The Copywriter Club Podcast: Recent Episodes
Kira Hug and Rob Marsh
Most podcasts about email are pretty basic. Build a list. Email often. Create a lead magnet people want. That kind of tired advice isn’t very useful. So in this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter Jacob Suckow about the skills and expertise it takes to succeed in this industry. This is a masterclass in succeeding as a six-figure email copywriter. Don’t miss it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Get Jacob’s Playbook here
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Research Mastery
Transcript:Rob Marsh: Most podcasts about email don’t get into the nuts and bolts of how it really works. Until now. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
When you hear a podcast host like me say we’re talking about email on the podcast today, do your eyes glaze over? Do you think, here we go again… more advice about how you need to build your list, need to have a lead magnet, need to email regularly… or maybe you think of tired advice and adages like “the money is in the list” and “the more you hit send, the more you earn”. This is not that.
This episode is not that.
My guest on the podcast today is Jacob Suckow. This is Jacob’s second appearance on the podcast. The first time was about four years ago. And the change in his expertise and business is substantial. He was just figuring things out in that first interview. Today he runs a six-figure email business helping his clients grow their sales with high-level strategy using regular emails and email sequences stacked on top.
How do you go from writing emails and pitching products to landing mulit-year retainers taking on not just the writing duties, but also strategy and responsibility for increasing response rates and sales? We talked about exactly how to do that in this episode.
We also talked about exactly how much you could be earning doing email for clients… Jacob shares all three of his pricing tiers to give you an idea of what you could be earning… and using his pricing structure you could create a six-figure business with just 3-4 client retainers.
And we talked about what it looks like to lever your experience with email strategy into a fractional CMO role and what that looks like too.
Finally we talked about newletters and how this is probably the biggest opportunity for copywriters out there today… the opportunity to grow and own an audience, then partner with offer owners or create your own offers for the audience you own is huge and one that perhaps every copywriter should be chasing down… and I’m not talking about writing weekly emails to other copywriters. These are niche opportunities that can be very profitable for the copywriters willing to put in a little work.
There’s a lot of good stuff in this episode so stick around.
Before we get to my discussion with Jacob, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery
And now my interview with Jacob Suckow.
Planning for the unexpected is one of those skills that successful people have. But you can’t plan for everything. This episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast features my guest, Dani Paige, who has become an expert in figuring out how to move forward when you have to deal with the unexpected. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Dani’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Sometimes you can plan for change. Other times you can’t—and you have to adjust anyway. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
One of the strategies we teach in The Copywriter Accelerator and our other programs where we talk about getting things done is planning ahead for when things don’t go as planned.
It’s pretty easy to set goals and expect the future to behave as expected. But the reality almost always turns out differently.
So you might come up with a plan to spend next Friday creating a new product or service, strategizing who its for, the various things to include to make it valuable, and so on. But then Friday arrives and you’re not feeling well, or a friend from out of town calls and wants to see you, or a family emergency ends up taking up a significant chunk of your day.
What happens then? Planning for the invevitable things that go wrong is a huge part of success. Thinking through the options before they happen can help keep you on top of things. But you can’t plan for everything.
A lot of copywriters we’ve had on the podcast have shared that a career they planned on pursuing turned out to be less than they expected. And they make an unplanned switch to writing copy. But there are other ways that life throws you a curveball and you need to quickly adjust expectations and behaviors to make things work.
My guest on the podcast today is Dani Paige. She started a corporate career that didn’t go as planned and found copywriting as a result. She’s changed the services she offers more than once. And she’s tried things she thought would work that failed.
More recently, she made changes to her business to prepare for maternity leave. Everything was ready to support her new family situation but once again, things turned out differently than she had planned.
So how do we as copywriters adjust on the fly when things don’t turn out the way we expect them to. That’s a big part of what we talked about on today’s episode.
Dani and I also talked about her journey into copywriting and how she learned to write sales pages and launch copy… if you want to write those kinds of projects, you can learn a lot from Dani and her approach to learning these skills.
And what Dani says about community and connection is a theme that has come up several times in the last few months here on the podcast. If you’re not building connections and participating in communities, you are not building a skill that is critical for your future success.
There’s a lot of good stuff in this episode so stick around.
Before we get to my discussion with Dani Paige, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery
And now my interview with Dani Paige.
Want to get more clicks? More sales? More clients? Then understanding why humans act the way they do will help. In his new book, Hacking the Human Mind, author Michael Aaron Flicker shares dozens of psychological “hacks” that copywriters should understand before they write copy. Michael Aaron is our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Hacking the Human Mind by Michael Aaron Flicker
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Want more responses, sales, and customers? Let’s hack the human mind. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Several months ago, I was fortunate enough to get an advanced copy of a book called, Hacking the Human Mind. Now… if you have a book and want me to read it, giving it a title like Hacking the Human Mind and including ideas and insights from behavioral science, neuro marketing, and psychology is pretty much guaranteed to get my attention.
But this book goes one step farther by looking at marketing in the real world then searching for the psychology that explains why something works. The approach basically flips the usual marketing tactic to-do list from: here are a bunch of psychological triggers… exclusivity, scarcity, risk removal, curiosity and so on… make sure you include them all into your sales process, and instead look for what works already and figuring out why it works.
That’s a bit different from the usual approach. So I asked one of the authors, Michael-Aaron Flicker to talk with me about some of the concepts from the book.
We talked about the Pratfall or Blemish effect and how to turn a product flaw into an asset. There are very few perfect products in the world, so understanding how to use this effect in your copy is incredibly useful.
We also talked about how to address product changes in a way that doesn’t generate backlash. We’ve seen customers revolt against design and formulation changes over the last few years—Kraft Mac and Cheese did it the right way. And to hear that story, you’ll have to keep listening to this episode.
Another idea we talked about is offer simplicity… we’re often tempted to stack feature on feature and then benefit upon benefit. We do this to pile on the good stuff and make our offers more valuable to our clients. But the actual effect may be the exact opposite. Again, to hear how that works you’ll want to keep on listening.
One thing Michael Aaron points out that it takes more than knowing about a particular psychological effect or persuasion trigger, often you need to find new and innovative ways to use these triggers.
Before we get to my discussion with Michael Aaron, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery
And now my interview with Michael Aaron Flicker.
Transcript summary coming soon.
Writing for clients is just one way to build a copywriting business. Once you’ve done that for a while, you may decide it’s not right for you. So what does the alternative look like? I invited copywriter Krystle Church to join for for the 266th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about that and a lot more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Krystle’s Email List
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Research Mastery
Partial Transcript:Rob Marsh: When your business stops working for you, what can you do to fix things? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
There are a lot of copywriters who build a successful business writing for clients. Or maybe they build an agency around their offers and niche. But then after a few years they don’t love the business they created for themselves. Sometime we just burn out and need to do something a bit different. Maybe they no longer want employees or contractors. Maybe they get tired of working directly with clients. Maybe they realize that instead of using their skills to attract customers to other peoples businesses, they decide to use their skills to sell products to their own clients. And then many of us are entrepreneurs at heart and have always wanted to build a business other than writing for a list of clients. Shifting a business from offering services to clients to something else can be a challenge.
It’s a very different kind of work. Instead of creating assets for clients, you may spend your time creating assets for your own business, then spending even more time getting attention for your offers.
For many copywriters, this is the dream—a copywriting business with customers instead of clients.
But there’s a lot of work that goes into a business switch like this. Validating offers. Finding a client base for your offers—which is almost certainly a very different set of clients than you’ve been writing for. Building out marketing systems to sell your new products. Figuring out how to deliver value when you’re not actually delivering copy.
I wanted to talk about this with someone who’s gone through the process recently. So I invited copywriter and coach Krystle Church to come back to the podcast and talk about the changes she’s made to her business over the past couple of years. The business Krystle has today is very different from the one she was running two years ago. She’s excited about the new direction and having more fun than when she was burning out with a calendar full of projects that required her attention from the time she woke up until she went to bed at night.
If you’ve been thinking about re-imagining your business, this episode may give you a few ideas to try. You’ll get a few tips about validating a new offer. And you might even decide to dabble with an offer for your niche that at least gives you a taste of what a different kind of business would feel like. This kind of business isn’t for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not for most copywriters. But it’s worth thinking about how you might be able to add to or change your business so it fits your needs a bit better.
Before we get to my discussion with Krystle, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery
And now my interview with Krystle Church.
Copywriters are teachers. We teach customers how the products and services we write about help them. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with teacher turned copywriter Meredith Cooley about all the ways copywriters use their teaching skills. Even if you don’t think you’re a teacher, you’ll learn a lot from this episode—including a simple copywriting lesson from Bluey. Yes, that Bluey. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Turn the Page Newsletter
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter UndergroundResearch Mastery
Transcript:Rob Marsh: Copywriters are teachers. So should more teachers be copywriters? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
A few years ago I had a conversation with one of my copywriting mentors. She mentioned that she had considered teaching as a possible career path. And I shared that I had the same thought when I started my career. Then we talked about the number of former teachers we knew who had left the classroom to write copy. And that’s when it dawned on me that copywriting isn’t just something that former teachers or potential teachers do.
Copywriting is teaching. But instead of practicing that skill in a classroom, copywriters are teaching on the page or on the screen, helping potential customers learn about products and solutions, about processes and unique mechanisms, and how to solve the very real problems and pains they are experiencing in their lives.
In the years since, I’ve interviewed close to a dozen former teachers on this podcast… people who are still teaching, just not in a formal classroom any more.
Do you feel this as a copywriter? Do you see yourself as a teacher for your clients and their customers?
My guest for today’s podcast is Meredith Cooley, a teacher turned copywriter who has helped dozens of other teachers leave the classroom and become copywriters for various businesses around the world.
Teachers have so many skills that copywriters need, from project management to engaging with stakeholders at various levels of a business. And perhaps most importantly, good teachers have to be able to take dry, boring content and make it exciting for an often disinterested and bored audience.
And if you listened to last week’s episode, you heard me talk about how I’ve started teaching marketing at a local college here in my home town. The crossover between teaching students and writing for customers is large. And that’s what this episode is all about.
Even if you don’t see yourself as a teacher, this episode may change your mind about how you think about your relationship with the customers you write for.
Before we get to our interview, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery
And now my interview with Meredith Cooley.
This episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is another guest-less show. It’s just Rob sharing a few thoughts about the importance of creating customer journeys for the products you write for so you’re actually addressing your customer’s needs and not just your clients. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Research Mastery
What we talked about:Transcript is underway…
What’s the biggest opportunity for copywriters today? That’s just one of the ideas we talked about on this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Tiana Asperjan is my guest and we talked about how she became a copywriter, her “secrets” for connecting with clients, showing up consistently even when things are uncomfortable, and the biggest opportunities for writers today. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Tiana’s YouTube
Tiana’s Newsletter
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Research Mastery
Highlights from this episode:Rob Marsh: What is the biggest opportunity in copywriting today? We’re about to reveal the answer. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
When inviting guests to share their experiences on this podcast, I often look for writers who are doing something a little bit differently than their peers are doing. Someone who has a different approach, a unique viewpoint on something, or maybe they’re testing things that the rest of us just aren’t up to speed on yet.
My guest on today’s podcast is Tiana Asperjan. Lately I’ve been seing Tiana everywhere… although that might just be a function of the algorithm showing me more stuff like the stuff I’ve seen recently. If you’re a copywriter, Tiana’s Youtube channel, social media feed, and newsletter are excellent. She’s teaching what works in ads and copy right now. But she doesn’t just say what’s working, she focuses on the strategy and psychology behind an ad so you know not just that it works, but why it works.
She’s doing things a bit differently from a lot of other copywriters and most of us who are sharing ideas and insights about copywriting with other writers. So I asked her to join me on today’s episode and boy am I glad that I did. I like all of the interviews I share with you each week, but this one really stands out.
Tiana’s story of how she got to where she is is a masterclass on the steps to success as a writer. It’s less about the destination, and more about accumulating the experiences and expertise you need to be great. I think as you listen in, you’ll learn a lot from Tiana’s experiences.
As for the answer to that question I posed at the opening of this episode… what’s the biggest opportunity for copywriters working today who want to stay relevant for years to come? Well, you’ll just have to listen to this episode because Tiana reveals what it is and why this particular “niche” —and I’ve got niche in air quotes here—is where more copywriters ought to be focusing their efforts today. If you want a look at a industry or niche that is desperate for help from good copywriters, you’ll want to keep listening.
Before we get to all that, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery
Newsletters are a big opportunity that many copywriters are ignoring to the detriment of their own businesses. For the 462nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I invited newsletter strategist Ciler Demiralp to talk about the newsletter industry and how writers can take advantage of this emerging industry. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Newsletter Circle
Ciler’s LinkedIn
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Here’s a summary of the episode:
Want to do more than “write” copy? Then you need to get involved with your client’s projects before they decide what they’re going to do. And to explain how you do that, copywriter Jamie Thomson joins me on The Copywriter Club Podcast. We talked about his process for going from discovery call to paid workshop and then paid project on this episode. You don’t want to miss it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Jamie’s website
Jamie’s free Strategist Copywriter Course
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: If you’re a copywriter who wants more input into the work you do and more money for contributing your insights early, keep listening. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Far too many copywriters are content taking an assignment from a client and simply writing the words. In fact, there are thousands of copywriters and content writers who think that’s what copywriting is—choosing the right words to make a client sound good. They even call themselves wordsmiths as if all they’re doing is coming up with the words.
Now obviously, writing the words is a big part of what we do. Often, it’s the only obvious part of a project that we can point to and say, that’s my work.
But great copywriters don’t start with writing the words. They get involved in their client’s projects much earlier in the process. Before design direction is figured out. Before the brand voice is settled. Even before a client decides what exactly they need to solve the marketing problem they have. This is where copywriters should start on a project.
That work is strategy… deep diving on the problem to be solved and exploring the various ways to find a solution, some of which might not even be copywriting-focused.
Okay, so how do you do it. My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Jamie Thomson. Jamie takes his clients from discovery call to paid workshop to project in a process that immediately puts him in charge of driving the strategy for a project. It’s a process that makes him significantly more valuable and critical to the success of a project than simply taking a project from a client and writing the copy.
What’s more, because Jamie plays such an important role in his projects, and his impact is obvious to his clients, they often come back for even more work which takes the pressure off client-finding and allows him to spend more time client serving.
In the age of A.I., when the machines can write copy faster than you can… and yes I know, it’s not as good, but can your clients tell the difference? So in the age of A.I., this is one strategy that makes you more valuable as a copywriter who solves problems and gets paid to do it. If that sounds interesting to you, then stick around. And if that doesn’t sound interesting to you, maybe Jamie’s soothing Scottish accent will be enough to keep you engaged. It works for me.
No matter what kind of copywriting business you want for yourself, The Copywriter Underground is packed with resources to show up as a business owner—not just a freelancer—to help you find clients, and solve big problems that clients are happy to pay big money to get off their plates. From copywriting and business templates to get you started (including a legal document and a proven onboarding process) to workshops to help you build your authority, attract clients, create products and services your clients want to buy, how to be more strategic and a lot more—The Underground is like a starter-kit for your writing business… It’s a complete business-in-a-box that you can plug into your own business and hit play. As questions come up, you have access to our private slack community, monthly group coaching, and regular feedback on your copy. I’ve been inside a lot of memberships and The Underground is the best value for content writers and copywriters I’ve ever seen. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu-2.
And now, my interview with Jamie Thomson…
Thanks to Jamie Thomson for sharing his process for getting involved with strategy early on in a project where you can have a bigger impact and show how valuable your thinking is for solving real problems.
Like I said at the beginning of the show, when A.I. can write copy that clients think is good enough, you need to contribute to your client’s marketing efforts in new ways, hopefully ways where you can add even more value. Jamie’s process is one of those ways. It’s not exactly a roadmapping session which is another way to play a strategic role with clients—with a workshop you take the lead in helping clients determine what needs to be created and getting buy in on direction which helps eliminate changes and rework later on. If you implement Jamie’s approach, email me to let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear how you make it work for your business.
And of course, another place to find resources to help you show up as a more strategic thinker is The Copywriter Underground. There are workshops on finding clients, pitching, discovery calls, using diagnostic tools like a scorecard to get clients to say yes to working with you… workshops on copywriting, A.I., voice, and so much more. Check them all out at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu-2.
What’s the best word to describe a hard-working freelance copywriter? How about feisty? On the 460th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, content strategist and author, Suzanne Bowness, shares the concepts from her new book appropriately called, The Feisty Freelancer. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Feisty Freelancer Website
The Feisty Freelancer Book
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: What’s the best adjective to describe a hardworking, client-pleasing, financially successful copywriter? How about feisty? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
When it comes to freelancing, this is no one right way to do things. There are thousands of niches to serve. Millions of clients with millions of needs. There are hundreds of ways to find those clients and thousands more ways to solve their problems. But every writer who owns their own business has lots of things in common with others doing the same thing.
And if you try to describe them… especially those freelancers who are actually finding clients, doing good work, and earning enough to make a living, well one word that comes to mind is feisty.
The feisty freelancer brings energy to their work. They’re not afraid to stand up for themselves or the clients they’re writing for. And they even might be a little playful. The Feisty Freelancer is also the name of a new book written by content writer and former Think Tank member, Suzanne Bowness. Sue’s book is a primer for freelancers of all kinds—not just writers—who want to do more than struggle for scraps. The feisty freelancer has what it takes to succeed.
This is Sue’s second appearance on the podcast. The first one happened almost three years ago. It’s episode #319 if you want to check it out. Given Sue’s expertise as a freelancer, it’s probably not a coincidence that some of the ideas we talked about then made it into the book. But it’s been a while since we had that discussion, so I took the opportunity to ask Sue about the topics she covers in her book. Things like pitching, working with corporate clients, marketing a writing business, strategies for being productive and getting things done. We even talked about whether freelancing is something people should be considering at all today. I think you’ll like what she had to share.
Before we get to my interview with Sue, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. The Underground includes monthly coaching and expert workshops, an accountability group to keep you moving toward your goals, and more than 70 different workshops to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. Recently I asked a new member why she joined the Underground and she said she did it for the copy reviews. She wanted feedback on her work to help her improve her writing. And where many writing coaches charge as much as $1500 to look at a single sales page, you can get unlimited reviews in The Underground for less than $90 a month. Honestly this just might be the best value in the copywriting world. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu-2.
And now, my interview with Sue Bowness…
Transcript is underway…
Clients need strategy. But they don’t always know that’s what they need. So how do you sell it to them? How do you ensure your work is strategic even if all your client wants is a few emails? My guest for the 459th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is copywriter Kristen Vanderhoek who specializes in strategy. She spills the secrets for selling strategy to your prospects on this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:CursorAndInk.com
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Is strategy a big part of your copywriting business? If it isn’t now, it probably should be. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Every client needs a strategy. But they don’t always see it that way. They just want the emails or the web site or the launch plan. But it’s the strategy that ensures that the deliverables go to the right person, include the right message, have the right call to action—all at the right time. Clients want the deliverables and the benefits of the strategy, but they don’t always connect the two.
So it becomes your job as the copywriter or content strategist to connect the dots for them, to show how strategy leads to better copy and content.
On this episode of the podcast, my guest is Kristen Vanderhoek, a copywriter who focuses on brand strategy. We talked about how to approach strategy projects—Kristen shared exactly how she does it. And we talked about how you sell strategy to clients who usually just want to deliverable. We also talked about Kristen’s HOME framework, the step-by-step process she follows when working with clients to ensure they get well-thought out, strategic copy and design.
Finally, one of Kristen’s differentiators is her white-glove service. She takes steps to make working with her feel like a high-end experience and makes sure her clients aren’t left wondering what’s going on, or feeling like they overpaid because the presentation at the end of the project isn’t just a file hand-off.
If you’re a copywriter who is ready to level up the projects you work on and the way you deliver that work to your clients, you’ll want to listen to this interview.
Before we get to my interview with Kristen, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. The Underground includes monthly coaching and expert workshops, an accountability group to keep you moving toward your goals, and more than 70 different workshops to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. Recently I asked a new member why she joined the Underground and she said she did it for the copy reviews. She wanted feedback on her work to help her improve her writing. And where many writing coaches charge as much as $1500 to look at a single sales page, you can get unlimited reviews in The Underground for less than $90 a month. Honestly this just might be the best value in the copywriting world. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu-2.
And now, my interview with Kristen Vanderhoek…
Transcript coming….
Want to write a book? Me too. But for some reason, I just can’t get it finished. Or started. I’m stuck. So I asked author and book marketing expert, Lacy Lieffers to join me for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to share her thoughts on writing books, the mindset needed to power through the process, why books are powerful business tools and a lot more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:BlackFoxMarketing
Lacy’s Instagram
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Thinking about writing a book? Yeah me too. For a couple of years now. So let’s talk about how to actually get it done. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for more than a year or two, you’ve probably heard me talk about wanting to write another book. It’s been a goal of mine for a couple of years even though I haven’t made a lot of progress on it lately.
And you’ve probably heard at least one guest talk about the book writing process… guest like Laura Gale, Jennie Nash, Stephanie Chandler, Mary Adkins, Ryan Guthrie and Allison Fallon have all shared their approaches, their secrets for finding time and organizing thoughts for a book, and their frameworks for putting together a best-seller or at least a book that appeals to their readers. It’s been a few months, but we’ve covered this ground before. So why talk about it again?
Because if you’re anything like me, it’s less about learning the latest secret for writing a book and more about reminding yourself that this is still a goal, and now is as good a time as ever to get it done. So if you have a goal to write a book, or like me want to write another book—one that better reflects the work that you’re doing right now, or even a novel that will connect with readers today… this episode is for you.
My guest today is author and book marketer, Lacy Lieffers. Lacy runs a community for authors and she helps writers at all stages of the book writing process from organizing ideas to creating a game plan to make your book a best seller. She knows her stuff, so I was more than a little interested to see if what she has to share will light that fire under my backside and get my book moving again.
We talked about pen names, picking the right book topic for you, how to figure out if your book idea will work, book marketing, and a lot more. If you want to write a book, or you’re stuck in the middle of your book, or you don’t know where to start, this episode is for you. And for me.
Before we get to my interview with Lacy, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. The Underground includes monthly coaching and expert workshops, an accountability group to keep you moving toward your goals, and more than 70 different workshops to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. Recently I asked a new member why she joined the Underground and she said she did it for the copy reviews. She wanted feedback on her work to help her improve her writing. And where many writing coaches charge as much as $1500 to look at a single sales page, you can get unlimited reviews in The Underground for less than $90 a month. Honestly this just might be the best value in the copywriting world. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu-2.
And now, my interview with Lacy Lieffers…
Thanks to Lacy Lieffers for helping me reset my goal and efforts to finally get to writing my next book. I’ve written a book before, and I’ve got to admit that while I think it’s a good book, by the time I finished writing it, I was no longer in love with the topic or the book itself. And at least in the case of that book, it’s on a topic or niche that I don’t do a lot of work in any more. So it’s definitely time for a book that’s more relevant to my business today.
If you want to connect with Lacy or use some of the tools she has created for authors to write and market their books, connect with her on Instagram where she’s got a long list of links to resources for authors. You can also find her at blackfoxmarketing.ca
During our discussion we talked about the “speak your book” formula for writing a book. I want to be clear that I’m not saying that that process can’t work. But as Lacy points out, we tend to speak differently than we write. And we listen differently than we read. So you CAN speak your book, but you’ll want to put in a lot of work to make sure it actually reads like a book and not like a transcript which can be hard to follow. If this is the only way you’ll get your book out of your head and down on paper, go for it.
And while having a book for it’s own sake may be worth the effort, a book opens all kinds of doors for you and your business that other marketing materials simply can’t. Even a podcast which can be a great way to get your voice and thoughts into the world, it doesn’t have the permanence of a book. There’s a reason why author and authority are basically the same word. When it comes to building trust, getting the attention of your ideal clients, and even booking yourself onto podcasts or events… having a good book makes all the difference. If you want to write a book, drop me an email and let me know. I’d love to hear your process for getting it done. It might help inspire me to get mine done too.
Finally, a quick reminder that if you want your copy reviewed by someone who can give you expert advice on how to make it better, jump into The Copywriter Underground now and let me see your latest project. You can learn more about the Underground at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu-2.
What does it take to write in the health and wellness niche? I asked copywriter Kristen Driscoll about that on this 457th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. The wellness niche is booming and now is the time for good copywriters to jump in. Want to know why? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Kristen's LinkedInThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Writing for the health and wellness industry takes a special set of skills. And that’s what we talking about today on The Copywriter Club Podcast.One of the questions I get asked the most as a copywriting coach is which niche pays the most. I’m on the record as a big proponent of niching… our own research which you’ll find published on our blog shows that copywriters who write in a single niche make almost two times more than copywriters without a niche. And copywriters who are focused on 2-3 niches make 30% more than writers without a niche.But not all niches are equal. Some niches pay more than others… the financial niche is one of those and we’ve published several episodes in the past talking about that niche… look for our interviews with Clayton Makepeace, Kyle Milligan, Jake Hoffberg and Ridge Abraham. Most of those episode are a few years old. Partly because of its reputation as a profitable niche, it’s hard to break into work with the high-paying financial publishers.Another niche that is generally thought of as high-paying is the health and wellness niche, especially writers who work with supplement makers, fat loss products and medtech. So what do you need to know to break into this lucrative niche? I asked Kristen Driscoll, a health copywriter, to talk a bit about how she broke in and the work that she does. It’s a roadmap for your own path to success with wellness clients if you choose to follow it.We talked about how Kristen found her first client in the niche, why she chose health as the industry she wanted to work in, and why wellness is a such a massive opportunity for writers today.I think you’ll like this discussion that Kristen and I had so stick around.Before we get to my interview with Kristen, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. The Underground includes monthly coaching and expert workshops, an accountability group to keep you moving toward your goals, and more than 70 different workshops to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. Recently I asked a new member why she joined the Underground and she said she did it for the copy reviews. She wanted feedback on her work to help her improve her writing. And where many writing coaches charge as much as $1500 to look at a single sales page, you can get unlimited reviews in The Underground for less than $90 a month. Honestly this just might be the best value in the copywriting world. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu-2.And now, my interview with Kristen Driscoll…Hey, Kristen, welcome to the podcast. I am really excited to talk to you about how you became marketing strategist and a direct response copywriter for health and wellness brands and all of the things. So tell us your story.Kristen Driscoll: Well, thank you so much for having me on. I think, like many direct cop direct response copywriters and marketing folks... so that was my first career, and then I was a full time yoga teacher for 14 years, and still teach yoga. And also a lot of kind of some similarities there that I could draw upon with copywriting and getting started. So from moving on from copywriting or moving on from full time yoga teaching, is when I discovered copywriting and went full off the deep end and kind of immersed myself in in learning the craft, because it really is a craft, you know, some getting those principles down, I think, is key for a longevity of a career.
If you've been doing all the things, listening to the advice of the experts, and you're still not seeing results, maybe the thing holding you back is your mindset. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I'm speaking with former copywriter and current mindset coach, Brian McCarthy. We talked about burnout, imposter complex, confidence and much more. If you're doing "all the things" and still not reaching your goals, this episode is for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Emily Reagan’s InterviewTanya Geisler’s Interview (Imposter Complex)Brian’s WebsiteImposter Complex eBookThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundThe How to Write Emotional Copy Masterclass Transcript:Rob Marsh: Maybe the thing keeping you from getting what you want and working with the clients you deserve is you. Want to know more? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.Content writers, copywriters, social media writers, and marketers of all kinds face a bunch of challenges when it comes to building a successful business that supports the lifestyle that we all want. We talk about finding clients on the podcast a lot… maybe too much because there are other challenges… figuring out our niches, creating irresistable products and services that clients want to buy, pricing, positioning, marketing, and of course writing and so on.All of those business skills are important. If you can’t do them yourself or if you can’t hire someone else to do these for you, you’ll struggle as a business owner.But there is a whole other set of skills that we often overlook that also impact your ability to grow your business. We generally think of these hidden skills as mindset. And that’s what we’re talking about on today’s podcast.My guest is former copywriter and current mindset coach Brian McCarthy. Brian works with copywriters and others to help them work through mindset blocks and develop new skills to overcome them. Things like growing confidence, finding clarity and alignment, over coming imposter complex and a lot more. If you’ve been doing everything right but still struggle to get traction or feel like you’re making a difference in the world… or even just for your clients, maybe refocusing your efforts on mindset is what’s called for. So keep listening for our thoughts on these critical, but often ignored, mindset skills.Before we jump into our interview, a little while ago I recorded a masterclass to show copywriters, content writers and other marketers how to write “emotional” copy. Everyone says emotions sell, but how do you actually write emotional copy? I walk through more than a dozen examples in this masterclass and give you a proven process for figuring out the right emotions to focus on as you write… and how they change as you make your pitch. The masterclass includes several bonuses on storytelling, using A.I. to find dominant and transformational emotions, and much more. You can get this masterclass at thecopywriterclub.com/emotionAnd now, my interview with Brian McCarthy.Brian, welcome to the podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here, like we were saying, just as we were chatting before we started recording, we met briefly a bunch of years ago, you were doing something slightly different than what you did today. Yeah, tell me just how did you get here. You're a mindset coach, but you also have a pretty big background in copywriting. So tell me about that?Brian McCarthy: Yeah, so I started copywriting, I don't know 20, 2014 or so got into that world, and I was always copywriting for a lot of personal growth companies and coaches. I was just very into the personal growth world. And then eventually, like, found my I was doing launches, I was doing case studies, those became like my my main even wrote a book on how to do case studies like that kind of became my main focus. And then I was when the pandemic hit.
This isn't the first time we've talked about LinkedIn. But in this episode, we cover specific recommendations for the content you should create and post as well as a proven process for connecting with clients. My guest is content writer Divya Agrawal and what she shared could change your approach to LinkedIn for the better. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Divya's LinkedInFind Your Clients on LinkedIn (Divya's Lead Magnet)The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundThe How to Write Emotional Copy Masterclass Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: If you’ve got enough clients or you’re not willing to put yourself out there to find the clients you need, well, you can probably skip this episode. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.Like last week, we’re revisiting a recurring topic on the show this week, but unlike last week, the recurring topics isn’t persuasion or psychology. This week we’re talking about the biggest challenge facing almost all copywriters and that’s finding clients.Even established copywriters will struggle with this from time to time. One of the trusims of business is that if you don’t have clients willing to pay you for the work you do, it doesn’t matter how good your website is, it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are, it doesn’t matter that you can solve your client’s problems better than anyone else… without the client, you don’t have a business.My guest this week is Divya Agrawal, a SaaS and Tech copywriter who has deep experience finding clients on LinkedIn. Divya started her career as a programmer but quickly figured out she was on the wrong job track, so she switched to writing. The lessons she shares from her experience launching this new business will help any copywriter or content writer who is looking for clients to work with. Specifically, Divya used LinkedIn to create connections with prospects. Her success posting content and making comments on other posts is a model for other writers who want to do the same… and LinkedIn is where a significant number of the people who hire copywriters hangout and connect. If your clients are there, you need to be there too.In this interview, Divya shares the questions she uses to vet her prospects before they become clients, and she outlines exactly how you can connect with clients on LinkedIn yourself. This is informaiton she charges her coaching clients for, but she’s sharing much of it today for free.Before we jump into our interview, a little while ago I recorded a masterclass to show copywriters, content writers and other marketers how to write “emotional” copy. Everyone says emotions sell, but how do you actually write emotional copy? I walk through more than a dozen examples in this masterclass and give you a proven process for figuring out the right emotions to focus on as you write… and how they change as you make your pitch. The masterclass includes several bonuses on storytelling, using A.I. to find dominant and transformational emotions, and much more. You can get this masterclass at thecopywriterclub.com/emotionAnd now, my interview with Divya Agrawal.Divya, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to hear your story and to talk about how you're finding clients, but tell us, how did you become a freelance copywriter for Tech.Divya Agrawal: Thank you so much for having me on the podcast, Rob, I highly appreciate this chance to talk to you. I have been a big fan of your podcast, so it's really cool that I get to sit here and share what I know.Yeah, I became a freelance tech writer back in 2017 end of 2017after a year long stint at a IT company as a software engineer, I was a Salesforce developer for a year, and that didn't work out. I did not like the corporate environment. I did not like the work I was doing. So then I was like, I need to do something else. I had always been a writer.
In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we're talking about how con men, pick-up artists, magicians and yes, copywriters, use psychology and persuasion to get readers to pay attention and change their behavior. My guest is copywriter John Bejakovic who has just published a new book on the topic. If you want to be a better writer, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:The 10 Commandments BookJohn's first interviewThe Katelyn Bourgoin InterviewThe Sarah Levinger InterviewThe Richard Armstrong InterviewThe Parris Lampropouos InterviewThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundThe How to Write Emotional Copy MasterclassTranscript:Rob Marsh: Looking for non-obvious ways to be more persuasive? Today we’re talking about the ten commandments of con men, pick up artists, comedians and others. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.Over the last couple of months, I’ve interviewed a couple of guests about psychology and persuasion… on episode 447 I talked with Katelyn Bourgoin and on episode 448, I spoke with Sarah Levinger. In both of those interviews we talked about using psychology and principles from behavioral economics and neuroscience. Today’s episode covers similar ground in a very different way.My guest is copywriter John Bejakovic. John runs one of the best daily email lists out there, sharing his throughts on marketing, sales, and persuasion. He recently published a book about these topics called, The 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters. It’s a long title for a short book that covers a lot of ground. I wanted to talk to John about the ideas in his book, but more than that, I wanted to discuss the ethics of using these kinds of tactics to get our readers and prospects to take action. If you want to be a better writer or a more effective communicator or simply want to help your children or customers or friends use information to make better decisions, I think you’ll like this episode.These topics really appeal to me. Not just as a writer or marketer so I can use these techniques myself, but also as a consumer. You can’t avoid the con men who use these tactics unless you understand the tactics and how they use them. Being smart is not enough to avoid responding positively to the ideas we talk about on this episode.Before we jump into our interview, a little while ago I recorded a masterclass to show copywriters, content writers and other marketers how to write “emotional” copy. Everyone says emotions sell, but how do you actually write emotional copy? I walk through more than a dozen examples in this masterclass and give you a proven process for figuring out the right emotions to focus on as you write… and how they change as you make your pitch. The masterclass includes several bonuses on storytelling, using A.I. to find dominant and transformational emotions, and much more. You can get this masterclass at thecopywriterclub.com/emotionAnd now, my interview with John Bejakovic.Rob Marsh: Hey, John, welcome back to the podcast. You were here, I think it was literally two years ago, Episode 365, where we talked about a lot of different stuff, and people maybe can go back and listen to that, but catch me up on what's been going on in your business, and this new book you've got.John Bejakovic: Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I was thinking about that. It's been about two years since I was on the podcast last and I think we talked about email and things like that, because that's kind of my bread and butter. And then at the end of that podcast, you were kind of asking me, what I'm what am I working on? And I was working on this book at that time, and the plan was to have this book, which is a kind of an intersection of different disciplines and ...
Looking for clients? In this episode I'm sharing 21 different ideas for ways to connect with clients for your copywriting business. I guarantee you'll find at least one idea—and probably more like four or five ideas—that will work for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:The Copywriter Club Youtube ChannelThe Finding Clients Ignition KitThe P7 Client Acquisition SystemThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: How do you find new or better clients? Here are 21 different ideas you might want to try. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.This episode of the podcast is going to be different from any episode I’ve done recently… in fact, in more than 450 different episodes, I can’t remember ever having an episode where not only did I not have a guest, but also didn’t have a co-host or someone else to chat with and bounce ideas around with. So in a sense, we’re making Copywriter Club history right now.But we’re not covering a new topic. In fact, we’ve talked about finding clients on almost every interview we’ve conducted with copywriters over the last eight years. And my guests have shared a ton of great ideas for finding clients. At some point in the future, I’d love to create a supercut of all the ideas we’ve shared over the years… but that would be dozens of hours long and it’s not at the top of my to-do list at the moment.However, on this episode, I’m going to share 21 different ideas, actually it will probably be more, 21 different ideas for ways to find clients. Not all of them will work for you. But I promise, if you stick around to the end of this episode, you’ll find at least one and probably five or six ideas that WILL work for you and that you can start using right now.I’m also going to share some advice… the dos and don’ts of reaching out to clients—some of the things you need to do first and what you absolutely can’t afford to do.If this topic appeals to you, I’ve got a couple of resources for you. The first is The Copywriter Club Youtube channel. I’ve posted several videos there about finding clients, pitching clients, the questions to ask to attract clients and more. Those videos are relatively short and will help you improve your outreach process so be sure to check them out.And I’ve put together a mini offer I’m calling the Client Finding Ignition Kit. It includes a 36 page report that covers what I’m talking about in this episode at more depth, and also includes three different workshops on finding clients. One focuses on Upwork and other online marketplaces, another is all about what’s working on LinkedIn, and the third is all about what to do if you need to find clients right now. And it also includes a one-time coaching call to talk about your approach and your pitch to make sure it will work. If you want that, go to thecopywriterclub.com/ignitionFinally, I won’t go through all the stuff it includes, but there are a ton of resources in The Copywriter Underground to help you find, pitch, and land clients. If you want to find a full-time job, there’s a workshop all about that. If you want to improve your discovery calls, there’s a workshop and playbook all about that. If you want to go deep on what’s working on LinkedIn, Upwork, and several other places to find clients, there are resources for all of those too. And that’s on top of all the other workshops, coaching, community, lead sharing and more… that’s all available at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu-2.Before I jump into that first idea, though, I want to just talk about a couple of things that are really important to keep in mind before you start finding clients. The first idea is that you do not have a business without clients. This is the thing that we do. We write copy. But if we're not writing copy for a client who's paying us to do it, we don't actually have a business. We're just doing this thing.
What do you do when the worst happens in business? Are you prepared? In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with copywriter Topaz Hooper about the steps you should be taking now to prepare for an economic downturn. The ideas we talk about here are good business practices even if the economy booms. But they become more important when things are uncertain. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:American Copywriter Co.Topaz's new InstagramThe first interview with TopazThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundResearch Mastery Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Are you prepared for the worst in your business… economic downturns, recessions, the loss of clients and ongoing projects? If not, this episode is for you. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.In today’s episode I’m catching up with Topaz Hooper who was a guest on the show several years ago. Topaz’s business has followed the trend that so many copywriters and other freelancers followed through the pandemic and afterwards. Most of us saw a nice bump in clients and revenues but then things started to change and she’s had to reinvent her business to adjust to the changes. We’ll get into that in the interview.Topaz also happens to be the second American expat who is living and working in The Netherlands that I’ve had on the podcast over the past couple of weeks. That wasn’t intentional, but maybe this was a hint that more of us could be living overseas and working with clients here in the states. I don’t know.The big topic we covered in this podcast is how to survive in a recession. We are not in a recession—at least as far as the general business cycle goes—at the moment, but there have been some difficult economic events that have scared a few people and caused them to predict that a recession is somewhere out there on the horizon. We are not predicting a recession, but we are talking about how to be prepared for it if it happens to come… maybe this year, maybe next, but certainly at some point in the future.But beyond the general economic environment, there have been micro effects in the copywriting world… things like A.I. taking on a lot of work, especially at the lower end of the spectrum. And some industries, finance and tech come to mind, have suffered their own downturns with layoffs and clients cancelling projects. So while these haven’t shown up in the overall macro-environment, what you see happening in your niche may be close to a what an actual recession might feel like. If you’ve felt that, you’ll want to listen to this whole episode.One more thing I want to mention, I talked about this topic—preparing for a recession—at The Copywriter Club In Real Life in 2020… that was right before the last mini-recession happened. Topaz and I talk about some of those ideas on this episode, but you can go even deeper with them in an article written by Anna Hetzel. I’ll link to that article in the show notes if you want to check it out. It’s worth reading.Before we jump into our interview, this is probably the last time I’ll mention this for a while but I want to share with you all of my research secrets… especially my 4:20+ research method that helps copywriters like you uncover the ideas and insights you need to write great sales copy. It’s part of Research Mastery which also includes more than twenty different techniques for capturing ideas, all of the questions I use to learn more about my client, their product, their customers and their competitors as well as the documents you need to capture your research and several tutorials on how to use A.I. to speed up your processes and even help with your research itself. There’s a bonus on using Airtable to collect and sort your data and more… You can learn more about this unique resource at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery… research mastery is all one word. Check it out now at thecopywriterclub.
As the owner of a copywriting business, you have a lot to think about—your products, your clients, your research process, writing great copy, finding new clients and more. So it's no wonder we tend to push legal questions to the bottom of the to-do list until there's a problem. Don't do that. Andrea Sager is my guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And she's got a lot of great legal advice on using A.I., contracts, business entities, and protecting your business and assets. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:AndreaSager.comLegalprenuer.comThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundResearch Mastery CourseFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Do you have questions about contracts, trademarks, business entities, and your legal risk and liabilities? Today, I have answers. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.About a year before I took on my first freelance writing project—I’m going back a long time here—I took the LSAT, that’s the test for admittance into law school. I had thought I would become a lawyer from about the time I was in eighth grade. And I did well enough on the test to get into most of the schools I was planning on applying to. My plan at the time was to practice law in the non-profit sector. And to help with that goal, I decided to enroll into a Masters program in public administration. But once I started that program, I was so bored by the curriculum, I couldn’t envision myself finishing. At the same time I met someone who asked me to write an article promoting a product for a company she was working for. When I realized I could make money as a writer, I turned my back on my dream of being an attorney and started writing copy.So when it comes to legal advice, I can’t really help, but my friend Andrea Sager can. Andrea has helped hundreds of small businesses with legal advice and services. I tried to ask her all of the legal questions copywriters tend to have about things like using A.I., contracts and agreements, trademarks, and how we limit our exposure to legal liability that could cost you your business, your home and more. This stuff matters. And I hope you enjoy this interview.Before we get to the interview, the last couple of weeks I’ve mentioned that I put everything I know about conducting research and using A.I. as part of my research process into a short course called Research Mastery. It includes a lot, but it’s not an overly long, impossible to watch course. Instead it’s the kind of course you can watch in an afternoon or weekend and walk away with a research process that helps you uncover the insights you need to write great sales copy. ..more than twenty different techniques for capturing ideas, … all of the questions I use to get find big ideas about my client, their product, their customers and their competitors as well as the documents you need to capture your research and several tutorials on how to use A.I. to speed up your processes and even help with your research itself. But unlike other research courses that take hours to watch and implement, this one will teach you everything you need to know in a single afternoon. You can learn more about this unique resource at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery… research mastery is all one word.I’ll link to that in the show notes so you can easily find the link if you can’t type the URL into your browser right now… thecopywriterclub.com/researchmasteryAnd now, my interview with Andrea Sager.Hey, Andrea, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I am thrilled to have you here. It's been quite a while since we talked to an attorney about all of the stuff that we need to be thinking about in our businesses. So I'm excited to have you here, but before we get started, maybe you could tell us your story. Just how did you become an attorney, an author, founder of the legal preneur.com and if I'm reading your website correctly,
Copywriters have been using LinkedIn to connect with and land clients for years. So why is it still so difficult to grow an audience on that platform? I asked copywriter and LinkedIn Strategist, matt Barker, to chat with me about this for the 450th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We talked about the best content to post, the biggest mistakes people make on LinkedIn, and how to get the right followers to pay attention to you. If you want clients to find you, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:Matt's LinkedInMatt's WebsiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundResearch Mastery Course Transcript:Rob Marsh: Looking for ideas for finding and connecting with potential clients on LinkedIn? You’re in the right place. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.There are a lot of ways to find and land clients. There’s cold emailing which allows you to choose the clients you want to work with—and if your pitch warms up your prospect and offers to solve the right problem for them, it can be very effective. Incidentally, if you want to learn how to cold pitch effectively, check out thecopywriterclub.com/lovenote. Beyond cold pitching, another popular method for attracting clients to you is posting content on social media. And for copywriters, Instagram or LinkedIn seem to be the two go-to platforms. And yes, there are copywriters using other platforms like TikTok or Threads and seeing success there, most of the action seems to be on these other, older platforms.We’ve talked about finding clients on LinkedIn several times on the podcast. And in fact, we’ll talk about it again in the near future. But because so many copywriters are using thise platform to build an audience, it bears repeating some of that advice from time to time. But it’s not just repeating the same stuff… we’re looking for new ideas that work now. The algorythm is always changing, so keeping an eye on what’s working now is important.So with that as our preamble, I invited copywriter turned LinkedIn Audience Building Strategist, Matt Barker, to share with me—and you as my listener—what is working on LinkedIn right now. Matt has built an audience of more than 170,000 followers on LinkedIn. His posts get 100s of comments and when he shares his programs or other products, the sales follow.Matt will be the first to say that getting attention on LinkedIn is harder today than it was two or three years ago. But that doesn’t mean it’s hard to stand out. In this interview, Matt and I talked about what works, what he’s posting more of lately, and how sharing content to inspire and motivate can bring in more clients than posts pitching your services. I think you’re going to like this interview…Before we get to the interview, just in case you missed this last week when I mentioned it, I put everything I know about conducting research and using A.I. as part of my research process into a short course called Research Mastery. It includes the 4:20+ research method that helps copywriters like you uncover the insights you need to write great sales copy. ..more than twenty different techniques for capturing ideas, … all of the questions I use to get find big ideas about my client, their product, their customers and their competitors as well as the documents you need to capture your research and several tutorials on how to use A.I. to speed up your processes and even help with your research itself. But unlike other resource courses that take hours to watch and implement, this one will teach you everything you need to know in a single afternoon. You can learn more about this unique resource at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery… research mastery is all one word.I’ll link to that in the show notes so you can easily find the link if you can’t type the URL into your browser right now… thecopywriterclub.com/researchmasteryAnd now, my interview with Matt Barker.
I covered a lot of ideas in this episode with copywriter Grace Baldwin. We talked about product marketing, building an agency, conducting research (including one research technique you've never heard before) and the importance of community in growing your copywriting business. This is a good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Grace's NewsletterThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundResearch Mastery Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Hidden inside this podcast are a couple of ideas that will take your research game to another level… and I promise at least one of these you’ve never heard before. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.I’ve interviewed close to 350 different copywriters and close to another hundred or so other experts on this podcast over the past eight years. And you would think that by now, I’ve heard just about everything there is to learn or know about copywriting, research, persuasion, finding clients and the many other topics we talk about every week. Often the topics we cover are good reminders of things I already know but maybe don’t apply to my business the way I should. Other times I hear ideas that I have implemented and what we talk about is a confirmation that what I’m doing in my business is helpful to my clients.And yet, I am constantly surprised by new ideas, new ways to do old things, and new insights that guests share that have never occurred to me before.That happened as I was recording this episode. My guest today is my friend Grace Baldwin. Grace is a copywriter with a background in strategy and product development. She’s in the process of building her own design agency. Grace has constantly leveled up as she’s built her business, working with bigger clients, taking on bigger projects and helping to create more impact for the brands she works on.While we were talking, she shared one way she does brand voice research—something I have never heard other copywriters doing and something that has never occurred to me before… and yet it’s the kind of idea that may help you as you conduct research for your clients, especially if they are in early stages and don’t yet have a lot of customers to intervew or survey. After hearing that, I shared my favorite research technique for getting a founder to share the features, benefits and other details about a product in a way that helps me capture these for my sales copy.If you want to hear either or both of these ideas, you’re going to have to listen to the rest of the podcast.Before we do that though, since one of the topics we touch on in this podcast is research, I want to share with you all of my research secrets… the 4:20+ research method that helps copywriters like you uncover the ideas and insights you need to write great sales copy. I’ve shared them all… more than twenty different techniques for capturing ideas, plus all of the questions I use to learn more about my client, their product, their customers and their competitors as well as the documents you need to capture your research and several tutorials on how to use A.I. to speed up your processes and even help with your research itself. You can learn more about this unique resource at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery … research mastery is all one word. Check out thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery.I’ll link to that in the show notes so you can easily find the link if you can’t type the URL into your browser right now… thecopywriterclub.com/researchmasteryAnd now, my interview with Grace Baldwin.Hey, Grace, Grace Baldwin: Hi Rob. Rob Marsh: I am so excited to have you here, so let's let's start with your stories. You were in the think tank. We hung out so much together a few years ago, but it's been a little while. So catch me up and catch up our listeners. How did you get to be marketing consultant, copywriter for B to B, Tech brands,
If you want to write more persuasive copy, you need better insights from your research. But how do you get them? Sarah Levinger is my guest for the 448th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and we talked about research insights, trend spotting, how A.I. can distort your research analysis, and how to make your copy more persuasive. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Sarah's TwitterSarah's CommunityTether InsightsThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Can psychology help you capture and hold the attention of your readers… then sell more of your products to your customers? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.On last week’s episode of the podcast, we talked about buyer psychology and how to use it to sell your products and services. It’s a great interview and I recommend you don’t miss it. This week’s episode is a kind of part 2 to that interview.In addition to specific persuasion techniques, today we’re going to go deep on research and discovering insights that a good copywriter can build a sales argument. If you want to use the techniques we talked about last week, what we talk about in this interview will give you the baseline insights to make them so much more effective.My guest today is Sarah Levinger, founder of Tether, a research insights platform that helps uncover emotional, behavioral, and identity-driven insights so marketers can connect on a deeper, more human level with their customers. And she uses A.I. to augment the process.Sarah walks through the process and framework she created for finding the kinds of insights that resonates with customers. She categorizes comments and research data by emotion, which leads to a better set of avatars and marketing ideas based on emotion rather than taglines or words that get a little tired as prospects see them over and over in your ads and other marketing. Then Sarah goes even deeper than feelings to uncover beliefs—she talks about why in this interview. I think you’re going to like what she has to share about that.Sarah also mentioned something about A.I. that I hadn’t considered before that kind of shifted the way I’m thinking about using tools like Claude and ChatGPT to analyze data. If you don’t understand this change, if you use A.I. in your research or analysis process, your copy will probably not connect as well you expect.Before we get to my interview with Sarah, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. If you haven’t jumped in to see what the Underground includes, now is the time. It’s guaranteed, which means you can join and if you don’t find the resources you need to grow your business, just let us know and we’ll refund your money. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. This week we’re adding another expert workshop all about how to create the perfect for you copywriter website. If your website doesn’t stand out or doesn’t help you land clients, you’ll definitely want to join us.The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more and join today by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Sarah Levinger…Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Before we hit record, I told you I've been wanting to have you on for quite a while. I've been following your stuff online. The way you talk about persuasion psychology, it just rings my bell. So I'm so glad to have you here.
When it comes to getting customers to buy more, it helps to have psychology working for you. So I invited buyer psychologist, Katelyn Bourgoin, to chat with me about the marketing tactics that truly make a difference when it comes to getting customer to open their wallets. This is a great discussion that covers insights like Jobs to Be Done, Trigger Events, and the deep psychology that engages customers and keeps them coming back for more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Katelyn’s NewsletterWallet Opening Words <— Get this!The Milkshake VideoClayton Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life?The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Transcript:Rob Marsh: Why do people buy the products and services we write about? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you need this episode. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.Before you can sell the products and services you write about, you need to understand why your customers buy in the first place. This includes marketing concepts like market/message match, jobs to be done, market sophistication, clarifying an offer, finding pain points, and finding under-served markets. My guest today is buyer psychologist Katelyn Bourgoin. She writes the Why People Buy newsletter and focuses on using science and psychology to sell more of whatever it is that you are writing about. Personally, these are the topics I could talk about for hours. If you want to sell more of the products and services you write about, you’ll definitely want to listen to this entire episode. What Katelyn shares about “trigger moments” is in my opinion one of the most important concepts in marketing that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Katelyn and I also talked about making difficult decisions like shutting down a business that isn’t working, or choosing between taking a real job and doing something on your own, and the mindset shifts required to make these decisions. And I grilled Katelyn on the methods she used to grow her newsletter. If you write a newsletter (or want to write a newsletter), her ideas will help you attract new readers faster.Before we get to my interview with Katelyn, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. If you haven’t jumped in to see what the Underground includes, now is the time. It’s guaranteed, which means you can join and if you don’t find the resources you need to grow your business, just let us know and we’ll refund your money. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. This week we’re adding another expert workshop all about how to create the perfect for you copywriter website. If your website doesn’t stand out or doesn’t help you land clients, you’ll definitely want to join us.The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more and join today by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Katelyn Bourgoin…So Katelyn, welcome to the copywriter club podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here. I've been wanting to have you on the show, literally, for like, a year. I'm not sure why it took so long to make the right connections, but thanks to Jordan for helping to make it happen. But since you're here, tell us your story. I know you've got a great story of, you know, some business success and failure, but you have created an amazingly successful newsletter. I love it. It's one of those that I wait for it to come into my email box,
Can copywriters who run a service business attract good clients using Facebook ads? The short answer is "yes". Facebook Ads Strategist, Tara Zirker, is my guest for this episode The Copywriter Club Podcast, and she explained that not only can they use FB ads to attract clients, they may be able to do it for as little as $10/a day... and that could attract dozens of leads—more than you would need to hit six figures. Want to know how to do it? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Your Ad Kit (Tara's Newsletter)The Successful Ads ClubThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Do you think of Facebook ads as a tool for growing your copywriting business? If not, it might be time to update your thinking. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.This is not the first time we’ve talked about Facebook ads on this podcast. I think I keep coming back to this topic because I see so much potential here—both for our own businesses and for our clients’ products and services. This is the kind of strategic skill that helps set some copywriters apart from most others. When you understand the ins and outs of driving paid traffic to your offers, you become imenselly valuable as a writer. And if you use these skills for your own products and services, you could create an almost endless pipeline of customers ready to pay for your help.But, for some reason, Facebook ads feels difficult. You’ve probably heard the same stories that I have of a creator who turns on ads and steps away for the weekend, only to wake up Monday morning to bill for thousands of dollars and no leads to show for the ad spend. This is something you probably can’t set it and forget it, at least as you’re gettinng started.I wanted to understand more about using ads and the analytics we need to pay attention to when we start using them to maximize our experience. So I invited Facebook ad strategist and founder of the Successful Ads Club, Tara Zirker, to walk me through all of this. We talked about how to scale a business with ads on a tiny budget… like $10 a day… what metrics you need to watch, what to test and what you can not bother with and a lot more.I’ve been on Tara’s list for quite a while and really appreciate her approach for running ads to your business… and yes, this works for service businesses like copywriters and content writers. Tara is about to tell us all how to do that in this interview.Before we get to my interview with Tara, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. If you haven’t jumped in to see what the Underground includes, now is the time. It’s guaranteed, which means you can join and if you don’t find the resources you need to grow your business, just let us know and we’ll refund your money. But I doubt that will be your experience because The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more and join today by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Tara Zirker…Tara, welcome to the podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here, as I was telling you, right before we hit record. But before we get into all of this stuff around Facebook, Facebook ads and your expertise, just tell me how you got to where you are. How did you become the expert in Facebook ads? Tara Zirker: Thanks so much, Rob. I'm so happy to be here and talk to your community.
In a world where A.I. can write all of the words for free, what is a copywriter to do? What tools should they adopt and how should they approach artificial intelligence? I invited Petter Magnusson, the creator of PurposeWrite, to join me on The Copywriter Club Podcast to discuss these questions and talk through how copywriters can use tools like his to serve our clients better. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Petter on LinkedInPurposeWrite (sign up for a free trial)The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: It’s been three years since ChatGPT launched and changed the world. So what does A.I. mean for copywriting today? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.When OpenA.I. released the first version of ChatGPT to the public, what had been a quiet conversation about artificial intelligence happening mostly behind the scenes suddenly burst into our collective consciousness. Writers and creators in particular were suddenly aware that at least at some level, these large language models could do some of the work we were being hired to do.Many of us dove into these tools to see what they could do. We launched a short-lived podcast that talked about how A.I. was impacting so many different ways of working, certainly within marketing, but also in many other industries. You can find the 20+ episodes of that podcast on The Copywriter Club website.Since that time, the dust has settled a bit. The A.I. tools have gotten a bit better. Image creation tools are significantly better. Writing tools have also improved, but it remains true today that the best copywriters seem to be able to use them to get the best outputs… if you want good copy, copy that captures attention and converts readers into buyers, it helps a lot to have a copywriter guide the inputs and rework the outputs you get from the A.I. model of your choice.Another thing we’ve seen in over the past couple of years is that while tools like ChatGPT and Claude get most of the headlines, lots of other tools have added components of artificial intelligence to improve their products, speed up useage, and make applications more sticky. At the same time we’ve seen the launch of job-specific A.I. tools that do one thing… like writing emails, or writing articles at speeds humans simply can’t match.So when it comes to A.I., where are we headed next? What tools will we be using to get better results? And how helpful is it to have a user or prompt engineer or copywriter who really knows what they’re doing versus just playing around to see what they can get a model to do?I asked Petter Magnusson, the developer of PurposeWrite to talk a bit about A.I., the tool he’s built, and also the broader environment of artificial intelligence and where he sees us going from here. And because whatever happens with A.I. will have a big impact on copywriters, this is a topic I may come back to in the coming weeks. This whole industry is fascinating. The speed of change is a bit scary. During our conversation, I had a realization. In the past copywriters charged for the things we delivered… the words. Officially we sold blog posts or sales pages or emails or some other copy, but it was the words that clients expected to get. But now that ChatGPT can produce the words pretty much for free, we need to move up the value chain and sell the process, the strategy, the analysis, and the ideas. And bringing that to the A.I. model you use will make the outputs there so much better. Any way… I think this is a discussion you’ll enjoy.Before we get to my interview with Petter, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—an...
