Hi,

After many months of hard work I’m happy to report I’m doing a little relaxing with my friends and family.

It started off with a workout at my friend Ali Brown’s swanky gym in Santa Monica. I took a kickboxing class with Cindy Brown while Kim Castle and Ali did cardio. Kim had to leave but the rest of us did some rare shopping offline on the 3rd Street Promenade. I fell in love with a metallic material at Miss Sixty but Ali intervened. It was in a bubble dress. What is up with that hideous fashion. NO ONE looks good in it. I almost got anyway because I loved the material but I found a top made of the same stuff. Disaster averted.

The next day I spent with another group of friends celebrating another birthday (the nerve of Mickley being born so close to my birthday - haha). John and I went to Malibu where we got married. It was so gorgeous. We saw dolphins playing in the surf around 5:30pm.

Today I finally met one of my assistant’s, Cathy Moody, and her family. (Don’t even try to poach her from me…I keep her extremely busy.) It was nice to meet in person even though I feel like I’ve known her for years.

Finally to wind up the weekend, John and I went horseback riding through Griffith Park. It was so relaxing. We barely spoke a word the entire time. Just coasted through the mountains, occasionally galloping, but mostly just cruising. I came home and took a two hour nap, which is very rare for me. I miss being out in nature. Living in the city can wear on your senses sometimes.

The day you hung out your shingle as an entrepreneur, you also took on the job of marketer. The minute you stop marketing yourself is when your pr0fits dry up, so you may as well get used to your role. If you don’t let people know what your business has to offer, you will NOT run a thriving business.

You may not want to hear this - in fact it may even make you mad. But a great way to let people know you have something special for them is through a solo-mailing (an email with a single offer sent to your permission-based list of subscribers).
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This week we’re going to reinforce the training that Recruits of my Red Hot Copywriting Bootcamp are drilled on. In case you didn’t read my last article we covered what you MUST do before you write a single word of copy. Each weekday we build on your skills of creating your copy from the ground up following my Field Guide. By the end of this copywriting Bootcamp you won’t believe that it was you capable of writing such a professional sales letter.

Get out your pen and paper, set your timer for 15 minutes, and let’s go!
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I firmly believe that all of us are creative.  We all have unique thoughts, make distinctive connections, and are capable of producing great things for our businesses and for our lives…if we put our minds to it.

Like your car engine, your brain works better when it’s warmed up.  Here are a few cool ways to do that – and get closer to crafting killer copy!

In Daniel Pink’s very cool new book A Whole New Mind (no, I don’t have a superhuman ability to read books, but I do use a service that provides executive summaries of the top business books, Soundview Executive Book Summaries® - www.red-hot-copy.com/recommends/summary) I found a great new way to get that creative motor running.
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“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Want to know one of my secrets to getting my copy très conversational? Bridge Phrases! You know. That throw-away language my journalism school professors called “empty and useless.” The connector phrases that keep the pace going - like a bucket brigade! Direct mail copywriter Maxwell Ross used that concept to illustrate how copy should flow.

Let me take you back to when the West in America was young. When men were rugged. And women didn’t have to diet. I’m talking about the time before there were fire departments. Oh, there were still fires. Just no organized way to put them out. So they came up with the bucket brigade system.

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Be a Winner! Answer the Challenge! An e-course is a sequence of emails set up to be delivered automatically without any effort on your part after the initial set up. Just set it and forget it. Setting up a free e-course is a great way to keep your services on top of mind and educate people about what you can do for them.

I highly suggest you subscribe to other people’s e-courses in your field and study what information they offer too. Psst! To make this ecourse work, you’ll need a sequential autoresponder service. I use www.clickstartcart.com. (It’s an entire shopping cart system, but I actually signed up with them initially because of the sequential autoresponders. They have a free 30 day trial).

HERE’S HOW TO GET STARTED
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My website www.red-hot-copy.com has been down for three long days now. That means no online sales. That means no email. That means brand, spanking new web surfers looking for information about copywriting pull up a “Page Not Found” when they Google my website.

I am not a happy camper.

But life goes on. It has to. So how can an Internet marketer run an Internet business without a website? Here are a few workarounds to keep you in business while things get straightened out.
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“The ancestor of every action is a thought.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last week, my computer came to a complete standstill. It was brutal. I watched as the life was slowly sucked out of it with no explanation whatsoever. Then little by little, within a few hours I couldn’t even open a single program. It was kaput. I panicked and put in a 911 call to Mr. Red Hot Copy, my husband, John.  Now John isn’t about to let me get away lecture -free. He explains to me that I need to get rid of all the spyware from my system. Spyware?! I didn’t ask for any spyware. How could I have such a thing? Well, it turned out my system was loaded with it. We hired a computer geek (I mean this affectionately) to come out and operate. Boy did I get a lesson about computer maintenance. Here’s what I found out.
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As the year winds down I can’t help but look at how I want to improve my 2007. It’s what all successful entrepreneurs must do – you included! In fact, the more successful you want to BECOME, the more important PLANNING becomes.

So let me pull back the curtain and confess some of the shortcomings Red Hot Copy endured this past year.

1. Not using mentorship opportunities like I should have. I currently have two mentors as well as running my own Sterling, Gold, and Platinum mentorship programs (just email me for more information if you’re curious). I get on my own mentees about not using their benefits enough. But the truth is I was also guilty of not using my mentors to full capacity.
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What do Mark Victor Hansen, Robert Allen, Anthony Robbins, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Ben Franklin have in common?

They all leverage the power of the mastermind team.

The mastermind works on the concept that two (or more) heads are better than one. When you gather a group of like-minded people and focus on one particular problem, a funny thing happens. Not only do you get intelligent feedback on blind spots you may not have noticed. But a truly phenomenal thing also happens with a mastermind group - the psychic aspect.
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