Michel Fortin: No, I think if you want to look at opti­mism in the best way is to look at it as an edu­ca­tional process. Learn­ing is part of it… sit­ting down with peo­ple, talk­ing with them, spend­ing time with them, read­ing books, spend­ing your time on learn­ing as much as you pos­si­bly can.

You will be able to go down the right road. Fast or slow doesn’t mat­ter and that’s not opti­mism. That’s just being. That’s just fol­low­ing your con­science. That’s just being a real­ist. It’s not being a pes­simist. It’s not being opti­mist. It’s prob­a­bly an opti­mal point of look­ing at it, an opti­mal point or way to look at things, but it’s not nec­es­sar­ily optimistic.

Ralph Zuran­ski: Do you think it takes courage to pur­sue new ideas?

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So, if you’re fol­low­ing the com­mand­ments, you should now have a unique name, pos­si­bly a tagline, and estab­lished your­self as the first or leader in your unique cat­e­gory. What about the ser­vice or prod­uct you offer? Do you offer an extra­or­di­nary prod­uct or ser­vice, or do you offer an ordi­nary one?

Even if the ser­vice you pro­vide is cus­tom­ary, tra­di­tional, and prob­a­bly offered by your com­pe­ti­tion, you should make it appear unique just as well.

Remem­ber that per­cep­tion is more pow­er­ful than truth. You don’t need to empha­size that your prod­uct or ser­vice is unique, bet­ter than the com­pe­ti­tion, or even the best for that mat­ter. Doing so by declar­ing that it is can some­times be worse than not say­ing any­thing at all, and the rea­son for that is that it makes your self-​​serving claim appear sus­pect or exaggerated.

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Free­lance copy­writ­ers are an inter­est­ing bunch. They prac­tice the art of sales­man­ship in print, yet have dif­fi­culty sell­ing them­selves. They strug­gle when it comes to self-​​promotion.

So instead of being well-​​fed and con­tent, they often go hun­gry. Why is this?

I believe it comes down to three fun­da­men­tal defi­cien­cies. I observed these in myself when I was get­ting started a few years ago. I have con­tin­ued to observe them in other copy­writ­ers who are launch­ing new free­lance careers.

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I’ll never for­get this for as long as I live.

The real estate office man­ager marched to his secretary’s desk. He rubbed his face in frus­tra­tion. I stopped mak­ing cold calls to spy on their conversation.

In muf­fled tones, he told her to write a “house ad” for a new list­ing. He wasn’t sure what to write. So he told her to come up with some­thing. Anything.

Back then I sold real estate for a liv­ing. I just started learn­ing how to write ads that work. But I couldn’t believe what just transpired.

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What I have said in the last chap­ter applies as well to the pro­fes­sional per­son and the wage-​​earner as to the per­son who is engaged in sell­ing or any other form of business.

No mat­ter whether you are a physi­cian, a teacher, or a cler­gy­man, if you can give increase of life to oth­ers and make them sen­si­ble of that fact, they will be attracted to you, and you will get rich. The physi­cian who holds the vision of him­self as a great and suc­cess­ful healer, and who works toward the com­plete real­iza­tion of that vision with faith and pur­pose, as described in for­mer chap­ters, will come into such close touch with the source of life that he will be phe­nom­e­nally suc­cess­ful; patients will come to him in throngs.

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A per­son who desires to make an impres­sion must stand out in some way. Being eccen­tric, being abnor­mal is not dis­tinc­tion to covet. But doing admirable things in a dif­fer­ent way gives one a great advantage.

So with sales­men, in per­son or in print. There is unique­ness which belit­tles and arouses resent­ment. There is refresh­ing unique­ness which enhances, which we wel­come and remem­ber. For­tu­nate is the sales­man who has it.

We try to give each adver­tiser a becom­ing style. We make him dis­tinc­tive, per­haps not in appear­ance, but in man­ner and in tone. He is given an indi­vid­u­al­ity best suited to the peo­ple he addresses.

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