So, yesterday I sent out an email about the Great Lord of Darkness Senor Stephen King.
In it I said some things about the $40,000,000/year man that caused a few of you to take up your pitchfork and assault my inbox with cult-like protest.
Good.
Because I wanted to talk more about The King.
Look, I admire the guy. I want to be him. I would love to be him.
He is a genius writer.
And an even better marketer.
Again, he makes over $40,000,000/year by writing words on a page.
He sells millions and millions of copies of his books, year in and year out.
He has been on the top of his game since 1974.
But here’s the thing:
Unlike the characters in his book, he isn’t magic.
There are no magic spells to get to his level.
What King has done to stay on top can be seen in this quote from his book “On Writing”:
“Not a week goes by that I don’t receive at least one pissed-off letter (most weeks there are more) accusing me of being foulmouthed, bigoted, homophobic, murderous, frivolous, or downright psychopathic.”
King polarizes people.
Either you love him, or you hate him.
Period.
He suffereth not indifference amongst his disciples.
When I saw your emails of support for The King flooding my inbox yesterday I chuckled a little inside.
Stephen King is a master at creating “The Two Camps”.
The Love Camp.
And The Hate Camp.
Don’t believe me?
Go to Youtube, search for Stephen King and look for any video where he is on a panel. The guy polarizes even his fellow writers.
And good for him.
Because “you’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything” as the old country song goes.
Take FreelanceCopywriterMike.com for instance.
When the name comes up in some circles there are two camps:
Camp #1
“Mike you are the best. You are great secret in this business yet I know I can’t hide you because I would not be honouring your brilliance. The best investment I made this year is using your services.” – Unsolicited testimonial on Facebook
Camp #2
“Look at this asshole. What a hack job. No copywriter would work for $97.” – Recent comment made by someone who shared one of my FB ads in an IM group (I edited for spelling. Either the guy’s fingers were seriously broken or he might have been drunk. Or he might have been 7 and learning to spell big words for the first time.)
And that makes me happy.
Really, really happy.
If I wanted everyone to like me, I would raise prices so that other copywriters would feel warm and fuzzy about their rates. I would try and “confirm the norm.”
But I don’t want that.
Stephen King doesn’t want that. McDonalds doesn’t want that. Steve Jobs didn’t want that. Gordon Ramsey doesn’t want that. And the list goes on and on and on.
Standing for something causes controversy. It polarizes people.
It makes people hate you.
But most importantly, it makes people love you.
“Like” won’t get your business through the hard times.
“Love” will.
Are you being too “vanilla” in your business? Are you trying to avoid Trolls/Haters/Ruffling Feathers so much that you are getting lost amidst all that noise?
Stand up. Choose something to stand for, and never, ever back down.
People (more importantly, customers) will love you for it.
To your success,
Mike