Myrmidons! My brothers of the sword! I would rather fight beside you than any army of thousands! Let no man forget how menacing we are, we are lions! Do you know what's waiting beyond that beach? Immortality! Take it! It's yours!
Troy
We want the freedom to create whatever, whenever we want...
But the market will only compensate us for what IT wants.
This leaves your average creator (whether entrepreneur, writer, or artist) in a particularly uncomfortable position, with only two real options.
Many creators do just that. They build for themselves and completely ignore the rest of the world.
There’s only one problem with this: it rarely pays off.
Yes, there are outliers. But that’s exactly the point: they’re outliers.
If the market doesn’t like what you create, you bear the burden.
‘Do what you love’ sounds fun and sexy, until you realize you’ve been living on your mom’s couch for 3 years.
Many other creators (probably the vast majority) choose this route.
They ignore their curiosities, inspirations, and passions, and build widgets instead.
There’s only one problem with this: it comes at a cost.
How long can we supply the demand for something we don’t care about? How long can we commit to creating something personally valueless? How long until the money’s not worth being a robot in the robot factory?
Of course, this is a false dichotomy.
It doesn’t take a human geographer to realize there are other options besides ‘starving artist’ and ‘miserable cog’ when it comes to the life we choose for ourselves.
Just look at how many starving cogs and miserable artists there are in the world…
I kid (sort of…).
So why do we do it?
Simple:
We create this dichotomy, first and foremost, because it’s easier to process the world this way. The brain can only process so many things at one time, so simplifying things makes the brain happy (we avoid sensory overload).
Second – and much more insidiously – we create this dichotomy to create an out.
The Enemy wants to keep us stagnate. An ‘either / or’ dichotomy with seemingly brutal consequences is the perfect weapon to make this happen.
If the world is a zero-sum game, if it’s either win or lose, if it’s either me or him…well, better reason to just stay put, keep your heads down, and blend into the rest of the tribe…
Now that we have a good, rational reason to sit still, we are off the hook for not taking action. We have our out.
But of course, this out isn’t really an out.
It’s submitting for comfort and safety (or so we think…).
The real dilemma isn’t: do I do what I love, or do I do what makes me money?
This dichotomy doesn’t exist – it never did.
The real dilemma is: do we acquiesce to a life and lifestyle undesired because it’s comfortable and safe?
Or…
Or do we take the uncomfortable, uncertain, and difficult path…the one we know won’t be easy, clear, or guranteed…the one fraught with hardship, setbacks and failure…
Because we know it will be worth it?
You can do important work and make money from it.
It’s possible, I promise you this.
I meet new people doing it every day.
More importantly, they’re doing it their way: they’re picking the route, choosing their packing list, and drawing the map as they go along. No, it’s not easy - but it was never supposed to be.
The same reality can be yours.
It’s waiting for you, just beyond that beach…
The question is: will you take it?
p.s. interested in taking the beach, but rather do it with an army? I'm writing a new book that will teach you how to assemble and lead a team to take the beach (and own your market). Sign up here.
Start, finished, and shipped in Cape Town, S. Africa (after hanging out with penguins!)
Total writing time: 5:30 hrs
After 6+ months of testing, tracking and recording...
3 months of intensive research, study, and compiling...
And 1 month of all-consuming writing, editing, scrapping...and writing some more...
I've finished my new book:
The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing: How You Can Share Your Work and Still Make a Profit
Author Tom Morkes delivers. Some readers might think anyone advocating sharing and generosity advocate wearing "KICK ME" signs on our backs as people steal our creations. Not Tom. Instead of some BS-ing cheerleader long on promises and short on specifics, this guy creates a detailed game plan anyone could win with.
- Tom Owens, author | 101 PO'ed Poems: Frustrations in Free Verse
If you've been following me for a while, you already know what this book is about.
For new readers, here are some links to get you up to speed on the topic of Pay What You Want, and why it's important:
1. Pay What You Want: The Ultimate Sales Strategy (external link)
This was a post I did for Medium.com. It's kind of gone viral. People are tweeting Justin Bieber about it. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
2. Pay What You Want Pricing with Tom Morkes on the Content Warfare Podcast (external link)
I sit down with marketing expert Ryan Hanley to discuss why Pay What You Want is one of the most powerful marketing techniques available.