Building a simple business should be, well, simple. But it's not. So I invited business consultant Justin Wise to join me for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about all the complex ideas that go into building a simple business that supports you (and not the other way around). We covered a lot of ground from content creation to positioning to offers and more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Justin's NewsletterBird by Bird by Anne LamottThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Transcript:Rob Marsh: What does it take to create and run a truly simple copywriting business? We’re going to talk about that today on The Copywriter Club Podcast.One of the many reasons that business owners fail at running their businesses is complexity—and by the way, this includes copywriters and content writers who own and run their own businesses too. We can serve so many kinds of clients and do so many kinds of work and even serve a bunch of different niches. And with all those options, we sometimes create a business that has lots of offers, and lots of messages to appeal to lots of different prospects. There are people who make that work, but this kind of complexity burns most of us out. So I invited business consultant and founder of Simple Business, Justin Wise, to talk about what we need to do to build a truly simple business that doesn’t require 60 hours of work a week to keep running.We cover a lot of ideas or levers in this episode… dailish emails, simple offers, customer journeys, pricing, content creation, sharing content…it all comes down to how you talk about what you do and who you do it for… differently.Differentiation is one of those things that a lot of copywriters tend to struggle with. We do so many of the same things that seeing what makes you different is really hard, especially when we’re sitting inside our own businesses. Someone once said, you can’t read the label from inside the bottle. That’s so true when applied to your copywriting business. Figuring out the thing that makes you different from all of the other writers out there is critical. And if you can do it, you’ll probably not struggle to connect with your ideal clients and land bigger, higher paying projects.Justin and I also talked about the pressure to be producing all the content, talking about all the things on all the platforms and how none of that leads to a simple business. I think you’ll like this discussion that Justin and I had so stick around.Before we get to my interview with Justin, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.And now, my interview with Justin Wise…Justin, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I would love to start just by hearing your story and how you became basically an advisor to literally hundreds of companies that are trying to differentiate and simplify and find an audience and make money. So how did you get here?Justin Wise: Well, it's the standard career path that everybody takes, unemployed house painter to pastor to business owner.Rob Marsh: There you go,
Want your copy to stand out and get notice? Communication Specialist Sam Horn is my guest for the 443rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Sam talks about how to take "regular" ideas and make them "pop". If you want to get noticed by potential clients, or want to help your clients get noticed by their customers, this episode is for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:Sam's LinkedInPop!: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title and Tagline for Anything by Sam HornTongue Fu by Sam HornThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Want your copy to get noticed and remembered? There are a couple of simple tricks that will help you do that. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.The ability to help your clients get noticed and remembered is one of the main things they pay you for. And to find clients in the first place, you need to be able to get prospects to notice and remember you. If you can’t do this one thing… you really can’t help them with anything else because they never engage with you.There are lots of psychological techniques that help people notice you… or help people remember you… or make people want to engage with you. So what are they? I asked communication specialist Sam Horn to walk through some of these techniques.Sam is the author of the book Pop: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title, and Tagline for Anything. She walked me through a bunch of the tricks she uses to coin new phrases so her readers raise their eyebrows. One of the things you’ll notice as you listen is that Sam uses these techniques as she talks with me… you’ll hear rhymes, juxtapositions, cliches, and patterns that demonstrate exactly what she is sharing as we talk.The ideas and insights we discuss go well beyond typical persuasion techniques like urgency and scarcity to create a more fun, human, and interesting connection between the ideas you write about and your audience.This is a different sort of interview… because Sam actually workshops an idea for a presentation I am planning on offering to listeners of this podcast. As she goes through the ideas I share with her, you’ll notice she starts throwing out ideas and insights I might use when I’m ready to share my presentation. It demonstrates the insights she shares—especially her advice to show the shift as we communicate what we sell.Near the end of the interview, Sam walked me through the questions she asks as she starts writing a book—and she’s written a bunch of them. If you’re thinking of writing a book yourself, some of these questions may be useful for you.I think you’ll like what Sam has to share.Before we get to my interview with Sam, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates, including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.And now, my interview with Sam Horn…Sam, welcome to the copywriter club podcast. I would, I mean, I'm thrilled to have you here. You know, author of nine books, everything about language and communication. But before we get into all of that stuff. I would like to know how you got here. How did you become an author, speaker coach, I guess, an intrigue expert,
What's the best way to learn copywriting? Could it be hand-writing sales pages and other great copy from expert copywriters like Mel Martin and Gary Bencivenga? My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour, a program designed to help you learn to write by hand-copying great copy. We also talked about getting affiliates, mentoring, and a lot more. If you want to improve your copywriting skills, be sure to listen to this episode (and click here to learn about the CopyHour program). Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:The CopyHour CourseGary Bencivenga's Olive Oil Sales PageThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: What’s the best way to learn copywriting? Would it surprise you that handwriting great copy is possibly the most successful technique? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.There must be something like a thousand different courses for copywriters to learn how to write copy. And probably another thousand more that talk about content—as if it’s a separate skill set. And there are probably an additional thousand more free videos in places like YouTube that promise to teach you the skills you need to succeed as a copywriter. With that many choices out there, you would think the world would be crammed full of phenomenally skilled copywriters, but it’s not. This should tell us that not all courses or workshops that promise to teach writers how to write copy and content actually work.So what does work? Is there a course out there that many copywriters talk about or recommend when it comes to writing engaging sales or conversion copy? And it turns out there is. One course recommended by people like Dan Ferrari, Chris Orzechowski, Elise Savaki, and hundreds of others is called CopyHour. Unlike many other courses, CopyHour focuses on handwriting great copy. Does that really work?I asked Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour to be my guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to answer questions like… why does hand-writing teach copy structure and pacing where other methods don’t appear to have the same level of success? We talked about the genesis and evolution of the CopyHour program and what it includes… things like writing great offers, writing headlines and bullets, and how Derek has improved the course over time.Now I want to be upfront about something… I came to this interview as a bit of a skeptic when it comes to hand-writing copy. I’m all in on studying good examples of emails, sales pages, and other good copy. In fact, I have a swipe file with more than 500 different sales pages that I’ve saved to study… those swipes are part of The Copywriter Underground… But handwriting? I wasn’t so sure… I think Derek may have changed my mind. And if you’re a skeptic on this topic, you may want to hear what he says about the science of handwriting and learning. If you’re convinced by the end of this episode that you want to know more, you can go to thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour to find out more about Derek’s course. It’s open for new members the week this episode goes live, so check it out today… thecopywriterclub.com/copyhourBefore we get to my interview with Derek, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard me talk about how we’ve recently rebuilt The Underground dashboard to make finding the ideas and insights you need easier. But as I started recreating this new dashboard, it occurred to me that no one has time to watch more than 70 different workshops—even for those workshops that help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. So I’ve taken more than 30 of those workshops on finding clients, having sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn, and dozens of others… and I’ve created playbooks that break down the ideas in the workshops into...
Yes, you write. But when it comes to marketing, you can do a lot more than that. Today, clients are looking for help from specialists like copywriters who bring more to the table. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Emily Reagan about how writers can offer additional services and expertise to their clients. Emily helps virtual assistants step up into a more helpful role as Marketing Assistants, and it's something we think more copywriters need to consider. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff we mentioned:Atomic HabitsEmily’s PodcastEmily’s InstagramThe Authority FrameworkThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: You’re a copywriter, but you can do other marketing stuff like design or email systems. Is there a need for that? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.As a copywriter, you probably have a hand in all kinds of marketing activities—everything from the overall marketing strategy to brainstorming lead magnets, to creating and posting content, or writing and managing ads, to figuring out which email systems will help increase engagement and purchases… you probably already do a lot of this stuff. What’s more, a lot of clients want smaller, more nimble teams these days, and that means working with people who can do more of the tasks they used to depend on an entire team to get done. Some people taking on these expanded roles call themselves marketing assistants. Whether that title works for you or not isn’t important. What really matters is that there is a growing need for writers of all kinds to take on this larger, more inclusive role and contribute more, often using A.I. to bring it all together.My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Emily Reagan. Emily started out offering marketing support especially related to Facebook ads, but she expanded beyond that to include copywriting and other marketing services. And she’s spent the past couple of years helping others do the same thing. We talked about the importance of adding additional marketing services to your copywriting business to make yourself more valuable—maybe even indispensable—for your clients. It’s yet another way to stand out from all the other writers out there who don’t offer clients anything extra.While we talked, Emily also shared a lot of details about her business—she works with clients and helps other writers grow their marketing skills. As she tells it, her business grew serendipitously… going from one thing to the next as it made sense. It’s not exactly a path that others can follow, but it is a strategy for finding your own path to the work you love doing. I think you’re going to like this discussion.As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard me talk about how we’ve recently rebuilt The Underground dashboard to make it easier to find the ideas and insights you need. But as I started recreating this new dashboard, it occurred to me that no one has time to watch more than 70 different workshops—even for those workshops that help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. So I’ve taken more than 30 of those workshops on finding clients, having sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn, and dozens of others… and I’ve created playbooks that break down the ideas in the workshops into easy-to-follow steps. Each playbook is 3-5 pages long. You can read through one and implement the ideas in minutes. And then if you want more detail, you can watch the accompanying workshop. Each playbook even includes a checklist so you don’t miss any steps and can make sure you get things done. I’m working on completing playbooks for all of the workshops and training inside The Underground. They should all be ready by the end of April. You can get the first 30 or so right now by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
When most writers think about ghostwriting, they think books. But there's a huge opportunity to ghost for business leaders who need content... articles, blog posts, speeches and more. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob is talking with Allison Evelyn (Ally) about how she pivoted from Day Rates and standard copy projects to ghost writing for clients—and how she's leveraging that work to ghostwrite books in the future. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Allison's WebsiteAllison's Podcast: Holy FAllison's InstagramGet her freebie: Ghostwriter GoldThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Transcript:Rob Marsh: When you think of ghostwriting, do you think of books? If so, you’re thinking small. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.We’ve talked with several copywriters, from time to time, over the past eight years, who have talked about ghostwriting. Most of those episodes focused on large projects like ghostwriting books—the in-depth process for writing a book and connecting with the kinds of clients who need help from someone who can write their book. But ghostwriting is more than that. Ghostwriting includes any project where a writer steps into the shoes of their client to write something in their name. It can be blog posts, articles published online, emails, webinar scripts, and more. When you look beyond the book world, the opportunity for ghostwriters is huge. Landing these clients isn’t dramatically different from the way that you find, pitch, and close regular clients… though there are differences. Usually, as a ghostwriter, you’re not writing for lower-level employees. Rather, you’re writing for founders, CEOs, and other high-level thinkers, so your work needs to be able to reflect that. In fact, your pitches may need to include ideas and insights that a client can use to show up as a thought leader in their business and niche. Landing work with ghost-writing clients means you need to show up and be recognized at this higher level.My guest for this week is Allison Evelyn, that’s her professional name— she mostly goes by Ally. Ally’s been on the podcast before when we talked about an earlier version of her business. Over the past four or five years, the kind of work she does and the kinds of clients she works with have changed quite a bit. When we recorded that earlier episode, Ally was a member of The Copywriter Think Tank. She also taught several workshops about day rates and the kind of work copywriters can get done on those kinds of projects (one of those workshops is in The Copywriter Underground today). With all the changes she’s seen in her business and her personal life, I was excited to catch up with Ally and learn more about her role as a ghostwriter for some prominent online voices. I wish we could talk about a few of them by name, but as a ghostwriter, you usually need to stay behind the scenes so your clients can shine.Even if you’re not interested in ghostwriting for clients, a lot of what Ally shares in this interview about working with clients applies to the normal back and forth with all clients, and if you put her suggestions to work in your business, I promise, you’ll be more successful. Make sure you take notes as you listen to this one.As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. No matter what kind of copywriting business you want for yourself, The Underground is packed with resources to show up as a business owner—not just a freelancer, find clients, and solve big problems that clients are happy to pay big money to get off their plates. From copywriting and business templates to get you started (including a legal document and a proven onboarding process) to workshops to help you build your authority, attract clients, create products and services your clients want to buy, and more—The Underground is like a starter-kit for your business… o...
A lot of copywriters want to expand their businesses beyond client work. But what does it take to do that? How do you come up with a new offer? And how do you test whether your audience actually wants it? Ross O'Lochlainn is my guest for the 439th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. He shares what it takes to come up with and validate a new offer. We also talked about how he found his first clients (and idea that works today) and how A.I. is affecting marketing and a lot more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:Ross' WebsiteThe Client StudioHow to Write Like a MoFo10 Energizing Hook FramesThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: How do you go from copywriter or content writer to problem solver and irresistible offer maker for your clients? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.A lot of copywriters jump into client work with both feet, they find some success and create a business that makes money, but also find that it takes a lot of time they may have been hoping to use for non-work activities. Spending time with family. Having lunch with a friend. Or taking in a movie in the middle of the day. Serving clients is time-intensive whether you’re doing research, writing copy, managing the client relationship, or looking for and pitching your next client. And of course, there’s the bookkeeping and marketing and the other basic office stuff that takes up time. It’s pretty common that copywriters tell me they want to change up their business a bit so they have more time for the personal things they want to fit into their days. But the constant stream of client work makes it hard to fit in the other options like products for your niche or templatized services ready to buy off the shelf and easy to fulfill on.And once you have an offer you want to make… how do you test whether it will work with your audience? How do you find the problems you can solve or the gains your potential clients want to get? On this episode you’re going to hear about a process that can help with that validation and how you identify not just the problem, but the kind of client you want to work with on these non-copy products.My guest for this week is Ross O’Lochlainn. I met Ross a few years ago when he came to our Copywriter Club in Real Life Event in Brooklyn. Since then, Ross has built a pretty unique business where he works a few hours a day helping his clients solve big problems. Then he spends his free time training in Brazilian Ju Jitsu and spending time with his wife. Ross is a copywriter but he does far more than just write copy. He’s become an expert in client attraction, moving customers into high-paid coaching opportunities and like I said a moment ago, solving big marketing problems. From the outside, it appears to be a great business model, so I wanted to see how Ross built that business and what we can learn from his approach.As we talked Ross also shared the idea that having a product is not enough. Having a lead magnet is not enough. There’s some alchemy to making the elements work together to generate a “lead with intent”. The intent here makes a ton of difference. Finding “perfect fit” prospects to join your email isn’t easy. And Ross shares how he does it. Oh, and we talk about A.I. in this one too.You’ll want to listen to this episode right up to the closing credits. It’s a good one.As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. This episode is all about creating a business that works for you and provides you with the time you need for the life you want to live. And The Underground is packed with resources to help you gain confidence and help your clients solve big problems like Ross does. From templates to get you started (including a legal document and a proven onboarding process) to workshops to help you build your authority, attract clients,
Using social media to find clients can be exhausting. Writers tend to focus on the "media" and use it as a broadcast platform that requires post after post and what at least one marketing guru has called "Content Shock". What if you focused on the "social" part of social media and used it to foster real relationships with prospects and clients? That's what's been working for Esai Arasi, our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Esai's LinkedInEsai's InstagramThe Business of ExpertiseThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Looking for an approach to social media that doesn’t require you to post three times a day or more? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.The old approach to social media was to post content—photos and video with clever captions that invite comments and likes—is hard to keep up with. If you don’t have a team of content creators and algorythm watchers to keep up with the latest thing, you burn out or lose interest or eventually realize that the effort you are putting in is not being rewarded by the leads and clients you are looking for.Most of us are on social media to get leads. But how’s that working out for you? Most content writers or copywriters posting on Instagram or X/Twitter or LinkedIn are spending a lot of time for very little payoff. And that’s because social media is great at helping foster connections and relationships, but not all that great at selling organically. I’m not saying it can’t be done or that no one’s doing it. Some are. But it’s not easy.My guest for this week’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Esai Arasi. And she argues you don’t need to post every day or every week or even every month. Tools like ManyChat help move followers who are interested in what you do from posts to DMs. Using social media to foster relationships you have with previous clients and referal partners is also useful. Those things don’t disappear into the feed after a few minutes. They endure. And switching up your approach to focus on these kinds of behaviors may bring you better results than you’ve been seeing lately.Stick around as we talk about how to do this.As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. We’re talking about social media and getting clients to work with you today and it just happens that there are additional resources in The Copywriter Underground designed to help you do both of those things. Workshops on using tools like Pinterest and YouTube to grow your audience and attract clients. Still other workshops on engaging prospects on LinkedIn and other social media platforms so you can build relationships that result in high-paying client work. Not to mention resources to help you land a “real” job if that’s more up your alley. And that’s just the beginning… there are dozens of templates—including a legal document worth hundreds of dollars—ready for you to borrow and use in your own business, three entire courses on selling, writing proposals clients can’t say no to, and building your authority so clients seek you out, not the other way around. Plus dozens of other workshops, monthly coaching, regular copy critiques and more. You can see what it includes at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd now, my interview with Esai Arasi…Esai, welcome back to the podcast. It's been a little while since we talked on the podcast. You and I have talked offline a few times since then, but catch us up on what's been going on in your business. I think on the podcast, last time we talked was like 2020. So it's been a little while.Esai Arasi: It's been a while. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me again, Rob. And I'm really excited to catch up on what my growth has been like because when I was last on your podcast, I was still working with you inside the think tank.
Finding a "real" job isn't easy. But more copywriters and content writers are interested in trying. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Copy Chief Matt Snyder who has hired lots of copywriters over the past couple of years. He shared the mistakes copywriters are making and what it takes to get the attention of a hiring manager. Even if you don't want a "real" job, what Matt shares in this episode will help you connect with high-paying clients and land more work. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Matt's newsletterMatt's LinkedInThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Want to land a real job as a copywriter or content writer? It’s not easy. But help is on the way. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.Most of the listeners to this podcast are freelancers or contract writers. If you’re like them, you generally work on projects or retainers for a variety of clients. And you’re good at it. But some writers crave the stability that comes with a regular job—either part-time or full-time—with an actual employer paying wages and maybe even providing benefits.A handful of freelancers I’ve worked with over the years have dipped their toes into the corporate world to work primarily for a single client, or for those who are looking for part-time jobs, have landed work that provides some security and regular income to go along with the unpredictabilty of freelancing. But finding those jobs isn’t easy. They’re out there for sure, but within hours of a copywriting or content writing job posting on LinkedIn or any other job board, the hiring managers receive hundreds of applications. Getting found in that slush pile isn’t easy—even for the very best writers.Recently in The Copywriter Underground, I invited a friend of mine who worked for decades as a job placement specialist for creatives, to share her best advice for copywriters looking for “real” jobs. That training is inside The Underground now. When I announced we would be hosting that training, another copywriter, Matt Snyder, reached out to offer his advice. Matt is the Head Copywriter at a digital agency and works with a team of five or six writers. He hires a lot. And he sees a ton of applications, resumés and other creative attempts to get his attention. So when he offered, I suggested we record our discussion and share it here on the podcast.That’s what this episode is. Now, I know I said this is about getting hired to real job with a company. But everything Matt shares is applicable to getting hired by freelance clients as well. I think every copywriter, every content writer, and every freelancer writer who listens to this episode will get a lot from what Matt has to say. So stay tuned.As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. We’re talking about getting work today, so I should probably mention the resources available in The Underground that will help you do that. Starting with the workshop with my friend, Jessica, the placement specialist. Her advice will make a difference if you’re applying for what we tend to refer to as “real” jobs. We also have workshops from experts like Laura Belgray who shares how you can stop waiting in line and “duck under” the velvet ropes holding you back. And Parris Lampropoulos who shared the exact pitch he used to get his first five clients, then how he went on to double his income every year for the next five years—do the math, that’s a lot. There’s also our in-house training about ways to find clients and an entire course on sales. Plus dozens of other workshops, templates, copy critiques, monthly coaching, and more. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.And now, my interview with Matt Snyder…Matt, Welcome to the podcast. I was checking our back episodes because I swear we've had you on the podcast before and turns out we haven't.
Writing Video Sales Letters is an art. It's not enough to simply record someone reading a regular sales page. They depend more on stories and keeping listeners engaged because you can't afford to lose your viewer's attention. In the 436th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Svet Dimitrov about this challenge and he shared why you need to take a different approach when writing VSLs. We covered a lot more than that, so click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Svet's LinkedInSvet's FacebookThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: If you applied for 200 different projects or jobs, each time sending a new cover letter with your pitch, I imagine you would learn a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t work in the application process. That’s what Svet Dimitrov, my guest on this episode of the podcast, did. But that’s not even the reason I asked Svet to join me on the podcast.I heard another copywriter talking about how Svet is one of the best VSL copywriters in the world today—VSLs are video sales letters and they’re different from regular sales letters because you can’t afford to lose your viewer’s attention ever. We talk about that in this episode and what you can do to improve your own VSL writing skills. If you want to write VSLs, don’t skip this episode.We also talked about Svet’s contrarian advice that copywriters—especially copywriters who are just starting out—should not have a website. Obviously, that’s not the way most of us think. Websites are there to build credibility and help clients see the various ways we can help them. But Svet argues, and I think I agree, that there is a better approach that connects personally with your prospects. You may want to stick around to here what Svet does.As you might expect, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve completely rebuilt the content vault to make it more useable and useful and in the process I’ve added more than 70 differnt workshops to it. And there are even more coming. Workshops taught by expert copywriters like Parris Lampropoulos, Joanna Weibe, Stefan Georgi, Jack Forde, Chanti Zak, Laura Belgray and dozens of others. And it’s not just copywriters, we’ve got marketing experts teaching how to build funnels, how to market using tools like Linkedin and Pinterest, how to put yourself in the right mindset to succeed and so much more. And that’s just the workshops. There are dozens of templates, a community of like-minded writers holding each other accountable, and monthly coaching with me. It’s time you joined us inside. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd now, my interview with Svet Dimitrov…Svet, I'm thrilled to be able to chat with you. I'd love to start just by hearing how you got where you are. How did you become a copywriter? Before we started recording, I mentioned that I've heard your name because people have said you are one of the best VSL copywriters in the world right now. So how'd you get there?Svet Dimitrov: Thank you first for inviting me, Rob. It's a pleasure to be here. And yeah, my story goes back, I would say, probably Probably by the time I was doing my master's degree actually, I was really struggling. That was 2009-2010 to finish my master's thesis. And I did read, so this was in the era when you couldn't find a lot of stuff on Google. So I had to sift through a ton of pages, I think I went to like the 10th page of Google, which probably nobody goes there these days, just to find, just to do research. But I think that's when I really started to understand that research is really important. I appreciate it, love the game, although I was struggling to find a good way to express my thoughts in my master thesis. And I think I sift through like maybe 10 physical books. Then I mentioned research on Google. I think I probably went through more than 100 PDF...
It's pretty common to hear copywriters recommend that you study old sales pages and even sales emails, but what about old magazine ads? The kind that are printed on paper in actual periodicals? Today, where so much advertising happens online or in your social media feed, Ad writing is a bit of a lost art form. But that doesn't mean we can't learn from it. In the 435th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed Lewis Folkard who breaks down old ads for his newsletter readers. And he shared what copywriters have to learn from his approach. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Lewis' WebsiteThe Olive Ad BreakdownThe Silk Cut adThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Copywriters seem to revere old books by Eugene Schwartz and Vic Schwab. But what about old ads? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.If you’ve been a copywriter for more than a few weeks, you’ve probably heard other more experienced copywriters mention books like Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, How to Write an Advertisement by Victor Schwab or Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples. They make up a large part of the official cannon of copywriting. In fact, David Ogilvy once said no one should be allowed to write a single word of copy until they had finished reading Caple’s book seven times. Of course there are new books that ought to be added… books by Joe Sugarman, Ann Handley and Matthew Dix. In addition to books, there are a lot of copywriters who like to study old sales pages. They create swipe files full of them. I do this. My swipe file has more than 1,000 differnent sales pages I’ve collected over the last decade. Some copywriters even suggest you hand write sales pages as part of your learning. I don’t go that far, but I think you can learn a lot by studying the persuasion techniques that copywriters have used in their work.But what about ads? One page with an image, headline, and a few lines of copy? Are they worth studying? And what can we learn from them?My guest on this episode is Lewis Folkard. Lewis has made a bit of a name for himself by picking old print ads from advertising award books, analyzing them, and writing about why they are effective or not. Lewis’ breakdowns are more than interesting reading, they’re mini-lessons on copywriting, attention-getting and persuasion. He told me why he does it and how it’s impacted his business in this interview. Stick around to hear what he had to say.As you might expect, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve mentioned that I’ve been rebuilding the content vault and adding a ton of additional workshops to it. Workshops taught be expert copywriters like Parris Lampropoulos, Joanna Weibe, Stefan Georgi, Jack Forde, Chanti Zak, Laura Belgray and dozens of others. And it’s not just copywriters, we’ve got marketing experts teaching how to build funnels, how to market using tools like Linkedin and Pinterest, how to put yourself in the right mindset to succeed and so much more. And that’s just the workshops. There are dozens of templates, a community of like-minded writers holding each other accountable, and monthly coaching with me. It’s time you joined us inside. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd now, my interview with Lewis Folkard…Lewis, welcome to the podcast. I would love to hear your story and how you became a copywriter.Lewis Folkard: Okay, well, I mean, I guess a lot of copywriters say very similar things in the sense that I feel like I've always had an interest in people and communications. I mean, some of the earlier nonfiction books that I read were kind of about human psychology and communications. I think there was a How to Win Friends and Influence People and another one by Brian Tracy, I believe. But I was young and just always enjoyed learning about how the human mind works and...
Everyone starts from scratch. But what if you had to earn six figures a year from the very first day you were in business? That's the challenge Jon Morrow had. He's my guest for the 434th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. I asked him about how he did it. We also talked about how he is using A.I. in his business (his approach is pretty good, which is what you'd expect given he's been using it for more than ten years). We also talked about what he would do if he had to start over... he suggested a strategy I'd never heard before. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:SmartBloggerThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Would you be willing to work for free—for two full years—in exchange for a simple favor? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.You already know this but succeeding as a content writer or a copywriter is not easy. And building a reputation when you’re just starting out is a huge challenge. But what if you knew that you needed to earn six figures a year, beginning on the day you launch your business. No time to ramp up. No time to figure out client acquisition. No time to create and test the products and services you offer. You have no choice but to succeed at a high-level from day one.What would you do?That’s the challenge Content Strategist and founder of SmartBlogger, Jon Morrow, faced. But he did it. He succeeded in creating a six-figure business from day one. Jon shares how he did it and why it was necessary in the first few minutes of our interview. And once you hear what he says, you may find yourself without an excuse for accomplishing big things in your business. Because if Jon can do it with the limitations he faced, you can almost certainly do it even if the world is conspiring against you.I didn’t expect this when we set up the interview, but what Jon shares about how he uses A.I. in his business, to write sales letters, create courses, and run his businesses will either frighten you or inspire you to step up your writing game. His approach is impressive.As you listen to this episode, ask yourself these questions: What are you willing to give up in order to get what you really want? How are you diversifying and changing your business in the face of A.I.? What can you do differently to make sure your approach to email actually makes money for your business or your clients? And what can you do to create more connection and community with the people you want to work with?But before we get to all that, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. we’ve been rebuilding our content vault and adding a ton of additional workshops to it. These new workshops are jammed full of practical ideas for building your writing business, creating new products like VIP days, lead magnets and more, getting attention and building your authority, showing up on social media with the right content to attract your ideal clients and lots more. The more templates and training we add to The Underground, the more I realize there is a crazy amount of valuable resources, in addition to monthly coaching and regular copy critiques ready for you to use. And you can get immediate access for less than you spend on a dinner out with your family. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.And now, my interview with Jon Morrow…Jon, welcome to the podcast. As I mentioned just before we started recording, you've been on my list for a long time to have as a guest. I think I've followed you or known of you for close to 15, maybe even more years than that. We'd like to start with your story. So I'm guessing that there might be one or two people in our audience who don't know who you are. So tell us how you got to where you are.Jon Morrow: So yeah, my story has many chapters. So the thing about me that's unusual is that I have muscular dystrophy and I can't really move any part of m...
One of the biggest challenges writers face today—and it's a repeated theme on the podcast—is getting noticed by clients and prospects. In the 433rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Content Strategist Erica Schneider about how you can cut the fluff and get noticed by the people you want to work with. This is a good one, you won't want to miss. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Erica's WebsiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Transcript:Rob Marsh: What to get noticed? Want to stand out? Want clients to find you instead of the other way around? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.A lot of the conversations on this podcast focus on the problem of getting noticed… standing out from the crowd of a million other writers—many of whom are willing to work for a lot less than you, some of whom, though hopefully not many, are simply better writers than you. There are lots of ways to do it… posting content on social media platforms, showing up at events, creating podcasts and video channels on still more platforms, building an email list… the many ways of getting noticed goes on and on.And yet… many of us, maybe most of us, still struggle to break though.There’s some unfairness in the idea that the most successful copywriters aren’t necessarily the very best writers or persuaders… they’re often the best at getting and keeping the attention of the clients they want to work with.So how do you become the writer who gets the attention and the clients.Often it comes down to creating content that is positioned to attract your clients on the platforms where they spend their time. And to share the best ideas for creating that content, my guest on today’s episode is Erica Schneider. We talked about a lot of ideas and insights to try in your own business—everthing from the mindset shift you need to make related to your personal brand and how to think differently about content in the age of growing competition and A.I. to Erica’s favorite hook frameworks and how to use them and why you absolutely need an email list even if you don’t plan to ever send an email. This is all good stuff so I hope you’ll stick around to hear it…But before we get to all that, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve spent the few weeks rebuilding our content vault and adding a lot of additional training to it. New workshops include how to add a VIP day to your services, how to create a new offer, how to get more done, how to do research, how to develop your own frameworks, how to conduct discovery calls, how to get more referrals, how to build an email list, how to create a launch sequence and dozens more. The more we add the more I think we really need to raise the price because there is a crazy amount of helpful templates, workshops, and even monthly coaching in The Underground. But for now you can still get in for less than you spend on a dinner out with your family. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.And now, my interview with Erica Schneider…I'd love to get started just by hearing your story and how you got to where you are now as a coach, content maestro in some ways. You are an authority builder for so many people. You're doing a lot of things. So how did you get here?Erica Schneider: I am doing a lot of things. So I was the head of content at a B2B marketing agency. for four and a half years. I started there as a contract editor, then managing editor, then head of content. And I have loved writing my entire life, but I never knew how to make money from it until 2018, which is when I kind of stumbled into the content marketing world. And so I am a self-taught marketer. never went to school for marketing, never studied like copywriting, content writing, any of that stuff. I learned everything on the job. Um, but I also sort of always wanted to be a teacher. So growing up,
Do you write webinars? Sell with webinars? Work for clients who use webinars? If so, this interview is for you. Jason Fladlien is the copywriter behind the highest selling webinars in history. I asked him about whether webinars are still working today and the answer is part of this 432nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We also talked about how to be a better copywriter, how to create information products and a lot more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Jason's Info Product WebinarOne to Many (Jason's book)Jason's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: A few years ago I attended several mastermind events hosted by one of my mentors, Brian Kurtz. The were fantastic events. Each of these events featured several speakers sharing the strategies they use to succeed in whatever they were doing. One guest might share direct mail packages they used to sellout their services while another speaker might share copywriting techniques and yet another would walk through how to set up a research survey then share how they determine which answers are worth paying attention to and which answers could be ignored. I always walked away from these events buzzing with ideas to try. At one of these events, Brian invited Jason Fladlien to speak. Jason is pretty well known in the online world as the expert who created the highest-ever selling webinar… he sold something like 60 million dollars worth of services on a single webinar. He has personally written hundreds of webinars that have sold millions of dollars in courses, services, products and more. I used what Jason taught at that event to write our best-ever selling webinar.So it makes sense that Jason has been on my list of future potential guests for a long time. And we were finally able to get an interview with Jason. We definitely talked about webinars and what it takes to make them work—especially today when we’re hearing that webinars don’t work as well as they used to. Jason does a pretty good job of busting that myth.But that’s not all. Jason shares how he created his very first information product. It’s not as easy to do today as it was when Jason first started, but if you want to sell courses and other products, what Jason shares in this episode will definitely help you get started. I don’t think its an exageration to call this episode a masterclass in creating and selling your own products. There are a lot of copywriting insights here as well.But before we get to all that, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve spent the last week rebuilding our content vault and adding a lot of additional training to it. New workshops include how to add a VIP day to your services, how to create a new offer, how to get more done, how to do research, how to develop your own frameworks, how to conduct discovery calls, how to get more referrals, how to build an email list, how to create a launch sequence and dozens more. The more we add the more I think we really need to raise the price because there is a crazy amount of helpful templates, workshops, and even monthly coaching in The Underground. You can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.And now, my interview with Jason Fladlien…Unfortunately, as we started recording this interview, we had some technical difficulties and we lost the first five, six minutes of the interview where Jason introduces himself and talks a little bit about how he got started as a copywriter and how he created an information product from scratch and started selling it for, I think, $7. He was originally creating content for just a couple of dollars per article when he started out and needed to learn copywriting in order to sell his services. So we're going to join the interview as I ask Jason how he became a copywriter, how he got good at the process of writing and where that t...
What does it mean to show up courageously in your life? Who exactly are you showing up for? Why is it important to keep showing up. In the 431st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob sat down with author and story teller, Jude Charles, to answer those questions and more. This episode is a bit different from the typical discussions we have on the podcast, but we think you're going to like it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Jude's Book (audio)Get The QuestionsThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: A couple of months ago, I scheduled a catch-up call with my friend Jude Charles. Jude has been a guest on the podcast and a speaker at several of our TCCIRL live events. But we hadn’t talked in several months so we hopped on Zoom to catch up on what we were both doing. During our catch-up, our discussion got personal and a bit vulnerable and we shared some of the things we were working on and working through. And we both realized we probably should have been recording the call because there are probably a few people who could benefit from the insights we were sharing.Some of the questions that came up included… What lights you up in your day-to-day life? Or in your work? Who are you showing up for? Who are you making a difference for with your work? And what do you do each day that requires courage? It was too late to hit record on that discussion, but we scheduled a time to revisit some of these ideas and this time we did hit record. That’s what you’ll hear if you continue to listen in on this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. This discussion is a bit different from the typical interview we usually share, but I think you’re going to like the change in topic and tone—at least for this episode so keep listening.But first, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard me talk about the monthly trainings—the next one happens this week and is all about how to land a “real job” for a client where you are their PT or FT copywriter. That’s happening tomorrow on the day this episode goes live. And of course it will be recorded and shared in The Underground training vault along with dozens of other trainings on building your authority and audience, on launch strategy, on building an email list, on research, on creating new products and services and so much more. To get your hands on all that training for less than you’ll spend on a single night out with your spouse or partner, visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.And now, let’s go to our discussion with Jude Charles. Welcome back to the podcast. You've been here before. You know the drill. You were on episode number 217, where you talked about the demonstration of proof. And then you came back for an ensemble episode, if I remember right, 279, where you were chatting a little bit about burnout with a couple of other people and just kind of talking about how copywriters can deal with that. You and I reconnected a couple of months ago and we were just chatting and I think it was, we were chatting. I can't remember which one of us said this, but we were like, we should be recording this. Cause it was a really, really good discussion. And so I'm thrilled to have you back. So we normally start out with your story, but since we've done that before, just kind of catch us up. What's been going on this last year or two?Jude Charles: Yeah. So I, Ironically, I think I've been going through a process of reinvention, maybe for the last, it feels like the last five years, it's probably been less than that. It started at TCC IRL, where we've talked about it. I don't know if we've ever talked about it online, but offline, we've talked about how you challenged me to get on stage and to share my expertise and what I had to offer. I was scared out of my mind the first time I did it. It was back in 2019.
How do you stand out in a sea of copy and content sameness? A USP (unique selling proposition) isn't enough. Neither is being different. My guest for the 230th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is marketing strategist Louis Grenier, author of the new book, Stand the F Out. We talked about what it takes to position your business, find your people, and build a durable brand. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Louis' book and bonusesLouis' book on AmazonThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: The biggest question facing most people who own their own businesses is how do I stand out? How do I position my busines in a way that makes it easy for customers to find me—and more importantly, to know they want to work with me? What can I do to make them care? Those important questions are answered in the new book, Stand the F Out by Louis Grenier. And Louis is my guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast.The topics we cover in our discussion are the kinds of things that help copywriters go from helping clients get the words right to helping clients sell more products, grow their businesses and as the title says: stand out of the crowd. This stuff isn’t easy. It can take years to learn. But if you stick around, the insights Louis shares will shortcut your learning curveBefore we jump into this interview, I want to mention the guest trainings we have lined up in The Copywriter Underground this month one more time… the first one is focused on building connections with prospects and clients on social media without burning out. If you’re like me and struggle to show up on social media consistently, this one will change your approach entirely—and help you find a client. And by the way, a single new client could pay for your Underground membership, for the entire year, two or three times over.And the second workshop is all about landing a “real” in-house job—either part time or full time. A lot of copywriters want something a bit more stable than the string of clients they get as a freelancer. If that sounds like you, you need to hear the ideas this workshop will include. The presenter for this workshop was a talent placement expert for creatives. She’s helped hundreds of copywriters find so-called real jobs. What she’ll share is critical to know if you’re thinking about applying for these kinds of jobs and want to stand out from the crowd.Both of these workshops are exclusively available for members of The Copywriter Underground. If you want access to them plus more than 30 templates, 70+ other workshops and trainings, and monthly coaching and copy critiques from me… you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. If you’ve been thinking about trying out The Underground, now is the time to do it. The first workshop is tomorrow. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu for more information.And now, let’s go to our interview with Louis Grenier. I like to start by hearing your story, how you got to where you are. You're a marketing strategist, author of a fantastic book, Stand the F Out. I don't usually use that word. I do. But it stands out for sure. So tell us how you got here.Louis Grenier: Bonjour, bonjour. Thank you for having me on. And it feels like I'm part of podcasting royalty. So it's good to be invited on this podcast, listen to it a few times over the years. And it's funny how the copywriting discipline is is still thriving despite the fact that they were supposed to be dead a couple of years ago. So it's good to see that you're still fighting the good fight. So yeah, to answer your question, it started from a trip in Paris when I was 17. So that was 18 years ago. to visit one of my older brothers. And I saw this book on his shelf that was basically the French version of Influence by Cialdini. But it wasn't a translation of it.
What makes a good newsletter? How about "unfiltered stories and what we learn from them?" For this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed business strategist Kristin Kenzy, the writer and strategist behind the Drunk Business Advice newsletter. Kristin's formula for figuring out what makes a good story for sharing in email or newsletters is gold. As is her "accordion pitch" process. Don't miss this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Kristin's NewsletterThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Okay before we get into our interview… long time listeners are probably wondering, what’s up with the new music? For the past five-ish years, we’ve been using a bit of music composed for us by Addison Rice. But after so many years, it just felt like it was time for a change. So the music is different for the new year and we’ll see if we can’t go another five years or so with this new mix.On top of that, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been hosting the podcast for the past six months without my one-time co-host Kira Hug. Enough people have asked what’s up with that, that it’s probably time to let you all know what’s up. I mentioned this briefly on one of our throwback episodes, but to make sure you don’t miss it…I wish there was a juicy story here, or a controversy, a messy falling out worthy of the pages of People magazine, but there’s not. Last year Kira told me that after seven years working on The Copywriter Club, that this project just didn’t light her up like it used to, and she was ready for a different kind of challenge. So we worked to slowly move her out of her daily role at The Copywriter Club. Kira’s still officiallly—legally—a partner behind the scenes, but is no longer working on Copywriter Club projects. We’re still friends. There was no drama… just time for a change. At the time I considered ending the podcast, but whenever I mentioned ending the podcast to someone I trusted, they all said, “no, you can’t do that… this podcast is too important for writers who want a look into how other people are running their businesses.” And on top of that I really enjoy talking with copywriters and other marketing experts about this thing we all do. It’s still lighting me up and I’ve got some great guests coming in the next few weeks, so hopefully you’ll all stay tuned to see what’s coming next. I’m still committed to our original promise of sharing strategies and ideas you can steal and use in your own business.Speaking of great guests… my guest today is business strategist and story teller Kristin Kenzy. Kristin writes one of my favorite newsletters, Drunk Business Advice. In it, she combines interesting marketing take-aways with fantastic storytelling that makes me (and thousands of other readers) look forward to it each week. I wanted to talk with Kristin about her approach to finding and writing the stories she shares. The formula she uses to figure out if a story is worth telling is excellent and she walked me through during our interview. We also talked about why writers need to stop journaling and a better way to pitch prospects in person… something Kristin calls “accordian pitching”. It’s good stuff, so stay tuned to hear what she had to share.Before we jump into this interview, we’ve got some really great guest trainings lined up in The Copywriter Underground this month… one on building connections with prospects and clients without burning out on social media. If you’re like me and struggle to show up on social media consistently, this one will change your approach entirely. And a second training on landing a “real” in-house job—either part time or full time—if you are looking for something a little more stable than freelancing is. Ironicallly, copywriters are bad at telling our own career stories and this workshop will show you what to do if you want to land one ...
In another throwback episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we're taking a deeper look at goal setting and a proven process to help you get more done in 2025. Dave Ruel, the author of Done by Noon, walks through his framework for setting goals (or intentions) and making sure they happen—before noon. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Done by Noon by Dave Ruel4000 Weeks by Oliver BurkemanGet Dave’s workshop in The Copywriter UndergroundThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: If you’re listening to this episode as it goes live, today is the final day of 2024. Many of us are looking forward to the new year and new opportunities to grow and get things done.I’m not a big fan of resolutions. They tend to be good for a few weeks, but after 4 weeks are often forgotten. It’s even a cliche now to mention how full gyms are on February 1 compared to January 1st. The drop off shows how ineffective resolutions can be for most of us.So what does work? Well, the past year or two I’ve focused more on behaviors rather than goals or resolutions. That is, making time to exercise every morning without a goal to lose weight or compete in a marathon or bench press a certain weight. Making time to do something every day is something I can do. This applies to other goals as well, like time spent reading rather than having a goal to read 24 books a year. By scheduling time to read every day, I can reach the 24 books read without setting a goal. So that begs the question, how do you make sure you spend your time on the activities and behaviors that will get you closer to the person you want to be?A few years ago, we asked something similar of Dave Ruel, the author of Done by Noon. That book is one of my favorites when it comes to getting stuff done. My other favorite takes an almost completely opposite view of time management and getting stuff done and that’s Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks. I’ll link to both in the shownotes in case you want to check them out.For today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I went back into the archives to resurrect this mostly forgotten interview with Dave Ruel. And while he does talk about goals, he shares a framework for making sure your schedule includes plenty of time for the behaviors you want to implement into your life. If you’re looking to get more done in 2025, some of his ideas will help.Before I share what Dave told us, after this interview we realized that we wanted to go deeper with Dave and his system. So we recorded a workshop where he walks through everything what he shares during this interview… at an even deeper level. That workshop is one of the dozens of business focused trainings available right now in The Copywriter Underground. Coming up in January of 2025, we’ll be adding several more, including a workshop for copywriters who want to work either part time or full time with a client. My friend Jessica, who spent 2 decades as a recruiter for a creative talent agency will share why copywriters are so bad at resumes and cover letters and what they need to do differently if they want to land a so-called “real” job. And Esai Arasi will be sharing how to build relationships with prospects at scale, without burning out on social media. Both of these workshops are happening in January and are completely free for Copywriter Underground members. If you want them… along with the time management workshop from Dave Ruel, go to thecopywriterlcub.com/tcu now to join.And like last week, you’ll hear Kira Hug asking questions on this episode as it is a throwback to 2020 when she and I were co-hosting this podcast. Okay, with that let’s jump in with Dave Ruel as he tells us how he became an entrepreneur focused on sharing better time management strategies…————Dave Ruel: I’m going to go back to my days as a fitness athlete.
Becoming a great copywriter is not easy. But there are things you can do that 99% of other writers will not invest the time to accomplish. In the 427th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we talked with copywriter Jason Rutkowski about the process of mastering copy, how to find a mentor, and all the effort that goes into the process of becoming great. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Parris’ Book ListThe Single Best Way to Get ClientsOn Writing Well by William ZinsserThe Brilliance Breakthrough by Eugene SchwartzThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: It’s the holidays and if this year is like most of our past years, that means fewer of our regular listeners are tuning in for the next week or two. So instead of bringing on a new guest you won’t have the opportunity to listen to and learn from, I’ve gone into the archive to uncover an excellent old episode that you probably missed. And if you did hear it back when it aired a few years ago, you might have forgotten it.But honestly, this is one of our best interviews about mastery and the process of becoming an in-demand copywriter. The guest for this episode is Jason Rutkowski. At the time we interviewed him, Jason was writing for some of the top financial and health clients. So he’s got a lot of great, timeless advice. You’ll also hear Kira in this episode. Long time listeners will know Kira is a co-founder of The Copywriter Club and until the middle of this year, my co-host for The Copywriter Club Podcast. Some of you have been asking, where she went? Earlier this year, Kira shared that after seven years of building The Copywriter Club, she was interested in pursuing some other challenges. So while she’s still offically a partner behind the scenes, she hasn’t been actively involved in the podcast and our programs for the past six months. Everything’s fine. There was no messy break-up… and who knows, if the right opportunity presents itself, we may work on something together again. We’ll see.So, while you’ll hear Kira’s voice, she is still working on other stuff for now.One more thing before we get to the interview, you’ve heard me talking about The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track and that in the coming weeks it will be retired forever. This is the proven business building program used by hundreds of copywriters to start and grow their businesses. Many used it to create six figure businesses. A few have earned seven figures since completing the program. And I know it will work for you too. But time is running out to get the strategies, insights and ideas we share in this business-building program. So go to thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack now to learn more—and if its a fit for you, join so you can build a successful copywriting business for yourself.And now, enjoy this throwback interview with Jason Rutkowski.Hey Jason.Kira Hug: Welcome Jason.Jason Rutkowski: Hey Kira, hey Rob.Kira Hug: How’s it going? Glad you’re here.Jason Rutkowski: Oh no, I’m excited. I haven’t done one of these in a while, so I was excited to do it with you.Rob Marsh: Definitely took a little time to get our schedules aligned. We’ve been trying to make this happen for a little while, because we know a little bit about you and where you write and we think it’ll be a great conversation, so we’re glad to have you here.Jason Rutkowski: Yeah, definitely.Kira Hug: All right, so let’s kick this off. Jason, how did you end up as a copywriter?Jason Rutkowski: Okay, I’ll give you the quick story about this. I was 19. I just finished my freshman year of college. I got an internship at a normal 9-to-5 job. And I realized I hated it. I was like, oh man. I saw all these people who worked in an office, you know, 30, 40 years; I’m like, is this really going to be my life?And also at the same exact time,
The world is drowning in content—most of it bad. So when a creator is doing something different, something that really stands out and challenges the rest of us to up our game, we pay attention. That's why Content Strategist Heather Parady is our guest for the 426th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Heather shared her unique approach to content creation and lays out a roadmap for anyone else who wants to up their content game. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff we mentioned to check out:The Copywriter Accelerator Fast TrackSave the Cat by Blake SnyderHeather's WebsiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Content is everywhere. Almost every business knows that content is one avenue that helps prospects discover and connect with them. I’m not telling you anything new here, most copywriters work with clients who need this kind of content whether it’s on social media, regular emails, videos, workshop and webinar content. We even use it ourselves.So when I discover someone who is making cotent that stands out or is even a little bit different, I pay attention. And today’s guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast fits that description.Hi I’m Rob Marsh and today I’m speaking with Content Strategist, Heather Parady. I’ve been watching Heather’s content for a while now and I am impressed. She connects ideas from interviews and books and all kinds of other sources to create short video content that grabs attention and teaches with a story, almost always gives me something to think about. This is one of my favorite interviews this year and I think you’re not only going to enjoy it, but you’ll have a bunch of takeaways to apply to your own business and content creation.Before we jump in, as we wrap up the year I need to let you know that The Copywriter Accelerator as it is today is going away forever. This is the proven business building program used by hundreds of copywriters to start and grow their businesses. And I guarantee it will work for you too. But to get the eight modules, eight blueprints, the bonuses and the coaching calls that go along with it… you need to opt in now. And if you decide to join the Accelerator now, you’ll get absolutely free, the program I am working on behind the scenes that will replace it. I don’t even have a name for the new thing, just know that it will be worth it. And if you don’t agree, you’ll get your money back. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack for details now.And with that, let’s go to our interview with Heather Parady.Heather, welcome to the podcast. I, I'm thrilled to be here. You know, as we were just talking before we started recording, I'm a big fan of yours. I would love to start with your story and how you got to where you are building this list, this following that you have, you know, video producer, all of the things. Yeah. How did you get there?Heather Parady: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I was listening to your show and I'm just really impressed with the quality of guests and the topics and how thorough you guys are and professional. It's just really, really valuable, valuable show that I look forward to continually listening to now. I was a therapist, you know, I went to school to sit in rooms with people and hear their problems and sort it out. psychology of trying to figure out why we are the way that we are. And I've always been kind of like a helper. You know, I think through and through, that's really who I am. So it's funny because a lot of people are kind of coming to me for like the media side of stuff. They're like, video editing and all this stuff. And I'm like, that's something that I'm learning how to do. It's not something that I've been doing all along. What I've been doing all along is sitting with people and reading books on Adler and Carl Jung and stuff like that.
Wondering how copywriters could be using Facebook and Instagram ads to grow their business? Our guest for the 425th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie. Kwadwo had to reinvent his business during the pandemic. And today he helps businesses grow with ads on Meta. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:The Accelerator FastTrackThe Art of Online Business PodcastThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Facebook ads. Copywriters write them. Some copywriters run them. All of us see and click on them. And yet, most of us don’t have a deep understanding of how to use them for our clients or our own businesses. It’s not a skill you can easily pick up by listening to a podcast, but we can get a deeper understanding of them with the help of an expert.Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is Facebook Ads Manager Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie. Kwadwo’s business collapsed during the pandemic and he had to create an entirely new means for supporting his family. So he began a business helping others use Facebook to promote their products. That’s not all we talked about. Kwadwo talked about the value of learning a new language and how that can change your perspective on the world. And the challenges of starting over. I think you’re going to like this episode.Before we get to that… I’ve been telling you about The Copywriter Accelerator FastTrack— that’s our business foundations program used by more than 350 copywriters to start, build and scale their own writing business. Graduates include six-figure writers like Justin Blackman, Kirsty Fanton, Michal Eisik, Dani Paige, Krystal Church and hundreds of others.The only way to get the business changing strategies and proven ideas we share in The Accelerator is with the Fast Track edition. And it will be going away sometime in the new year. So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, this is just about your last chance to get that game-changing program. I’m working on a new program that will replace it… something that will be more concise and immediately applicable. It’s too soon to reveal the details but if you join The Accelerator FastTrack before we launch this new program, you’ll get The Accelerator and free access to the new program when it launches. That includes all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that will help you find and land the high-paying clients you want. If you get started with the FastTrack now, when the new year is here you’ll be ready with a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today.And now, let’s go to our interview with Kwadwo...Kwadwo welcome to the podcast. I'm excited. First of all, as I said, as we were starting to chat just to meet you, but also to have you on to tell us your story, how you became a Facebook ads manager, a strategy partner, host of a very popular podcast. How did you get here?Kwadwo: Let's go back to when I was sitting in Beijing, China, the capital of China, with my wife at a Mediterranean restaurant. And we were enjoying our hummus and naan and we're sitting and we're overlooking like a popular shopping strip. And so we're chatting and just relating about China life because I've lived there for 12 years. And the next thing that happened was It's very typical for me, but my wife had never experienced before. And so a couple of tables down, there's two Russian girls. They had spotted me, and they had started giggling like they saw somebody famous. And the thing is, I was famous, and I'll go into that in a moment. they made their way over to the table and, you know, say, excuse me, introduce themselves and wanted to take a selfie with me. So I introduced them to my wife and then did the selfie thing and they wen...
A lot of copywriters need a way to attract prospects... but more than that, they need to do it in a way that immediately communicates that they're the expert—an advisor clients can trust. In the 424th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with copywriter Meg Kendall about creating an industry report that does this perfectly. If you want to stand out from all the other copywriters who depend on lead magnets and social posts to get clients, you need to listen to this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Meg's WebsiteThe Copywriter Accelerator Fast TrackThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: One of the biggest challenges copywriters face… actually it’s not just copywriters, it’s freelancers of every kind… one of the big challenges we all face is getting noticed. But more than that, getting noticed in a way that builds trust with the clients you want to work with.Just about everyone has a lead magnet… or an email list… or content on social media… all with the intent of making a connection to prospects and potential clients. If you don’t have those you should. They’re table stakes for creating a successful business.But because everyone has them, you have to do more than these to stand out. One way to stand out is to write an eye-opening industry report that immediately sets you up as the expert in the field. It’s more than a download, it’s a shortcut to interviewing potential clients, establishing relationships with them, and demonstrating your ability.Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is copywriter Meg Kendall. Meg followed this exact path to connect with several potential clients in her niche. She’ll be sharing exactly how she did it in this interview. Before we get to that… you’ve heard of The Copywriter Accelerator program. That’s our business foundations program used by more than 350 copywriters to start, build and scale their own writing business. Graduates include six-figure writers like Justin Blackman, Kirsty Fanton, Michal Eisik, Dani Paige, Krystal Church, and today’s podcast guest, Meg Kendall.We no longer run that program live… the only way to get the business changing strategies and proven ideas we share in The Accelerator is with the Fast Track edition. And as I mentioned on this show last week, even that will be going away sometime in the new year. So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, time is running out. What will replace it? It’s too soon to reveal the details but if you join the accelerator fast track before we launch this new program, you’ll get early access to both the accelerator and the new program. Until then, you get all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that are included in The Accelerator Fast Track. And when we launch the new program sometime next year, you’ll get that updated program too. Don’t wait to work on your business so when the new year is here you have a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today.And now, let’s go to our interview with Meg Kendall.Hey Meg, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. Let's start with your story. I've been watching you build your business now for a couple of years. I think it's a good one.Meg Kendall: All right. Yeah. I feel like my story is kind of similar to a lot of other copywriters and that it's very winding and maybe a lot of the backstory is fairly irrelevant to what I do now. So I had a fairly long career in hospitality. I worked as a server and a bartender for about 10 years, and it was pretty hard to leave. At some points, I wasn't sure I would ever leave. And then I finally broke out, and that was via going back to school for the millionth time, it feels like. Really,
For the 423rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we're checking in on the progress A.I. has made over the past year with Jon Gillham, founder of Originality.AI. We talked about how originality helps protect writers from false accusations of plagiarism and checks facts (unlike ChatGPT and Gemini), plus some of the risks that A.I. poses to the world of content creation. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:Get the AI Bullet Writing PromptOriginality.AIThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Almost two years ago, we realized that A.I. was not just a new idea that copywriters and content writers needed to pay attention to, rather it was a game-changing technology that would impact almost everything writers do. The number of new tools and features that include use A.I. to deliver their benefits is in the thousands. That’s a big part of why we launched the A.I. for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast last year. You can find more than 20 conversations about A.I. on that podcast.But as A.I. has become almost commonplace, we stepped away from doing so many interviews about artificial intelligence and just how it is changing our industry. But I’m thinking it’s about time we checked in on how the tech has changed over the past few months and what copywriters should be using it for… if they aren’t already doing it.Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my guest is Jon Gillham, the founder of Originality.AI. This tool is the most accurate A.I. detector available today. What’s more in addition to checking for content created by A.I., it’s a fact checker—something tools like Gemini and ChatGPT have struggled with, it checks for plagiarism, and will help protect you against clients and others who might claim your writing isn’t original. We talked about how they do it and the risks A.I. continues to pose for writers on this episode, so stay tuned.Before we get to that… last summer we ran the last ever live cohort of The Copywriter Accelerator program. Since then, the only way to get the business building insights and strategies that we shared with more than 350 copywriters over the past seven years was to join the Fast Track version of the accelerator at thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack. But I’ve been working on an updated version of that program and it too will go away soon. So if you’ve been thinking of joining the accelerator, time is running out. What’s coming next? It’s too soon to reveal what I’ve been working on, but if you join the accelerator fast track before we launch it, you’ll get early access to the new program, absolutely free. Until then, you get all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses that are included in The Accelerator Fast Track. And when we launch the new program sometime next year, you’ll get that updated program too. Don’t wait to work on your business so when the new year is here you have a steady flow of clients and a signature service you’re proud to offer them. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more today.And now, let’s go to our interview with Jon Gillham.Hey, John, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. We'd like to start with your story. So how did you become the founder of Originality AI, and I guess also the co-founder of AdBank and Motion Invest and Content Refined? You've done a lot of this company starting thing.Jon Gillham: Yeah, it's been a journey. Yeah, so my background was as a mechanical engineer, did that in school, and then I always knew that I wanted to get back to my hometown and started some sort of online projects. A lot of those projects all had sort of a central theme around creating content that would rank in Google, get traffic, and monetize that, whether that was an e-commerce site, a software business. And then at one point, we built up some extra capacity within the team ...
Starting and growing a copywriting business isn't easy. So when we find a writer who seems to have figured it out, it's worth taking a closer look to see what's going on. So for the 422nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I asked Megan Smyth to share more about her business and podcast and how she's gotten so many things right as she's grown. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:The Copywriter Accelerator Fast TrackMegan's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: One of the things I love most about what I do at The Copywriter Club is the opportunity I have to see copywriters grow in so many different ways. They get better at writing. They build and develop amazing businesses that support the lifestyle they want—sometimes that’s something as dramatic as a full-time, six-figure business and other times it’s a part-time gig that helps pay some of the bills. And for copywriters who already have a business, it’s fun to watch them change and update the way they market themselves, create products, and find their ideal clients. Honestly, it’s a big part of why I do what I do.Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter and launch consultant, Megan Smyth. As you’ll hear during this interview, Megan is one of those copywriters who has made big changes to her business over the past couple of years. Megan’s a pre-med student turned copywriter and the business she’s created will inspire anyone who is just starting out or is ready to make a change—heck, I’m inspired by the progress she’s made. So stick around and listen to what Megan has to share about how she did it.Just a quick note… on this episode, we’ll mention The Copywriter Accelerator program that helped jump start Megan’s business and brand creation. That program is no longer available—at least in the format that Megan participated. However, we’ve taken all of the content, the 8 modules and blueprints and several bonuses and repurposed them into what we’ve called The Accelerator Fast Track. This version is designed to help you get results even faster. If, as you listen to us discuss that program, you are interested in how it might help you and your business, simply visit thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more.And now, let’s go to our interview with Megan Smyth.Megan, welcome to the podcast. Tell us how you got started. How'd you become a copywriter, a course creator, now doing some coaching as well? You've come a long way.Megan Smyth: Yeah, doing all the things. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. It's an honor to be on this show. It's one of the very first podcasts I started listening to on this journey. So, you know, if we're talking about how I got started, very first copywriting and business podcast I ever listened to was yours. And I've learned so much from you and Kira. But yeah, so to kick it back, I did not grow up dreaming of being a copywriter. I've yet to meet anyone that even knows what that was at a young age. My plan was to be a doctor. So I studied pre-med in university, and I realized about halfway through that something was just not right. I was enjoying it, but not as much as my friends around me in the program. And I was sort of on this fast track to success. It seemed like I had it all figured out. I was in this great program. I was applying for early admission to med school and all these things. And there was just this voice in the back of my head that was like, this is not it. Something's not right. And so when all of my friends in the program were writing the MCAT over the summer, I took the summer off and I booked a one-way ticket to Thailand. And that was sort of my escape plan. Rather than tell everyone that I was having these doubts, I just left the country for three months.
What does it take to create a course that delivers on its promise and ensures that students get through all of the material? On the 421st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, copywriter and course corrector, Maya Stojkovich, shares her COURSE framework for creating and fixing the programs experts sell in order to get results. There's a ton of crossover with copywriting sales messages, so grab your headphones and let's get to it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:The Course CorrectorThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Why are so many course creators failing when it comes to selling their courses? Or worse, they do sell their courses or memberships or workshops, but the people who buy them don’t finish them. I’ve certainly bought my share of courses with the full intention that I was going to complete the training and the assignments, and they’re still waiting there months… sometimes years later. What’s up with that?Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter and course corrector, Maya Stojkovich. Maya is one half of the partership behind the Course Corrector—a program designed to help course creators fix the things that keep course buyers from finishing the work and getting the result they want. The other half of this partnership is Linda Perry who has been on the podcast several times before. On this episode, Maya shared the formula for making sure a course will deliver the promised result and keep students engaged. And smart copywriters will notice some big similarities between what she shared and what we often put into a winning sales message. So stay tuned.Just a quick plug… this episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground… the only membership for copywriters focused on helping you build your business skills—the skills that help you attract clients, create services they want to buy, price them effectively, and run a business that’s fully booked and profitable. Does it reallly make a difference? Yes it does. Members tell us its the best investment they’ve ever made in themselves. The training resources, templates, critiques and community are game changers. And you can find out more… even try it risk free for thirty days at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd now, let’s go to our interview with Maya Stojkovich.Hey, Maya, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. Let's start with how you got to where you are. How did you become a copywriter, a teacher, and now a course corrector?Maya Stojkovich: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for having me on. I'm so excited. That is a wonderful question. How I got here, I'd say, is a pretty non-traditional route. Everything about it seemed traditional at first. I went to college. I got an English degree. I actually started off working in politics and that's what I really thought I wanted to do. And then I ultimately recognized that it wasn't the life for me. And so I actually ended up coming home and I was trying to reassess and, you know, I got the chance to actually join the Accelerator, and that was the first course I ever took. And I sat there and was like, this is really something. But there was a piece that was missing. I wasn't fully engaged, but I also like to blame that on being 20 and 21 and not really knowing who I am at that age. And I continued to learn. I took so many courses. That full year, I was just taking course after course. I actually ended up becoming a certified mindset coach. And that really helped shape the rest of my career path. I actually settled down into marketing for a while, and then I up and moved, and I ended up being a paralegal, a teacher, an education programs coordinator. And it seems all over the place, but now sitting where I am as one half of the course corrector, I recognized that my entire path was just setting me up to become this course...
