The Creative Entrepreneur #2: The Creative Entrepreneur, #2

By Beth Ann Erickson

Drop Dead Easy Marketing Techniques.

Top marketers master them. Freelancers routinely skip them. It's the toxic word creators loathe to use... marketing.

Thing is, mastering just a few simple techniques can propel your creative life faster than you ever dreamed possible.
   Here's what you'll discover in the second installment of “The Creative Entrepreneur”:
~  How “Waking Up” is often the most painful activity you can engage in… and how this one activity can make or break your creative process.
~  How to harness one inborn trait, it’s utterly simple, and will effortlessly guide your creative pursuits.
~  Why you should never, ever pursue every opportunity that comes your way.
~  How to learn from negativity without getting sucked into its toxic brew.
~  How to engage the power of the universe to help pave the way to your success.
~  How to turn "mistakes" into advantages.
~  Discover how to guarantee success in every endeavor… it’s only two sentences, and it’s found (in bold) inside.
~  How to focus your energy to stay balanced and on track, no matter what’s going on in other areas of your life. 
   Beth Ann Erickson is a decades long freelancer (since 1995), publisher of Writing Etc., the free zine for Creative Entrepreneurs, copywriter, author, and Internet Marketing expert. You can connect with her at FilbertPublishing.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Filbert Publishing
• Release date: Nov 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540180506

Book preview

The Creative Entrepreneur

Insider Secrets to Effective Shoestring Marketing, Managing a Winning Mindset, and Thriving in Any Economy

Volume 2

Beth Ann Erickson

Copyright 2010/2016 Beth Ann Erickson

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-932794-20-5

Published 2010

2016

Published by Filbert Publishing, 140 3rd Street, Kandiyohi, MN 56251, USA. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Volume II

The Power of Gold

Intuition

Negative, Negative, Negative

Life 2.0

The Power of One Second

Root'n Scoot'n

It's Your Choice

Navigating Hazards

Instant Experts

Poetic Marketing

Goodbye?

About Beth Ann Erickson

Introduction to Volume II

REMEMBER WHEN I SAID that time flies? Yeah. It still does.

Just to recap: These letters were created for a very special community I created. Filled to the brim with creative freelance writers, the gem of participation in my little experimental group was a monthly letter from me outlining nuts and bolts freelance information, down to earth mindset information to keep their frame of mind conducive to writing success, and practical business information to help run a successful operation.

That brings us to this volume. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, the Creative Mindset Experience was already 1/3 complete. We’d covered a lot of territory, I had a ways to go in completing my task, but something felt amiss. Not with the group... with me.

I was beginning to feel disconnected, living far from the life of my readership. It really was an odd sensation. I mention it because you may get that sense as you peruse the upcoming pages. I do, eventually overcome that sensation, in the oddest of ways. More on that later. But hints of this transformation begin in this volume.

I hope you enjoy this journey as much as I enjoyed living it. I also hope you’ll gain tons of great information to build your own profitable freelance biz. Enjoy!

Beth

Letter #10

The Power of Gold

FROM: BETH ANN ERICKSON

Kandiyohi, MN

Dear Friend and Subscriber,

Greetings from Minnesota!

I'm supposed to be writing you from Vegas. But I'm not.

I'm holed up in beautiful Kandiyohi, watching life swirl around me like a mad dash.

Decisions can be tough. And decisions about your writing career can create a fair amount of angst.

Woops, I'm getting way ahead of myself here. Time to clarify a bit.

In the beginning...

Writing careers tend to thrive in a continual evolutionary process. I'm sure you've noticed this.

For me, I've spent the last couple years of my writing career so off track that I sometimes struggle to recognize what it started out as versus what it is today.

It's amazing what can happen to your career can take you when you focus on money... moola... cash... the big payday.

And that's exactly what I did... for two solid years.

And that's also the reason why I'm not in Vegas today.

OK. Enough cryptic talk. Time for some specifics. I share this story in the hopes that it'll help you avoid the sinister trap of doing well.

Dateline: August, 2005. I'm minding my own business, writing, maintaining the CopywriterMastermind group.

Yikes. Time to back up again. The CopywriterMastermind group used to be a fiction group. Participants would write, ask questions about writing, we even worked on an interactive novel together. In fact, at the time, an aspiring copywriting guru was quite active in that group, often participating in our interactive novel... this was before she hit it big as a copywriter.

But I digress.

