One trait you’ll find in nearly every successful copywriter and entrepreneur is that they’re ok with looking like an idiot in front of their friends.
Case in point…
Back when I was in college, I was making a couple hundred bucks a month as a poker affiliate.
So I was doing well for a college kid…
And then one year I had the bright idea that I was going to go to the Kentucky Derby and hand out promo cards for a poker site that I was an affiliate of.
My line of thinking was that there would be thousands of people at the race who liked to gamble…
So they were perfect prospects to sign-up for the poker site I was promoting.
I figured if I handed out a few thousand cards, I’d get a bunch of people signed up and make a couple grand because of it.
So on Derby day me and two of my buddies packed into my little Ford Ranger and made the 5-hour drive from Columbus to Louisville.
We had no place to stay…
And barely enough money to get in the race…
But I was convinced I was going to get a bunch of sign-ups from handing out these promo cards.
So that’s what I did.
From the moment we got into the race, I was handing out cards to every drunk college kid I could find.
Despite the blistering heat…
And the sunburn I got…
I handed out cards for hours and hours…
And the more cards I handed out, the more excited I got.
“I’ve handed out at least 1500 cards so far…if even 50 of these people sign-up, I’ll make $5000”
That was my thinking.
I thought I’d struck gold…
And I was gonna make a bunch of money from this.
However…
That’s not exactly what happened…
Cause after our 5-hour drive back to Columbus that night, I sat down to check my affiliate stats to see how many sign-ups I got.
I was convinced I’d get at least 50…
Maybe 100 if it went really well.
I had dreams of the huge kegger I was gonna thrown with all the money I made.
However, that excitement quickly came to a stop when I logged into my affiliate page to check my stats.
Not only did I not get 50 or 100 sign-ups…
I got 0.
Literally, nobody signed up.
My heart sank into my stomach…
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I even fired off an email to my affiliate manager to make sure the stats were updating properly.
His response?
“Yep all the stats are updated by the minute, so those are accurate numbers”
Talk about a kick in the nuts.
I spent nearly 8 hours walking around handing out promo cards thinking I was going to make a bunch of money…
But in the end, I didn’t make a dime.
So it was a major fail…
And because of that, I was the butt of many jokes from my buddies over the next few months.
Everytime I had a new idea for something they’d shoot back with “this isn’t gonna be like the Kentucky Derby thing, is it?”
So I took a lot of shit for that…
However…
I think this story is instructive.
Because in order to be successful, you’re gonna have to go through some embarrassing points where your friends and family think you’re nuts.
It happened to me (many times)…
And it’s happened to almost every big name marketer I know as well.
At some point, you are going to fail…
And you are going to look like an idiot.
And that’s perfectly ok.
It’s part of the process.
So don’t run when it happens.
Simply understand that it’s NORMAL, and that this is what every successful marketer goes through, so keep carrying on.
Make sense?
I hope so.
Cause that’s all I got for ya today.
Enjoy your Tuesday,
– Justin
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