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My 4 year old daughter came home from preschool last week with a picture of a penguin that she had drawn.

I still can’t see a penguin in that picture no matter how many different ways I look at it.

The thing is, my daughter is very talented when it comes to drawing. At the age of four, she’s actually better to draw than I am, so I knew there was something going on when I saw that picture.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not crazy parents putting pressure on the child to be the best artist in her class, but this was obviously not my daughter’s style.

I was looking at it and going, “Look, Daddy, Casey drew this beautiful penguin at school today.”

Then Casey said, “I copied off of Jane.” (I’ve changed the name to protect the innocent.)

Aaaaaahhhh. That made sense.

I told Casey I would rather see a penguin that she drew by herself without copying off of anyone.

She quickly churned out this photo:

See the difference?

I had to try to explain to my daughter that she could do a better job if she did her drawings on her own, without copying off of anyone else. As I was explaining this to her, I realized that lots of adults still don’t get this.

If you’re marketing your business in the way that everyone else in your industry markets their businesses, just because you think that’s how you should be promoting yourself, did you ever stop and think you’re basically being a copycat?

There’s an excellent chance that if you’re trying to be someone you’re not, you’re stifling something great inside by doing so. Like my daughter’s own penguin drawing.

Market with your own personality. Be authentic. Be yourself. Make your own unique, individual mark on the world and be proud of it.

You’ll attract better clients, you’ll do better work and you’ll have a happier existence.

It’s true what they say, you know, you learned everything you needed to know about life before you finished kindergarten. Think about it. Would your teacher let you get away with copying off your neighbor?

Didn’t think so.

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Last week I got a postcard in the mail. I love junk mail because I’m a copywriter and I love to dissect direct mail pieces and think about what I would have done differently if I were the writer or a member of the creative team.

I save the best and worst pieces of junk mail I get in a special folder in my filing cabinet.

The postcard I got last week was shocking. I’ve blacked out the name of the company because I don’t really think I need to go there, but I will say it’s a company that’s been steadily going in the toilet from what I’ve seen and experienced over the past ten or so years of dealing with them. I will quite often go out of my way not to deal with this company these days because the customer service is horrible, the prices are much higher than their competitors and they charge a special fee when you pay cash instead of charging your purchases to an account…but I digress.

Maybe you received this same postcard in your mailbox and didn’t pay attention to it. This is the front:

Let’s examine the message.

First of all…I feel a bit cozy because I always like hearing that I’m a valued customer. This company wants to help me start my year off right by offering me 10% off my next purchase of $100 or more. Wow! (Strong headline – very important)

Notice that big huge 10% off? Kinda stands out. And 10% off of $100 or more…I’m going to save at least $10 on something that will help me start my year off right. How great! (Draw attention to the discount, grab the reader’s attention – very good)

Now I better hurry because as you can see at the bottom of the message, the offer is going to be ending soon. At the end of the month. (Creating urgency, adding a call to action – terrific)

So I flip over the card to find out more and here’s what we see:

Pretty self explanatory. In a big blue box we see that we have a Bonus Offer Number to use when we place our next order of $100 or more so we can save 10%. Great! (Telling me exactly what to do – perfect)

But wait. Look at that huge paragraph of small print.

Let’s take a closer look:

Okay. There are some exclusions to this “any purchase over $100″ and it looks like as a valued customer, I’ve received a 10% coupon that I can only use when I buy more than $100 worth of bedding, clothing, shoes or a small kitchen appliance from this major department store. Oh wait. Maybe not, because apparently if it’s a “shop by phone” item that doesn’t qualify either.

My question as a consumer is:

Why did they bother to send me something with so many conditions? If this multi-million dollar company really values me, why do they have to make me work hard to figure out which items apply for this discount?

If I’m so valued, wouldn’t this company (which is a pain to deal with) try to lighten up and give me 10% off any order of $100 or more without such a huge list of exclusions?

My question as a copywriter is:

Why on earth did this postcard ever get to the printing and mailing stage? If there were so many conditions, wouldn’t it have been a smarter “marketing” move to let people find all that out after they already got to the website and picked the things they wanted and had made a decision to buy them before realizing they didn’t apply with their coupon? Cause then although they would have been pissed off, they still may have gone through with their purchase even though they didn’t qualify for the 10% off because they’d already decided they needed and wanted those items.

I don’t know. If you’re going to call such attention to the fact that your customers are only valued enough to get a 10% discount on a $100+ purchase on small ticket items like bedding and clothing then why bother with that postcard at all?

