckers?

Him: The bad truckers are the ones who are tweakers.

Me: They’re skinny?

Him: They could be fat. They just don’t have teeth. From our point of view, bad truckers are ones who don’t show up on time. I mean, if you say you’re going to be there at 6am, be there at 6am. If you say you’re going to be there at 4am—fine, we’ll do what it takes, but be there at 4am.

Me: Yeah.

Him: A lot of truckers who give discounted rates also give discounted service. Or, they end up being late.

Me: That’s frustrating.

Him: Or, they don’t show up at all.

Me: So, are those the ones that usually turn out to be tweakers?

Him: Usually there’s something up.

Me: So, the way you tell a good trucker from a bad trucker is by looking at his teeth?

Him: That helps, but it’s hard to tell. Not everyone who’s missing their front teeth does meth.
Some of them are just missing their front teeth.

Me: I thought you were going to say, ‘Not everyone who is late is a tweaker.’

Him: That’s true, too.

Me: Are the bad truckers nice once they get there, or are they bad all around?

Him: They’re not mean. It’s usually about being late, and they don’t really care, because, ‘What are you going to do? I’m here now. You want to not load your truck because I’m late?’

Me: Are all the good truckers friends with each other? Do they hang out?

Him: I don’t know. I imagine they know each other. I imagine there are little trucker clubs.

Me: Or do you think when someone becomes a trucker, it’s because they don’t want to hang out with other people a lot? They like to be by themselves?

Him: No, I think a lot of the truckers know each other. A lot of them work together. Not everyone owns their own truck.

Me: Is that a kind of hierarchy? Whether or not you own your truck?

Him: I don’t know. I should ask about that.

Me: Why did the guy who owned his own truck go back to not owning his own truck?

Him: I don’t know. Maybe he went out of business.

Me: How does a trucker get people to hire him to drive stuff?

Him: Most of the truckers we work with work with someone else. Trucking company. Usually a guy who’s the boss, who owns a couple of the rigs.

Me: Like a truck pimp.

Him: Yeah. And then he hires the drivers to drive the rigs.

Me: Do truckers ever burn out? What do you do if you burn out?

Him: Senate? Fund your own senate race? I don’t know, I think we’ve explored the full realm of my trucker knowledge.

Me: What were they wearing?

Him: The guy today was wearing white sneakers, white socks, denim shorts. He was a very large man.

Me: How short were the denim shorts?

Him: Knee length. And he had a plain belt and a black, big-dog shirt that had something about the United States of America on the back.

And he had a little leather holster on his belt that held two pens.

Me: I knew we hadn’t exhausted everything.

Him: And he had big jowls and a bruise on part of his face. He smelled. And he checked his cell phone constantly.

Me: He had a cell phone, too? But he didn’t keep that in the holster?

Him: No. Just the pens.

Me: Was he the only trucker you had today?

Him: No, but he was the one I spent the most time with.

The other guy I met only briefly this morning.

He was hunched, with a potbelly.

He was wearing a grey t-shirt with a collar that was all stretched out because he’d been sleeping in it for days. And he had a pair of jeans, a big, hooded jacket, and a trucker hat.

He was all scruffy. He had a cup of coffee and a cigarette in his hand at all times, and kept asking people if they had tokes.

Apparently, yesterday afternoon he parked the truck, and it wasn’t going to depart until yesterday morning, so he was done for the night. While everyone was loading the truck, he walked three blocks to the corner store and bought a bunch of beer, and sat there in his truck, where he had a TV, and watched a baseball game and drank all his beer. He slept in his truck, and was up at 5:30 this morning to finish strapping it down and to take it away.

Me: They’re kind of like cowboys.

Him: Kind of, yeah.

Me: Like Lonesome Dove.

Him: Yeah, a little bit of that. That’s true. Except they’re bigger.

Me: Do they ever go, ‘Hi! I’m Doug?’

Him: If their name was Doug. I don’t think we’ve had a truck driver named Doug yet. Our regular truck driver’s name is Diki.

Me: Diki?

Him: Mm-hmm. He’s a redhead. He’s got kind of a rockabilly look, with a red goatee. His hair’s all slicked. He’s really into hauling the rocket around and watching us pick it up off the truck.

By the way, what are you going to do with all this?

Me: Nothing.

If you liked this interview, you can listen to an interview of me by visiting http://purposefulproduct.com/. I talk about how I started a business, how to trick yourself into accidentally writing your website, and a few other things I can’t remember. (You’ll need to enter your email address to access the recording, but it’s free. Not an affiliate link.)

