In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy has to do nothing more than
“follow the Yellow Brick Road” to get to the Emerald City
and meet the Wizard.
And the path is sitting right in front of her. All she has
to do is start walking, stay on the path, and she’ll get
there eventually.
Alas, in real life, there is no Yellow Brick Road to take us
to our sales and marketing goals.
Yet sometimes we — and by “we,” I mean me — act as if
there is.
So I sit around waiting for that clearly marked path to
magically appear, so I can get started on my journey.
In my copywriting business, this often means staring at my
computer, waiting for the perfect headline or the perfect
lead sentence to suddenly occur to me.
Or for my mind to conjure up the perfect email to send to
you.
I know better, of course, but there seems to be a recording
in my mind telling me that there’s one perfect way to write
whatever I’m writing, and if I sit at my desk long enough
doing nothing, it will come to me. (BTW, this has never
worked. Not once.)
But it’s not just writing copy. Recently, I’ve been toying
with the idea of starting an information products business
or an affiliate marketing business. And just like that I’m
suddenly looking for the Yellow Brick Road.
I have to pick the perfect niche — and then the perfect
product within that niche. And then I have to pick the
perfect advertising medium, write the perfect squeeze page,
come up with the perfect upsell and so on and so forth.
And it’s all a lot of nonsense. Years ago, my copywriting
mentor Clayton Makepeace impressed upon me the necessity of
going down blind alley after blind alley when writing copy.
Once you’ve done your research, engaged in a little hard
thinking, and scratched out an outline, you have to sit down
and write.
And if you spend three or four hours going in the wrong
direction or writing something that just doesn’t work … you
try again … and again … and again. That’s just the way it
works.
So I don’t write just one headline. I write 100. I don’t
write just one lead. I write a dozen. I don’t just write one
or two drafts … sometimes it’s five, six or seven.
What’s remarkable, however, is that just writing and writing
and writing — without stopping — often uncovers the gold I’m
looking for. Gold that’s never found by just sitting here
thinking or reading.
There’s nothing particularly profound about any of this.
You’ve probably heard something similar a million times from
self-help gurus, business consultants and TED talks.
The challenge is in the implementation. The challenge is in
simply pulling the trigger even if that means going down the
wrong path multiple times and taking your lumps.
But each time, if you meticulously track your results to see
what works and what doesn’t work, you’ll make real progress.
In other words, sometimes there’s real wisdom in the idea of
just throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Especially when you can’t get something done because you’ve
got too many options … too many magic bullets … too many
good ideas … or are paralyzed by fear or some other mental
block.
So here’s a challenge for you. Pull the trigger on something
that has the potential to generate business for you. Can’t
decide what? Then get a stack of index cards, write one idea
or tactic on each card, shuffle the deck, and then pull out
a random card and spend the next 30 minutes working on it.
I’m pulling the trigger on sending out my daily email. How
about you?
