10 Strategies in 30 Days (Part 2)

Last time I talked about how - if you are looking to kickstart your writing career in 2008 - your best approach might well be to reinvent yourself.  For those of you who missed it, you can find the starting strategies here.  For the rest of you read on.   You have picked a passion - something that you can remain committed to for at least a year.  You can translate that passion into a service.  And you are able to express that service in terms of solving problems for your potential clients. [Thank you who sent in their "elevator-speech" lines - I will post them at a later date.] Now you need to GET NOTICED.  After all, starting a business or trying to energize a moribund one without going to the next step - well you might as well go back the security of the dark side.  The good news is that it is so much easier to do this than the bad old days when cold calling and print advertising seemed the only recourse.   Getting noticed has three categories of action.  For the exercises this week, we will start with the easiest, and the one with perhaps the most potential for bringing in work. This may be old hat to many of you, but you MUST have an electronic presence of one form or another.  Do you need to have a fancy expensive web site? Not at all.  But you do have to have an electronic link to your work samples, resume and testimonials.   And that electronic link has to be in the signature line of every email you sent out. So, for those of you starting out in the business, don't have a web site or a budget or a conception for a web site - then this very day - or at least over the next three days - I want you to set up your own blog site.  It is simple and it is free.  There are lots of places you can go to do this.  I suggest either www.blogger.com orwww.wordpress.com.  Just follow the instructions to set up the blog.  Then publish/post your resume, a couple of work samples, letters of reference if you have them, and anything else you think a client might want to see.  Assuming you already have these items to post (if you don't you best get busy then) then the whole process should take about an hour - at most.  Then its done and you don't have to ever look at it again, unless of course you want to start an interactive blog going.  That's a whole other thing.  And not a bad idea that I will discuss at another time. Once you have your blog up - you will have a URL - which is the object of the exercise.  It is this URL you will put in your email signature line.  Then if someone wants to see your work, your resume, or what others think of you - that information is a simple click away. Will doing this guarantee you work?  No.  Just as a business card won't.  But the absence of either can kill a potential job possibility.   For those of you for whom this is old stuff - and you already have a website or a blog - then I want you to raise the ante a little.  In a world where viral marketing is king I would like you to take one of your own pieces from your site and see if you can find a like minded blog/site who you can cross post to - with links back to your site or at least with your email address.  If anyone has done that recently I would love to hear about it. You have seven days for this very simple task.  Until next time...

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So are you feeling optimistic about 2008 or are you still licking your wounds from 2007?

I would like to make the case if you follow these ten strategies you will have work begin to walk through your door. Not immediately perhaps, but sooner than later.

So get out your calendars. You have the rest of the week/weekend off but starting Monday, January 7 the clock starts ticking.

Even if you are making buckets of money and are happy with the type of work you are doing - consider it a challenge to reinvent yourself. In these uncertain economic times you might to do exactly that.

Number 1

Pick a Passion if one hasn't already picked you. Unless you are among the walking dead there must be a few things that hold your attention with some constancy. If you gave up the luxury of a steady paycheck working for the dark side to freelance - make sure you make choices that quicken the pulse a little rather than going back to the comfort zone of the familiar. If you hated writing communication plans at your old job why on earth would you choose to offer those services as a freelancer just because you were pretty good at it? That's the worst of all worlds.

So is it a subject matter that excites you? Biotech? The environment and global warming? Things financial? Doesn't really matter what it is just as long as you find it absorbing. Then set about becoming an expert at it or interpreting the expertise of others and putting it in words that most everyone else can understand. If you tend to be more eclectic in your interests, then pick a genre that you really enjoy. In my case it has been speech writing. For you it might be annual report writing, or brochure writing, or press releases.

The need for the passion is not just for your own sanity. I know I repeat this ad nauseam but if have a passion for what you do, you will already have an advantage over your competitors who are not so similarly enthusiastic about what they do. And believe me from the number of reports I get from my clients about lackluster performance they see from freelancers, I can only conclude there are unhappy campers out there.

In all your efforts to sell yourself as "the one" freelancer that will fill the bill - other than core competency and a reputation for utter reliability - nothing will sell yourself with greater efficiency than your passion for the job. It is something you can't fake, and it is absolutely infectious. Those potential clients will quite rightly believe that you will bring the same enthusiasm to their project and that is exactly what they are looking for.

Incidentally, in the process of picking a passion you become a specialist writer which means you will be seen as an expert, which means you will be in demand, which means you will get paid more. Not a bad deal.

So go on. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Over the next three days (January 7, 8, 9) your only job is to find that passion. Now don't make in an anxiety producing exercise. You aren't giving up the next seven years to become a heart surgeon only to discover you don't like the sight of blood. You are just picking some topics or genres of writing that you feel some enthusiasm for. If it turns out to be a wrong choice, you get to try again.

