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We’ll be going back to the post series later this week, but I had some thoughts today I wanted to share. I’ve gotten a lot of emails in the past few months from people who are starting businesses (generally writing businesses) and want advice on the best way to be wildly successful. These used to really freak me out, because I don’t consider myself wildly successful (yet, but I’m damn well going to get there) and because I frequently have no idea what I’m doing and I feel like I’m just guessing. Luckily, I’m pretty good at making educated guesses.

But back to these emails; I’ve gotten so many that I wanted to do a post about the one thing I do know about making a business work, and why I think it’s the hardest part of running a business. So today we’re going to talk about two things: being responsible for yourself, and not quitting. When you run a business, these two things go hand in hand, and they’re a nasty combination a lot of the time.

When you work a regular job, it’s pretty easy to get away with both of these things. When I wrote grants and they didn’t get enough funding, it was easy to use both of these things to make myself feel better. “Well, we would have gotten tons of money if it hadn’t been edited to death by everyone else.” I’d think, or “Whatever, I couldn’t have written that cool/innovative/outside the box thing anyway.” When you work a regular job, you’ve got tons of people that you can blame when things just don’t work, and tons of reason to mentally check out of a project or assignment and feel okay about it. Bosses, co-workers, work environment, corporate structure; the list is huge. In fact, most of us are so bothered by that list that we start our own businesses to get away from that stuff.

The problem is that when you start you own business, all those excuses disappear. Say you release a new product or service, and it doesn’t sell. At all. Everyone has this happen, and it’s awful on you mentally. Well, if you worked a normal job, you’d have lots of people to blame. You’d feel a lot better; you could write it off as someone else’s failure rather than your own. But when you run your own business, you have the horrible realization that the fact that it didn’t sell is all your fault. Put simply, you screwed up, no one else, and you didn’t make any money. That’s hard.

All of this brings me to the second part of this post, which is the actual useful advice part of it. When you do get to this point in your business (and everyone does, most of us multiple times), you’ll want to quit. All of the sudden, the old job that you hated seems not so bad, because at least everything wasn’t your fault. As a society, we spend a lot of time being told that things aren’t our fault. We’re comfortable that way. And when we have to face that we are responsible for everything that happens to our business, it makes us want to run and hide. So here’s the best advice I can give you: don’t quit. And I think that’s also the hardest advice to follow.

When I started Cottage Copy, I didn’t make money for three weeks. I was scared, terrified, and wanted to give up before I’d even started. The irony of all this? Three weeks is really fast to turn a profit for an online business. A lot of people take three months. It’s all in your perspective. I still have days where I want to quit pretty frequently, because the idea that I’m not making tons of money all the time is directly attributable to the amount of work that I put into the business is not only scary, it’s exhausting just thinking about it. But I try and tell myself that I can’t quit; that I’m great at this, that I love this, and that I don’t think I could be anything but a writer at this point.

And the fact that I can make a decent living as a writer at all? Is pretty damn cool, in my opinion. So next time you’re having a total business meltdown, try and break down the process. Acknowledge that you screwed up, try and figure out where and how to fix it, and then remind yourself of all of the things that you really love about your business and your life. And then put up a little post it that says “Don’t quit” on your desk or computer. Mine gets a lot of use, but I’m still going.

Got any other pieces of advice for fellow business owners? Leave them in the comments.

So I’m planning to go to my first networking event in a few weeks; it’s a very neat sounding conference near where I live called BlogPaws. If you are an animal blogger reader (and I know there are a bunch of you), you should go check it out!

Thinking about this whole Blogpaws thing got me wondering though: so many people run animal businesses, or blogs based around animals, which is great. But how do you brand and market really effectively with animals?

I brand with animals around here, well, with one in particular. He even has his own bio now! When I started branding with Didy way at the beginning, it wasn’t really conscious. Part of it was an offshoot of my lifestyle: I really am one of those dorky people who spends all day in my pajamas writing and hanging out with my dog. And my dog has enough personality that he’s hard to ignore, so he sort of worked his way naturally into my branding. I’ve ramped up the dog aspect of my brand a lot in the last few months, because I’ve found that it’s a wildly effective tool (and because my dog is awesome and clearly an unofficial business employee).

