Like I wrote about yesterday, we often don’t want to build a relationship with a customer or a fan. We want to do that thing that makes fandom automatic. We want to send out one email, release one single, make one video, do one gig that gets us an endless avalanche of money and love.
It doesn’t work like that.
Instead of being bummed that we can’t get the magic pill, we can look at that impulse in everyone. Our prospects and fans want that too. How can we be a magic pill for them? How can we solve multiple issues in the lives of those we serve? This is a great way to look at service in our worlds. It helps us empathize and figure out better ways to be us for them. The people the love what we do love the impact that we have. Let’s promise more and provide more.
When sending out a cold email to someone, we often want a total solution. It would be great to have one complete message that sums everything up and gets the recipient to send us some money and become a fan for life.
We can’t avoid trust
We need people to trust us / our service. We can’t get around it. Trust is often hard-earned.
If we’re trying to get a big commitment from our emailee (money, audience, activity) we need big trust. Likely, we’re not going to get that from a single email. Sorry. We will get it from a long conversation, multiple interactions, and a positive exposure.
Start small and active
Don’t start out with a big long email that tries to tell a whole story. It doesn’t work. You don’t want to receive that from a stranger. You’re not gonna read that crap. Why would anyone? Also, trying to compose that perfect email is a lot of time.
Gift
So, give a gift (don’t offer a gift) to the recipient. “I noticed some lint on your shirt in your linked in profile pic. I retouched the picture for you and brightened it up.”
Get interaction
The most effective call to action is “reply and tell me…” We don’t want more than one call to action in an email. “Go look at my website and social media” is a big ask. Don’t even add links to the email.
We want to make it easy as possible for the next interaction. The next interaction is a commitment to more.
The trouble is it’s more work
When we do this, we’re asking our cold emailee to do work, and we have to be willing to do more work than them upfront. Unfortunately, we can’t send out one email and be done if we want to get real results. We have to spend time. We have to deal with people who aren’t actual leads. We have to build lots of relationships, and we have to keep showing up consistently.
Once we build trust with people and get into actual conversations, the sky’s the limit, but it starts with simplicity. Quick, positive, and engaging.
I believe if a company can offer a service at a lower price than a competitor, it is in the customer’s best interest that they do.
If you can prove that you offer something better for your client than a part-time pro then you will get the gig. If not, wouldn’t you want that customer to have the service they need at the lowest price possible?
I love connecting people who don’t need what I offer to performers who can satisfy them for a low price.
Our challenge is not defeating other performers or making them all do business the same way. Our challenge is elevating what we do, offering more, and communicating that offering to potential clients.
I see performers posting things about how other performers need to match their rates. This blog post is in response to that.
There are certain jobs that are great for the fiverr or 99designs type of job. They are cheap little gigs with a very limited scope. I use fiverr all the time for removing the backgrounds from photos. People can do them fast and cheap. I trust them thoroughly to be able to do this job.
This is the important thing with freelancers – trust. If we try to hire someone we don’t trust, we end up doing all the hard parts of the job. We hire a graphic designer we don’t trust, we end up doing all the important parts of the graphic design.
I’ve seen a bunch of people try to use 99 Designs to get themselves a new logo. They get images from designers, then they ask their friends which ones they like. The goal of a design is not picking something that you or your friends like. The goal is solving important communication problems. This approach is like choosing a doctor based on which one will be the most fun.
There are a lot of dishes I can cook well. When my friend invited me to bring some food to a party, the dish I brought was some complex thing I had never cooked before.
This is a drive I find myself having often. I have the opportunity to share something that’s easy for me and valuable to others, but I get more excited about doing something new. I get twisted up thinking that the new & difficult thing is going to be worth more. It’s great that I want to learn more, but there’s always something new to learn in the familiar, too.
I see this in the people I hire for things and the people who I consult. Our greatest force becomes invisible to us. Once something gets easy, we stop noticing that it’s awesome.
Part of this comes from identifying as a grower or an underdog. As we’re coming up in our careers, we have a lot of learning and growth, but when we become experts, we hav e the opportunity to start a new chapter of using all that learning. If we made growth part of our identity, it can be hard to look for opportunities to share because we might not realize what we have is worth something.
Part of this is a negativity bias. Evolutionarily, we pay attention to danger or lack more than abundance. It’s tough to bring attention to the good things in our life like our skills. We’re looking for our inadequacies in order to stay safe.
What our fans want from us is not innovation of self. They want the greatness of us in our power.
Comedians like to talk about destroying a heckler. I don’t really think they can be destroyed, but that would be interesting. I have silenced many. I’ve also amplified them and I’ve befriended them and I’ve utilized them.
Hecklers usually think they’re being helpful to the show. People in general want to make the world a better place. Either the interruptor thinks the performer is great for the audience and wants to give them some gold, or thinks that the audience is better off without the performer and wants to give the audience some gold.