Marketing consultant, Leticia Collins is our guest for the 420th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She's an expert in community-based email list growth, so it's no wonder she added 4300 people to her list in less than a week. Want to know how she did it? Then this episode is for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Leticia's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:The money is in the list, or that’s what we’re told. And before you can work on getting some of that money out of the list and into your business, you need a list. If your list is small, you need a bigger list. If your list is full of the wrong people, you need to find the right people. As a business owner, one of your big challenges is your list. And knowing that, would you like to hear how you can add hundreds, maybe even thousands of qualified names to your email list in as little as a week?Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with marketing strategist Leticia Collins. Tish is a successful marketer who has worked hard to grow her list. And in this interview, she shared how she added 4,300 subscribers to her email list in one week. And triped her revenue in the process. If you want to grow an email list full of potential clients for your business, this episode is for you.Before we get to that though… you hear me tell you about several resources that we’ve put together to help you build and grow a writing business. I’m going to quickly list a few of them here so you can get the help you need… we have a free facebook group called The Copywriter Club. You can find us on Facebook and request that we add you to the group where you’ll find seven years of threads about all kinds of copywriting and business questions. Obviously you know about this podcast. You’re listening to it right now and there are more than 400 interviews with successful copywriters and other experts in our backlist. Once you’ve listened to this episode, scroll through to find interviews with people like Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, Jereshia Hawk, Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Kennedy and so many others. Honestly, it’s the best free library of copy, content and business ideas that you’ll find anywhere. And it’s at your fingertips. Take a minute now to subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you don’t miss another episode.And right now you can get our free, 36 page mini-book called How to Find Clients when you go to thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient . I guarantee you’ll find at least one and probably 5-10 ideas you can use to find a client for your business. We’re here to help you build a business, so be sure to take advantage of all the free resources we’ve provided for you.And now, let’s go to our interview with Tish Collins.Welcome to the podcast, Tish. I want to start with the question we always start with, which is how did you become a content creator, a digital marketing strategist, business mentor, all of the things?Leticia Collins: Hi, well firstly thank you so much for having me on, it's so lovely to be here. And I got started in business, I started my business back in 2019 and I never really saw myself becoming a business owner at all, I kind of fell into it. It started when I went to university, I studied journalism and creative writing and one of our assignments, one of the very first assignments was for us to start a blog. I had always wanted to do that. So I was really excited about it. I started my blog and it was going to be like a portfolio for when I became a journalist. Obviously that didn't happen. Um, but what did happen is I began to grow my blog. I grew my Instagram. I started working with brands and I kind of started my first business that way. And then after a few years I began to get some questions about how I was getting paid to work with brands and growing my Instagram so fast.
The publishing platform Medium's been around for years. But the company has made a few changes recently that might make you reconsider whether or not you should be writing on Medium. Our guest for the 419th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Thomas Smith. I asked Thomas to share some of the reasons Medium has become a place for readers to find great content as well as a place for writers to not just share their thoughts, but also to potentially earn a respectable income stream by posting thoughts there instead of social media or your own blog. Why Thomas? Well, he's earned more than $19,000 for a single post on the platform, and well over six figures over the past couple of years. So he knows a thing of two. And he shared it all on this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Thomas's Thrive on Medium CourseHow to Find Clients 36-page Mini-bookThe FREE Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: It’s been said so often that it’s almost become a meme… there’s this idea that successful millionaires… or maybe its billionaires, I can’t quite remember, but successful millionaires have on average seven different streams of income. They may have a salary or income from a business they own, they earn dividends on their investments, maybe they have income from property they own, and so on. And people share this idea with the intention that those of us who hear it will also think about ways to add different potential income streams to our businesses.But as a content writer or a copywriter, you may not have access to investment that pay dividends yet. Or property you can rent out. Or many of the other more traditional ways these very wealthy people earn money. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t options for us. In fact, some of these options may be easier for you and me, than for the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks of the world to capitalize on.Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with successful Medium writer, Thomas Smith. Thomas has been writing on and making good money with Medium. He recently released a course that shows how he does it. And I wanted to chat with him about the possibilities for content writers and copywriters to use Medium as a potential revenue source—especially for the kinds of writing we might want to do for ourselves instead of our clients. If you write for you… you may want to listen to this episode twice so you pick up on all the ideas Thomas shares about growing an audience and income stream using Medium.Before we get to that though… you hear me tell you about several resources that we’ve put together to help you build and grow a writing business. I’m going to quickly list a few of them here so you can get the help you need… we have a free facebook group called The Copywriter Club. You can find us on Facebook and request that we add you to the group where you’ll find seven years of threads about all kinds of copywriting and business questions. Obviously you know about this podcast. You’re listening to it right now and there are more than 400 interviews with successful copywriters and other experts in our backlist. Once you’ve listened to this episode, scroll through to find interviews with people like Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, Jereshia Hawk, Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Kennedy and so many others. Honestly, it’s the best free library of copy, content and business ideas that you’ll find anywhere. And it’s at your fingertips. And right now you can get our free, 36 page mini-book called How to Find Clients when you go to thecopwriterclub.com/findaclient . I guarantee you’ll find at least one and probably 5-10 ideas you can use to find a client for your business. We’re here to help you build a business, so be sure to take advantage of all the free resources we’ve provided for you.And now,
Want to write a book? There are plenty of experts who will tell you how. But Allison Fallon has an approach that's different from all the others—at least, that's how it felt to be. Allison is the guest for the 418th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and when you hear what she shares about the process of writing, I think you'll agree, she does this a little differently—and it might just be the approach that works for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:The Power of Writing it Down by Allison FallonWrite Your Story by Allison FallonIndestructible by Allison FallonPacking Light by Allison FallonAllison's WebsiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: As a copywriter or a content writer or someone who is thinking about exploring these career paths, you’ve probably toyed with the idea of writing a book. Maybe you’ve got a great story that absolutely has to be told. Or perhaps you’ve heard that a book is the best business card and can open doors with clients who then hire you to write for them. Or maybe you’ve got a screenplay you work on for a few minutes after your client work is done. More likely… you’ve thought about one or more of those things, but haven’t yet put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.I’m always thinking of ideas for books, some of which I have started, others I’ve put away for later. And to help me as I process these ideas, I’ve read several books about writing books… how to do it, what to include, all that stuff. Recently I came across another book about writing books that was very different in its approach. It changed the way I think about writing… books and other things too.Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and my guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is author and book writing coach Allison Fallon. You’ll hear me say it in the interview, but Allison’s book, The Power of Writing It Down, felt more like therapy than another book about putting together your book chapters in a particluar order or writing scenes or character development. After reading it, I wanted to talk with Allison about her approach and what it means, particularly for writers who might be writing to a non-fiction audience. I think you’re going to like this interview.Before we jump in with Allion…Last week I mentioned our special free report called How to Find Clients. And I want to share that again because it features more than 20 different things you can do, starting right now, to find your ideal clients. It also shares the 4 mistakes you absolutely can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you do, you are dead in the water… and it also shows you five things you need to do before you reach out to the people you want to work with IF you want them to say yes. This isn’t some dainty one page PDF you’ll forget about in a day or two… it’s 36 pages jam packed with ideas that either we’ve used in our own businesses or we’ve seen other successful copywriters use to grow theirs. You can get your free report by going to thecopywiterclub.com/findaclient that’s all one word. Thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient. Get your free report now.And with that, let's go to our interview with Allison…Allie, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I would love just to start with your story, and I know you've got a really great story, but how did you become an author, speaker, founder of Find Your Voice?Allison Fallon: Yeah, I have always wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember. I often tell a story about being in fourth grade, and that was the first time that I really realized that I had a teacher who pointed out a skill I had for storytelling. And I just remember feeling like, oh, I can like something and be good at something and be acknowledged for it. And so that kind of started the spark for wanting to tell stories and in a longer format, like writing a book.
In the 417th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with case study copywriter Dana Owens... and of course we talked in depth about writing case studies. But as we talked, Dana shared her connection secret for getting plenty of leads for the work she wants to do. It's a great idea that any copywriter can borrow and use to grow their own business. But to get it, you're going to have to listen. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out:Dana's Tools for Case Study WritersThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter Underground Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: One of the client finding ideas I like to talk about is making connections with other service providers. Instead of thinking of other copywriters as the competition, think of them as business associates who can support you in all kinds of ways including by sharing leads. I’ve mentioned more than once that copywriters have shared leads with me that have resulted in more than six figures worth of business over the years.With results like that, of course you should connect with other copywriters and content writers. But there may be an even better group to connect with when it comes to getting clients. It’s just one of the things we cover on this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast.Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and my guest for this episode is case study copywriter Dana Owens. We covered a lot of ground in this interview including how Dana kind of stumbled on this perfect partner for leads in her busines. If you write case studies it’s a connection idea you can steal and use today. But if you write any other kind of copy, you can use this idea as well, you’ll just have to figure out who your perfect connection partner is. So stick around to hear more about it.Before we jump in with Dana…It’s been a little while since I’ve mentioned our special report called How to Find Clients that features more than 20 different things you can do, starting right now, to find your ideal clients. It also shares the 4 mistakes you absolutely can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you do, you are dead in the water… and it also shows you five things you need to do before you reach out to the people you want to work with IF you want them to say yes. This isn’t some dainty one page PDF you’ll forget about in a day or two… it’s 36 pages jam packed with ideas that either we’ve used in our own businesses or we’ve seen other successful copywriters use to grow theirs. You can get your free report by going to thecopywiterclub.com/findaclient that’s all one word. Get your free report now.And with that, let's go to our interview with Dana…Hey Dana, it is so great to see you. Welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. You know how this goes because you've been part of The Copywriter Club world for a long time, but let's start with your story. How did you become a copywriter?Dana Owens: Well, first of all, I'm so excited to be here. I actually learned that copywriting was a real thing from the Copywriter Club podcast. Seven years ago, I remember taking a road trip with my husband. And that was like back in the day where I had to connect his iPad to the car through a USB cord. And I had like 10 episodes of The Copywriter Club Podcast downloaded. And throughout the road trip, we listened to the episodes. And that's when I realized copywriting could be like a real career and a real business. And that's when he also learned it. So the fact that I'm talking to you today is just like, I don't know, a funny, funny, full circle moment.Rob Marsh: So that's amazing.Dana Owens: Yeah. But I started, um, I got involved in copywriting. Like I wish I would have started so much earlier than I did, but I graduated with a journalism degree and became a journalist for one year. Um, I went to work for a local, I'm from Michigan. So it was like a local small town paper and was the police reporter into the police be...
Starting a business is hard. And having enough runway to get off the ground is a big part of whether you succeed or fail. Content creator and author of the Hey, Freelancer newsletter, Blair Sharp, is our guest for the 416th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Blair shares how she made sure she had enough runway to figure things out when she launched her business. There's a lot in this episode, including Blair's story of giving up alcohol. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:Blair's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: This podcast episode is all about what I like call runway. And maybe the best way to explain what I mean by that is a comparrison of your business and an airplane. It takes energy to get an airplane of the ground. The pilot needs to spin up the engines, the aircraft has to accelerate, the wing flaps need to be adjusted to get “lift” so the aircraft rises. And because all of this takes a bit of time… you need a runway to move down while it all comes together.Your business is a lot like that. Most businesses don’t take off like rocketships. They need runway while you figure a few things out and get the momentum to take off. It takes time… so having a long runway can really benefit your business.Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I’m speaking with content creator, part-time psychometrist and author of the Hey Freelancer newsletter, Blair Sharp. The way Blair has built her business is the perfect example of using a runway and time to figure things out, instead of just leaping into the unknown and hoping for the best. It’s a model that a lot of freelancers could benefit from. So stick around as she lays out how she’s made it work for her.Before we jump in with Blair…Tomorrow, October 9 is the day of our next members-only training on how to create a lead magnet that not only helps you grow your list, but attracts your ideal clients and buyers, not just people looking for a free download. Our guest Kennedy from Email Marketing Heroes will be sharing a totally new way to create lead magnets that create buyers. That’s how he describes it.If you want to build your own list or you want to be hired by clients who need help with emails and lead magnets for their own lists, you need to see this masterclass. And the best way to do that is to join The Underground at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. As a member you’ll have access to dozens of expert trainings all focused on helping you attract more clients and get stuff done. I promise, you can use these trainings to build your skills and expertise so you can raise your rates and earn the living you deserve from your copywriting or content writing business. So jump in at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu today.And now, let's go to our interview with Blair…Hey Blair, welcome to the podcast. We want to start out by asking how you became a content writer, actually also a psychometrist, I think is… Yes, you said it correctly.Blair Sharp: Most people don't know what that is or know how to pronounce it.Rob Marsh: Okay, so psychometrist and you're the author of the Hey Freelancer newsletter. Yes. And so yeah, let's dig into that. How did you become all of these things?Blair Sharp: Yeah, right. Well, it's kind of a long story. And whenever I tell it, I don't really know, like, where should I start? We've got 60 minutes here. So I've been a psychometrist, which means I test people's thinking. So I work at the Mayo Clinic. I've been there. I'm in Rochester, Minnesota. I've been at that job for just over 10 years. So I just hit my 10-year mark. And I started writing for a local parenting blog, just on a volunteer basis, in 2019. And really enjoyed it, just as a little hobby. I was doing a lot of essays, some things in the community. And it was kind of like a nice other mom.
Most writers focus on the writing part of copywriting, which only makes sense as we’re writers. But maybe we should be doing more copythinking before we start to write. Our guest for the 415th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is A-List Copywriter David Deutsch. And when it comes to thinking about copy, David has few peers. He talked about strategy, writing emotional copy, coming up with big ideas, and much more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:David’s website
The How to Write Emotional Copy Workshop
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: When we started The Copywriter Club Podcast, one of the things we were adamant about was that we would interview copywriters at all levels of experience and at all the various stages of their business journey. So we’ve spoken with copywriters who are just getting started along with those with years of experience. We’ve interviewed copywriters who call themselves content writers, strategists, consultants and various other titles. We’ve heard from marketers and authors and experts in all kinds of fields. In fact we used to start the podcast with the promise that you would listen and walk away with plenty of ideas you could “steal” for your own business.
With that background, it’s always a thrill to get the opportunity to interview an expert copywriter who has earned his place on the A-List. One of the go-to copywriters when it comes to being coached by one of the very best in the direct response world.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I’m speaking with A-list copywriter David Deutsch. David has generated more than a billion dollars in sales over the course of his career. Not bad. And probably someone we can learn from. You’ll hear this in the interview, but one of the things David likes to talk about is the difference between writing and persuasion and copywriting. The two ought to be the same, but often they’re not. I know I say this every episode, but I think you’re going to like this interview. So stick around.
Before we jump in with David…
It’s October. Which means the year is 3/4 done… we’ve all got one more quarter to reach the goals we set for our businesses at the beginning of the year. So let me ask you, how is it going? Are you ahead or behind your goals? What can you accomplish in the next 12 weeks that will move your business forward and set you up for a successful 2025… hard to believe the decade is half over… any way in my opinion the best place for copywriters to stretch and reach their goals is The Copywriter Underground, the paid membership with more than 100 hours of training, including an entire course on selling, a mini-course on proposals, more than 27 different templates, including a legal agreement, and so many other resources designed to help you grow. And each month, we invite a different guest expert to teach a new skill… this month’s members-only persentation is by Email Marketing Hero Kennedy on creating lead magnets that attract buyers, not freebie seekers to your list. It’s the kind of skill that will help you build your own list and make you so much more valuable to your clients. It’s happening next week in The Copywriter Underground which you can join at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
And now, let’s go to our interview with David…
David, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I would love to start with your story. How did you become a direct response copywriter, a copy coach, and I think what some people would even say, you know, original member of the A-list of copywriters that are out there? Tell us how you got there.
David Deutsch: Oh, well, thanks. It’s great to be here, first of all. And, you know, I started on I don’t know how far back to go, but I started my advertising career at Ogilvy and Mather in New York, which was David Ogilvy’s agency back when he still occasionally roamed the halls. And I you know, worked in the ad world for a while after that. Um, and it was, it really taught me, first of all, of all the advertising people, David Ogilvie was the most accountable, the most direct response, enthusiastic. So I always had that training in, it’s not just creativity, but it’s selling right. And it’s not creative unless it sells. And, um, When I first encountered Jay Abraham, I was like, wow, there’s this whole world out there of direct response. There’s this whole world out there of more accountable advertising. I want to be a part of that. So I kind of left the ad world and started working for the boardrooms, the Agoras, Healthy Direction, some of the big publishers, as well as all sorts of entrepreneurs and startups and fun stuff like that. But it was always more or less direct response oriented. It was always about getting a response, getting an order, getting a name.
And after doing that for a few decades, I started teaching, coaching other people how to do it, because I kind of found that it’s really pretty easy in a way to turn someone, turn their thinking, right? Most people think incorrectly about writing. They think, well, how can I write? How do I put the words? What are the right words to put on the page? Rather than, hey, you know, if you had to convince someone to go to a certain movie or to go to this restaurant versus that restaurant, you wouldn’t sit down and be all writerly and try to compose something. You would just, your natural persuader would come out. So, I find that just getting people in touch with that kind of goes beyond all the formulas and the templates and all, which are great to have. But the main thing is, how do you get in touch with that ability that you naturally have to help people, help to persuade people? So that’s what I do now. I still do some writing occasionally, although it’s more partnerships, kind of getting together with people and creating a product or working with them as part of their team. and have my own products as well, because nothing keeps you as sharp in terms of writing.
Rob Marsh: You’re having to sell your own things.
David Deutsch: It’s like, boy, you really pay attention to the numbers. And that’s what copywriting is in a way. It’s as much of a science as it is an art.
Rob Marsh: I love that. So before we jump into how you do that and the strategy, all that, you’re one of the last guys around that really remembers Ogilvy, David Ogilvy. His books, I think, almost set the stage for much of what became the direct response industry, even, you know, before the internet sort of, you know, took over a lot of that, but just tell us, you know, just a minute or two, your thoughts about that whole experience for you and how formative it was for you.
David Deutsch: Well, I think being at Ogilvy was kind of like being at a teaching hospital in a way, right? People taught each other and there was a body of learning that you learn from. It was partly a mythology in a certain way, which was interesting, right? The myth of David Ogilvy and what he did and how he was. And of course, he perpetuated that myth by occasionally wearing kilts and doing outrageous things in restaurants and doing outrageous things in presentations. But, you know he loved the English language. You can tell his writing is so masterful in its command, in its exactness, its use of language. And he loved getting results. He loved selling. He didn’t just write for sport for its own sake, for winning awards, right? He called direct mail my first love and secret weapon. because he used it once to sell a hotel back in the day. And so, you know, and I think also his putting his teachings in different forms, right, in his lectures, in his books and things has kind of inspired me to share what I know, to be part of that passing on.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love reading his books to this day. Some of the things that maybe he teaches are a little dated, but you know, I’d still say 80% of what he taught, what he talks about is applicable to the work that we do. Certainly what we’re doing online, you know, where response is so much of what we have to do. But I’m a little bit jealous that you had that experience of being at Ogilvy in those days.
David Deutsch: Yeah, I’m very I’m grateful. Because It’s like I fell into it in a certain way. You know, I got a job there. It wasn’t even in the writing. And then I got into the writing part of it. But I was just like, Oh, I’m at an agency. That’s interesting. You know? Yeah. And, but I kind of fell in love with it. You know, just got kind of swept up.
Rob Marsh: I think, yeah, I think that happens to a lot of us. I’m, you know, much the same way. I had an opportunity at the very beginning of my career to start writing and I’ve loved it ever since. Yeah, it’s, it got its hooks in me and I’ve not wanted to let go. You mentioned when you left the agency, you started working with a lot of these big name direct mailers and it was all offline, I believe at the time. As you list off some of those names, I can imagine a lot of direct response copywriters thinking, wow, that’s the A-list of clients. It feels charmed in a way. How did you connect with that first client that then led to the next, whether it’s a boardroom or Agora or… Yeah, how did that all come together?
David Deutsch: Well, that’s an interesting question, interesting story. In the Jay Abraham corpus of work, there was a mention of a guy named John Finn, who was a copywriter’s agent in Los Angeles. And I thought, I should copy, I should copy, I should write to this guy. And I wrote to him. He was very receptive. And he hooked me up with different clients. and hooked me up with a guy named Jim Rutz, who was a very well-known writer in the world of direct response and in those big, you know, with those big companies. And I started working with Jim Rutz, which was a great learning experience, amazing command of language, amazing command of selling. It’s like you can’t put his right, you read his writing and you can’t put it down. So I worked with him for a while and, you know, he was kind enough to introduce me to the players there and they knew that I worked with him. And eventually I began working with, with his blessing, working with them on my own. You really can’t be working with someone, you know, both for, I think the, the learning, because, you know, it’s you can learn all you can from books, right? But unless you have someone that’s really tearing your work apart, right, and that’s really, you know, giving you feedback on it, and then showing you exactly what to do. Sometimes, it’s hard to learn plus the contacts that you make, I’ve made working with Jim and working with other people and working with John Finn.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Tell me, are there two or three major lessons or takeaways that you had from your experience working with Jim Rutz?
David Deutsch: Sure. I think the main thing was don’t be boring. First of all, do not bore. And Jim was just amazing at using colorful language. He even wrote to the reader’s highest intelligence. Sometimes you come across words you didn’t even know what they meant. And either it didn’t matter, or you kind of knew what they meant from the context. So it didn’t matter in that sense. But he could take anything and make it into an interesting story, put an interesting twist on it. So I think there was really, you know, there’s really learning that. And I think also, I learned from him, just the power of a great idea of an outrageous idea. Half of the ideas he came up with were terrible, but the other half were genius. You never kind of knew which one was which. But that’s how it is, I think, with great ideas. Someone comes along and says, I got this great idea for a drink. We’re going to make it. It’s going to be really bad tasting. It’s going to be full of sugar and caffeine. And we’re going to put it in a little can, and it’s going to be really expensive. We’re going to call it Red Bull. I mean, that sounds like a terrible idea, but it turned out to be a great idea.
Rob Marsh: So what I mean, since you mentioned that, let’s let’s talk a bit about ideas. And I know this is something that you have been talking about and teaching about pretty in depth most recently, although throughout your entire career, ideas have been a critical part of your success. So, yeah, let’s talk about this. Where do ideas, well, actually first, what is an idea? Because I think a lot of times we talk about this, oh, you got to have the big idea in order to write a sales page or to have a campaign or whatever. And there’s a huge disagreement as to what even qualifies as a big idea.
David Deutsch: Yeah, yeah. And disagreement is silly because an idea is whatever you want it to be. Who cares, right? There’s no definition. Oh, this is the definition.
Rob Marsh: That doesn’t make it to idea status. That’s a concept.
David Deutsch: Yeah. You know, an idea is a new way of doing something. It’s a new way of saying something. It’s a new way of presenting something. You can have an idea for where to go to lunch. You can have an idea for how to change the world, you know, with a new iPhone. There’s all sorts of ideas, right? Idea for a heck of an idea for a headline. You can have an idea for a product. So I think what we’re talking about in a way though, is, is ideas for copy. Yeah. Right. And to me, a big, like what they call a big idea is an idea that you can really build a promotion around. right, that sustains a whole promotion. Like you see that with Agora, the stuff that they do. You see that with some big health promotions. You see that in the ad world, of course, right? What’s the idea behind this commercial that kind of sustains it, that gives us a premise to build on, right? Like “End of America”. Well, yeah, the idea, it’s not an earth shaking idea. But the idea was that the end of America, which is just kind of a little bit of hyperbole, that, you know, America, as we kind of know, it is coming to an end, and you need to be prepared. And not in a gloom and doomy way that there’ll be blood in the streets, but just that, hey, it’s gonna be some big changes. And you could either profit from them, Or you can kind of watch your portfolio go down from.
A lot of my favorite big ideas are just opposite ideas. That’s one of the things I teach in my Idea Power training. Just do something opposite. If everyone else is zigging, you zag. If everyone else is saying, do these things to be healthy, you can say, hey, all that stuff’s a lot of crock. You’re not going to be healthy because you don’t do this and do this. You be healthy by doing this stuff that I said, looking at it in this new way. Right? Like, yeah, you shouldn’t need a ton of sugar. And yeah, you shouldn’t smoke cigarettes. But you know, drinking eight cups of water a day isn’t going to help you and not drinking coffee is going to help you because coffee is good for you in a lot of ways. And that was an actual promotion. It was very much like that. It was like, you know, had enough with all these people telling you all those things not to do right. It got your attention.
Rob Marsh: So what are some other, I’m going to use the word framework here. It’s not really a framework, but you know, if we have these tools, like, you know, opposite ideas, what are some others of these tools or frameworks that we can apply as we start thinking through, okay, I’ve got a promotion or I’m coming up with a hook for something. Maybe it’s not even as big as a campaign. It’s just, you know, I want an article on LinkedIn or on my own blog or whatever, but I need that hook. What are some of those other tools that we can apply to the thoughts as they come?
David Deutsch: Well, I think people get stuck, right? They just, they don’t think of it as in a fluid sort of way as how can I take what I have, right? And kind of what can I add to it? What can I subtract from it? Like maybe an idea comes from zooming in. on something like Ogilvy zoomed in on the clock in that at 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock, right? He zoomed in, right? You can zoom out, you can focus on one particular feature, right? A lot of times an idea or your ideas or promotion sounds really bland, right? Talking about Oh, this revolutionary thing is going to change your thinking in the world and how you do it. But if you really zoom in on one little thing, how it neutralizes a certain molecule in order to switch off your, I don’t know, hunger hormone or whatever it is, right? And then same with adding something, right? What can I add to this? How can I throw in Donald Trump? How can I throw in a celebrity? How can I make it relevant to what people are seeing going on in the world now? And of course, you see that in financial stuff, right? It’s like the agora, the Trump checks, or the Trump secret, or how the election’s gonna change something. And you see it in health by the celebrity connection, right? Celebrity secret. And I’m not saying don’t just automatically add the word celebrity into it, but look for the connection that it might have to some celebrity, right? Maybe some celebrity does something that’s along these lines that you can kind of use that as a tie in. Maybe people in Hollywood are doing it. People at Hollywood are doing everything. Chances are, you’re doing whatever it is your product does.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s truth there. So I want to ask you, when you get a new assignment, what is your process? Because do you jump into the product first? Do you start researching the customers? What does that even look like when an assignment lands on your desk?
David Deutsch: First of all, first thing I do, and it’s something I got from Clayton Makepeace, is I just start coming up with ideas. because I don’t want to fill my head with a lot of cans, cans, you know, it’s this, it’s not that. The first things that come to mind are usually the things that would get me to want this thing that I want this thing to have, right? Like, you know, and as you kind of what used to be called open the box, right? Of materials and background research, open the files nowadays. You know, you may find, oh, I can’t really say that it enables you to live forever, but I can say it enables you to live longer. And I can say, you know, certain other things about it, right? But a lot of the thinking about it, a lot of the analogies about it, a lot of the directions that you get when you first don’t have anything, you know, uh, hemming you in can be very productive. So that’s, that’s kind of my starting point is do that for awhile and then say, okay, I’d like to, in the research now explore certain things. Like I want to explore this thing about longevity here. I want to explore how it helps you live longer. Um, and rifling through some of the other stuff. Maybe I’ll see some unexpected things. I’m, I’m looking for that, you know, It was discovered by a headhunter, by someone got it from headhunters in the Amazon jungle, right? How close can I come to the one-legged golfer, the famous John Carlton ad, where the guy got it by the technique from watching a one-legged golfer. I want to find those things. And I want to know enough about the market, who we’re writing to, right, to know not just, oh, they’re male, they’re this, they’re educated, they want to make more money. I want to know why they want to make more money. I want to know what drives them. I want to know what keeps them up at night. I want to know what they, as Jane Kennedy would say, I want to know what they talk to their spouse about at night, driving to see their kids, you know, or not at night. I don’t know why I threw in at night, but, you know, like, what do they just say to each other in private, right? How can I kind of tap into that? And then I want to know, how the product works, you know, like really well, I hate getting copy from people. Um, where it’s like, obviously, it’s written by a copywriter that read a couple of pages of stuff about blood pressure, but doesn’t really understand, like, if I was talking to a doctor, it’d be a totally different conversation. Not like he’d use big words, but it would be obvious he understands how blood pressure works. Right? It’s obvious from this copywriter, he doesn’t understand how blood pressure works. He just kind of knows how to talk about it. And when you read it from someone that’s really maybe gone out and read a book or two about blood pressure, really understands the different ways of getting blood pressure down, really understands what happens when blood pressure goes up, right? How that puts pressure on every organ of your body. It’s not just, oh, it’s a number, and it’s a bad number when it’s a high number, right? We’re talking about every organ of your body is being overtaxed by this high pressure, fluid pressure up against it, right? And getting rid of it just frees up your circulation. You know, I had a client and he did a lot of he was in the facial skin care. And I said, you know, I read your stuff. I don’t really feel like you really know, I mean, I feel like, you know, skincare better than most people, but I don’t feel, you know, what’s really going on under there in the epidermis. I feel like, you know, enough just to write what you need to write for it really, you know, kind of well. And he was right. You’re right. You know, I’m going to go read up on some books, right? I’m going to go read some books. And he came back. He was like, God, it makes such a difference now when I write about it, right? Even if I’m not directly referencing what I wrote, what I write and the way I say it is different. Because I know, you know, what’s I know the 90% under the iceberg now. So anyway, I got off on a little rip. But so that’s what I do then. And then I just try to write, you know, maybe I’ll come up with some headlines. Maybe I’ll have an idea for an opening. I don’t really care where I start. I just want to start I want to start getting stuff on paper. I think that’s real important. And then try to get something down, complete as quickly as possible. and see if it works or if it doesn’t work. I like to work on Scrivener for longer stuff, because it’s really easy to organize stuff in Scrivener. It’s really easy to move it around. It’s kind of a word processing program, like for writers. And it’s like everything you always wanted a word processing. I wish Word divided things into Windows easier. And I wish that column where you can make it so they have the table of contents. I wish that was a little better and more active. I wish all these things. It just does that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, Scrivener’s made for, I think, originally for novelists, right? So you can move characters around or chapters around or whatever. Because of that, though, I think it becomes a really powerful tool if you’re writing long form, because oftentimes you’ll tell a story that later, as you’re writing, it’s like, wait, that doesn’t really fit up above, but it does fit down below. The copy and paste scroll in Word is so much less effective than what you’re talking about with Scrivener.
David Deutsch: All you have to do is move the title in that over here, I guess, in that left-hand column, just move it down to where you want it. You don’t have to like take the whole thing and cut and paste it. Exactly. The other thing that I love is that you can keep all your research right there on that same column. So it’s like, oh, I want to look at that PDF. Oh, I want to listen to the recording that we had the call with the client, right? It’s right there. I want to see that chart again. The chart is right there in that column.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it makes footnoting research so much easier. It’s a great tool, Scrivener, for all of this. It’s so cheap.
David Deutsch: It’s like, what, 49 bucks or something like that?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s cheaper than Word, for sure. So as you’re writing this, and I know I kind of asked this before we started recording, and you’ve been doing this long enough that you obviously know, okay, at some point, I need to be building authority or I need to be introducing proof at this point. But do you have a framework or an outline in the back of your head that you’re writing to as you sit down, or do you just let it come out of your fingers as it comes?
David Deutsch: To some extent, it comes. I mean, there’s a basic There’s certain basic outlines that are kind of in my head, you know, there’s the, you know, the problem. you know, I want to, you know, I want to let people know that there’s a problem. And if it’s a problem that, you know, oh, there’s a knife stuck in their neck, okay, well, I don’t have to sit there and go, you know, it’s really hard to have a knife stuck in your neck. And people look at you funny, but you know, it’s embarrassing, you know, you’re less productive at work. Like, I don’t have to do that. I just have to go, I got a thing here that can get that knife out of your neck. If they’ve got arthritis, Okay, little less so, right? I don’t have to harp on how painful arthritis is. They know it’s painful. Maybe I have to remind them a little bit. Maybe I have to play a little bit on, you know, you can’t pick up your grandson. That kind of hurts, makes you feel a little less, you know, useful. Just, you know, just step on the corns a little bit. If it’s high blood pressure or if it’s like, you know, high blood sugar, well, that’s a little different because there’s not those constant reminders like you have with arthritis. So I got to do a little more pressing on the problem. I got to do a little more reminding them that, hey, it’s not just, you know, a number that your doctor says you really should get down. This is a ticking time bomb in your body that’s liable to go off as a stroke or a heart attack at any minute. Um, And then, of course, there are some things where they don’t even know it’s a problem, like, oh, I never knew I needed this, right? You’ve got to tell, like Scrivener, right? Nobody knows they need Scrivener until you tell them, hey, there’s this better way to do this thing, right?
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Life insurance strikes me as one of those kinds of products where you absolutely need it if you die, but it’s one of those things that you don’t even want to think about needing. And so, yeah, hardly even like hits your radar, right?
David Deutsch: Yeah. Like I think Dan Kennedy says, you got to show them the coffin. There’s no life insurance. I came close to that. I sold a book on estate planning.
Rob Marsh: Okay, basically the same problem.
David Deutsch: Same thing, I had all those same problems, which is of course planning for death and who you’re gonna leave money to. How do I make this interesting, right? And it was one of the first things I did for Boardroom and it was a great training ground, right? Because it really like, okay, in trying to make that interesting, it was like, well, now I, it was like lifting 50 pound weights and now 10 pound weights don’t seem that heavy anymore.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, for sure.
David Deutsch: I remember, if I could just share one thing, this long thing about how you have to be really careful to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s because if you don’t do certain things, then the money that you think is earmarked for a certain beneficiary might not get to that beneficiary because you’ve misstated something or haven’t specified this in this certain place. And I turned that into how to avoid accidentally disinheriting your heirs.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. There’s a connection there, right? Yeah.
David Deutsch: To me, that really sums up how do you take something boring, make it into not boring? How do you take something that’s just informational and make it relate to something that they care about, which is, you know, their heirs, you know, getting what’s coming to them.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So as you’re writing, I’m curious about the effort and the amount of work that you put in. And maybe this is something that you coach people on. For a beginner, intermediate copywriter, how many headlines, how many hooks should they be coming up with? Or is their writing, whatever this thing is that they’re writing, a sales page, a blog post, a case study, whatever, how many rewrites does it take to get to something that’s actually good? And I know that’s a really nebulous question, so I apologize for that.
David Deutsch: And of course the answer is it depends, right? Yeah, of course. Like 50. You know, three is often a good number, right? You get to two, you revise it once.
Rob Marsh: You’re talking about the actual article itself, not necessarily headlines. Headlines would be more than three. Yeah.
David Deutsch: Yeah. The actual overall thing, right? You do it once, you go, you know, I missed this. I missed this. I don’t know about this approach. I want to try this. That’s kind of a second draft. And then you see other things become clearer because you fix some things. Other things are now a little out of whack or now it becomes clear that the conclusion is not as good as it could be. So the third time kind of does it right. Headlines, it’s good to generate, I don’t know, 20. You know, it’s good to generate 30. You know, the main thing is a to make them all as different as possible. Don’t just like, you know, Oh, should I instead of like, like how to make more money and live a better life? Make more money and live a better life. I’ll take out the how to like, no, that’s just to say.
Rob Marsh: right?
David Deutsch: Right. Like you really want something like, you really want to base it on a different hypothesis. Maybe they don’t want to make more money. Maybe you’re wrong about that. That’s the most important thing that that’s the thing that’s going to work. Maybe they just want to look good to their to their family. Maybe they want to be a good provider. Maybe they want to maybe it’s keeping score to them. Right? You know, so the headline then becomes how to prove your sixth grade teacher who said how to prove wrong your sixth grade teacher who said you’d never amount to any Like maybe, so that’s another headline, right? And what’s another headline, right? What if we took it and extended it, the benefit, right? It’s not the money, it’s the thing you can buy, right? Why not spend next year vacationing in Europe, flying first class and staying in a first class hotel instead of going to the nearest beach or something, right? It’s not quite the same thing now. It’s different emotionally. It’s different conceptually. So, you know, again, people get hemmed in. They’re like, Oh, I got to say these things in the headline. And I got it. Got it. They try to make the headline into a sales pitch. And as you know, it’s not a sales pitch. It’s a read the next read what’s under the headline pitch.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s it’s a catch your attention. So that you can get them into the next sentence, right?
David Deutsch: Nobody ever read a headline and went, I’m gonna buy this thing. I’m
Rob Marsh: So, you know, to bring us back around then to, you know, back to ideas, how do you know when you’ve got a good idea? Because, and this is obviously the reason we want to come up with a lot of them, because the first few ideas are generally not great or they’re so common, you know, that they’ve been used and seen before. How do you know when you’ve got that one or, you know, two or three maybe that you’re just like, wow, we definitely need to test this or we need to use this?
David Deutsch: Yeah. Well, um, first of all, I don’t mean to be pitchy here, but they can go to, um, speaking of writing.com forward slash IP. And there’s a test that they can take to see whether something is a big idea or not.
Rob Marsh: Okay.
David Deutsch: And couple of things on that. One is, you know, You’ve got to train yourself to recognize good ideas. I mean, that’s what you’re trying to do here, but to feel good ideas, right? You read something like End of America. Can you feel like it does something to you emotionally that gets your attention? You can feel that when everybody reads at 60 miles an hour, loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce electric clock, you feel like it does something to you. They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play dot, dot, dot, Right? You feel that. Yeah. And, um, you’ve got to learn to kind of feel that, like practice it with other headlines. Like, does this do that to me? Right. Does this, is this a big idea? And then learn to recognize it in your own, looking at them as if you didn’t write them. Right. Like, look at it. Like, okay, if I will, I’m just encountering this headline. I didn’t write it. Oh, you know, Does it? Yeah, that’s not very interesting. It looks like a million other headlines. I mean, right, like, because it stops being your precious baby. And you’re seeing it as other people see it. Okay.
Rob Marsh: I mean, in the real world, the way to do this probably is to look for those things that do stop you, that do catch your attention, that you’re just like, wait a second, why do I love that ad? Or what is the thing about that that made me stop as I was going to go get a drink during the commercial break or whatever and have to finish watching that? Or I’m turning the page and I have to read this and trying to, I guess, figure out what is the thing about this that made me stop?
David Deutsch: Yeah. I mean, that’s something I learned from Steven Kotler. I was very articulate about that best selling author. And he says, Look at how something made you feel. How does this make me feel? And then why does it make me feel this way? How does it make me feel this way? And I think there’s a couple things when it comes to big ideas, right? The first is, you know, I think, Oh, he said, Does it make me go? Wow, when I saw it, someone else’s idea? Do I go? Do I wish I’d thought that?
Rob Marsh: Yeah.
David Deutsch: And you can kind of do that with your own ideas. The other is, is there an emotional component to it? End of America. There’s emotion there. They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play, da, da, da, there’s a lot of emotion in that. Vindication, resurrection, proving others wrong, not being laughed at anymore. So much emotion there. So does it have that emotion? And is it a big enough idea to carry a whole promotion, right? I mean, Ogilvy’s thing was for, you know, 12 mistakes, let’s say, that people make when they read English. You know, to this day, people look at that and they go, I wonder what those 12 mistakes are. Maybe I make those 12 mistakes. And it carries the whole promotion, because as it talks about those 12 mistakes, it talks about why you should buy this course.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. Okay. I want to change gears just a little bit and talk about this idea that, again, before we started recording, I mentioned Brian Kurtz mentioned this to me. I’ve heard him say it a few times, this idea of copy thinking as opposed to copy writing. You’re the guy that coined that phrase, I believe. What is copy thinking and how is it different from copywriting?
David Deutsch: You know, I think Of course, you’ve got to think to write, but I think a lot of people just kind of go on automatic pilot when they start writing. right? And the automatic pilot is programmed by their, by their eighth grade English teacher and maybe college, you know, courses and things they had to write for that. It’s programmed by, okay, I’ve read a lot of this stuff and I know what it sounds like and I’m going to make it sound like this sort of thing. It’s not your fault, right? You’re, you know, not to blame for being overweight or not rich or whatever it is.
And now, okay, now I’m in the story part. So I am going to tell this story, right? So come hell or high water, no matter how boring it gets, they’re gonna tell that story from beginning to end, right? Because they’re not thinking about, well, maybe the best way to tell this story is to start at the end of the story and work my way back, right? In medias res, as they say. Maybe the best way to, you know, whatever it is, maybe there’s a better way to do this than just kind of regurgitate the stuff that occurred. Because AI can do that, right? AI does that very well. So what we need to do is to get off of the automatic pilot and take control of the throttle or whatever the thing is called in an airplane. And fall back on our own experience and our own expertise and our own insights that we have and our own, even wit and humor and personality and what we are and what’s inside us.
And that means thinking. That means like just sitting quietly before you start to write and go, well, what do I want to say here? What do I know about this? What do I feel about this? What do I want the person I’m writing to, to feel? Right? What story do I want to tell and how do I want to tell that story in a, you know, in an interesting way? And what strategy should I use, right? Is everyone else, you know, zigging, so I need to zag? Have people heard, you know, the Schwartzian, have people heard this to death? And I can’t just come in with a better way to lose weight or a better way to make money. I’ve got to come in with, you know, why French women don’t get fat, right? Or I’ve got to bring in, you know, you know, this radical new way of making money or address the market directly, right? Tried every way of making money and can’t seem to do it. Here’s what you’re missing. So that’s what I think is lacking so much. And I think it’s more and more lacking as people kind of rely more and more on AI output, whether they cut and paste it, which horrifies me. Or whether they use it you know, incorporated themselves, they need to add that strategic element to it. They need to add that strategic element in terms of even how they prompt AI, right? Like, hey, here’s what I’m thinking. How do I go against what people are doing? What’s the strategy? What’s the way? Like, have a conversation with AI. AI isn’t just write me a sales letter or write me an email, right? It’s like, hey, let’s talk like you’ve got this intern. that is working for you, right? You don’t just say, go write me a, well, you might, but go write me a sales letter. It’s like, hey, let me tell you what I’m trying to do here. What are your ideas? What do you think? What do you think about this? What do you think about this, right? How would you take this? How would you dimensionalize this? What other ways could you do this? Give me five other ways to tell this story.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah. It feels to me, and I agree, that what copywriters, maybe we’ve got an entire generation of copywriters who are used to taking an assignment from a client and assuming that the strategic thinking has been done. You know, they’re asking me to write a sales page. So I’m, you know, I, I’m assuming that they know how to drive traffic to the sales page or they’re asking me for an ad. So I assume that it’s about this thing that they’ve asked about rather than taking that step back to, to really do the strategic work. And I think that’s hard for a lot of copywriters because oftentimes we don’t have that background.
David Deutsch: Yes, we don’t have the background and thinking is hard work. And people are under deadline pressures. But that’s what people need to do. And when you do do it, it makes the writing so much easier.
Rob Marsh: Totally.
David Deutsch: Because you’ve got that insight. You’ve got that direction. You’ve got that strategic underpinning. You know what you’re trying to say, what needs to be said, how it needs to be said. You know, sometimes I feel like that’s my whole purpose as a coach is just to get people to stop and think, you know, to just say to people, Hey, how would you say this? So forget about writing, right? Just sell it to me. How would you sell it to me? Right. And then at first I’ll kind of copyright selling it to me. No, no, no, no, no, no. Just I’m your friend sitting in a bar. Just tell me about this thing. Don’t tell me your strategic, you know, whatever your, you know, what you think the copy should say.
Rob Marsh: Yeah.
David Deutsch: You know, tell me as a friend, because that’s what copy is. I forget who said this, but it’s kind of, um, it’s like just putting your, you know, putting your arm around someone and saying, Hey, let’s go look for, you know, close together. You look, you look good in this. You don’t look good in this. Right.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So you mentioned using AI, obviously not to do the writing, but as an idea buddy. How have you used it to improve strategy, or how are you coaching other writers to use it? I know you can sort of have that back and forth, but do you actually ask a tool like Cloud or ChatGPT for strategic ideas to start with?
David Deutsch: Yeah, sometimes. I think Ask for strategic ideas, bounce strategic ideas off of it. Ask it, why would this not work, right? You can ask it unlimited questions, right? Why not ask it why something wouldn’t work so that you could avoid finding that out later? Or at least consider, oh yeah, it might not work because people might be offended by this, or might not work because that’s not the benefit people really want, or whatever it is. But yeah, sure, have that. conversation with it. And I wouldn’t say don’t use it to write, but that’s a very far part of the AI process, right? Yeah. When it’s ready to actually write something, you know, like first you’ve got to go, what’s the avatar? What’s the strategic? What are we trying to do here? And, you know, AI, as you probably know, is very step by step. It doesn’t do well with find an avatar, think of a strategy, and, you know, do an outline and write it, right? It likes to do those things in stages, like, let’s do the avatar first together. Let’s do this together. Let’s do that together and go back and forth.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, as a writing buddy or as a thought buddy, AI can actually be a really great tool to force us to do the things as copywriters that we often skip over because we think we know the audience, or we think we know what the right feature is. And if we have that go, that back and forth, you know, tell me why this won’t work. Give me three additional things that I’d be thinking about here, kinds of prompts could, I mean, it just, Like, it’s part of that copy thinking process.
David Deutsch: Sure. It’s a great copy thinker. You know, what are five things that people with diabetes wish regular people without diabetes knew? Right? That could be some pretty good stuff to have in your promotion. What are five things that, you know, people with diabetes, you know, what are their biggest obstacles? What do they hate most? Right? You know, questions like that can give you real insights. into a target market. I mean, probably can’t beat going out and talking to people with diabetes. But you know, it’s a good it’s a good thought starter, right?
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. So we met in person a few years ago at one of our events, Copywriter Club in Real Life. I think we were in Williamsburg there. And one of the things I noticed that you were doing as all these presentations on stage, I looked over at one point and you were busily scribbling notes into a notebook, which impressed me a little bit because I don’t think there was anybody on stage with less experience or with more experience than you. So there’s a lot of people who have been maybe doing this for only a couple of years or whatever, and you’re still scribbling away tons of ideas, thoughts that you’re having. And like I said, it impressed me because I was just thinking, if somebody with three, four decades of experience is here learning. There’s a lesson here for the rest of us. So that’s a really long introduction to my question, which is, how do you stay sharp today? What are you doing to learn? Where do you focus your reading, your journaling, your thinking, basically, to make sure that you’re growing your skills?
David Deutsch: Ooh, that’s quite a question. You know, there’s a lot of things, right? Keeping current with what’s going on, whether that’s social media. I love TikTok, which is, of course, a great way to know what’s going on because it’s all on there. Although it does kind of gravitate me away from, you know, young person things kind of into, you know, things more appropriate for my age.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, the algorithm still works.
David Deutsch: Yeah, the algorithm works really too well. Because whenever I say to my daughter, hey, did you see that thing on, you know, whatever, she’ll be like, yeah, Dad, you know, that’s on the old person feed, right? But it’s a great way to keep up with stuff. Being around young people, coaching young people is a really big help. You know, reading a wide variety of things Um, not just stuff that, you know, you’re interested in, but stuff that you might not want to be, you know, exposed to. Right. Um, whether that means watching, you know, Fox news or watching, you know, I love to watch Fox news and I love to watch, um, you know, CNN. Right. I love to see all ends of the spectrum. This goes back to the thing about taking notes. And I think there’s a couple of things there. One is they may have different insights than I do. They may have learned different things. They may know some things that I don’t. But even the things that they know that I know, they may know a different aspect of it. I may learn something from how they applied it or how they used it. That’s something I got from Jay Abraham, right? You go to the same seminar as someone, find out what their takeaways were, right? Because they won’t be the same as your takeaways. Different people see different aspects of things. And so, you know, I think that’s really important too. And just, you know, using the tech. The best advice I ever got about AI is just use it. you know, plan your vacation with it, use it. Don’t worry about getting this new plugin or, you know, this hot new, you know, just become familiar with it.
Rob Marsh: So here’s a slightly contrarian question, but what drives you nuts about copywriting today?
David Deutsch: Well, a lot of it is AI copy. When you can look at it and you go, oh my God, AI so wrote that. You can see that in editorial stuff, right? You can see that in copywriting. So that drives me a little bit nuts. I think it drives me a little bit nuts when people just are kind of writing on automatic pilot. because it just seems like a waste of a person, you know, when this person is an individual and has got things to bring to it and is only bringing to it, you know, this homogenized, you know, vomiting forth of everything that’s ever been written before in a different, you know, the classic being, you know, it’s not your fault.
Rob Marsh: Might as well have AI write it if that’s all you’re going to bring to the table.
David Deutsch: Yeah, because that’s exactly what, and that’s why AI is so good, because it’s good at doing it’s good at taking everything and making it sound like it, you know, it sounds like. And the danger is, as people become more and more immune to that, right? And what is, I don’t know, I forget what the word, inured against that, right? Like with stock photography, we can look at something, oh yeah, stock photography, you know, There’s the people posing around the boardroom table, right? Maybe we didn’t at first. We went, oh, nice photograph. Oh, look, they got all that set up and lighting. And now we just go, yeah, that’s the stock photography. Yeah. And it’s kind of becoming like that with AI, I think, too. It’s like it’s got that soulless kind of ring to it. And that’s why I think it’s really important for copywriters to read people like, to read writers with voice like Stephen Kotler, like Norman Mailer, like Tom Wolfe, you know, to really experience what real voice and copy can sound like and personality. Because that’s what people read, right? They read things like that that are interesting to them. And more and more, we’ve got to hold people’s attention. We’ve got to get people’s attention. It’s getting hard to do that, right, for everyone everywhere because people are so buried in all the noise and all the stuff that’s out there, they’re not responding like they used to.
Rob Marsh: I think that this is a really important point. You know, Gary Halbert was famous for handing all of his copy cubs a Travis McGee novel, you know, to basically, you know, get them thinking, you know, in a different way. And like you said, when we show up, we were hired to write copy. So we put on our copy goggles and we write copy. But that’s not the stuff that connects deeply. That’s not the stuff that’s emotional. And we’ve got to go beyond that automatic stuff. And it’s fiction. The writers you named are phenomenal for voice. dozens of others that we can name that also do that. But it’s a reminder that if you’re not reading fiction or poetry or outside of the realm of just copywriting books, you’re probably shorting your ability to write well.
David Deutsch: Yeah. I mean, a lot of what I train people in is fiction techniques for nonfiction. Right? How do you build characters? How do you build suspense? How do you, how do you plot, you know, the stories that you tell? And of course, we’re doing real stories, hopefully. But you know, they’re doing with fate was so what, right? A story, a story is a story. And an interesting story is an interesting story. Like Howard Gossage said, people read what they’re interested in. Sometimes it’s an ad. Yeah, right. And all those writers, Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Stephen Kotler, I forget the other one, but they all wrote, even David Wallace, they all wrote fiction and nonfiction, right? And the reason their nonfiction was so great was because they brought those novelistic techniques, those fiction techniques to their nonfiction.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s a great lesson there. So you started out a few decades ago doing this. If you were coaching somebody, maybe it’s a friend of your daughter’s or whatever, they’re just getting their start. I want to be a direct response copywriter. Where would you tell them to start? What would you tell them to do? What are those first couple of steps you would coach somebody on?
David Deutsch: Well, I’d start them out with, you know, the basic books, right, the Hopkins, the Ogilvy, the capels, give them a foundation in the basics of direct response, because those haven’t changed, right, the basic tenets of Hopkins, the testing, right, more important than ever, easier to test than ever. The basic human nature stuff in those things hasn’t changed, right. And then I think I would make sure that they not only knew copywriting, but they also knew you know, how to make a funnel, they also knew SEO, they also knew, you know, CRO, conversion rate optimization. Yeah, right. They knew those things that they didn’t just think of. And they just didn’t think of themselves as writers, right? Writers is one thing that they do. They’re people that get sales that get, you know, I’m someone that gets sales for people get response. And sometimes a lot of that revolves in writing because you have to, you know, write stuff for CRO and SEO and all those other acronyms to work. So I tell them like, just know more than other people. That’s a big thing in what I teach, right? Just know more than other people, right? Know more about copywriting, know more about the products, know more about the market. It’s hard to write better. Right? You know, people are, some people are good at writing, some people aren’t that great at writing. But it’s real easy to know more than other people. Like some writers are really good writers, I’m sorry, some copywriters are really good writers, like Bencivenga, you know, and other people like that. Other people are good enough, but they’re really good at knowing what to write, right? Really good at knowing what to put on paper to get people to react in a certain way, to do certain things. So just know the history of copywriting, know the history of the industries that you’re working for, right? Just put in that work, especially when you’re young and you need to differentiate yourself.
Rob Marsh: This is where every copywriter should be more curious than anybody else, right? That’s like one of the number one character traits, I suppose, that really set us apart, or at least should set us apart. If you’re curious, you learn.
David Deutsch: I mean, imagine that friend of a friend’s daughter or whatever it is, right? And, you know, she knows copywriting. So she goes, you want a copywriter? I can write copy. Nah, we got plenty of copywriters. We don’t have an opening right now. Right. But if she goes in there and she’s like, you know, Hey, I can help you improve your sales. You know, I do copywriting and I do other things like what’s the biggest problem you have right now? Well, we can’t really get our leads to convert. Well, I, you know, I know a little bit about that, right? I know a little bit about converting leads and here’s some of the things I found. Tell me more about it. So she may be a copywriter, but she’s getting her foot in the door with whatever their problem is because she can help them solve it. And she can use copywriting to help them solve it. But because she knows a little bit about the funnel and how to convert leads and how to get more leads or whatever it is, she’s got so much more exponentially a chance at getting that job, getting that, you know, project.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. This has been a great conversation for me, David. It’s been great to connect with you and hear your thoughts on all of this stuff. But it’s only been 50 minutes. I’m guessing there are a lot of people who would like more David in their life to be on your email list, possibly even jump into one of the courses or the trainings that you offer. You mentioned the website earlier. It’s speakingofwriting.com. Is that the best place to go?
David Deutsch: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so happy now I have a website. David L. Deutsch, D-E-U-T… I don’t have to do that anymore. Now it’s just speakingofwriting.com.
Rob Marsh: Well, and plus there’s the other, the other David Deutsch, who’s the famous physician or, or whatever, if you misspell your name, all his stuff comes up. So yeah. Speakingofwriting.com is the easiest way to find you.
David Deutsch: Yeah. That’s where they can go. They can, you know, sign up for my newsletter. They can, uh, find out about products there. There’s a bunch of articles and there’s two free reports, one on copywriting and one on, uh, creativity, how to come up with great ideas.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for your time and again, for sharing. I’d love to have you come back sometime. We can talk about some of this stuff even at greater depth, but I appreciate your willingness to share so much, David.
David Deutsch: Thanks. My pleasure. I’d love to come back. I think we’ve got a couple more hours in us.
Rob Marsh: Easily. Thanks. Thanks again to David Deutsch for going deep on copy thinking, finding ideas, strategy, and so much more. There’s just so much to learn from this interview, and I’m already going back and taking additional notes.
David talked a little bit about writing emotional copy. He shared some really good ideas on how to do that, paying attention to the way that copy makes you feel as you encountered it. We have a how to write emotional copy workshop with a bunch of different bonuses. If you want to check that out, you can find it at thecopywriterclub.com/emotion. And of course, you can connect with David at his website, speakingofwriting.com. There’s a couple of bonuses there. And if you go to speakingofwriting.com/IP, you can get the checklist that David mentioned early on in the interview about how to know if you’ve got a good idea or not. And of course, join his list there so you can keep up with what David’s doing in the world of copywriting today.
Standing out as a content writer when you offer the same services as every other content writer is hard. We’re talking blog posts, case studies, white papers… But if you’re willing to go beyond the expected and find deeper problems your clients have, you can carve out a very different kind of business. For the 414th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with content strategist Sarah Hopkinson about how she found a problem that she can solve and be the only content mixologist doing what she does. If you’re a content writer who wants to solve bigger problems than writing blog posts for SEO, you’re going to like this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Pocket Guide Sarah Created for us
Ry Schwartz Podcast Episode
Everybody Writes by Anne Handley
Sarah’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: A lot of content writers focus on serving clients who have obvious content needs. They know they need blog posts for SEO or case studies for a sales funnel. They’re solving problems that their clients know they have. And while there are plenty of opportunituies for copywriters in this space, there is a ton of competition too. Because a lot of writers, especially writers who are just starting out, will gravitate to these obvious problems and the clients who know they need these assets.
But there are deeper content needs that are a bit less obvious. And they can be a rich opportunity for the smart copywriters who can unlock them. Let me give you an example… there are hundreds of podcaster and video channel owners with months or even years of episodes full of great ideas and insights. But most podcast listeners don’t have the time to listen to every episode in order to get those insights. Take this podcast for example, if you were to listen to every episode, it would take you twelve weeks if you listened 8 hours a day to hear everything we’ve shared. But what if an enterprising content writer could unlock those insights so listeners didn’t have to put in the time, but could get the ideas in a lead magnet or PDF resource for a client. Now that’s a non-obvious content opportunity that a lot of clients have but almost no copywriters offer.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I’m speaking with content strategist and podcast content mixologist Sarah Hopkinson. Sarah has created a business that does exactly that—uncovers the best lost and hidden content that podcasters have in their archives, then helps her clients find new uses for those assets. Sarah has staked out a unique position in a niche with a ton of potential clients that almost no one else is serving. And I asked her how and why she did it. Stay tuned to here what she had to say…
Before we jump in with Sarah…
On this episode we’ll talk about the kind of lead magnets and other content that Sarah creates for her clients. We actually asked Sarah to go through some of our older episodes to find the very best ideas that our guests shared about finding clients. If you’d like to see what she discovered, simply visit thecopywriterclub.com/pocket. If you go to that url, you’ll be able to download a report that shares the ideas that Sarah uncovered on those older podcasts—ideas that still work today. Any way, check it out at thecopywriterclub.com/pocket
And now, let’s go to our interview with Sarah…
Sarah, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. Tell us, how did you become a copywriter and a podcast content strategist?
Sarah Hopkinson: Hey Rob, it is great to be here and I’m so excited to talk to you. I got into copywriting through like many copywriters, a slightly long journey. I did a degree in French and linguistics, which really set me up for life in France, and I decided that that was my goal to move from Britain to France, so I did that. When I arrived in Nice in the south of France, I bounced around a little bit, did a few small jobs before I landed a job with a big travel company producing content for them. in English and French. So that was kind of content writing and also research, content curation. But then in 2020, the world changed quite substantially with COVID and I was made redundant. And as part of my redundancy process, it took quite a long time. So I had time to think about I wonder what I want to do next after this job. And I’d heard of copywriting before, and I started telling people that I wanted to be a copywriter until somebody said to me, Oh, great. So what is that? And I thought, what an unfair question to ask. Um, so I had to start doing research on copywriting, uh, and I found out that it still interested me. It was what I wanted to do. So that led to me creating my own business in 2021, Copyhop. Uh, and I was recommended the Copywriter Club podcast by a friend and I did the accelerator, found my niche and here we are today.
Rob Marsh: So content strategist for podcasts is something that’s a little bit different. There aren’t a lot of copywriters. Well, there are a few copywriters certainly doing podcast type work, but you’re kind of in a niche that’s pretty small and maybe a niche that you’ve carved out or kind of created on your own. So tell us, why did you choose content for podcasts?
Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, I chose it because I’ve been into podcasting for a long time just as a hobby, listening to podcasts. So when I started my business as a copywriter, I thought if there are writing services that podcasters need. And through kind of poking around on the internet and looking at the podcasters that I follow, I noticed that they had show notes. So I started selling podcast show notes on Fiverr. And I have to say as a service, it really took off in a short space of time. It got quite popular. And I had quite a regular client base who would ask me for show notes. And then they started asking me for other things. For example, mostly blog posts, but also picking out highlight quotes and writing a bit of social media copy for their podcasts. And I got great reviews about that. And it made me think, I feel like there is something here that podcasters need this service because they need to keep promoting that podcast. They want to build a community around that podcast. And they’re doing that by publishing this content in various places on the Internet. And also, you know, there’s value in a podcast episode. But if you don’t keep on advertising that one podcast episode, it kind of sits in the archives and dies. And I thought, I bet that there’s scope here to turn content that podcasters have already made into something that continues to make them value instead of it being kind of a one-time effort that brings in a few listeners and then you just shelve it and don’t go back to it. So that was the idea behind offering the services. But yeah, it was really through the help of The Accelerator that I was able to kind of shape and define what I wanted to offer to my podcasting clients.
Rob Marsh: So I’m not really intending this to be an ad for the accelerator, but talk to us a little bit about that process that you went through as you were thinking through, okay, I want to do this. How did you then say, okay, these are the services I’m going to offer. Are these the kinds of clients that I’m going to work with? What was your thinking there?
Sarah Hopkinson: I think I had kind of the kernel of the idea of there is something more here that podcasters need. But, um, I think that the program helped me to develop exactly what it was that I wanted to offer podcasters and to help me kind of shape it in my mind of working with podcasters on projects. So I think that the, you know, the support that you and Kira gave me was really valuable for me being able to do that. Um, But I think really the process around it was also thinking about it from the point of view of what suits my life and my business that I can offer as well, which was a piece of the picture that I hadn’t really put in there, but obviously it’s very important to think about that too. about what you can realistically do as an online service provider. So I think that, yeah, going through the program helped me to take something that was an idea into a full-blown website and service that I offer. Almost an online persona, really.
Rob Marsh: Some copywriters might be listening and thinking, okay, there are, I don’t know, quarter of a million, half a million podcasts out there. Maybe it’s even more than that. You probably know the numbers better than I do. And so this might be a pretty good way to get started as a copywriter. But most of us, when we think about this stuff, thinking, OK, well, I don’t really want to write show notes, you know, or, you know, the the caption that goes into social media, which is really what we see usually when it comes to, you know, writing for podcasts. So you’ve gone a lot broader than that. Talk about some of the kinds of projects that you work on and all the content that’s involved in that.
Sarah Hopkinson: Yes. So the things that you mentioned, the show notes and stuff is kind of at the lower end of the spectrum. And the kind of projects that I really enjoy working on with clients go a bit deeper than that. So instead of looking at an individual podcast episode, which is what you would do with show notes and probably with blog posts as well, I like to, with my podcasting clients, I talk to them about the entire archive of podcast episodes that they have and help them to turn it into another form of content. For example, an email series or a lead magnet. And if we’re producing, if I’m producing for them, for example, a lead magnet, it might be because they’re getting ready to sell a course or some kind of service to their podcast listeners. And therefore my lead magnet, I go through their podcast archives, looking through the lens of a theme, really. something that’s come up often in their podcast episodes across multiple episodes. And I pull those strands out and put it together in the form of some kind of downloadable PDF. But it’s really focused on the value that the podcaster shares in their podcast episodes, packaging together different information, such as what this cool guest said in this one episode compared to this expert from another episode. and putting it together in a way that delivers a lot of information to their listeners that their listeners wouldn’t necessarily have got by themselves just from tuning into an episode here and there.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like it. Obviously, you did something like that for us a while ago, and it’s a lead we use, we throw it out there every once in a while. And I will share the link in the show notes if anybody wants to check out that that you did. But it’s a lot of work. Like this isn’t, you know, I mean, you’ve got the listening, then you’ve got to pull out all of the ideas, and you’ve got to, you know, write it all together. So these aren’t small projects.
Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, it is quite time consuming. And sometimes it feels like stepping into somebody else’s universe, really. Because one thing that I love about the podcast is that I work with that they’re so dedicated to their subject matter. And they, you know, they care so much about it. So I really try and treat that with respect. But Yes, some of my pricing depends on, for example, how organized their podcast archives are, because if they’re organized, it’s a lot more easy for me to go in there and find the information that I’m looking for. And if it’s a bit of a jumble, it’s going to take a little while to unpick. So that can be hard to know until essentially the gloves are off. But yeah, it is a bit of a labor of love in some ways. You know, I feel like a bit of a archivists or kind of audio archaeologists going through and finding, finding little bits of information. And sometimes the podcaster will say to me, Oh, I’d forgotten that we even said that, but actually, it’s really important. So it’s difficult, but it can be very satisfying too.
Rob Marsh: I like the idea of the audio archaeologist. There’s definitely a lot of work. I mean, it’s funny when I go back and listen to our older podcasts, and we’ve had 400, I think close to 440 episodes. That’s not the official number because we’ve had a bunch of secret episodes. in between episodes and those kinds of things. But there’s a lot of content there. And I don’t even remember half of what was said, especially with those older episodes. And so there’s a lot of value in having somebody go back, find some of that stuff. Obviously, if you’ve got transcripts, you can dig in and find it. But if It’s a lot of work to go back and listen to 440 episodes that are an hour long. It’s a half a year’s work if I were going to go through every single episode and try to do that for us. So obviously you limit it a little bit when you’re in this kind of project.
Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, I do limit it. I wouldn’t listen to every single episode. That’s why the angle of the theme is quite important because That’s a good way of eliminating some of the less relevant content right from the bat. But I think that podcasting isn’t quite like social media where you really have to be publishing a lot to stay on top, but still there is a kind of a pressure of forward momentum that you need to do release episodes and keep your podcast feed fresh. So that’s where I feel like my service provides a lot of value because you can’t both prepare for, record, edit, and release new episodes, and at the same time, put all of this care and attention into the episodes that you’ve already made. Even if it’s your full time job, that’s a lot of work. That’s where I like to provide a support for the podcasters so that they can carry on doing the things that they love doing and I can do the bits that I love doing.
Rob Marsh: So you mentioned earlier, you didn’t tell us the pricing, but you said that it can vary a bit based on the organization. Outline a project for us and tell us about what you would charge for something like this. So maybe we use it for an example. the lead magnet that you created for us, it was a little while ago, so I’m guessing your prices are a little higher than they were when we paid, but what does a typical project look like from a price standpoint?
Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a good question. It depends a little bit on the scope of the project, but if I’m producing something like that lead magnet that I mentioned before, where it’s focusing on a particular theme, kind of prepping the audience for some kind of launch to come in the form of a book, then I would probably start my pricing around around $1,500, $1,600 for a fairly simple, straightforward project. And if The things that would complicate it would be more episodes to listen to or blending several themes at once. But really, I think that two is kind of the max so that it stays simple and coherent for the audience. But that’s the price point where I feel like I can dive in and get some really good quality work done. And they’ll also get value from it as it’ll help to get people onto their email list so that they can kind of click in the launch funnel.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, and that’s one of the challenges that podcasters have is you may have several hundred or several thousand listeners, but getting them onto an email list is a big challenge. And so finding that kind of content that gets people engaged. And then, of course, you’ve got the challenge of following up with a regular email, something not all podcasters do.
Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, I like to think that I’m kind of helping to provide that bridge to turn a podcast listener into somebody on your email list and then into a future client.
Rob Marsh: So I’d love to get your thoughts on this. I’ve seen some podcasters take interviews and simply publish the interview straight as a book on Amazon. Those kinds of things don’t really appeal to me. Might as well just read transcripts on a website or listen to the podcast. But what is involved? I know one of the services you provide is creating an actual e-book from this content, which is a much more substantial project. What’s involved in that, turning interviews into something that’s actually readable as a book?
Sarah Hopkinson: Well, to go back to what you were saying about just taking a transcript and kind of publishing it as a book. I think that that misses the mark because one of the hills I will die on is that people speak very differently from the way that they write. And it doesn’t, so that’s why transcripts can actually be difficult and sometimes almost painful to read. Because what makes sense out loud doesn’t make sense written down. So I think if that’s what you’re doing, just publishing a transcript, it’s probably not really going to help anybody. Fun side fact, that was one of the big discoveries from the Watergate scandal, that there were all of these transcripts of these conversations going on and the content was obviously quite shocking in nature. But the other thing that people were shocked by was that they couldn’t really understand the transcript because the conversation was kind of messy and jumbled. And you had to really hear the audio file to understand the mechanisms of how people were talking to each other, which is what our brains do all the time.
But to go back to how you can actually make audio content valuable in written form, I think it’s about, again, about looking at the themes of the conversation, the insights that come up. So when I’m looking at a transcript, I use a couple of different AI programs just to get it nice and clean. And then take a summary of it from there. And also, perhaps the summary is AI generated. But from there, for me, it’s almost a journalistic writing process. to get the information into something that’s digestible in written form. So it takes several stages to take it from an audio recording to a written book. And also, if you’re writing something as large as a book, you need to be really kind of fleshing out the extra detail, doing the fact checking, all the contextualizing that you might not have from the interview. But yeah, you’re going to, if all you’re doing is taking something from A to Z with nothing in between, your end product isn’t going to reflect the real value that you could get from the podcast episode.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it drives me nuts when I go back and read our transcripts as I go through. Like you said, sometimes you have half of a thought and then your brain figures out a better way to say it and so you stop and you rephrase and as this stuff is put together and piled up in a conversation on paper, it’s messy and it doesn’t make sense a lot of the time. What’s worse is for me, I say things like, you know, and um, and like so many times, and that stuff gets picked up in transcripts and also drives me crazy. having somebody who can clean that all up and, and, or, you know, being a writer who can do that yourself, it’s a really valuable service for those who want to, again, uncover content from podcasts.
Sarah Hopkinson: Yeah, people talk messily. And that doesn’t mean that it’s messy to listen to. But if you want to turn that podcast into something else, you have to you can’t just, you know, copy paste and publish. There’s, as you say, there’s an art in that, that goes into helping people get the most out of your podcast. I also like to think of it as kind of extending the podcast experience as well from something that you have in your ears. to something that really becomes part of your world, whether that’s because you’re suddenly on that podcast’s email list, or you’re following them on social media, or you got their ebook or their kind of mini guide. It helps you to kind of feel more connected with them and the subject that you both care about.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s a really good point. So let me ask you about finding clients because it feels to me like a lot of podcasters, they put out a podcast, the podcast is alive and out there, and that’s how most people engage with what they’re doing. Do they always feel a need for extending content? I guess that’s a really long way of saying it feels like some of these clients may not feel like they need a content strategist or a copywriter to help them out. So how do you go about helping them see the gap there that you fill so that they’ll hire you?
Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a good question. I’ve found my most successful clients from cold pitching. With cold pitching, I do a lot of the filtering on my end to make sure that I think that I would be a good match for the client that I’m pitching to. Some of the things that I look for in particular is a podcaster who’s been going for at least a year. Um, and I also look at, uh, things that give me clues about, um, it’s not necessarily to do with how successful the podcaster is, but, um, things like if they have a team around it, if this podcast is something that’s really serious for them. So I like to work with podcasters who have the podcast as part of their business. For example, the podcast is kind of For some businesses, they’re de facto marketing that they find their own clients for their own business through that podcast. That for me would be the sign of a potentially a good client because they know that their podcast is valuable and they want to get that value from it. So yeah, the pitching process for me is actually quite intensive because I’ll be listening to their episodes. I’ll be following them online. I’ll be subscribed to their email list. Um, and if they start talking about things like a launch, that’s where I think, okay, this is a podcast that I could work with.
So that’s, so I do a kind of a big pre-selection and then in the email conversation I have with them, which I’ll probably be outreaching to them several emails. Um, I’ll be using arguments with them around what, that they’ve already invested value in their podcast. but they’re not necessarily extracting that value back from it. So kind of putting it in monetary terms, um, to convince them that, that these are the kinds of services they need. And it’s not a service that every single podcaster would need, but for certain podcasters, it’s something that really helps them to kind of move their podcasts into the next level in terms of monetizing their content and building the community around it. And that’s where I feel like I can really help.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, as you described that process, it feels pretty intense. In our P7 client acquisition system, we walk through how do you pitch clients. I think you’ve seen some of that stuff. There’s two different kinds of pitches. There’s the MVP, which is down and dirty. It’s real quick. You find a list of people that you can send out brief emails to and connect with. you’re doing what we call the goat pitch, which is really going into understanding the client and what they need and their voice. And there’s a lot of risk in doing that because, you know, if you spend five to 10 hours, you know, on your, you know, trying to figure this stuff out, even before you send a pitch, that takes a lot of time and you’ve got to have a pretty high hit rate. So, you know, what’s in the pitch that makes people respond positively?
Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, it is kind of a high risk strategy from that perspective. I have a pitch template that I use. But the template for me is really just kind of a structure that I hang my message on. So for me, my template is, you know, in paragraph one, I’m going to open with something that’s very complimentary about their podcast that shows the underlying messages, I’ve listened to several episodes, you know, more than one episode, and then, and then I go into talking about, you know, because I’ve listened to your podcast, I know that you’ve got this launch coming up, or something else that’s important to them and also timely, that there’s some element of time pressure. And then I introduce myself as somebody who can help to alleviate that and them with that kind of time pressure with this problem that they’re dealing with.
And then I’ll follow it up with kind of relevant testimonials, and then close out with, you know, another kind of other kinds of reasons why they should get in touch with me. And also it’s something kind of fun and lighthearted, but relevant to them, you know, if they say that they live in Chicago, that I’ll mention, you know, maybe you would hope you would go out and enjoy a great deep dish pizza tonight, something like that, like just kind of fun and light. So it’s a template, but it’s highly adaptable. And that helps me just to keep in mind what my goals are and what I think this particular podcast would respond to. I think if other people are intimidated by this kind of intensive process, I would say that it is difficult to execute because I know that I’m committing to a certain number of hours of listening to their content. But I do that in a very focused way, you know, that I’m listening always for where the opportunity is for me. So it’s a very kind of active listening process. And I would say that even though I don’t always get a positive response in the sense of great, let’s hop on a call and work together. Because the process is so personalized, I nearly always at least get a response. Nearly all of my pitches have some kind of response. And that response might be positive in some other way, as in, this isn’t for me, but I know somebody who might really like this, or this isn’t for me now, but I’m looking to do this in six months. So it’s not necessarily about getting a win right there, but it’s about opening a door and it’s the start of a relationship. And I’ve had podcasters who have come back to me and said, yes, now it’s time. Let’s go.
Rob Marsh: And when you put that much work into the front end of a relationship, it’s so much easier to maintain that the person that you’re reaching out to knows that You’re genuinely interested in at least the work that they’re doing, if not them personally. So I love this approach from a pitching standpoint. Like you said, it’s a little bit high risk and it’s intense on the front end, but the result is, honestly, it’s a network that could feed your business for years to come.
Sarah Hopkinson: Exactly. And I like to think of there being multiple touch points in the conversation. Um, and podcasting really lets you do that because I can comment on several episodes, but also I can, um, leave a review of the podcast, which I do with using my name and my business name. So I can reference like, Oh, if you, Hey, if you got a review recently, a good review, that was me. Um, so it’s, it’s just little ways of showing that your, that you really care about them as a person. And most podcasters respond to that really positively. So I think if you’re in this kind of high risk pitching strategy, look out for the other touch points as well, where you can build on this relationship and try and get some kind of positive out of it, even if it’s not the, hey, what’s your bank details, I’m going to wire you some money right now.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So this might be a selfish question because I have a podcast, but are there things that podcasters should be doing that would make it easier to work with a content strategist somewhere down the line in order to create these kinds of assets that help uncover older podcast episodes that might have value in them or to keep them alive in some way?
Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a really good question. One thing that I advocate for is having some kind of spreadsheet where you document stats about your episode, as in episode number, episode title, maybe guest, that kind of thing, but also tagging broad topics that you covered. So for the Copywriter Club, it might be things like pitching. mindset, working with a coach. It could be email copy, SEO, things like that. So you can have those already created in like a drop down on your Google Sheet. And you can just kind of tick which ones apply. And that means that you’ve got one table or one place online where you can see everything. It is a big job to do. If you haven’t done it regularly, that’s why it’s if you If you can, it’s best to start at the beginning and do it every week. But yeah, it really helps you kind of keep tabs on those episodes and otherwise. I know because I had access to your archives, having those transcripts done and published somewhere online, not publicly, just somewhere where you have access to them, that’s kind of the beginning of it. But yeah, content tagging is really, really helpful.
Rob Marsh: That would have been fantastic advice seven years ago. Where were you?
Sarah Hopkinson: I’m sorry, I don’t have going back in time powers.
Rob Marsh: I mean, obviously we have transcripts of just about every episode that we have. So that resource is there, but that’s actually a brilliant idea to have the broad general topics in a spreadsheet. I’m kicking myself for not having thought of that before. Yeah. So, you know, podcasting world has changed a lot in the last decade. You know, there are, I think at this point, there are a lot of people saying it’s too late to start a podcast. There are too many podcasts out there. Most podcasts don’t even get you know, a hundred listens to a single episode, so is it even worth it? What would you say about all of that? I guess in a general sense, you know, is podcasting still a place where we should be? And then in maybe a very specific sense, a second question is, should more copywriters have podcasts?
Sarah Hopkinson: I speak to a lot of people in the podcasting industry and I’ve, attended podcasting conferences. And this is a conversation that happens a lot. And I think that like many other phenomena, podcasting had, you know, it started off slow, but then it had a huge boom era. And it’s a medium with a very low bar to join, which is why there was such a huge boom. You know, you don’t really even need to have a microphone to have a podcast. You can just record stuff on your phone and publish it. So the barrier to entry is very low. It’s almost nil. And I think that we are out of that phase now where anybody could start a podcast and be successful. And I think that what that’s done is it’s it means that people who want to start a podcast now, I would say to them, do it, but be intentional about it, because it’s no longer a quick win strategy. And so I think that it’s what podcasters now and podcasters of future need to remember is that your podcast has to be about something, you have to have a goal in mind of what you want that podcast to achieve for you. And that goal might not be 100% like the content that you’re talking about on every episode, but you have to know what that podcast represents in terms of either your business or personal goals. Because also with it, with the lesser quality of podcasts dying, It means that the ones that survive have to be good in some way, they have to be fulfilling a need. Or if you’re entering a category where there’s high competition, then you have to provide really high quality content, which means that it’s a lot of work. And you’re not going to be able to do that work unless you know the why behind why you’re doing it.
Rob Marsh: So yeah, so I guess the second question is, should copywriters, should we all have a podcast? Maybe not about copywriting, but focused on our niches, or is all of that work that you’re talking about, does that kind of eliminate it for most of us?
Sarah Hopkinson: I wouldn’t say every single copywriter needs to have a podcast, but I think if it’s something that you feel compelled to do, then absolutely explore it because it’s not going to cost you a ton of money to set up. It’s just going to be more of an effort in terms of the time that you put into it. So if you don’t feel like podcasting is for you, then not having a podcast won’t harm you. I don’t think that you’ll have a client who’ll say, I’ll never work with you because you don’t have a podcast. But if you think that you can see a podcast out there, you know, if you have an idea of a podcast in mind and think, oh, that would be super great, but I can’t find a podcast like that, then you can step up totally and be that person. So I think it comes down to how much it speaks to you as a genre. And I would say, for example, for me, I don’t like Instagram. It’s not something that appeals to me, which is why I don’t put a lot of effort into it. So I would view it in the same way as you’ve got to be discoverable online somewhere. It’s about choosing a place where you feel like you can flourish.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s a great answer. There’s so much opportunity, but it is or needs to be purposeful. And there’s a lot of, you know, there’s so many not just copywriting podcasts, but podcasts out there, which you think, Oh, this is a great idea. And they get to five or six episodes and it just peters out. Maybe they’ve shared that idea and they’ve covered it and that’s okay. Um, but really extending something for longterm is, you know, it takes a lot of effort and thought.
Sarah Hopkinson: Oh, true. Well, you guys know that better than everybody, but, um, pod fade is real where you just can’t keep up with the rhythm that you’ve set yourself. As you say, there are some podcasts where it was never designed to be, you know, a weekly show forevermore. Maybe you just wanted to have a podcast where you would talk about one subject matter and you covered it. And I think that’s fine if you do that and you wrap it up and you say, you know, we’ve come to the end of the arc of this story of this subject. It’s it’s finished. But if you’re aiming for something more long term, you have to be really realistic with yourself about how you’re going to be able to sustain it. And maybe that’s why you look into getting a team around you to help you.
Rob Marsh: So while we’re talking about this, you’ve gone through this process yourself and are starting a podcast. That’s The Rumor later this month. Tell us about what that is and what’s involved in it. And from what I’ve heard, your podcast is actually a little bit more involved than the typical interview show like this one.
Sarah Hopkinson: That’s right. Yep. The rumors are true. I am starting a podcast with Nicole Hyman, who I met on the Copywriter Accelerator. She and I clicked and we had a lot in common and she came to me with this idea earlier this year and we’ve been working on it ever since and we’re about to launch, which is really exciting. So our soon to be published podcast is called the Tried It podcast, your proven pathway to a better copywriting business. And you’re right that it does involve even more work than the other podcasts out there. Because in our podcast, we take a book about an aspect of copywriting, whether that’s kind of the technical side of copywriting, or running a kind of copywriting freelance business. And over the course of one episode, we discuss that book. and what we thought about it, points that we agreed with, things that made us think about. And we choose three things each that we’ve learned from that book. And we go away and work on them in our own businesses or on our client work. And then we have a follow up episode. where we talk about what we learned from that process, whether we’re going to carry on doing these three goals, what we would recommend to other copywriters. So the idea behind it was really having a way to kind of formalize that commitment to growing as a copywriter, because there’s a lot of podcasts out there that give fantastic advice, but they don’t necessarily kind of lay out what that pathway of growing and developing your skills looks like. So in the podcast, we are really honest and transparent about the things that we do know, the things that we don’t know, how our clients received our work with the ideas that we use with them, and how other copywriters can grow their skills in a more kind of intentional way.
Rob Marsh: So tease the first episode. What’s the book that you guys are talking about in the first episode?
Sarah Hopkinson: Oh, well, the first episode, we decided we were going to go for kind of a writing Bible. We went for Everybody Writes by Anne Handley, second edition. It’s a great book if you’ve never read it, because she’s such a brilliant author and she gives really great advice about writing, which is applicable to everybody. So it’s not just for copywriters. Um, so we, we both read it separately. Um, and actually I ended up reading it almost two times all the way through because I felt like there was so much that you could get from it. And then yes, both Nicole and I made our own separate implementation goals. And then in the next episode we discussed how we got on with them and yeah, the things that we, that we learned from Anne Handley that I’m still trying to practice today.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s a good starting book. I am really looking forward to tuning into this idea of a podcast. It’s different from what most copywriting podcasts are. So, yeah, like I said, the end of this month, we’re hoping for the launch and yeah, we’ll check it out.
Sarah Hopkinson: That’s right. Yes, we’re launching it with an official launch party, an online launch party, which is going to be on the 26th of September. It’s going to be live on LinkedIn. So that’s Nicole and I celebrating our achievement, kind of birthing the podcast into the world. and we’ll be releasing episodes on Tuesdays from the Tuesday after that, which is the 1st of October.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. Okay, so let me shift gears a little bit. After you went through The Copywriter Accelerator, you did some work on your own personal brand, you know, creating a website and doing a photo shoot and really, you know, from where the before was on your website to the after was a really amazing transformation. Talk about that process and why you made the choices that you did.
Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a great question, Rob. I wanted to have a website to showcase kind of my new services. And I spent a long time thinking about the theme and my brain loves kind of metaphors, analogies, and I was trying to think of a way to demonstrate visually what I do for people and Uh, after thinking about it for a long time, the idea kind of came into my head out of the blue of, um, that I’m like a podcast content mixologist because I take ingredients that are already there from your podcast episodes and shake them up in a new way, just as, you know, adding a couple of different, you know, spirits, ingredients together makes a new cocktail. Um, so I think that I also wanted to showcase with it also like my fun side and to give people something a little bit, not, not exactly aspirational, but something that would demonstrate the value that they’re going to get from it. Um, so that, that was the idea behind it. So I asked a photographer friend of mine to do the photo shoot. So that was me. investing in it a bit, but not too much because I didn’t want to spend loads and loads of money on an idea that I was still kind of testing that was still quite new. But I have to say, from having the idea to executing it and launching the website, it was quite a nerve wracking process, especially I discovered that I hated writing my own website copy. It made me feel very I don’t know, very vulnerable in a way to write about myself and to try and sell my own services. So it definitely was not as straightforward as I thought it was going to be.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, a lot of copywriters actually hire other copywriters to write their websites because, you know, it’s, well, the joke is the shoemakers’ kids have no shoes, right? When it comes to telling our own stories, for some reason, we just aren’t, I think this is a human thing, not a copywriting thing, but a human thing. We’re conditioned or maybe we evolved to try to focus on other people and on ourselves less. That’s definitely a common challenge.
Sarah Hopkinson: Yes, I definitely I’d heard of other copywriters struggling with their own copy. And I thought, oh, that’s strange. Well, you know, too bad for them, but it’ll be fine for me. And you know, I had it as an action item in my calendar one afternoon, you know, start writing website copy. And within two minutes, I was in this kind of torrent of despair. And I was like, Oh, I understand it now writing your own copy can be very difficult.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s not the easiest thing. As we come to the end of our time together, I’ve got just a couple more questions. One is about AI and how artificial intelligence is impacting podcasting, transcripts, the marketing of podcasts. What are you seeing there? And I guess, what are you excited about as far as AI goes?
Sarah Hopkinson: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Because as much as we have talked about AI in the world of copywriting, and how it’s changing copywriting, there’s been parallel conversation about how AI will change podcasting. So I really feel like I’ve had it from both sides. And I think that both fields, podcasting and copywriting, is similar in that there is a lot of AI anxiety going around. But I noticed the same trends in both. The AI is swallowing the work at the end of the spectrum, which requires less brain effort, less personal touch. But there’s still so much scope for real human involvement and real human creativity. One of the AI anxieties that I had was that I was at the London podcast show in May earlier this year. Somebody played us a clip of a podcast that was 100% AI generated as in script written by ChatGPT, cover art by MidJourney, voice generated using the software. And I thought, oh, wow, this is a bit crazy. And I don’t think that that will be the future of podcasting because I think humans are still so fundamentally interested in connecting and being involved with other humans. But there are some really cool tools out there. For example, there’s an AI parroting tool where if you’re trying to, for example, get a read-write, this is more for advertising on podcasts, but if you’re trying to get an AI voice to say a particular phrase for you, like a catchphrase or something like that, you can design the voice and then you speak into the software to give it the exact inflection that you want that voice to use. And the voice will mimic your inflection. And it’s just amazing. And it saves that kind of playing around with a tool that doesn’t really understand what you mean. Say it more energetic, say it with more of a lift. So that’s a really cool tool. And there are some other good tools out there that’ll help you with summarizing content, highlighting content, which I find quite useful to use. I use Otter.ai for my transcripts, things like that. But yeah, there’s going to be a lot more personalization in podcasts in the future, which is something that’s really cool to look out for, such as little extracts of podcasts. It’ll change perhaps based on your location or the time when you’re listening. And maybe you won’t even know it, but that’ll be done by AI and it’s all there to make the podcast more relevant to you.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that seems positive, mostly. You mentioned the completely fake podcast, script written by AI, the voices by AI. In theory, that sounds really cool and interesting, but I think ultimately, if you know that, if you know it’s not a human being, We tend to lose interest because you’re right. I have less interest in wanting to know what chat GPT thinks about something as opposed to Sarah Hopkinson—you know, the human element—is meaningful, which going back to the way you pitch, you know, the reason your pitches work is because you are creating, forging a human bond. And I guess maybe once AI can imitate that human bond perfectly, we’re in trouble. But until then, I’ve got a lot of hope around the work that we do.
Sarah Hopkinson: Thank you. I do too. And I agree. I think that there will always be a space for humans to position themselves as experts, but also experts who really care. And I think that the future of copywriting and podcasting really leans into that. The AI voice generated stuff is cool. But when I listen to that, I find I’m really just listening to the voice wondering, oh, that’s clever how the robot makes that voice. I’m not listening to the content anymore. But when you have a human who’s taken the time to share their thoughts with you on a topic they really care about. That’s where the magic is.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I agree. We already mentioned the podcast, but what are you excited about in your own business? What’s coming up for you and what are you working on?
Sarah Hopkinson: That’s a good question. Yeah, the podcasts I’m really excited about. I’m also over the next couple of months slowly building in a new service into my business where as well as providing, for example, lead magnets for podcast launches, I want to be able to offer the launch elements as well so that a podcaster who, you know, let’s say is some kind of coach with a podcast if they want to start selling a course that I could not only help them have the lead magnet that would get people onto their email list, I would be doing the mechanisms of the launch as well. So that’s something that I am starting to work on and I’m hoping to launch it next year. So I’m really investing in training myself to be able to do that, both from the sort of learning technical point of view but also with my confidence. So I’ve just started working with a, with a business coach as well to help me deal with the anxieties that come around changes in your business.
Rob Marsh: Nice. Sarah, if somebody wants to connect with you and everybody should definitely be on your email list to, you know, get the updates as you drop podcasts and other ideas about writing for podcasts, where should they go?
Sarah Hopkinson: I’m quite active on LinkedIn, Sarah Hopkinson. My website is copyhop.co, but I would say those are the best places to find me. LinkedIn, my email list. I do have an Instagram account, but it’s pretty quiet.
Rob Marsh: As you mentioned. Thanks, Sarah. This has been awesome. I appreciate your time.
Thanks again to Sarah Hopkinson for sharing so much about her business in this interview and some of the things going on there. I love that Sarah had to research what a copywriter does. And since we’ve been talking about uncovering excellent examples of old content that gets lost and ought to be resurfaced, I should point you to one of the oldest episodes that we’ve done, an interview with Ry Schwartz. Ry said almost the exact same thing. He was hired as a copywriter, then had to go and Google, what does a copywriter do? He shared that story in episode two of the Copywriter Club podcast. That was a long time ago, seven years ago. There’s a lot of great stuff in that episode about coaching the conversion and so many other ideas. It’s definitely worth checking out. If you can’t find it in your podcast feed, it’s online at the copywriterclub.com. Simply find the podcast tab at the top of the page. or you can just search Google for thecopyrighterclub.com and Ry Schwartz, you’ll be able to find it.
I have to admit that I’d like to take some of the transcripts from our podcast and turn them into written books and post them on Amazon or other places where people find books. There may be AI tools that will help with that at some point, or there might even be some that are doing that today, though so far the tools that I’ve tried are less than optimal. They don’t quite give me anything that really feels like a book that I’ve written. So we’re going to see where that goes in coming months, but there’s just a huge opportunity to unlock so many of the ideas that people talk about on podcasts like ours and share them in different modalities, like books, possibly videos and other printed materials.
Sarah mentioned as we were talking cold pitching to find her clients, we briefly mentioned our P7 client attraction system that includes lots of templates and other tools to help copywriters find and land their ideal clients. Sarah took advantage of what we call the GOAT pitch. That stands for the greatest of all time pitch. If you want to know how to create your own GOAT pitch, You can learn how to do that and see examples that we share in P7 when you go to thecopyrighterclub.com/clients. And of course you should connect with Sarah on LinkedIn and at her website, copyhop.co, where you can sign up for her weekly newsletter. And if you’re listening to this podcast week that goes live, please be sure to check out Sarah’s podcast launch this week. That’s going down on LinkedIn in just a day or two.
Standing out and getting noticed is hard in a world with more than a million people calling themselves copywriters and content writers. Posting on social media, writing for LinkedIn, or even creating content for Google or Pinterest—all of those things work. But who wouldn’t love to be featured in the Wall Street Journal or Business Insider? You get positive press and a high-value link to your site for SEO. Sign us up. But hold on… it’s not as easy as you might think. My guest for the 413th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Gloria Chou, a self-made PR specialist. And in this interview she spells out how you can attract those high value press placements to help grow your business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Gloria’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: As you think about your copywriting or content writing business and all the things you need to do to get yourself out there and in front of your ideal clients… there are a lot of options. There’s social media with its various options from TikTok and Instagram to LinkedIn and Twitter and more. You can create a YouTube channel or a podcast. You can show up at events or in groups in places like Facebook. You can start your own groups using tools like Telegram, Skool, Circle, and of course Facebook. You can ask your existing clients to introduce you to their network and build a business on referrals. I even know one writer who had his car wrapped with a vinyl cover that advertised his work and contact information.
And honestly, those are just the most popular options—except maybe that car wrap. That might be a little more rare.
One of the most effective ways to get yourself out there is to be featured in a major publication or possibly on TV using PR. That kind of exposure comes with instant credibility and potentially, a massive audience of potential clients. What would an article in The Wall Street Journal or Business Insider do for your clients attraction efforts? I’m guessing it wouldn’t hurt. And if you’re like a couple of copywriters I know, it could instantly double or triple your business almost overnight.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed former television producer and diplomat and current PR guru expert and unofficial hype woman for dozens of small businesses, Gloria Chou. Gloria’s approach to getting PR is a bit different from other experts who talk about it and definitely worth learning about. What she shares in this interview could be just the thing you need to land the publicity you need to take the next step in your business. So stay tuned to hear what she had to share.
Before we jump in with Gloria…
You only have a couple of days until the next guest expert workshop happening in The Copywriter Underground. I’ve shared a lot of details about what The Underground includes on past episodes, so let me just say this. Unlike a lot of other memberships and groups, the underground is designed to make things easy. There aren’t dozens of modules to watch or complicated hoops to jump through. Just the focused insights and ideas you need to grow your business from wherever you are today to that goal you want to reach. We make building a copywriting business do-able.
So I mentioned the training coming this week. It’s with Pinterest Marketing expert Heather Farris. She’s going to show you how to use Pinterest to drive leads to your business. And how just one or two posts, can send new clients your way for years after you post on that platform. It’s a workshop that could add a bunch of new clients and thousands of dollars in new revenue to your existing business. And you can do it in about 30 minutes a week. To get access to Heather’s Pinterest secrets, you’ve got to be a member of The Copywriter Underground, which you can do at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
And now, let’s go to our interview with Gloria…
Gloria, welcome to the Copyrighted Club podcast. Tell us, please, how did you become a PR guru and I guess the unofficial hype woman for dozens of small businesses?
Gloria Chou: Thank you so much for having me, Rob. Yeah, so I always say like my alter ego, if I wasn’t doing this, I’m like that person like at a concert, let’s say a hip hop concert, that’s like hyping the crowd up before the main guy comes on. I just love to see people win. And, you know, I was always a person that was like connecting my friends to different opportunities. But funny thing is, is that I’ve actually never worked a day in my life in PR, never worked in an agency, whether it’s marketing or PR, I actually used to be a US diplomat. So I had a very non-traditional path to becoming what I am today. And I just started picking up the phone and cold calling after I got my first PR gig. Because again, I never worked in PR, so I didn’t have contacts. And from just literally, I kid you not, cold calling the operator at the New York Times, starting from the operator, and perfecting that pitch so many times after being rejected, of course, even more times, I picked up on patterns of like, okay, this is what an editor wants or this is how I can write an email to a journalist who doesn’t know me, who actually will respond and say, tell me more. And so I’ve kind of been able to kind of hack it and I come up with my proprietary pitching method that now I teach everybody called the CPR method. So that’s kind of the long and short of it is crazy career transition, cold calling, and kind of always been an industry outsider. And so now I teach other people how to hack their own PR.
Rob Marsh: So I’m really curious how somebody goes from the idea of being a diplomat, which I know it’s probably not as sexy as what it seems like, you know, the James Bond movies or the Netflix specials or whatever, but diplomat PR is a pretty different career change. So what sparked that?
Gloria Chou: So I grew up bilingual, bicultural, I’m Chinese-American, and I studied abroad in South Africa. And so I’ve always been interested in just having a very international life. And so I thought, OK, well, maybe my niche is in diplomacy or something to do with international relations, which is what I studied in school. I ended up getting a scholarship. I ended up, you know being fast-tracked to the Foreign Service and I quickly realized that there are two types of people in the world people who like to stay in the boundaries and kind of just do what they’re told and people who are More creative and visionaries and like to kind of just learn by getting into the fire.
So I’m the latter type I am NOT the type that’s just like okay let’s just do this because this is the way it’s always been done and so I realized that even though the career was incredible, right? I got to travel, I had the most amazing benefits, still do miss those benefits, that ultimately was not aligned for my personality. And there was also a part of me that wanted to just work with women of color, you know, which is like people like me. And so with all of that, I decided to leave that career and kind of have a midlife crisis, I guess, if you will, give up this very, you know, prestigious quote unquote career and kind of restart my life. And so that’s kind of what I did. And slowly and slowly I started to get tiny little PR gigs.
I remember the first PR gig I got was my friend who was taking a sabbatical from diplomacy. And he’s like, yeah, I’m working for this FinTech startup. We haven’t really raised money. We don’t have any budget. But sure, like if you can get them on CNBC and Wall Street Journal and New York Times, like they’ll pay you like 250 bucks per feature, which is like not a lot, right? And no one really does No PR agency will do that. They don’t give you any guarantees.
I had to start from the bottom, so I was like, sure. And so I had no idea what AI, fintech, anything was. And I just started looking at Excel spreadsheets and sitting with their engineers and figuring out, what is the story here and how can I pitch it to the press? And I think just from doing that over and over and over again, I have this skill of finding out what is the storyline that’s really relevant from something that maybe is very complex or maybe not as interesting, and how do we make it interesting to the media? And then I didn’t have any contacts. So what did I do? I had to literally Google the operator and start cold calling. And so I think it’s the combination of getting rejected, cold calling and doing it over and over that now has built my business to what it is, which is a really untraditional way of doing PR and giving that power back to the people, which is me saying, you don’t need to hire an agency. You own your own story. You’re the best advocate for your business. Now, how can you just pitch in a way that is proven to get that person on the other side to respond? So that’s really kind of what I’ve built with my PR community.
Rob Marsh: That makes sense. I think a lot of small business people are thinking, okay, well, I’m putting stuff on Instagram or I’ve posted on my blog. That’s PR. Tell us why that’s not actually PR and what we should maybe be doing, some of the things we should be doing differently.
Gloria Chou: Well, you know this better than anyone, as CEOs, it’s all about how can we work smarter and not harder? How can we move from the $10 an hour tasks, which we can delegate and automate, social media, customer service, making reels, writing captions, how can we move from those $10 an hour tasks to the $10,000 an hour things that actually builds an asset for your business.
So when I think about social media, it is not an SEO asset. It’s not SEO friendly. It doesn’t build your SEO. You don’t own your social media. It can be hacked, banned, restricted at any point. So for me, it’s not an asset, right? What is an asset is building SEO, and what builds SEO are backlinks. So when you get featured in the New York Times or Forbes, those backlinks have very high rankings, which will really boost your SEO. Not only that, unlike social media and ads, Having a piece, whether it’s on a podcast that you trust, whether it’s on Forbes, it’s credible. So you’re also not only getting traffic, but you’re gaining the trust of your audience, really positioning yourself as an authority and standing out from the competition. No other marketing activity gets you all those buckets, but PR does.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so how do we do it then? You know, because it sounds great. I would love to have a feature in the Wall Street Journal with a stipple drawing or whatever, but that feels like a really big reach from where a lot of copywriter businesses are. Sometimes we haven’t even really defined who we’re working with yet or exactly what we’re really good at. So where do we start?
Gloria Chou: Well, I will say that the reason why you think that is very normal is because the industry has told us for decades that you have to pay someone who knows someone, and it’s really about this kind of gatekeeping, and it’s about privilege. And what I’ve discovered is that journalists don’t want to talk to agents. They don’t want to talk to PR reps. They want to talk to you, the founder. So how can we just remove that middle layer, but learn how to talk to journalists in a way that they want? Because here’s the thing, the news cycle is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They need information, right? You’re actually doing the journalist a job and helping them by giving them content, and they want to interview fresh voices. If journalists only interviewed the top people, right, the people from Fortune 500 companies, they would lose their credibility very quickly. So put your name in the hat, first of all. Know that journalists want to hear from you. Now, that’s the first thing. Second thing is a lot of people just aren’t taught how to pitch to the media because it’s not something that we’re taught. We’re taught how to market. We’re taught how to sell our features and benefits. But here’s the thing. The journalist is not your customer. They’re never going to buy from you. So you can’t be too direct in how you’re selling. So if you pitch the journalist like you’re pitching to a customer, Then the journalist will say, well, we have an entire ads department, happy to take your money, why don’t you buy an ad? And if you don’t want to buy an ad, you have to position yourself as an expert. What does that mean? It means that you need to have a point of view on a specific topic or an issue and you want to lead with that instead of what you’re doing. Does that make sense? Yeah. I have someone who’s a speaking coach and she helps introverts really, you know, get their copy and messaging out there in a world full of noisy extroverts is what she calls. And so her pitch was not about like, hey, this is what I do, this is what I serve. She started her pitch using a third party data point from a research institute that said that introverts were actually better suited for certain C-level positions than extroverts. And then she went on to say why and kind of the speaking tips and different words that introverts should use and not use. And she ended up being featured in over four different magazines. So you see how that’s leading with the issue or the trend and not leading with what you sell? And I think that’s really the key of it all is you really need to position yourself in that way and translate your marketing pitch into something that the journalists can actually use. How can you provide tips, solutions, steps, framework? How can you pitch it in a way that’s relevant to what people are talking about?
Rob Marsh: I want to come back to the pitch and get really specific on this. But first, you mentioned we have to get on the list. We have to be the go-to person. So I’m going to speak for whoever I think is listening. Maybe I don’t have a lot of contacts or I have zero contacts. Maybe I read a local paper. I’m like, oh, I know the name of the business editor at my local paper. How do I get myself on the list? Are we talking about signing up for things like HARO or is there a better approach?
Gloria Chou: There’s a couple of ways to do it, like grassroots, right? To me, when you boil it down, PR is two things. It’s writing a pitch and knowing who to send it to. So we talked a little bit about the pitch. Now let’s talk about who to send it to. You’re not sending it to the generic inbox at New York Times. You’re not sending it to the editor-in-chief. They’re busy doing their own book tour. And so for us, it’s really about finding the staff reporter that covers that beat or that issue. It could be the person that covers entrepreneurship. It could be the small business reporter. It could be fashion, finance, whatever that is. But make sure you are targeting it to the specific journalist and not a general inbox that just goes into an internet black hole. So that’s number one. Number two, obviously, you can set up a Google News Alert, where Google gives you all the articles that are digital articles, online articles that are being written about your keyword. So if you’re a copywriter for fitness, right, you’ll be able to see all the different news articles. And you can start to create your own media list by copy and pasting the journalist name and email. This is public information. Obviously, in our program, we have a database of 100,000 journalists to save you that time. But you can start off doing very grassroots thing like Google News Alert, sign up for Haro, and also follow different hashtags on Twitter and LinkedIn. Because guess what? Journalists are writers and they are publishing on those platforms. And so what better way to connect and break the ice and say, hey, I love this article that you wrote. Have you thought about this other topic or are you doing a follow up? So those are very kind of organic ways. There’s a couple of hashtags you can follow on Twitter and LinkedIn. One of them is a journal request. And so that just means that the journalist has a request for interviewing a certain type of person for their story. And if you fit the bill, then you should answer that.
Rob Marsh: And if you see that, how quickly do you have to respond? You know, if I see something from a week ago, I’m guessing it’s too late, right?
Gloria Chou: You know, it depends. If it’s someone who is writing for a top tier outlet, they’re probably going to have a lot of responses already. And so time is of the essence, but it takes two seconds to go every day to just do your Google News alerts, you know, check the hashtags. And before you know it, you will start to populate your own media list of whatever, you know, journalists that are covering your keyword. Social media is amazing. We live in such an amazing time where people are not really at their desks anymore, right? And so it’s not like you can’t reach someone on LinkedIn or on Twitter by just complimenting them on their article or even in the DMs. So use that to your advantage, the fact that we do have such an accessible way to contact people through social media.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I really like that idea. I mean, obviously, we’re already following people, maybe not necessarily in our niches, you know, maybe I’m following news resources so having those conversations almost feels like that’s been happening anyway. And you’re suggesting just make it work for your business and point it in a slightly different direction.
Gloria Chou: It’s a different mindset because I think as founders, we’re all about that sales and marketing message, which we’re so good at, but we just have to put on a different hat in order to talk to the journalist. I always say, and I teach this too, I always say pitching to the media is like peeling away the layer of an onion. And it works for whether you’re pitching for a podcast or anyone else. It’s really, are you pitching to someone who’s not a customer, right? So think about the first layer of an Añon as a very general pitch. The ones that I get in my inbox all the time because I host a podcast and it would be like, you know, why women need to focus on wellness and mental health. Like, okay, that’s not really flavorful in terms of the onion. I want to peel away to get to the core of it. And so that requires two things, which is specificity and relevance. So let’s workshop that a little bit. Okay. Why in 2024 women over 50 are facing a mental health crisis. Do you see how that’s more specific?
Rob Marsh: Yeah.
Gloria Chou: And how can we make it even better? Why after COVID, suicide rates for midlife women are exponentially increasing, right? So you see how with every time you pitch, you get a little bit better, you get a little bit more specific. And that’s how I want you to think of your pitch, whether it’s for a podcast or an outlet, you just got to peel away the layers of the onion.
Rob Marsh: And this is where a lot of our listeners who have copywriting skills and persuasion skills, this is where some of that, how do you create a good hook or how do you create that curiosity and get attention and hold it starts to come in. So the audience that we’re talking to right now ought to have a leg up on the typical business owner who doesn’t actually know how to do all of that stuff.
Gloria Chou: Yeah, and I will say like, yes, you know, copywriters are great with subject lines. But what you don’t want to do is when you pitch to the journalist, you don’t want your subject lines to be weird or clickbaity, because it’s just going to go in the trash. And so I have a whole training on subject lines, but the subject line cannot be like, You know, like those fun ones that the copywriters have, like this email only has nine words in it. Don’t do that. Your subject line needs to be specific about what the story could be. It almost reads like the title of an article, right? It could be something like, you know, as a copywriter for top level executives, these are five words that they never use. You see how that is very specific. So I would do something like that. I would not put your name or your company or what you’re offering because there’s no context or relevance to the journalist.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, you’re definitely not selling a product here. You’re really just trying to show up as an authority.
Gloria Chou: And offering something of value, being a solution for somebody.
Rob Marsh: Got it. So coming back to the pitch then, are you suggesting that we should actually be pitching ideas, article ideas, and that kind of stuff? Or are we just trying to create these connections so we’re there as a go-to when they need us, maybe both? What does that look like?
Gloria Chou: It’s all about connection, but how do you get them to actually connect with you, right? You have to position yourself as an authority. Let’s talk about my CPR method. The CPR method is the culmination of years of cold pitching, thousands of cold calls, and throwing spaghetti on the wall and lots of ugly cries because, again, I had a lot of failures because I didn’t know anybody in the media. It was just cold calling. I found that when people responded to me or when I got my clients on CNBC or New York The structure of the pitch had these three elements. C for credibility, P for point of view, R for relevance. And I usually like to structure my pitch starting with the relevance. Why? Because you’re competing for their attention every single line. You know that as a copywriter. And what is news if it’s not relevant? So I want to talk about what’s going on right now. It could be something about elections. It could be something about AI.
What is trending right now? It could be seasonal. It could be something that’s topical. It could be something that is already making headlines. It could be a contrarian point of view. Start with the relevance, and then go into your point of view, which is P in CPR. I usually like bullet points, so it could be three tips, three things, three whatever that is, and then conclude with your credibility. Again, your credibility is the least important part. It could just be like, I am a copywriter that’s worked with 20 different people in this niche, and here’s what I found. You don’t need all these accolades. You don’t need to be featured. So that’s really my PR masterclass in a very short window, but it’s basically CPR, credibility, point of view, relevance.
Always start with the relevance. Go into the three bullet points for point of view. Conclude with a little bit about yourself. Don’t go into your unpublished autobiography. hyperlink to your About Me section so that they can discover more. Do not attach long PDFs. You’re not going to go through it. And then the closing should be like, I’m happy to chat about these trends. I’m happy to offer insight. Here’s how it can be reached. Put your phone number and tell them they can call or text you.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like all of that. So I actually kind of want to take a step back here because like talking through the process, talking about, OK, these are the things you should be doing. But maybe we need to start with this question, what should my goal even be as a sole proprietor running my own business? Is it even possible for me to be in The New York Times if I start this week? Can I be in there next month? Or, you know, like, where do I start and what is that bill to fill? What does that look like?
Gloria Chou: I mean, we’ve had people pitch and then get a response from a journalist within 24 hours and get featured. So it can be quick. It can be quick, especially now with digital, they need content like all the time. So here’s another thing if you have a limiting belief. I had someone who is a Pilates teacher and she is also, you know, service-based and she got featured in the same magazine twice, like US News and World News. So there’s no limit to how many times. And I’ll give you another example. She got featured in an article called What is Pilates in 2023. So just when you think everything’s been talked about, it’s not about newness. It’s just about positioning your pitch in a way that is digestible to the journalist. So if she can get featured in an article called What is Pilates in 2023, there’s your limiting belief right there about like, you know, I need something new. So no, it’s not about positioning something new because there’s readers at every level. It’s just about positioning in a way that’s not about selling your products or services and me, me, me, me, and just giving them an idea of how they can maybe frame a story because again, they need to pump out stories. They need those eyeballs.
Rob Marsh: And it sounds like you’re not saying start small. You’re not saying start with the local newspaper and level up from there. I mean, is it go big?
Gloria Chou: There are other publicity coaches who do teach like, you know, like, so there are different tiers, right? And some people will teach you how to be a contributor, which is basically you writing free content. But I always say, let’s just go for it. Let’s just go for the highest thing. At least if we don’t, then at least we can get to a mid tier one. So I really think there’s a lot of buckets in PR and you want to get as much as possible so that you’re consistently planting the seeds and getting the SEO. You have your podcast, which is more long-form storytelling. That’s probably something that your people like a lot. And so if I’m pitching for a podcast, and I have a training for this too, instead of the three bullet points, it’s like, here are five questions I can answer on your podcast. So that’s much easier for them. But again, don’t pitch something that’s super general. Make sure that you are shaving away the layer of an onion. And then you have your seasonal stories. So end of year, beginning of year, these are important themes. End of year is all about self-care and family dynamics. Beginning of the year is about planning and regimen. So think about how you can pitch for that, too. And then there are evergreen stories where it’s copy hacks and tricks that can work for anyone. So there’s tens of different buckets, and they all do their job, which is get you noticed, get you that traffic, get you that SEO. So I wouldn’t say one is better than the other. I think you should be aiming for all of them. The local store, the local one is good. The local one, you can talk a little bit more about yourself because obviously it’s a hometown story. So especially if you have a partnership with an organization, if you give back to charity, then I would definitely highlight that. Are you bringing jobs to your community? Are you hiring? Those are all the good things that would be perfect for a local news.
Rob Marsh: When we’re talking about these seasonal kinds of opportunities, obviously there’s some timeline here. My approach would be, oh, I just wrapped up Thanksgiving dinner. Somebody is going to be writing about Black Friday. Maybe I should pitch a journalist and it’s Thanksgiving evening, right? Too late, I’m guessing, in most cases. What should those timelines look like? If I’m thinking, OK, I have something that I might be able to contribute for, say, like the Super Bowl or Black Friday. How long in advance should we be looking at?
Gloria Chou: So everyone’s editorial calendar is different, right? So, you know, we have journalists that come into our program to coach our people. So we had someone from Forbes and she writes like gift and travel guides. And she says usually four to six weeks is good. Now, if you want to get into print, like Oprah’s favorite things, and we’ve had people get in there, print is like six months in advance. But for most of what we’re talking about, it’s going to be digital because then there’s SEO backlinks. Feel like very few people are doing print these days. So it’s four to six weeks and so obviously the earlier the better, right?
So if you’re trying to do something for Black Friday, like right now at the time recording in September would be absolutely perfect. To start drafting and then do that follow-up. Here’s another pro tip: after do not send an email unless you have an email tracking device installed we have software for everything get analytics see if your pitch is being open and And then you can make a drama in your head about whether or not the person hates you or they probably don’t even know you, right? So let’s figure out how do you get your emails open. If it’s not, it could be a deliverability issue. It could be an email issue. It could be a subject line issue. Let’s solve for the right problem. And so having that software to tell you who’s opening it, and if the journalist opens it three or four times, by the way, that’s a sign that they really like it. They’re just trying to find a place for it, right? So that’s a huge help in terms of my students.
Rob Marsh: In the novel writing world, it’s not cool to send out your transcript to several different readers at the same time. You kind of send one, you get the response and go back. That may be changing. Is that the same in PR? You know, if I have a pitch, can I send it out to 10 people at the same time? Or am I trying to be respectful that it’s like giving you the offer first and I want to hear back?
Gloria Chou: If you have something titillating that’s like an exclusive, you could shop around an exclusive. But if you have something that’s not a sensitive subject, I say pitch to everybody.
Rob Marsh: Okay, that makes sense. And then once we have that in place, let’s say that we’ve been successful and I’ve gotten two or three placements, I’ve been quoted in an article or two. How do I use that to grow my business? What are the best ways to actually capitalize on it?
Gloria Chou: Okay, to answer your question, this is where we can have fun because it’s like, oh, I’ve been featured and it becomes an addiction. People always tell me, oh, I wish I started this PR earlier and didn’t buy into this whole concept of I need to be a certain size business or I need to have a huge following because it’s not true, right? Okay, so let’s say you get it, you can put it on your email footer as seen in, you could write it into a newsletter, you can repurpose it into a blog, you can repurpose it into 30 types of content. I always say I’d rather start with a PR feature and then repurpose it into my content, then just create Instagram posts for Instagram. That’s not a smart use of our time. So always think, how can I work smarter and not harder? Sorry, my voice is a little chokey. I have a little seasonal allergies and it’s tickling my throat.
Rob Marsh: It’s all good. It’s all good. OK, so that that makes a ton of sense as well. You know, and again, as marketers, we should be able to figure out like, oh, yeah, I’ve been featured in The Wall Street Journal or even in my local paper. I want to let people know. And I imagine when that happens two or three times, that actually helps with future PR as well.
Gloria Chou: 100%. Like I said, PR is the only thing that gives you all those things at once. Your SEO, your traffic, your credibility. It allows you to charge higher prices, right? Because what’s going to, it’s really a third party validation. Ads don’t do that and neither does social media. I can go and buy a thousand followers today, right? We know that. So that’s why PR is something traditionally that the agencies have charged a lot for and what I’m trying to make it very accessible by kind of what I’m sharing with you here. And I always say like press just begets more press and if they actually see that you’ve been featured and you’re vetted You’re credible, you know how to talk to the media then it’s just a very lower It’s a lot lower bar for them to feature you again and again and in fact a lot of times People get featured in the same article, let’s say it’s like Forbes or whatever, because a journalist already knows them, and then you become their go-to person if they need a quote on something. It’s not a one and done. Once you’re on their speed dial, you cultivate that relationship. That journalist now, most of them are freelancers, so they’re writing for four or five different outlets. You can probably get featured in all of them, but you need to make that first contact. You need to do the work of pitching yourself and at least get in the arena.
Rob Marsh: So what about paid opportunities? Every once in a while I get an email or, you know, somebody connects with me on LinkedIn and they’re like, Hey, you know, we have this opportunity to feature even like video. Like I can get you on a TV show supposedly, but it’s going to be $5,000 or maybe it’s not that much, you know, for a mention or whatever you think about that crap.
Gloria Chou: You’ve really struck a chord. This is the bane of my existence. This is why PR gets a bad rep. They actually even target me. I’m like, yo, your targeting is not good. You’re targeting me. Anything that’s pay to play is not earned media. It’s not organic. It’s an ad that they’re masquerading as PR, but it’s basically them paying for an ad which you can just directly get with that publication, but they are giving you an upcharge because they’re the middlemen, right? So that’s really what it is. And a lot of times those TV things with like retired D-list actors, you pay a lot of money, they make you feel good, and then it airs in a South Dakota town at 4 a.m. when no one sees it. So not all publicity is created equal, but the best publicity is free publicity because that’s earned publicity. You cannot pay a New York Times journalist to feature you. You cannot pay someone at TechCrunch to feature you. That is not editorial. That’s advertising.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So we’ve talked about a lot of the stuff we should be doing. Can we talk about some of the biggest mistakes? Obviously, doing the opposite of what you’ve been talking about, that could be a lot of mistakes. But what are some of the biggest pitfalls that you see, especially as we begin this process and we start to step forward and trying to get ourselves out there, that we really ought to avoid doing?
Gloria Chou: So not being specific, not being relevant to the times, making your pitch super long so that when they open it, it’s like five big paragraphs and immediately they want to stop clicking on it. So use my CPR method. Do not attach any kind of slide deck or case studies. If they want to learn more, you can add a hyperlink. Don’t add too many images, one tops. As a copywriter, you probably don’t need to be adding images. Images are more for like products, so just keep it very short. Another big one is not following up, because everything, you know, everyone that gets featured, they probably had to follow up. And so no, you’re not bothering the journalists, you’re just simply reminding them. I like to follow up on email and DM after seven days. So every week, I like to follow up. And then using your email tracker, you can see who is opening it. If they don’t open the email, they probably don’t even work there anymore. But if they keep opening the email, and the software will tell you, actually, like, this person actually clicked on the email four weeks later, it means that they went back to their email for a reason to open your email. At that point, you want to keep the conversation warm, like you would a lead, and just be like, hey, I loved your article that you wrote last week. Are you working on this? Lots of different ways you can break the ice with the journalist, whether it’s compliments, whether it’s asking them what they’re working on. that helps us nurture a relationship because that’s what it is. It’s not like buying an ad. You’re nurturing a relationship with a writer that has the ability to tell your story to millions of people. And so, yeah, it takes some time. We’ve had people getting featured in one week. We’ve had people getting into Vogue from a pitch that they pitched six months ago. But you need to start planting the seeds now. Which leads me to my last thing, the big mistake is waiting until you’re ready. Because what you don’t want to do is wait and then look around and be like, hey, I launched. And it’s like crickets. So the smartest entrepreneurs are building a relationship with journalists in their beat even before they’re launched. So that way when they do launch, they can go back to the journalist and it’s not the first point of contact.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that actually seems like the biggest key is that this is the kind of relationship building that you need to be doing now. I mean, we do the same thing with clients. You don’t want to have to reach out and ask for the favor when you’re desperate for clients. And I’m assuming it’s the same thing with PR. It’s like the first contact isn’t the big ask. If it is, sometimes it works. I mean, two out of 100. But if you’ve got that relationship, it makes all the difference.
Gloria Chou: It’s really what it is. It’s really a relationship building. And once you do build that relationship, like I said, there’s no limit to the amount of stories they can write because they’re probably freelance writing for multiple outlets.
Rob Marsh: So let’s say I’ve been listening to you talk, Gloria, and I’m ready to do this. Maybe I’ve got a niche, and so I’m starting to look for a couple of people who write within my niche. I start to reach out to them. Other than sending them a specific pitch, is there anything else I should be doing that basically gets me on the radar so that they can see, oh yeah, this is a guy I can trust?