The first trick to branding with animals is to make sure that if you’re using one animal as a focus, or writing as an animal, it really needs to have a strong personality. Most pet owners will tell you that their pets have naturally strong personalities. Pets are like people in a lot of ways: they have likes, dislikes, favorite foods, pet peeves, and hobbies. Animal lovers know this, and more importantly, they expect to see this reflected in sites about pets and pet products. If you’re writing a biography of a dog or cat, make it spicy, funny, and full of personality, just like you would if you were writing about a person.If you’re stuck, think about what kind of person your dog or cat would be. Would they drink beer and watch NASCAR? Would they read Tolstoy wearing a smoking jacket? How do they feel about tv and music? All of these are great questions to tap into the voice of your pet.

Second, think about what your pet or animal means in the larger picture. I brand with Didy not just because I love him, but because it’s smart marketing. For me, branding myself as a girl and a dog gives off the impression that I am small, personal, and not just a writing factory. These are all good marketing impressions. If I was running an animal site, I’d probably still brand with Didy, but I’d highlight the fact that I’d adopted him after he had been abused and stuck in a shelter for six months. After all, these are big animal issues that really get people talking. Branding with animals is about more than the cuteness factor; animals can be used to highlight all kinds of causes, world issues, and charity work.

Finally, if you’re branding with animals, don’t take it too seriously, please. Ever seen a very professional site written from the perspective of a dog or cat? Yeah, it’s kind of silly. If you’re going to do the animal branding thing, try and roll with the sillier writing voice. You cannot write a completely professional bio of a dog, so don’t try. Make some jokes, be silly, and use it as a way to insert some humor into your web copy.

Do you run an animal blog? Do you run an animal Twitter? Are you thinking about going to BlogPaws and want to hang out? Leave a comment!

So, some of you may have noticed my Twitter absence lately. This was for the most part, purposeful. I’ve been busy putting up websites for clients, writing ridiculous amounts of awesome copy, and….planning a fabulous new joint venture/kickass website creation package with Amy and Chris (More on that later this week when we get the site up)!

Several realizations as a result of my Twitter vacation:

1. I get more done with Twitter off.
2. I really really really missed all my Twitter friends.
3. I definitely think it affected my marketing negatively.
4. I got a hell of a lot more actual writing done then I have in months.

Now, the key is this: how do I combine all this so I can use Twitter, keep in touch with my lovely Twitter friends, and get awesomely productive amounts of actual writing done? I’m still working on this part.

Part of two of this post is the fun part: If you’re a contest winner, you’ll get sent a DM on Twitter pretty soon about how to claim your prize! Thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks to my prize package guinea pigs!

Leave a comment and tell me what you’ve been up to during my Twitter break!

Holly here! I know I haven’t been as interactive lately, but I promise that I am cooking up secret project things and writing website copy and all kinds of things that you will love when I talk about them next week. But in the meantime, I miss you guys, and I’m absolutely going to respond to all of your wonderful comments over the weekend.

I wanted to add something quickly to this fantastic post. My experiences have also shown that customer service really is king. Sure, lots of sites say that you don’t have to answer your email in more than two sentences and you don’t have to remember the details about your clients lives and politely ask about them; truthfully, these aren’t required. But doing them can be the difference between a satisfied customer and a raving fan for life.

Hello Cottage Copy readers! It’s Laura again, and I have a little customer service story for all of you. It goes something like this:

A week ago, I got a call from a client . A website development company had contacted her asking who was building her website. (A little bit of context: Her website was going through an overhaul. I had put up a template ‘under construction’ page from OurTuts and
all that was on the page was her social media links, her proposed launchdate, and how to contact her business in the meantime).

Not much there to go on. I can completely see why this guy told my client that they could do better than what I had to offer. They did C++, jQuery, CSS, Ruby on Rails–every mark-up language that was currently out there, they knew.

And they were trying to steal my client. And truth be told, they had every right. I don’t proclaim myself to be a coder. I don’t know JavaScript. I rely heavily on third party software to create my websites. And I’m actually just a lowly copywriter who happens to know a bit of tech. That company on the phone with my client, when it comes to website design, could very much kick my ass.

Now, what did my client answer in response to their obviously superior offer?

She completely and utterly told them off.

“I’ve gone through three other web designers, and none of them understood my business or what I wanted. It’d take *months* for a change to appear on my website and it doesn’t even look the way I want! One girl was even charging her $80 a month for doing *absolutely nothing*. Laura, on the other hand, listens to me. She knows exactly what I want, what my business is about, and I know when I have a problem, I can just call up my girl and it’ll be taken care of. You cannot do that for me.” (Note: this is not verbatim but it’s pretty darn close.)

