The sales copy hack that makes everything easier and less pushy
Sitting at my desk, I stared at the floor with my jaw jutted forward.
I swore under my breath and looked back at the computer screen. The cursor on the blank document was blinking at me, like it had a question. I imagined it asking,
MARSHA
WHAT
ARE
YOU
GOING
TO
WRITE???
“I don’t KNOW,” I said, sulkily.
A year after I started my business, I decided to get serious. I spent more money than I’d ever spent on anything hiring Kendrick Shope — the best Sales Coach I knew — to work with me one-on-one. She’d made huge strides into my sales-resistant brain, helping me understand that it was ok to charge people who have money for my services, showing me how to do consults and teaching me the lost art of following up.
But there was one last mountain I was struggling to climb.
Writing sales copy.
Kill me.
The thing was, I knew that the language I needed to write it was in my brain somewhere.
When I was deep in conversation with people, it came out. That was how I’d got my first few clients. The next few came from word-of-mouth. And I was really good at coaching! I got rave reviews.
So… how come I couldn’t tell other people about what I did in a way that made them get it straight away? Whether it was introducing myself at a networking event, writing my About page or… Sales Copy. Ugh.
I knew I was supposed to talk about their pain points and desires. But articulating those felt like trying to pull something out of my brain that was shrouded behind that heavy material people put on furniture when they’re painting. I just couldn’t get to it.
Kendrick and I had a Skype call later that afternoon. Part way through, in her delightful Southern accent, she said,
“Marsha, ah wanna try a thought experiment on you. If ah were to give you $500 to spend on your business right now, where would you spend it?”
Without missing a beat, I said…
How to get your friends and family to sell for you (without being a slimy creep)
When I first started this business, I thought the best way to sell my services would be to throw money at the marketing. Facebook ads! Celebrity endorsements! Giant billboards! Except, there was a pretty big obstacle…
…I HAD JUST STARTED MY BUSINESS SO I HAD NO MONEY.
What was left instead?
Word of mouth. Here, there was another problem:
Most of the people I’d done sessions with so far had been pro bono. And they’d been happy to do those sessions for free, because those people had no money to spend on coaching. Which meant most of the people they hung out with also had no money to spend on coaching.
You might have this same issue. But you know who does have some money they might spend on your thing? SOMEONE you know. Which sounds easy…. but:
How do you tell people you know about what you’re doing, without sounding like you’re trying to screw them out of their well-earned money as an act of charity?
Two parts to this answer:
1. Remember that the…
Quiet The Beast: How to deal with the part of your brain that says mean things to you
When I was growing up, I just thought certain things were truths. Being messy is bad. Not having cool clothes (a puffball skirt, say, or a stonewashed denim jacket and matching skirt) means people won’t like you. Being fat is my fault and something I should be ashamed of.
In my teens and early twenties, the list grew. Going too far with a boy makes you easy. Wanting to kiss a girl is weird and gross. Smoking makes you cool. Especially if you’re not drunk. Especially Benson and Hedges.
Twenty years, countless self-help books, hours of journalling and — thank you, privilege — a LOT of therapy taught me that those ideas were just that, ideas. They weren’t truths. When I believed them to be true about me, and used that to judge myself, it wasn’t because this was a reasonable conclusion to make. These thoughts were just the “inner critic.” One part of your brain that sometimes (often) lied.
But then, I faced a new problem: if I had figured this out, why was it still happening? If I’m so evolved, why do I keep saying such awful things to myself?
Since becoming a storytelling and speaker coach, I’ve spent a lot of time with brilliant, successful people, listening to their personal stories. One thing that I have come to understand is that having this voice that says mean things about you to you — a voice which I call your Beast — is part of the human experience. And that the trick is not to squash it, and not even to love it. But just to do what you can to reduce the volume and frequency with which it speaks to a level where you can start to tune it out. When you can, you have have a nicer life, and you can change more lives.
This year, I was asked to give the closing keynote at the penultimate (ever!) World Domination Summit. Instead of talking, as I usually do, about Storytelling or Sales Pages or even my I Don’t Have My iSht Together, Either project, I decided to write a brand new talk, where I shared the four steps that have helped me figure out how to master my Beast.
To watch it, click on “Read more” then on the big play button on the vid:
How to make yourself likeable when you write online
AKA advice from my past self to you)Cleaning out my Evernote recently, I found a folder called “BLOG PERSONALITY IDEAS.” It came from, years ago, when I was working with Kendrick Shope and she said [imagine deep Southern accent]:
“Marsha, I don’t know anyone who pours their whole personality into their emails better than you do.”
