The Puppy

Our family has a new bundle of joy – a 7-month-old black lab mix we named Rocky. He’s been here for just under a week, and the similarities to adding a new baby to the family are unmistakable.

We’re happy to have him; he’s added a new dimension to our lives, and we’re learning along with him, eager to see the world from a puppy’s point of view. We can envision many years together, and are considering all of the fun things we’re going to do.

On the other hand, he’s certainly cost us a lot of money for a “free” puppy. Food, bedding, bowls, treats and toys were purchased before we even brought him home. He needed a vet exam, shots, de-worming, and flea treatment and will need to visit the vet again in two days, and eight more times in the next four months. We bought him a cage, which is HUGE and takes up a great deal of space in my home office. He likes it, though, and it’s necessary to successful dog ownership.

Friends of ours recently reported adopting a Coonhound puppy that tore their couch apart while they were at work. The cage/crate is for everyone’s protection. I’m home most of the time, though I do leave for social appointments, business meetings, errands, and family outings. Rocky has a safe spot to take naps and to sleep overnight while nobody’s watching him. And while we’re away, he can’t get in trouble or do anything that might hurt him. When we come home, he’ll get plenty of exercise and affection. What more could any pup want?

I’m learning as I go. I admit, up till recently I didn’t like dogs. The dog we had when I was a kid was a mean ol’ gal. She was a miniature poodle, but was never trained properly and had a lot of bad habits. She bit my toes and stole my toys, and only really liked my grandma. I am determined not to have another “Tinkerbell.”

My goal for Rocky is to teach him every common command – heel, sit, stay, down. I also want to teach him fun commands, like fetch and shake. There’s a “Good Canine Citizen” test – I want him to pass. Labs are supposed to be very smart and easy to train, so I want to take full advantage of that trait. I’ve already taught him “sit.”

Of course, Rocky is not a purebred lab. He may be part Boxer, or part “Village Dog” – who knows? All I know right now is this – he’s good natured, mostly housebroken at 7 weeks of age, and pretty smart. It’s looking good so far.

Specializing

Barry Morris commented on my last entry, making me a liar for saying nobody commented. Thanks, Barry! I like comments.

Barry said that freelancers often find more success by specializing in a niche rather than being generalists. I believe he's right, too! When you specialize in a field or a particular product, say newsletters or annual reports, the learning curve is much shorter and it's easier to prove your worth.

Those who know me know that I love metaphors. So here's another one: specializing is like playing poker (or rummy, I guess). You can either have three of a kind, or a series in a suit. You can specialize in brochures, for example, or write many things for one industry, such as finance.

Either way, when a new client asks for your portfolio items, the chances you can pull out something similar to what he needs increase exponentially when you specialize. If you don't, that vocational school marketing guy may have to use some imagination to see that you can do for him what you did for a bed & breakfast.

But at some point during your card game, you might want to change strategy, so it's not a good idea to get attached to your royal flush in-the-making. Your industry may take a nose dive, or a new technology could make your service outdated. And if you're foolish enough to "specialize" in one company, well, any number of awful things could happen.

Mostly, I don't specialize because it's BORING. I like to do brochures one day, newsletter articles and ad copy the next. I like having assignments in lots of different industries because it's fun to keep learning. And really, all of these things have a lot of common ground. So here's what I really specialize in:

1. Really listening to clients
2. Doing comprehensive research
3. Focusing on the end goal, not the process.
4. Having a great time doing it, which means I get to maintain enthusiasm!

What's YOUR specialty?

The Funnel

I haven’t blogged in a while. I apologize for that. Though nobody has left comments, I know people do read this. When I write an entry, I want to make sure it’s relevant – and inspired.

Tonight I was working on some sales materials for an upcoming business expo. I bought a booth, and it’s going to be an adventure just preparing for the thing. I need new brochures! Pens! Taglines! Gimmicks!

While brainstorming, I thought about the last few meetings I’ve had with prospects and clients. One of them, a graphic designer, asked me to name my specialty. On the spot, I had to decide what it was I did best – brochures? Articles? Advertising copy? I knew that whatever I named would be how he remembered me. He’d think of me as “the newsletter writer” or “the brochure writer” and I didn’t want to be pigeonholed.

Sometimes specializing is a good thing, mind you. But there is such a thing as being too specific. I don’t do graphic design, photography, telemarketing, grant writing, or any number of tasks marginally related to copywriting. I can subcontract them and manage them, but I don’t do them myself. When it comes to copywriting jobs, though, why can’t I “specialize” in more than one field? Clients need more than one thing written, usually, and it gets boring just doing press releases or sales letters all the time.

So what I told her was that I specialize in “distillery.”

When we were in high school and college, we were told to write a 2,000-word essay on the topic of choice. In order to minimize our research and maximize our grade, we learned to be verbose. We were proud of it, in fact. We threw in $100 words to impress the professors, plus lots of extra modifiers and adverbs. As we progressed through our degrees, we learned the “educated” writing style, which approaches excruciating detail.

I did it too.

But the real world works differently. People don’t read unless they’re hooked into doing it.

In the marketing world, you’re not “graded” on how many words you write, but how few. If your message is 20 words long, can you say it in 10? Condense that to 5 words, and you’ve got a chance of being noticed. A message that’s more complex, such as a news article, has to conform to available space. Before you get too comfortable with brevity, though, consider that the small size doesn’t mean it’s short on information. A good article, brochure, tagline, or any other real-world marketing piece is like a can of sardines or a good cigar – packed with substance.

Most of the time, the substance isn’t a problem – it’s the packing. One marketing employee can come up with pages of stuff, and five give you more. Smart people have a lot to say. I’m the funnel that you pour it into – and the condensed message comes out.

The message isn’t just condensed, but customized, optimized, and targeted. It’s about crushing a pound of carbon into a tiny diamond.

Tagline: Words That Work As Hard As You Do.