Posts tagged as:

Brain

The Simple Tricks Experts Use to Always Get Paid For Their Time

by Laura Roeder on October 5, 2010

image of stopwatch

When I think about it, I still get that feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I was chatting with a woman with an interior design business about the changes she needed to make in her website. The conversation was going well — she loved all my ideas and was ready to rebuild her site.

I started getting excited, thinking I had found my next project. I was already putting together her proposal in my head. Then she uttered those dreaded words …

“I’d love to take you to lunch and pick your brain sometime.”

I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt my face turning red and I stammered out an excuse about getting back to her when I checked my calendar.

Requests for “brain-picking” are rampant in any business, and they’re never fun if you’re the one whose brain is being picked. It used to happen to me so much that I found myself becoming resentful.

Every time I spoke with someone new I heard a little voice in the back of my head saying “Ugh, I bet they’ll never hire you, they just want a bunch of help for free”.

That little voice was not very helpful for landing clients

If you’ve ever been in this situation, there is a way to turn this around. There is a way to handle these situations with grace and without frustration.

There’s even a way to make those freebie requests go away — or, even better, turn into paying clients.

It is your job, and your job alone, to set appropriate boundaries and clear up what you’re happy to give for free and what you charge for.

That might be hard to hear. But if you want to move through these situations with grace (and encounter them less often) you have to stop placing blame — and start making it a policy to get paid for your time.

Sound impossible? It’s not. Here’s how:

1. Take full responsibility

The most important thing you can do is stop being angry at the prospect for asking.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. If you were given the choice between getting a new computer for free or paying for the same computer, you’d pick free every time — and you’d never think about the company who doesn’t get paid for the sale. Why would you?

I know free is my favorite price for everything.

It is your prospect’s prerogative to ask for your time for free. Let me say that again — it is their prerogative to ask.

In fact, they’d be missing a golden opportunity if they paid for something when they didn’t have to. You can’t blame the prospect for taking the smart route.

You’re also missing the subtle compliment that goes with being asked for advice.

When someone asks you for your time for free, be grateful that they view you as someone who can offer valuable advice. Gary Vaynerchuk constantly says how grateful he is to get thousands of emails a day — he doesn’t take it for granted that every one of those people thinks that he is worth taking time out of their life to write to him.

Everyone asking for your time is already “sold” on you to a degree — they must be or they wouldn’t be asking you for more! Instead of viewing them as a dead-end cheapskate, see them as someone who is so invested in you that they’ll either be a potential client or a source of referrals.

2. Clearly establish your service offerings

Sometimes people ask you to work for free because you haven’t given them anything to buy.

When I offered web design I didn’t have any packages for ongoing support. I charged clients a per-project fee, and considered the project done when the client signed off on the design.

Invariably, people would contact me after the project was officially “over” with some tiny request — things that literally took 5-10 minutes of my time. Crafting a new invoice for this small request seemed silly, yet all of these requests were starting to seriously eat up my time.

I started to feel like I had to provide free service for life for each one-time purchase, and I felt like people were taking advantage of me when they asked for these small favors.

Looking back, I can see that they weren’t taking advantage of me. The issue was mine. I should have had a clearly-defined ongoing support package to offer in response to those requests.

That would have made things clear — either you had purchased my ongoing support or you hadn’t. As it stood, everyone was in the grey zone.

If you don’t like people asking for your time for free, but also don’t have any sort of well-defined offer in place to charge them for that time, the blame falls squarely on you.

3. Decide what you’ll give away …

What are you willing to give out for free?

This is where content marketing is your friend, because you offer plenty of valuable free resources like your blog or newsletter.

It also may be appropriate to do brief introductory phone calls, or host one group in-person session per month for people who are interested in working with you.

Whatever it is for your business, get clear.

For the record, you do not have to offer any time for free. It is possible to get hired without any kind of free consult beforehand if you do a great job building the relationship ahead of time with your content marketing. In my business people sign $5,000 contracts with me without any kind of free introductory consult.

