Allison Nazarian Just another WordPress weblog

I receive a lot of inquiries through my website. Most come as a result of my site’s high rankings for a number of key terms and keywords that people needing copywriting services would be searching for.

That’s the good news.

The not-so-good news is that most of these inquiries are from folks looking for bargain-basement pricing and with little to no understanding of what good copywriting is or should be.

You know the saying about having two ears and one mouth and using these tools proportionally? Well, the reason this idea is so often-quoted is because it is true.

And it’s true because those who talk too much about themselves are physically, logistically and in every other way literally incapable of listening.

Welcome to the 2009 Do-It-Yourself Marketing Telseminar Series.

Beginning in January, once every month of 2009 (as well as once a quarter as a special bonus) I will be interviewing some of the world’s top experts on the latest tips, tools and trends of marketing, sales, P.R., advertising and social media, all with one goal: To give you high quality, actionable information that will put money in your pocket .

Re-run and edited from my Your Words, Your Business e-newsletter (view full version here).

I spent time two weekends ago in Maryland, where I grew up, spending time with my sister and her family. Aside from the bitter cold, which I am no longer used to as I live in warm and sunny Florida, it was a wonderful weekend.

INC Magazine is one of the old-school must-reads for the Entrepreneurial Set. It’s also one of the few publications I still read as a hard copy, as in not on a screen but in my hands and with pages.

I particularly like Norm Brodsky, a phenomenally successful entrepreneur who writes a regular column in INC. In one recent column (Secrets of a $110 Million Man), Brodsky talks about guidelines that the best entrepreneurs follow. These are powerful tips that are both sobering and right-on, but one really upset me.

Can I vent for a moment?

My 9-year-old daughter has discovered e-mail. Like, really discovered. Like, runnning home from school and logging on kind of discovered.

I’m torn because there are so many potential dangers of her being online but it’s also important to me that she become as online-proficient as possible early on. She shows signs of a major entrepreneurial streak (I pay her $5/week for performing various duties in my office, but that’s another story) and I want her to explore that as much (and as safely) as possible.

In Part 1 of this blog post, I talked about my feelings about home offices and the home-office-or-not-to-home-office struggle I had in the earlier days of my business.

When we last left off, I had “moved out” and rented a “real” office. The office was great — a nice building, wonderful neighbors, a reasonable rent and even a pond surrounded by orchids and filled with Koi fish in front of the building (remember, I live in Florida — it’s always warm). The commute was very reasonable (15-20 minutes one way) and for the first time, clients and meetings came to me.

Those of you in the U.S. are probably focused on tomorrow, Thanksgiving — on your plans for the day and on what you’re thankful for on a wider level.

Like you, I started thinking about what I was thankful for. And then I probably got distracted by 18 other things. And then, I started really thinking – I put myself into the future (not in the sci-fi sense) and asked myself what I would like to be thankful for next year at this time.

Many of you who read this blog and follow me are work-from-home solopreneurs/entrepreneurs. And many of you work in a larger, more corporate environment. And many of you are somewhere in-between.

I love you all equally and, now I can also say that I can relate to you all equally.