Creative prostitution

Hey Bestie,

My swipe file is on version 1.44.

7 years of other people's emails, sales letters and upsells, filed away like a serial killer keeps fingernails. I still open it most weeks.

And look, modelling works. You take someone's offer or copy, put your own sauce on it, ship it. I've taught that and I'll teach it again.

But at some point it stopped being a tool for me and became an thing I needed to do. Study what's working, say what everyone else is saying a bit louder, go viral, feel nothing. I've started calling it creative prostitution, and honestly the pay isn't even that good.

The freest I've ever felt in this business had nothing to do with that file. It was the times something came through me like a charge and I just said it, before I'd had a chance to check whether it fit a "hook formula".

People can tell the difference.

You've watched someone sell a thing they're properly into, and you've watched someone sell for the paycheck, and you knew which was which in about 6.9 seconds. One feels like a conversation. The other feels like a sales bro pitch oozing in crocs.

So if your content feels hard right now and it's landing like a wet fart in a lift, I'd ask whether you're actually in it.

Or are you cruising through a version of your business that an older you set up?

He or she had his reasons. They're just not the one running it anymore, and you're allowed to want something different. Sometimes that means folding an offer, or walking away from the thing that "works" because it doesn't work for you now.

How long are you going to carry that because you haven't got the courage to tell the truth yet?

I asked myself that one this week and didn't love the answer for some specific bits.

It mostly comes down to permission.

Give yourself that and the expression follows, and the connection (which is where the sales actually come from) follows that.

If you're carrying a business that doesn't fit anymore and want help working out what to cut and what to say instead, I'd love for you to hit reply and tell me what you've experienced lately.

It's the very reason I'm doing this free work this week because most of the stuff I've been putting out there seems to have resonated.

Your biggest fan,

Jacob 'creatively sparking' Pegs

oh look, a hooman!

ps. I've had a handful of clients ask about what to do now that CustomGPTs are discontinued. So I beautifully crafted this for you here (https://jacobpegs.swipefast.io/aikit).