And I’m sitting here on the phone, trying not to turn beet red at the restaurant I’m at, as she recounts this conversation with the webmaster who cold called her, and my jaw is just hanging open. She *did not* just say that all of that to him.

She did. And needless to say, the guy was a bit flabbergasted and quickly apologized for making her upset.

So what does this have to do with customer service?

Everything.

I’m a copywriter. Obviously, website creation isn’t part of my normal services, nor would most copywriters advertise that. But I do it. Because my clients need it. And because I want them to succeed. I had spent two hours the week before at this particular client’s business, getting to know her industry, because the more I knew about her, the better I could help her.

And she loved me for that. Even if someone was more skilled than me, she wasn’t going to give me up for a stranger. Because I treated her like gold. Because I listened. And customer service matters more.

So if you think you can’t compete against someone who’s more established, more skilled, and has better resources than you, I’m telling you’re wrong. You can compete. And you can compete well. Give everyone you do business with a phenomenal customer experience, and I guarantee that the payout will be in more than just in dollar bills.

Laura Espinosa is a copywriter in Simi Valley, CA. When she’s not running all across Ventura County catching up with her crazy clients, or bothering Holly on gchat, she is working on her urban fantasy novel and cuddling her riceball of a cat. You can find her on Twitter,
since a certain someone convinced her to join.

“Humor is really closely related to fear and despair. I believe the reason people have a sense of humor is if they didn’t, then they would look around, they would realize, with their perfectly rational brains, that we live in an extremely dangerous, scary world, run by all kinds of forces over which we have no control, and we’re all gonna get older and sicker and die. That’s the way it’s gonna work, biologically. It’s a scary thing. And if we can’t react to that in some way that allows us to release the fear and the anxiety that that realization comes along, we’re in deep trouble. So we laugh.” -Dave Barry on humor

When I drafted this post last week (yes, I know), I started out with a whole big intellectual introductory paragraph about Aristotle’s definitions of genres and the Poetics and things; it was pretty dry, but my professors would have been proud. Then, last night, I ran across this quote by Dave Barry, which essentially says the same thing in a much more accessible way. The main point is that everyone seems to agree on one basic definition of comedy: comedy happens when the crap in life becomes so absurd that you can’t do much except laugh at it.

Humor is a powerful form of communication, and can be used incredibly effectively by almost anyone, whether you’re marketing or teaching. However, lots of people get really nervous about using humor in their marketing and blogging, and I sort of don’t blame them. Humor is one of those subjects that is pretty subjective: just because you think it’s funny, it doesn’t mean anyone else will. Also, bad humor and bad jokes tend to be really bad, and can actually have a negative effect on things.

I’m not going to write a post telling you how to be funny, because if I could tell you that there would be way more comedy posts around here. I can give you some basics of what makes comedy effective though, which I hope will be equally helpful.

1) The funniest things are the truest things.
To paraphrase, Aristotle describes comedy as portraying the realistic through the unrealistic. The key here is that the heart of the joke has to rely on something that’s true. Per Aristotle and Dave Barry, this means that jokes don’t have to be based on anything inherently funny. In fact, the best ones aren’t. If you’re trying to figure out how to spin something in a funny way, try looking at what the universal truth is in your story.
2) Write for your audience: you don’t need to appeal to everyone.
This isn’t bad blogging advice either, honestly. When you run a blog, or you’re writing your new website, you probably know who you’re aiming things at. This is good, especially if you’re trying to be funny in print. Find the jokes that your specific audience can relate to. Identifying your audience’s fears, anxieties, and needs can go a long way towards making your joke not only relevant, but resonate.

If you’ve got any tips about humor writing, leave them in the comments. And remember to enter the contest if you haven’t already!

If you’re missed the earlier posts in this series, check them out here, here, and here!
Along with overcoming the monster, I think as business owners and as human beings that we all connect with this plot on a pretty deep level (or at least, we hope to!). This plot gains its strength from the fact that as a society we desperately want this to be true. As a result, if you’re looking for a psychological starter for your marketing, this is a pretty reliable one.

As a society, we have internalized the idea that going from rags to riches is not only possible, but that anyone can do it. This goes beyond the endless adaptions of Cinderella, and carries over into almost all aspects of our culture. Look at Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, or even the more complex example of the film Slumdog Millionaire. Who Wants to Be A Millionaire succeeds because we like seeing everyone get a chance to create this plot. Slumdog Millionaire managed to use this plot to create a complex story that crossed cultural boundaries effectively. You don’t have to know anything about Mumbai to identify with the hero, who comes from a totally different background than the average American viewer.

