The thing I was ashamed of was pure gold.

I have a secret.

I run a successful copywriting shop and creative agency…

… but by all traditional standards, I have no right to do so.

I don’t have a marketing degree.

I have never worked in an advertising agency on Madison Avenue.

And if I’m going to be REALLY honest, I didn’t even know what copywriting was before I started my own copywriting business, 6 years ago.

Yet –

I am regularly introduced as an expert in my field.

I am often invited to speak on a topic where I have no traditional “credentials.”

My clients trust and go to great lengths to seek out my opinion about writing and messaging for business.

But, if we would have met in my first two years of business, I would have hidden the real way I learned how to do what I do.

Because instead of working in an ad agency, I spent the first 15 years of my post-college life exploring.

Here are my credentials:

I taught English in a Japanese middle school.

I volunteered at soup kitchens and stayed up playing chess with homeless teens.

I rode my bike across Europe, the US, and Japan (in the winter!).

And instead of studying marketing techniques, I studied people.

I learned how to teach.

I learned how to get myself into trouble, and find my own way out of it.

I learned how to invite people to do things in a genuine and slightly mischievous way.

Which seems pretty great now, right?

But when I was starting out, I didn’t think it was Enough to get anyone to hire me.

My friend Annie and I have been talking about the idea of “being enough” lately.

I wrote a prayer for myself earlier this year, and one of the lines is “the time has come to let go of the old feeling that you are not enough.”

Annie told me that, at first, she thought it was a feeling of not good enough.

But as she looked into it, she sees that it’s enoughness, plain and simple.

Is the way you got good at what you do now Enough?

Or do you tell yourself a made-up story about how you need to be someone else, in order to attract great clients?

One of the things I teach business owners about their message is to find is 3 distinctions — what makes you different.

It’s one of the 6 elements of your money-making message, and if we’re working together, I’ll tell you to put it in your Message Playbook.

Here’s the thing – most people will spout off their degrees, credentials and trainings as “what makes me different” or “why you want to work with me.”

But what’s interesting is that, often, at least one of your distinctions isn’t the thing that is conventionally respected.

It’s the thing you have been ashamed of, that you finally, irrevocably, OWN.

In my case, my clients finally said, “Stella, we don’t want to work with the slick advertiser. We LIKE that you are human, and quirky, and still know what you are talking about.”

The thing you are ashamed of can be pure gold, to your ideal clients.

When I started teaching your distinctions in the marketplace this way, one woman in the Writing Brigade had an epiphany.

She helps people lose weight and balance their hormones, while still living with joy (and the occasional slice of brie and glass of wine).

“I feel like I can’t really own helping clients lose weight, if I still have some pounds I’d like to lose, too,” she said.

We were in the writer’s room in Montana at the Writing Intensive, so I didn’t even have the chance to open my mouth before the room erupted, in protest and intervention.

“I don’t want to work with some skinny uptight lady who only eats rice cakes!”

“You lost 60 pounds, Ann, and kept it off for 5 years? That means something to me! I want THAT!”

“Are you kidding? You’re all about enjoying your life — who doesn’t want THAT as they lose weight?!”

Here’s the thing about shame – it only has power over us if we let it.

(For more on this, go watch and read Brene Brown.)

But as far as your message goes, I want you to check in and see if there’s anything that you’re hiding about yourself, because you think it’s not “enough.”

And just test out owning it this week, in your conversations with clients and your audience.

Because you don’t need to be perfect to win clients. And the more you share of who you really are, the more your ideal clients will be drawn to you, like moths to a flame.

Love this article? I’ll teach a free class on finding your distinctions in the Craft Your Message production lab, starting October 21^st, 3-4:15pm EST. To register AND get my all new free guide: “10 Ways to Make Writing Easier, More Profitable and Sound Like the Real You” click here.

Mighty thanks to ganeshaisis flickr photostream for the hand.