Fearless Quest Week 3: Breaking Business Barriers

This week was dedicated to scare myself when comes to business. I know the things listed below won’t seem that daring to most, but to me they truly were terrifying things. Performing each scary item is definitely putting me on the road to financial freedom and business growth.

August 1 – I joined Demand Studios. In the writing world, Demand Studios is definitely looked down as a factory churning out subpar writing daily. Hence the reason I was nervous about joining. I didn’t want to be judged by the writing community. While I know Demand Studios isn’t exactly what real writers aspire to, I saw it as a way to improve my writing speed and ability to take direction. After all, at $25 per article you better be able to churn out one story in under an hour for it to be worth it. Plus,  the inability to chat with your editors makes it necessary for you to follow direction well and write tight content. Well, I bit the bullet and haven’t been scorned by other writers yet.

August 2– Asked for a testimonial. Everyone knows that the best way to sell ebooks is with lots of testimonials and reviews. Well up, until now I haven’t gotten many because I’ve been so afraid to simply ask for the feedback and assistance. I made a bold move and asked the Dean of Students from my alma matter to read and review my book. It was very scary to ask considering I graduated years ago and chances of him remembering me were slim. Much to my surprise he said, yes!

August 3 – Became a Brand Ambassador. Though I’ve done some modeling and performance work in the past, I’ve left any trace of it behind when I dropped the runway and picked up the laptop for writing. So when I got the opportunity to work as a promo model/brand ambassador at an upcoming race in the area I was apprehensive. Rather than shy away from it and cower in fear, I decided to use the opportunity to revisit something I once loved. I’m gad I made the effort, but unsure whether I’ll do more in the future.

August 4 – Sent some work to family. If your family is anything like mine, you know nothing can stay within in the family for long. The moment, you win an award, star in a play, or score a goal suddenly the whole world knows. Well, one of my aunts goes way beyond the typical acts of a proud mama and straight to public relations manager on high gear. I think all of the above contribute to my fear of sending any of my writing to family members considering I am so shy. I’m not exactly sure what I expected to happen, but I did send some select family members emails of my previously published work. Nothing happened and it wasn’t as bad as  I thought it would be.

August 5 – Participated in shameless self promotion. I promoted myself in the most unusual way. I asked  the customer service representative of my apartment complex to look at my professional website and ebook. Well, maybe it wasn’t the most unusual way, but it probably wasn’t very appropriate considering it was in a follow up email to my recent lease assistant inquiry. Despite being somewhat inappropriate, I did it and no body threatened to kick me out so I guess it wasn’t so bad. After all, you never know where I’ll find my next client.

August 6 – Asked someone else I admire for a testimonial. Since asking my former dean for a testimonial of my ebook, 100 Things You Should Always Say – Dream Catcher Edition, went pretty well I decided to kick it up a notch by asking someone I really admired –  the director of my hometown library. Besides the fact  that I truly admire her as a person, she knows books so I knew her opinion would have merit. When I asked her to review the book, she practically jumped at the chance! I was really nervous she would decline as I thought she probably gets asked to review books on a daily basis by other library patrons. I was wrong.

August 7 – Read reviews of my ebook. Considering I was busy asking so many people for reviews, I figured it was about time I actually read the reviews I already had. However, I was afraid I couldn’t deal with the harsh words of strangers on the internet. I just knew there were terrible things written about the ebook that could make me quite writing. Luckily, there weren’t many bad things to say. There were only three reviews, and only one of them wasn’t favorable, which I consider pretty impressive for not doing much to get reviews.