However, here’s the catch. The fact that this plot resonates so well also makes it a popular tool for less scrupulous marketers. The first rule of quality marketing is that you don’t promise results that you can’t guarantee. Unfortunately, the internet can be a gathering place for people who don’t follow this rule when marketing. Most of the time, they get around it by using the tantalizing idea of rags to riches. Nothing is better for drumming up strong emotions, images, and getting the customer to make an impulse purchase. Every product that you find online that promises to help you triple your income while working half the hours you do now is using this principle irresponsibly.

So now that I’ve demonstrated that there is a lot of money to be made by using this plot, how do you go about designing a marketing campaign around it that doesn’t sound sleazy and awful, and is also effective?

1) Helping people decrease their wasted time effectively saves people money.

This is a sort of unconventional approach to things, but it uses the same psychological trigger as the rags to riches plot does. For example, let’s say that we’re trying to market a new informational product that is aimed at freelancers. Sure, you can go ahead and claim that your customer will make more money in the end, but can you really prove that? More importantly, how does this make your claim any different from the 80 million other info products out there? You don’t want to be like 80 million other people, right?

So, figure out what your product does do. Does it teach someone to manage their clients better? Help someone save time when doing their taxes? Help a writer get inspired so they spend more time writing and less time wikipedia surfing? These claims all make you a good rags to riches marketing candidate.

2) If you product does actually increase income, you need to think outside the box.
If your product increases the income of 99% of your clients, that’s amazing and you should be proud of yourself. However, if you marketing with the tried and true “triple your income” strategy, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

The problem is that savvy consumers (and almost everyone on the internet is one) see that claim and it sets off alarm bells. You’ve still got to find a marketing angle that makes you stand out from the pack.

Never fear though, if you do get results, and can prove it, make sure that you really leverage your testimonials. While the triple your income claim may sound fake in a sales copy setting, a testimonial that says it can be really powerful.

3) All entrepreneurs want to recreate this story.

We entrepreneurs are a pretty driven bunch. In addition, we’re not all trust fund babies; most of us are regular people who work our asses off to pay our bills and are desperately trying to become the star of this story. If you’re doing business to business marketing, this plot is one that your audience will automatically identify with and understand. If you don’t believe me, think about how many info products you’ve bought in the past year. Or just google rags to riches; you’ll be amazed at the results.

This is a guest post by Maggie Marton, a writer from Bloomington, IN. She likes language, dogs, language, travel, and language. Her website is www.maggiemarton.com; you can contact her here.

Consider how much of your writing goes out into the world each day. You could be working on a project for a client, tweeting, sending your mom an email, or updating your blog. We all put a lot of words out there every single day. But here’s the thing: Our fingers fly faster than our brains, and sometimes we end up sending an email or document that contains grammar errors. Now, if that email is going to your mom, it’s not that big of a deal. (Unless your mom is a former English teacher who loves nothing more than to point out your errors. Hi, Mom!) But what if that typo goes out to a potential client? Or goes live on your blog, which is tweeted and Facebooked to a slew of potential clients?

While not everyone likes to sit around diagramming sentences for the fun of it (though it is fun!), there are some simple rules that will help you avoid five of the most common errors.

That vs. which

On the surface, this one’s a toughie. But one simple rule will help you decide whether to use that or which: If the information is nonessential to convey the meaning of the sentence, use which. If the information is required to make the sentence complete, use that. Consider:

• The sweaters that have red tags are on sale.

In a store full of sweaters, it’s essential to define exactly which sweaters (those with red tags) are on sale.

• The sweater, which my sister bought on sale, is ugly.

In this case, which is appropriate because you can remove that clause and the meaning of the sentence (the sweater is ugly) remains the same.

Its vs. it’s

This is an extremely common blunder, probably because we’re typing too quickly to think it through. It’s means “it is” whereas its indicates possessive. The simple rule is to ask yourself whether you could replace what you wrote with “it is.” For example:

• It’s snowing again.

Test the sentence by replacing the contraction with “it is.” It is snowing again. It works, so it’s is correct.

• This shovel is useless; its handle broke.

In this case, you can’t replace the its with “it is” (it is handle broke), so its is correct.

Your vs. you’re

I shudder every time I see the phrase “your welcome.”  This is another one of those cases where our speedy typing gets the best of us. Your indicates possessive, whereas you’re is the contraction of you are. Just like the previous rule, this one can be avoided by simply replacing the contraction with the full two words.