Understanding this benevolence is important if we want this audience member to shut up. It’s unlikely that a heckler is going to provide a way to make the show that I’ve been doing for 20 years better, so usually, I’ve gotta get them to chill.
I can’t chill them in a way that turns the audience against me, so if I’m going to be mean to the heckler, I have to turn the audience against them first.
If a heckle isn’t loud enough for the audience to hear, I’ll say “what?” This…
Includes the audience in the dialog
Makes the heckler an even more obvious interruption in the show
Gives me extra time to think of a response
If the heckle is unwarrantedly mean or rude, I’m clear for take-off. I can let ’em have it.
If the heckle is non-sensical or benign, I can point out how it’s an interruption and bait a response.
Then, they may just be quiet, or they might come back with more. The audience sides with me, and I dig in with a lot. Make it wild and funny and make the audience feel they got to see something special. The heckler did help. We did it together!
Another trick for filling up our gas tanks when we’re feeling slow to make stuff… Look at the good things we’ve done for others. Our mission is generous. Our motivation is to give something.
If someone does something for us, often all we have to do is thank them and let them know how much it helped — especially with a followup. So much of life is journeys with no end, that when we see the results of something we do, it can be super exciting.
We can look thru
‘thank you’ notes
evidence of past projects
yelp reviews of ourselves
photos of work / moments
emails of happy clients
whatever
Stuff that reminds us that we have done good work. It doesn’t even hafta be repeatable work or related to what we’ll do next. The idea is to brighten us up, reconnect us with the unburdened feeling of forward momentum.
There’s a part of me that feels like looking at the good things people have said about me is feeding my ego, but really it’s not. It’s a chance to feed the fire that keeps me giving more. It’s a connection, rather than an isolation. Let’s do it!
In entertainment, we’re not just picking our careers from a catalog or a guidance counselor’s list. Usually, the work we do doesn’t fit into a job title and it doesn’t match anyone else’s career. Basically, we’re making it up. Recently, I’ve been re-making mine up many times over. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing. Here are three things that are helping to guide me.
1. Establish my Mission
Knowing what my mission is is really helpful. I’m trying to figure out all the time where the limitations of that mission are because that’s how I can feel safe in my choice. If I know the boundaries are strong and I’m within the boundaries, I’m on the right track
2. Figure Out My Daily
By making a schedule of a dream day at work,
I can understand where I want to be in a year or whatever.
I can get practical about how I want to spend my time.
I can get away from career paths that are going to push me away from my desired daily.
3. Determine progress
The question is, “If I do this thing for a (month/year/decade) will I be ahead of where I am, or will I just feel like I kept up?”
I used to be really into rebelling, trying to figure out how I could get away with everything maximum perpendicular to the grain. I wanted to do what nobody else was doing. I wanted to break all the rules of entertainment.
It might sound like an old man thing, but I didn’t find that to be the way to get what I wanted.
I thought I would be liberated to get what I truly wanted by doing something different, but different becomes a trap. When we’re trying to be different, we’re missing the opportunities of being the same. We’re handcuffed to the opposite of the norm.
It’s much more helpful to our mission to handcuff ourselves to the mission — to our intention. Then, we don’t even examine what is the norm and what’s avante garde. We look for what works best.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving day and I know thousands of you will be disappointed to know I won’t be blogging. So, hopefully this will give you something meaty to stuff your mind.
We are generous. We are fueled by a mission that is giving. To get to action on this mission, we need gratitude. We don’t need to express gratitude to others, but we need gratitude for ourselves. We need to remember that our life is full and we have more great stuff than we need. Otherwise, we can’t give.
The opposite of gratitude is wishing. Ambition is fun, but if we’re wishing and wanting with the majority of our thoughts, we will be in victim mode.
“Victims” are the most dangerous people in the world.
Folks that make victimhood the majority of their identity will not act from their intentions because they’re too busy trying to protect themselves. They are subject to the whims of the world. Wherever is threat, there is the attention.
We need to fill ourselves up with gratitude. Remember how great we have it, then we have everything to give.
I sometimes feel like being grateful is an arrogant recounting of how much better my life is than others. It isn’t. It’s a mindset.
I sometimes feel like being grateful will lead me to losing what I have. It’s the opposite. If I strengthen my gratitude muscle, I will always have plenty and I will never lack.
When we take up space and are vocal about what matters to us and who we are, it gives others permission to do the same. We have good stuff to do. We can be loud with it and that adds to the lives of others. Let’s go!
I talked about how to show value in a site and one of the ways is an awards section. These don’t have to be an Oscar or “World Champion!” They don’t have to be from contests.
They can be…
A contest won
A contest finalist
A contest selection
A repetition of success “5 Time Guest Author”
“Official” something eg: “Official Speaker”
Certification
Top of a category
If we don’t have a stats section, you could let a stat fall in this area too.. eg: “20+ published works”
We’re trying to turn information graphical in every part of the website possible. We want the user to glance and get the message, so we need to make the text of the award graphic as short as possible and with hierarchy that boosts the important part.