3. 3 Ways Pay What You Want Leads to More Profit than Fixed Pricing
I show you 3 case studies of people crushing it using PWYW pricing.
4. Get Unstuck and Start Making Money Now (external link)
I sit down with marketer Tema Frank to discuss my origins in the online world and how I got started using Pay What You Want pricing.
This is my reason WHY for what I do / create / write.
6. How Letting People Choose Their Price Can Make You a Millionaire
A case study of my first Pay What You Want product: 2 Days With Seth Godin.
***
The free resources above should get you started.
If you're at all interested in the subject and would prefer a more in-depth, yet practical look at the pricing technique (and how to apply it to your own business, writing or art), definitely check out the book.
I put my blood, sweat and tears into this one - I promise you that.
If this book isn't your style, but you'd like to support my creative work, any and all contributions are welcome.
So is sharing (I even made it easy):
If you're an entrepreneur, check out @tmorkes new guide The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing: https://gum.co/pwywguide [click to tweet]
Check out this killer new book by @tmorkes: The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing: https://gum.co/pwywguide [click to tweet]
Want to sell your art? Try giving it away to make a profit instead The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing https://gum.co/pwywguide [tweet]
The best sales and marketing book since Cialdini's Influence. Get it: https://gum.co/pwywguide @tmorkes [click to tweet]
Okay, that last one is a little self-aggrandizing...but if you do tweet it, you are awesome and will have a place in my heart forever.
***
So if you're this far down on the page and still haven't bought a copy, seriously grab one:
Thanks so much for reading, and thanks so much for your support - it really does mean the world to me.
***
Started, finished and shipped on 25 November 2013 in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Total writing time: 1.5 hours
Total time spent waiting for the massive upload that is 'The Complete Package' to finish: 5 hours (I'm not kidding)
Have you ever tried writing a book, a blog, or business copy?
If so, you’ve probably experience writers block: the inability to form your ideas into the perfect words, sentences, and paragraphs.
But this type of block isn’t exclusive to writers.
All creative entrepreneurs - from writers, designers, and inventors, to artists, marketers, and entrepreneurs, experience creative block.
Creative block is the inability to satisfactorily form into something tangible the ephemeral ideas in your mind.
Creative block can hit anyone trying to tell the perfect story, build the perfect product, or produce the perfect piece of art.
And if you’ve experienced creative block, you know what an infuriating pain it is and how quickly it can cripple your project.
You also understand one thing only the few brave enough to create understand: Creative block is real.
Creative block is one of the Enemy’s most effective creativity-destroying weapons.
If you’re not careful, the Enemy will use creative block to get you to quit your project prematurely, give up before you even start, or abandon your life’s work althogether.
Don’t give up – there is a way to fight back and overcome creative block, once and for all.
But you must be ready to go to war with yourself and your art.
If you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. [Dale Carnegie]
There are ideas in your head - ideas that may be vivid, logical and clear before you sit down to write - but the moment you put pen to paper (fingers on keyboard) they vanish.
You sit down to bring these ideas to life but the ideas fade into nothing.
You stare at the screen desperately, hoping through sheer willpower you’ll be able to form your perfect idea into the perfect sentence…but it’s gone.
The worst part – throughout the day you had no problem at all coming up with great ideas.
But they all came at the most inopportune times.
These brilliant ideas come to you in their lucid entirety while driving, showering, or eating; while mindlessly folding clothes, lifting weights, or going on a long run; while in a conversation, reading a book, or listening to a presentation.
But the moment you need them – sitting in front of the blank screen - they vanish.
It seems like when you don’t need the ideas, the ideas come in waves, but when you need the ideas – when you sit down to write; when getting words on paper is the only thing that counts – the ideas disappear.
Insurmountable?
Hardly.
There are ways to overcome creative block.
It starts with identifying the reality of the situation: yes, creative block exists…
But only when we care deeply about what we create and how people will perceive it.
If you don’t care about what you write, or you’re not concerned with how it's perceived, you can write freely and unencumbered (think personal journal or email to a close friend).
For those who care about their work and about how it's perceived, overcoming creative block can be a bit trickier.