Gloria Chou: I teach this follow-up framework in my program where you basically just schedule send all the emails. So it’s not like you have to do it like when you feel like doing it because otherwise it’ll never get done. So just spend a few hours on a Monday or a Friday, batch like schedule all of them. You can press the schedule send button so that the email goes out on a weekday at 9 a.m. for example. and then actually DM them. So it’s really important on your media contact database, which we have as well, it’s like, you need to know where they’re on social media, so that way you can follow up with them and connect with them on social media on more than one platform. Most journalists are open to that. There are some journalists who will say, DM’s not open, or don’t message me. That’s fine, I think that’s a rarity. But it’s really about, like you said, a lead, it’s like multiple touch points. I have you on my email, but I also am talking to you on the DMs. So how can we increase that frequency? Another thing is to monitor what they’re talking about. So someone just wrote a story about, like, let’s say leadership for, you know, like leaders who are on the spectrum, right? And if you have some experience with that, or you’re working with a client, like, that would be a great time to be like, hey, I loved your story about that. Here’s also what I found to be interesting and just start a conversation with them.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Again, the relationship side makes a ton of sense and I love where that takes us. So, as far as then getting started, you know, we’re starting to see some success. Is there anything else that we need to know or keep in mind as we start to, you know, go down this road as far as getting PR, sharing it with the world, you know, steps that we need to be taking?
Gloria Chou: I think it’s literally 90% mindset because it’s a very unnatural act, especially for my community as women of color to take up space, to pitch themselves. And so I think if you can get over that, that’s like 90% of it. It’s just pressing that send button because I always say everything you want is on the other side of that send button. And the CPR method also works for speaking and awards. It’s just a way of having a conversation that gets that person to say, yes, tell me more. And so I think that you can think about where else you can be applying this. Think about how your business needs you to be its number one advocate and spokesperson. No one else can do that for you. Now, once you master this, you can delegate this to a virtual assistant, but you need to learn how to pitch. You need to learn the fundamentals of it. And then you can create a system, right, in your business where, like what I have, where someone’s pitching me for like, you know, 50 different podcasts, and then every month we’re kind of looking at how many we’ve got. So that way you have a steady rotation of that visibility, whether it’s podcasts, whether it’s online, whether it’s speaking or awards. But you want to start to create a system in your business like you do with everything else, because this is really the $10,000 an hour asset that you’re building that’s going to give you a lot more ROI than spending hours on social media.
Rob Marsh: Obviously, we don’t want to spend hours doing it. What is the appropriate amount of time? And I’m guessing when we start, it’s going to take a bit more time. But yeah, if I’m running a business, I’m working with my clients, how much time should we be spending on PR?
Gloria Chou: Well, I mean, like you said, you know, you got onto my free PR masterclass. I mean, that’s 45 minutes of training. Once you watch that, you start drafting your pitch, you start getting your media list together, put the two and two together. I mean, you can start with just 15 minutes a day and just start connecting with five journalists a day because you’re already on social media watching animal videos and cooking videos anyways. Why not just spend a little bit of that time to actually connect with journalists? And before you know it, you’re going to be able to start to create that list and connect with a lot of journalists, and you’re going to have your own contact database.
Rob Marsh: What gets you most excited about the future of PR and the possibilities here?
Gloria Chou: For me, it’s making media representation more diverse. So we know that black women start small businesses more than any other demographic. We don’t see that in the media. And so for me to help people really leverage this way of doing media, which is to be their own publicist, I’m really hoping that we’re going to be able to see more diversity of stories. When we think about entrepreneurship and small businesses, I’m hoping that we’re just going to have more diverse people from all walks of life being featured. And that’s the work that we’re here to do. That’s the work that I’m here to do. And that’s what really drives me every day.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. Maybe one final question. How is AI impacting this realm of either pitching, coming up with ideas in the interface between journalists and business owners?
Gloria Chou: So obviously, I don’t have to tell you since you’re a copywriter, it definitely helps you, right? So in terms of research, you can ask it, what are some of the trends? But I don’t think that AI is super updated, so it doesn’t give you all of the topical things that’s really in the news. So I think it’s less relevant for PR. What you can do is after you write the pitch using my CPR method, you could Spit it in chat to make it more concise, just to shave off a few words. I think that could be a good way. But so far, I haven’t really found AI to be super helpful in writing pitches because that relevance piece is like, it’s super new, right? It’s like you need to know what’s going on. You need to be a good steward of the news and see what’s happening.
Rob Marsh: Seems like there might be some opportunity for somebody to come along and create the AI HARO type tool out there, but I haven’t seen it yet.
Gloria Chou: I do use ChatGPT to rewrite your press page and bio section. So if you need help to rewrite the about us section, that’s great. You can use that with ChatGPT
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Cool. Gloria, where can people find out more about you, your programs, especially the way that, you know, you’re working with, as you said, women of color. And there are a ton of introverted women, you know, who are copywriters, content writers, who definitely need help getting out there. Actually, all of us do. I shouldn’t even limit it to introverts. Men, women, we all need this help. Where can we go to get that from you?
Gloria Chou: Oh, thank you. Yeah, so I’m on all the social media things, mainly on Instagram, at Gloria Chow PR. That’s Gloria C-H-O-U PR. You can watch my free masterclass, the one that you watched, which actually reveals word for word, from subject line to the last sentence, how the CPR method is used. And you can watch it now at GloriaChowPR.com slash masterclass for free. I also host my own podcast called Small Business PR, where we are asking journalists all the things that nobody will tell you. Things like, what do you not like in your inbox? What about sending samples? What about follow-up? All those questions can be found on my podcast. So those are the ways you can connect with me. I love being in my DMs. I love meeting people. So DM me and let’s chat.
Rob Marsh: If you’re struggling with the idea, I’m not ready to do this, the podcast stuff that you put out there may be the thing that helps people get over that. So they have the information they feel like they need. So yeah, check out all those resources. Thank you, Gloria. We appreciate your time.
Gloria Chou: Thank you.
Rob Marsh: Thanks again to Gloria Chow for showing us her framework for getting PR along with so many helpful ideas for doing this work. You can check her out at GloriaChowPR.com and Chow is spelled C-H-O-U. So GloriaChowPR.com. There’s a free masterclass on her site that will get you started and help you decide if this is a strategy that could work for you.
Gloria also has a podcast. I’m going to be on her show in the coming weeks talking about email and how to make sure that your messages get read. So you can check that out as well. Be sure to subscribe to her podcast.
This whole topic of PR and getting coverage in the media is not one of my areas of expertise. We’ve done a bit of it early on when we launched the first TCC IRL, that’s our in-person copywriting event. We were featured in Inc Magazine. We probably should have leveraged that success to build even more PR as we talked about with Gloria earlier in this episode, but building trust and establishing yourself as the expert that your clients can’t wait to work with is something that we’ve helped a lot of copywriters do. We’ve built a bunch of helpful resources inside the Copywriter Underground to help you do that.
And once you start to get PR, you need a home base where people can learn about you and how you can help them. And that’s where all those links that you’re going to be getting will be directed. Hopefully that’s to your website and not necessarily to a LinkedIn page that you don’t control. The resources in The Underground make it easy to figure all of that out. Be sure to visit TheCopywriterClub.com/tcu to learn more about those.
How you present your products and services to your customers matters. And while most copywriters don’t overtly say they do positioning work, the reality is, any messaging project pretty much requires it. The question is, how do you do it right? For the 412th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we talked with copywriter and product positioning expert, Kate Guerrero about the formula for positioning the products you write about in a way that makes it easy for customers to understand not only what it is, but why they need it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Positioning by Ries and Trout
Fletch’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Transcript:Rob Marsh: Positioning is a marketing term coined by Al Ries and Jack Trout way back in 1969. It refers to the practice of connecting your product or service (or your client’s products or services) to a single idea in your customer’s mind. And when it’s done well, your prospects and customers associate your brand with that idea. Some examples include Volvo and safety, Apple and creativity, and Disney and magic. Although few clients ask for copywriters to position their products, this is actually a big part of what we do, whether we do it consciously or not. So I thought it might be worthwhile to talk in depth about how copywriters can do it and the impact it has for their clients.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed copywriter and brand positioning expert Kate Guerrero. Kate is the in-house writer for Fletch, an agency that focuses almost entirely on helping their clients position themselves on their home pages. As promised, she laid out the process that she and Fletch use to help their clients identify the ideas they can stand for in the marketplace. We also talked about the differences between copywriting and messaging—what she shared pairs nicely with our interview with Justin Blackman on last week’s episode. And finally we also talked a bit about fiction writing since Kate has a manuscript she’s been shopping to major publishers. That’s a lot to cover, but we did it, and I think you’ll like the result, so stay tuned.
Before we jump in with Kate…
The next expert training happening in The Copywriter Underground is coming up soon. You probably know The Underground is our community for copywriters who are actively investing in building their business and writing skills. It includes personalized coaching for you where I give you feedback and ideas to help solve the stickiest challenges you face in your business today. There’s a massive library of business-focused training to help you grow a resilient, profitable copywriting businesss. And each month we bring you a new guest expert training that will help you make even more progress in your business.
This month our guest expert is Heather Farris who will be showing you how to use Pinterest to drive leads to your business for years after you post on that platform. Unlike Twitter where tweets disappear after a few minutes, or LinkedIn and Instagram where posts are lucky to last a day, the content you post on Pinterest is close to permanent. That’s because Pinterest is more like a search engine than social media. Any way, Heather will be sharing how to use Pinterest to drive copywriting leads to your business… it’s the kind of idea that could add new clients and thousands of dollars in new revenue for you. But to get access to these closely held strategies, you’ve got to be a member of The Copywriter Underground, which you can learn more about at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. Jump in now so you don’t miss this or any of the other upcoming expert skill trainings.
And now, let’s go to our interview with Kate…
Kate, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. You’ve heard a few episodes of the podcast, and as we like to start, I’m really curious how you became a copywriter and now specializing in product marketing.
Kate Guerrero: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so excited to be here. Love all of your guests. And this is a great opportunity for me. So my journey to copywriting was very long and winding, I think, as it is for a lot of people. I, as a kid, always wanted to be a writer. And then as I got older, was really only sort of presented with journalism, which was, I didn’t want to do that. I taught English at the high school level for a few years. I did a number of different things like educational related sales. I worked for a tutoring company… lots of different things. And then ended up being home with my kids for a time and looking for things, you know, as often we do in that stage where I could have something flexible, something just, you know, income on the side. And I started getting introduced to the world of online services.
So I dabbled in social media content, in virtual assisting and all these different things. Worked with a lot of very small entrepreneurs, mainly in the mompreneur space. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with that as much, but that was booming about seven, eight years ago. So I just sort of started dipping my toe in and figuring out what do I want to do? And it was really funny because I was sort of trying to pitch myself doing all these other services, you know, maybe I’ll do coaching, maybe I’ll do virtual assisting. And it always came back to whenever I would produce anything written, that was when it made my clients most excited. They’re like, oh, this is so good. Your writing is really good. And at that point, I was like, hmm, maybe this is the thing I actually need to do because the other tasks felt like, yeah, I can do this, but they didn’t feel like a super niche of what I’m actually really good at. So I was like, oh, well, maybe I should just say I’m a copywriter.
It was like one of those little light bulb moments that you’re like, I don’t know why it took so long to come around to that. But then I just really started networking with people just in the online space who needed blog content, just sort of anything. I was basically willing to do anything. And I could not believe how much opportunity there was. It was almost like I felt like I had tapped into one of the trades. Like if you’re a plumber or you’re an electrician, you’re guaranteed someone’s going to need your services. And I was just so surprised because I just thought, because writing comes easily to me, I just thought it sort of does to everybody. And the number of people that were like, A, I’m not good at writing, or B, I don’t want to do it, was shocking. So I was like, okay, I guess this is what I’m doing.
So I very quickly built up a freelance business. It took me a couple years to get to full time, but I wasn’t even, I actually, felt like I was more putting the brakes on it than anything else because there was just such a need. And I really did it just through kind of networking. I always say I kind of use it a barnacle strategy, which I’ve heard now is called partnerships. I just find people that are in the space, you know, sort of get to know them and their needs and then start writing for them. And then generally the referrals were enough to to keep me going.
I had a really broad slate of clients. I wrote for a curated newsletter called The Pour Over. I wrote for a social media content agency. I’ve written for a number of… partnered with web designers to do blog content. So I really at the time it was actually kind of exciting to do a lot of everything. And everybody was like, you know, you have to niche down, you have to niche down. I was like, I’m fine doing what I’m doing. Then I started working with Fletch and sort of getting into the product marketing side and I sort of saw the space that I had been pulling potential clients from was a much smaller pool. And all of a sudden there was this giant ocean of B2B clients. So it was sort of a natural flow to say, okay, there’s a lot more resources. There’s a lot more opportunity in the space and really pairing the copywriting with product marketing made a ton of sense, and particularly messaging and positioning, because it was a lot of the issues that I had seen when somebody brings a copywriter in and they say, can you rewrite our website?
So you come in and then we say, what do you want to say? What is your company? What do you want people to know about you? And very quickly, it was not a copywriting issue. It was a messaging and positioning issue. So I had run into that myself. And then when I started working with Fletch, it was like, oh, we can do this whole process from beginning to end where we hit the messaging and positioning first. What did you create? Who are you trying to serve? What is the product? And then it very seamlessly flows into like, how can we say that in a really articulate and elegant way? So I’m now just very recently full time with Fletch and just, you know, trying to just do this now. I finally, finally did it. I finally niched down. Yeah, that’s how I got to where I am today.
Rob Marsh: We are definitely going to dive into the formula that you use at Fletch, because that actually is what made me reach out to you, as I shared before we started recording. I love this formula, and I think there’s just so much here that copywriters need to understand. But before we get there, I want to ask a couple of follow-up questions about your story. You said that you couldn’t believe how much opportunity there was out there when you started reaching out and networking. writing. And there are a lot of people today who would say the opposite. They’re struggling to find those clients. They’re really struggling to find any kind of work. What do you think it was that you were doing that made it so easy for you to connect with, partner with the right people?
Kate Guerrero: I think it was because I started from a relationships standpoint. So at the time, I was really involved in this. So I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but I, and I don’t know how active she is anymore, but there’s a group called boss mom. So she, I don’t know if you know, Dan Malstaff.
Rob Marsh: Dans has been on the podcast. Amazing, amazing marketer.
Editor’s Note: Dana has not been on the podcast, but she spoke at TCCIRL in San Diego in 2020 and what she shared there was amazing. Rob remembered this wrong.
Kate Guerrero: She’s amazing. So that basically the commute, the fate, it was a Facebook group that she had created. I would just connect with people in it. You know, what are you working on? We did all kinds of coffee chats where you would just do a quick call. Like, what are you looking for? What am I looking for? And I think, I don’t know. I don’t know if this is like, I don’t know if this is okay to say, but like, you know, it was almost exclusively women, you know, it’s, it’s marketed obviously. Um, so it was a very relation, relationally heavy approach. So it was a ton of referrals like anytime I would meet somebody or connect to connect with someone it was always like oh I know somebody or you know, oh, do you do this and I would say That was that was really the thing. So I connected with this this woman who had a business I worked in social media for doing some social media for her for a time and then she referred me to her friend also in the area who ran this content marketing agency, and I worked for her. And I also did quite a bit of networking in real life, too. I had just another mom at school who, you know, I’m a big, like, anytime I start talking to somebody and we talk about what we do, I’m always sort of thinking, like, how could we potentially help each other? You know, like, what are you doing? What am I doing? How could we do that? So she mentioned she did writing, and I immediately was like, could we go get coffee? Like, what are you, you know? And she actually gave me some of my first blog content gigs. And I think, so I think it was a combination of the relational piece. And then I was, they always tell you, you know, to make sure that you price according to your value. And at the beginning, I was really fine with very, very low rates, not for long. I think at the beginning, I was like, I don’t know this industry. I know I’m a good writer, but I don’t really know what to do next. So I pretty much said yes to whatever. And then some of those opportunities were more fruitful than others. And some led to other opportunities that were better, but I kind of looked at it as like, I don’t know if this is like the best way to do this, but I’m just going to keep clawing my way kind of, if that makes sense.
Rob Marsh: No, it totally makes sense.
Kate Guerrero: Yes.
Rob Marsh: So obviously it’s relational and creating those relationships is a huge part of making that work. Were you doing anything to ask for referrals or was it just happening naturally as you would go through work?
Kate Guerrero: No, I did. I did ask for referrals, like particularly when and there was a lot of ebb and flow at the time. I only wanted for a little while, I only wanted part time work. And then there were certain months where I was like, you know, I want a bit more. And I would ask, you know, like, do you have anybody else who is interested in this? I did it. I did a number of cold pitches where I would just email, cold email, cold DM. those are, those are not as successful. But basically, no, I would, I would go out and, you know, reconnect with maybe somebody that I had had a call with earlier, you know, like, do you have any need for this? But now I never tried a little bit to do actually, part of this, before I got into the copywriting, I was trying to start a business selling craft kits. Basically, so it’s a way to make friends. And you know, you could get rather than a book club, you could do like a craft club.
So I had just started experimenting sort of with my own marketing, like building a presence on social media. And I’m just not good at it. I’m just really not good at it. And I know that that’s the way that works for a lot of people. I mean, that’s how Fletch built their entire businesses, you know, on building, getting out there and actually presenting content. And I just am sort of, I think I’m pretty good at finding people who are good at doing that, and then connecting them and saying, how can I support you? Like, I’m very comfortable being sort of that support person. If somebody has a strong vision, strong leadership, a lot of talent, And I think that’s a really powerful thing that not everybody knows. And I think because copywriting is such a distinct service that pairs really well with other people. So I think sort of identifying those, those, you know, the people who are like, they are really out there, making their presence making their mark and saying, like, I’ll just, I’ll just partner with you behind the scenes and do really good work. And I don’t have to be the face, you know, and for a lot of people, that’s, that’s super valuable. So I think that’s also something that worked really well.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I see a lot of value in that. We often talk about how you don’t want to be that order taker or that partner, but if you find a relationship like that, it can remove a lot of the headaches, you know, the client finding headaches and a lot of that stuff. And it could actually work for, you know, the copywriter. Well, like yourself, like it worked for you for a while.
Kate Guerrero: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that was a lot of, like, I would establish relationships with clients very early. Like, this is the process that we’re going to use. Everything was always very streamlined. We had a really, there was not a lot of back and forth because I really wanted, the way that I wanted to work was I just, I didn’t want to work on a business. I just wanted to do the work. I think sometimes it’s like, that’s sort of the sweet spot that not everybody realizes you can find, you know, like, you don’t necessarily, you don’t necessarily have to be building this giant business or taking orders, like there is something that’s sort of in the middle, like if you if you think somebody is doing good work, and you can support them and create this process. There was, you know, I basically just worked, like I wrote when I was working. And then that was pretty much it.
Rob Marsh: So obviously that’s the kind of relationship that you have with Fletch, although I think now you’re an employee, an actual employee, but how did that relationship develop? How did you connect with them and basically work yourself into a position in an agency?
Kate Guerrero: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, this part of the story is a little, is, uh, we don’t, we don’t often share it super publicly, but Anthony and I, so Anthony and I have been working together on a number of things over the years. We actually are related. So there’s like, but we’ve done a number of projects together. Um, for probably the past 10 years, we’ve been like, I’ve been like, when are you going to start? Cause he always has, we always knew he would start something, you know? Um, so I was like, basically, when are, when are you going to get going? So we’ve done a lot of projects together. We actually ran—during the pandemic—we were developing sort of like an online church for a while, which he shares about occasionally. So we ran like jobs to be done interviews with, with different people who are just sort of like trying to find something different during the pandemic. So we’ve done a number of projects like that over the years.
And as Fletch was growing, I was actually very resistant. He was like, you should come on board. You need to get started with this. And I kept saying, no, this is fine. My clients are fine. And he’s a very persistent person. So finally I started, I said, okay, I’ll do a couple of projects with you. And then he’s like, okay, how about you take a few more? How about you take a few more? And then really got, I just really got actually just very fascinated with the positioning and messaging piece and really saw that it really fills this gap that it was a huge illumination for me because I was like, this is where copywriters often get honestly kind of the short shrift because we are assigned to do things that are not copywriting. They are messaging. And so once I really was able to see how those fit together, then I was like, okay. And then finally over the last year, he finally convinced me to do it full time. But it’s great. I mean, it’s a great working relationship because I’ve pushed back on a lot of a lot of pieces like on, you know, differences to our process or how we relate with clients or how we interact, you know, in terms of our workflow. And I think it’s really kind of sharpened the process and made everything better. But it has been adjustment now, you know, going from like, I clocked in and clocked out. And now it’s like, I’m much more invested in the overall mission of the company. But it’s been really fun. I’m ready for it at this point. Before it was like, you know, I’m sure, I don’t know if you have kids, but when they’re little, you’re like, everything’s just kind of a roller coaster. And now I was like, okay, it’s time to, you know. move in a more targeted direction. So, yep.
Rob Marsh: Yep. I can totally relate to that family situation. And my wife may be even more because she was our stay at home caretaker for a while before she went. So you mentioned that this messaging framework was a huge illumination for you and I had the same experience. So I saw Anthony present this in a webinar maybe a year or so ago. And it was one of those things where I’m like, this is a brilliant way to talk about positioning and how to figure it out for not just for product marketing companies, but it literally works for anything. And as you said, a lot of what we get asked to do isn’t just copywriting, it’s messaging, it’s strategy. And that’s really where this framework comes in. And so I’m wondering if you would walk us through the framework that you guys use, that process, and how you actually identify the various pieces as you put it together. And I don’t know, maybe even, maybe even let, you know, we can make up a client to apply it or whatever’s the best way to talk about this.
Kate Guerrero: So basically the foundation of it is the hypothesis that the more people understand what you’re selling, the more they are likely to buy it. So basically, the idea is, you know, when you have a product or a service, people need to understand what is it. And shockingly, that’s often obscured on homepages. So we look at the idea of, you know, positioning your product in the market. What is it? Who is it for? What are the alternatives, the inferior alternatives that people are using currently and why your product is better? And basically that articulation is your positioning in the market. And then the messaging is how you share that.
So there’s lots of different places to share your positioning and express that messaging. And, you know, you can do it on social, you can do it on blogs, you can do it on podcasts and events. But we’ve decided to focus specifically on the homepage as that marketing asset as a place to really specifically say, what is it, who is it for and why is it better than the alternative? So basically that’s the process that we walk through with clients. So we start out by taking a deep dive into their current site. They generally send us a questionnaire where we ask lots of questions like, what are your struggles? One of the most typical ones is people will land on our website and they don’t understand what we do. And we have to explain, do a lot of education on what actually this is. And then after we get that, basically all of that information from them, Then we come in and in a series of workshops, we actually work through, here’s where we think, here’s a couple different options for where you can position in the marketplace.
So there’s basically two categories of how you can position yourself. And we aim for clarity and succinctness. Quickly, as you can explain to someone what it is that you do and why it’s better than the alternative, the more likely you are to have word of mouth, which is your best asset. If you want to do marketing, if you want to do one-to-many, you have to make it really easy for people to share what you do. So basically we look at, there’s two major ways to position yourself.
You can anchor yourself within a particular category that people really understand well. So we get a lot of companies right now that are working with AI in different ways, you know, obviously different ways to use AI to enhance businesses. So there are lots of different variations on the chatbot. And this is like a category that we know and understand. And it’s a really powerful way to anchor, you know, we are the chatbot for lawyers, you know. We get a lot of resistance from companies when you talk about category because they often want to say, but we’re so much more. And we say that’s exactly right, but that’s why you want to use that category as a reference point. So in the same way that ChatGPT is a chatbot, in the same way that Smarter Child was, you know, like decades ago, I don’t know if anybody remembers that bot. But it’s a way to anchor yourself in people’s understanding. So you say, you know, we are so much better than every other chatbot because we have all of the knowledge on the internet. So that’s one approach. If you have a really strong existing category that you can use as a comparative matrix, that can be a great way to go.
The other option is to anchor yourself in a use case. So this is something that someone is trying to do. This is a little bit where that jobs to be done idea sort of fits in. So you could say, you know, we use Calendly a lot as an example. So when Calendly first started, if you would say, you know, we’re a scheduler, a scheduling tool, they were one of the first. So that category didn’t really exist. So the idea would be for a company like Calendly, which they did at the beginning, was to anchor themselves in a use case. You’re trying to schedule meetings online. So that’s where you start. So basically we choose one of those general two paths, whether you want to anchor yourself on the use case or the category, and then we look at competitive alternatives. So for some companies in a super mature product category, let’s say you’re a new type of CRM, you would want to say immediately, you’re not going to explain what a CRM is or why it’s good to use a CRM because the product is, the category is so mature. You would want to say, why would, why would I use somebody new other than Salesforce or HubSpot? Similarly with the use case, you would say, are people, currently cobbling together a bunch of different scotch tape systems together, and we’re finally a solution for this use case. Or do people, you know, in the case of Calendly, like, you could, there’s lots of different ways that you could accomplish that use case. You could have intern scheduling, you could go emails back and forth.
So basically, like, what are we better than? And then that helps to determine the differentiation. So basically, like, you know, What are you for? What are you better than? And then we say that that’s actually just, that’s the foundation of the positioning. And then we say specifically, how do you do it? So we know once you say, what is it? Who is it for? What is it better than? And then we really say, rather than anchoring on, you know, a lot of people will, are proponents of saying, you know, well, it’s going to, it’s going to raise your ROI, or it’s going to increase revenue. But we look at the homepage as really like the how page. So rather than just stating those benefits, we’re going to say, here’s what we do, here’s who here’s who it’s for. And then here’s how we’re going to do it. So it’s a different approach for a lot of people. Because it really goes nitty gritty into the capabilities and features. of the product. But what we look at is that that’s why they’ve laid it on the page is to figure out what exactly it is. So that’s sort of like the broad philosophy in a nutshell.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. When you look at a customer or client at first blush, is there a category that’s more likely to be anchored into use cases versus like an industry or some other category? I mean, I know you mentioned the CRMs. Obviously, if there’s a ton of competition, you don’t just show up and say, I’m the best. In fact, you mentioned AI. I’ve seen so many AI writing tools that literally the headline on the homepage is the same as every single one of their competitors, and they all say, write emails faster. Literally, that is the differentiator, which isn’t a differentiator at all, because everybody is saying the same thing. So I guess my question is, you know, as a client comes in, is there a natural pathway to one or the other? Or do you really need to explore to see, you know, how mature the category is, you know, what the competition looks like all of that?
Kate Guerrero: Yeah, it is really kind of exploration. We often say, we’ll create sort of two lists side by side. So let’s say if maybe you’re a tool like Airtable, you could be used for a number of different use cases, almost infinite. So if you wrote a list of Airtable’s use cases, it’s going to be extremely long. Whereas if you could list the different product categories that Airtable could be, potentially it’s like a next generation spreadsheet. there’s far fewer options for the potential category. So then we would probably steer, we would steer a company towards the one that has fewer choices. And we also talk about positioning for audiences and your positioning can change. So like when Airtable started, they, you know, basically they positioned themselves, you know, for more technical people as a particular type of spreadsheet. And then you can actually create different assets that will put the category even in a slightly different light based on who you’re talking to. So we use that as a heuristic to decide which way to go. And then we also say, when you talk to customers, what is the most productive sales conversation? Like if somebody comes in and says, I’m just cobbling together a bunch of tools and you know, like, ah, that’s an easy sell. Or if somebody comes in and they’re like, I’m using this shoddy competitor and you’re like, yeah, we’re going to nail it. So a lot of that comes into the conversation as well. just seeing where the easiest wins come in. And that’s generally a sign that that’s the position that you should take.
Rob Marsh: Thinking about the strategy behind this is really interesting to me because it seems like a lot of clients are going to want to show up and they want to own the best position, right? Like literally be, we are the best at this, or if they can, we are the only. And the reality is that’s almost never the case. New categories are very rare and they fill out pretty quickly, you know, when they do emerge. So how do you address that? You know, how do you take somebody from, well, okay, you are the best, but we’ve got to focus, you know, on one or two, I mean, I guess one of the things about positioning is that you have that single idea that you’re trying to position in the mind of the customer. That goes all the way back to recent trout in the 1960s, right? How do you navigate that conversation? And the reason I’m asking is I think this is really difficult, especially a consultant copywriter working with a client who’s not necessarily perceived as the strategist or as the agency coming to do the advice, but they’re hired to write the copy. I’m thinking about that conversation. How do we have that conversation with our clients so that we get them to that point where they’re like, okay, yeah, let’s actually talk about the options here.
Kate Guerrero: Right, right, right. So we, a lot of times, and this is interesting, because a lot of times in the calls, this will get into like business strategy, you know, and we’ll say, this is what you think you should do. But this is obviously a larger question than what to put on the homepage. But we will say, you know, we have people come in all the time. And they say, this is a platform, it can be used by so many different departments, so many different industries. And we say, can you pick the leading one and lead with that? So it’s almost like a wedge strategy. So if you are like, let’s say, a note taking tool. So like a lot of us use these note takers, the bots that come into the call. So there’s so many of them, they’re ubiquitous. So I actually have a friend who’s at a startup right now, and they are building one that’s specifically designed for lawyers. So obviously the technology can be applied to anyone, you know, any meeting online. But what they are choosing to, because of their focus on that audience, they’re choosing to highlight the specific features that differentiate them. So this notetaker bot will actually sense different signals in the conversation when different terms come up. They will actually suggest like, you know, obviously I don’t know the legal profession, but they’ll be like, this sounds like this document or, you know, like they’ll present the supporting materials or the supporting arguments that you would need in the call. So we always say to companies, like, where is your strongest offering? Who gets the most value out of what you have created? And then sometimes we will actually shrink the vision of the product. We will push them to say, like, let’s make the vision smaller. So rather than saying, like, this is a no ticker for anybody, even though it can be, you want to lead with, you know, this is a no ticker specifically. for lawyers. And the thing that we found is really powerful is that once you create that very specific example, People are very resistant to doing that because they’re like, well, it’s going to pigeonhole me.
Rob Marsh: Then the whole niching conflict.
Kate Guerrero: But the strange thing is that the more specific you are in an example, the easier it is for the audience to apply it to their own specific example. So we see this with Fletch all the time. Our website is extremely focused on B2B SaaS companies, mainly early stage, you know, that’s who we’re speaking to, speaking to their problems. But we get clients from nonprofits, we get service agencies, we get, you know, people we had, we had a veterinarian chain one time that contacted us. So just because it was so clear what we’re offering. So the specificity of the example, often lets you not only target your ideal customer, but also help people who are not your ideal customer self select if they actually need what you’re offering. So To answer your question that we generally try to find that really specific wedge point if they’re not calling it out already. We have clients who don’t really have one before, and that is by far the most challenging piece. And then sometimes we will say, like in the roadmap, you know, in your future product development, like, do you have a sense of where you could focus, you know, as this wedge strategy? We also talk about positioning for the next revenue milestone. So an example we use a lot is like Amazon. In the very early days, Jeff Bezos was like, well, I’m going to sell everything online. But we had no reference point for that. So he said, I’m going to sell books online. And that was the beginning. Even though his vision was so much larger, he artificially kept it small for a while until he eventually was able to expand. Um, so we, we will often say, you know, is there, is there a way that you can, you know, to, to get to the next revenue milestone, whether it’s 5 million, 10 million, 1 million, whatever, who do you need to focus and target and play up this very small differentiation piece in order to get that foothold. And then you can expand later.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Okay. One of the things I really like about the way that you put all of this together is that you end up with this statement. In fact, you guys all, I think the entire team has it on their LinkedIn page kind of as the banner. And it’s, again, Everybody should go check out Kate’s LinkedIn page just to see this banner because it is a really good way to illustrate how positioning statements are written and which parts reflect the customer, the thing that you do, all of that. So at what point then do you take this research, the strategy that you’re focused on, and then start writing out these kinds of statements where it’s like, this is the thing we do. This is who we do it for. This is the category. I mean, again, the way that it’s framed on site, and I think it’s also on the Fletch website as well, or a version of it. It just makes it really easy to see how this all comes together.
Kate Guerrero: Yes. So actually, this is the part that’s been the most fascinating. So what we found was at the earlier stages, we would do all of this strategy with clients on these calls. And we would record all these information in different colored boxes, different ways to sort of visually, graphically see it. And they would be 100% on board. Yes, I want to focus on this is a notetaker for lawyers. And then we would go away, create a wireframe of the page, and actually just take those sentiments and make sentences out of them. Like literally, it’s the same stuff. Often it was almost the exact same words, but we were arranging it on the page, like copy on a website. And then we would present it to them and say like the best note taker for lawyers. And they would be like, no, I hate it. And so it was this weird thing. So you just agreed to this, yeah. We talked about this.
So it’s this weird thing that happens when people, and this is copywriters know this, It’s fine to talk about saying something. When you actually say it is when it gets pressure tested, you know? So it’s like we’re talking around and around in circles, but eventually something has to go on the page. And once they see it, all of these questions or, you know, pushback or insecurities come up. So what we’ve started doing is actually bringing in the sentences and the wireframe much earlier. So Often now what our process will be is during the calls or sometimes quickly after the calls, we will create sort of, we call it like a vomit draft, and we’ll just arrange it so it looks like a website. And we’ll say, this isn’t clever or even super clear, but something at the top will say like, this is the note taker you want if you’re a lawyer. And then we show them sort of that vomit draft and say, this is what we want to say. This is the structure, the message, the positioning. And then once we’re aligned on that, which is, it’s just always fascinating to see, like it happens almost every time that once they, you know, just seeing it in the words spark something. So then after we go back and forth and, you know, decide, is this actually where we want to be? Then we move into what we call a type draft. So basically this is what anyone really would consider good copy. So good sentence structure, economy of language, clarity, you know, just good sentences. There’s not a lot of personality there.
And then for some companies, that’s great. They want clear. I mean, that’s a perfect example of our Fletch website. There’s not a lot of personality. It’s just very simple, very clear. And then there’s an additional layer that we’ll add on for some companies that want to be, let’s say they want to be cheeky, or they want some wordplay, or they want some puns. Some companies want to be really bold, and they’ll use like, you know, maybe some, maybe some swears with the little asterisks in them, or, you know, like, there’s just different ways to be clever and fun. And that’s when we get to do that, I think that’s probably my favorite stage, because that’s really where it feels like the most, you know, decorative, you know, it’s the most fun copy. But we’ve found that that flow really helps to make sure that the message stays consistent. And then we just play around with how it sounds so we all Anthony talks about it a lot of times it’s almost like putting on clothes, you know, so you can have like a. You can have a mannequin, it’s the form that you want, and then you can put a business suit on it if you want, or you can put a clown outfit if you want, but underneath it has to be the same message.
The other thing we have seen is that when people will, the reason we structure it like this is to sort of help people understand what is copy and what is messaging, which is one of the hardest things to tease out because they are so interrelated, but they are really different. So what we found a lot of times is when people say, I don’t like the copy, it’s almost like, I don’t know if you’ve heard this analogy before, but when someone says I love you, it actually can mean a lot of different things. It can mean I’m sorry. It can mean like, you know, I miss you, all these different things. When somebody says I don’t like the copy, it can mean a lot of different things. It can mean I don’t want to compete with this, with who I’m competing with. It may mean I don’t want to be lumped into this category. It may mean I don’t really like the product that I’ve made as much as I thought I did. A lot of times it is not the actual copy.
So our process is designed to guide people in talking about what we actually want to be talking about. And when we finally get to the copy, you know, like, are we going to use, which word are we going to use? Or how do we want to structure the sentence? By the time we get to that point, that it should feel much more light and fun because we’ve already decided on those really significant and heavy pieces.
Rob Marsh: So to make sure that I’m understanding what you’re saying here correctly, the difference between messaging and copy. Messaging is the structure underneath. It’s basically the strategy. This is the stuff we need to say and copy is the how we say it.
Kate Guerrero: Yes. Yes.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. You wouldn’t frame it any differently than that.
Kate Guerrero: No. Yep. That’s it.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So I’m glad you mentioned this because as much as I love the formula, you know, that’s on the LinkedIn page, it’s on the homepage, whatever. I imagine a lot of people will look at it and say, wow, that is plain and boring. Actually, I don’t think it’s boring, but it’s very, it’s very simple and it is very plain and it is very direct and obvious what you’re saying, which is maybe why I love it. You know, just, it’s like, it’s almost like a fist to the cheek, right? It’s like, pay attention to this because this is what we are. And I can imagine that a lot of clients would look at that and say, well, I want to be more fun. You said more cheeky, more bold, maybe more professional, something like that. And so, yeah, the difference between the two I think is massive. Even though we confuse the two.
Kate Guerrero: Yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So, you know, when you’re doing this well and it’s all, you know, working, that seems to make sense. But where do people get stuck? Where do we get hung up when it comes to making this stuff work? It feels really easy to say, I help X do Y in order to get this benefit or result, you know, kind of along those frameworks. But I know it doesn’t always go smoothly. So where do we get stuck?
Kate Guerrero: Yeah. I think a lot of times it’s a clash between the grander vision versus the immediate revenue milestone that you need to hit. A lot of times we’ll work with, particularly CEOs, that’s why they’re the CEO. They have a really big idea. We’re going to be everywhere. We’re going to be serving all these different markets. We’re going to be showing up here and here and here and here. that there is a place for that broader vision. And usually that message will come in your VC conversations. It will be in your investor pitches. But what we say is where a lot of people get stuck is the homepage is generally where you want to be speaking to the people that are just going to buy what you made. So they just really need to know what it is. So decoupling those two things and understanding that you can hold a broader vision while also just presenting something very simple on your homepage, that those two things can both be true at the same time is really difficult for a lot of especially early stage companies to sort of make peace with. It’s kind of like it becomes this existential crisis sort of thing. A lot of founders look at the homepage as a representative of their company. You know what I mean? Like Wikipedia is a bad example, but this is like this is a representation of everything that we are and everything that we stand for. And we come in and say we look at the homepage as a marketing asset.
One of many, you know, we all, a lot of times we’ll point to like Apple’s homepage. If you ever, like, I don’t know if you’ve ever, the last time you’ve gone on Apple’s homepage, just a couple of weeks ago, in fact, they have, they are a great example of using the homepage as a marketing asset. So it’s like, I think right now they’re currently highlighting like computers for back to school, you know, obviously that is not the scope of Apple as a company, but they look at it as like, this is what we want to sell right now. This is what we want to hit. So that is where people get stuck a lot. The other thing is that I think we have a different perspective. A lot of people want to use very outcome-based language and benefit, like tell people that this is going to save them money, that this is going to save them time. And they like the idea of having the homepage say all of those great things rather than saying what the product does. This is sort of a philosophical difference, you know, because I think sort of the winds of marketing have changed back and forth.
But we just look at, you know, if you look at some of the best like PLG companies who are really relying on people to just click and buy, their messaging is not focused on like, save time and save money. It’s what is the thing? And relying on the audience to be able to say, yeah, if I could schedule emails, if I could schedule meetings over email, it would save me so much time. You don’t need to spend a page telling me what I would do at the time I saved. Just tell me what is the thing you’re going to speed up. So that’s where people get stuck a lot, too. Yeah, I’d say those are probably the major things.
Rob Marsh: I think some of that may come from, I mean, you mentioned like historically, that’s what websites have done. And we’ve always seen that homepage is like, okay, well, this is where we’re putting everything. And this is the page that’s going to direct everybody to wherever they go. And I like the way that you guys think about it, being a little bit more focused on that because I’m looking at Amazon’s homepage today. Books don’t even come above the fold, at least what they’re showing me. That might be different for somebody else, but I see stuff about movies. I don’t even know why I’m seeing some of this stuff because I’ve never bought any of this stuff. It’s whatever Amazon thinks is important and whatever their algorithm is saying that somebody in my seat is going to buy, right? I think a lot in speaking about copywriters here, I think a lot of copywriters struggle with this in a really big way, not necessarily for their clients, because often times we’re really good at helping our clients see the thing that they need to differentiate on. But when we put together our own websites, we struggle with this because we can serve any industry and we can write any piece of copy. I can write an email, I can write a blog post, I can write a sales page. And, you know, as you mentioned, you know, clients struggle with this whole thing and saying, yeah, we’ve got to tell our entire story. So I love the focus that you bring to this process to really pick out, okay, what’s the most important part or what’s the most important audience or what’s the most important product. And then let’s build assets for that other stuff elsewhere that doesn’t necessarily mess up our message.
Kate Guerrero: Right, right, right. Exactly.
Rob Marsh: So anyway, I love that. Okay. I want to change our discussion a little bit, you know, away from product marketing and more into just writing. You are a fiction writer. You recently even won an award for a book, you know, that I know that you’re in the process of selling all of that stuff. Tell us about your process for just writing. And I’ll tell you, part of the reason I ask is a lot of us start out thinking, “hey, I want to be a writer.” We start copywriting because that’s a way to do the thing that we love and make money out of it while maybe the book sort of percolates in our brains or sits in the drawer or whatever. And then we get home from the copywriting job where we turn off the computer and we are so tired from writing that we can’t write anymore. And yet you’re doing this at least on a part-time basis. How are you doing it? And what do you do? What’s your writing process?
Kate Guerrero: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s so great.
Rob Marsh: That’s a lot of stuff to throw at you at one time.
Kate Guerrero: No, I know. But I really look at it as like, at a certain point, I feel like We were told, I don’t know if this is a generational thing, but we were told either you can choose to follow your dream or you can choose to make money. And I feel like you really can do both. I look at my… day job as that is what pays the bills. Even fairly successful novelists generally do not make a full-time income. If you even look at your favorite fiction writers, most of them are teaching, they offer some sort of ancillary course, they have or they’re doing something else. Like I follow a lot of, you know, pretty, pretty, I would consider them pretty successful fiction writers. So looking at the at the fiction angle as like, this is a precious thing to me, and I don’t want to rely on it for a full time income. I think some people may have a difference of opinion there. I look at sort of like it’s almost like two sides of your brain. These are two parts of writing that I can enjoy, and they’re going to bring me different things. In terms of being able to write after you’ve written all day, it’s gotten harder. It’s gotten harder. But I think it’s just carving out the different times that work for you. So there’ll be weeks when I have a really intense workload, the projects require a lot of in-depth thought. And when it comes to the end of the day, I’m like, I just can’t generate any more words. And then I’ll work generally on the weekends on my manuscript. And then sometimes little things fall into place. You know, it’s sort of that, like the mystical nature of the creative process. Like sometimes everything just works and in an hour I’m done and it was, you know, going to take me 10 hours and my project is done and I feel still full of creativity. And then I’ll try to, you know, write up my own manuscript that evening, you know. But I think, I think leaving, leaving yourself open to like, there’s just, there’s just not one way to do it. And I really try to stay very inspired. I read a lot. I like to watch, you know, TV shows that are really inspiring to me, even like the music I’ll put on in the car, like whatever’s going to fill that bucket. And I think, too, the two different types of writing are different enough that I am able to keep them disparate, if that makes sense.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it does. When you’re writing, do you have a favorite go-to? Are you writing short stories? Are you always working on your novel?
Kate Guerrero: My dream is to be a novelist. So I wrote a manuscript that did get an award. I pitched it to 100 agents. It got a lot of really encouraging responses, basically, of people being like, you’re just not there yet. Which has been such a really great example of like it is, it is just like fiction, I think fiction writing is one of the hardest types of writing the market is just so brutal. But it’s really taught me a lot actually, but the work that I’ve done with Fletch has taught me so much about getting started on the next manuscript in terms of positioning, because it’s a business, you know, and so there’s a huge part of if you want to sell your novel commercially, you need to say, who is this for? You know, it’s the same questions, like, what did you write? And who is it for? And my first manuscript, I was like, well, it’s a little bit of this, and it’s a little bit of that. And like, but the same as I’ve, we’ve learned with product marketing, That’s very hard to market, you know? So really making the decision this time to say, like, no, I’m going to pick a genre. I’m going to pick, like, it’s for fans of this book and this book, and really write from that lens has been super helpful. Because I do. That is my goal, is to get it commercially published. And that is one of the constraints of just, you know, if you’re going to sell it, who is going to buy it, you know? So that’s been an interesting way that it’s sort of intersected.
Rob Marsh: So have you written out a positioning statement for the previous book or for the book that you’re working on? Do you have one? And if you have, are you willing to share it?
Kate Guerrero: Oh, it is not in a shape to share. But actually, so there’s a process in the fiction world where you write a query letter, which is basically a positioning statement. So I have been working on different iterations of it as like through the process, just kind of like fine tuning. The similarities are just very, very interesting in terms of highlighting the overall positioning statement and then your capabilities and features. It’s very similar in writing a novel as well. Eventually, I will be able to share.
Rob Marsh: This whole way of thinking about books feels very James Patterson-esque to me. And I know he’s the best-selling author maybe of all time now. I’m not sure how he compares to Agatha Christie or maybe the Bible. But I think his process is very much like this is a genre book for this audience. And I mean, they even outlined their books, he and his co-writers, I think, in that way. Yeah, so obviously it’s an approach that could work for fiction, and maybe it’s a little bit more disciplined than most fiction writers tend to be.
Kate Guerrero: Well, we’ll see. I mean, we’ll see as it evolves. We’ve gone down many different paths, but it is very easy. I think also in messaging as well. We tend to always think we’re the exception. Every company is like, well, but we’re just different. And it’s like, most likely you’re not. The same general rules apply. And so I think that’s a really helpful thing to remember as a creative person, because it’s like, you can explode past these boundaries, but you have to first establish where they are.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Okay. So, in your work, or maybe even in your fiction writing, are you using AI tools at all to help with this stuff? And if so, how are you using them?
Kate Guerrero: What’s the process? Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. I am a big proponent of AI. I think this is the wrong approach to be scared. I think the right approach is to say, how can this help? I would say in the product marketing, copywriting for websites, I use it a lot for just like excellent sentence structure. So almost every sentence that I write, I will run it through ChatGPT a few times and say, make this more clear and concise, and then just evaluate the different versions. And then sometimes it’ll work and it’ll be perfect. Other times I will take that and sort of shape it myself. I don’t enter in anything long form because then it really loses it’s not able to keep that sharp piece. So I generally work on just a very sentence-based structure or even a phrase. You know, if you’re like, this is what I wanted to say, but I can’t nail it in, you know, like, um, and even sometimes with a sentence, you’re like, I’ve got several clauses or I have two, you know, two independent clauses together. And I know we can get this a little sharper and I’m just struggling to do it. And that’s where I feel like AI really shines, because it’ll do it for you. And then I’ll be like, no, that’s not it. Or sometimes they’ll be like, yes, that’s perfect. So I look at it as just kind of like a little assistant that really helps on that sentence structure level. I also use it a lot for fiction for brainstorming. So if I have two characters, let’s say this character has to be mad at the other one, and I can’t really figure out what should be the inciting incident. Why would they be mad at each other? And I’ll put it into AI and say, you know, I have these two characters. They need to be angry at each other. What could have happened to spark a fight? And the interesting thing is I’ve put in lots of… Because the book I’m writing now is a mystery and there’s some death in it. So you have to preface it by saying, I’m writing a novel, because otherwise the model will cut you off and say, I cannot. I cannot… And give away ways for people to die. Give away ways for people to die. But if you say you’re writing a novel… And it’s actually generated some really interesting ideas. Things that I’ve been like, oh, there was one where the character has to be bullied. And I was like, what could, you know, what could just a high school girl, what could the other girls be mean to her? And it takes, this section of the book takes place in the 1990s. So, you know, like what, what would be, I don’t remember, you know, like what were things you could be bullied about in the 90s? And there was like a great, it gave me a great list. So it’s, it’s, I look at it as just like a really, a really helpful assistant, you know, that like it’s, I’m not afraid of it replacing human writing at all. It’s just, it’s just not good enough, you know, like, and, and it is very good. But just as it’s, I have found it to be good at specific tasks, and not in a holistic general way. So that’s, that’s been my experience.
Rob Marsh: It sounds like you’re using it in similar ways that I’ve explored using it as far as writing a book. I don’t have an award for a manuscript that I’ve produced yet, but I’ve basically put in plot ideas and basically said, what would happen next? Or give me some possibilities for, like you said, the inciting incident. I tend to think through thrillers. And so I’m like, OK. who can be the bad guy, how do we increase attention, those kinds of things. Character sketches. The vice president is this guy. Tell me about his background and where he got, what created the trouble that ends up being. And I find it really helpful when you know, brainstorming that kind of stuff for sure. It also seems like you guys could take the formula that you have, you know, again, on the homepage and basically say, you know, here’s the product, here’s the audience that it serves, you know, give me 10 versions of, you know, that headline statement. Right, right, right.
Kate Guerrero: Yeah, and we have done that before. And we also have tried in calls a lot of times, what we’ll do is if someone says, you know, like, we want to be known as the blah, blah, blah, can’t think of one off the top of my head, but they were like, we want to be we want to sort of create this product category, you know, we’re the intelligent, like, we’re just looking at DocuSign says they’re the intelligent agreement management platform. So a lot of times we’ll, you know, sort of as a thought experiment, we’ll, we’ll say, you know, like, Let’s say a company is doing this, what might they be selling? And then it sort of works sometimes to reverse engineer. We look at it as sort of like the voice of the internet, you know, like Chachi Patiso. What would you imagine this sounds like? And it’s very enlightening to be like, you know, you may feel like this has a connotation, but probably the rest of the internet is going to hear it this way. So, that’s been an interesting use too.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that is an interesting use for it. Okay, so what are you most excited about in marketing and copywriting or even just in your own career, you know, that’s coming up in the next year or two?
Kate Guerrero: Yeah. I really love the intersection with particularly marketing copywriting with creativity and then also sort of this technical side. I never thought I would be working in tech at all. But it’s really fascinating to see the types of software that is developed and the ways we can streamline things that we never would have been able to before. There’s a couple things that I’ve said I want to see if a company comes out with this. The one that I would love to have is, you know, there’s all sorts of AI powered search tools that will scan across all your business applications and unearth insights. So I want one for my personal life. So it will scan my kid’s school website and my, my, you know, the policies for my doctor. And then I can say, you know, where’s the form that I need? And it’ll just pull up. So that’s, that’s my, uh, my dream.
Rob Marsh: Yeah.
Kate Guerrero: Right. If somebody could come up with that, then, you know, maybe it tells you like what’s on your grocery list or whatever.
Rob Marsh: I can imagine that someday that thing will exist. It’s like, you know, how did I do in math in the fourth grade? And it will be able to pull up my fourth grade report card. And yeah, that kind of stuff could be really, if not useful, really interesting.
Kate Guerrero: Right, right, right, exactly. Um, and then I think, uh, I am, I am very excited about the fiction piece. I would love to, I would love to have, uh, at least a literary agent potentially, potentially working on selling a novel in the, in the next couple of years. But yeah, I think I’m excited to see what will happen in the B2B space. I think it’s, it’s always changing and, uh, it’s just, it’s every company is completely different in, in some way. So that’s been just a really fun adventure. It’s different every week.
Rob Marsh: Well, we’ll be looking for you on the bestseller list someday. Who knows when, but someday in the future.
Kate Guerrero: Someday, yep.
Rob Marsh: Kate, if somebody wants to connect with you, where should they go? Where can they learn more about you?
Kate Guerrero: LinkedIn’s probably the best. I don’t post a lot. I’m trying to get better about posting more, but I will always respond to a DM or if anybody wants to connect, I’ll pretty much connect with whoever. So that’s a good place to start. And then if you’re interested in what Fletch does, Uh, Fletch website is really helpful. And then Anthony and Rob have, you know, constantly, uh, really killer content that they’ll, they do almost every day.
Rob Marsh: So, and that’s Fletch PMM.com.
Kate Guerrero: Correct. Yep. That’s correct.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. Thanks, Kate.
Kate Guerrero: Okay. Awesome. Thanks.
Rob Marsh: Thanks to Kate Guerrero for sharing her process for identifying the elements of an effective brand position. Positioning is one of those marketing skills that makes you a better copywriter. There are some pretty famous examples of positioning that are usually talked about. You know, some of these are a little old.
One is the car rental company, Avis, which for decades lagged behind Hertz as the number two largest rental company in the United States. They used that idea of being number two as proof that they had to try harder to get a customer’s business. So their cars were cleaner. Their ashtrays were always empty. This was a time when smoking was far more common than it is today. They always had cars on the lot available for you. Trying harder was their position and it was the backing or the proof that they were the better car company. And it worked. It worked so well that they became the number one car rental company for a while, which makes it a bit harder to use that number two position.
In the same industry, you’ve probably heard the tagline for enterprise rental car, we pick you up. That’s not exactly a positioning statement, but it speaks to their position as the more convenient rental company. Enterprise ignored airports and they put their lots near car repair shops and other urban locations where their customers could easily access a rental car when they needed it.
Maybe a more contemporary example of this is Chick-fil-A, which positioned itself as an alternative to hamburgers. And the cows that are always directing you away from burger places and to Chick-fil-A restaurants is one way that that shows up in their marketing.
DuckDuckGo positions itself as the privacy alternative to Google. And similarly, lately, Apple has been positioning some of its products around privacy. VRBO, I recently saw their vacation rental company, they’ve been positioning themselves against Airbnb, saying that they only offer host free facilities. So you know, you’re not going to be sharing your vacation with somebody that you don’t know at the Airbnb location that you might buy.
There are lots of ways to position a brand or a product or a service. If you haven’t read it, you should definitely check out Reese and Trout’s book simply called Positioning. It’s an older book. It was written in the seventies and the examples are a little bit dated, but the idea is critical when it comes to messaging and copy. And I think if you’ve struggled with this or knowing what it even is, that short book will help you out.
Let me make one last mention of our workshop coming up in the next week or so. When you join The Copywriter Underground, you’ll have immediate access to these expert workshops as soon as they happen. The next one is on how to do social media marketing that lasts longer than a few minutes or a day or two. This is the kind of knowledge that’s hard to come by in the, I’ll just Google to find my answer world. Shortcut your learning curve and get the results that you want faster by joining The Copywriter Underground at thecopyrighterclub.com/tcu.
Brand voice is one of the “popular” ways to niche or differentiate yourself in the crowded world of copywriting. But what is it really? And how do you do it? We wanted to go deeper than the typical discussion on brand voice, so we asked the expert on the topic, Justin Blackman to join us for the 411th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And we think you’re going to like what he shared about it as well as writing brand manifestos and achieving mastery. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Brand Voice Academy
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Transcript is underway…
If you’re struggling to get the people on your email list to buy your products and services (or you want to help clients sell more to their lists), this episode is for you. We asked Kennedy from Email Marketing Heroes to be our guest for the 410th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kennedy shared his SCORE method that helped him increase his own sales by 1700%. Want to know how he did it? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript and get the secrets.
Stuff to check out:Email Marketing Heroes
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: After recording more than 400 episodes where we’ve told the stories of hundreds of copywriters and shared many of their processes and secrets for finding clients and getting things done, I think my favorite episodes are those that lay out a playbook for doing something specific. Those episodes are like audio masterclasses where you get almost step by step instructions on how to do something differet. We’ve had a couple of episodes like this lately… and today’s episode is another one like that. We’re getting very specific with email strategy and a formula that could increase your sales—or the sales of your clients—by close to 20x.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed mind reader, mentalist and founder of email heros Kennedy. Kennedy’s been a friend for a few years now. He spoke at our Copywriter Club event in London last year and shared a bit of what we talked about on this interview, so I was thrilled when he agreed to join me here to talk about how to string together email sequences in a way that massively increases revenue. If you apply what Kennedy shares in this episode, you could double or triple what you charge clients for emails and strategy simply because you’ll know how to drastically increase the results you get from your work.
Before we jump in with Kennedy…
I want to tell you about the next couple of guest expert trainings happening in The Copywriter Underground. In case you don’t know, The Underground is our community for copywriters who are actively investing in building their business and writing skills. It includes monthly group coaching where we help solve the stickiest challenges and problems copywriters are facing in their busienesses today. It includes a massive library of training all focused on helping you grow your skills and get better at things like finding clients, conducting prospecting calls, writing hooks and leads, creating frameworks and processes for getting things done and so much more. And each month we bring you a new business focused training to help you add to your skills and grow your business. The nexd training scheduled for September is all about Pinterest Marketing. And our guest expert for that is last week’s podcast guest, Heather Farris. I asked Heather to customize what she shares so it’s directly applicable to copywriters and content writers. And she agreed. She’s going to show you how to use Pinterest to create long-lasting funnels for your services. And in October, today’s guest, Kennedy is going to return to share something we touched on in today’s interview: creating the perfect lead magnet… so you’re not just adding people to your list, but you’re attracting buyers who want the solutions you have to their challenges. But here’s the thing with these unique guest trainings… they’re for members only. The only way you get these behind the scenes secrets is to join, which you can do at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. Do it today, so you can join us for these upcoming, business changing trainings.
And now, let’s go to our interview with Kennedy.
I want to start the way we usually do. And that’s just with your story. And you’ve got a little bit of a different story. You are not a typical copywriter. In fact, I don’t even think you call yourself a copywriter.
Kennedy: I don’t even think of myself as a copywriter at all. I feel like I haven’t really earned that prestigious title.
Rob Marsh: You do a ton of copywriting. So, you know, it’s, it’s obviously it’s in your wheelhouse, but how did you, how did you become, you know, the head of, well, I guess the head hero at email marketing heroes. The superhero.
Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, so basically my, as you said, my background is kind of a bit unusual. I started off never wanting to get a job. And basically all I’ve done is I’ve spent, I’m, I’m 40 years old now. I know I don’t do it. Right. But you look so young.
Rob Marsh: Yes. You don’t look a day over 37, 38. Yeah.
Kennedy: Yeah. Um, but I always, all I’ve done up to this point is avoided getting a job at all costs. And so that began with I got interested in unexplained stuff when I was a kid. I subscribed to a print magazine called, it was called The X Factor. It was all about unexplained stuff like UFOs and aliens and Area 51 and stuff that was unexplained. I was always interested in that stuff. And that led me to magic and to what is known as mentalism, which is magic using your brain, using deductive reasoning, statistics, influence, persuasion, psychology, body language, understanding other human beings, and understanding yourself, so memorizing ridiculous amounts of information. And so I one day decided to do a show at my local pub upstairs in this function room of this pub. And I did a show. I was asked by somebody. I didn’t just show up and randomly do it. Somebody asked me to do it. And it went well. People were like, oh, that’s quite good. I thought, oh, this should be fun. So I did another show. And I ended up being a full-time after-dinner corporate entertainer where I performed for corporations such as Yahoo and all the big companies that you’ve heard of. at their conferences and awards dinners and product launches and all those sorts of things, getting to fly around the world and do all that sort of good stuff. Ended up even headlining on some cruise ships, which has meant I got to go to amazing places like Antarctica. I went to St. Petersburg. I’ve been to some incredible, incredible places. Burma, doing the show, which was great. I was getting paid to travel, which was great. I then ended up coaching other entertainers on how to get gigs, how to charge properly, how to attract different types of gigs, whether they were working at trade shows or even family entertainers at restaurants and stuff like that, all across the whole spectrum. But part of all of that was I had to figure out how do I communicate what I do so people will go, oh, I think we should hire that. Because back then especially, people didn’t know what a mentalist was. They didn’t know what it was. They were like, so is it like magic? No. Is it like psychic? No. Is it like this? Is it like that? No. It’s like it’s this other thing. So figuring out the words to communicate. And I think I have one of the first direct response Websites in my entire industry. Everybody else was like he’s fantastic. You should hire him. Whereas I was like You know, would you like to make your next event? The one that everyone’s talking about guaranteed, you know, like I mean it was back in the the 2000s, you know, so So I was just caning it with that stuff and I applied it to advertising and stuff like that and that’s how I ended up really understanding what copy is, what words can do, and of course, applying all the know-how of psychology that I’ve been using on stage to do that. And then eventually, Somebody said, I know you’re speaking at these events for entertainers and performers, but this is a generic business, small business conference for people who sell coaching and online courses. Do you want to come and speak at that about this marketing stuff? And I said, OK, let’s do that. Why not? It’s an audience. People will clap and fill up my ego. That’ll be lovely. Thank you. They’ll make me feel pretty, which I need all the help I can get. So I thought, yeah, let’s do that. And from then, it really, I mean, I don’t like getting on sales calls, although recently I’ve been doing a bit of that just to do a bit of market research and force myself to get out of my comfort zone. But in general, I don’t like doing sales calls. But I do like the idea of being able to email people and be able to move people from where they are to closer to buying something. And I’ve always really enjoyed that. Even as an entertainer, I had automated upsells When somebody booked me, funny story, actually, I remember this charity. It was like some pets charity. They helped do pets and animals. And they talked me down on my fee, talked me down, talked me down. And basically, I ended up halving my fee for these people. I was like, yeah, OK. I get off the phone. I forgot that I had an automated upsell sequence for everybody who booked me. because it’s automatic. I wrote it years ago, which is the great thing about automation. And the next thing I know, a few weeks go by and I get an email from them saying, yeah, that sounds great. And I’m like, what are they saying yes to? I look through the history of what they’ve been receiving. They’re saying, yes, I want you to do this extra special routine in your show. And they ended up paying me more than my original fee that they’d already taught me down from. That’s amazing. Yeah. So they’re good negotiators. I’m a better email marketer.