4. … but don’t assume that free advice is all they want

We often make the mistake of assuming that someone isn’t willing to pay just because they ask to “pick our brain.”

Again, they’re asking because we all love free. That doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to pay, it means they’re hoping they won’t have to.

They’ve expressed interest in learning more from you, which means they are a potential client and should be treated as such.

Remember that you are in business here, which means that you exchange value for money. Don’t let “free” become your default mode. It is your job to take the lead.

If you lead them down the free path that’s exactly where they’ll go. Lead them down the customer path instead.

5. Respond with confidence

Here’s a script for how to handle someone asking you for coffee or lunch to “pick your brain”:

I’m glad to hear you’re interested in getting deeper into this. The next step is my one-hour consultation. Would you like me to tell you how that works?

Notice that you’re asking permission and putting the prospect in the driver’s seat.

You’re also using the clear service offering that you established in step two. You’re not explaining why you’re charging, because there’s no need: your time is valuable. That’s a given. Even if you’re not used to thinking of it that way yet, get used to responding to these queries as though you are.

If they want to hear more about your consult, that’s great! You have the green light to sign a new client.

Some people will backpedal and start saying they’re tight on money. Here’s another script you can use in that scenario:

I completely understand, you have my card so just get in touch with me when you’re ready. You can also take a look at the articles on my blog if you’d like some more general advice that can tide you over until you’re ready to embark on this project.

What you don’t want to do is hedge, waver or discount. Stand firm with full respect for your business and you’ll find that the prospect will share that respect.

Hold firm and freebie requests will fall off

You’ll notice that the people at the very top seem to struggle with this topic less, even though they get the most requests.

Why? When you’re clear and confident in what you offer, paying for your time becomes the natural progression.

Get clear, get confident and start being honored by those “freebie” requests. That’s how you become an expert that always gets paid for their time.

If getting all of those requests because you’re the top expert in your field is a problem you would like to have, check out my course Creating Fame. It’s a step-by-step guide to making you and your business famous using social media. Enrollment opens for a limited time on Thursday, October 7th.

About the Author: Laura Roeder is a social media marketing expert who teaches small businesses how to create their own fame and claim their brand online. She lives in Venice Beach, California, where she video blogs, makes frequent trips to the library, and volunteers with local middle schoolers.

Scribe Makes SEO Simple


{ Comments on this entry are closed }

8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity And Stifle Your Success

by Dean Rieck on September 29, 2010

image of squashed face

“The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts the moment you get up and doesn’t stop until you get into the office.” ~ Robert Frost

It’s a myth that only highly intelligent people are creative.

In fact, research shows that once you get beyond an I.Q. of about 120, which is just a little above average, intelligence and creativity are not at all related.

That means that even if you’re no smarter than most people, you still have the potential to wield amazing creative powers.

So why are so few people highly creative?

Because there are bad habits people learn as they grow up which
crush the creative pathways in the brain. And like all bad habits, they can be broken if you are willing to work at it.

Here are eight of the very worst bad habits that could be holding you back every day:

1. Creating and evaluating at the same time

You can’t drive a car in first gear and reverse at the same time. Likewise, you shouldn’t try to use different types of thinking simultaneously. You’ll strip your mental gears.

Creating means generating new ideas, visualizing, looking ahead, considering the possibilities. Evaluating means analyzing and judging, picking apart ideas and sorting them into piles of good and bad, useful and useless.

Most people evaluate too soon and too often, and therefore create less. In order to create more and better ideas, you must separate creation from evaluation, coming up with lots of ideas first, then judging their worth later.

2. The Expert Syndrome

This a big problem in any field where there are lots of gurus who tell you their secrets of success. It’s wise to listen, but unwise to follow without question.

Some of the most successful people in the world did what others told them would never work. They knew something about their own idea that even the gurus didn’t know.

Every path to success is different.

