I awoke
moments ago, powered up my computer, grabbed a cup of tea. When Outlook
finished yawning, I had 16 messages. One was to moderate a comment by Seth
Godin. Yep. The. Seth. Godin.

My first reaction was to write a
headline. OHMYGOD! Seth Godin came by! And then proceed to gush about how I
felt when The. Seth. Godin. added his words to mine on the blog. I was tempted
to write as if I were engaged in the Snoopy happy dance, cheering and clapping
and jumping with glee. What in the world did *I* do to rate the visit?

That was my first reaction. My second
reaction is one that I’ve been having frequently. Instead of being completely
flustered and overwhelmed and, well, obsequiously grateful, I tried to examine
what this means in terms of me being a business owner.

I’m trying to make the leap from being a
writer-hobbiest to being a writer-professional. This is my business. Instead of
squealing with delight and wagging my tail, I need to stop and act like a
business person. It perhaps shouldn’t strike me as so extremely farfetched that
The. Seth. Godin. would stop by, since I did link to one of his posts
yesterday. Any business person would, of course, be thrilled to be noticed by
The. Seth. Godin. But a business person wouldn’t necessarily transform herself
into a 12-year-old Harry Potter fan at a J.K. Rowling book signing.

Another example: Recently a potential
client asked me for some case studies of how my marketing techniques had helped
someone’s ROI. My first reaction was, “Well, I don’t know for sure because I’m
brand new, but I just *know* this will help you.” I almost typed that to the
client, but I waited a day instead. During the day, I thought about his
question, and I was finally able to figure out a case study that showed a
marked improvement for my former company.

When I decided to strike out alone as a professional
copywriter, I kept reading about putting together my samples into a
portfolio. My first thought was that I had absolutely nothing. I had been in
sales/marketing for many years with one company, a director of education for a
nonprofit before that. I hadn’t written full time since grad school, and many
of my newspaper clips were literally yellow. I didn’t have any experience, I
thought. Nothing relevant. And I tried to think of ways to play down my lack of
experience.

My worst idea: I was going to send out a
postcard that had a picture of a half-filled glass of water. The front would
read, “The pessimist says, ‘Gee, she doesn’t have much experience yet.’” The
back: “The optimist says, “Yeah, but I bet she’s still cheap.’”

Yeah. It was that bad. But within a
couple of days, I found several dozen examples of flyers, brochures, articles,
press releases, white papers, postcards… All perfect examples of the kind of
work I do. So that postcard never materialized, and I have a professional
portfolio I can bring to show potential clients, plus plenty of samples on my
website.

The point here is that in order for
people to take me seriously as a professional writer, I need to take myself
seriously. I need to take
off the “I’m not worthy” t-shirt
and replace it with a pinstriped suit. When I truly believe that I’m a
professional who can help people with their businesses, other people will believe
me as well. It’s not really about *false bravado.* It’s more about the true
conviction that a business owner should have that her products and services are
really worth something.

Thus, I want to thank Mr. Godin for
dropping by because I really do admire his work (I just finished Purple Cow). And I will continue to use his
principles to try to stand out in a crowd. He’s invited back anytime to
contribute.

(But I did call my mother.)