I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea. If that were my postcard and I was being told by corporate to promote a sale on small kitchen appliances, bedding and apparel (which appears to be what applies in this promotion) I would have made it a big deal that with this coupon code you save 10% when you buy more than $100 worth of apparel, home decor and small appliances and played that up.

Then it would be a sale based on a positive – Look at what you can save on!

Instead of the current negative – Look at what we don’t want to give you a discount on!

But what do I know? I’m just a freelance copywriter working from a little home office.

I wonder how many other people saw that postcard and had the same reaction as me. A big belly laugh and a trip to the recycling bin. Well, in my case, it’s going in my swipe file, but if I was not a writing geek it would be in a blue bag.

What do you think?

Do you think getting 10% off, even with so many conditions, is a great way to start your year off right as they state on the postcard? Was it a good marketing move? A smart promotion?

Or are you with me when I say that I feel about as much like a valued customer as I do when they charge me $2 to pay cash?

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There’s a group in my area for caregivers of children aged 0-5 that meets once a week. It’s called “Baby Steps” and last night the discussion was around separation anxiety.

Through our chatting, we struck on a very interesting point. Separation anxiety happens to parents just as much or more than to children. I, for example, started my business to allow me to be at home with my children, and it took my little girl’s own prompting to make me register her for preschool (today was her first day). I had big-time separation anxiety and had to get out of my comfort zone to do what will certainly be best for my daughter.

I only have to think back to the day I moved away from home to know that my mother experienced some major separation anxiety when her eldest child was leaving the nest.

Separation anxiety is basically what happens when you’re forced out of your comfort zone.

I learned last night that separation anxiety is most common with babies aged 10-18 months when they gain the ability to recognize people. They know when someone holding them is not their mother, and most children that age make their anxiety known. But I don’t feel like that anxiety ever really goes away. It just changes depending on our situation in life.

I was thinking about comfort zones when I was brainstorming topics for this blog post, and I thought about my friend Sally Kuhlman’s newest endeavor. Sally has been a virtual assistant for years, that’s how I know her, but she recently launched a new blog “Sally Around the Bay” where she blogs about her adventures around San Francisco Bay. She says that one of the reasons she decided to do this was to force her outside of her comfort zone to try new things.

I think all entrepreneurs can take a cue from Sally.

When’s the last time you separated yourself from yourself? What’s keeping you in your comfort zone? What will it take to force yourself out of it?

Are you afraid to start a blog because you’re afraid of how your thoughts will be viewed by the world? Do it anyway. You know, in this day and age you can hire someone to write your blog posts

Have you been meaning to launch an info product but keep getting in your own way?

Is there a brilliant tele-seminar sitting in your brain waiting for you to get the guts to go ahead and do it?

I was terrified before I first spoke to a group about writing better copy. The first time I got a booth for my business at a trade event I was scared. When I released my second ebook I was no less nervous than I was with my first one. It’s hard to put yourself out there, but you just have to go for it if you want to grow your business and if you want to grow as a person.

Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer and to me, having someone value my work enough to publish me is the ultimate marker of my success. I’ve gone way outside of my comfort zone and have started pitching magazines on article ideas. Guess what? An editor has responded to me. They loved my query and it looks like I will be published in a magazine this fall.

Sometimes you’re not getting what you want most because you simply aren’t stepping outside your comfort zone and asking for it.

What would you do if you stopped listening to that voice in your head telling you you’re not good enough, or that everyone will laugh at you?

What if the only thing stopping you from being a brilliant success is you?

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I never knew how much I really loved trees until I moved to a home surrounded by them. Tall, healthy and beautiful hardwood trees are everywhere. A birdfeeder hangs from the Maple in my front yard and in return for feeding them, sparrows and chickadees serenade me throughout the day. A stand of birch in the back will make the perfect spot for a hammock one day and the mighty oaks next door have thrown their acorns into our yard in previous years and tiny oaks are springing up in my flower gardens.

Where I grew up, there weren’t trees. There was an ocean…the beach was my backyard playground…but no trees. I always thought the notion of collecting acorns off the ground and raking leaves in the fall was so poetic. Now my four year old asks every day if it’s fall because of the leaves changing and her and her little sister were thrilled when they saw little green acorns on the grass in our neighbor’s yard.

A couple of evenings ago, we were at our neighbor’s house chatting about the acorns and how the girls would sit out there all day and pick them up. The neighbors loved that idea because the more nuts my girls picked up, the less there would be for the squirrels. She said if she had any idea how many squirrels would show up to enjoy those acorns that she never would have planted oaks all those years ago.

