Let’s say you want to earn $150,000 this year. Okay. Can do. Here’s the math: To pull in $150,000, you need to attract at least 150 clients who spend about $1,000 a year on your stuff. (Every week, you must snag three new clients. They need to arrive on a conveyor belt.) Or, you need [...]

Yes, we want referrals. We want a plethora of referrals.  A veritable parade of referrals. We want our phones to ring, two or three times a week, with calls like this: “Hi, I’m Ruth Martin. I got your name from Ted Baker who says you’re something of a genius with copy. We are revamping our [...]

I’ve been holed up working on a batch of new material on winning the bigger-money clients.  And this idea came bubbling up from the deep. I have never tried this, nor seen it done, so it comes without warranty of any kind. I am posting the recipe without having baked this particular soufflé. Here’s the [...]

No, this isn’t about doing work for free. That is a dopey business model. (I speak from experience here.) And it’s not about doing work on spec. Which is mostly an exercise in jackoffery. Run away from that. I’m talking about giving away advice, expertise, game plans, ideas — even that BIG idea that can [...]

For me, business cards are about as useful as typewriter ribbons. In the past two years, I needed an actual, hand-outable business card maybe three times. But when I saw what Moo was doing with business cards, I simply had to buy 50 of them.  Twice. With Moo, you design your cards with an ingenious [...]