Hey All,
A quick personal note:
I'm leaving my full-time job at Vero to pursue a freelance writing career and some other business ventures. I'm mostly booked for the summer but if you need help on a content project or know someone who does, shoot me an email.
Enjoy this week's posts and if you're feeling inspired, pass it on.
Freelancing: 2 Years, $230,000+ and 9 Big Lessons Later via @JoelKlettke
Copywriter Joel Klettke is one of the best in the business. In this post, he offers some advice for other freelancers but his lessons apply to anyone in marketing.
Since I launched in 2013 full-time, Business Casual Copywriting has generated over $230,000 in profit and more than that in revenue.
That in a supposedly “saturated” industry that “pays peanuts”.
The Creative Cringe via @gregoryciotti
On writing, vulnerability and progress.
If you think you’ll be able to outrun the creative cringe, think again—the only way to avoid it is to plateau. If you aren’t cringing, you aren’t improving.
A Guide to Triggering Personal Emails via @jimmy_daly
Here's a post I wrote for the Vero blog about using 'personal' emails in your marketing. Here's the email we sent to announce it (which was a bigger hit than the post itself).
Marketers have a tendency to get carried away with automation. Short-term goals drive people to make rash decisions that don’t benefit their customers in the long-term. Personal emails fall into a gray area where they can only be successful if built into a long-term strategy. Used improperly, they are sure to piss off your customers and damage your reputation.
Why Your Brain Loves Negativity and How to Fix It via @blakethorne
Blake is the new marketing guy at iDoneThis and is already publishing some really great articles. Case in point.
Think about this, two-thirds of your motivation regulator is designed to focus on negativity. That seems problematic. Also, economic studies have shown people are more likely to make financial and career decisions based not on achieving something good, but on avoiding something bad.
Older workplace models may have supported this behavior — 20th Century assembly line workers were not expected to “fail fast” or innovate. Being a good employee was following a series of don’ts. Don’t show up late, don’t talk back to the boss, don’t touch that button.
Most of us aren’t working that way anymore. We need to focus on growth and progress, behaviors that inherently need action, not avoidance.
Free Mac Utilities via @ProductHunt
Just a bunch of cool Mac tools on Product Hunt. I found a few that were immediately useful, like Copyclip.
Have a great week!
Jimmy