Fighting back against creative block is hard if we do it through force.
The two most common techniques are:
Both of these techniques are equally ineffective and will wreck you in different ways.
Both are tools of the Enemy.
Both will bury you.
The only way to overcome creative block is through the circumvention of disempowering thoughts, and focused discipline of good habits.
Forcing the right words never works.
When we sit in front of a computer all day, stressing and straining to get the “right” words onto the screen, we begin our descent into the self-perpetuating abyss of wasted time.
If the words don’t come out right the first hour at your computer, they sure won’t come out right by hour five.
They won’t come out right because they can’t: the words you write are never right. They’re also never wrong.
When we focus on creating the perfect sentence, the perfect flow, the perfect tone, style, or theme, we forget what’s ACTUALLY important: the message.
We forget our purpose; we forget our why; we forget the entire concept of art, which is this: art is never right or wrong.
The first and often most effective way to overcome creative block is to forget forcing the right words and begin allowing the wrong words...
People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently. [Anna Quindlen]
Eventually, once you allow enough of the wrong words, you’ll forget right and wrong altogether and simply create.
Waiting for inspiration is pointless and futile.
Often, when we’re burned out, tired, or simply unmotivated, we rationalize taking off days, weeks, or months so we can reset and recharge.
The thought process: if I’m well rested, if I take some days of to reset my mind, I’ll come back better and stronger. Plus, the best writing is inspired writing, so I must wait until I’m inspired before I write.
This is the Enemy at work.
The Enemy will justify why you should rest and save strength, why taking a break for an indefinite period is essential for creativity, and why avoiding writing is the surest way to clear your mind for more writing.
Lies.
The Enemy uses creative block to dismantle and destroy your project because it needs you sedated, compromised and passive.
The Enemy’s survival depends on keeping you safely hidden inside the group so as not to expose yourself through your art.
The Enemy fears you as an outlier and uses thoughts of ‘waiting for inspiration’ to cripple your dreams.
Don’t accept this for one second.
Here’s the reality: inspiration comes to those who grind, work, and create.
Inspiration comes to those who allow it to happen through movement, through action, through consistent, repeated behavior.
Inspiration comes to those who are disciplined.
I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning. [William Faulkner]
Sit down and create every day and you will find your inspiration.
When we put our words, ideas, and art out there; when we produce publicly; when we tell everyone who we are and what we’re about, we expose ourselves to the tribe.
And the tribe isn’t always on our side.
This fear of the tribe, of judgment and criticism, keeps many people from starting, finishing, and shipping their great work.
Overcoming creative block really isn’t a secret. It just means doing the work every day.
But you already knew that.
The real question is: do you have the courage to create in spite of these fears?
And that, like everything important in life, is your choice.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. [Mark Twain]
This is the second post in the Seth Godin meetup series. You can find the first post here. Stay tuned and sign up for my free newsletter so you don't miss the next post in the series (hint: it's about designing a website that converts, telling a story that sells, and building a brand that people remember).
If you've been following the blog, you know I attended a Seth Godin event last week.
Seth is the marketing and writing genius behind Poke the Box, Linchpin, Purple Cow, and over a dozen other best sellers.
Below, I've compiled a list of 21 insights, lessons, thoughts, and riffs from the first day of the event.
The main ideas are Seth's, but I've taken liberty to expand and explain to make the content actionable. Enjoy!
Make being on time and shipping on time a discipline. Never be late - never ship late. Set a date and commit to it. Once you've committed to the date rather than quality, the quality of your product will go up.
Once you realize you're a teacher, it's not hard to find students.
Freelancers get paid when they work (hours for dollars), entrepreneurs get paid when they sleep.
Here’s the thing: when you're freelancing, the cheapest possible person to hire is YOU. This is dangerous. It means you’ll keep resorting to hiring yourself. And if you keep hiring yourself, there’s no one to focus on the vision or growth of the company.
So if you’re going to focus on being a freelancer, then hire someone to do the entrepreneurial aspect of your work (to manage resources and focus on growing and expanding the business) or get over your fear of doing it yourself.
People don't know what they want, so don't ask them. Build, ship, refine, repeat.