I was thrilled, and her suggestion eventually turned into me starting the service, Put The You Back In Your Business. But somewhere in between, I decided to test out if this could even be a thing, by getting on a call with a business buddy who wasn’t having any engagement in her emails and blogs.
I honestly don’t remember which chum it was (and if it comes to me, I won’t name him/her, because: discretion). But clearly, I made ten notes, and these were written up on the one file inside that was inside that BLOG PERSONALITY IDEAS folder. I just read through them, realized that Past Marsha made some good points, and thought I’d share them with you! With a little explanation under each one.
1) YOU ARE WARM! So be warm in your emails!
I have seen this issue SO MANY TIMES. I meet someone in person. They are so warm that standing next to them basically feels like being hugged by someone you really like. Then I look at their blogs and emails and they write like they’re politely informing me of my next dental appointment.
If you are a warm person in real life, we warm online and in your emails. If you are not warm, be the way you are. Either way, your people will find you and be grateful for it.
2) You don’t have to tell them anything about your life
OH this one. “I’m a really private person. I don’t want to talk online about my life.”
I get it a LOT. But here’s the wonderful thing…
how to write a bio that people actually enjoy reading or hearing (3 Steps!)
While I love doing things that are public facing — speaking on stage, getting interviewed on podcasts, being part of a panel, writing guest blog posts, running workshops for organization — there’s one part I always used to hate. Being asked that question:
“Could you email over a short bio?”
Because summing up your entire career in one paragraph is harrrrrd.
But also, a bio is one of those things that “you just have to have” — which is entirely the wrong way to think about it. Instead, you should be asking yourself my favourite two questions…
How (and Why) to Brag Online Without Sounding Like a Jerk — 6 Ideas
I got famous among this group of friends pretty early on. I hadn’t even really done anything.
Back in 2013 when I started my business — and by “started my business,” I mean “decided that maybe I could possibly start a business where I was coaching, and so threw up a very basic website and started calling myself a coach” — I made a new group of friends. All of us had done B School, Marie Forleo’s (brilliant! life-changing!) online business and marketing course, and we decided to meet once a week for coffee. Being an entrepreneur was a brand new experience for me, and I loved hanging out with other people who got it.
A few weeks in, it began. I would arrive and, inevitably, someone would say…
4 questions to ask yourself before you speak on stage
(AKA a resource I send to clients and potential clients that I never thought I’d share publicly but here we are :))
Glaring at her face on the video call, I stuck my bottom lip out.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled petulantly. “Do I even have to think about that?”
Michelle smiled warmly back at me. “You know you do,” she said. And she was right. I groaned.
When I found out that a long-time daydream of doing the closing keynote at Portland’s World Domination Summit was coming true, I knew I needed help. I coach speakers all the time, but writing my own talk felt like trying to cut my own hair without a mirror. I needed help. And I knew Michelle Barry Franco was the person to help me. What I didn’t know was…
16 Hacks to Stop Wasting Time on the Internet
When I was 16, I had some important exam coursework disqualified by my teachers due to plagiarism.
“But I didn’t copy it!” I told them. What I chose not to mention is that I also hadn’t written the essay myself…
Sick of me having left everything until the last minute again, on the night before the coursework was due, my mum picked up my Religious Studies textbook and just started dictating. That was why the essay was, in my teacher’s words, “A-level standard.” Because somebody who’d already done their A levels (the exams we’d take at 18) AND a Cambridge University degree AND had twenty-odd years of life experience had written it.
Long before the internet was a thing, I would do anything I could to avoid doing my homework. Access to it became easy and frequent later, when I was in the workforce as a freelancer and now an entrepreneur. Both are jobs where there’s no boss standing over you, and I embraced all the opportunities to dick around online and not get work done until the last possible minute.
Recently, I’ve started to try and combat this tendency.
Here are the apps, behavior shifts and phone hacks that I use to keep myself off the internet as much as possible:
PART ONE: APPS
(1) SelfControl App for desktop (free!) — selfcontrolapp.com
Of the variety of apps that exist, this is the one that I found first, is super-simple and that works really well. You download it to your computer, add “blacklisted” websites (mine are: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BBC news, CBC news, The Guardian), then set how long you want to be locked out for (any amount of time up to 24 hours).
Once you hit “start,” all those sites behave as if they’re down. Even if you take the app off your computer, you’ll still stay locked out until the time is up.