3. Fear of failure

Most people remember baseball legend Babe Ruth as one of the great hitters of all time, with a career record of 714 home runs.

However, he was also a master of the strike out. That’s because he always swung for home runs, not singles or doubles. Ruth either succeeded big or failed spectacularly.

No one wants to make mistakes or fail. But if you try too hard to avoid failure, you’ll also avoid success.

It has been said that to increase your success rate, you should aim to make more mistakes. In other words, take more chances and you’ll succeed more often. Those few really great ideas you come up with will more than compensate for all the dumb mistakes you make.

4. Fear of ambiguity

Most people like things to make sense.

Unfortunately, life is not neat and tidy. There are some things you’ll never understand and some problems you’ll never solve.

I once had a client who sold a product by direct mail. His order form broke every rule in the book. But it worked better than any other order form he had ever tried.

Why? I don’t know.

What I do know is that most great creative ideas emerge from a swirl of chaos. You must develop a part of yourself that is comfortable with mess and confusion. You should become comfortable with things that work even when you don’t understand why.

5. Lack of confidence

A certain level of uncertainly accompanies every creative act. A small measure of self-doubt is healthy.

However, you must have confidence in your abilities in order to create and carry out effective solutions to problems.

Much of this comes from experience, but confidence also comes from familiarity with how creativity works.

When you understand that ideas often seem crazy at first, that failure is just a learning experience, and that nothing is impossible, you are on your way to becoming more confident and more creative.

Instead of dividing the world into the possible and impossible, divide it into what you’ve tried and what you haven’t tried. There are a million pathways to success.

6. Discouragement from other people

Even if you have a wide-open mind and the ability to see what’s possible, most people around you will not. They will tell you in various and often subtle ways to conform, be sensible, and not rock the boat.

Ignore them. The path to every victory is paved with predictions of failure. And once you have a big win under your belt, all the naysayers will shut their noise and see you for what you are — a creative force to be reckoned with.

7. Being overwhelmed by information

It’s called “analysis paralysis,” the condition of spending so much time thinking about a problem and cramming your brain with so much information that you lose the ability to act.

It’s been said that information is to the brain what food is to the body. True enough. But just as you can overeat, you can also overthink.

Every successful person I’ve ever met has the ability to know when to stop collecting information and start taking action. Many subscribe to the “ready – fire – aim” philosophy of business success, knowing that acting on a good plan today is better than waiting for a perfect plan tomorrow.

8. Being trapped by false limits

Ask a writer for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves words. Ask a designer for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves visuals. Ask a blogger for a great idea, and you’ll get a solution that involves a blog.

We’re all a product of our experience. But the limitations we have are self-imposed. They are false limits. Only when you force yourself to look past what you know and feel comfortable with can you come up with the breakthrough ideas you’re looking for.

Be open to anything. Step outside your comfort zone. Consider how those in unrelated areas do what they do. What seems impossible today may seem surprisingly doable tomorrow.

If you recognize some of these problems in yourself, don’t fret. In fact, rejoice! Knowing what’s holding you back is the first step toward breaking down the barriers of creativity.

How about you? What mental habit has been hardest on your creativity? Let us know in the comments how you’ve handled it.

About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s most creative advertising copywriters. He shares his writing and freelancing experience at Pro Copy Tips.

Scribe for SEO Copywriting


{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The Cure for Analysis Paralysis

by Taylor Lindstrom on August 3, 2010

image of young woman thinking

You try to kick someone under the table and your leg stays as inert as the table’s leg. Your toes are unwiggleable. Your eyebrow won’t arch wryly in disdain.

You want to make something happen, but that desire isn’t translating into movement. Your muscles don’t obey the signals from your brain.

That’s paralysis.

Analysis is pretty much the same thing.

You analyze your business all the time. You decide that it would be smart to start an email campaign, or change the direction for your blog posts. You decide whether to run a promotion for your consulting business or launch an information product.

You’re thinking about something happening.