Psst. Can you keep a secret? Then you’ll fit right in with the rest of the Secret Discount Scouts. Secrets! Discounts! Adventure! Just don’t tell anyone. Coming soon…a new product that will take you by the hand up Website Copywriting Mountain. Join today–but quietly. Quietly.

A bribe is a kind of guarantee. And, like bribes, guarantees often introduce an element of distrust:

“If you don’t like it, I’ll give you your money back.”

It’s not terribly confidence-inspiring. Most consultants don’t have the luxury of offering money-back guarantees, anyway. So, they feel stymied by things like value-based pricing. How can you demonstrate value while inspiring clients to follow through on their end without a guarantee? Doesn’t the lack of a guarantee render the term “value” arbitrary and meaningless?

How do you reduce perceived risk while also protecting yourself?

Guarantees don’t have to require giving someone their money back.

They don’t even need to be guarantees at all, as long as they establish trust and reduce the client’s perceived risk—without putting you at too much risk.

Here’s one idea. What if we made guarantees positive, prize-winning events instead?

Instead of accepting total responsibility for your client’s business, why not give them a reason to take ownership and to follow through on their commitments—by giving them a nice bonus?

You do your work, client follows through on their end of the plan, and if they demonstrate consistent follow-through, they receive a fat cash prize.

It inspires them to believe in themselves. It makes you look good because you now have a success story. It makes giving them money a delight.

And it motivates them to really, really want to follow through. Yes, because they love their business and the people they serve and they truly want to make a contribution. But also for the cold, hard cash.

Now that’s a bribe I can believe in. You?

Psst. Can you keep a secret? Then you’ll fit right in with the rest of the Secret Discount Scouts. Secrets! Discounts! Adventure! Just don’t tell anyone. Coming soon…a new product that will take you by the hand up Website Copywriting Mountain. Join today–but quietly. Quietly.

I am sorry. I really am.

It’s true that if your birthday was truly, deeply important to me, I would remember.

Your birthday would hold an esteemed, color-coded position on my calendar, set on automatic repeat, with three-week, two-week, and one-week text-to-phone countdowns. Your address would already be transcribed onto an old-fashioned, stamped envelope, and the thing I’d write on the card (which I’d make myself with letterpress) would be the perfect thing, just the thing to make you feel fantastic on your birthday.

The problem is I’d still forget. Unless something is screaming for my attention, I don’t tend to do it.
See: Dishes, May 2010.

The other thing to know about me is I don’t actually enjoy having a birthday myself.

Part of me wishes everyone would forget my birthday. I feel uncomfortable on my birthday. So many expectations. My birthday also reminds me of all the birthdays I forget. I feel guilty on my birthday.

And then there are the “happy birthday” emails pinching my inbox’s cheeks.

No one who knows me would ever send me a “happy birthday” email. So, if I were to look only at my inbox, it would appear that the only people who care about my birthday are those who want to sell me something.

All of the most embarrassing parts of my past emerge, in a carefully synchronized dance of shame, to commemorate the aging process.

There’s the Bodybuilding website I joined to burn the fat and feed the muscle.
The online dating website that still has my email address from 2002.
The Honda dealership that sold me the car I used to rear-end someone.
The former financial advisor whose advice I never took, calling my cell phone “just” to wish me a happy birthday.

PLEASE STOP!!!

To clarify, I do like celebrating other people’s birthdays. It’s fun, like Cinco de Mayo. Not my holiday, but who doesn’t love a party?

And I do like being invited to birthday parties. A party is an event. Once I’ve RSVP’d, your birthday becomes urgent. There’s a well-defined protocol. I don’t even have to find a stamp. I can give you the card myself.

Maybe you feel this way about your birthday, too.

Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you cry because not enough people remembered your birthday.

Well, now there’s a solution to all of the guilt, the fear, the pain, the embarrassment. For everyone.

It’s called Birthday Amnesty.

It is one random day of the year I have chosen on which to celebrate my friends’ birthdays, in the hopes of getting forgiveness for the countless birthdays I have forgotten.

On this special day, the people whose birthdays I forgot will receive a surprise in the mail. I might even throw them a party!

No pressure for me, no pressure for you!
Just a delightful surprise!

The amazing Shannon Wilkinson suggested this idea to me when I was detailing my birthday issues. She said it reminded her of the library’s amnesty day, when you can return a book without a late fee. I need library amnesty, too.