It’s most effective when I remember to start it the night before a morning where I’m going to work, to keep me locked out for at LEAST the first two hours.
(2) Kiwi for gmail (free or $9.99) — www.kiwiforgmail.com
This is an app for your desktop, that allows you to use gmail, google calendar and google docs, all without opening a browser. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.
It behaves exactly like gmail and most apps that you use for gmail work with it. You can have multiple gmail addresses on the same app. It’s simple, clear and delightful. And it means you can get on your email without the temptation to hit “new tab” and check social media.
(3) Inbox Pause (free!) — www.inboxpause.com
This is an app by Boomerang which stops new emails coming into your inbox. If, like me, you use email for work a lot, it means you can go into your inbox to search for things/email people/reply to stuff without your brain getting the “OOH NEW EMAIL WHO’S IT FROM????” moment that makes you want to check.
New messages still arrive — but to see them, you need to search for the special “inbox pause” folder, which is just annoying enough that you don’t do it automatically.
I have had my inbox paused since June 2015.
(4) Chrome apps for Facebook and Youtube
I use Google Chrome because I like the apps. These two help me not get lost when I pop onto Facebook or watch something on youtube, by disabling the Facebook news feed — “News Feed Eradicator for Facebook” , and the Youtube “suggested videos” — “Remove Recommendations Youtube VK Facebook”. They have saved me HOURS.
PART TWO: BEHAVIORS
(5) No technology in the…
Stop putting this in your stories. Just stop. ( + YYQ11 review!)
Two things! The first is what I’m going on about in the subject line. I went on my friend Matthew Kimberley’s podcast (after guests he’s had like John Lee Dumas, Amy Landino, Laura Belgray and Todd Herman) to talk about storytelling — but we ended up covering something I never have before:
What you should NEVER have in your stories. And, it turns out, I…
I drew myself every day for a year. Here’s what I learned.
Sitting in the cafe, I’d been staring at the guy for a solid five minutes when he looked up and caught my eye. I panicked and looked down at the table. Grabbing the newspaper in front of me, I covered up my piece of paper, hoping desperately that he wouldn’t see it..
As a kid I loved drawing. And as a teenager, art class was one of my favourites. But when I came to the age where we got to pick our subjects, I realized something: I did not have natural artistic talent. And I assumed this meant art wasn’t for me, so I stopped.
But then, a few years ago, doodling in a notebook, I suddenly thought,
Hang on — I love drawing!
And I realized: just because I’m not good, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. And that maybe I could just draw, and then never show anyone!
Pretty soon, I understood that I like drawing faces more than anything else. Given that I spend a lot of time working (and taking breaks from working) in coffee shops, this would give me ample numbers of faces to draw! Except… for the embarrassment factor.
I mean, staring at someone just is embarrassing. But skilled artists can (sometimes) get away with it, because they could perhaps say,
“Oh, I was just drawing you!”
And then the staree could say, “Well, can I see?”
And the talented pencilsmith would show them the drawing, and that person would say,
“My gods! You’re BRILLIANT! It looks just like me! Let me pay you for it, fifty shillings!”
The only problems with this fantasy for me are 1) we don’t use shillings anymore and 2) in my version of this scenario, the person would more likely say,
“My gods! Why is my eye next to my mouth? Is that a SQUIRREL on my head? What is WRONG with you?”
Around that time, I saw Lisa Congdon speak and she said two things that altered the course of my year. She’s someone who came to art late in life and now makes a living from it. And while she does have heaps of natural talent, the first thing she said was very, very helpful:
“You have to come to peace with the fact that the drawing in your head, and the drawing that comes out of your pen, are not going to be the same thing.”
INTERESTING, I thought.
Then she told us about a project she did for her audience, where she committed to drawing a different self-portrait every week for ten weeks. For the first few, she was trying to make them realistic. But one week, she was in a really bad mood, so she just drew that. And people loved it.
INTERESTING, I thought.
Around that time, I’d been loving the little day-to-day cartoons my friend Natalie Czerwinski draws. I’d even once told her I wished I could commission her to follow me around and just draw scenes from my life. The final piece was remembering something I’d heard Asha Dornfest say in a talk:
“Self confidence grows when you keep a promise to yourself. You prove to yourself that you are trustworthy.”
On August 30th, 2016, I made a promise to myself:
I was going to draw a self-portrait every day for a year.
I made myself some rules:
1. If I was…
