The Critical Entreprenurial Ingredient: Persuasion

I’ve started writing my eBook (was up LATE last night on a roll, actually!!). Brian Clark over at CopyBlogger wrote a great post today on coercive copywriting. In it he talks about coercion in marketing and writing - when it’s ethical and when it’s manipulation. Since it fit well with some of the things I was writing about last night, it seemed perfectly timed to share a little excerpt from my draft.

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I know I say that my first two home based businesses failed. I suppose it is not a very fair statement, because for the first two years of my freelance graphic design business, it THRIVED. I had referral business coming in left and right. I never had to go on sales pitches. Work was just handed to me. I worked my tail off for my clients, they knew it, and sent me more and more work. I was solely in charge of design and art production of the Claire’s Accessories web site for over 6 months, and I helped to triple their repeat visitors over a 3 month timeframe. I did work for Ameritrade, the Follett companies, Aon Insurance and a large Chicago rock radio station, the Loop.

But then two things happened. September 11^th, and two months after that I was pregnant with our third child. Remember what I said about struggling with depression? Well, these two events were more than I could handle with the resources I had available to me at the time, and my motivation and self esteem started spiraling out of control. Badly.

This is why I discuss depression so openly on this blog and in my articles, begging and pleading my readers to NOT work at home when they are depressed. It is a recipe for disaster. I know because I lived it.

So, how did I turn it all around? I learned how to sell.

Yes, you read that correctly. I took a sales seminar. Now, before I lose you, let me explain to you WHY acquiring sales skills saved me, saved my family, saved my marriage, and indeed, saved my ability to be a successful business woman. It’s really not sales – its persuasion.

You see, when I was depressed, I couldn’t persuade myself to look at life differently. I couldn’t persuade myself to act in a manner that I knew would be more congruent with a happier life. I couldn’t persuade myself to take care of myself.

When I procrastinated in business, I couldn’t persuade myself to take action.

When I was harsh (on myself and on others), I couldn’t persuade myself to find the good in the situation.

When I was working at all hours of the day and night, I couldn’t persuade myself to take time for myself and my family.

I knew what I needed to do to get better. I knew all of the things that made a successful business - I had just done it for two straight years. But I just didn’t DO it. In other words, I was constantly at the effect of my own life and my own disempowering emotions rather than at the cause.

When I took that sales seminar, I realized that I had been selling all along. In fact, I had been a damn good saleswoman during the last two years of depression. But I was selling the wrong product! I was selling myself on my shortcomings and on my “story” of ‘I can’t’. I was selling others on my limitations, and selling my customers on what I couldn’t do for them – much of the time I talked people out of working with me!!

When I left that sales seminar, I had changed. I became a new person overnight. Though the changes I made started well before that seminar it was the lessons I learned that weekend that enabled me to FINALLY move to become the CAUSE of my life – and NOT at the effect of my own emotions.

How? Well, I guess you’ll have to buy the book when it’s completed…

(Don’t worry, I’ll publish more excerpts along the way :: stay tuned!)