“Oh, that was easy. I should have done this a long time ago!”
How often have you thought that?
Happened to me recently, and it got me thinking about an important business lesson that so many of us ignore.
The pocket door that wouldn’t budge
When we moved into our house last January, we marveled at how many pocket doors were sprinkled throughout.
And one of the coolest places was in our daughter’s bedroom.
Her closet had a pocket door, which was perfect… except it didn’t close.
No matter how hard I tugged and yanked on the handle, that pocket door was stuck in the wall.
For months, she just didn’t have a door on her closet. Every once in a while, I’d go in there, tug on it, think about how I’m going to fix it, and then walk away.
Why?
Because a stuck pocket door can be a huge project.
I’ve Googled the issue multiple times over the past year: it usually means the door has fallen off the track inside the wall. You have two options to fix it:
- Try to get some leverage on it so you can lift the door up and pivot it back onto the track, or
- Open up the wall and see what’s up
Last month, I finally made a point to try Option 1.
I drilled a hole into the side of the door and screwed in a large hook for hanging things in the garage.
With my foot firmly planted at the bottom of the door, I yanked on that hook with all my might, hoping to hoist the back end of the door up and onto the track.
No dice.
Wouldn’t even vibrate, much less lift.
What the heck was going on?
The solution was easier than I expected
Staring at the door, it looked like it was pinned to one side of the wall opening.
I really didn’t want to open up the drywall, so I turned on my phone flashlight and peered into the crack between the door and the wall.
A tiny speck reflected back at me, sticking out from the middle of the door.
And a light bulb went off in my head.
I measured how high the sparkly speck was, and then walked out of the room and around the corner to my son’s bedroom on the other side of the wall.
I opened the closet door and looked for a screw that was that height.
At that exact height was the bracket holding up the shelf in my son’s closet.
I grabbed the drill and pulled out that screw, and the one above it.
I returned to the pocket door, pulled on the handle, and it easily and smoothly slid out of the wall!
Standing back with my mouth hanging open, I surveyed the damage to the door: two small screw holes in the middle – easily reparable.
The previous homeowners had screwed into the pocket door, knowingly locking the door into the wall, just left it like that, and sold the house without remedying the problem.
Unbelievable.
(Also, I’m not leaping to assumptions here. I have a year’s worth of insane, “Why-would-they-do-that” stories from this house.)
Now, my daughter’s pocket door is the easiest one in the entire house. She’s only 3 and she can handle it with no problem.
This was a 2-minute problem. And I took 9 months to address it.
Has this ever happened to you?
I don’t mean the pocket door thing (though that would be a crazy coincidence).
I mean, how often do you solve an issue that’s been plaguing you, and you think, “Man! That was easy, I can’t believe I waited so long to do it!”
It’s a universal experience.
That’s because we are notorious for making things feel more complicated, more lofty, more difficult in our heads than what bears out in real life.
Freelancing is no different.
We do this all the time – we make up these big obstacles.
Then we use them as reasons NOT to take action.
So we wait for the “right time”.
But it’s not that complicated
Writers tell me all the time that they want to build their copywriting businesses, but they’re just waiting until they can “dedicate the proper time and effort to it” or whatever.
What they don’t realize is…
…you can build a biz and get clients in 30-60 minutes a day.
Shoot, you can do all your client outreach while you’re hanging out watching TV at night.
But when you put these mental obstacles in your way, you miss out on months (and sometimes years) of income and business-building just because you thought it would be more difficult.
It’s not.
- Figure out who you want to write for
- Reach out to them regularly
- Get conversations going
- Close them into clients
- Get paid
It is literally that simple.
Anyone who wants to argue with me should know they’re arguing with a copywriter who has been doing this for 15+ years.
And whenever I have needed more work, it has always – ALWAYS – come down to that list of bullet points.
If someone tells you differently, they’re wrong.
Period.
You don’t need to be a copywriting expert.
You don’t need to dedicate 6 hours a day.
You don’t need to build a ton of experience.
You just need to go out and get clients.
Action.
And once you finally do that, and you start getting results, you’ll think to yourself…
I should’ve started this years ago. Why did I wait so long? I could’ve been doing this the whole time.
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