But you’re not making it happen.

When analysis paralysis is beneficial

It turns out that sometimes it’s good to be paralyzed.

Every night, when you go to sleep and drop deep into that REM state that lets you wake up all refreshed in the morning, you are, medically speaking, paralyzed.

This is a good thing. When you get tired, your ability to act is impaired. You’re more likely to get lost, to drive poorly, to call the ex you swore you’d never speak to again.

Get paralyzed by sleep for a couple of hours, and suddenly everything improves. When your spouse throws the car keys at you a little too hard because they haven’t forgiven you for calling your ex last night, you catch them effortlessly with catlike reflexes.

Analysis can be like this.

Sometimes we have too much going on in our businesses. It can help to take a moment to stop everything and hold completely still, moving nothing but our brains, just thinking about the problem.

We don’t have to take action yet. We don’t have to move a muscle. We just have to think about what we’ll do when we’re ready to move.

Analysis can be a refreshing pause for our brains.

It can also be a serious problem.

When analysis paralysis Is detrimental

The kind of paralysis you experience in REM state every night is good for you. You probably didn’t even know you were paralyzed.

(If you weren’t freaking out about it before, don’t start now. Whatever you do, don’t think about the xkcd comic that points out that dreaming means going comatose, hallucinating vividly, and then suffering amnesia. Adding paralysis to that list doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?)

It’s okay for your legs (and the rest of you) to be paralyzed for a couple hours a night. If it goes on for more than a day, though, you’re going to start to be pretty concerned about some of the logistics.

Analysis can be like this, too.

When you’ve taken the time to hold still and analyze your business for a couple of hours — even a full working day — before you take action, that’s perfectly healthy. It has probably improved your ability to move forward confidently and with good judgment.

If you find yourself analyzing for weeks or months at a time without moving, it’s time to be concerned.

How to cure analysis paralysis

To cure real paralysis, you generally need the sort of miracle doctor featured prominently in many a popular medical drama, but not so prominently in real-life hospitals.

To cure analysis paralysis, though, you just need to check out the recent Third Tribe seminar featuring Sonia Simone and Chris Garrett, where they talk about how to take action on that product launch you’ve been meaning to do, thinking about, analyzing, and never doing.

You’ll learn:

  • The product development technique that kills paralysis, moves you to a fast launch, and creates great value for your customers
  • Why “thinking big” can stop you dead in your tracks, and how to get moving again
  • How to use your own “weaknesses” as strengths that move you forward
  • What to do if you don’t have thick skin (and how it can work to your benefit)
  • How to create products that move your customers farther and faster toward their goals.

While you’re listening, you’ll find yourself analyzing how to use these techniques in your business. You may also find yourself lulled into a soporific state of bliss, because Sonia’s voice is extremely soothing. And that’s okay.

To make sure you don’t get stuck there, though, there’s a Next Action worksheet to help you move forward. Use it. Make your business stronger through movement.

Otherwise, I’d have to explain what “atrophy” means. And no one wants that.

About the Author: Taylor Lindstrom is a freelance copywriter and the new Assistant Editor for Copyblogger. This is her first Copyblogger post.

P.S.

To snag Chris and Sonia’s interview, and instant access to 15 more cutting-edge seminars that will move your business forward (with new seminars added every month), join the Third Tribe today.

Scribe for SEO Copywriting


{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Three Training Tips to Become a Better Blogger

by James Chartrand on May 20, 2010

image of dumbbells

I don’t go to the gym.

I could. There’s a gym right here in my town. I’d like to be stronger, faster, and more badass. But I don’t go to the gym, and the reason has nothing to do with my not wanting to get all of the benefits of a good workout.

It has to do with the fact that when I want results, I want them now.

I want to go to the gym just one time and walk out with muscles I didn’t have when I went in.

Now, everyone knows you don’t achieve your physical peak in just one gym session. Yet I keep noticing bloggers out there who seem to believe that they can achieve writing prowess in just one blog post.

