My love affair with email snuck up on me.
Here’s how:
It started as a task on my to-do list, “Hey, you! Send an email to your list.”
Then it grew gnarly guilt-fangs when I heard important marketers say, “You know, you really should send a daily email.”
(So then I wasn’t emailing daily, but I had the good sense to feel ashamed of my bad behavior.)
Then someone threw out a challenge.
And boy, do I love a challenge.
So I jumped in with both feet.
An email a day for 30 days.
With some caveats:
No emails on weekends because weekends are kid days, and also because I’m a ruthlessly hard worker, so if I don’t schedule in breaks, I won’t take them.
(Hey, someone has to be the mom in my life, and it might as well be me.)
What happened? I completed the challenge.
I sweated out a few days wondering if I had anything interesting to say, but mostly it was cool.
Then I wondered, “Can I keep this up long term?”
That’s when I started to panic.
Because: I’ve noticed that some marketers’ emails get less personal as their businesses grow, and I was afraid that might happen to me.
What if deathly-boring-writing is like a fungus that sneaks up and takes over your writing just as you’re hitting your stride… and bringing in the money that makes sense to you?
Fear!
Fear that I might abandon myself in pursuit of my dream.
Fear that I might trade away my authentic voice in exchange for money.
I started to see it as…
… an ugly, knotted yarn ball that combined the bluest, fuzziest threads of money, doubt, shame, and abandonment…
… and some anger.
Because when all the other dark emotions show up, anger likes to splash in the mud too.
It sounds like this:
“No I will not fall in love with certain aspects of my business, because it is clear that success is ahead if I just follow the simple steps.
And if I am successful, then you might leave me.
And I am unwilling to be left.
So, I am not going to help you.
I’m going to sit over here and think of dozens of reasons why you shouldn’t write any more emails.
Number 1: If people find out you spend this much time thinking about emotions, then they’ll know you are crazy for sure… or an artist… or crazy… or someone worth respecting for your unflinching honesty… or crazy.
Number 2…”
And this goes on in my head all day, because I pay careful attention to the words my emotions make.
Because the truth is:
I’m not angry.
Anger is angry.
That’s different.
And when I separate the feeling from the person, I can look on Anger as a cute, fussy toddler.
Offer her a snack.
And send her to timeout until she calms down.
Okay.
Back to my original story:
I fell in love with email… yesterday.
And I knew it was true love because when I looked over the emails I’d written that morning, I thought:
“Those are really good emails. I hope the right people read them. I wonder what I can do to make the headline stronger, so it gets opened.”
And when I heard the thought:
“This is good. How can I make sure the right people read it?”…
… that’s when I knew I was in love with email.
It snuck up on me.
And.
It took almost 3 months of writing and sending an email every day.
The outcome?
Peace.
I no longer hear the fear and anger voices when I click the giant “Schedule this broadcast” button in Aweber.
What I hear now, is the cool sound of the beach on a quiet day.
I also notice a warm feeling in my belly, that lets me know:
“You said your words. Good job.”
I’m telling you this because copywriting is riddled with fear.
Sales letters, emails, blog posts, ads… all of it.
Will people click on it? Will they like it? Will it convert?
The honest truth is: I have no idea.
The only way to know for sure is to test.
And the surest way to create enough content to test, is to clear the fear… and then get on with the writing.
Phew! This was a long email.
I’ll try for shorter tomorrow.
No promises, though.
Because writing is how I breathe.
It’s just too magical to clip its fragile little wings.
Alright, I’m out.
We’ll chat tomorrow.
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