Just last week I was speaking to a group of 50 women and men. I opened by holding up a $20 and asking who would like this $20 bill. I also mentioned there were no strings attached. You would have thought that everyone would be raising their hand wanting $20 bill.

That isn't what happened. Less than half people raised their hand.

I gave $20 bill away and stood in silence. It wasn't a long silence but silence when everyone expects to be hearing you talk is long whether its 10 seconds of several minutes. I was waiting until I saw a few audience members began fidgeting.

Then one women spoke up. ¡°Darn, I could have used that $20 for gas today.¡± You guessed it, she was one of hesitant ones.

My topic was on marketing. The exercise demonstrated that even when we market from truth with no strings attached and even though we totally think of customer first, many people perceive, assume, that there is going to be a catch to offer.

This is a powerful lesson when you are expressing your offer, whether its written or verbal, majority of people reading or hearing it are going to be thinking with an ¡°it's too good to be true¡± mentality.

This means that whenever you are preparing any type of marketing material you need to see your offer from this perspective.

The temptation is to think, "Hey, that's way outside my level of expertise. I'm not ready for that."

My advice to you is this: Do it.

When you are faced with opportunities that are larger, more challenging and ultimately 'scary', that's when you learn fastest, stretch yourself most and build your inner confidence as a copywriter.

Let me give you a couple of related examples.

Within my first two months as a direct marketing copywriter I was presented with opportunity to write a mailing for Franklin Mint.

As some of you may know, Franklin Mint is a very, very sophisticated company when it comes to direct marketing. I seriously wondered whether I might end up looking like an idiot, wasting my time and theirs.

But I took on job. Scary, yes. But it worked out fine. I learned a great deal and continued to do work for them.

Here's another, related example.