• You’re going to be so excited when you get your birthday present.

You’re because you are going to be excited, and your birthday present belongs to you.

Their, there, they’re

The easiest way to differentiate between these three is to think about each definition. Their is possessive (their car). There indicates location (over there) or functions as a pronoun (there are three cars). They’re is the contraction of they are. So:

• There are two seats that they’re saving over there for their friends.

Me, myself, and I

The most common error with these guys is replacing me with myself or I. While myself or I may sound like the smarter options, me is often the correct choice. The simple rule here is that I is the subject of a sentence (I went out, I ski, I hate cheese), and me is the object of a sentence (she tricked me, he gave me his ticket). Use myself reflexively, that is when you’ve already referred to yourself at the beginning of the sentence (I wanted to kick myself) or for emphasis (I myself love filing taxes).

It gets trickier with compound nouns; however, there’s one simple step to straightening these out. Remove the additional parties. For example:

• Me and Dave went roller skating.

Remove the additional party: “Me went roller skating”. So obviously in this case, it should be I.

• My sister took my cousin and I out for brunch.

Remove the additional party: “My sister took I out for brunch”. In this case, it should be “My sister took my cousin and me out for brunch”.

The trick with grammar is that if you’re doing it right, no one will notice. But that’s the goal, right? By taking a few extra seconds to apply these rules to your writing, your dazzling content will shine far brighter than any grammar errors.

Hello blog readers!

I have missed you! Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been a little MIA lately, and I’m sorry for it. Sometimes real life just sort of explodes and you have to try and swim your way out for a few days. It’s funny coming back to the blog after a life enforced break: I worry that you guys have all deserted me or something. However, to make it up to you, I have a round-up post of epic proportions; we have contest updates, blog schedules, various and sundry internet discoveries and recommendations, and a CC spaniel update.

First, the contest. So, yes, the time limit thing: sometimes life happens and contests fall by the wayside. However, my busyness is your gain! I am extending the contest another two weeks to make sure that everyone can get in on things. The package is really good, and I want to make sure that everyone who wants one gets a chance to enter. So, if you would like to win a Spring Cleaning package from yours truly, please make sure to either enter by email or via Twitter.

Tomorrow we return to our scheduled blog series, and then Thursday will be a guest post from the wonderful Maggie Marton. On Friday we’ll be back to the basic plots post series. Nothing like covering tragedy, comedy, and grammar all in one week!

Onto the wonderful wide world of the internet; I’ve found a lot of neat stuff in the past few weeks and I’ve been desperately wanting to share some of it. To start, FabGabsVintage is having a sale, which is wonderful and you should all try and get in on it. However, while you’re over there browsing her wonderful stuff, check out the copy on her main page. It’s fantastic, effective, narrative, and stealthy.

Secondly, if you want to post your CV, google maps is probably not the best place to do it.

If you’re a shy marketer (like me) these two links will probably be right up your alley.

Lastly, if you’re interested in seeing Cottage Copy from a more canine perspective, the Cottage Copy spaniel (and secretary in training) now has a Twitter account. Food centric snark abounds.

As a student, an obsessive reader, and as a professional, I think this is the plot I feel most attracted to. For me, the attraction started with Beowulf and John Gardener’s Grendel at a very young age, and never left. I would also argue that for our modern lives, this plot is the most applicable in marketing and in life.

Overcoming the monsters, in a classical sense, can be found in every culture and language. For the Greeks, it was the Minotaur that lurked in the heart of the labyrinth (We should note that part of the fear came from its human side). In early French literature, monsters are represented by the Beast, another animal who is frightening because he is more human than we would wish. This pattern isn’t accidental: the scariest monsters are the ones we understand the best.

For Havi Brooks, the monsters we face are literal. They speak to her; she fights with them, and sometimes even has long sit down chats in her head with them. They hold us back, they create stuckness, and they tell us that everything we do is pointless and wrong.

As business owners and operators, I think our monsters give voice to our imposter fear. They tell us all the negative possible outcomes, and help us to discount the positive ones. In addition, they tell us not to talk about them, as we want to seem in control and professional. This makes them difficult to use as a marketing tool, but also very effective. Truthfully, we don’t use monsters when we market because we spend so much time in their company. This is sort of a shame, because absolutely everyone has these internal monsters, and everyone wants to know how to get them to shut up and go away.