Squirrels are destructive and they actually ate the neighbor’s outbuilding a couple of times. So I understand the frustration.But I can’t help but think, the pleasure she and her neighbors have gotten from that tree over the years must make up for the squirrels.

Trees do a lot for us. Besides the sciency things like cleansing the air, those oaks have provided shade on hot days and a a break from the wind on cold ones. Oaks are gorgeous to look at and I’m sure they must have been climbed by children at one point or another and I know my children will enjoy making crafts out of the fallen acorns over the next few weeks. Squirrels can be a big pain, but they only last while the nuts are on the ground…for a couple of months. Is the joy you get from an oak tree for the rest of the year, for decades, worth more than that?

Do you love your business as much as the day you planted the idea seed? Have you watched it flourish and grow over the years only to discover the squirrels? Of course it’s probably not going to be actual squirrels for you…I’m trying to use a metaphor here…but it might be the headache of bookkeeping or the pain of dealing with crabby customers.

Have you ever caught yourself thinking that if you knew how much hassle it would be, you’d never have started your business in the first place?

I don’t know about you, but I think there’s something awfully sad about that.

As I look out my window and watch a pair of blue jays enjoying the view atop a branch of one of those oak trees, I for one am very glad that my neighbor planted those trees.I actually suggested she get a cat to naturally take care of the squirrel problem.

What I would suggest to you for your squirrel is more complicated than a cat. Maybe you need to rebrand yourself or renovate your marketing message to start attracting different kinds of customers.

And maybe you’re just tired like most solo-preneurs and you just need a break. Maybe your clients and customers whose lives you impact in a positive way feel just as passionately about the product or service you sell as I do about the neighbor’s oaks. And here you are wondering if it was ever worth starting the business in the first place.

No matter how many bad days I have as a business owner, no matter how much I hate my squirrels (taxes and filing and stuff) I would never wish it away. And I’m pretty confident that if I went to my clients and said I wish I never became a writer, at least a couple of them would tell me I’m crazy.

After all, for every pain in the butt squirrel, there’s a beautiful, sweet sparrow.

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This morning as I was checking email and sipping coffee, my laptop started telling me to switch to a different power source because of a low battery. That’s normal, except I was plugged into the wall.

I checked the part in the middle of the cord…that pack thing that plugs into that other thing…and it was connected. I wiggled the adapter where it goes into my computer to see if it was loose there. I checked to see if the cord was firmly plugged into the wall and it was.

At this point I started to panic. But I know I have a backup adapter in the house somewhere and I always keep it in the same place. At least I did in our former house. I haven’t used the adapter since our move at the end of May and while I recall putting it in a box upon packing up my old office, I have no recollection of unpacking it.

This is when I started to dismantle the house, searching for that cord. I dug through all my brief cases and laptop bags. I went through every door and cupboard in my office – each nook and cranny. No adapter.

So I call my husband. I ask him if he’s seen it anywhere on his travels and he tells me to slow down for a minute. He asks if I checked some different things (all of which I had) and then he asked me to plug the computer into a different outlet. I rolled my eyes and said that I’d been using that outlet for weeks, but I said I’d humor him and I plugged in to a different outlet.

BEEP. My computer turned on.

I never in a million years would have thought of doing that. If I didn’t talk to my husband, I would have gotten on his computer and searched online for a new adapter because I was in a panic and need my laptop working. The thought that an outlet could just quit working would never cross my mind. I neglected to consider the obvious and go right to the source of power.

I started to wonder how many other situations arise in my life that could be handled better if I took the time to check for the obvious solution.

Is this happening in your business? Do you get lots of traffic to your website but very few leads? If you think that just because you have a beautiful website customers should be impressed enough to line up to work with you, look a little deeper. How’s your website content written? Is it speaking to your target market in a language they understand? Is it compelling enough to sell? Beautiful design is important – extremely important. But what’s even more important is the words you use to sell your visitor once they land on your page.

Do you seem to attract the wrong type of customers? Is your personality constantly clashing with the people you do business with? Do you only get leads who don’t want to pay your rate? Look at your website content. Is it written with your personality infused into it so that you attract people you’d like to do business with?

As a copywriter, it’s obvious to me to check the words you’re using to market your business when times are slack, but it might not be so obvious to someone else.

This morning when I simply plugged my computer into a different outlet, my problem was solved. That’s where the power was.

If you hand your marketing materials over to a professional copywriter, including your website, your thoughts and ideas will be transformed into powerful compelling marketing pieces that will attract your ideal customer and make them want what you’re selling. The words you use to sell your product or service is where the power is in your marketing. Are you plugged in?

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