Tag Archive for get unstuck

4 Magic Words To Get UnStuck

Unstuck finger trap

4 Magic Words To Get UnStuck

Copywriting tool kit ad

– – –

Have you ever gotten stuck? And hoped like hell to get unstuck?

Danny G. dreamed of starting his own bakery, but he had no money for ingredients, equipment or a storefront. Though he worked hard and hustled, he could never save up enough money. He felt stuck and hopeless, wondering how he could ever achieve his dream without any capital.

One day, while out walking his golden retriever on the city streets, instead of asking the same old question, “How I could ever save up enough?” he decided in futility to change up the question. He wondered to himself, “How could I do it without any money?”

No sooner had he asked the question, Danny saw an Edible Arrangements truck pull up in front of the local businesses. The man got out of his truck to deliver a beautiful “bouquet” of fruit.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed to his dog and everyone near. “I don’t need a store, big equipment, or truckloads of ingredients to start. I can bake and deliver fresh goods to local businesses this week!”

Danny used the 4 word question format I’ll describe for you today.

 Better Questions Get You Unstuck

It’s the same question format I used myself when the Chinese gemstone dealer asked me how to market her gemstones in the USA. Though I’d had no previous experience in marketing gemstones – anywhere! Yet we found success.

It’s the same question I asked myself over and over again to gain success in each of my several careers as a “fixer”.

A fixer of homes. Of office equipment. Of photographs. Of sales and marketing.

Here it is. If you use it, it will shift your mindset over to positive and let your subconscious mind get to work on finding you the answers you need.

See, our mind hates unanswered questions. If we can’t find the answer, like Danny, “How can I save enough money?” it can get stuck in a loop of asking a question for which we can find no answer.

When we get stuck in those loops, we have to change our question to one which has an answer. Though we may not like the answer, it WILL show us a way.

I’ve never seen it fail.

The Magic 4 Word Question is this:

How can I (do the thing) without (the problem or obstacle)?

~ ~ ~

“How can I, in spite of, or without.”

For example:

How can I start a business without any money?

  • I could start smaller than I want.
  • I could ask to borrow materials or money.
  • I could trade or barter.
  • I could piggyback onto another’s business.

Success Leaves Clues

Many, many businesses and ultra-successful businesses got their start with very little or no money.

Money is seldom the problem people imagine it to be. It’s more of an excuse not to start.

Consider…

WhatsApp – Jan Koum and Brian Acton founded the messaging app WhatsApp in 2009 with $250 in seed funding. It grew rapidly to over 1 billion users before being acquired by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014.

Craigslist – Craig Newmark started Craigslist in 1995 as an email distribution list focused on San Francisco events. He originally funded it himself at nearly no cost. Craigslist eventually grew into one of the most popular classified ad platforms globally.

Dollar Shave Club – Michael Dubin launched Dollar Shave Club in 2011, which sells razors and personal grooming products on a subscription model. He started it with $1,000 of his own money. Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion in 2016.

Lynda.com – Lynda Weinman started teaching web design online in the 1990s by posting lessons for free. In 1995 she started Lynda.com with her husband with just $200 for a domain name and web hosting. She grew it into a leading online education company that was bought by LinkedIn for $1.5 billion.

Imgur – Alan Schaaf built the first version of popular image hosting and sharing site Imgur in 2009 for free in his dorm room. The costs were less than $7 to register the domain name. Imgur grew to one of the largest sites on the web with billions of image views per month.

Today, I thought I’d address, help tackle, the biggest reason folks get stuck, MONEY.

But this same magic 4 word question shift can help you get unstuck from nearly every obstacle I can think of.

How Obstacles Fade Away

In my first 25 years out on the road fixing everything imaginable as a field service technician for copiers, cars, photo printers, and house mechanicals, I had to ask this same, magic 4 word question several times each day. And it never failed.

How can I (fix this) without (the parts, the skill, the resources I need).

When I was starting out as a photographer I asked,

“How can I get better photographs without spending years to learn the craft?”

That’s when I found Photoshop. And then that same question showed me how to master the editing software faster. Then write a popular (and profitable) self-published book, “Photoshop Tip Cards” to teach that method!

As a parent it helped me raise children, and teach them how to get THEMSELVES unstuck by asking that one, simple question.

As a copywriter and sales professional it works time and again.

What’s got you stuck?

Try the magic 4 word question on your problem and see if you don’t get some answers.

Remember though, you may not like the answers. “But I don’t want to _____.”

Your resistance will then be your demise. We most often get stuck by the things we choose not to do.

What are you willing to do? Willing to try?

Or do you find comfort in your familiar complaints and stuckness?

Here’s hoping for your speedy, upcoming Un-Stuckness!

– Robert Schwarztrauber

P.S. If you’re stuck on getting sales, or getting more sales, you may find greater success by asking the questions found in The Copywriter’s Persuasion Toolkit. The toolkit’s questions digs deep into your prospect’s habits and unconscious behaviors. These special questions uncover and reveal to you the best prospects and their secret emotional hotbuttons and buying triggers. Let these questions, templates and simple graphics reveal the words and phrases that get your buyer to buy – buy more – and more often.

Writer’s Word Constipation – 3 Quick Cures

writer's block

Writer’s Constipation

copywriter tools

vvv

What Pro Writer’s Do When The Words Won’t Flow

Writer’s constipation is different from writer’s block.

Writer’s block finds you staring at the blank page or screen, lost for what to write.

Writer’s block is more of a mindless state.

Writer’s Constipation occurs when you have too much to write.

Writer’s Constipation is when you’ve been grazing or gorging on information for an extended time, researching or learning, but not producing anything from it.