This year, I’d like my first Birthday Amnesty to take place sometime in late June, I think. Unless I forget.

Wouldn’t you love to get a surprise in the mail after sending in your quarterly estimated taxes?

I hope getting a Birthday Amnesty card on a random day makes you feel more special, because you deserve to feel special.

Dear reader,

If you suffer from guilt and forgetfulness and would like to join the Birthday Amnesty program, all you need to do is comment below. You’ll be added to the Official Scroll of Birthday Amnesty recipients.

Once you’re in the program, you’ll need to pick a day on which to send your friends a Birthday Amnesty card. Cupcakes appreciated.

You’ll also need to decide whether to have a Birthday Amnesty party. If you do decide to have the party, it’s very important to make sure there are enough cake and candles for everyone. Since you’ve already forgotten their birthdays, you can’t skimp on Birthday Amnesty.

And here’s a song you can sing:

Happy Birthday Amnesty
Happy Birthday Amnesty

I’m bad at remembering dates

But I like you

If the program has enough recipients, I might even create a Birthday Amnesty Certificate of Authenticity you can print and display to the people whose birthdays you forgot. That way they’ll know your amnesty is real, and not some cheesy gimmick.

Happy Birthday Amnesty!

Psst. Can you keep a secret? Then you’ll fit right in with the rest of the Secret Discount Scouts. Secrets! Discounts! Adventure! Just don’t tell anyone. Coming soon…a new product that will take you by the hand up Website Copywriting Mountain. Join today–but quietly. Quietly.

Since starting his AdWords campaign two and a half months ago, Alan, an independent artist and scientist with no previous clients, generated $4,350 in private welding class services from this ad alone.

Most new businesses take months to get off the ground. You could say AdWords provided the rocket fuel to a much faster launch.

Although the AdWords tactic was intentional, neither of us were experts. I was a total beginner, and so was he. Everything I knew about AdWords I learned from this free report.

After we both read the report, we got to work. We already had a sales page, which I’d helped him write. So, this post focuses on the AdWords campaign.

Short story: Wild success. He generated a 1,450% return on investment!

For the longer, behind-the-scenes story, read this interview.

This is relevant for you if you are:

• An artist
• A teacher or a coach
• Anyone offering a specific service, particularly in person, who needs clients now, and doesn’t want to wait for the whole trust-building, online-expert effect to kick in

This may not be relevant for you if you have an unusual service no one seems to know they need until they get to know you. However, you might be able to make AdWords work for you by focusing on a specific problem you solve.

INTERVIEW WITH AN ACCIDENTAL ADWORDS THOUSANDAIRE

Me: Why did you decide to do this AdWords campaign? I know you’ve always been allergic to capital-M Marketing.

Alan: I decided to do an AdWords campaign because I really needed to connect with people outside of my network.

Email lists, Facebook, and Twitter can get you far, but at a certain point, a lot of those people are too close to you for your service to be useful to them.

I was selling metal fabrication lessons, and a lot of the people in my networks have those skills already, or could acquire them easily. My natural network is not my client network. And even their extended network wasn’t my network.

Having friends send out emails and direct their friends to my sales page didn’t really work for me, either. I knew I wanted to take out an ad, and I had heard of some other friends who were doing different things who had success with AdWords, so I decided to give it a shot.

Me: How did you get started?

Alan: AdWords searches the entire Google content spectrum—everything from your web search to history to your email for keywords. And then it picks ads that are associated with those keywords. So what I did first was to pick the keywords. I started off with the keywords that I would use to find my service; and then I added keywords to people that I thought would be interested.

Me: For example?

Alan: For example, I’m teaching metal fabrication classes, welding classes. So the first keywords I used were private welding classes in San Francisco.

My ad says:

Private Welding Classes
You’ll master the basics and more
Perfect for Makers, Artists and DIY
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA

Me: But you teach in Oakland. Isn’t that misleading?

Alan: I do teach in Oakland, but when you create your ad, you can specify who sees it. You can target a geographic area really specifically, so my ad is only seen by people in the San Francisco Bay Area who are over 18.

That way I don’t have to deal with some 13-year-old who wants to take a class. I don’t want to deal with minors.

Me: How has your success with AdWords affected your attitude towards AdWords ads, which you yourself never click on? I know you used to say that if you didn’t click on it, no one else would, either.

