8 Copywriting Business `Takeaways I Learned This Winter

With spring here and thoughts of a hot summer beckoning, it's easy to forget about all the short days and long cold nights of the past few months, and instead only look forward to the fair weather ahead.
I'm not 100% sure that's the wisest thing to do. Nope. Don't get me wrong, I love the warm weather as much as the next person.
But I also think it's important to reflect on the past from time to time and look at what lessons I can learn and, more importantly, how I can apply them to my future self-development.
Naturally this activity extends across all areas of my life including doing the work I love at Kreat?v Ford?t?s where I am part of a dynamic copywriting and marketing partnership.
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.? ~John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
A seemingly great client would appear offering fantastic opportunities for working together, business affiliations and multiple long-term ?ber benefits? only to fall horribly short of the mark.
Although we always try to be level-headed and circumspect in our business, nevertheless these situations inevitably raise our expectations and levels of optimism (even when warning bells are ringing merrily away in the background!).
So my takeaway from these incidents is ?really listen to your gut feelings, and always make sure you don't let the enthusiasm Million Dollar Copy and eagerness that comes with seemingly great opportunities cloud your otherwise sensible judgement and critical thinking'.
These are those potential clients who manage to hoover up your time (and often great ideas too) and then disappear off in a puff of smoke without paying only to re-appear out of the blue (sometimes weeks or months later) when they decide they need to waste your time again.
Having had to deal with these jokers on too many occasions to count we now make sure we get our contract out and signed and money up front before we let them get their foot back in our door!
These inevitably take time, energy and resources. Plus they can fizzle out and sometimes sadly lead to nothing.
Existing clients however, especially the really good ones with whom you have a great relationship and love working with, should always be the first port of call when you are looking for new projects and improved revenue streams.
Time and time again we found this to be the case and although it's such a simple concept it was one we always somehow managed to forget or neglect.
Sure, its a clich?, but as John Donne so eloquently put it no man is an island entire of itself?any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.?
Okay, get the point. What we found out this winter was just how true these wise words are, and how they include us as much as anyone else.
As a result we now actively seek and identify people (and organisations) who we can really help out and who can really help us in return.
And I don't mean just via the normal services we provide for fiscal payment at the end of each month. No, it means working closely alongside each other, sharing information, and bartering skills and knowledge via real time mentoring, consulting and genuine support of each other.
To survive they need to get out of their safe port (where they will just rust away and sink from lack of use) and travel to a specific destination to off load their cargo and take on board a new one.
But sometimes circumstances change and ships need to change course and go somewhere else, and we think businesses are like that too.
Actually what we discovered this winter was that some things were clearly working much better than others, and it made sense to focus on these obvious strong areas by strategically altering the direction of our company. A decision that so far has proven to be a resounding success and one that has resulted in us once more powering full steam ahead.
It might be true that a bad carpenter blames his tools, but I think you can also argue the case that having the right tools in the first place is also pretty important.
This winter we decided to upgrade some of our work tech ? something we had been putting off for ages ? and boy were we blown away!
What we found was not just how useful it is to have shiny new stuff with longer batteries and tons more functionality, but how the equipment itself allowed us to do new unexpected cool things for our business and clients that we previously never even knew that we couldn't do!
Just like any relationship, ending a business relationship can be a difficult and emotional thing to do.
As such it is something we avoid as much as possible, preferring instead to nurture, develop and improve them.
But there are times when you just have to do what you have to do, and we have learnt from hard experience the art of knowing exactly when to walk away.
On several occasions this winter we found ourselves dealing with clients who were so difficult, awkward or demanding to work with that it impacted heavily on our ability to do the really good job for them that we pride ourselves on doing.
And when that consistently happens, despite doing everything we can to avoid it, we now know it's time to call it a day.
As copywriters we try and be versatile and adaptable. We need to be as we inevitably deal with a wide range of different clients, scenarios and situations.
But when a client tells us to try and perfectly mimic them, their voice and expertise and even go so far as to tell us that they know our job better than we do, then warning bells go off like a klaxon!
Because this has happened to us in the past on several occasions we actually made a conscious effort to develop specific strategies and approaches to turn these situations to our advantage.
So now we can not only recognise them very quickly but avoid them from happening by explaining our industry expertise and experience, and consulting with them rather than being manoeuvered into an awkward position that doesn't work for either party.