Rob Marsh: I love it. We’re definitely going to talk about email. And I mean, you’ve done some amazing things in your business that I’ve seen. And I really want to dive deep on that. But before we go there, I told you this before we started recording. I’ve got this thing about mentalism. I love Derron Brown. You know, I’ve watched all of his specials. I’ve read several books. In fact, I was talking with another copywriter, John Bejakovic, a while ago, and we were talking about one of Darren’s books. And he said he’d been told by several A-list copywriters that copywriters aren’t allowed to talk about that book because it reveals so many psychological secrets that, you know, they want to keep, they basically want to keep those secrets to themselves, it’s funny. And I’m glad that John and I were the ones that maybe, you know, start talking about this a little bit. But mentalism obviously has tons of crossover, you know, with the psychology of persuasion, with copywriting, with communication. So can you just give us some of the stuff that you learned as a mentalist that you apply in your copywriting and in things that you do with your clients today? That’s a weird question.
Kennedy: No, it’s the same thing though. It’s the same thing because communication is communication, right? So what we’re doing by email, on a website, on a sales page, a landing page, in an ad, in a VSL script, in a video ad script, whatever we’re doing, we’re doing the same thing. We’re taking people from, first of all, getting their attention and making sure we have their attention. Then we’re probably building up some kind of trust. So let’s think about a typical show for a mentalist, a mind reader, or anybody doing that kind of thing. The first thing I’ve got to do is got to get their attention when I walk on. Otherwise, I’ve lost the room. I can’t impact anybody. I can’t even make them laugh. And I certainly can’t influence them to do the sort of fun psychological games that I’m going to play with them. The second thing I’ve got to do is realize the audience is wondering, yeah, but is he any good I’ve seen the fact that he’s performed in Las Vegas, and he’s done events for this company and that company, and done all these things on the BBC TV, and consulted for all of these big magicians that you’ve seen on TV when they were doing mentalism stuff. But they’re still going, yeah, but is he any good? Will I like him?
So the first thing we’ve got to do is build that trust. Because if you’ve ever been to a comedy club when there’s that that second or third act on the bill, who’s usually the one trying out. They’re a newer act. They’re a new person to the comedy scene. The reason the compare, the MC, doesn’t say, this person’s brand new, is because if that’s ever happened, the audience gets tense and goes, oh, I hope they’re not rubbish. I hope they’re not crap. And it’s really difficult for the audience to relax until they realize they can trust this entertainer, in this case, to take them on this journey. And no matter what happens, this person can handle it.
So that’s why the beginning of a show for me is when I’m the most interactive with the audience. It’s when I’m talking directly to people in the front, chatting about this, being very off the cuff, talking to people, because I’m building up this, hey, you can trust me. No matter what happens, we’re going to have a good time. I’ve done this a lot. It’s going to be great. And I’ve got some really exciting stuff prepared for you. So that’s the same thing that we do in copy. We tell people, you can trust me. I’ve done this before. These are my credentials. This is the struggle I’ve been through. And this is the journey I got to getting to this point that allows you to now trust me.
So we’re building trust. And then what have we got to do? We’ve now got to present problems. Well, the problem in a mentalism show is going to be, hey, you’re thinking of a word or a phrase from one of the Shakespearean sonnets, and I’m going to apparently telepathically, or using some other psychological skills more likely, I’m going to pick up on what those things are. Well, that’s the problem. That’s the problem that we’re setting. We’re teeing up a problem. It’s the same when you’re writing an email. You’re saying, hey, if you’re a coach right now who’s struggling to get to consistent 10K months, then there’s only one reason. I’ve set up the problem. So it’s exactly the same.
And then we’re going to go into some conditions So if I just go over to the person and say, hey, give me the book with the sonnets in it and have a look at which words you’re thinking of, then it’s not very interesting. I’m going to set up the conditions. They are going to be, I’m going to be blindfolded. I’m going to put a bag over my head. I’m going to be outside the room. I’m going to be in a different room. I’m going to do it over the phone. What are the conditions? And this is the same in copy, right? The conditions are going to be, would you like to solve that problem without having to do cold calling, without having to? So what are the conditions at this point? It’s exactly the same. They run in parallel.
And then of course, we’re going to start introducing some unique, interesting, innovative hook, a unique mechanism. It’s called in copy, but it really should be called a unique mechanism in performance as well, which is the unique way you’re going to apparently figure it out. And in my case, I’ll come up with something really ridiculous because I do a very lighthearted kind of act, right? So mine will be by sense of smell. So I’m going to sniff your wrists to figure out which Shakespearean sonnet you’re thinking of. Or I’m going to use the cunning use of balloon telepathy, and I’ll blow up a balloon and rub it on your face. I’m coming up with some unique, interesting thing because Let’s take it back to really much simpler entertainment, like magic, like magicians. How many times has somebody said, pick a card, and you take a card, and if every time all they do is find your card by going, that’s your card, at some point, it’s going to get very boring. We’ve seen that trick a lot. Whereas the whole point of performance is to dress that trick up in new clothes. So it’s the same in writing. It’s the same in copywriting. It’s especially the same in constructing email campaigns that you have to redress your campaign, your promise in new clothes. That’s why sometimes someone might do a Jeff Walker style product launch formula type launch, but the next three months later, four months later, they might do a challenge, or they might do a wait list, or we have to constantly be redressing these things up. Otherwise, we lose the attention of our audience.
And of course, then there has to be the payoff. in which case it’s going to be some kind of a revelation in a mentalism show of, this is what you’re thinking of. Or in an email, it’s like, hey, we can solve it using this system. Click here, and then there’s going to be an action. We’re going to go and find out what that action is going to be. We’re going to click the link or whatever it’s going to be. So lots of parallels there between the world of performing as any kind of performer, not just a mentalist, but with copywriting, with email, or with any of it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love the comparisons that you draw as you go through there. I wonder, one of the things I didn’t hear you mention that we hear a lot in direct response marketing in particular, risk removal. How do you do that as a mentalist? Or is that even because I’ve paid money for a ticket to the show or because I’ve walked up to you on the street? Have I already surrendered that just by participating?
Kennedy: Yeah, I think there is a level of risk, especially like there’s a there’s definitely a thing I started to have to handle, I would say, in the last six years. And that is for the booker, really, and that there is a fear and a resistance to hiring a mentalist that is, are they going to reveal something that’s inappropriate for the circumstance? So if it’s an ideal, most of my work is corporations, right? And there’s always been corporations. I have to remember, and I’ve seen a lot of performers forget this really important thing. And that is, those people in that room, they have to go back to the office on Monday, and they know each other. They have to deal with the backlash of anything that I do. And that’s why there’s a strict policy in my show of, I don’t reveal any personal information about people on purpose. And people are like, oh, you should be telling people about their star signs and their ex-partners and all this sort of stuff, because it’s personal. I’m like, that’s fine if it’s a public show where they’re paying tickets. I don’t do public shows where people buy tickets. I do stuff for corporations, so I’m more interested in randomness. And also, hey, today, I could go on to Google. I can go on to any social media platform and find out pretty much more impressive stuff than I could figure out using my mentalism skills. So also, it’s a little bit of a defunct thing anyway. So yeah, there is a level of risk reversal or risk removal.
The other piece, actually during the show itself, There is a risk for participants who are going to feel embarrassed or that, and that’s going to cause a lot of friction for a performer. So I have seen other performers, and I’ve been this performer and I was less experienced too, where people would refuse to get up on stage. And the reason that happens is because you haven’t reduced or reversed or removed the risk of participation. So that’s the reason that in my show, I’m constantly setting up the premise of, If you are on stage, that is the safest place. They’re the only people I’m not poking fun at. If you’re in the audience, I’m going for it. I’m saying anything I want. So the safest place to be. And that’s why when I get somebody up on stage, I shake them by the hand. I use two hands. I look them right in the eye and I say, thank you so much for being here. There’s nothing embarrassing about to happen. This is going to be really fun.” And I am then true to that. And remember, a huge piece of risk reversal and risk reduction is not just saying the thing, but following through with what you say. When you say it’s a dollar trial, make sure it is a dollar trial. And making sure that if you say there’s a guarantee, that you make it very easy.
I mean, a mistake I see way too often is people say, hey, there’s a money back guarantee. You’ve got 60 days and it’s unconditional. But they’re not telling them in the sales material how to take them up on that guarantee. So in all of our sales material, I’m always like, if you don’t like it, for any reason in the next 60 days, drop us one, and I love this line, you’re welcome to use it. I say, drop us one email to the email address, and we will send you a refund before we even ask you for a reason. So now I’m proving the risk is reversed, right? We have this phrase that we teach in writing email specifically, which is SIPI, S-I-P-I. Say it, prove it. If you say you’ve made $2.4 million, show me a Show me a graphic that proves it. Show me a screenshot. Show me something. Say it. Prove it. Because we live in a world which is so skeptical now. So if I say, hey, I’ve just been speaking at this amazing event. I’ve just shared the stage with Stephen Bartlett and Ali Abdaal and Jasmine Starr and Ryan Dice, you can bet your bottom dollar right below that is a photo of me either with those people or on that stage. Because I want people to realize every time I say something, it is true.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah. I don’t have anything to add there. It’s too important to miss, but you’re right. And something that I think, especially in sales materials, we miss a lot. Okay, before we leave mentalism altogether and move all the way into email, what’s the weirdest, funniest, I don’t know, most embarrassing moment that you had on stage as a mentalist performing?
Kennedy: I can tell you the most high pressure one. Okay, let’s do that. Yeah, the highest pressure one, I didn’t find out until I was in the room who it was for. So it was like ABC Limited, and I was like, I don’t know who that is or whatever they were called, some random name. And I found out actually when I got there, it was for the British Secret Service. And I’m thinking, these guys know this stuff, like this is how they operate, you know? So I was, I was terrified. But of course, I couldn’t take any photos. I’ve got no evidence that you know, I could.
Rob Marsh: I’m sure you did. Sure you did. You believe you.
Kennedy: Yeah, that was really, really scary. But I think it’s one of my favorite. I think I went down the best at that gig. It was definitely one of my better gigs. They were so on board. They were just really, really good people. So that was a pretty high pressure gig.
Rob Marsh: All right, let’s talk. Let’s talk about email, because I think that’s probably more applicable to what most people want to hear about. I want to hear about the mentalism. Maybe they do, too. I don’t know. But obviously, in explaining what you do as a mentalist and booking gigs, you got pretty good at this whole email thing. Kind of walk us through that part of your story.
Kennedy: Yeah. So, I mean, I realized that when people are going to start sending inquiries through my website, I would have to start talking to them and following up with them. And I got really sick of typing the same thing. And sometimes when I was typing stuff to them that these people who are inquiring, it would convert and sometimes it wouldn’t. And I was like, I need to do something about this. So I started creating just canned responses inside of my Gmail account. And when somebody would inquire, I would just click that canned response and realize that certain responses would do very, very well. I was like, hmm, that’s interesting. And then I realized the people who were a no or who didn’t reply, they needed some following up with to keep them warm. And that was the thing, I think, that led me to being one of the busier corporate guys. It wasn’t because my marketing was better or my lead generation was particularly better. It was marginally better to begin with, but people started seeing what I was doing and copying it, of course, because they saw how busy I was.
But then I realized I had to follow up with people. And the real thing that made me that busy was the fact that if somebody said no this year, for their event, they went with a different option, whatever reason, I had an automated follow-up sequence that would tee them up for booking me next year. And that’s when, for the first year, I was just as busy as everybody else. But in year two, year three, year four of being a full-time performer, I was really busy doing three shows a week. It was because of my ability to follow up and to follow up hands-off. because it was all automated. Wait 360 days, and then automatic email to Rob that says, hey, last year we didn’t get to work together. It’s Kennedy, the mind reader. I’m just wondering, how’s things looking for this year’s conference? Really simple, very conversational style emails, not corporate, not newsletters, not any of that stuff. And then I would get the bookings that year. And they’re like, oh yeah, actually, we’re going to be having the meeting next week. Good timing. And I’m like, oh, it wasn’t by accident it was good timing. It was because I waited almost a year until you were organizing the event again.
So I had a piece of data that I was really leveraging. Yeah. And then, and from then on, I then started growing this following of other entertainers who wanted to know how I was doing this, and I ended up launching a physical print newsletter, which was, I think the price, and it was like 130 US dollars. Basically, it was 82 pounds a month. in British pounds, because I used to sell in pounds, for this physical print newsletter with an online community and monthly trainings. And so that’s when I really got my teeth stuck into real email marketing, growing a list. I grew one of the biggest lists in that entire niche at the time. I think there’s people who’ve got much bigger lists in that niche now. I’m no longer in it, but at the time. And then, again, moving people through into enrolling in this membership. And that ended up me hosting an offline event, an in-person event, which was a content event with an offer at the end to enroll more people into the whole thing. And that’s really where my email marketing chops really got sharp.
Rob Marsh: And then that led to email marketing heroes. So obviously you went from helping other magicians, other entertainers, and now you’re working with all kinds of businesses, moms and pops, corporations, you know, really broad range.
Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, a lot of our clients are coaches, course creators, membership site owners, copywriters, and in-person facilities. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. Okay, so let’s talk about email specifically. We’ve actually done, I don’t know, we’ve probably done 30 or 40 episodes. I mean, we talked to copywriters, copywriters write emails. So we’ve done a lot of talking about emails. But I’m curious, you know, from your perspective, where you’re seeing it, both as a writer yourself as a business owner yourself, but as somebody who’s got exposure to all of these other businesses, writing emails. Let’s talk first about some of the mistakes people make, copywriters, coaches, others in their emails. And then maybe we can talk about some specific campaigns. You’re brilliant at naming campaigns. We can talk about some of that stuff too.
Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, some interesting mistakes. I mean, one of the things I have the benefit of is unlike a lot of people, I’m not seeing lots of copy. I’m just seeing lots of emails. So I’m really able to talk to what works specifically in email in a much deeper way than most people will think about it. Because all I think about is how to make sure our clients, our members, our customers are getting better results with their emails. I think I think one of the things to think about that’s really, really important when you’re doing your own email marketing and when you’re doing stuff for clients is to really think about from the moment that someone joins your email list, the moment someone joins your email list, they are the most likely to buy. You are the most exciting, interesting person in their inbox only until the next person whose list they join, right? Because when someone joins your email list or a client’s email list, if you’re writing emails for a client, at that moment, that lead, that person, that human being has a problem and they believe you have the solution to that problem. That’s the only reason they join your email list. If they didn’t have a problem and they didn’t think you could maybe help them solve that problem based on the lead magnet, the freebie, the gift, the way they get onto your email list. If they didn’t believe that, they would just keep on scrolling, or at least they’d bounce from the page. The only reason they clicked the ad or clicked a bit of content, clicked the link in bio, got to your landing page and decided, yeah, I’m going to buy access to that information with the currency of my personal email address, which comes right to my phone, The reason I do that is because I’ve got this problem, and I think you’ve got the solution to it. So when somebody comes to one of our lead magnets, they’re dissatisfied with the level of conversion from their email account, right? So we don’t help. We have small programs about list building and all the kind of things. But the thing we are brilliant at and the thing we obsess over is converting more of your existing subscribers to your existing offers. So when someone joins our email list, my headline is like, ugh, why aren’t my emails making sales? That speaks exactly to the problem. So they’re joining the list for that reason. And so whatever your client does, whatever you’re doing, then that’s the reason they’re on your email list. And that means you’ve got a bunch of people on your email list, and some of those people have an urgent problem now. And people who are coming to my world are the people who are like sick and fed up of trying to grow their social media and convert off DMs and trying to do it one-to-one and sales calls. And they just, they know they’ve got this asset of either a few hundred or a few thousand or a lot of thousand people who they know, they’ve seen everybody saying their money is in the list. And they’re like, dude, I don’t want the money in my list.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s no money in the list.
Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. Well, the money is in my list. It’s not in my damn pocket is the problem. It’s in the list. It’s in the wrong place, right? The money is in the list. It’s in the wrong place. That’s the motto that we go by. So we have that moment of time when we have their attention to help them solve that problem. And every day that someone’s on your email list, the less likely they are to ever become a client, ever buy something from you. There are, of course, always outsiders, outside statistics around some people need nurturing for longer. That’s true. But in a world of direct response style, have a lead magnet, you’re bringing people in. People are joining at the point that they have the problem. For the most part, I would say 70% of the time. Sometimes we’re opting in for things which we for a problem we might have in the future. Of course, there is always about 30% of people doing that.
So with that said, One of the mistakes I see is that there is not an immediate automation in place that tells people what your products or services are straight away. And you don’t have to do a high-pressure sales job on them at all. What you can do is just say, welcome to my world. Here’s some ways of engaging with us. And some of them are free. Here, we’ve got a podcast. It’s called The Email Marketing Show. Go listen to that. Here, we’ve got a free community. It’s called The Email Marketing Show Community. And oh, if you want to jump ahead and you just want the best information to get your email marketing turning into more sales, here’s our Email Hero Blueprint. That’s email number one that somebody gets. Because the way I think about it is this. Somebody hops into the emergency room, right? Somebody goes in to the emergency department at the hospital. Their leg is hanging off. There’s blood splurting up the walls. And they’re like, I need to see a doctor. I need to see a doctor. And the doctor comes in, sits down, and says, hi. Let me tell you my hero’s journey. I got into medicine because I’m like, oh my God! And before you even get to telling them how you can help them, this poor guy’s bled out on the floor. There are subscribers who will bleed out before you get through nurturing them to death. Because they’re the people who need your help right now.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, it’s eye opening in so many ways. One of the things that I noticed that you do, or you teach, and you do it as well, because I’ve been on your list for a long time, is different from what most of us do. And that is, we might have that sales sequence. We’ve got, you know, somebody signs up for the list, we deliver the lead magnet, we give them that first four, six, maybe even 10 emails and then we drop them onto our regular list, which maybe it’s daily, maybe it’s weekly, maybe it’s as frequently as we think about emailing. It may not be that often. You guys don’t do that. You guys hook together sequence after sequence after sequence in a way that seems to lead to people buying not just that first five or six days, but then again after 10 days or 14 days or whatever. Tell us about how you guys do that.
Kennedy: Let me tell you why. Before I tell you exactly how you do it, let me show you how impactful this was for our business. Obviously, I’m about to share with you some numbers, and I just want a full disclaimer. I’m not saying anyone else is going to do these numbers. This is not me. It’s also not me showing off. Because for some people, these numbers will be tiny. For some of these numbers will be astronomical. But it’s not about what the numbers are. It’s about what they mean. So I asked one of the members of our team to grab me just a slice of time, a few months of time, and tell me how much money just the sales sequence that people went through made us for this particular one offer. And the number was 27,000 and something, right? It was 27 and a half grand, but let’s just say it was 27,000, okay? And this is for one program in that period of time to these subscribers, using that one sales campaign. 27 grand, hey, not to be sniffed at. Most people would be pretty okay with that. I’m over the moon with that. That’s absolutely great.
Then I said to the team member, OK, compare that to that was just one campaign. That’s a campaign we have called the Overture, right? It’s a six-day, very simple campaign. And the campaign has two things in it, like all good email automations has two elements. It has emails and wait times between emails. That’s all automations should be, by the way. Everybody overcomplicates segmentation and all this stuff. Please don’t. You don’t need to.
There’s only two segments of your list, by the way. Quick tangent, there’s only two segments of your list, people who haven’t bought and people who have bought. That’s the only two segments most of us need. Unless you’ve got a million subscribers, unless you’re a corporation where you’re having to really divide the list up. But really, if you’re doing less than $3 million a year in revenue, I don’t think you need more than two segments. I think you need people who have not yet bought, and the only emails that should go to those people are. emails to get them to buy for the first time and turn them into a customer rather than a cost that you’ve already spent. And the second bunch of people are the people who have bought and your job is to send them offers, which allow them to spend more and get more from you and learn more from you. That’s the only two segments we need.
So somebody joins the email list, The first sequence they go through is a welcome sequence. We call it the getting-to-know-you sequence. It’s a four-day sequence, right? So us getting to know them, them getting to know us. Next, they go through a six-day sequence called the overture. At that point, in this period of time, of this particular one product, we made just over $27,000. Lovely, great amount of money. That’s great. But then if we eke out the other campaigns, and they go through a content-led sale sequence, an objection handling sales sequence, and I’ll go talk these on in a second, a risk reversal sequence. So three more sequences for the same period of time, same email subscribers, same offer, didn’t come up with a new product. Because we know putting a product together is loads of time, loads of energy, getting the sales page written costs a fortune from you flipping copywriters, you know what I mean? All that stuff, all those expenses, didn’t need any of those things. That made, same product, same subscribers, that made $500,000.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so just to be clear, they were going through four to six emails before, 27,000, and then you added, it’s probably, what, 30, 40 emails through each of these specific sequences. It’s not just random emails. Right, yeah, they’re not random emails, yeah. And you basically 20Xed what you made.
Kennedy: Yeah, I mean the increase is 1,800%. Yeah. It’s an 1,800% increase. Or to put it another way, if I just continued doing what everybody else is doing, which is just doing one sales sequence and then into the newsletter segment, I would have been leaving 94% of the money still in the list.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. So here’s a reason that people should continue listening. Let’s walk through what, like, what are you doing in each of these sequences? And, you know, again, anybody who’s listening might be thinking, well, I don’t have my own list. This isn’t useful. If you can do this for clients. Oh my gosh.
Kennedy: I mean, clients, they’re going to love you and retain you. Or if you do a rev share with clients. Exactly.
Rob Marsh: This isn’t a $50 an email or even a $200 an email kind of work, this is highly challenging for your business, for sure.
Kennedy: It really is. And that’s what we do now. We do revenue shares with clients now. We used to have an agency where we only purely did writing for people. And now we do it on a very odd occasion, but mostly if we’ve got bandwidth, we do it on a revenue share because of the kind of impact this can have. So yeah, the way this works is rather than them coming in, the new subscriber coming in, they go through, well, the worst case scenario is they come in and they get on your live list and they just get whatever email you happen to be sending. And that’s where this idea of what we call the score email engine, and I’ll teach you the whole thing. I want you to make sure you’ve got all this to go and use. That’s where this score email engine came from, because I joined someone’s list. It was a big guru. You’ve definitely heard of them. You’ve seen their ads. They’re doing the whole thing all the time. And they were running a challenge. So I opted in for that email list. And the first email I get from this guy was, bonus number three is expiring at midnight. I’m like, huh? What’s bonus number two? What’s the product? What even is the product? I didn’t know what the product was. So I was unable to buy because I had no context. So what we’re going to do is take the best performing email sequences, the best performing email campaigns, and make sure that every single new subscriber goes through your best stuff.
If they happen to join your list on a day where you’re feeling a bit rubbish, or you’ve had a bad morning, or you don’t feel very inspired that day, or it’s just not the best email ever, they don’t suffer from that. They get the best chance of enrolling. And that was the results that it got for us.
So the first thing they’re going to go through is that welcome sequence. Okay, great. The next thing we’re going to go through is this sales sequence. And that S, the S for sales, is the S in SCORE. We’re going to build up this. Is it an acronym? I can never remember that word. S in SCORE stands for sales. And that is literally showing up and saying, hey, I’ve got this thing. It’s going to help you solve the problem you joined my email list for. Go check it out. And it hands them straight to that sales page that you’ve got. And it’s just a direct sales sequence. Nice and easy. Then, because we don’t want to just be beating people over the head with, hey, you should buy this. No, really, you should buy this. That’s not going to work.
So what we’re going to do now is the C of SCORE, which is a content-led sales sequence. It’s a content-led sales sequence. It is a sales sequence, but it is content-led. And that might be Hey, I’ve just made this video. I’ve just written this post. I’ve just put together this Google Doc. It’s a piece of content that they can go and engage with. So you’re building up some goodwill. You’re building up your authority and your knowledge. Your knowledge is going into their head. You’re building up some desire through that piece of content. So they might click and go read your Google Doc. Well, the people who click to look at your Google Doc, if you’ve named your Google Doc something that is high intent, like, here’s the five reasons that nobody’s buying from your emails, or whatever it’s going to be, we can now segment those people and be like, OK. We’re now going to show those people, because we know they’re interested in that particular topic, we’re now going to put them through a conversion sequence within that content-led sequence. So your content-led sequence is made up of two pieces. It’s made up of the content, and it’s made up of the conversion part. And only the people who engage with the content ever see the conversion part. Everybody else who’s like, that topic doesn’t really excite me. That’s cool. They don’t even know there’s an offer that you’re just a nice person sending content out. All right. Yep. Yep. So that’s the C.
Okay. Next, we’re going to go into the O of score. And this is the objection handling sequence. So at this point, there are a bunch of people. who are fixated on a reason why they can’t and why they can’t now. So we’re going to have an entire sequence, not just one email of your sales launch, which is what most people do dealing with objections. We’re going to have a sequence, which is all about dealing with objections. But it’s not just about dealing with objections. It’s about understanding their objection and then dealing with their objection. And here’s a really good format. for that. One is, what I like to do is I like to send them a survey. So think about it. They’ve received, in the first sequence of six emails, they’ve received links to a sales page. Okay. That’s a bit salesy. It’s for the people who are the eager, urgent buyer, the person with the leg hanging off and the blood flying everywhere. That’s helped that person. The person who needs the content is a person who needs, is what I call the researcher, the person who wants to understand a bit more. But they’ve been sent a nice link to a nice video with a bit of content. Lovely. So they don’t feel like they’ve been beaten over the head. And then we’re going to shake up their psychology again. We’re going to reset their attention, which is what we need to be doing. The reason people stop reading your emails, the reason people start unsubscribing is because you’ve no longer got their attention. We need different email sequences in order to reset people’s attention. It’s the reason like partway through a show, if you go and see any kind of show, a comedy show, a musical, a play, a mind reading show, whatever, they’ll change the pace. They’ll make it light. They’ll make it dark. They’ll make it funny at some point. Just before the big crying, awful, tragic song in Les Miserables, there’s the comedy song. There’s a reason for that. We’re resetting attention. And TV shows on Netflix do this all the time. They’re resetting attention by changing pace, changing the temperature of things. So what we’re going to do here is we’ve sent them to a sales page, we’ve sent them to a video, we’re going to reset their attention again by asking a question. That’s a very different vibe. So I’m like, hey, I’ve made this one question survey. I’d love you to fill it out. It will take you one click, half a second. And the question, the survey is, hey, I’ve been telling you about my amazing program, the Email Hero Blueprint or whatever your client’s thing is. I’m just wondering what’s the reason you haven’t enrolled yet? Because I think it’d be perfect for you. And then we just list the objections. I’m not sure I can afford it. I feel like I can’t afford it right now. Or I don’t know if it’ll work for my business, or whatever the main objections are. Come up with the six main objections. And then you have a follow-up bunch of emails which send them to a video based on which objection they selected. which doesn’t handle the objection, it doesn’t overcome the objection, but it turns the objection into the reason why they should.
Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about how we do that. That’s an easy thing to say. So let’s take an example. Let’s say, OK, I haven’t joined Email Heroes because, yeah, it’s too expensive. It’s too expensive right now.
Kennedy: It feels too expensive. It feels, yeah. I mean, the word that I use is I feel like I can’t afford it right now. So I’m putting lots of doubt into that. It’s a feeling, not a fact, I feel like. And right now doesn’t mean forever. So there’s a lot going into just that one. OK, so how are we going to turn that into the reason why they should? So we’re going to step back and go, cool. Well, the fact that the reason, hey, it’s going to be on a video, probably, because that’s the best way of communicating high empathy things. I’ll be like, hey, thanks for filling out the survey. I know I’ve had a few people have said that they feel like they might not be able to afford it right now. And I totally get it. First thing, you need to agree. I totally get it. Cashflow is a thing. I’m a business owner too. I’ve got to watch cashflow like a hawk.
So here’s the thing. One of the reasons that cashflow can be difficult and investing in things can sometimes be difficult. Notice how I’m, sometimes, can be. I’m dampening all this certainty. I’m moving them away from that certainty of, I cannot afford it. I sometimes can feel like I can’t afford to invest in the things. Even when I see a thing that I know is going to help me, even when I see a thing that I know is the thing I really want, sometimes I hold back because I’m concerned about the investment. And here’s the thing. When your email marketing is not producing you consistent results, When your email marketing is not bringing you in predictable sales, it’s very difficult to invest in anything. Because until your email marketing is sorted, you can’t build your email list because you don’t know if it’s going to convert. You can’t come up with new products because you’ve got no money to do that. So once your marketing is sorted, now everything else becomes more predictable. I’ve now crushed those beliefs.
Like, that’s gone now. But I still need to be able to say something around, hey, so now buy the thing, which can be a little bit tricky, but it’s really simple. I say, so that’s the reason why, for people like us who are really concerned about cash flow, I’ve put together a special six-part payment plan to make sure you can get started and get access to this today. And if you click the button below right now, we can give you that payment plan. But here’s the really important thing. Unlike other programs about email marketing, this is not a thing that you have to sit back and go into a dark corner of the office or a dungeon and work on for months before you start seeing results. Each module of the Email Hero Blueprint gets you a result as you build it. That’s what I want you to do. So the first thing I want you to do when you get inside is I want you to use this module where you’re going to be able to do X, Y, Z things. So if you see how now I’ve just moved everything over to, of course you can’t afford it. You haven’t got the thing you can’t buy.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Now, some people would say, wait a second, we’re being really manipulative here. And there’s probably some reality there. It is manipulative. However, if you are delivering a real result, if you tell somebody, yes, if you buy, we’re going to solve this problem and you’re going to be getting the result that you need. That takes it into a whole different space. It’s no longer this negative thing. You’re actually solving a real business problem that they need solved. And I think it’s really important to say that about this kind of psychology.
Kennedy: If you don’t have something that’s genuinely helping people, then that is manipulation. And also think about this. Whenever we communicate, we are either moving people towards a belief we want them to have or away from it. We can’t help it. That’s all we’re doing. So as you’re watching or listening to our conversation right now, you’re moving towards some beliefs about the topic, about Rob, about me, about this entire conversation. you’re moving towards or away from those beliefs. And that’s just the way life is. That’s the way human beings are wired. And so if you genuinely believe that what you have got will help people, look, I remember hearing, let’s talk about magicians again.
Penn Jillette was once asked. He’s a notoriously outspoken atheist, right? He’s a strong atheist. And whatever your belief system is your belief system, and that’s great for you. somebody asked Penn, what do you think about those people who come and knock on your door and sell religion at the doorstep? And I will never forget his response. He said something around the fact that he thinks it’s a good thing. Because, and his explanation was great, I mean, it was a long time since I saw and heard this, but the essence of what Penn Jillette said, Penn Jillette as in Penn and Teller, so what he said was, If you believe you have the cure to something, if you have the secret to save someone’s soul, and that’s what you truly believe, then you should be knocking on everyone’s door and trying to save them. So if I have the cure to some horrible cancer, I should be knocking on everyone’s door telling them, because the selfish thing to do would be to keep it to myself. And also what we’ve got to remember is, I like to believe that even if people don’t buy anything from me ever, I want to put enough good stuff out there that people can genuinely actually go and use, go and do. That’s why I’m giving you this stuff today that you can actually go and do. There’s no theory here because even if most people don’t buy anything, but if they take something and they go and actually use it, then I’ve been your coach, I’ve helped you a little bit, and I feel great about that because I know that not everybody can afford. I know that not everybody’s in the right situation right now.
So if we’re all coaching people anyway, even the people who we’re not hired by, even if the people who have not bought our program are not in our membership, then part of coaching people is giving them that harsh reality. So if I am coaching people through the fact of this objection and going, you could believe that, that is definitely one way of thinking about it. But the way that I actually think about it is this, that’s how I feel about it. And then they get to decide. I mean, you’re not pushing anybody. They still get to decide. I don’t do the I don’t like to personally do the thing. And everybody has different things. You might be like, I’m fine with that. But I don’t like to do the, hey, so you’ve got two choices. You can either have the big one or the small one. Which one do you want? Because actually, my highest value in my life, in my life, is choice. Everything I do is about me having more choice and giving people choices. That’s why everything I do is non-prescriptive. It’s like, you could do it this way, you could do it that way. It’s about doing it the way you want to do it. Do you have to use the exact language patterns and the way that I just said it? No. Would I say it exactly how I said it? Probably not. That was just me giving you the full, unharnessed version of what could be in that. It’s too harsh. But I would water that down and have that sentiment and encourage people. Because I genuinely believe if you’re not making sales right now, it’s because you don’t have the right email stuff in place. And every business would be so much more successful if they stopped fannying about with building that social media account and figuring out what a challenge is and tinkering with the headline on the sales page, and actually just had a predictable email system. I hope you can tell that I genuinely believe that. I’m very passionate about it.
Rob Marsh: No, yeah, you’re coming across very dispassionate. I wish you would dial it up a notch or two, Kennedy. Okay, so I took us off track a little bit, you know, and walking through the score sequence, that’s objections. And then once you’ve gone through the, you know, you’ve dealt with the objection, you’ve gotten them to a video, you’ve given them the opportunity to opt in there, what’s the next step?
Kennedy: Yeah. So of course, by that point, there’s still a bunch of people who have not bought yet. Some people have bought from sales. Some people have bought from content-led sequence. Some people have bought from the objection handling sequence. Still, some people haven’t because they have been burned in the past. They’ve bought stuff that over-promised, under-delivered. They don’t believe in themselves. They don’t believe that they can do it. And that’s when we’re going to get into the R, which is risk reduction or risk reversal. And that’s when we’re going to do things like, if it’s a membership offering a trial, or offering a free week, or offering them, my favorite one is an open day where they get to come and attend one of your live sessions, one of your Q&A sessions, so they can actually see how you interact with other people. Or it might be one of my other favorite, for a course, my favorite risk reversal is what I call Module 1 Unlocked. This is a really powerful campaign that we have running in our business, where we unlock the actual real first module of the course. We give them a username and password. They get to log in, consume the full module, learn the stuff. And again, a percentage of those people who are in the right place will want to unlock the rest of the program. So again, reducing and removing risk. And this is, again, with that offer, that same offer.
The final piece is the E, which is engagement campaigns. So I’ll get to what those are. So you’ve got sales, content, objection handling, risk, reversal, and reduction. And you’ve got engagement. Engagement campaigns are all the campaigns which I would class the getting to know you, that welcome sequence, that is an engagement campaign. The re-engaging people who are starting to slumber, starting to go to sleep, stopping opening your emails. That’s a type of engagement campaign. A looked but didn’t buy campaign. We call it the tell me more campaign, which is where a person keeps checking out the offer, three times, but didn’t buy. I’m like, well, it’s like somebody going to a shop and picking up that new iPad and putting it down, walking away, coming back, picking it up again. That person wants to buy. They just need a different sequence. So you’ve got engagement campaigns. And of course, your newsletter, your live emails, they’re part of that engagement piece of this entire thing. And here’s the real secret. You don’t have to do score in that order. They are just the ingredients. They are just the elements. So actually, our score engine is E, we have a welcome sequence, engagement. We also have a delivery sequence to deliver the lead magnets. That’s another E. Then we have a content-led sequence. Then we have a sales sequence, then another content-led sequence, then a risk reversal sequence, and then into engagement. But, sorry, the objection handling sequence is between the It’s between the second C and the R. So, but ee-kuh-score doesn’t sound quite as good as score.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Ed-kuh-score. Ed-kuh-score. Yeah. So, but, but yeah, I, I like that you can move stuff around though, because I think you need to be flexible in any business and some offers, I suppose you could even change it up by the offer. Some offers are going to be far more urgent. Uh, therefore you need to lead with sales. Others you want to build up with maybe content because you’re leading into some kind of a pre-launch, that kind of thing. So, uh, the different elements of being able to put them together is, is important. And I guess the baseline here though, is that you should do at least five, at least one of each.
Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, your minimum viable engine really is the fastest way to get fast results. And that’s, what’s really important about this is don’t sit and write a sales campaign, a content and objection, a risk reversal campaign. Don’t do that. Take one of them, take a sales campaign, write it. send it to your list live and get instant gratification, get instant feedback, get instant results. And those results will be a combination of sales, hopefully, but also data. What was the open rate on that? What was the click-through rate on that? We had, when I sent out our very first version of our sales campaign for one of our offers, email number four of that six email campaign had a 0% click-through rate. And I was like, how is that even possible? Is the technology broken? I didn’t know, but I went in, I copied it, pasted it into a new email, changed the subject line and put it back in again. And immediately the next week, bang, it was fine again. So I don’t know if it was just keep being a little bit weird, or indeed the subject line was killing it all. But again, you’re going to get some data, okay? And you’re going to hopefully make some sales. And then you’re going to automate that one. And now you’ve automated that one for all new people coming in. While that’s happening, while that’s running, you’re now writing your content-led campaign, right? So I might write, we have one called a daisy chain. So I would grab that one, start writing that. And then I’m not going to automate it straight away. I’m going to send it live and get instant gratification. I’m going to get instant results, feedback. And then once I’m happy with that, I’m then going to automate it. So you’re making a piece and you’re using it live and then you’re automating it because you’re now getting results immediately and you’re building an asset. And that’s the big change. If you get one thing from all the little things we’ve shared, hopefully we’ve written down a bunch of things today, but if there’s one thing, it’s stop writing emails that are spent. Start writing emails that are assets. We’re making sales today from emails that I wrote four years ago. I woke up this morning to sales from four years ago’s emails. Write an email and then have it as an asset. And it might be an automated asset that’s always running. Or if you do like an event-based type business where you do launches or challenges, which are live, well, every time we run a summit, for example, I don’t rewrite a new summit campaign. I grab last year’s summit campaign. I go in there. Yeah, update it, but I don’t want to be messing around with the automation every single time and figuring all that shenanigans out again. Of course I don’t. I’m going to go and I’m going to create these little assets that I can fire off, that I can launch, that I can run, or that I can automate. So build assets, build assets for yourself, build assets for your clients, and then you’re going to see a compound return of these things like any asset.
Rob Marsh: OK, this has been phenomenal. I want to maybe change our conversation just a little bit and focus on this for the last couple of minutes we have together. And that is this other email related challenge that most businesses have. And that is, how do you attract buyers rather than freebie seekers? to your list? You know, what are the things that we should be doing? I know there’s actually good reasons to attract freebie seekers onto a list, but obviously you need to turn them into buyers pretty quickly. So is there a way to bring them on as buyers or should we just be looking at that sale sequence and be saying, look, nope, we’re giving them something free. We’re going to get them to buy as soon as possible. And we’ll basically build through a score sequence in order to do that. Right.
Kennedy: There’s two pieces, I think two major pieces of this. I think one of them is running offers which are paid offers on the front so that the ad or the content or your traffic is going straight to maybe a low ticket offer. which basically means you’re bringing in less people quantity-wise, but you’re going to bring in more apparently quality people. And the data shows, not from me, from very clever, actually clever people, shows that people who are customers are 50% more likely to buy in the future. So yes, bringing in buyers is a good thing. The other thing you can do, though, if you don’t just want to bring in people who are customers, and you need to do what about a share, whether it’s a free thing or a paid thing. is you can bring people in for free, but you have to be very careful about the level of intent they are showing when they join your email list. So what do I mean by that? Either your free thing or your paid thing needs to have something about it that disqualifies people if they are never going to be a good fit for your program.
Case in point, I will not run a lead magnet, a free lead magnet, or even a low-ticket $7, $27, $67 offer, which is five free traffic methods to build your email list. The reason I’m not going to do that is because in our business, we only help people who’ve got some email subscribers. Even if it’s like one of our clients, Sheila, she’s got 78 subscribers. She used one of our campaigns. She sold out her mastermind six-figure business. Very good. But she has some subscribers. Amazing. She’s amazing. She killed it. She did well. She understands her messaging. She went and did the work. But I want to make sure that people have some subscribers, even if it’s as small as Sheila, all the way up to hundreds of thousands of subscribers, which some of our clients have. So saying how to use free list building to build your email list, that’s not really going to attract the person who needs the help we give, which is how to convert more of your email subscribers. Whereas, if I put out a lead magnet, which is how to re-engage your dead email subscribers, well, that’s pre-qualifying people. Whether I charge for that or make it free, it doesn’t matter. The person engaging in that, the person joining that and enrolling in that, whether they’re paying money or paying with their email address, is a person who could have the problem I solve.
So here’s a way. I taught a class just about a month ago called The Perfect Lead Magnet. And I’m happy to come and give the full class for your audience if this will help. But let me give you the basics of it. And that is most people’s lead magnets solve too much of the problem. And so what I want you to do instead is think about, and this is going to open up a bloody can of worms. I know it’s going to. But let me give you the essence of it. And I can come and do the whole thing for you. Um, basically think about the, I want you to separate two thoughts and they are the situation that your audience finds themselves in versus a, one of the many problems that is causing that situation. Right. Your. If you think about the situation you solve, the situation you help people move out of, and it’s made up of a lot of pillars that are problems that uphold that situation, your lead magnet should be one of the solutions to one of the problems. It should not be trying to solve the situation.
So for me, as an example, The situation our customers of our Blueprint and our other programs have is they’re not making enough sales from their email list. That’s a situation. It’s not a problem because the problems that are making that happen are, my emails are, the content is rubbish. My subscribers are not engaged. I don’t know how to do subject lines. What are my call to actions? There are probably 300 problems. And the great news is once you map out the problems which are supporting their situation, you now have a list of lead magnets.
Rob Marsh: You just gave me about five ideas on an offer we have. I’m just like, okay. I just broke it down in my brain. I’m like, yeah, okay. Yeah.
Kennedy: Excellent. Because what that means is when, and again, we can go into this later, but when you solve that problem, the person still is in the situation. So now they are more likely to buy your solution to the situation because you haven’t solved the situation, but you have still solved the problem. You’ve been true to your word. So for example, we have a low ticket front end called ClickTricks, which is 12. I’ve just added some more, but it was 12 different ways of getting more people to click the links in your emails. That is solving a particular problem. It’s solving that I have a low click-through rate problem. It’s not solving the situation of I’m not making enough sales for my emails. So when you get that, when you grab that product, and I show you the 12 different ways of getting more clicks, you are satisfied. Kennedy was true to his word of here are how to get more clicks, but you still haven’t solved the problem, which is I need to make more sales from my email. So now when I show up with a campaign or three and say, would you like to solve the situation? You’re like, yeah. So it’s really that distinction between situation and problem.
Rob Marsh: I like that. I’m going to take you up on your offer to come back and teach the whole workshop because I think that can be really helpful. Again, not just for copywriters, content writers, marketers in their own businesses, but it’s the kind of thing that can be a game changer for clients and lead to those really successful relationships. We’ve gone over an hour, Kennedy. I really appreciate your time. I mean, it’s easy to go so long with you. I mean, hanging out with you is a blast. We’ve done it a bunch of times, and hopefully we’ll get to do it again in the future. But for those who have been listening and thinking, OK, I need more Kennedy in my life. I can’t imagine anybody’s actually thinking that, but no.
Kennedy: No, they were like, he’s a manipulative scumbag.
Rob Marsh: If you need more Kennedy in your life, you’ve got your own podcast. And obviously, you know, lots of places to find you tell us where to go to find. Yeah, again, get more Kennedy.
Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. So if you like podcasts, which I think you probably do, we have a podcast called the email marketing show, where we share what’s working right now in email marketing, we have a good laugh as well. I’ve got a great co host, called Fifi, who’s one of my best friends. She’s amazing. And also, if you’ve got some ideas and some questions around things we’ve shared, go to Facebook, search for the Email Marketing Show Community. That’s our free Facebook group. I’m in there. I know Rob’s in there. There’s a whole bunch of us in there talking about email marketing, how you apply this stuff. Actually, on the way into that group, you have the choice. And again, it is a choice. It’s optional. to give us your email address and get on our email list and see how we do this stuff in practice. And you’ll be able to go, oh, that’s a sales sequence. Oh, that’s a content sequence. Oh, there’s the objection sequence. There’s the risk reversal. You’ll be able to see all of that in action as well. So just go to Facebook, search for the email marketing show community and click request to join.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I highly recommend it. I got on your, I can’t remember how long ago I got on your list a couple of years ago. And then after getting to know you, I’m like, wait a second, I’m going to, I’ve got to go through this sequence again. So I went in on another email, I’m screwing up all of your metrics. But I went in with a different email so that I could actually watch what you were doing. Because like I said, you do it differently than most other people. And it’s something worth learning. And so I hope some of our listeners will check that out. You definitely should. It’s benefited me. I’ve learned a ton from you. So thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you, man.
Kennedy: Appreciate you. Love you hanging out as ever. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: Okay, like I said at the beginning of the show, that was basically a masterclass in using email to convert new leads into paying customers. And if you only got half of the results that Kennedy got when he built his score automations, you could increase your sales by 800%, or that’s eight times, right? It feels a bit like sorcery, but it’s a lot closer to science as you add more and more to what you know already works.
And can I just emphasize a couple of things that stood out to me while we were talking? While Kennedy was talking about how mentalism and his mentalism act follows the exact same steps that we follow in direct marketing, I immediately started taking notes. It all starts with your ability to get attention. If you can’t do that, either with ads or subject lines or interesting content or a hook, on your video or your podcast, nothing else matters. Without attention, you’ve got nothing. No matter how good your product or your service is, no matter how many people you can help, no matter how interested you are in solving the problem that you can solve, if they can’t find you, none of that stuff matters.
Then once you have their attention, you’ve got to build trust. And there are lots of ways to do that. In fact, there’s a fantastic resource in The Copywriter Underground all about proof and trust that walks through something like 23 or 24 different ways to add proof to what you say. SIPI, like we talked about, say it, prove it, so that your readers and your prospects trust you as an authority.
Then you present the problem that they’re struggling with. The bigger and more painful the problem, the better. This is where we usually talk about selling painkillers, not vitamins. You want to be addressing a real problem, and that’s just nice to have. Then you lay out the conditions. These are the features, the benefits, all the ways that your solution can help, the stories, the backup proof. case studies, all of that.
And you couple that with a unique mechanism, the thing that you do that is different and superior than every other solution out there, including the option of doing nothing, which let’s be honest, is usually what prospects choose to do.
And I’m going to start sounding like a broken record, but when it comes to unique mechanisms, we have got a killer training inside The Copywriter Underground from Todd Brown, all about how you create a unique mechanism as a copywriter. And this isn’t an easy thing to do because copywriters, content writers, we tend to do the same things. We solve the same problems as everybody else. And yet there are ways that you can stand out and be completely unique. That resource is The Underground as well.
Then after you have your unique mechanism, you remove the risk for your buyer. as we talked about, and then you ask for the sale. That’s it. You’ve just written your marketing piece or you’ve created your own mentalism mind reading act. So be sure to go back and listen to the various steps of the score method again. I’ve heard Kennedy share this a couple of different times and each time I pick up on something else that I should test or change or do differently or do better. There’s so much gold in the advice that he shared in this episode. So don’t just let this be a one listen and be done. Sit down, take notes, think about how you can implement the various pieces of the score method in your business.
I want to thank Kennedy again for spending the past hour with us. You can find him at emailmarketingheroes.com. We’ll link to his website in the show notes. I highly recommend that you hop on his list. And while he’s probably going to hate me for saying this, don’t buy immediately. read the emails as they come in, watch what he’s doing, how he’s addressing different needs and problems, and how the copy in each email helps solve those problems, how he’s using content and sales sequences, the various different things that we talked about on today’s episode. It is a masterclass in what we talked about today.
Finally, don’t miss Kennedy’s upcoming workshop in The Copywriter Underground on creating lead magnets that bring buyers to your doorstep and not just other copywriters who are checking out what you’re doing, but they’re not actually going to buy anything from you. This kind of knowledge is hard to come by in the I’ll just Google it for my answer world. This training is going to shortcut your learning curve, help you get results faster. It is well worth the time and the investment, especially when you see how little The Copywriter Underground actually costs on a monthly basis. Find out more. at thecopyrighterclub.com/tcu.
Looking for a place to market your writing business where you may be able to be the only copywriter talking to your prospects? Pinterest may be the answer. Heather Farris, the go-to Pinterest Marketing Expert for a lot of service providers, course creators and others is our guest for the 409th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She shared how to get started, how to find the right key words, and how to get clients off Pinterest and onto your mailing list (or buying your products). This is a good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Heather’s Website
Heather’s Pinterest Board
The Copywriter Club Pinterest Board
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: It doesn’t matter how good you are as a copywriter, if your ideal clients can’t find you, you won’t have a lot of work that you really enjoy. In fact, if clients can’t find you, you may not have any work at all. Copywriters have been solving this get-found-by-clients problem in a lot of ways. They’re on Instagram posting photos and reels. They’re on Linkedin sharing client success stories and thought leadership. They guest on podcasts like this one, sharing their frameworks and processes to attract the clients they want to work with. But the problem with all of those platforms is that there are literally thousands of other copywriters doing the same thing—trying to get attention and connect with the clients they want to work with. What if you could attract clients from a search engine that’s been around for years, but it ignored by almost everyone?
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I’m chatting with Pinterest Marketing Consultant Heather Farris. Her title gives away the answer to the intro, but Heather has been helping service providers connect with their ideal clients on Pinterest for years. As you almost certainly know, Pinterest is an image based search engine with almost 500 million active monthly users. And some pretty easy-to-use tools for finding keywords so you can connect with your ideal clients. Now I’ve always thought of Pinterest as a place to find cool images, but clients? Heather set me straight and not only will you like this interview, but I’m guessing more than a few listeners will use what Heather shares to find their own clients on Pinterest.
Before we jump in with Heather…
If you’re listening to this episode when it goes live, The Copywriter Accelerator is open now for the only time this year. The Accelerator is our 8-part, 16 week program that helps you build a successful freelance business whether you’re a copywriter, a content writer, or you use your writing as a strategist, a social media specialist or something else. You’ll learn how to position your business so clients want to work with you. You’ll learn what it takes to create successful products and services that solve real client problems that client’s can’t wait to buy. You’ll learn the various ways to price what you do so you get paid for the value you create, not the time that you work. You’ll set up the right processes and learn how to manage clients. You’ll get more than 29 different ideas for ways to get yourself in front of the clients you want to work with, and you’ll take the first steps toward creating a brand that resonates with you and the people you want to work with. Many of the copywriters who have gone through The Accelerator have gone on to build six figure businesses—many have even been on this podcast… like Justin Blackman, Chanti Zak, Zafira Rajan, Kirsty Fanton… the list goes on. If you want to use the strategies and ideas that helped them in your own business, go to TheCopywriterAccelerator.com now. It’s open for three more days, then closed until next year. And who knows… maybe forever.
And now, let’s go to our interview with Heather Farris.
Heather, welcome. I’m excited to be chatting with you today. And as we usually do, let’s start off with how you got to where you are. How did you become a Pinterest ad strategist, consultant, and I guess Pinterest marketing expert?
Heather Farris: I just happened to fall into it, to be honest. I have a history and a college degree that I’m still paying for, painfully so. in accounting and management and finance. So I was living in a very, very small town of 13,000 people. When I graduated college, my husband was in the air force and I didn’t want to have to drive an hour one way—I had a family. So that was like commute time. I didn’t want to have to spend time away from them to go into Kansas city to work in an accounting firm.
I found a tiny little bookkeeping firm that was paying $12 an hour and I was making No money. And I was just looking for any way to make more money than what I was making, or at least make what I was making and have more time with my family. And I went to Pinterest one day and I searched “how to work from home”. Today, people would be searching for “side hustle” because that’s the new terminology. But that’s what I looked for. And I found this whole world. I had no idea it even existed. And I was using Pinterest every single day up to that point. And I found blogging. And then one thing led to another, and I was building funnels and starting to sell digital products and making courses. And yeah, here we are eight years later.
Rob Marsh: So I’m curious. First off, most people, when they want to figure out how to do something, they go to Google. You immediately went to Pinterest, which is maybe why you ended up where you are. But why? Absolutely. Why?
Heather Farris: Why? Yeah, because I’d been using Pinterest every day up to that point. as my main search engine. I started using it when I was 20. That’s when the platform came out. It was 2010. I had a brand new baby. And I was newly married. And I didn’t know how to do anything. I didn’t know how to decorate. I didn’t know how to cook. I didn’t know how to properly clean. These are just things that you would normally learn. And I did learn some of those things at home growing up. But when you have your own place and you’re trying to cook food for your new husband, It just – nothing felt right that I was finding on Google and everything was making me sick. So I went to Facebook and I typed in that third party Facebook status from third person. My sister-in-law texted me and she’s like, hey, you should try this platform out. It was Pinterest and it was only in beta and I waited two weeks for my invitation to come and it came and every single thing that I was finding on there was food because all the food bloggers at the time were using Pinterest heavily. And I single-handedly taught myself how to cook. I’ve cooked over 3,000 recipes, Rob, from Pinterest over the years. I have fully taught myself how to do all sorts of different cuisines and cultures and baking.
Rob Marsh: So while we’re talking about that, how many of them were your kids willing to eat? Because most parents have five recipes in rotation, right?
Heather Farris: Not very many. Yeah. Not very many. 3,000 is a lot.
Rob Marsh: 3,000 recipes over 14 years.
Heather Farris: That’s a long time. But that’s where it all started was I went there to learn how to teach myself how to cook because I was cooking literally hamburger helper and it was making me sick. So one thing led to another and it just became my main search engine. So yeah, I went there for everything.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that I see this already is a different, different way of thinking from me. So before we started recording, I told you I’m, I’m like, I have zero knowledge of Pinterest. I do have like a Pinterest account. And I think I’ve pinned three or four things to a board. My daughters love it. My daughters are on it all the time. Uh, but yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t use it, you know, much. We’re going to get into that for sure. Before we do that though, uh, I want to know about your blog. You know, as you started blogging, what were you doing? What were you writing about and did you grow it? Did it start to produce money for you? Like how did that all come together?
Heather Farris: Yeah. So I started that blog in July of 2017. Yes. I believe that’s the right timeline. And by December, I had grown it to with Pinterest traffic. I’d grown it to over 5,000 page views a month in just that very short amount of time. I had started to apply for ads and I had started to sell a digital course on budgeting because I was blogging about motherhood and budgeting and like meal planning and all of these things. It was like a lifestyle blog that I was just sharing my life with other people. It had done really well. And I’d started to monetize with some affiliate links, and I was looking for some sponsorship opportunities. When the winter came about and the new year came around, and I had an opportunity to actually just do what I was doing for my own Pinterest account for some other bloggers. And I realized very quickly I could make a lot more money and do a lot less work by just offering what I was doing as a service to other people. So I continued Doing the blog thing for a while, I continued selling digital products. I was actually approached by companies like Trello. I had featured them on my blog and they had found out that I had featured them on my blog and they reached out and did an interview with me. There was a couple of other things like that too that had popped up, but it just kept coming around that I was really good at this thing. I was really good at doing Pinterest marketing and driving traffic to websites. And I didn’t have to share my life anymore in order to still make an income. I just got in this rut where I felt like I was living my life in order to make money and I didn’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that today. I like privacy and yeah, it just, one thing led to another and people started hiring me.
Rob Marsh: It feels like a lot of people are doing that on Instagram, the same kind of thing. It’s like, what interesting thing can I do today so that I can post a photo of it in order to get attention?
Heather Farris: I just don’t want to do that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I get that.
Heather Farris: I like my private life and I want my kids to not have to live online. So when the opportunity presented itself, because I had used the platform every day up to this point for the six to seven years that it was in existence, I understood why people were using the platform and how they were using it. It enabled me very quickly to take the information from client websites and position it in a way on Pinterest that people were searching for it and really quickly get them traffic to their websites, grow their email list, sell their products, get people into their coaching funnels. Ultimately, that’s really what I’ve become known for over the years is doing Pinterest management. later on Pinterest ads. And I just have never looked back. I mean, I obviously have my Pinterest blog. I also have another travel blog that I just do for fun, but the mom blog ended up getting archived about two years ago completely. It doesn’t even exist anymore.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Before we get into Pinterest stuff, one more question. You were selling digital products as part of the blog. What were those? What were you creating and how were you selling those?
Heather Farris: My most successful digital product for the mom blog was a Trello for moms course. So I was teaching moms how to use Trello to do all of their household management. My most popular template that I had sold, and this is why Trello came to me and featured me in an article, was actually two. The one for meal planning, and then one for saving your kids artwork. And then not having to actually have all this paper laying around in your house. And they had never heard of moms using their tool before. It was just like business owners or whatever. So I was bringing like a new market to their platform and they wanted to talk about that. So that was actually really interesting. I turned ads on to that funnel, Rob, before I went on vacation to Colorado that year. And over the course of me running those ads, um, I made like six or $700 in the two weeks I was on vacation, just from sending people to, that landing page for the Trello for Moms course. So that was my first foray into Pinterest ads. But that was it. It was the Trello for Moms course.
Rob Marsh: Wow. Okay. Let’s, yeah, let’s talk Pinterest. So, uh, I have to admit, I have some hesitation even talking about Pinterest because in my small minded way of looking at this, I, you know, I have a really hard time imagining like, okay, how could a copywriter use Pinterest for their own business? I can see a lot of applications and how they can use it for their clients. And obviously, you know, copywriters who figured this stuff out can carve out a really nice niche for themselves, depending on who they’re serving. But yeah, let’s, let’s talk about what good is Pinterest for business owners? Because to me, it feels like a pinboard with a lot of artwork. And like you said, a lot of photos of food and, and, and a bunch of inspirational quotes.
Heather Farris: So I know a lot of copywriters in your audience are probably just doing copy work and they have referral sources or pipelines of leads and they don’t really have to go outside of that. Then there’s probably this other segment of your audience who probably do have their own website. They probably are talking more about copywriting in kind of a value driven way and those are the people that probably have the biggest opportunity on Pinterest. The ones that do have a small blog or even like you Rob, you have a podcast. Anyone that has a YouTube channel, anyone even creating content on Instagram or TikTok that is value-driven where they’re trying to reach their clients because this seems to be a new marketing method these days. where we showcase our expertise and then clients find that attractive and want to hire us. Those opportunities present themselves for Pinterest in a really positive way because it’s an opportunity for people who are looking for something specific like sales psychology, copywriting tips on Pinterest. And then those pieces of content have that opportunity to be surfaced in search.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So, I mean, that definitely rings a bell for me. You know, we talk about sales psychology and all kinds of persuasion techniques, that kind of a thing. Are people going on to Pinterest and typing in, you know, sales psychology or, you know, how to write an email, those kinds of searches?