One last thing - write your choices down.


Number 2

Now was that so hard? Beginning to get excited about possibilities yet?

In the next three days you have the simple but tricky task of taking your choices and translating them into something your potential clients can relate to. You have to be able to tell them what you do in a way that won't sound like every other sales pitch out there. That's why the first exercise was so important.

Whether you are at an information interview, a networking event, or in the elevator, your first two or three sentences can make or break you. When you are asked "what is it exactly you do?", you bloody well better know what you are going to say.

No here's the critical part. Statements that you are a freelance writer, or editor, or communications consultant say absolutely nothing. You have to couch your sentences in terms that mean something those listening. How are you going to make life easier for them? What problems are you going to solve?

And it can't sound like PR gibberish. So vision/mission statements don't cut it. If your first two sentences prompt a dialogue that centers around their issues, you are about to land a client. Or at the very least plant a seed in their brains for future reference. And for gosh sakes, now that you have made such a great impression, make sure you have your business card with you so days or weeks later, they will have your coordinates on hand. Remember that having a business card will not land you work. But not having one can kill you.

So tell me, my subscriber colleagues, "What exactly is it that you do?"

If you feel particularly inspired and come up with a few great lines you are pretty proud of, I will be glad to publish them in the next newsletter (with or without attribution, your choice). Alas, no door prize.

So you have January 10, 11, 12 to come up with two or three sentences.
Get that done and you can have the Sunday off.

Strategies 3 and 4 will be in the next issue during the week of January 14th. Don't let the first two get ahead of you. If they do, you find yourselves well into February and you are doing the same old same old.
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Shouting At The Wall
I have a slightly psychotic cat who every once in a while - for no obvious reason to her owner - faces the wall and lets out a plaintive yowl. Sometimes to make her point she will rake her claws down the wall as if to shake loose her inner demons.

I am sure the animal behaviorists will say that this is natural behavior that has its counterpart in the wild. The animal psychologist on the other hand might anthropomorphize her actions by attributing such human emotions as frustration, boredom, or anger. She's an indoor cat wanting to be outside and so I am thinking those emotions might be very real indeed.

As I talk to people working for the dark side of corporate work I think of them facing the wall and having a good yowl themselves. Nor are freelancers immune to those pent up feelings when their professional lives are not quite working as they would want or had anticipated.

Of course most of us don't yowl out loud but inner yowling can be identified through the following symptoms:

1. You have a job that pays well but every time you get on the elevator in the morning you get a knot in your stomach. The job no longer challenges you, there is no room for advancement, and your boss is an idiot.

2. You are a successful freelancer but these days you are seized by writer's block, fear, boredom, lethargy,procrastination or any combination of the above.

Any of this describe you?

The good news is that these feelings are perfectly normal and we all have them from time to time.

The bad news is that these feelings are perfectly normal and we all have them from time to time.

Over the next few issues of FF I am going to going to deal with those issues and possible ways out of the dilemma - whether you are in full time mode and want out, or in freelance mode and don't know what to do next.

In the meantime let me offer two little pieces of advice that might help get you out of the doldrums.

One of the reasons we want to shout at the wall - literally or metaphorically - is that we often see no way out of our dilemma. And no light at the end of the tunnel. We are trapped.

That was how I felt about 15 years ago - the last time I worked the dark side of the street. I knew I wanted to freelance but couldn't see how I could make the jump. Too many financial commitments and too much fear of failure. One simple little visual trick helped me enormously.

I put a large year-at-a-glance calendar on the wall opposite my desk. I put a large red circle around a date exactly one year later. On that day I would leave the dark side, I told myself.

It was tremendously helpful in a psychological sense. The next day I walked into the office and said "gosh, less than a year to go in this job. I can do anything for less than a year.

Well you can guess what happened. As the weeks went by, the shorter the period I had left.

As the months went by I began to realize that "holy cow, if I am leaving in six months, I better get busy doing all those things I must do so I can hit the freelance trail running."

It was a pretty amazing visual cue that motivated and nagged at me every time I glanced up from my office desk.

So for you darksiders out there yearning to be free, put that calendar up there, circle your freedom date and see what happens. You best be prepared to tell your boss what the red circle is for when he/she walks in your office.

For frustrated freelancers who are shouting at their own inner demons, the solutions can be a little trickier.

First you have to be able to identify what those demons are. Not enough money? Working too hard? Hate your clients? No longer interested in the subject matter you've become an expert in? Don't like the genre of writing you specialize in? Just plain frustrated? A starting point for you might be to put on your wall the one change you want to make in the coming year. Just one thing. As that wretched Dr. Phil might say you can't change it if you can't identify it. So find the "it". Just one for a start.

So there you go. Lessons our cats can tell us. Howl at the wall once in a while. And then tear it down.
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