Your job isn't to persuade or change peoples minds; your job is to amplify the people who already get the joke. The people that understand and appreciate your message - those are the people you should aim to please and delight, not the stranger who doesn't get what you're saying.
Reviews don't matter (good or bad). Comments don't matter. If you worry about reviews or comments, you're letting the lizard brain hold you back.
Sales are a side effect of giving. If you give consistently and for a long time, when it's time to offer something for sale (seminar, conference, book, product, etc.), people will be ready and willing to buy it.
Instead of trying to make a sales call (which immediately puts up a wall and makes the conversation antagonistic), take people to lunch.
If you're going to write something, make sure it's worth reading. Instead of worrying about the masses, worry about the small group of people who want to hear from you. The masses won't read your book anyway - they've already read 50 Shades of Grey, their one book for the year.
Write your book only if you can say to yourself with certainty: this is going to blow the minds of 10 people. Now write out loud for these people.
Everyone wants to be on the Forbes 100 (everyone in that niche, who reads that publication); everyone wants to be on the Inc. 500 list (again, everyone in that market).
By creating a top 50, top 100, top whatever list, you make people who AREN'T on the list want to be on the list; you make people who aren't number 1 try to be number 1 next year; and you make number 1 try to stay number 1.
Creating a list is a self-feeding marketing tactic. Use it if you can.
You can't protect an idea. If you’re worried about someone stealing your idea, stop worrying. It’s a complete waste - you can't keep them from finding out eventually, so why worry?
Ideas aren't scarce. What’s scarce is doing the difficult work to bring the idea to life (because someone will quickly take your place)
Deep (meaningful, personal and few) is better than wide (shallow and many)
It's natural to feel like a fraud. It's natural to be scared of what people might think of you. Instead of stressing out over this, ask yourself this question:
If people knew your story (fully exposed) would they still buy your book?
What do you want? Do you want more customers, more readers, more clients, more revenue per share, more revenue per customer, more buzz about your product, more growth....?
Decide what you want so you know where to go.
When you're more afraid of letting people down than doing the work, you'll do the work.
Do you think Martha Stewart comes up with the apple pie recipe she makes on tv? She doesn't worry about that; she simply curates. Her NAME is what makes money – people want the product because she uses the product. If she had someone else present the material, show it off, run the show, people wouldn't want it.
We want to hear it from Martha, not Martha's team.
If you want to be an expert (in this style, form or fashion), then you can't build a team to tell people about products that they want YOU to tell them about.
Whatever you're building: you can't have insiders if you don't have outsiders. Don't be afraid to make people angry or upset at what you produce. It's important that those people exist - it means they are the outsiders and you can focus on delighting the insiders.
Don’t end the conversation when someone says no to your sale. Instead, tell them a personal story. Tell them how you felt the same way, but then you found out a new piece of information that made you change your mind (I didn't want to buy this new car, but then I took it for a test drive and found the comfort of the seats and the handling remarkable). Or explain how others felt the same way, but that was BEFORE they learned this new piece of information (ex: after they went for a test drive they changed their minds).
Writing a novel is a long, lonely journey with no immediate pay off. It's only payoff, if ever, is after a long, long time. The feedback from your effort takes a while; you have to push for a long time to get any sort of response.
Blogs, on the other hand, have a short reaction time and almost immediate feedback (push, get response).
Regardless of the feedback time, don't let "the lizard brain" neuter your storytelling (if the story you have to tell might offend people, don't change it).
People don’t want to hear what you do, they want to know what you're passionate about, what you struggle with, and they want to be told a story.
What results do you want (from your business, product, book, etc.)? The focus of what you measure will be your results (if you focus on revenue per share, you'll increase revenue per share). Your results are the consequence of where you focus.
What is your super power?
Be remarkable. Be memorable. Be something and do something that many people will hate and that others can’t live without. The more you push to the edge, the more remarkable you become.
By becoming more stereotypical, you become the person to go to for that topic/niche/market.
Don't water down your message.
Be edgy.
Hope you enjoyed these nuggets of wisdom. If you did, I only ask 2 things:
1) Share this post with someone else (spread the love!)
2) Post a comment below and let us know how you're using these insights to improve your business, brand, or blog (or whatever you're working on!).
p.s. if you don't want to miss the next post in this series, sign up for my free newsletter.
