Bad news today, I'm afraid.
This is the final lesson
Before you watch it though, I need to tell you something about my past...
When I was twelve, my mother and I hit a rough spot where we couldn’t even afford to buy food. We used to go to churches to get meals, because otherwise, we would’ve gone hungry.
But I had an idea.
I took a plastic bucket and put a sign on it that said, “Please help. We need money.” Too embarrassed to let anyone see me with it, I put it next to the road and looked out the window, hoping people who went by would drop money in it.
Needless to say, it didn’t work. Even worse, my mother saw it, and it punched a hole in her heart.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “We’ll make it somehow.”
But I couldn’t do nothing. The feeling of powerlessness was killing me.
A few days later, I noticed a Girl Scout going door-to-door, selling cookies. By the time she got to the end of the street, all her cookies were gone, and she had a wad of money in her hand.
That’s when I learned one of the most important lessons of my life…
You can’t just wait for people to put money in a bucket. You have to give them something in exchange. You also have to go to them, not expect them to come to you.
But what could I give them? We didn’t even have enough food for ourselves, much less supplies to bake cookies.
I looked around and found a poem I’d written for my mother. It was all I could afford to give her for Mother’s Day.
“That’s it,” I thought. “I’ll sell poems.”
Over the next few days, I wrote a dozen or so poems. Each of them less than a page.
And then I made little frames for them out of popsicle sticks.
When I was done, I went to every house on the street. My neighbors opened their doors and found a skinny little kid in a wheelchair sitting outside, selling poems for three dollars apiece.
What do you think happened?
You guessed it, I sold every single one of those poems. Not a single person said no.
I made $36 from my writing that day. Later, we went to the store, and little Jon Morrow, a 12-year-old kid in a wheelchair, bought his family’s groceries for the first time. Still brings tears to my eyes, just thinking about it.
A week later, my mother found work, and I stopped going door-to-door, pestering the neighbors, but I was never quite the same after that. I got rid of a demon that’s plagued writers for centuries:
Shame.
We love to write. We love to share our gift. We love to see it touch people.
But when it comes to promoting our writing? Or even worse, asking for money?
We feel ashamed. Dirty. Afraid.
So, most of us never promote our work at all. Or if we do, it’s the equivalent of putting a bucket by the road and watching out the window, hoping somebody drops a dollar in.
But that’s not the way the world works.
If you want to succeed as a writer, you have to be brave. You have to fight for your work.
For today’s lesson, I created another little video for you, showing you how. It requires some courage, but if you’re willing to do the work, you’ll be shocked at what will happen.
Click here to watch the lesson
By the way, this is the last part of the case study, but let me ask you a question…
Would you like me to teach you more of this kind of stuff?
Not only guiding you step-by-step through how to write posts like this, but also taking you under my wing and giving you my “stamp of approval” so big magazines and blogs want you to write viral content for them?
If so, more details tomorrow.
Talk soon,
Jon
PS: If you missed the previous emails, or you just haven’t found a chance to read them yet, here they are again:
How to Become a Highly Sought-After Writer (Part One)
How to Become a Highly Sought-After Writer (Part Two)
How to Become a Highly Sought-After Writer (Part Three)
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