Recently, onstage, a client spent longer on her personal story than I recommend in my Speak-to-Sell Signature Talk formula.

Although it felt right to her at the time, and she got great results, she still asked me if she did the right thing.

I told her that you need to follow the rules in the beginning, because you want to learn the model, prove the model, and make sure that you know how to do it.

But once you get the structure down, if you feel the urge to try something a bit different and see if it works, that’s perfectly fine.

That’s when it’s okay to break the rules.

What you don’t want to do is what I did last year.

I took Clint Arthur’s media class, where we all got a chance to pitch to 20 producers by Skype. He gave us very specific rules about what to say and what not to.

Well, I got up there, and I broke the rules. I told one of the ladies from the biggest channel that her hair looked great, because we had this girlfriend connection and I usually like to play with that.

But when she sent back her list, I was not on it.

In fact, I was one of only two people out of 18 who did not get booked on that station. Ouch.

It was such a great lesson, though, about when it’s not okay to break the rules.

I tried to improvise from the beginning. And, as I painfully re-discovered, that usually doesn’t work.