Heather Farris: Yeah, they are. In fact, they’re actually looking for the value-driven content that teaches them how to do those things. And they’re also looking for templates. So a lot of people now sell copywriting templates for sales pages, and emails, and about pages, and all these things. And they’re actually looking for those items as well. So not only are they looking for the information, but they’re looking for products.
Rob Marsh: So what, let’s say I go, I could probably do this. I should be pulling up Pinterest right now and saying, you know, teach me how to write an email or something. But what should I be creating then to put on Pinterest that’s going to connect with that searcher?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so I’m going to talk to you through this through the lens of my Pinterest account because I’m a service provider too. OK, good. So being a service provider, I obviously offer the services and do the services that I talk about on my website. But I also have a YouTube channel and a blog. And I have an Instagram account where I create value-driven content there. Most of your audience can probably relate to one of those three things. what I do and what I’m doing right now. So I just had a pin go out today for a free keyword workshop. And it just landed on Pinterest this morning. It’s got very few views so far because it’s brand new. It just published, but it’s literally called the Keyword Workshop for Pinterest. That pin is linked to the landing page where someone can sign up for that free workshop. So if anyone in your audience listening has a lead magnet, for example, and they want to get people on their email list and maybe they have a free welcome email series that they give away. teaches people how to write their own welcome series, but also gives them a template to do so. I’ve actually seen quite a lot of these on Pinterest. That would be a really great Pinterest pin for them to create and direct back to the landing page where they could then capture people who are interested in writing that email series. Now, a couple of things are going to happen. That pinner who clicks on and signs up for your email list is going to go away either happy with their new template, and they now have a welcome sequence they can put in their business, or still in need because they still don’t understand the concept of how do I write this effectively? How do I plug my own products or services into this? They’re still going to have questions, a group of them are, and that’s where we can capture those people in that kind of nurture sequence behind the scenes and land them as clients or even sell additional products to them in that funnel. And that’s what I do, actually, a lot, is capture people on my email list, if I can get them on my email list. Because I’ve hired copywriters to write emails for me. They’ve done a really great job of doing so, because I’m not an expert in copywriting. Those copyrighted emails from professionals in my funnels convert people like gangbusters.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So people are, they’re searching a need and I mean, this is basically like any other search engine that we’d be doing. Yeah. It’s searching a need, getting some kind of an answer. So lead magnet that answers the question, and then obviously leading into some other kind of a funnel, small upsell, possibly course, you know, getting people onto a list where you can then sell them through email. I assume I’m understanding that correctly.
Heather Farris: You are. And then on the flip side of that, for any other free or paid content, if you have a course that you’re selling, if you have paid digital products that you’re selling, any of those templates, if you have free content in the form of YouTubes, podcasts, blog posts, all of those things can also become Pinterest pins. So if you have a blog post on sales psychology tactics for beginners, That can become a Pinterest pin. The Pinterest pin would say something to the effect of sales psychology tactics for beginners. It’s very simple. If you’re already writing on your blog, use the same kind of language on Pinterest, and then link it back to the blog post. Or if there’s a paid product, link it to that.
Rob Marsh: Okay, that makes sense. So as I think this through then for a lot of copywriters who are probably listening, most of us don’t write for other copywriters. So we want to be talking to people in our niche. And I can see this, I’m guessing, you know, coaches, course creators, there are certainly a lot of them that are going to be on Pinterest. If I’m writing for maybe plumbers, maybe there are plumbers on Pinterest. I certainly don’t want to limit and say there are no plumbers on Pinterest because that’s probably not true. But do you see niches that are definitely going to be better for Pinterest than some of these others that I could imagine might not be? Or maybe I’m just putting up a block there that really isn’t real and I should try it anyway.
Heather Farris: So the local businesses that I tend to stay away from, not that they aren’t there, it’s just I want to see people get results in a way that feels good to them and it’s quick. I don’t want people to wait years in order to see ROI. So I tend to stay away from hyperlocal businesses when I’m marketing, but if you’re If you are a copywriter for digital product sellers like myself, we are definitely on Pinterest. Yeah. We’re there marketing our own businesses, but we’re also there looking for resources to grow our businesses as well.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. So again, just sort of thinking through who’s going to have the biggest impact, you know, advertising on Pinterest or putting up content there. People who are probably in creative industries, entrepreneurial, but maybe not necessarily the come to your home and perform a service type business. Although again, I’m guessing that there are people that are there. It’s probably just a longer build.
Heather Farris: Yeah, they might be there. They very well could be there. I was doing a consult with a fellow Pinterest marketer recently, and she had recently landed a client for a garage door company out of Canada. in the Ontario region. So it was very hyper-localized to only that province in Canada, but I wouldn’t touch that myself. because I prefer digital businesses. So if your target market are digital businesses, they are there. Coaches, service providers, course creators, anyone that needs copywriting services generally in the digital business is probably there. Now, I would say it’s probably a good thing to think through who your ideal target market is. If you’re looking to write for the Jenna Kutchers of the world, they have Pinterest managers like myself. So you might be reaching their Pinterest managers and not the business owner. So be thinking about that too.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, aiming for the top is always a little bit of a gamble. Obviously it’s awesome if you can hit that home run, but you gotta work up to it.
Heather Farris: Yeah. And you would actually be surprised. I found a multi seven figure client through Pinterest. I didn’t find them. They found me and they have a huge YouTube channel. I was blown away when I logged into this discovery call for that client and they were like, yeah, I found you on Pinterest and I’m looking to run Pinterest ads and I’m like, okay, let’s do it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that can be great. So Pinterest is obviously a visual medium. Very visual. And copywriters, we can’t, you know, I mean, most of the time we spend our, you know, typing into a Google Doc. And so taking a screenshot of, you know, our work, probably not going to fly. Let’s talk through some of the visual strategies that we should be thinking about.
Heather Farris: So my visual strategy, if you go visit my Pinterest account, and we can link it in the show notes for anyone that just wants to check it out, is very much, because I also am mainly creating in a Google Doc or I’m filming YouTube videos, I try to become as visual as I can. So my way of doing that has been showcasing the templates that I’m creating. So right now, one of my most recent Pinterest pins that went live is a tablet with a screenshot of the templates that I sell for that product. I also share video clips from my YouTube channel or any video like podcasts or anything like that that I’m on over to Pinterest. And then a lot of my pins are just brand photos of myself. And I’ve actually found that to be true for a lot of service providers in the space.
Rob Marsh: And I’m looking at some of your pins right now, and they’re actually pretty copy heavy. They are. There’s a lot of words on them. Obviously, the descriptions include a lot of words. And so I’m guessing your advice would be don’t run away from having words or copy there. It’s not entirely visual.
Heather Farris: Yeah, you definitely should have words on your pins. That’s what we call a text overlay. And Pinterest, being that visual search engine that it is, actually indexes the words, the imagery on your pin, the words on your pin. the elements on your pin, and it also indexes all of the copy that you assigned to it. So your pin title, your pin description, the link, it will crawl the webpage that you link to. So all of those things are getting indexed into that file folder for SEO purposes to be served up later when someone’s searching for it. So if someone were to search for Pinterest board cover templates, that Pinterest pin that’s at the top of my feed that published probably yesterday would likely come up in the search because I’ve done my keyword research and optimization.
Rob Marsh: Let’s talk about that then, because my first inclination would be, okay, I’m going to throw a bunch of pins up on my Pinterest page and let’s see how it goes. But I wasn’t even thinking keyword strategy yet. So what do I need to be thinking through to make sure that they work?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so the long-term sustainability of Pinterest is what sets it apart from all the other platforms. So Instagram posts will last, you know, maybe a day. Facebook posts, maybe a day. Tweets, who knows. Minutes. Pinterest pins will come up for years, and the reason being is because of keywords. So Pinterest is that search engine. The first iteration of a search engine on Pinterest came about in 2011. It wasn’t even a year old when the founders figured out people were searching for stuff more than they were browsing. They eventually took away the browse functionality in the search bar and it’s only search now. And there’s a few iterations of the search engine that take place. So as you’re looking for keywords on Pinterest, you can simply go to the search bar and search for things like copywriting tips for email marketing and then see what comes up not only in the search results, but also in the autofill of the search bar and then use those words on your pins.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So, and what if, I mean, obviously, you know, using other people’s words or whatever, you know, gets you that start. How do I differentiate?
Heather Farris: So you differentiate with the presentation. Being visual, you’re going to have your own Pinterest pins and the way that you’re presenting your content is going to look different than everyone else. You don’t want to look the same as everyone else. So if you were to search copywriting tips for email marketing, You don’t want to make your pins look exactly like everyone else’s, but you can use the same word. You can use the same phrase. And I would actually encourage you to do that.
Rob Marsh: OK. And then what else should we be looking for as far as keywords? If I’m doing an SEO plan for my website, am I thinking about the same kinds of keywords for that as well? Or is it more product-related or service-related, the traffic I’m driving?
Heather Farris: Yeah. Definitely full funnel marketing platform. So people are looking for things before they even know what they want. They’re in that awareness phase. They’re in the consideration phase as they move through and make decisions and ultimately leading them down to that purchase phase. So, and Pinterest themselves builds them as full funnel. So when you’re thinking about your keyword strategy, you should definitely use both informational and commercial keywords. If it’s a free piece of content, but within the free piece of content, like on a blog post or whatever, if you have a product in there that you want to sell, you can, in that instance, I would encourage you to use both informational and commercial. Now, to your question and to your point, you’re creating a keyword plan for your website. Is it similar on Pinterest? Because pinners have been using this platform the same way they use Google. In a lot of cases, the same keywords will be in both places. So if you have that keyword of like, you know, copywriting tips for email marketing on your blog, search for that exact keyword for the blog post or the landing page in the search bar on Pinterest and just validate that it exists. They’re not always there, but in a lot of cases they are. And to further your point, If any of you are listening right now, you’ve probably gone to Google recently and you’ve seen a lot of search results for Quora and Reddit, but you’ll also see search results for Pinterest pins that are in the Google search. If you are using your Google keywords as supplementary keywords on Pinterest, you do also have a chance to show up on Google for your Pinterest pins and your Pinterest boards.
Rob Marsh: Okay. That makes sense. I just did, you know, a quick search for, you know, as you’re saying this stuff out, you know, copywriting tips for email. And I’m starting to see some copywriters who have actually been through some of our programs, which is gratifying to see. They’re way ahead of me on some of this stuff. So good job to them. But I’m also, you know, I look at it and say, oh, wow, there’s a lot of really good design here. And I’m not a designer. To really make this work, should I be working with the designer or can I get away with templates from Canva? Am I going to look like everybody else if I do that? What’s the best approach as far as design goes?
Heather Farris: The best approach for me is just to make sure you’re following best practices. So I’m going to tell you what they are, and then you can take this and apply it to either custom templates that you hire someone to make or Canva templates. I will say I wouldn’t use the Canva templates that are just in the Pinterest library on Canva because everyone is using those and you don’t want to look exactly the same. So if you are going to use them, I would edit them enough to where you look like an individual.
Rob Marsh: Not just change the colors, but really change them.
Heather Farris: Change some of the design elements. So I have this methodology for creating a cohesive Pinterest design for your profile. And my tips are always following best practices for Pinterest. So best practice number one is to have a text overlay, especially in this market for service providers like your copywriters. They’re not selling fashion, so we can’t just get away with no text on our images because people aren’t going to know what we’re selling, you know, for copy. So always use a text overlay and in your text overlay, you want to use your main keyword. So looking at my account right now, I have a pin that says how to sell digital products in your business. My main keyword is how to sell digital products. So within your text overlay, No matter what template you decide to go with, always leave space for that text overlay for that main keyword. Best practice number two is to limit the number of colors that you use in your overall design. So three to five max. Don’t go crazy. Number three, don’t use a lot of script font because people are mainly on mobile except for your copywriters. Their audiences are probably primarily like mine going to be on desktop. But even then, the pins might be slightly bigger, but they’re still small images, and you don’t want to use script font that’s really hard to read. Stick to, you know, if you go look at my account, I definitely stick to best practices, but don’t write paragraphs and paragraphs of text on your images. One of my Instagram images recently imported to Pinterest, and it’s on there right now. And there’s a ton of text. It’s very small, hard to read. Don’t do that on your standard Pinterest pins. And then the last best practice is to use tall imagery. So 1,000 by 1,500 is the sizing. If you stick to those things, no matter whether you have your brand designer create custom Pinterest templates for you, or you use something out of Canva, or you go to Etsy or Creative Market, you’re going to find something that works.
Rob Marsh: OK, so that’s a shortcut. And then, of course, if I can design, you know, I should feel free to decide it to look like my own brand standards, you know, so it looks like me.
Heather Farris: And you want people to leave Pinterest and land on your website and they don’t feel like they’ve really left the platform. It looks the same. So the same colors, the same fonts, the same you know, little elements, if you have custom illustrations as, you know, supporting elements that you use in your brand kits, anything like that, your logos, you want to use all of those things within your design, within your Pinterest banner, on your profile. Use a picture of yourself, you know, unless you’re not a personal brand. then maybe use your logo as your Pinterest profile photo. But when people see you on Pinterest and they land on your website, you want them to feel like they’re actually just on an extension of Pinterest.
Rob Marsh: So again, I want to try this out. I want to play around with it. And from what we’ve been talking about, it sounds like best practice is you go to some kind of a free lead magnet. You know, other ways of promoting would be going to a low ticket or even a high ticket purchase. Do you see much success with that or do you really have to get them into a funnel as far as buyer behavior goes?
Heather Farris: I personally, my preference is to get them into my email list. That’s my number one goal because I know I can sell there. So if you know you can sell on a sales page, if you’ve sold organically via a sales page to high ticket, If you have a call funnel that you can get people into, wherever you sell the best, I want you to test out sending traffic to those places. Now just understand that historically Pinterest pinners are gathering information, and the bicycle does take a while. The average bicycle is about 18 days. And that’s generally for physical products. That’s not even for like services and things that might be $2,000, $3,000 or more. So just understand that the bicycle might be that they’re collecting information. You know, pinners are hoarders in Pinterest pins. They love to hoard Pinterest pins and they’re looking for information to make decisions. If you can link them to your email list in order to further nurture them, if you can link them to your blog post or your YouTube videos or your podcast episodes, do those things because any opportunity that you have to build trust with them is going to shorten the buy cycle.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. So we’ve talked about best practices. What are the mistakes that we need to really look out for? Obviously the opposite of the best practices, but yeah, where are the pitfalls?
Heather Farris: Some common mistakes that I see creators on Pinterest making is just repurposing without any regard to what they’re repurposing. So a lot of people will just put up their Instagram reels that are more entertainment, and they don’t actually bring any value to Pinterest pinners. Now, Pinterest pinners are here to find inspiration, to do, buy, and try. They are just like search engine users where they have a problem and they’re going and searching for something. So if you are creating an Instagram reel, that’s a day in your life as a copywriter. Pinterest painters don’t care about you. They care about themselves. So if you’re going to repurpose content to Pinterest from social media, you want to repurpose that content that’s value driven. So take taking that same style of video that you made with that music and overlaying, you know, for copywriting tips or for copywriting mistakes. or how to write a sales page tips. Those kinds of things will do better than just your repurposed entertainment style reels. That’s mistake number one. Mistake number two I see often is obviously using no keywords at all or only focusing on a hashtag strategy. We don’t use hashtags on Pinterest. They are there. They are clickable, but they only exist because of shuffles. So when you’re thinking about repurposing content from Instagram to Pinterest, remove the hashtags and write pin copy. Write about the thing that you’re sharing. If you are creating Pinterest pins in Canva to link to your website, opt to use the keywords that you want to rank for versus the hashtags.
Rob Marsh: Anything else, any other big mistakes?
Heather Farris: Yeah, some other mistakes. So not necessarily mistake, but it’s definitely like you’re going to miss out is not using any video ever.
Rob Marsh: So Pinterest is… That was going to be my next question is video versus images because video is big everywhere. I mean, even Instagram’s moved away from images and is now mostly video. TikTok’s all video. Even LinkedIn is seems to be… Going video. Yeah, video. So how should we be thinking about that?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so be using some video over there. Again, I kind of already harped on using value-driven content and video. If you can do that, that’s great. You can also, any of the carousels that you might be creating on Pinterest, if you’re creating those in Canva, you can download that as a video instead of a carousel and actually put that on Pinterest as a video too. That actually works really well for clients. So that’s kind of like not a mistake, but like you might be missing out on potential reach. A lot of people don’t understand the algorithm from the standpoint of search, but they understand algorithms from the standpoint of engagement. But if you can do that search part of the algorithm over time, you’re going to build that engagement side of the algorithm as well, that social side. So be thinking about how you can generate saves. And don’t just be thinking about impressions. One of those mistakes I see people making a lot is only focusing on their reach, where they’re not actually focusing on the downstream things that make a difference in reach. And those are things like saves and outbound clicks.
Rob Marsh: So yeah, let’s talk a little bit more about that because if I’m thinking, okay, I want to get saves. Obviously, if I, you know, I can follow the best practices or whatever, but is there something else, you know, can you basically say, Hey, save this for later? Or, you know, are there other things that you do to generate those saves?
Heather Farris: It’s generally the type of content that you’re creating. So if you are focusing on value type content, like what I do as a service provider, you’re going to generate saves naturally because people are going to want to come back and reference it. One thing that works really well for saves for my clients and students is creating infographic style Pinterest pins, but not the size. of infographic, not like that 2000 by 3000 or whatever size, that really crazy tall one. Yeah. Not those, but like 1000 by 1500 style infographic pins where you’re laying out steps or you’re showcasing, you know, your knowledge for something. Those actually generate a lot of saves and then videos.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. Okay. I’m trying to process all of it as I grab my brain around this thinking, okay, you know, how can I do it? How long, you know, let’s say I start today, I start throwing up pins. Well, maybe the first question is how many times should I be pinning a day or a week in order to start the process? And then how long until this really starts to pay off generating traffic, not just to my site, but maybe I’m getting attention on my pins and starting to see views or saves. It’s probably not a three-day process. It’s not a miracle cure.
Heather Farris: No, it’s not. It’s a search engine. So much like your Google SEO is going to take a while, Pinterest is also going to take a while. I tell people six to 12 months on average of putting your content on Pinterest. I like to educate people and equip them with a growth mindset of we’re going to park our content on Pinterest, and we are going to build sustainability over time. So we’re not looking for Pinterest to immediately drive six figures to our business. Pinterest is probably going to start by generating 50 to 70 page views a month, and then it’s going to grow over time. But when we are looking at a social media strategy and we’re comparing it to a search-based strategy, the difference in the volume in page views and eyeballs on your website is greatly different for Pinterest. So it’s definitely one of those benefits. So let’s go to the top of what I think should be the first question, is how many times a day should you I think it depends on how much content you have in your business. And content can be anything from sales pages, products, to actual content like these podcast episodes. If you have a huge library like you do, Rob, or like I do, you could probably afford to pin one to three times a day. And you don’t have to do that in the moment. You can be planning all of this behind the scenes. It’s not one of those things where you have to have your makeup on, Rob, and your hair combed to do an Instagram reel, right?
Rob Marsh: Which is good. It doesn’t happen very often.
Heather Farris: Right. Neither, not me either. So it’s definitely a behind the scenes platform. So you can do a lot of planning. You can do a lot of batching and scheduling in advance to make those one to three pins a day happen. If you don’t have a lot, if you maybe just have service pages and you want to drive traffic to your website to land some clients or get people into call funnels, you could probably withstand doing just a couple of pins a week. Just know that the lower amount of output you have, the slower the slog is going to be. And I love full transparency. So I just I want to give your audience that information. Now, the timeline. I tell people six to 12 months on average before you’re really going to see considerable results from this platform, and that is really dependent upon your goal. I think a lot of people in your audience are probably conversion copywriters, so they know how to write copy that actually converts. they may be lacking in the design part of that process because maybe they’re not designers, they’re the copywriter. So making sure that your design and your copy are working together on your website to convert is going to be important. And then presenting your Pinterest pins in a way that’s, you know, captures the attention. So just get after it and just have that mindset of This is just another platform for me to build on. I don’t have to be present in order to put content on the platform. I’m just going to park it there. And when people find it, they’ll find me.
Rob Marsh: That makes sense. One thing that strikes me as being very different from, say, Twitter is, you know, in Twitter, you repost a lot of content because it only lives for a couple of minutes at best. And then if it doesn’t pop back up, it never pops back up again. Right. So we’re always scheduling the same content to go up. Probably don’t have to do that with Pinterest the way that that works. Or it seems like, hey, if I’m trying to write copy for coaches, reposting the same pin over and over isn’t actually going to do a lot of good.
Heather Farris: No, in fact, what I would encourage you to do is create 20 pins for the same piece of content and schedule those out throughout the year. So having a wider, having more buckets, having more nets and spreading it out wider is going to do more of a service. So I don’t create content for, I don’t create a Pinterest pin for a piece of content once and I’m done. I will come back to that content, especially my big Converters. So I have a few blogs on my website and they have YouTube videos embedded in them and they have products embedded in them. These are pillar pieces of content for me and they are huge conversions. They drive a lot of conversions in my business. I create pins for those every single month.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. And so you’re just saying the same thing, really, but in a different way. You’re just using a different hook or different images, a different combination of things. Yeah. Again, that makes sense. So before we turn to the ad side of all of this, how about tools for making this easier on us? You know, again, I’m looking at my own skill set and I’m thinking, okay, How would I create 20 pins using my preferred tool, which is Adobe Illustrator, which would be a nightmare or if not a nightmare gives me a lot of control, but would probably take me three days to create, you know, 20 very different pins. So let’s talk about like design tools, posting tools, all of the stuff to make this easier. So that like, like you’re doing, you’re basically automating it.
Heather Farris: Yeah, so my preferred tool in my design work life is Canva. And I think that’s probably true for a lot of business owners. So you actually can convert your Illustrator, your PSD files into Canva templates with PSD or with PDFs. So you can import a PDF into Canva, and it will come in with all the layers. And you can manipulate those. So if you have something you like in Illustrator you want to bring over to Canva, you can do that. You can also do it in reverse. Canva is going to be the easiest way for the majority of people to design quickly. I actually would suggest having a set of templates between 15 and 20 different you know, very different templates that you can very quickly write some copy for and then plug in images. So when I make pins for my all my new content, so I publish a blog today, I make three pins for that right away and schedule those three pins to Pinterest. So they’re going out over the next few weeks. And then I’m going to put that URL back into my queue to make pins for again. So you can make things in bulk. And if you have templates to work from, you can very quickly replicate. You could use the same exact template with the same copy and just change the image or change the color slightly. And that’s a new image for Pinterest. So that’s really the only tool I would suggest people really start with is a design tool of their choice. You don’t need to pay for a scheduler right away because Pinterest has a native scheduler built in. And you can schedule up to 30 days in advance with it. and you can schedule images and videos.
Rob Marsh: When would you want to use a paid scheduler? Is there a reason that a business owner would want to shift away from the free tool?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so in a lot of cases, shifting away from the free version to the paid version is when you want to schedule more than 30 days in advance. you have more of a need to bulk schedule a lot of content. I do this for all my clients. I actually am completely done with all September content. It’s only the 13th of August. And we’re already moving into scheduling all that content. But I can’t do that on the native platform because I can only schedule to September 13th if I were to do it today. So that’s why we would use a scheduling tool instead.
Rob Marsh: Okay. That makes sense. Let’s talk about ads and the difference between the organic things that we’ve been talking about and ads. What’s, you know, is it a different approach or is it simply you’re paying for exposure?
Heather Farris: It is a different approach. The number one way I would suggest your audience to use ads is to drive traffic to their funnels. So either getting sales into their low ticket funnels, driving people into a call funnel or getting people onto your email list. That’s what I’m doing right now, actually myself, and I’m getting leads to my email list at about $1.50 for a lead.
Rob Marsh: That’s not a bad price. Yeah. Compared to what people are paying on Facebook and Google for the same thing. Yeah. So as far as, is there like any difference in images or is it you’re basically doing the same kind of content, but you’re really just using a paid platform?
Heather Farris: Yeah, very similar images. In fact, one of my ads that’s running right now shows the digital download that someone’s going to get instead of a stock photo or like a photo of myself, a brand photo. So in that way, that’s really the only difference in what I’m doing for the images. You could also do the same thing that you do for your sales pages, where you have mock-ups of what’s included. Using those mock-ups on the Pinterest pins for ads are actually really effective. So it helps people to visualize that this is going to be something like a course or whatever. If you’re doing webinar funnels or workshop funnels, or you’re promoting to those, That might be you might need to use more brand photos of yourself unless you just have a mock up of the workshop in that case. Webinar funnels I’ve done in the past for clients. I’ve had a few celebrity clients we’ve done webinar funnels for and we used their brand photos now that I’m thinking about it and just with text overlay. So we basically took their Instagram and meta ads and we made them tall, 1000 by 1500 with the text overlay and the call to action for like free webinar. And then we directed it straight to that landing page.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Again, makes a lot of sense. Let’s say that I’ve been listening to the conversation here and thinking, all right, I definitely want to do Pinterest, organic, maybe ads, but I don’t want to do it myself. I want to work with a consultant like you. Talk me through the process, the price ranges that people can be expecting, the kinds of things that you help people do as a consultant.
Heather Farris: Yeah, so price ranges are going to vary depending on where you go. If you go to Upwork, you’re likely to find people from anywhere from $15 an hour overseas to $35 to $50 an hour locally in the US. I guess it depends on where the majority of your audience lies. I would, if I were you, I would be looking for people who specialize in Pinterest and that aren’t necessarily doing Pinterest because they also do social media. So look for a specialist. Because Pinterest definitely is not a social media platform. So social media strategists, oftentimes, unless they went through some sort of Pinterest education, are not quite equipped with a full tool set for Pinterest. So just be aware of that. Now, pricing as far as retainer packages, it could vary anywhere from I’ve seen some people offering Pinterest services for $500 a month. My rates are on my website. Right now, I charge $1,000 for organic, $1,000 USD for organic, and I charge $1,500 for ads. I also have a package together for the two for $1,800 USD. I’m very transparent in my pricing. I don’t want people to feel like they have to get on a call in order to work with me and find out what that pricing is. And then there are agencies that charge $3,000, $4,000 for the same thing. So I would do some price shopping.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. Again, another opportunity that copywriters may be thinking, well, uh, in addition to, you know, writing blog posts for my clients or helping them get social media, maybe there’s an opportunity to help them with face or with Pinterest ads, Pinterest content to drive additional traffic. Um, you know how, I mean, you do this, you know, if I wanted to sort of become that consultant or, you know, offer that, how long do you think it would take me to learn these skills and to get really good at it?
Heather Farris: Probably to learn the skills three or four months. I have a program that teaches people how to use Pinterest. And in that container, I also have courses on ads and design for Pinterest. So I think it just depends on the readiness of your clients that you can use as use cases, or if you have your own website and you can test these skills out for yourself. You want to do the thing in order to really refine it, like writing copy. in order to land our copywriting clients, and I say our, and I don’t mean me, in order to land those clients, you obviously have to write copy. So do the skill, learn the skill, implement the skill, probably three or four months to learn the skill. Probably over the course of a year, you could really have it down.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. How is AI changing this whole landscape and what are the tools emerging that we could be trying out for this?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so I actually have an AI chatbot that I have in my membership. I also sell it in my Shopify store that I’ve built for Pinterest. So the guardrails for the AI tool are for Pinterest specifically. So it will create you know, pin titles and pin descriptions and board titles. And it’ll give you like a general of like what you should do for Pinterest strategy and all those things. So there are chatbots like those out there. But AI, generally speaking, ChatGPT and Canva, if you see any content on that, they don’t work together very well at all. It’s clunky. You can’t use your own custom templates. Stay away from it. If you’re using AI for Pinterest, I wouldn’t necessarily use it for creating images. I would more so use it for writing copy and then editing, but you’re copywriters. You’re already going to know how to write copy without having to use the tools. In this instance, I don’t use AI for much unless it’s for copy in an industry that I’m trying to better understand.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. It feels pretty easy when you talk about it.
Heather Farris: It’s easy, it’s just there’s a lot of steps.
Rob Marsh: Yes, right. So what are some of the craziest things you’ve seen happen on Pinterest that have worked for clients or for driving traffic?
Heather Farris: I once had a client, this is, you said crazy, so I’m going to give you a crazy example. I once had a client I was selling organizing products for. They’re like an organizing company and they sell really pretty organizing stuff. I spent $2,500 in ads and we made $95,000 in a month, which was insane.
Rob Marsh: Wow. And those are physical products, but- Physical products.
Heather Farris: Average order value is $175. It just went viral and it went insane. Things that I’ve seen just work really well, if done right, is recouping some of the content you’re already creating for other platforms, but then just making sure that you’re positioning from Pinterest pinner usage. So instead of making your smoothie and dancing, let’s create a reel that’s very similar, that gives tips and value and putting that on Pinterest and linking it to your website. Pinterest can be a really great traffic driver if done correctly.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I’m a believer. You’ve convinced me. And like I said, I want to, I mean, you know how it is as a business owner, there’s so many levers to pull and things to do, but it feels like compared to Facebook or Instagram, there’s a lot of more open ocean here, open field, you know, because the there’s fewer people using it and there’s fewer people doing it. So a real opportunity, especially if you can talk to a particular niche and really stand out as being the one copywriter, the one content writer who’s really targeting that particular user on this platform. Again, a really great way to stand out.
Heather Farris: Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of opportunity. And again, just going into a platform like this with that mindset of I don’t have to be made up. In fact, Rob, the majority of my client work is done watching a movie or listening to an audio book. You have a lot of books behind you. I listen to a lot of audio books and podcasts. And it’s just done behind the scenes. I don’t have to have. you know, nice clothes and have my hair combed in order to do my Pinterest marketing. I can do it all behind the scenes. No one ever has to see me. And that’s what I love about it is I can just go about parking all my content, all my clients’ content on this platform, and I can just do it while watching my favorite show or listening to my favorite podcast.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like that. We could all use more time watching our favorite shows, knocking off the latest series or whatever. Um, you’re going to actually come into the underground and teach a class for us, uh, next month, uh, when this goes live, it’ll be about four weeks away. Tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be sharing. I think it’s Pinterest 101, you know, this basic stuff.
Heather Farris: I am. Yes, exactly that. So Pinterest 101, and I’m going to position it from the point of a copywriter. So I’m actually going to do a bunch of research on the platform and finding copywriters, finding examples of exactly how you can do this. creating slides that kind of speak to that and show you exactly what you’re going to do. So I’m going to teach you how to find your keywords, how to use them. I’m going to teach you how to build your profile, where to use all the keywords on your profile. Then I’m going to teach you the basics of creating Pinterest pins and creating catchy, like click worthy Pinterest pins. So those are what the underground can expect to learn and walk away from. And by the end, they’re going to have an action plan. And they’ll be able to reach out to me on Instagram and share their progress or ask questions.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Amazing. Like I said, I’m excited for this because I want to try it out. I want to see if I’m hoping for slightly better than six to 12 month run rate on this, but we’ll see how it goes. We definitely have a lot of content that could be turning into pins and using it more effectively. So Heather, where should people go if they want to learn more about you or from you or jump on your list?
Heather Farris: Yeah, so just HeatherFerris.com. It’s F-A-R-R-I-S. No E. It’s not Ferris Bueller, okay? HeatherFerris.com. Everything is there, from my low-ticket membership that you can do all of this learning on your own, or you can jump on my email list.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, this is great. And like I said, I’m excited for the upcoming workshop. I’m going to try to implement some of this stuff and see what happens. And yeah, we’ll go from there. But thanks so much for joining us.
Heather Farris: Thank you for having me. And Rob, when you’re done setting all this stuff up, let me know when it’s done, and I’ll take a look for you.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. I appreciate that. And maybe you can point out what I’m doing wrong when we get to that workshop. Sure. We do it a lot better. That’ll be great. Thanks, Heather. Thanks to Heather for going so deep on the ins and outs of marketing on Pinterest.
Usually I have something to add or a few additional thoughts, but I have to admit, I don’t know enough about Pinterest marketing to add very much here. Obviously, general marketing principles apply. You can’t just post images or video on Pinterest and clients are going to flock to your business. You still need to fix real problems for your clients. You still need to know your niche and exactly whom you serve. And you need to be able to talk to those potential clients about the problem that you solve for them. All of that stuff comes first.
Once you have that figured out, you’ll have a lot more success on Pinterest or whatever other platform that you show up on. And of course, that is the stuff we figure out in The Copywriter Accelerator program. So if you don’t already know that about your business, you don’t know who you serve, you don’t have a signature service or a product that appeals to them, you don’t talk about the problem that you solve for them, the value that you create, you’ve got your pricing wrong, If you don’t have that, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com now, and let’s get that straightened out. It’s open until Friday of the week that this episode goes live. So if you’re listening to it on August 20th, 21st, 22nd, right in there, you can still get in. So jump in there at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Thanks again to Heather for, again, going so deep on how to market a business on Pinterest. I’m going to try out a bunch of what Heather shared. So if you’re on Pinterest, search The Copywriter Club and follow us there. You should see at least a couple of posts that I’ve started working on since Heather and I recorded this a few days ago. And over the next few weeks, you’re going to see us trying it out and maybe find the inspiration to try Pinterest for your own business. You can connect with Heather at heatherferris.com. That’s Ferris with an A, not an E. And since this episode is all about Pinterest, you should definitely follow her there and see how she applies what she was talking about today to her own business.
That’s the end of this episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please visit Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the podcast to leave your review. Of course, we’re on Spotify, we’re on your favorite podcast app, wherever. Let us know what you think.
And better still, copy a link to this episode and share it with another copywriter or content writer who you know might be able to learn something from it. I promise they’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness in sharing the episode.
9 out of 10 copywriters never hit the six figure mark. That is, they are stuck earning less than $100,000 a year. Why? Because, while they’re good writers, they don’t have the business skills to run and grow a successful business. For the 408th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we wanted to share some of the amazing things copywriters are doing in their businesses with the help of The Copywriter Accelerator. This proven, 8-part program has helped hundreds of copywriters learn the business skills they need to build the business they want. We’ve chosen three copywriters to share their biggest takeaways. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Copywriter Accelerator
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: We’ve been teasing it on the podcast and in our emails for the last month or so—so it’s probably time to make it official, The Copywriter Accelerator is open for new members right now. If you are new here or you don’t know what The Accelerator is, stick around for a minute so you at least have the information you need to decide if this is the right program for you.
If you already know about the program and want to jump in this year, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com now to get all the details.
For those who don’t know, The Copywriter Accelerator is not a course or a membership. It’s our proven, 8 part, cohort based program that ensures you have all the business skills you need to succeed as the owner of a copywriting business.
You’re almost certainly already a good writer… but that’s not enough to succeed. If clients can’t find you, if you don’t know how to talk about what you do so you attract them to you, if you don’t have the systems in place to make sure you get the work done for them, it’s pretty easy to fail.
And that might be the reason that 9 out of 10 copywriters and content writers never grow their business to the six-figure mark. Let me repeat that, 90% of copywriters never earn $100,000 from their business because they don’t have the business know-how it requires.
They’re great writers, but not yet great business owners and that’s why we created the Accelerator program. It’s designed to help you build the skills to ensure your success.
More than 350 copywriters have gone through the program and used the modules to update and improve their businesses. And if you’re struggling to grow your business, it might be time to visit thecopywriteraccelerator.com to learn more about this program.
Earlier today I was scanning through a few of the past episodes with copywriters like Justin Blackman, Chanti Zak, Zafira Rajan, Kirsty Fanton and a bunch of others looking for some of the things they said about the accelerator program. I wanted to share their successes…
I was going to clip a bunch of these interviews together so you could get a sense of what is included in The Accelerator, but then I remembered an interview we did a while ago with several former members of The Accelerator sharing what they got from the program. So without further ado… let’s roll the tape…
Kira Hug: We’ll let these copywriters introduce themselves in a moment, but first, let me just say, if you’re tempted to skip this episode, because you’re not interested in this program, it could be worth giving it a quick listen because many of the takeaways they share about the changes they’ve made to their businesses apply to copywriting businesses at every single stage. And these writers are doing some pretty cool things in their businesses. You might be inspired by what they’ve done, and maybe even borrow an idea or two for your own business.
Rob Marsh: At this point in the program, we would usually say something like this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator. And then we would tell you all of the reasons why you should consider joining. We’re not going to do that today. Other than to say that after listening to this episode, take a moment to visit thecopywriteraccelerator.com and see what this program is all about. And see for yourself whether or not it’s something that you should consider for your business this year.
Kira Hug: So, let’s jump in with our guests. We are so excited today to be here with some of our Accelerator members, members who are currently in the program, which we’re about to wrap up this month. And so before we dive into this conversation and ask you all a bunch of questions, can you take a minute to introduce yourself, all three of you? Just share name, where you’re located, your copywriting specialty, and then bonus points if you want to share a favorite movie or book, optional. Tori, why don’t you kick this off?
Tori Autumn: Hi, my name is Tori Autumn. I live in Washington DC and I focus on launch copy and website copy for course creators and coaches. My favorite book, I’m actually getting into that book the Four Thousand Weeks right now. It’s scary to think of life like that, but it’s also great to think of my time management.
Kira Hug: Yeah. Such a great book. I feel like when I hear Four Thousand Weeks, it makes me think that we have more time than I thought, but I’m like, wow, we have Four Thousand Weeks. This is great. So much time available.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Until you do the math, Kira, and figure out that you’ve lived 2000 of them and…
Kira Hug: Rob, I didn’t do the math. I didn’t do the math. Thank you. Thank you for that.
Rob Marsh: You’re welcome.
Kira Hug: All right. Thanks Tori. And Demetrius, can you introduce yourself?
Demetrius Williams: Yeah. So I’m Demetrius I’m from London. I specialize in website and blog copy for retail tech businesses. And I read so much. But the last book I just read was Atomic Habits. I literally read that in less than a day.
Kira Hug: Oh wow.
Demetrius Williams: And I’ve basically used it to tone down my procrastination. I have a shun for procrastination sometimes. So habit stacking to get rid of the bad habits has been a really good thing for me in the last couple of weeks.
Kira Hug: All right. Thanks Demetrius. Peta, what about you?
Peta O’Brien-Day: So, I’m Peta O’Brien-Day and I’m from New Bri, which is a little bit west of Demetrius in the UK. I focus on helping entrepreneurs write nurturing copy for their businesses and help them build authentic relationships with their customers in the health and lifestyle space. In terms of books, I’ve got a tiny person at home, so I haven’t read a lot in a while. But I have just finished Caitlin Moran’s More Than a Woman, which is incredible. She’s fabulous. She’s so funny. And she writes about politics and social justice and feminism and all kinds of things. That book is about all the different things that we have to think about as women in the 21st century and how much we have going on and what we can maybe do to make it a bit easier.
Kira Hug: All right. Well, I am adding that to my list for sure, Peta. I need that one.
Peta O’Brien-Day: You would definitely love her. She is fabulous.
Kira Hug: All right. And so let’s just kick off this conversation. As I said, you’re already in The Accelerator program. Let’s go back in time to when you initially joined around four months ago. I’m just curious to hear why you joined. Where was your business at the time when you joined?
Demetrius Williams: I’ll go first. I think I just started, I think I was a year into freelance copywriting and I just got to a ceiling basically. And I just didn’t know where to go next to level up in terms of my processes and how to get more clients. And I’ve been listening to the podcast for about a year and I’d always wanted to join The Accelerator, but I think I missed the last one. So I had to wait for the next one. Joining The Accelerator, it basically challenged me in how I’ve worked on my processes. And it’s allowed me to get a bit further than some of my other freelance friends who have taken like three to five years to get where I want to get. So I basically joined, so I wanted to, instead of get five years to better my business, I’m going to get it down to at least a year.
Rob Marsh: That’s awesome. How about you, Peta?
Peta O’Brien-Day: When I heard about The Accelerator, I’d started out in Upwork with my $35 blog post and I’d managed to work my way up to having some own clients that I’d cold pitched. But it was in drips and drabs and same as similar Demetrius I want to fast track things. But I didn’t have a huge amount of time. I had a little girl at home, I still do and had only about 15 hours a week to do the training or any courses I wanted to do and my actual client work. So I wanted to find something that was accessible, that was easy to digest, but that gave me massive amounts of value. I knew that in January I was going to have a lot more time because my little girl was going to nursery and I wanted my business to have all the background stuff ready to go, the processes, the niche, the branding, everything ready to hit the ground running in January and really make things explode.
Tori Autumn: Well, I’m a little bit shocked that you’re making me think back in 2021, but no. I started because I very much felt like an order taker. When I read about the sales emails and sales page for The Accelerator, it really put words to what I was currently going through. Just feeling like I had to settle for low budget copywriting projects. And it was mainly because I felt like I needed to prove myself in the copyright industry with lots of different projects and also not really knowing what to charge. So my biggest goal was knowing how to describe myself as a copywriter, what type of niche I want to go and also blended with the other part of my business, which is self love coaching. So that also involved the brand messaging and how to price my package and how to work through my own processes.
Rob Marsh: As I listen to you guys talk about it, there’s a couple of themes already that seem to be coming out of the reasons why you joined. One of them, Tori and Peta, you both mentioned low budget projects and trying to get away from those. Could you talk a little bit about what you’ve learned in The Accelerator? Has it helped you think about your pricing and either raise it or help you make plans to increase your prices so that you’re not stuck with those $35 blog posts, the low budget projects?
Peta O’Brien-Day: Sure. So much. Obviously there’s a modern on pricing. And so you get the chance to think about the value of what you are bringing and how you can organize your packages and your services to make it to show the value that you’re bringing. But the biggest thing to me was the mindset model on that and the encouragement and the push to realize that your business is actually a business and that you are not just a little freelancer surfing the job boards, writing a few words and sending them to people. You are a real business and you are a real business owner and you have skills and talents, and the work that you send your clients and the partnership that you have with them has massive value. And that gave me a lot of confidence to put my neck out and ask for more money, essentially.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. How about you, Tori? How has it made you rethink your prices?
Tori Autumn: Yeah. So similar to Peta, I really struggle with the pricing because of the mindset. And so the mindset module was helpful, but I also realized how much I wasn’t giving myself permission to charge what I wanted to charge. I thought that if I wanted to charge $5,000 for a launch copy, I have to have certain type of clients or a certain amount of years under my belt. But with the price and module, those things didn’t matter. It’s about finding the right clients and also not having to explain myself in what I do so much. I realize right away with my pricing, oh, if I’m having to prove that copywriting is great for your business, you’re probably not the right client. And you’re probably not going to see the value of charging these prices. So I think that that really was a big paradigm shift for me, knowing that you can charge whatever you want and those clients can find you and not bat eye at your prices.
Kira Hug: And maybe we can make this actionable for anyone listening too, because we’re talking about mindset and mindset can feel so big. And so is there one step or anything that you would share with anyone listening who’s struggling and does feel like that struggling freelancer and does not feel even close to that business owner? One thing they could do today or this week?
Peta O’Brien-Day: I think for me, it would be, when we are doing copywriting for clients, we are told to lead with the benefit. But I think we rarely do that when we are trying to get clients ourselves. And I think that’s one of the things that helped me at the beginning, was to go through just on a piece of paper by myself, the benefit that I was bringing to my clients before I pitched them. And then I was able to go to them and say, “No. These are the deliverables and this is how much I want you to pay me, but this is the benefit that you are going to get out of working with me as a partner.”
Kira Hug: What about you, Demetrius, is there anything that you would recommend to shift that mindset?
Demetrius Williams: Again, I think I’d mirror what says as well because I would also explain the benefits, but also explain the value as well in relation to the client specifically, the value and the benefit.
Rob Marsh: So, another theme that I picked up on as you guys were talking about the reasons why you wanted to join The Accelerator was just the idea of speeding up your progress. Demetrius, I think you specifically said you’re in a place in your business where other people are just arriving at after three to five years and you’re short cutting the process. Peta, you said something similar. Talk a little bit about that too. What specifically have you done that has helped you shortcut all of that time out of creating a business that’s working for you?
Demetrius Williams: I think for me it was honing in on my niche. Prior to The Accelerator, I was just doing web copy, blog copy, emails, product descriptions. This broad spectrum of copywriting. But when I focused on my niche, which is for retail tech clients and using my skillsets in digital marketing specifically SEO, it really helped me honing onto the broad spectrum of clients that I could get to help me increase my price and also knockling down on certain processes as well. So instead of just cold-calling blanket emails to a list of clients, I’ve now put some structure in how I cold-call to clients.
So, I’ve got quite a big database of clients that I want to pitch. And it’s just taking the time to go through some of these clients in a bit more detail, looking at their websites, looking at what they need, how much value I can bring to them and crafting tailored emails to each of these clients to call pitch. And it’s really helped me in getting leads. So just before Christmas, every day for about a week and a half, I sent about 10 to 20 emails from my list. And I had a sequence as well of about three to five emails within the sequence. And I managed to get about four calls and I got four leads and I managed a bag two clients as well. Those were my first high paying clients as well.
Rob Marsh: Well done. Nicely. Yeah. Good progress. How about you, Peta? What have you been able to cut out of that development process?
Peta O’Brien-Day: So, I think partly for me it was the permission to spend time on my business. So life’s busy and just with being a copywriter, the focus is often on doing client work and just keeping things ticking over. But having signed up to The Accelerator, it gave me permission and a little bit of a push to spend time and bring power on my business to carve out a couple of hours a week because you’ve made the investment, the resources are there and you have to justify taking time away from client work for a little while to do it now. Because otherwise, the time’s gone. Having you and Kira and having a massive amount of other accelerated members to bounce ideas off, it’s not going to be there forever. It was that push to do it now. Otherwise, I think probably I would’ve done similar things in bits and pieces like over the next couple of years and it would’ve taken a lot longer and not been as effective, I think.
Kira Hug: What about for you, Tori?
Tori Autumn: Yeah. For me, I struggled with wearing a different hats in my business. Well, the most part of being a copywriter, I was just the copywriter. I wasn’t really the CEO or managing the bookkeeping effectively. So within this program, within my copy crew, I ended up hiring a virtual assistant, I got an accountant, got a graphic designer. Things start really turning as well so that I can focus on not just the copywriting, but the overall marketing strategy and actually set aside a time each week in blocks to work on my business was the biggest benefit for me. And also the community of people. It’s something about having accountability partners that really helps keep people on task and keep the big picture and the vision ahead. And so this was also the other biggest reason I joined, because I wanted to find other copywriters who are in similar stages of me, but want to go big with their business.
Kira Hug: Yeah. I definitely want to talk about the time you all have invested in the program and the accountability that’s baked into it. But first let’s talk about what has surprised you the most as you jumped in. We’ve all enrolled in different courses and programs and you jump in and you’re like, Oh, I was not expecting that for good and for bad. So was there anything in particular that stood out to you as a surprise in this program?
Demetrius Williams: For me, it was the community and collaborative nature of The Accelerator. Because I’d been in other programs before, but it was very much, “Welcome to this program. Here’s your video, here’s your products to do. Submit it, you get graded and marks. And here’s some development areas.” But in The Accelerator it was very much, “Hey everyone, here’s this group of people that are on the same mindset and how their businesses are and how they want them to grow. And we’re going to work together like a mini community and we’re going to all work with each other and collaborate to reach our goals at the end of the program.” And I was not as really surprised about it. It was one of my favorite things about the program as well.
Peta O’Brien-Day: Yeah, definitely. I think the access that we got to other people’s perspectives and other people’s advice was just incredible. And the amount of access that we got to you and Rob, just to be able to ask you questions and to get feedback and critique on our copy. The amount of face to face live calls that we got was amazing. Because like Demetrius said, there are lots of courses where you sign up and there might be a quick chat, but then there’s a lot of videos and everything’s virtual in a pretty faceless sense. But this felt like a proper community. Weirdly, I was also surprised that there were more than two English people in the program.
Demetrius Williams: They were like four or five.
Kira Hug: They were good amount.
Peta O’Brien-Day: Yeah.
Rob Marsh: I think about five six of us.
Peta O’Brien-Day: Yeah. We got like a little encleave going on and it’s cool. But that was a big surprise and it was really nice because so much of the cooperating world that I’ve checked into in the last couple of years has been over in the States, which is fine. And you’re all very, very lovely, but it’s quite nice-
Kira Hug: Are we?
Peta O’Brien-Day: … to know. You are. I know you are. You’re not quite as reserved as we are. But it’s nice to know that there are other people in my country that I could, I don’t know, jump in a car and go and have coffee with, which we’re going to do at some point.
Kira Hug: I was going to ask you if you all have hung out yet, if you’ve made that meet up happen.
Peta O’Brien-Day: No. Not yet. There’s been a bit of a pandemic going on.
Kira Hug: Great. That thing is happening still. Tori, any surprises for you?
Tori Autumn: Yeah. I would say having a lot of challenges and wins in common with these group of copywriters. And also, I think a lot of us who suffer from comparisonitis tend to put other copywriters on pedals because of their clientele or how much they make. But I found myself really admiring my peers, really admiring their courage with their challenges and how they show up in their business and how they push the envelope. So I’ve actually found a group of people who I aspire to be and who have similar niches as me.
Rob Marsh: Tori, you mentioned being able to share wins. I’m curious from the three of you, what are the big wins that you throughout this program. Maybe starting with you, Tori, what is the big thing that you’ve walked away as you graduate and the biggest change that you’ve made in your business?
Tori Autumn: Starting before I felt ready, I started pitching my dream clients and I got a couple of yeses from that. And also figuring out my niche in terms of where’s that intersection lobby between self-love coaching and conversion copywriting. So I’m really excited about that. I would say those are the top two.
Rob Marsh: Demetrius, you mentioned you’ve landed a couple of big clients, any other wins?
Demetrius Williams: Even though I’ve managed to land some big clients, I think biggest win for me is my increase in confidence. I think my confidence is supercharged. I think I mentioned to you guys before about just working in the retail and fashion industry. My confidence was knocked down a bit and I think I’ve had issues of imposter syndrome. But because I’ve been able to really identify my values and my skillset, and being able to communicate how valuable I am to clients, it’s really boosted my confidence so much. Personally, I don’t think you can put a price on that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, for sure. How about you, Peta?
Peta O’Brien-Day: Yeah. Kira saying that the sales page that I wrote for a client was good. I think I floated around on cloud nine for a week after that one. I was like, “Oh, my-”
Kira Hug: That was great.
Peta O’Brien-Day: Thank you. But apart from that, similar to Demetrius in terms of confidence, but specifically making my business feel like a business off the back of the assignments. So streamlining my processes, making myself feel like I actually know what I’m doing, but in a way that… I’ve always been really worried that to be taken seriously, I have to not be myself. And I quite like being myself. So it’s been really lovely to build this kind of professional business that is a proper business that I can be myself in. Because we’ve talked about branding and we’ve talked about positioning and niching, and all of it has been focused being you, being an individual and what you specifically bring to the table that nobody else can bring. So finding your weird.
Kira Hug: And you mentioned a handful of the modules that we dig into in the program. I’m just curious what was your favorite module, if you all don’t mind sharing? What was your favorite module and why was it that particular module?
Peta O’Brien-Day: I really, really liked the branding module. It felt a little bit like therapy.
Kira Hug: That’s what we wanted. That’s exactly what we wanted.
Peta O’Brien-Day: Yeah. It felt like digging into things that I wasn’t even sure that I knew about myself. And like I said, being able to bring that into my business. That was a lot of fun.
Tori Autumn: Yeah. I would say the branding module as well. I enjoyed thinking about what would I look like on 11 versus being very quiet and introverted. And also the last module of putting us out there, that visibility piece was very helpful for me in terms of thinking about, okay, which ways do I want to market myself? Which way feels attainable for me and which way is also pushing the edge for me to get out there. So those are my two.
Demetrius Williams: For me would be the first module, just the mindset because it laid the foundation of not only how The Accelerator program would be, but also how my business would be as well. Once I’ve nailed down my mindset and how I work, then my business is on a great solid foundation. And also finding my niche. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be focused on such a unique niche in terms of retail tech. And it’s just literally opened up a whole host of different types of clients that I could work with. And each client is different, which is what I like. I’m not really into working with the same sorts of clients over and over again. I like variety. And there’s like so much variety in this niche I’ve got. And I’m super happy about that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. One of the modules that we teach is all about creating a package that is specifically targeted to your ideal client. As you guys work through that module, tell us a little bit about one of the packages that you’ve created. I know we’re just coming out of The Accelerator, so you probably haven’t sold a lot of them. But just talk a little bit about that process as well. Tori, what did you build?
Tori Autumn: I created the launch recipe, which has, it has a couple of things. So it has the research, which is the voice of customer interviews and also just some customer research, and also includes webinar invites, show ups and promo emails and sales page. The name is also similar to my coaching program, the self-love recipe, but I like that because I’m a big foodie. So it helps with my brand positioning. Like also wanted to promote food in my brand, but also go to package for anything that’s launched copy for course creators. And that was challenging only because I got overwhelmed with the so many options that I can put into that package and how to price it. But I’m right now at $5,000 with that, which sounds like a scary price for me, but it also sounds like a good price. So part of that module helped me with understanding for myself, at least what is a good price that I can charge, what is a great price that I would really want to charge. And so that’s the main package that I put together.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I love that. Retail tech sounds like an interesting niche, Demetrius. What a package appeals to that clientele?
Demetrius Williams: I focus on bolstering my clients’ online visibility through organic search. So I mainly focus on web copy and blog copy and content and SEO marketing. So my packages split into tiers. My signature package focuses on landing pages and blog pages, like a set amount of blog pages and landing pages and home pages. And it’s also victim of that. There is a content marketing order and then there’s a detailed SEO order as well. So I log into their Google analytics and their search console, and I dig deep into how their website is performing and look at key areas and how I can optimize and improve it. And I also a detailed next steps as well with the SEO on content audits.
Rob Marsh: Peta, how have your packages changed?
Peta O’Brien-Day: So, I have gone all in with the youth work theme. Before I was a copywriter, I was a youth worker for 15 years. And my new brand takes all the listening and empathizing skills that I learned as a youth worker, and uses them to build relationships between businesses and customers. So my package is the tuck shop brand experience, lots of very inviting pictures of sweets on my page. It’s focused on entrepreneurs who have built a successful business, but they’re still doing everything themselves and they want to start handing things over. But that’s quite difficult to do if they’ve not spent that much time thinking about their brand voice, what makes them unique and how somebody else could write in a way that they write. So my package starts with a brand discovery call to dive right deep into who they are.
Then they get a brand communication guide that covers their target audience, how they think, what they like, what the industry is all about, pause it into a guide on how they talk that they can handle that to any contractors or freelancers that they want to work with going forward. I write them a brand story. So I take all that information and craft into a really compelling about page that helps them sell that story and build that connection with their audience. And then I start off the process of helping them communicate with their audience to blog posts and to email and newsletters to build those connections. And it is $2,750. It’s quite exciting, but the packaging module was a little bit terrifying.
Kira Hug: Can you elaborate why was it terrifying?
Peta O’Brien-Day: Well, once, I got it all written down, it was fine, but I think getting to that point, I wasn’t sure that… I think it was a confidence thing. I wasn’t sure that I could bring enough value to the table to put it into an actual package. But talking through the process with you guys and going through the module blueprint helped me pull together all the value that I do actually bring to clients and the unique ways that I work, the frameworks that I have, and really helped me to put together something that I think is really helpful for my clients and brings an awful lot of value. But it was quite scary.
Kira Hug: So, we get a lot of questions about time and how much time it takes to participate in The Accelerator to actually get any results. And this is something that is different for everyone, but I’d love to hear from all of you. What did your time look like each week, or how did you even set it up so that you had the time to focus on your business development? Who wants to kick it off?
Tori Autumn: I’ll start. So I initially had a four-hour block on Mondays to devote to this program and also my business. And some weeks that worked, some weeks that didn’t work. But what I found was helpful for me was going with what time of the day or week really works for me. So it was a lot of late night writing, late night thinking, because through this program I realized I’m nocturnal. No. I just really like working at night and it’s where my creative juices really flow. So I did a lot of working in about maybe two to three hours a week with the program. And some weeks I skipped which I didn’t beat myself up on because I know that I could just catch up. It wasn’t super time consuming, but did help with, it was a lot of critical thinking.
The biggest part for me was also creating time to implement what I learned. Like now I have the questions answered and I turn into homework. Then what? So I had to, during my night hour, find out times when I can actually make those small tweaks on my website, update my social media or update my packages and process and really how I’m going to now with the new knowledge and value of myself that I know how am I going to present that to prospective clients. So it was part actually doing the work, but now implementing it that gave me about two to four hours a week with this program.
Demetrius Williams: I think I’m the opposite of Tori. I’m very much a morning person and I really love having structure of my day. So I think in module one, actually, when we’re talking about mindset, I just basically blocked my whole calendar for the week. And most of the time that I focus on The Accelerator was first thing in the morning or an hour or two during lunchtime. And by doing that, I was able to take a good chunk of time throughout the week to actually focus on The Accelerator. And by doing that, I’ve now actually implemented that calendar structure into my working day as well for my business.
Kira Hug: What worked for you, Peta?
Peta O’Brien-Day: You probably don’t want to know my answer. I am not the perfect student when it comes to this kind of thing. I’ve got two kids at home and my sister-in-law came to look after my daughter for a day and a half a week. So with that and nap times, that is my time for client work and anything else that I want to do. So I listened to quite a lot of The Accelerator videos whilst cooking dinner. There is now quite a lot of tomato sauce on my laptop screen, which I hope won’t do too much damage.
Basically, as much as I would love to have been able to block out time and be really, really intentional about it, far too much of it was on the fly for my liking. There were a lot of late night website update sessions. I did a lot of the blueprints whilst making sure that my daughter didn’t spill hummus all over herself. But you know what? I made it work. I handed everything in on time. I probably did spend about three to four hours a week on doing all the blueprints and the modules and making the changes. It was just in much smaller chunks and much less organized.
Rob Marsh: I mean, I know you said we wouldn’t want to hear that answer, but I actually love that answer because it’s very real and it shows that even if you don’t have a ton of time to dedicate to a program like The Accelerator, you can still carve it out in small chunks and make it work. So I’ve been impressed by what you’ve accomplished. And just hearing how you’ve accomplished it, it makes it even more impressive to me. I like that.
Peta O’Brien-Day: Thank you.
Rob Marsh: So, another thing that we talk about in The Accelerator is branding. Obviously creating a brand is literally a lifelong process. Brands change over time and they evolve. And so the time that we spend in The Accelerator talking about that is pretty shortened, but we try to give you some things to think about. And I’m curious what each of you will be doing as you move forward with your brands. Where are you taking them? Are you going to be doing some unique photos? Is there a theme that you’re thinking about? Peta, I think you mentioned that you like that module. Maybe we could start with you. Where does your brand go from here?
Peta O’Brien-Day: Sure. Like I mentioned, I’m really hanging onto the whole youth work vibe and relationship building, sitting down on a sofa, drinking coffee, and eating lots of sweets at the tuck shop, which might be British thing. Come to think of it. But I don’t know. Do you guys have tuck shops at youth clubs?
Kira Hug: I don’t know what that is. But that might just be a me thing.
Peta O’Brien-Day: I might need to work on that for the American market then. But anyway… So I’m planning a brand photo shoot at the end of January. I’ve got a friend who is incredibly good at graphics. And I have come to realize that as much as I can see in my head what I want on the screen for my website, I can’t make it. So I’m going to get him to come and help me create something that feels like me in terms of design as well as tone. I’m happy with my brand and how it sounds in terms of tone of voice. It sounds for me, it’s authentic. It gives across my vibe and the way that I want to work with clients. But I think my task for the next couple of months is to take it up a notch visually and work on things like getting my framework out there. So I’ve got a framework that’s inspired by my youth work experience. The plan is to talk about that on podcasts and decent guest blogging and up the visibility of my brand that way.