Alan: I think it’s probably made me a little more likely to click on ads, but again, only under really specific circumstances. I don’t think I’m my target audience, to be honest. I basically taught myself how to weld. I’m still very dubious of marketing and advertising, even though I have to do it myself.

However, I’m definitely more comfortable doing it now than I was before. I see its value, and I see how it can be done honestly and with integrity and style. But I don’t think a lot of people do any of that. I think a lot of marketing and advertising is still pretty sleazy and aggressive and untrustworthy.

Me: How has using AdWords affected the quality of the people you’re getting? I know your first two clients came by way of referral, so what’s been the difference between them and subsequent AdWords clients?

Alan: So far, the people who get to the point that they’re taking the class have been absolutely the right people. It’s not just about the ad. I talk with them afterwards, and not everyone who clicks on my ad is clearly the best client. For example, a lot of people click through but don’t follow the call to action. And a lot of people who follow the call to action and fill out the form will not actually become clients. But the people who do end up being my clients are great. They’re interested in learning and they’re a lot of fun.

Me: So let’s talk numbers. How many people have responded to the call to action, how many became clients? What’s your ROI here?

Alan: So far, I’ve spent $300 for two-and-a-half months, so $124 a month on average. And I’ve gotten $4,350 in business.

Me: Wow. That’s 14.5 times what was spent, or $1,450% ROI.

Alan: How did you do that?

Me: Calculator.

Alan: I also got two referrals. Those weren’t included in the numbers above.

Me: What advice would you give to someone who was thinking of doing this themselves?

Alan: No matter how you have your sales page set up, it’s difficult to tell who is actually going to end up being a good client. Sometimes someone fills out the call to action questionnaire, and you think they’re a hot prospect. You’re sure they’re going to follow through. But a lot of times they don’t pan out. So you never really know. So my advice would be to treat each stage of contact with everyone with the same amount of enthusiasm and skepticism. Also, my sales page was tight, and targeted a very specific type of person. That really helped.

Me: You’re reading Howie Jacobson’s Google AdWords for Dummies right now, right? I can’t wait to see how that changes your results.

Alan: Me, too.

This concludes my Interview with an Accidental AdWords Thousandaire. We’ll report back as soon as anything else exciting happens.

Success somehow marks one as a peaked man (or woman), no more capable of improvement than a 10-year-old TV sitcom.

Jumping the shark has jumped the shark.

It’s time for this metaphor to die.

How many episodes of Gilligan’s Island does anyone need to watch before thinking, “Okay, I get it. You’re never getting off the island. The Professor and Mary Ann will never be a thing. And Skipper is never going to move his hammock so Gilligan doesn’t keep falling on top of him. That’s just the way it is.”

A show can’t wake up one morning and decide it wants to be a mermaid. It can’t keep getting better without becoming another show entirely. There are only so many plot-lines to explore.

To change, a show would first need permission from dozens of other people, the suits, major corporations, sponsors, networks.

Also, if a show isn’t wildly successful, eventually it gets pulled off the air.

Not true for businesses.

Our businesses, ourselves.

Unlike a sitcom, a person can do whatever the heck they want to do—in life and in business. It’s not possible for an individual to cease to have the capacity to become infinitely better.

Businesses meet real needs. Businesses solve real problems. They can change to meet changing needs and changing problems. They do it all the time.

Businesses don’t need to stay famous. They don’t have to be on TV every other day. They don’t have to attend parties and get their name in magazines. They just have to keep solving problems and doing great work and making themselves, their people, and their customers happy.

A business can be unknown by 99.99999% of the internet, and do very well for itself. I know plenty of insanely profitable consultants who aren’t and never plan to be internet famous.

They’re doing just fine, and don’t need household-name fame to make a difference.

A so-called shark-jumper could decide tomorrow to become a painter. And what could anyone really say about it?

When Walt Whitman decided to quit his job as a low-level reporter, his journalist peers likely viewed him with disdain. He stopped being a reporter so he could write poems, which he then self-published. I’m sure that sounded as bad then as it does now. That first book of poems didn’t exactly pave the way to riches, and he had to go back to work as a reporter again just to make ends meet.

Today, no one talks about Walt Whitman, the mediocre reporter who jumped the shark. His poetry changed everything.

So, maybe you’re not Walt Whitman (he might disagree with that—for he is large and contains multitudes). But even if you did peak with the thing you’re doing, it’s possible the thing you create its place is so remarkable it changes the world—or at least a tiny piece of the world.

When it comes to shark-jumping, let Fonzie do the honors. We’ve got work to do.