That’s just as silly as me expecting to be able to do 50 pull-ups on my first trip to the gym.

Your brain is like a muscle

Your brain is not actually a muscle, so don’t put any bets down on your trivia skills at the local bar. But your brain acts like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.

This is how you learn a language, for example. The first time you learn that “Bonjour” means “Hello” in French, you have to think about it pretty hard whenever someone asks you the question. But if you move to Quebec and hang out with me awhile, you’ll find yourself soon saying “bonjour” automatically when you walk into stores.

Your brain doesn’t have to think about it anymore. It’s walked down that neural pathway often enough that saying “bonjour” becomes an automatic response.

When you write a blog post, your first posts might take a lot of effort. You’re going to work hard to remember how to craft a good story, or pause to wonder whether you just made a common grammatical error, or remind yourself to break things up and use bullet points so people can read more easily.

After a few years of blogging, you don’t think about that stuff anymore. It happens naturally. That part of your brain becomes so strong that it doesn’t feel like work.

How to make your blogging muscles stronger

If you want to be stronger, faster, or in better physical shape, you go to the gym often. Maybe every day.

If you want to be a stronger blogger, a faster writer, or in better shape to whip up posts that people want to read, write a blog post every day.

Even if you only post once a week on your blog, put in the time to write every day. Otherwise, you’ll never make your blogging muscles any stronger. If you only lifted weights once a week, how long do you think it would take you to turn yourself into an Ironman?

The more frequently you write, the faster you’ll improve, and the stronger you’ll get.

Here are a few tips to get stronger in even less time.

  • Switch it up. Trainers and fitness magazines say to work different muscles on different days, because muscles need to rest. The same goes for blogging. Try writing about a different topic every other day, or trying new approaches three times a week. You don’t have to post those topics — you just have to write them. You’ll still be working your writing muscles, but you won’t exhaust yourself writing the same type of content every day.
  • Make every repetition count. A lot of people go to the gym and sort of sleepwalk through their routine. They’re doing each motion, but they’re not working that hard. They don’t notice when they could move up a weight bracket to get more results. When you blog, don’t just toss off a post in 20 minutes without thinking about it. Make every single post count. You’ll write faster when you’re stronger, but right now, slow down and make sure the post you’re working on is the best it can be.
  • Increase your difficulty. Speaking of moving up a weight bracket, don’t stick to posts about simple topics. If you feel like you’ve exhausted your current knowledge about your favorite topic, go out and do some research on more complex areas of that topic. Work to make your writing even better and more compelling. Push yourself. Don’t stick around lifting 5-pound weights when you could be lifting 50s. You’re never going to get stronger if you stay in your comfort zone.

Above all else, put in the work. Plenty of people think they can run a marathon. They sign up, they undertrain, and when the big day rolls around, they can’t do even a fraction of the run.

The blogging equivalent of that is when a blogger pitches a big blog for a guest post, but can’t deliver anything like the caliber of writing that blog demands.

So put in the training. You’ll get stronger, faster, and better — and before you know it, you’ll be at the front of the pack with the big shots.

About the Author: If you’re looking for more training advice on your blogging, head on over to Men with Pens, where James Chartrand gives you a writing gym packed with equipment to work those muscles.

Scribe for SEO Copywriting


{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The Sales Boosting Logic of the P.S.

by Sean D'Souza on March 24, 2010

image of the written word P.S.

The P.S is one of those clichés of copywriting. It seems like every sales page has one.

Maybe you think it’s outdated. Maybe you think it’s unnecessary.

Until you learn the logic of why it works.

So before we get into that, do me a favor. Say the following words quickly, and then look away from the screen for a moment when you’re done reading the list.

  • Elephant
  • Cow
  • Monkey
  • Glass
  • Window
  • Ruler
  • Buddha
  • Carpet
  • Swing
  • Stereo

[click to continue…]



{ Comments on this entry are closed }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →