About
Back in 2003 I came up with an idea for a book titled, "Reading Minds With
Feelings." I started asking friends how I should proceed and quickly learned the publishing industry was changing rapidly. In fact, I got more than a few suggestions that traditional publishing was not the best way to go. The alternative to a conventional book deal was, and still is, writing online. Almost everyone I asked about writing sooner or later suggested I write on the internet.
I was torn. Thinking I had a good idea, it seemed publishing with a known book company was the most direct way to move forward. I mean, somehow, even though I was more than agreeable to buying books, electronics and boat hardware online, I still felt a twinge of doubt about foregoing conventional publishing. Writing online wasn’t quite comfortable yet. The advice I got, however, overwhelmingly pointed towards blogging, or writing ebooks, or writing an online newsletter. So I had to rethink my whole project.
A First Stab At The Internet
Finally I decided to write a free online newsletter about career development and work on the book in my spare time. The newsletter complimented my technical recruiting profession, and by 2001 I had started my own practice so it all just made sense. Setting up and writing the newsletter was pretty easy. I used Constant Contact for distribution and a very simple html layout. At the time I had over ten thousand contacts in my business database for recruiting so I began to contact and distribute my weekly articles to people I knew from work.
My problem was: how could I make money with a free newsletter? I didn’t know much about marketing. I thought my readers would be so pleased with the free newsletter that as I occasionally advertised modestly priced reports, they would buy them. I didn’t have a clue. Internet marketing is a whole lot more technical and sophisticated than I realized.
That newsletter wound up getting me speaking invitations at companies and trade conventions. But I made a grand total of $20 for all my sales efforts. My first internet marketing project was a financial flop, especially because the hosting and email distribution services cost me several thousand dollars over the six years I published the newsletter… Career Development Weekly.
And Then The Long-Wave Crashed
By 2008 when I pulled the plug on that project and began looking for other ways to earn money on the internet, my technical recruiting business was taking a huge hit from the economic downturn. Hiring was way off 
and companies began economizing. Even though many of my client companies were Fortune 200 (like Honeywell, Pfizer, Revlon, Clorox and Cadbury) their R&D departments, the area I specialized in, was one of the first areas these companies scaled back. Their financial executives usually made the case that the company (whichever one it was) could continue growing through acquisitions rather than internal development. After all, the purchase price for companies was also dropping due to the recession — so, for the finance execs, buying companies seems to make sense, at least on the surface. Under these circumstances I found it more and more difficult to place scientists and engineers at my longstanding client companies. As a result my income plunged, and since I had always worked out of my house there weren’t a lot of fat expenses I could cut. Oh no. I live in central New Jersey and it’s expensive – Oh no, Oh no!
In 2009, I was trying to figure out how to rebuild my small, sole proprietor business into an online writing business? At first it was frightening; I mean I was afraid to talk about most of my problems with my family simply because I didn’t want to scare the hell out of them, but as I researched internet marketing I realized there were tons of resources and I had options. I can’t say I didn’t
continue to be frightened, but I was encouraged and I began to open up. I thought my business situation had hit a bottom of sorts, and that I would now begin to pull it all back together in some new format.
Well, it was not quite that easy. There’s a huge learning curve with internet marketing. And what made it all worse was that my family situation was also changing. I’m married and have two children. In 2009, my son was about to graduate college, while my daughter was about to graduate high school. My wife and I would continue to need money for their support and education. It was a bad time to be losing my business. I started to feel desperate, and internet marketing started to feel like a last daring effort to pull my life back together. Some days my efforts seemed more harebrained than other days. But what I was becoming certain about was that, if I was going to learn to be a successful marketer, I’d have to find a mentor.
I Didn’t Know San Diego Was So Gorgeous
So as I increasingly spent my days writing and researching online, I also signed up to attend an internet marketing convention in San Diego. I made a blind choice, not knowing any of the big named marketers. In fact, I really didn’t know much of anything about the history or personalities involved with IM, and I knew nothing about how IM had developed over the previous 15 years.
It was my fist trip to San Diego and the whole place is just gorgeous. I had a ball and met several of the industry’s most prominent players, but I also met Jason Fladlien (now well on his way to making serious waves), who at that time was just turning the corner of success. He had been in the business for a little over two years and had firmly established himself and was making good money. He’s obviously talented, driven and from what I could see, he just had something good going on. I liked him because he seemed honest and unassuming – also because we have some common interests.
Well even with the guidance of a mentor, it still takes awhile to learn the IM lay of the land. I took a mentoring class with Jason and got his Stopwatch Copywriting course as a bonus. Then I bought several more of his other products, and set about learning all the technical stuff I needed to know about internet marketing. Yet, no matter what else I learned about, I kept returning to copywriting. I realized it was a core skill that transcended what was currently going on in IM and that if I could get a grip on what I needed to write good copy, I’d eventually be able to succeed.
It was exciting to be learning so many new things, but also a let down as I realized I wouldn’t be making big bucks immediately.
It was going to take a bit of paying dues. The upside was, that some of the foundation ideas of copywriting are very similar to the material I had worked out for that book I told you I was writing. Remember, that book was about reading minds with feelings.
Still Trying To Get Traction
I started to feel I was moving in the right direction, but just needed to pickup the pace. So next, I took a course with Frank Kern and learned a ton of stuff that all dovetailed really well with my book ideas. Frank’s a shrewd guy and knows emotional marketing as well as anybody… probably due to the fact his mother is a shrink and he’s been around it his whole life. At any rate, he too helped fill in some of the empty spots in my IM knowledge.
I got my first inkling of what IM success feels like as I attempted to market 5 or 6 products in 2010. I kept writing and producing information products and then putting them up on sales pages, but the first 4 or 5 products got no sales. I can look back now and realize that the sales copy was really weak, but at the time I put up those pages, I was doing everything I could to get started. I just didn’t know what worked and what didn’t. Fortunately, I can also look at those products and see they were well put together and high quality. I’ll be able to use them as bonus materials for other products or rework them later and reuse them.
The Biggest Online Forum I’ve Ever Seen
It wasn’t until I started to work with the Warrior Forum on a daily basis that my sales efforts really started to pickup. There is just so much knowledge and good information available at that website that I couldn’t help but pick up better marketing skills. My business is still small, but many of the things I learned in my previous business life are now beginning to help me in my internet marketing efforts. Scheduling, systems, how to interact with other small businesses and what it feels like to develop new clients and new accounts all transfer from my old business to this new one.
My family life too is beginning to improve. The financial end isn’t yet back to where it was prior to 2008, but things are moving in the right direction, and I’m excited about all
the opportunities I have to be creative and use the writing skills I developed over the last 10 years.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I work with other internet marketers, coaching and training them to use emotions in their sales writing. And if you’re interested, I’d certainly like to help you. That means, after passing through this life odyssey I’ve just told you about, I’ve come out the other side with the skills to connect “reading minds with feelings” to writing copy with your feelings included. And it makes a huge difference.
