Letting Go

In This Issue:

• Main Essay: Letting Go by Monica Day
• Resource Referral: Another Angle on Pricing
• Quick Research Tip: Staying Plugged Into the Deep Web

Letting Go
by Monica Day

Sometimes, when we’re adding new things to our lives – learning a skill, undertaking a new career – we feel like we need more to succeed. We’re convinced that with more time, more knowledge, more courage…we could make the leap.

But as I get older – make more changes, take bigger risks – I’ve discovered that piling on essential skills is not our deepest challenge. Rather it is the difficulty most of us have in letting go of our old patterns, beliefs and limitations that stand in our way.

In theory, we know it’s good to let go of things. Remember the last time you cleaned out the garage? Dumped a few bags of clothing off at the Goodwill? It didn’t hurt to get out the clutter. In fact, it was liberating.

You might even notice that when you clear a space in your closet…you also make a little room in your mind to reclaim your creativity. Or maybe you find a countertop you haven’t seen in a while under piles of bills and mail. As you spray a little Windex on it and make it shine, you realize you haven’t taken a deep breath in a while…and it feels pretty good.

So why is it that most of us put off the task of clearing out the excess baggage in our lives? Whether it’s getting rid of old clothes we don’t wear, or releasing old beliefs and behaviors that are holding us back, we often resist letting go of things we don’t need. Even when we know it will make room for more of what we want.

The reason, of course, is that letting go of something old or comfortable makes us vulnerable. Before the new life you’ve imagined takes hold, you can hear the wind whistling through the emptiness you’ve just created. And it’s a lot louder and more distracting than you expected. You have to be strong enough to resist filling the void with the first thing that comes along. Jump too soon to fill it and you risk making choices you’ll regret.

Rather, you have to wait until the feeling of emptiness transforms into nothing more than an inviting open space – ripe with possibilities, yet particular about what it welcomes in.

Let’s say you quit your job because you have a vision for a new career and more freedom. But at first, you don’t have enough clients to fill your time or your bank account. What should you do?

If you give in to the anxiety or fear, you are likely to take on projects you hate or work that distracts you from your goals. Your vulnerability can make you feel weak and afraid – or worse, desperate and needy. And if you give in to those feelings, you can make bad choices. Before you know it, you’ll resent your new business as much if not more than you hated your old job.

But if every single action you take brings you closer to reaching your goals – and you resist taking actions that don’t support your ultimate vision – you’ll find you naturally attract more opportunities that move you ahead.

This holds true with any change you make. Career, relationships, habits—it’s the same scenario over and over. In between the old ways and the new dream, emptiness happens. How you choose to fill that emptiness will determine whether or not you make a successful transition – or merely a substitution.

What old habits or circumstances are keeping you from achieving the big dreams that brought you to the Copy Protégé? Or if you’ve already let go, how are you managing the emptiness?

I’m making big changes right now, too. And these are the questions filling my days and nights. I thought maybe you could relate. Let’s hang in there together. I’m convinced that the opportunities just around the bend are the ones we’ve waited for our entire lives.

Resource Referral: Another Angle on Pricing

The other day Krista referred you to Chris Marlow’s 2007 Freelance Copywriter Fee and Compensation Survey as a way to figure out how you should be pricing your services.

Today, I want to introduce you to another resource – and I’m pleased to say that this resource is brand new and Copy Protégé readers have the first crack at it.

My friend and colleague Ilise Benun and her business partner Peleg Top have assembled a very helpful new resource called Pricing & Marketing Secrets: The Creative Professional’s Jump-Start Kit to Success.

One of the quickest paths to financial success is to learn how to talk about money confidently, and value your time wisely. By looking at pricing and marketing together – and providing hands-on tools that help you get to your bottom line effortlessly – Ilise and Peleg have truly given new freelance professionals a gift.

In this program, you’ll learn how to overcome the 3 main challenges every creative professional faces:

• How to develop lucrative business…not just snag clients
• How to price your work so you don’t lose money (or sleep)
• How to create an ongoing stream of new prospects and clients willing to pay you what you’re worth

I also like that they extend their guarantee far beyond the usual 30 days. You can take an entire year to decide if Pricing & Marketing Secrets: The Creative Professional’s Jump-Start Kit to Success is the right resource for you. Although I’ve been in business for four years now, and it only took me a few minutes of perusing this resource to know how much I still need it!

(And what’s not to love about the Handy Hourly Rate Calculator you get as a bonus when you order? It’s an Excel spreadsheet that will actually calculate your hourly rate for you. All you have to do is plug in a few numbers!)

I think of Chris’ pricing survey as the outside-in way to value your services – based on the competition and the market. Which is great. In contrast, Pricing and Marketing Secrets might be considered the inside-out way of pricing your services. It helps you figure out your vision for the income you want to generate – then craft a marketing plan that will help you get there. Very innovative approach.

Make a place for both in your library and you should be able to tackle the money aspect of your business once and for all.

Quick Research Tip: Staying Plugged Into the Deep Web

I introduced you in my last column to Information Researcher Extraordinaire Clayton Imeri – who you’ll be hearing more from in the weeks ahead. He is the new guru for Copy Protégé’s exploration of the Deep Web – the place where the best research lives.

One of the very first things Clayton turned me on to when I met him is a site called High Beam Research. It’s a subscription research site – a fairly affordable one in my book – that allows for very detailed advanced searches. But the best part is that you can put High Beam’s library, web and reference section to work for you, even when you’re doing other things.

Here’s how…

Let’s say you write a promotion using information you find on High Beam Research. You can use the RSS Feed feature to alert you whenever updates or subsequent articles come out on your topic – long after your promotion is completed and running. When something big happens, you can call your client and offer to write a lift letter or make changes to keep the promotion fresh. Your client will be impressed…and your vigilance is likely to keep the royalties rolling in, too.

By the way, many websites now have the RSS Feed feature – and Clayton will talk more in our upcoming publication about how to use it to your advantage. The thing I like about High Beam is that you can keep your eye on multiple publications at once. Without High Beam, you’d have to go to every website you want to track individually and set up your RSS Feed request. The name of the game in research: efficiency!