Almost everything you market addresses a monster issue. I advertise writing services. Most of my clients hire me because they want to get rid of their writing monsters; they’re tired of sitting around and having their monsters chatter at them about how they’re awful writers and their copy won’t sell a damn thing. For them, hiring a copy writer helps keep the monsters at bay. That’s a really powerful motive to buy something.

If you are a service provider, you are the anti-monster. Overcoming monsters in a business sense takes one thing: expertise. And as well all know, running an internet business is about positioning yourself as an expert!

Here are some ways you can market yourself as a monster killer:

Don’t Lose Sight Of The Results:
I hired my business coaches because of this tactic. They promised not only more free time and less stress, but more income by the end of the process. Their focus on not just the process, but the results of the process was an essential component of what made me sign up with them.

Now, demonstrating that you have a positive track record doesn’t have to be as complex as setting up a big portfolio on your site. You can go that route, but there are some quick and easy ways to do this as well. Many people do money back guarantees: they have so much faith in the quality of their product that they are willing to put their money where their mouth is. It’s simple, quick, and a really powerful marketing tool. When you focus on results, the monsters can’t argue very much.

Be Transparent:
Monsters generally speak in what-if statements, I find. “What if you don’t really know how this works?”, they say, or “What if this is just a big waste of money?” I think these monsters are probably louder if you’re a one person start up, but everyone experiences them. Help your clients out by building your business based on transparency. Don’t surprise them: lay it all out in advance so they know what they’re getting, and on what timetable. It’ll help your marketing, and make the process smoother on your end.

Acknowledge That Monsters Exist:
All businesses have the same sets of fears, and we all are fairly quiet about them because we want to be professional. Being the person who acknowledges this, and talks about it openly can really set you apart from the pack. We all want to be experts, but we also need to make sure that we’re treating the client as an equal. Ultimately, we’re more alike than we are different, and acknowledging that when you market can be really effective.

If you’re new to the blog, or if you missed a day, go check out part one and two of this series!

If you’re new to the series, make sure to go back and read the introductory post from yesterday!

The first basic plot is probably the most famous: the quest. The quest plot focuses on human hardship. In it, some poor and generally disenfranchised person goes on a long journey to try and find something better. The quest plot focuses on some very basic human needs: happiness, satisfaction, self-improvement, and most of all companionship. You can find this plot everywhere from the bible to the Arthurian legends to Burn Notice: it’s basic.

So when you are designing your marketing, how does this help you? Well, if you’re a consultant or a coach, there are some pretty cool ways to use this to your advantage. Even if you’re not, you can take the psychological elements of the quest and use them to strengthen your marketing. The most important aspect of this myth is also in my opinion the most overlooked. No one can finish a quest by themselves. Every great hero has a helper, a guide, or an object that helps them complete their journey. By positioning yourself as that person or item, you’re giving yourself a leg up in the marketing world.

Everyone Wants To Be Happy.

Hell, the credit card industry is based on this principle. Like the person on the quest, we all want to ease our hardship, improve our position in life, and attain great rewards. The good news is that your customers are the exact same way. I spend a ton of time in my teleclass talking about emotional marketing: the idea that basic emotions sell big. This is that same principle at work. If your product can make someone happier, you need to say that. Emphasize it in your marketing writing, and explain why. Also, remember that this isn’t limited to pure happiness. Can your product or service reduce stress, or just give someone a break? Find out what quest your client is on and be the chance meeting that gets them to the end.

Everyone Wants To Be Satisfied With Their Life.

There are many different reasons to start a quest. In fairy tales, it’s because you’re the youngest and don’t get much attention, or that you’re poor and have no other options besides starvation. In legends and epics, people go on quests to prove themselves to a community, or to redeem themselves for past transgressions. In novels, it can be as simple as a general feeling that your life isn’t what it could be. This probably isn’t news to anyone, but I think most of us feel like this. Coaches and consultants specialize in this: it’s peace of mind marketing. This psychological principle spawned the entire self help genre! In general, proving that you can help someone become a more fulfilled and satisfied person is an easy way to successfully market your services.

You Can’t Finish A Quest By Yourself.

Everyone needs a guide, a helper, or simply a friend. Quests are difficult by nature, and people set out on them knowing that. The urge to quest is what causes people to do crazy things like start businesses and move to new places and change jobs. We all want something better than what we have: the fact that we’ve literally been telling this same story around the world for thousands of years proves that. When you’re selling things, especially in a service based business, you really want to be the companion that assures the quest will be completed.