Before August, I'd met a copywriter at the AWAI bootcamp. We hit it off. What I hadn't counted on was that her strong personality easily overrode my quiet, introverted, fiction-writing, dreamy self.

She's a great person. She just REALLY knew what she wanted. And what she wanted was the fiction list.

She arrived on my doorstep one snowy winter day and stayed the week. We discussed writing, dreams, and how to earn a living from these pursuits.

I'll be blunt. I wasn't making one red cent from the fiction list. But I was having the time of my life. I enjoyed the interaction. I loved the participants. And writing an interactive story? Priceless.

But as my new partner pointed out my folly in working for free (and she was partially right) logic trumped dreams and I took the first step to rechart my course.

Before I took the time to evaluate this proposed new plan of action against my personal Polaris, she was co-owner of the fiction list and had changed the name to CopywriterMastermind.

What does this have to do with you?

Everything.

I always joke, telling people that I never stood as a child declaring that when I grew up, I wanted to write colon cleansing autoresponders.

But here I was, doing just that. It's amazing what we, as writers, will do to earn a buck. Sadly, freelance writing often doesn't command a good wage.

You can work on an article for weeks, only to earn a pittance or worse yet, earn nothing at all.

I know this to be true because I've done both. In fact, just last week, I rejected a post to the Mastermind group soliciting articles. They needed 10 of 'em, 750 words each. And the pay? Thirty dollars total. That's three bucks a piece.

I'll let you do the math to figure out how much per word that is.

But the thing is, if you write 750 words of advertising copy, you can expect anywhere from $750 - $1,000 for the equivalent of just one of those articles.

See the lure?

Balance the cost of the soul you lost to the dream you lightly sold... are you under the power of gold?—Dan Fogelberg.

I know. You've heard that quote before, you'll undoubtedly hear it again. It's one of my favorites.

So that's exactly where I was when I forsook my fiction dreams and embarked upon my illustrious copywriting career.

Since that fateful day in '05 I've been struggling with enjoying writing, some days despising waking up and needing to work on yet another vacuous project for another product nobody really needs.

Sounds negative, I know. But hang in there. Things get better.

Up to that point, a writing career, in my understanding, consisted of two roads: the follow your bliss path or the earn money so you can live path.

Little did I know, a third path existed that I was totally unaware of.

But before I get too deep on this path, I think a little more background information is appropriate.

On with the story...

So, I'm exploring this earn great money for your writing path. I'm overwhelmed at all the information I need to become adept at this little matter of persuasion. I'm buying courses. I've building a big swipe file. I'm nabbing rare books every time I turn around. I'm heading to seminar after seminar, feeling oh-so-important as I hob nob with gurus and make important contacts.

I worked hard to build a network of contacts so I could build affiliates.

And all the while I was utterly miserable.

I hated (yes this is a strong word, but it adequately describes my feelings about this) the emptiness of the whole process.

Please note: If you're an aspiring copywriter, do not become depressed as you read this. Copywriting may be your path. I honor that. It simply wasn't the path I was born to follow.

On with the story...

I watched gurus snicker over how gullible their lists were. I listened as big guys in the industry plotted their next product launch.

I even engaged in a half hearted launch of my own before I slammed on the brakes. I was in a classic situation, working with a mentor whose main goal was to help me make money.

Unfortunately, he didn't understand my ultimate goal any more than I did. So rather than use my voice to put a halt to my current momentum, I kept forging forward, always hoping that someday I'd magically have enough time to work on a project I loved.

And this is a scenario that many freelancers run into: how to squeeze writing into their already packed schedule.

In the process of trying to make every moment count, we often turn to the more lucrative assignments and allow the heart-building assignments to languish for weeks... months... sometimes years.

It wasn't until July of last year that I finally woke up.

I know. I'm always telling writers to wake up. It can be a long and seemingly difficult process.

It's seemingly difficult because the moment you wake up, you're instantly aware of your present circumstances... you're suddenly faced with the millions of tiny decisions that have constructed your present reality.

It can be quite an uncomfortable revelation.

Waking up...

I recently wrote about my relative... the one who just graduated from an alcohol rehab center in Canton, South Dakota.

Well, she's home now.

Near as we can figure, she started drinking within hours of returning home.

Her kids still live with their grandparents. Her husband is ready to leave her. Her county was prepared to declare her an unfit mother unless she started attending meetings and working her program of recovery.

How could it have come to this! she wails to me on the phone. The answer's simple. It's a million little decisions resulting in big time consequences.

It's the same for you and I. If we carry excess weight, it's a result of all those