No One Is The Best At Anything

I tried to write this opening sentence about mindset shifts I had in 2020 and I accidentally typed mindset shits. If that isn’t a Freudian slip, I don’t know what is.

Because it’s hard to shift your mindset. It feels shitty at first. You have to acknowledge that a belief you hold or a habit you’ve created isn’t working. You have to admit that something is wrong.

Something I had to confront this year was that I had this quiet (but very real) internalized pressure that told me I needed to be the best. That if I wasn’t the best, it wasn’t worth trying. But one day, probably when I was talking about how to write copy that communicates directly with (and only with) your ideal clients, a lightbulb went off.

No one is the best copywriter.

Or the best mom or wife or exerciser or money manager or household keeper or cook or any of that.

There’s a lot of excellence in the world and quantifying is both exhausting and impossible. Being the best isn’t the goal. Not in life or in my business. The goal is working with integrity, giving generously, and making sure people feel valued while I do it.

I will never be the best copywriter. But I can be an excellent one for a very specific group of people.

Being The Best For The Right People

Learning that I’m not the best and I’m not going to be the best for everyone was hard, but freeing.

The freedom came when I realized that I could be great—excellent even—for my perfect clients.

Let’s make this about you. Think about your direct competition: photographers in your area who are trying to reach the same clients that you are. If you use them as something to measure up to, business can quickly start to feel very scary.

There is no “best photographer” in your area.

There are simply photographers who serve different audiences.

So now think about your favorite client: the one who loved working with you and who you would clone every weekend if you could. You were the best photographer for them.

The way to get more of those clients is by talking directly to them.

You can do this on your website. Start the copy with the answers to a couple simple questions:
1. What is your ideal client thinking about when they land on your home page?
2. What solution are those ideal clients looking for?

Then, you simply use your entire website to prove that you understand what they are thinking about and you are the solution to their problem.

So stop trying to be the best for everyone. Be the best for the right people.

If you wanna hear more of my thoughts on this, I talked A LOT more on Hannah Murphy’s podcast, Taking Action last month …

All The Details

To listen to this episode on your computer, go here.

You can also find it on the Apple Podcast App, on Google Podcasts, and on Tune In.

What else you’ll learn:
– How to do justify your value as a photographer
– Selling your services with excitement instead of struggle
– How your images and words can play together well on your site.

Thank you so much Hannah! I loved all your episodes and am honored to have been on one!

If you’ve listened to the episode and want some extra help DIY-ing your site, I’ve got a guide for that.