You’re full of it. You’ve been consuming words, written or oral, and you’ve digested that knowledge and turned it into your own new ideas. But you haven’t gotten any out.

Now, you have such a backlog of research to share, new ideas, perhaps a whole book full of ideas – but the words are packed so tightly in your skull you struggle to get the flow started.

You’re constipated in the head!

Where to start?

I’m experiencing this writer’s constipation phenomenon now.

For three years I’ve been researching and studying the various and many benefits which can be derived from a certain part of our anatomy. A mentor of mine suggests now might be a good time to publish those findings.

But where to start!

Three years worth of words and ideas are swirling around in my head. Flashes of genius call out at random intervals – triggered no doubt by some bling in my immediate surroundings.

Rather like the term writer’s constipation came to me while in the shower today. I don’t know why!

But what to do with all these random stuck thoughts?

Is this where I should start? No wait…

Maybe I should start here?

And as we all know – a confused mind does nothing.

Help! I Can’t Get It Out.

Luckily, I’ve lived long enough to know that we don’t have to panic when this happens.

Much like the other constipation we all know and despise, there are cures. Remedies. Some potent like Magnesium Citrate. Some more gentle, more like MiraLAX.

Here they are:

My Three Cures for Writer’s Constipation

1. Pick It Out.

Literally. Grab a piece of paper and a pencil, not a keyboard or screen – you’ll see why in a bit – and start writing down little snippets. One word about your topic or research. Then another. Then another.

Maybe it’s:

  • Potential headings
  • Potential chapters
  • Industry jargon
  • Report Titles

Expand next to phrases. Important thoughts or ideas. Multiple word groups or short sentences. Don’t edit. Write them down as they come. Quickly now! Don’t stop to think. Write. Write some more.

Once you find yourself slowing down or thinking too much, stop. Or perhaps you’ve filled the page. Stop!

Get up now. Go grab a glass of water, coffee, or some other favorite drink. You need a short break to let your mind catch up.

Go back to the paper now. Add arrows to connect related points. Circle or highlight matching ideas with a colored pens. Number things if that’s appropriate. Begin to organize thoughts and words.

Rewrite these on another paper if that helps you organize.

Now that you’ve got things flowing, keep going.

Work on expanding the ideas you have. Or start on another page if you feel you have more to get out first. The important thing is to keep the flow going once it starts.

Stay regular. Write every day.

2. Map It Out

I love mind maps.

Not the computer kind, I get too lost and angered in the learning or formatting curve to find any benefit.

I love the speed and simplicity of pen and paper. Especially that engineering paper with it’s little blue squares. Legal pads are my second choice, followed by blank printer paper.

Strange as it may seem, a sketch artist once told me his “trick” to getting started with that scary blank page. Simply draw a border around the page!

Yes. A simple rectangle. A border. A frame.

Then, it’s not a blank page anymore. You’ve added “something”!

Typically, I’ll write my working title or topic in the center of the paper, then circle it.

Half an inch away I’ll write whatever word seems closely related to that.

For example, if I wrote BODY in the center and circled it, I might write ARM a half inch away and circle that. Then draw a line to the BODY circle.

Next I might write HAND a half inch out from ARM and circle that. Then I might write FINGERS a half inch out from hands and circle that, or maybe I’d square that. Connect them all with lines.

writer's mind map

I won’t give a whole tutorial here on creating mind maps. There are dozens of websites and videos already doing that. And most of us remember enough how to create one from our school days anyway.

Mind maps help you get your information out bit by bit, word by word, while organizing at the same time.

I’ll usually run out of room on the page and have to start over. Or get a bigger piece of paper.

Mind maps provide a structure which helps things start flowing.

Nature abhors an empty space and will suck the words right out of you – if you let it.

3. Take A Writer’s Dump

This last one, I first heard from the late, great copywriter Gary Halbert.

It’s a technique he used and recommended for fighting the constipation’s dreaded cousin, Writer’s Block.

You just start writing.

Nonsense. Any words. Any sentence. Nothing has to make sense. You can write your favorite nursery rhyme. Song lyrics. Anything goes. “Four score and seven years ago…”.

How to bake bread. How to draw a cute kitten. How to safely clean your ears with a Q-tip even though the box says don’t.

Just start writing. Dump it all out. It’s the warm up. Nothing really matters…to me!

It works on the same principle as syphoning water.

You suck and suck until you get it to flow, then it just flows – all by itself.

Conclusion…

Try one or all of these three remedies next time you get a bad case of Writer’s Constipation.

You’ll feel better fast. You’ll thank me.

The Magic Potent Bonus Cure!

If you haven’t got your flow going yet, or are looking for a faster start, I’d recommend you grab a copy of my most potent writer’s remedy, The Copywriter’s Persuasion Toolkit.

Even if you’re NOT writing sales copy!

Its psychological themes and colorful graphics offer unique and timeless insights into inner the workings of the human mind.

It’s like Draino for idea flow.

Using its fill-in-the-blank templates and forms, you can’t help but find the ways and means of presenting your information in a form that readers will eat up. It will literally pull the thoughts from your head in an organized, compelling form.

Use at your own risk*

Available by prescription only…and I’m prescribing it for you here!

Be forewarned though… Ideas will flow out so fast it will make your pen spin. Best to have that paper ready to catch them.

*Safe and effective when used as directed.

There you go. Or at least, I hope you do.

Otherwise, you’ve read this far just to increase the log-jam of information that got you here in the first place.

Take action!

That’s the only way out of this mess.

“Here’s to your struggle-free, strain-free writing success!”

– Robert Schwarztrauber