Rob Marsh: I like it. How about you, Tori?
Tori Autumn: I want to do a photo shoot probably in March, around my birthday with lots of food and something with a self-love brand with it as well. And one thing that stood out to me in the program that helped me with understanding how I want to present my brand or more so position my brand is when Kira talked about how you can niche yourself through your values as well, that became like such a big pivotal moment for me, in terms of understanding what are the type of clients I want to work with and how much can I express myself in my brand and in my messaging with my core values. So I want to talk about how I’m very feminist and very into wellness brands and self-love. And I’m a big foodie and a big nerd. I like knowing that I can give myself permission in terms of having a lot of fun with my brand, because we all started our businesses for various reasons, but one is because we can truly do what we want with it.
Rob Marsh: Demetrius, how has The Accelerator helped you rethink your brand?
Demetrius Williams: It’s really enabled me to, again, like Tori said, marry my own personal values with my brand. I’m very big on personal connections and building trust. And I’ve realized that a lot of my retail technology clients are the same. They’re very much about making connections, especially when it comes to the technology that they make, because their technology is going to be in retail stores, whether it’s a holographic mirror that helps customers pick the right size for their clothes to a wifi payment system within their store. It’s all about that human connection with the retailer. So I’m working on mirroring connections and building partnerships and trust within my brand. And I have a friend who’s a graphic designer, and I think Peta said the same thing about not being a graphic design profession. I know bits of it, but I’d rather have a professional to come and work on that with me. So I’m going to work with her to build a good concept for that.
Kira Hug: We touched on accountability and community earlier in this conversation. I just want to circle back to that and find out if anyone one’s open to sharing how we helped build that community and facilitate that connection with other copywriters in this program. Because again, I know community is something that we all talk about and how important it is, but how does that actually happen and how did it happen in this program?
Demetrius Williams: I think one of the best things about what happened with The Accelerator was that you guys are just going to speak to each other, just like schedule 50 minutes and just everyone just have a chat with each other and introduce ourselves. And for me, as much as I’m about connections, I’m not very good at meeting people for the first time. So shoving us in the deep end, it really like opened us up. Some of us felt like we’ve known each other for ages. So just putting ourselves out there and being really collaborative within like the first module was just really great for me?
Kira Hug: I like that. We threw you in the deep end. It was like, well put.
Peta O’Brien-Day: Oh my goodness. The meeting greets were terrifying, but they were fabulous. Like getting to know so many different people. And also for me, because I was time starved, the permission to keep them to 15 minutes was really, really helpful because it would’ve been lovely to spend hours chatting to everybody. But knowing that you could say at the end of 15 minutes, I need to go and talk to eight other people now this afternoon. And then I haven’t managed to circle back to everybody that I’d like to, but I’ve managed to schedule longer calls with people through the course and catch up with people at different times. So my daughter was awake at 1:00 AM the other night, but Lindsay was awake because she was in America. So I chatted with her on Instagram for a while, while I was trying to get at my daughter back to sleep.
But I think one of the things that really built community for me was with the coaching calls Q and A calls, the fact that you guys gave us so much time to present our wins and our struggles and ask our questions. And I felt like I got to know so much about so many different people through those calls and to tap into what they were doing with their businesses and how they were struggling and get to know who they were as people. And when you paired that with module blueprints like the branding one, so I now know what type of bird everybody thinks that they would be, which was actually a lot more insightful than themselves.
Kira Hug: That is important to know, right? It’s important to know that.
Peta O’Brien-Day: It was. Definitely. And I found lots of other people who, if they were animals would be wolves. So I’m thinking of starting a pack. Those kind of little touches were really great for me.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Hearing you talk about the meet and greet, it’s funny to watch people as we talk about that. And there’s probably about a quarter to a third of people who have that fear in the eyes, right? It’s like, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? And yet at the end, almost every single person is like, “This is the best thing out of The Accelerator.” Just because you get to know so many other copy writers that can support you and your business as you continue to grow. Okay.
So, one last question from me, Kira may have a couple more questions, but I’m curious, you guys have gone through it, you’ve finished up all eight modules. The only thing we have left is a graduation call. But if you were talking to somebody who’s thinking, okay, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, or maybe they missed out like you mentioned, Demetrius, on the last time. They’re like, For sure I’m getting in on the next time. What advice would you give to them as they’re thinking about, okay, should I? Shouldn’t I? Or maybe a reason why they should think about seriously joining The Copywriter Accelerator. Tori, let’s start with you.
Tori Autumn: Well, there are lots of great reasons. The first one, if you want to just be a freelance copywriter who works for other people, then be that. But if you actually want a sustainable business and actually feel like you’re a CEO and that you can grow and have leverage to do lots of other big dreams, then join us.
The other thing was going back to the community piece, the copy crew was extremely helpful for me. Not just because of they were my peers and we get to talk about our challenges and wins and things that we have in common, but also being able to have someone critique your work and critique your copy and give great feedback other than Rob and Kira, or other than other copywriter mentors that you look up to is really beneficial. And it helped me because it helped me look at people differently and look at us as a community versus like, oh, I can only go to this person because they’re in that mentor space. We all became mentors to each other. And I felt like that was very critical at how I looked at my business, how much value I brought to the table and how I want to move forward with my niche and launch copy.
Rob Marsh: Demetrius.
Demetrius Williams: Only the boost of confidence that I mentioned before. But I was really able to hone in on my skill set and what value I provide for my clients, because I never really showcased that at all prior to The Accelerator. I was really able to leverage that, to increase my rates. And I definitely wouldn’t have increased my rates to the point that they are now without The Accelerator program. And I’ve met some friends along the way. I mean, Peta and I are in a copy group in slack and everyone in that copy group, we’re now in a WhatsApp group together. And we’re just going to continue our accountability group after the program as well. So it’s just been a really, really valuable experience.
Peta O’Brien-Day: So, I would say that you’ve just got to jump. Doing anything big with your business is scary. But with The Accelerator, you’ve got a roadmap to take you from floundering around in the dark to success. And that’s ridiculously valuable, not just in terms of money, but in terms of mindset and confidence and connections. All the things that we’ve talked about in this chat. And like Tori said, having different people in the group with you mean that you have so many and perspectives, everybody comes from a different place. Everybody’s had different experiences and everybody’s got particular specialism and skillsets. And the ability to tap into those to find answers to struggles that you’re having with your business and the ability to work with two experts who have done this before, they know what works and they put you in the right direction is priceless.
Kira Hug: We’re going to do a lightning round. So just relatively short answers, which is hard for us to do. So last question for all three of you, what are you most excited about your business in 2022? What excites you the most? Tori, can you kick it off?
Tori Autumn: Most of my business growth will be my personal growth as well.
Kira Hug: Demetrius.
Demetrius Williams: I think the same as Tori. For me, it’s growth. It’s business growth and personal growth.
Peta O’Brien-Day: Me having the time this year to put into practice all the incredible things that I’ve learnt. Yeah. That’s what most excites me.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, thanks to you guys, Peta, Tori, Demetrius for joining us just to talk about your experience and also for showing up and doing so much work in The Accelerator community. We are thrilled by the success that you’ve had so far and are really looking forward to seeing what you do with your businesses in the coming year. The foundation that you’ve laid through The Accelerator, you guys are completely set up for success. And so we’re really excited to see where that goes. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. We really appreciate it.
Story telling is a super power. However, even writers often struggle to find and tell stories in a way that makes them compelling and persuasive. On the 407th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob spoke with author and story teller Matthew Dicks. Matthew has a new book called Stories Sell that walks through how to find and tell stories. In this interview, we talked in depth about this critical copywriting skill and how you can develop it for your own business.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Moth
Story Worthy by Matthew Dicks
Stories Sell by Matthew Dicks
Matthew’s Novel that is a bunch of lists
Live Life Like You’re 100
Matthew’s Website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Whether you write copy or content, chances are you’ve heard the advice that you need to be telling stories. Stories are powerful… they help us bond to one another, they help communicate ideas and information far more effectively than if we just share the idea or information alone. They trigger the release of a variety of good hormones and they’re just plain entertaining. But often the advice to tell stories is hard to follow because it’s not always clear what counts as a story or how exactly you should go about telling one.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I teacher, novelist, non-fiction author and famed story teller Matthew Dicks. Matthew is the author of Story Worthy, a book that is often recommended and shared in the copywriting community as a how-to manual on the art of story telling. And he has a new book out called Stories Sell that takes much of what he shares in Story Worthy and puts it in a business context. I read it a few weeks ago, and honestly believe that every copywriter should have this book on their shelf. And just in case you want a quick link, we’ll have one in the show notes for this episode. This is a great conversation that I think you’ll want to listen to at least twice.
Before we jump in with Matthew…
If you’re listening to this episode when it goes live, we are about a week away from opening up The Copywriter Accelerator for the only time this year. The Accelerator is our 8-part, 16 week program that helps you build a successful freelance business whether you’re a copywriter, a content writer or you use your writing as a strategist, a social media specialist or something else. You’ll learn how to position your business so clients want to work with you. You’ll learn what it taks to create successful products and services that solve real client problems that client’s can’t wait to buy. You’ll learn the various ways to price what you do so you get paid for the value you create, not the time that you work. You’ll set up the right processes and learn how to manage clients. You’ll get more than 29 different ideas for ways to get yourself in front of the clients you want to work with and you’ll take the first steps toward creating a brand that resonates with you and the people you want to work with. Many of the copywriters who have gone through The Accelerator have gone on to build six figure businesses. And if that’s something you want, it might be worth checking out. To find out more, go to TheCopywriterAccelerator.com.
And now, let’s go to our interview with Matthew Dicks…
Matthew Dix, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. As I was saying just before we started to record, I’m excited to have you here. I’m guessing that there are a lot of our listeners who know who you are and may be aware of your work. But for those who aren’t, will you just give us the story on how you became writer, novelist, storyteller?
Matthew Dicks: Yeah, that’s a tricky story. But Well, I mean, I became a writer. I like to say on November 30th, 1988, when a teacher in my high school recognized that I had something to say. And at that point in my life, I was sort of a little lost. I was a senior in high school. My parents had indicated to me that when I graduated, I was. out on my own, like college was a word that was never spoken to me as a child by a teacher, guidance counsel, or parents. So, you know, I spent my senior year of high school worried about where I was going to live and what I would eat. And so, you know, I had a moment in a classroom where a teacher gave me a chance to share my voice with the class and it worked out really well. And I discovered that maybe this would be something that could save me someday.
And so I started writing on November 30th, 1988. And I have not missed a day since that day for my entire life. I’ve written every single day of my life through COVID and pneumonia and the birth of children and my wedding day and my honeymoon and everything in between. I have yet to miss a day. Actually, the next day after that sort of momentous moment in high school, I started my first business writing term papers for my classmates, my first writing gig. And with the money I earned from it, I bought my first car, a 78 Chevy Malibu. So I’ve been writing for a very, very long time. It took me 17 years after that day to publish my first novel. So I published my novel, Something Missing, in 2009 with Doubleday. And that basically made my dream come true. You know, at that point, if nothing else had happened, I would have been a happy human being. I would have made my dreams come true.
So since then, I’ve published six novels and three books of nonfiction. I thought I was going to be a novelist for a long time only. Uh, and that would be the extent of my literary career. And then in 2011, in July of 2011, I went to New York city to tell a story on a stage for an organization called the moth, a story slam. You put your name in the hat, you hope it gets picked out. You stand on the stage and you tell a five minute story. I was basically pushed there by my friends who said, you’ve had a terrible life. go talk about it on stage. It’s not true. I’ve not had a terrible life, but I’ve had one of those weird lives of misfortune. You know, I was homeless for a period in my life. I was arrested and tried for a crime I did not commit. I spent time in jail. I’ve been killed. I’ve stopped breathing and my heart has stopped beating twice in my life. And CPR has been performed on me both times. And obviously it worked. So I’ve had all these odd things happen to me. So my friends say, go to the moth and tell stories about it. And so I thought I was going to go and tell one story. And I got on the stage. I hated every minute of that evening until I began speaking into the microphone. And that was the moment I sort of fell in love with telling stories about my life, and being funny, and being heartfelt, and doing all those things that storytellers do. So I started going to New York, and then later Boston, and now all over the world, telling stories on stages large and small. And then I thought that was what I was going to do, which is I’ll be a storyteller and maybe a stand-up. and carve a little bit of a career out of that while I’m writing my books.
I’m also an elementary school teacher for the last 25 years. So, you know, also making a dream of mine come true. I wanted to be a teacher for all my life and I didn’t get to go to college until, you know, six years after I graduated high school. So I never really thought that would come true either. So I’m still teaching elementary school today. But, uh, you know, I started telling stories on stages and business people started to notice me and they understood before I understood that what I was doing on a stage would be helpful to them in the work that they did, whether it was marketing or branding or sales or. you know, advertising, all of those things. And so the business community came to me, I told them they were all crazy. And then it turned out they were not crazy.
And so in 2017, I wrote my first nonfiction book Story Worthy, and that got some attention. And the business world found that book too, which was not written for them, it was really written for people to just want to tell stories about their lives. But the business community sort of took a round peg and shoved it into a square hole and made it work. And then, you know, I started working for some of the biggest companies in the world. Oddly, my wife is still as amazed as I am. Like I’ll walk out of my office and she’ll say, you were just talking to Amazon. And I’m like, well, I was talking to a VP at Amazon, like not Amazon. You know, I work for the FBI now. I help their hostage negotiation unit learn how to tell stories like weird things keep coming over the transom that I can’t believe are happening. And then last year or this year, this year I published Story Sells, which is the story book for business people, it’s the one that they don’t have to jam the square peg into the round hole anymore. So. So that’s where I am today. I’m writing every day, still and telling stories and helping businesses with the work they do.
Rob Marsh: The way you talk about it, storytelling is, is definitely a superpower that opens all kinds of doors. It sounds like.
Matthew Dicks: It really is, yeah. I often say, actually, my friend said, and now I repeat him, Matt’s kind of an unlikable person who tells a good story. And that’s a little true. It can get you out of a lot of trouble telling a really good story.
Rob Marsh: So I want to go back to that first story on the moth stage, because you said you hated everything about the night until you started telling the story. Like, what is the thing that makes because a lot of a lot of people are the opposite, right? They’re OK at the event until they get on stage. And as soon as they’re on stage, everything goes blank. You know, they sweat. You know, they freak out… all of the things. I mean, the joke, you know, that, you know, people would rather be in the coffin at the funeral and giving the eulogy. Right. So what was it that made that difference for you? How did that switch flip?
Matthew Dicks: Well, first my wife pointed out to me that I had been in training for that moment for a long time in my life. I didn’t understand it at the time. I thought I had stumbled onto something in 2011 later in life that I was uncommonly good at. Lucky me. And I said that once, or I said it many times. And then finally my wife heard me say it and she said, really, that’s what you think? And I said, well, I wasn’t performing on stages before then. And she pointed out I was actually a wedding DJ for almost 30 years. So I was accustomed to standing in front of groups of people I had never met before and speaking extemporaneously. So I didn’t have any fear of audiences. I never had that. And I’ve never been nervous in my life, almost never in my life period. I’m just one of those people that sort of moves through life without anxiety of any kind. I’ve also been writing since I was 17.
So when I took that stage that night, I understood something about story structure that maybe other people didn’t. When I was 10, I actually saw the movie E.T. and there’s a scene in E.T. that offended me so much as a 10 year old and even today as a 53 year old that I wrote to Spielberg. And basically the letter said, I love your movies, but you keep having these scenes that screw everything up. So if you’d like to run the movie by me first, I could help clear up this problem for you. And I gave it to my mother and said, mail this to Steven Spielberg, please. And she said, okay. And it took me like 35 years to realize my mother never mailed that letter. Cause I’ve been mad at Spielberg. I was like, how could he not write back to a kid? And then it occurred to me in 1981, a mother who could barely hold it together as it was, how was she going to find without the internet, the address for Steven Spielberg, right? She looked at the letter, she read it and she threw it away for sure. But even at 10, I was watching movies and I was not thinking so much about the movie as it passed through me, I was actively deconstructing it and thinking about what was making it work.
So my wife pointed out, like, you’ve been doing this all your life. When you took the stage at the Moth, you were already ready to go. But the thing I love the most was, as a novelist, you write a book, and it takes you somewhere, for me, between one and three years to finish a book. And then you send it out into the world, and occasionally you hear what people think of it, long after the story’s done, and sometimes after you can’t remember parts of the story, because it’s been like a year and a half, and you’ve written two books since then. But at the Moth, or any time I speak publicly, I get instant feedback from the audience. I know within seconds if I’m winning or losing simply by the response of the audience. And that instant feedback appealed to me. I grew up on video games. Back when you used to have to actually put quarters in video games and there was like value on being good at a game. You could never sort of just start over. And I loved video games because I always knew where I stood. Like there was a score at the top and I knew if I was winning or losing and storytelling, public speaking, standup comedy, all of those opportunities to speak in front of human beings and get a auditory response immediately really appealed to me.
Rob Marsh: So let’s, let’s break that down then when we’re talking about stories, what is it that makes stories work? Because again, I think a lot of people feel like they may not be good storytellers or they don’t have good stories to tell. And I think sometimes you may even say this in your book. I can’t remember exactly, but maybe it’s just that we don’t know how to tell a story the right way in order to communicate what needs to be communicated.
Matthew Dicks: Yeah. Well, actually, I think the biggest problem is people don’t know what a story is. Okay. So let’s start there. Yeah. Oftentimes people assume that something happened to them. And so now I’m going to tell you what happened. And that’s not a story that’s reporting on your life. And it turns out no one wants you to report on your life except your spouse is required to listen and your mother might actually want to hear it, but no one else. So just because something happened, even if it’s something fascinating or unusual or unbelievable, that doesn’t make it a story. It just makes it an anecdote that occurred to you or happened to you at some point in your life. And then people report on it chronologically and They don’t get anywhere with it.
So a story is fundamentally about change over time. You know, every book you’ve ever read, any movie you’ve seen, any play you’ve seen, any story I’ve ever told is about. a character, you know, in my case, if I’m telling a story, it’s about me, if it’s a business, it might be a product, it might be a CEO, it might be the business itself, you’re in one place, and then something happens. And now you’re in a new place, it’s either transformation, meaning we’re going to fundamentally change as a person or as a an entity will say, or realization, which is more common, which is we used to think one thing, or I used to think one thing, and now I think a new thing. If you don’t have that change over time, you really just have a flat line of events that are occurring. They can often be connected by the word and which is how first graders tell stories and how 31 year olds sometimes tell stories, which is this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened. And so we don’t actually end up anywhere with meaning. We just end up relating events that took place in our lives, which are not entertaining. So what we’re looking for, if we want to be storytellers are moments of change where we. realize something new about the world, about ourselves, about the people around us, you know, about anything, really, if there’s change, even infinitesimal change, that is going to constitute a story. And that’s the kind of thing people are attracted to. They remember what they find entertaining.
Rob Marsh: So this is something I think a lot of copywriters, content writers are going to relate to because when we sit down to write about products, we’re thinking about a customer journey and that customer has to go through some transformation that the product creates for them. So this is immensely useful if we can actually get good at it. So can we talk through like, okay, so how do we find these stories? How do we identify something that’s going to stick like that, something where do we find the change? And how do we talk about that final result of that transformation?
Matthew Dicks: Well, when I work with people, the first thing I do is I say, let’s mine our own lives for the stories we have. I essentially say, let’s throw our stuff on the table because oftentimes that’s enough customer stories are fine. But the problem with the customer story is we’re telling someone else’s story at that point. And when you tell someone else’s story, that’s harder to be entertaining and engaging. If I say, Hey, I got a friend named Peter. Do you want to hear this crazy thing that happened to him? You’re like, no, actually I don’t. I don’t know, Peter. It’s meaningless to me. But if I said, Hey, something just happened five minutes ago to me, that was really foundational and. you know, instrumental to my life. Do you want to hear it? You probably do because it’s the person telling the story. So the more personal our stories can be, the more meaningful they’ll be. So I start by saying, well, you know, you made this product, right? What does it mean to you? You know, if you were the person who made it, tell me about the journey from soup to nuts. Like when did the idea occur to you? Tell me when the first step was taken. Tell me when the first obstacle took place. You know, tell me how you overcame that obstacle. Tell me about the journey to the creation of the product. That’s a great place to start because that’s a story.
Lots of people like, you know, people love the story of Spanx because they love the idea of a woman cutting off essentially the feet of her leggings and changing the way women dress. fraternity, or at least as long as Spanx are around, right? Because people can see that it’s tangible. They understand moments of inspiration. They love that. So we start with stories like that. And then if it’s not that, and you’re sort of, well, I didn’t invent it. I’m just here to sell it. Well, what does it mean to you as a person who is selling it? You know, is this something that’s going to matter to you? I bought my windows in my house. I had to replace all my windows, right? I wanted to. I didn’t buy the most expensive or the cheapest windows or even really the best windows. I bought Trevor Divine’s windows because he came in and he told me stories. We started with golf for 30 minutes. At that point, I was buying his windows anyway. He came into my house. He saw a nine iron leaning against the door and said, Oh, so you play golf. And 30 minutes later, we’re still talking about golf. And he says, well, maybe I should bring the window in so you can check it out. And I thought in my head, sure, but I’m buying it. I don’t care as long as it’s made of glass and it keeps the bugs out. I’m good because I like you. Right? Because that’s how people buy things, right? They buy them from people they believe in more than the thing itself. But Trevor had a story about the relationship of the windows to his life. He also had these windows in his house. You know, he said, this is the same window I have in my house. I also did exactly what you did. And oddly, I didn’t get much of a discount. So I understand the cost of putting in windows the way you’re going to do it. I did the very same thing. So he was able to sort of relate to me and tell me his journey through replacing windows. He had funny stories, he had interesting stories. So oftentimes we don’t even have to go to our customers if we are customers of a product or we understand the product in some meaningful way.
Rob Marsh: So I think this is a really important point that stories create relationships. In fact, it’s probably the primary way that we create relationships with other human beings. I think you talk about some of the science of this in your book and why that happens. I don’t necessarily want you to have to repeat everything that’s in the book. People should definitely go buy all of your books. But let’s talk about that for a minute. How does that happen, that this relationship is created?
Matthew Dicks: Sure. Well, when we tell someone a story, we actually change their brain chemistry in ways that they have no control over. And that’s because of evolution. For all but the last one quarter of 1% of human existence, we have not been able to write anything down. And so for almost all of humanity, the only way we transferred information from one generation to the next was through oral storytelling. So our brains have evolved to pay attention when someone’s telling a story. So back in the day, we’ll say the story might’ve been, hey, the berries on that bush, they killed uncle Joe. So don’t eat those berries, right?
Our brains have, have understood over time, they’ve been evolved to understand that story is equal survival. When someone’s telling us a story, it might keep us alive. And so our brain chemistry changes as we’re told a story to accommodate for that. So if I tell you a story. Oxytocin is released, for example, which is the empathy chemical, which means that you’re going to feel more connected to me even if you don’t like me, because I told you a story. And endorphins get released, which make you feel better about the world and about where we are, and you attribute those good feelings to me. ability to comprehend stories actually improves and your ability to retain information improve all by me just telling you a story.
Laughter produces the same thing as well. So a funny story is like a superpower, like a supercharged version of that story. But when we change brain chemistry like that, when we start telling stories, people just feel more connected to us. And when they feel connected to us, they trust us. And when they trust us, we can convince them to vote for the person we want them to vote for, buy the product we want to buy, you know, engage in the service we want them to engage in. It’s just more likely to be available to us if we prime their brains in that way. So telling stories makes a lot of sense, especially early on in a relationship.
Rob Marsh: And as I mentioned earlier, I think a lot of people struggle with this, oftentimes because we feel like we don’t have any stories to tell. And again, in your books, you talk about several different ways to find stories. My favorite is Homework for Life, although I have to admit, I struggle a little bit with Homework for Life. And we can talk about what it is, but let me tell you my struggle, because I’m sure you’ve heard this from a lot of people. Most of my life is sitting at the same desk, working on the same kind of project, doing the same kind of thing. And so if I sit down at the end of the day to write what interesting things happened to me today, as I think the requirement is, I find it really hard to find something new. And so what I have found is that when I do homework for life, I actually start remembering old stories. And so it actually ends up being less about today and more about, oh, that time that the exchange student from Norway was staying with us for a week and we stole the golf carts at the golf course and drove them into the lake. I’m gonna have to maybe edit that part out. But yeah, that’s what happens to me. And so let’s talk a little bit about Homework for Life and how we can find our stories.
Matthew Dicks: Sure. Well, that is part of Homework for Life is you resurrect stories for sure. And that happens to me all the time. I agree that I hear your excuse quite a bit. I think it’s weird that you work 24 hours a day and you have to sit at a desk for 24 hours. Most people work for six to eight hours a day, which means we have a solid eight to 10 hours a day where we’re not sitting at our desks. Even when we’re sitting at our desks, I think we have moments. Homework for life is the idea that every day should be held onto. It’s precious and it contains stories. I started it because I was starting to run out of stories to tell on stage. So I assigned myself this homework assignment every day. I’m going to sit down and at the end of the day, I’m gonna ask myself what happened that is story worthy. And I’m going to write it down. Not the whole story. Cause I think that’s crazy. Instead, I want you to write, uh, in an Excel spreadsheet is what I use. Essentially the length of a screen in one cell, five or six sentences at most. What happened over the course of the day, even if that thing is not incredibly story worthy, you must extract something from each day.
My goal was one new story per month, 12 new stories per year. I would have been thrilled. Instead, I discovered my life is filled with stories in ways I never imagined. And I’m not a unicorn. Tens of thousands of people have realized the same thing, doing homework for life. The problem is we don’t pay attention to our lives because we’re so focused on everything else. And when we do notice something of meaning, we don’t hold onto it. We let it go. And what happens is time becomes fleeting as a result. I hear people all the time say, time flies and it doesn’t fly. It just goes unaccounted for. So if I asked you. How many days can you remember from the year 2021? Even if I let you look at your calendar from that year, if you’re really good, you might get a hundred days, which means you’ve taken 365 days and reduced it to a hundred, which is why time feels like it’s flying because you’re throwing away, you know, 165 days or 265 days in a year. Suddenly time flies because you don’t have enough days to account for each year. Homework for life says every day is worth remembering and every day probably contains more stories than, you know, when I started doing it in 2014, 2015, I was finding a little more than one story per day. That was worth writing down today. I find more than seven and it’s not because my life is more interesting. It’s because the lens for storytelling has become. sharper and more refined. So I see things that I used to not see. And it’s not that everything that I say or everything that I write down is going to be said, you know, I did analysis on that as well. How many of the things in my homework for life do I actually speak out loud as a story or a part of a story or a joke and stand up or even a moment in one of my novels? It’s about 10%, which means 90% of the stuff that I write down never gets spoken out loud, but I’m still glad I’m holding onto it.
And I never judge anything. And so things as simple as when we think something for the first time that goes into my homework for life. So the other day I’m picking up the art table in our house and I’m pulling all the kids crayons together. I noticed the Brown crayon never gets used. It’s always like long it’s, you know, the blue crayon has nothing left and the Brown crayons always get everything. And I thought to myself, is the Brown crayon, the crayon least used because Brown is the color of poop. Now, I don’t know if that’s true, but that. thought amused me and it’s in my homework for life now. It’s never something I’m going to say on a stage. It’s not even a good joke really. It was just a thought I had and it was the first time I’d ever had that thought. And so it enters my homework for life. So it’s not necessarily what we did, although it could be, and it’s not what we said, although it could be. A lot of times it’s just like a thought that ran through my mind, an idea that I had, a realization that I’m dumb. My son said something I never want to forget. So often parents hear this where their kids say something unbelievable. They’re like, I got to write that down. And then they never do. And then their kid’s 18 and they can’t figure out how time flew. It didn’t fly. You never wrote anything down.
You know, my kids are 15 and 12 and thank God I started doing homework for life just about the time my daughter was born. So my daughter is 15 and she feels 15 because I’ve been accounting for her days without missing one and my son for the same reason. So homework for life is the acknowledgement that our days are filled with stories, but it takes some time to develop the skill. You know, remember I went from one per day to seven per day, but that took a long time. But even if you find one per day, that’s fantastic because now you’re going to hold on to your days and they’re worth remembering. And it gives you the content that you need to do the job that you’re doing.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I love the exercise. And like I said, when I, when I sit down to do it, I, I resurrect a ton of stories from the, from the past. But as we were talking about at the beginning, you know, some of these incidents or thoughts aren’t really stories, right? Because they don’t have that point of transformation. So how do you take what you collect in your homework for life and actually turn it into a story? Let’s say that, you know, you want to go on the moth again in a couple of months and you start going through your homework for life to figure out, OK, what’s a new story I can tell? What does that process look like?
Matthew Dicks: Sure. Well, I’m going tonight. I’m going to be in Boston tonight performing at the moth. So there are moments that happen to me in my homework for life. that I know are not stories, but could be parts of stories someday. You know, my son says something weird and I know it’s not a story, but someday I might be telling a story about my son and he might be acting foolish and I’ll use that as an anecdote to support his foolishness. I’ll be like, Oh, well he said that weird thing. I’m going to include it. The other day he asked me, why do t-shirts have pockets when no one would ever put something in a t-shirt pocket? And I was like, that’s a good point. And it’s the way he sees the world, which is he questions everything. The apple has not fallen far from the tree. And so I might tell a story someday about how my son and I are alike because we constantly look at the world and basically look for something to complain about. Right. And I’ll use that moment, the question about the t-shirt as a moment and a much longer story. I don’t judge anything.
We often don’t know what is going to be a story until sort of later on when we reflect, but there are moments when we know it’s the, just, it’s the moment when you realize something has just happened. That’s transformational. I’ve suddenly made an important decision or realize something. So the other day. Charlie falls into my son, Charlie, he falls into the bedroom. I don’t know why he falls in, but he’s 12. He just falls. He falls into my bedroom. And when he falls, he ends up looking under the bed and he sees under the bed of baseball bat. It’s his little league baseball bat from his first year in little league. And he asks me, why is this bat under your bed? And it’s there because I’m exceptionally vigilant. I’m the victim of two violent crimes in my life. It is there because I am prepared in ways he can’t begin to understand. This is one of a thousand things I’ve done. And I’m sitting there trying to decide if I tell my 12 year old that it’s there in case our home is ever invaded. And at first I think I don’t want him to know that possibility exists. Then I think to myself, well, he’s 12. He probably does know that’s a possibility. So then I decided to tell him the truth. I say it’s there because if an animal or a person ever comes into the house and they’re not supposed to be here, I want to be able to brain them. I want to be able to bash their head in and protect our family. And he looks at me, I can tell the gears are going in his brain. And then he says to me, okay, good job, dad. And he puts it under the bed and he runs away. He’s still a boy. He doesn’t have to worry about things because he has a father who will worry for him. And in that moment I go, well, that’s a story because that was, I felt the weight of the decision that I had to make and I felt the tension in what he was going to say to me. And when he said it to me, I realized, oh good, he gets to still be a boy. I told him a scary thing, but I told him his father’s ready for it. And now he gets to let go of those fears. And I said, well, that’s a story. Right, because I felt the weight of the moment and that’s what we’re looking for. It’s the moment when the hair stands in the back of your neck. It’s the moment when you have to hold your breath waiting for someone to answer. It’s the moment when you learn something for the first time, good or bad, you know, it’s all of those moments. Those are the story moments. That bat moment, actually, I’m working with a cybersecurity company.
And when it happened, it occurred to me, oh, this will be a good story for the cybersecurity company because the cybersecurity company is essentially the bat under the bed. Right. They’re going to take care of you the same way I’m taking care of Charlie. Charlie doesn’t have to worry about home invaders because he knows his father’s ready. You don’t have to worry about someone coming in and, you know, ransom wearing your stuff because we have a bat under the bed for you. Right. It’s a good story to relate to. So that’s how that content becomes meaningful to us. We can use these things that happen to us. And even if it’s not the Charlie story, exactly, we can use that metaphor of a bat under the bed or some other way of preparing for emergencies. We can use that metaphor for the cybersecurity company. So I’m always thinking in those regards.
Rob Marsh: One thing I know you do for your community and your audience, and we’ll share the website where people can get on your list so they can do this, but you do a pretty regular call where you do examples of this, like how you take a product and create a story around it. And if you’re willing, I’d love to just kind of go through that process just a little bit, because I think taking personal stories is a little bit different from an actual business story or writing about a product.
Matthew Dicks: Yeah, we call it, I call it business time and essentially once a month I get on a call. It’s whoever wants to join me. It’s, you know, it’s public and free.
Rob Marsh: They’re fantastic by the way. If you’re listening, you should definitely jump on and listen to Matthew do this.
Matthew Dicks: Thank you. And they give me a random product and then I go through a very cursory version of what I do with companies. You know, with a company we would go for a lot longer and it would take a series of meetings and possibly weeks before we land on a final strategy. But I sort of give an overview or a, You know, a quick and dirty version of what I might do with a company. So essentially I get a product of any kind and it can be as simple as a, I did a thumbtack one day. Actually, thumbtack was a good example. Someone said thumbtack. And when I’m trying to think of a product story, how are we going to sell a thumbtack? I start to think of stories and I say, well, stories have protagonists and antagonists, right? Good guys and bad guys. Our good guy is the thumbtack. So what’s the bad guy? Like what’s the opponent to a thumbtack? And I started listing them. I like lists a lot. I wrote a novel based only on lists. And the one I landed on was gravity, the enemy of the thumbtack. The thing that thumbtack is defeating is gravity because we want to have our papers stick to a wall, but gravity will not allow it to happen. Enter the mighty thumbtack, the defeater of gravity, right? And so we’re looking for who our enemy is. Who our protagonist is we’re looking for in some cases, like who of our, who are our constituents, which are ultimately be our customers. And then we look for stories to tell.
And sometimes those stories come from me or someone else I’m working with at the table in the business. And sometimes they come from outside sources and sometimes we just generate a story. And in that case, it was the mighty thumb tack. It was this simple thing that you probably have never purchased in your life and yet somehow made its way into your drawer, into your desk drawer. You have thumbtacks and they could be plastic and tall or they could be metal and short, but they’re all brave and they’re all fantastic because they’re defeating the thing that none of us can defeat, which is gravity, right? We are trapped on this planet unless we get on a big rocket and escape gravity. But the thumbtack everyday defeats gravity in a noble and quiet way. And so we do that with every product. We look for antagonists and protagonists, and we look for stories and, uh, we play with what’s going to be most emotionally appealing. What’s going to be memorable. What’s relatable. All of those questions get answered too. And then ultimately we decide on a strategy, which might again, not be the best strategy, but it is a strategy we come up with in 45 minutes. That way I would first pitch to a client and say, okay, how about the mighty thumbtack? The defeater of gravity and the thumbtack guy might say, no, I don’t like that. Right. And I’ll be like, all right, fine. We’ll go find a new story. And I go back to that process again.
Rob Marsh: So this is actually an interesting opportunity, I think, for a lot of writers to engage more with companies. Oftentimes we get hired to, you know, write the blog post or write the sales page or write the email, but we’re not asked to help come up with the story strategy. I wonder if you have some thoughts around how somebody might start to approach their clients into engaging in that kind of work.
Matthew Dicks: Well, you know, let’s take like blog posts and email, for example, right? We have to acknowledge that no one has ever woken up in the morning hoping to read an email or a blog post. Right. And unfortunately though, businesses don’t seem to understand this. They think that if I landed something in your inbox, you are excited about reading it. When I think most people’s default is, do I have to read this? Right. They’re looking to delete. They’re looking to eliminate so when we write something that is gonna land in the inbox for a customer writing a blog post that we’re gonna give someone a link to we have to acknowledge that nobody wants to read it and when we have that as our fundamental truth. Then suddenly we recognize the importance of storytelling and genuinely being entertaining. It’s a meaningful way and it’s gotta be at the top of everything we do because. If you’re entertaining in the last paragraph, no one’s ever going to get to the last paragraph to see how funny you are or how engaging you are or how witty you are. It’s got to happen at the top.
So, you know, my company, we write emails and the way we write them is my business partner essentially uses AI to create sales copy. And then he sends it to me and he says, okay, here’s the version that basically everyone else sends some version of this. And then he says, do your stuff. Which means in the first paragraph or two, please tell a story that is somehow related to what we are selling or what we’re offering or what service we’re providing. And I have to find a way to relate something in my life to the content and tell a story through it. And it works very, very well. I was actually at a storytelling show recently and a woman came up to me and said, I get all your emails. And my thought was, Oh, she’s going to tell me I send too many emails. Cause I probably do. And she said, I can’t help but read them because that first opening paragraph always has such a good story to read. I know that I’m going to get something good. And then she said, and that just sucks me to the bottom. Right. Cause I, I drip it all the way through the email. We have to find a way to get people to want to read the stuff instead of just getting what most people produce. Content that is coherent and complete and grammatically correct, but what round white and flavorless is the phrase I use, right? It doesn’t mean anything ultimately, and it’s forgettable. So we have to find a way to make it more memorable. My open rates are terrific. Like they’re fantastic on my email and it’s because I’m engaging in storytelling and that can be, I’m telling a story about my life. That’s like engaging enough. It could be, I’m telling something funny. That’s going to make someone laugh and make them want to read it. Sometimes it’s just like, here’s a crazy thing that I learned. Right. One of those, you know, you learn a fact and you can’t wait to share it with everyone else on the planet. I wrote, I write those down all the time because I know that there’s a lot of ways to entertain.
When I use the word entertain, people always think funny, but it’s not entertaining is funny. Sure. That could be one, but it could be telling a story. It could be providing a actionable recommendation that can be used five minutes from now, like a life hack. That’s very entertaining. When someone told me. that one of the best ways to maintain your balance in your old age, because people tend to die because they fall down and then they go to the hospital and then they get a disease in the hospital. They die. That happens all the time. Right? So someone told me the best way to avoid that Matt is when you’re brushing your teeth every night for two minutes, stand on one foot for the first minute and stand on the other foot for the second minute and practice standing on one foot. That was super entertaining to me because I immediately began doing it and after a year of doing it, I can’t believe how better my balance is now. I can stand on one foot longer than you. I’m loving that. I’m loving this idea. And that’s entertaining, right? Yeah. So it’s not funny. It’s not a story, but it’s actionable content, right? So if we, if we provide our readers with something that they will perceive as entertaining, one of those things, right? The story, the funny, the actionable content, the insight into something you’ve never noticed before, right?
It’s Valentine’s Day. Here is an amazing gift if you’re stuck on Valentine’s Day, right? If it’s close to Valentine’s Day, you’re reading. If you don’t have anything, you’re definitely reading. So if you can find a way to relate that to the content, to the product, to the service, right now you’ve got someone reading your content. And that’s why I love AI, because AI is going to make everyone who can’t be entertaining sound stupid and boring, and it will allow only entertaining storytellers, funny people, people who understand that you have to grab people’s attention and engage them. It’s going to make those people so valuable, because AI just can’t do any of those things, and it’s never going to be able to do those things. It writes really great sentences, but those sentences sound like everybody else’s sentences. So, you know, the bottom of an email can sound really boring as long as I hook them at the top, I bring them to the bottom. So that’s how those personal stories are. Those interesting notes, those footnotes. Like if you’re in a company, one of the best things to do is just start asking your people what happened this week. Right.
This morning I had a podcast interview like this one. And as I was coming down the stairs in a home I’ve lived in for 15 years, I came around the corner and I just walked into the wall. I wasn’t paying attention and I nearly knocked myself out. I was on my ass. holding my computer, like seeing stars three minutes before I was supposed to be on a podcast, right? If I owned a company and I had found out that Joe did that, I would open the email with, here’s a crazy thing that happened in the company today. Joe, who’s been here for 15 years and walked to this floor every single day of his work life. He walked into a wall today and fell on his ass, but he managed to get up and get on the podcast with a little mark on his head that everybody could see and star is still on his eyes. But he got on the podcast and he began speaking coherently. Good job, Joe. Right. Those are the kinds of things we want to entertain people with.
Rob Marsh: So we talked a bit about homework for life, uh, other strategies for, for identifying stories that maybe aren’t happening today, but you know, for recovering them from the past, uh, how else can we go about that?
Matthew Dicks: Well, I’ve got, I’ve got strategies in the book. I mean, one of my favorites is first, last, best worst, which is a game you can play with people or by yourself, which is essentially the acknowledgement that the first time we do something, the last time we do something, the best time we do something or the worst time we do something is often very story worthy. So when I’m teaching it to people, I always start with simple prompts like kiss. So you write down your first kiss, your last kiss, your best kiss, your worst kiss. There’s probably some stories in there right away. Pets are a good one. Teachers are a good one… dates, vacations. There’s some that are just very good, but the ones I really like are I’ll open up a random object generator. Um, on the internet, you know, there’s one that I like especially, and I’ll just produce a random object of any kind. Right. So if I look around my room right now, I will just like here, I’ve got tape. I’ve got some scotch tape on my desk. So I would do scotch tape and you can’t always do it, but I’d say, okay, my first scotch tape, my last scotch tape, my best scotch tape, and my worst scotch tape, which essentially is your opportunity to examine your life through the lens of scotch tape. Right. It’s not likely that you have a great scotch tape story, except you might really actually have one. Right. And those are the kinds of stories we leave behind that we want to return to our lives. So as I think like, what’s the first scotch tape, it might not actually be your real first scotch tape, but essentially you’re asking yourself, when was the first time I remember scotch tape being something in my life. Right. And it was wrapping presents as a kid, watching my mother do it. And I remember scotch tape was precious back then, probably because we were poor, but I used to think of it as like. I used to think of it as like fine wine, like there’s masking tape. And then there’s a special tape called scotch tape. That’s invisible that only parents can touch because it’s only used for Christmas presents. Right now, that memory actually just recurred to me. Even if I never use it in a story for a minute, you and I were here, but mentally I was in a dining room that I have not stood in in 45 years. Right. Watching my mother who has been dead for 20 years. wrapping presents on Christmas or before Christmas. And that’s a beautiful thing, like just to be able to do that. So you can play that game first, last, best, worst. You can play it by yourself. You can play it with people. You play with a random object generator and you resurrect stories from your life that can be valuable to you.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. And I mean, you can do it literally with anything and yeah, you could run forever. Okay, we’ve probably talked enough about the stuff that’s in the book. People should probably buy the book to hear the rest of it. I’m curious, you’re a teacher. What are some of the lessons from teaching that make you a better writer?
Matthew Dicks: I know that I stand before the worst audience there ever was every day, which are 10 year olds who definitely don’t want to pay attention to me. So as a person who has to engage an audience, that helps me every single day. But in terms of writing, you know, I think one of the most fascinating things for me is that the people who teach writing, Almost all the way through high school are not actually writers themselves. They don’t engage in the process in any meaningful, creative way. And as a result, rather than teaching writing in the way it should be taught, they imagine what writers would do because they don’t engage in the process themselves. So weird things happen like in elementary school, especially, but actually all the way through more writing is considered better writing when a writer knows that. the least number of words you can use to say something is the best version of that thing, right? So I have a student who brings a three line poem to me that says a brilliant concept in three lines. And I say, that’s fantastic. Right. That is beautiful.
But another teacher says, well, it’s only three lines. Can you, can you say more about it? Which kills the poem, right? Or, you know, a second grader writes a story and brings it up to the teacher and the teacher who doesn’t understand how to write their only default setting is write more. And the only way they can imagine writing more is to describe stuff. So they’ll say what can you tell me the color of the person’s eyes can you tell me what color her hair is right and then the kid goes back and write the color of the eyes and the color hair add seven words and suddenly in their mind the story is no better when my mind is probably worse because the color of the eyes and the hair were not relevant to the story the kid understood that. But now their teacher is forcing them to pick eye color even though it doesn’t matter to the story and the result is we get a lot of writers in the world who overwrite. Who don’t have any confidence in writing and don’t really have a process that works for them you know rather than allowing writers to figure out the best process for themselves which is some people plan. And some people just come up with a premise and begin writing and, you know, what the hell is going to happen, which is my process, right? I just, I come up with a premise or a question really for my fiction. And then I just write, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t have any plan. Right. And until I figured that was my way of writing, I was stuck because I was stuck with the way people taught me how to write, which is make an outline, make a list of characters, explore the ideas before you begin writing. That’s a perfect way for me to murder every book. Right. But I didn’t know that for a long time until I figured it out. I didn’t figure it out though, because teachers don’t actually write. And so, you know, as an elementary school teacher, what I try to do is undo a lot of the things that my kids suffer from also kids don’t like to write. And it’s because we create these onerous conditions under which they have to write. Like you can’t start a new thing until you finish the old thing. Whereas any writer I know has never worked under those conditions in their life.
Every writer I know has a book. and then another book on the side, and then an article they’re writing for a newspaper or a magazine. And notebooks of other ideas. Right, yeah. And I’m always asked, how do you handle writer’s block? I’m like, I don’t have writer’s block. I have nine things going at the same time. One of those things is going to spark my imagination on a given day. You get writer’s block if you’re forced to write one thing at one time, which is what teachers do all the time. So as a teacher, I just see the tragedy in how writing is taught only because the people who are teaching writing don’t actually write.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s very true. it’s not just perceptive, but applicable to the business world as well, because we bring all of those bad habits. And even writers, you know, are doing the same thing, you know, professional writers, hired to write are still suffering from a lot of those same habits.
Matthew Dicks: Yeah, even like, It’s, it’s amazing to me that how ineffective the business world is. I was working with the vice president of marketing for a company that you have probably already touched today, at least once. And she was getting ready to give a keynote and I gave her feedback on the keynote that she had written and I gave her positive feedback. And at some point she said, you don’t have to compliment me. Just tell me what’s wrong. I don’t need your compliments. And I said, those are not compliments. That’s called positive feedback. I’m giving it to you because I want to tell you what you’re doing well, so you continue to do it and perhaps even do it more consistently.
There’s two ways to change behavior. One is to tell you what you’re doing wrong and have you change it. But the other is to tell you what you’re doing right and increase the rate at which you’re doing it. I’m increasing the rate at which you’re doing the right things. That isn’t a way to create change. And she said to me, I’ve never thought of it that way. And no one’s ever told me that before. And then when we were done, you know, with the keynote process, she said, I think I’m going to do performance reviews differently than I’ve ever done them before. Cause I usually just tell people how they have to improve. I’ve never told them what they’re doing well. And I bet if they don’t know what they’re doing, well, they might not be doing it anymore, like next year. And I say, yeah, and that’s the thing that teachers understand. And weirdly, it seems to me it doesn’t make it into leadership at a corporate level where it’s absolutely essential if we’re going to improve people’s performance.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about writing books. I think there’s some pretty big differences between fiction, nonfiction. You know, you’ve done both and I think done both very well. What is the process when you sit down to write a work of fiction? How is it different from when you sit down to write a book like Stories Sell?
Matthew Dicks: So I tell people that nonfiction, whether it’s biography, memoir, or, you know, uh, an instructive book, like story. So I, I view that as a puzzle, meaning I have all the material already. You know, I know what I want to say. I might not know the order and I don’t know how I want to say it, but I basically have what I need to convey to my audience in front of me. And so the puzzle aspect of it is what order should it be in? You know, how much should I lean on one idea or another? What examples am I going to use? What evidence am I going to provide? But essentially everything’s in a big pile and I’m sorting. I’m sorting to figure out the best way to present it.
Fiction is discovery for me. Fiction is what if imaginary friends were real, but only the imaginer could see that real being. What would that be? I have no idea what else is going to happen in that story. And I begin writing and I write to an ending that I somehow find. through a combination of creativity, and I suspect some subconscious doing some work for me that I’m not aware of, and some dead ends that need to be chopped off and rerouted and things like that. But fiction is invention, whereas nonfiction is not invention. It is you’ve got a whole pile of stuff. What’s the best way to say it? And that applies for everything. That’s an email that I need to email to a client, you know, Oh, I want to pitch a, you know, they, they want me to pitch a proposal on a talk I’m going to do. Right. I know what I have to say. I just have to figure out, do I tell them the price up front? Do I tell them that later? Right. What do I, what do I, how do I want to make the argument that they should have me come out? How do I tell them that I, you know, I, I want to fly first class. Like these are all things I already know, and I have to just find the best way to do it. And so I love that puzzle aspect of storytelling and of that nonfiction because as much as I love invention, I really do love staring at facts and trying to organize them in the most effective way.
Rob Marsh: And when you’re writing a novel, I mean, it sounds like you’re discovering it as you write. Do you do any kind of plotting or outlining as you go? Or is it, it’s literally coming out of your fingers?
Matthew Dicks: It’s coming out of my fingers. The best way, more than half of the writers in the world and the novelists write this way. Yeah. Uh, and the best way it was described to me by a novelist was it’s kind of like we’re driving down a road and the headlights are on and we can see just in front of the car, but no further, you know? And so a lot of times when I’m writing a novel, it’s almost like reading it while I’m writing it. My wife has caught me crying at the end of a novel as I’m writing it. And it’s not because I’m sad about what’s going to happen. I’m sad about what is happening. Cause I’m surprised by the ending of the novel. Like it surprises me in the same way it would surprise a reader. And that has happened to me over and over and over again, where I never saw it coming and then it was there and somehow all the pieces were there. And I have to assume like my brain’s just doing some work that I’m not aware of on a conscious level. And then some of it is sort of creativity and maybe a little magic happening at the same time.
But there are novelists who plot out and mystery writers for sure. plot out because they have to sort of like leave the clues and the red herrings to go along the way. But someone who is not writing that kind of a book, many of us are just starting with a premise and seeing where it goes. In fact, I think one of the things that is difficult is when you have a premise and you’re trying to envision what’s going to happen and you can’t figure it out, I think that thinking about your book counts for almost nothing. I think that most of the stuff actually happens when you’re writing, when the fingers are on the keys. I told my daughter the other day, I said, I have an idea for a book. And I told her the idea and she said, that’s a great beginning, but then what? And I said, Oh, that doesn’t matter. And she goes, Oh, how’s it gonna like, you know, it was sort of like a weird, world that someone suddenly experienced. She said, well, what’s the explanation for that phenomenon? And I said, I don’t know. I’d have to figure it out when I start writing. And she says, aren’t you afraid you’re not going to figure it out? And I said, no, it always, it always works. I write on faith and it seems to work. I think the problem runs, happens when people assume they need to know everything before they start writing. And, um, for a lot of people, you can’t know anything until you start writing. And that’s the case for me.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Writing as an act of faith is one of those ideas that might be relatively new to me and maybe needs to go into my homework for life tonight. Uh, who knows that’ll show up somewhere else.
Matthew Dicks: I used to be afraid the first two books I wrote, I didn’t know what the endings were going to be. And I was a little nervous that there would be no ending. And the first two ended. Like really perfectly like, wow, it’s almost like I planned it. And so after that second book, I just realized it’s always going to come to something great. And it always has. And so when you get to the end, I’m always like, wow, look how all that wrapped up so beautifully. look what I did without trying to do it, you know, so now I have the faith that no matter what I start, it will land in a good place.
Rob Marsh: Okay, this is maybe a final question for you, you know, as we wrap up, but you do a lot of stuff, you’re running a business, you know, consulting with companies, you’re writing novels, you’re writing books, like story sell, you’re a teacher, you have a family that you spend significant amounts of time with, What does your day look like? How do you structure your day so that you’re getting all of this stuff done?
Matthew Dicks: Well, the question I love to ask people, I’ll ask you, do you know what the meaning of the number 1,440 is?
Rob Marsh: Minutes in a week. Or minutes in a day?
Matthew Dicks: So my day is structured by that number, meaning I just take advantage of every minute I have. And so the structure is not sort of consistent on a day to day basis, except for the fact that I get up early when no one’s bothering me and I feed the dog, I feed the cats and I, um, and the kids, I get their meals ready. And then I have an hour or two of quiet time where I write a blog post. I’ve written a blog post every single day for the last 20 years without missing a day. That’s sort of my warmup. So I write a blog post that, you know, several thousand people read. And then I’m tackling whatever the daily project is, which is right now I have a book that’s due and I’ve got to finish the revision. So that’s the primary job. But if I wake up and I decide I don’t want to do that because I’m not feeling it, I’ll look at my to-do list and go, all right, well, I have to write this email from my business partner and I’m working on a picture book. So maybe, you know, so I’m, I’m constantly looking for the, the thing that sparks my interest alongside the thing that has to be done. And I’m taking advantage of every minute. So before, you know, before I clicked on this podcast, I was sitting here and I had three minutes. I looked up and I said, okay, it’s 57 minutes after the hour. I have three minutes. And rather than doom scrolling on my phone or, or anything else that would have been a total waste of time. I wrote a thank you note that I needed to write. So I have thank you notes next to me at all times. I wrote a thank you note, put it in the envelope and now it’s ready to go in those three minutes. And I took advantage of those minutes rather than wasting them. And I think most people waste those minutes and I just prioritize them.
Rob Marsh: Maybe this is where Homework for Life helps you recognize the importance of time and it becomes easier to have that kind of discipline around everything.
Matthew Dicks: Yeah. I mean, if you go and watch a Ted talk I did called live life, like your a hundred year old self, there was a moment in my life when a gun was put to my head and the trigger was pulled and I was certain my life was over and. You know, it was the worst moment of my life and also the most fortunate moment in my life. Cause from that moment on, I have lived relentlessly. You know, there is not, there is not a time in the day when I am not being purposeful and the use of my time. And that doesn’t mean I can’t kick back. and watch television with my wife or purposefully sit on a couch and pet a cat and do nothing else. But I’m not allowing time to be dithered away or stolen by outside forces. I am always actively choosing how to spend my time so that if a asteroid crashes into the house right now and ends my life, I know that every minute of my day was spent purposefully, if not productively, at least in a way that I felt was good for me as a human being.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. That’s maybe a great way to end Matthew. You know, you’ve got a couple of resources online that people can check out your own email list. Where is that? Where should they go? And of course we’ll link to everything in the show notes as well.
Matthew Dicks: That’s great. Uh, well they can, if they’re interesting at storytelling, they can go to story worthy.com where I have lots of resources that they can check out. They can just go to Matthew dicks.com too. If you want to see all of my stuff, my books and my blog and all of those kinds of things. But those two places will get you everything.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, and I’m going to, again, say Story Cell is a fantastic book. Every content writer, copywriter should have a copy of it. Maybe they should have it on audio and a physical copy so they can listen to it a couple of times because, again, your strategies, your application for this is so useful and it’s so easily doable for, you know, you don’t need a PhD to figure this stuff out and you make it very doable. So thank you for that. Thank you.
Matthew Dicks: I really appreciate that.
Rob Marsh: Thanks to Matthew Dix for what was basically a master class in storytelling. I’m not going to repeat very much of what Matthew said. I don’t have a lot to add to that. He covered it so well. However, I do want to mention that often what we talk about when we talk about telling stories in copy aren’t actually stories, especially when you’re writing email. Sometimes what we write about are events. We did mention that earlier in this episode. Sometimes they’re anecdotes. Sometimes it’s something as simple as the least boring thing that happened to you today. Strictly speaking, as Matthew shared, these don’t meet the definition of a story that we talked about today, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not useful or that you need to always add a moment of transformation. But when you are writing one of these not quite stories, it might be worth taking the time to ask, what would make this a better story? Is there something that I learned from this thing that happened? Is there a moment of transformation that I can share that conveys the point that I want to make? You may not have one, and that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use it in an email or use it to illustrate a point in a presentation or a blog post or even in a sales page. But if you can find one, your story and communication effectiveness is going to be so, so much better.
I also want to mention, again, something that Matthew mentioned, that we just kind of went over quickly. And that’s the importance of being entertaining. That doesn’t mean that you have to be funny. There are lots of different ways to be entertaining. But it does mean that you have to catch attention and hold it. Stories for sure help and maybe even be the best way to hold attention. But make sure that what you write is something that your reader can’t turn away from. It’s so important if you want to be a successful copywriter. And again, Matthew shared a couple of ideas for doing that. So go back and listen to this episode for more of that. I want to thank Matthew Dix again for spending the last hour with me. We mentioned several of his books, Storyworthy and Stories Sell are particularly useful for copywriters, content writers, other marketers. We’ve linked to both of those in the show notes for this episode, and you should definitely add them to your bookshelf. Matthew also has a bunch of resources at his website storyworthy.com. And as he mentioned, there’s links to everything that he does at matthewdix.com.
During our interview, Matthew mentioned that he has this novel that’s pretty much a bunch of lists. My wife gave me this for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve linked to that in the show notes also, in case you’re interested in checking that out. And like I said, there’s just a bunch of links in the show notes for this episode that you’re definitely going to want to click on and see what’s there.
Be sure also to visit thecopywriteraccelerator.com to find out more about our program designed to help you build a resilient, successful copywriting business. This is the only time the Accelerator is going to be open in 2024. It will probably be until fall of 2025 that we run it again.
We’ve talked a lot about emails on the podcast lately. And for the 406th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed ConvertKit’s Creator Growth Manager, Morgan Kitzmiller about newsletters, referral tools, and how to use email service providers like ConvertKit in ways you might not have thought of before. There’s a lot of good stuff in this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:ConvertKit
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: We’ve talked a lot about email on the podcast over the last ten or fifteen episodes. How to write them. How to make sure the emails you write end up in your reader’s inbox. How to add personality and sell with emails. In today’s episode, we’re going deeper into how to work with an email service provider to do more with your emails.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with Morgan Kitzmiller. Morgan is the Creator Growth Manager at ConvertKit. And she’s the owner of her own business, Root and Rise. Morgan works with creators to help them grow their audiences and their businesses. We talked about how to use automations and other tools to make email a bigger part of what copywriters do. And we talked in depth about what’s going on with newsletters… which tools like substack, beehiiv and convertkit are making so easy to start and run as a business. We covered a lot of ground in this interview, so make sure you stick around for all of it.
Before we hear what Morgan had to share…
You’ve heard me talk about The Copywriter Underground often on the podcast. Along with the monthly coaching, weekly copy critiques, the community and courses you get as a member, each month we bring in a special guest to go in-depth on a business or copywriting topic. This August 14, copywriter Francis Nayan who was a recent guest on the podcast will join us in The Underground to share the ins and outs of what we’re calling the one-email-a-day business. He’s going to break down his business model and show you how to sell digital products with a daily email. It can be a great way to diversify your income and if you want to work with fewer clients, what Francis will be sharing could be pivital to creating a business that supports you and your lifestyle. To join us for this workshop. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu and sign up.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Morgan Kitzmiller.
Okay, Morgan, welcome to The Copywriter Club. We like to start with your story. So tell us, how did you become the creator growth manager at ConvertKit? And I suppose it’s probably connected to this business that you built for yourself, Root & Rise, as well.
Morgan Kitzmiller: So actually, kind of the other way around, I built Root & Rise as a result of being involved and working with ConvertKit for a long time. Starting off at the beginning, this takes us back eight years ago. I had graduated college and was looking for new opportunities. I was an art major. I did not want to go into the art world and was just learning about different jobs or things that were out there. And I stumbled upon ConvertKit. Learn that they were hiring and really growing up the team in many ways at that point in time that was like 2016 was when Nathan our CEO hired a ton of new people like I believe the team went from. maybe four people, four or five people at the beginning of that year to closer to 20-ish by the end of that year. So there was a ton of growth in the company that year. And when I learned about ConvertKit at the time, the tagline was email marketing for bloggers. And that was a world that I had definitely consumed a lot of content in, not a world that I was directly a part of myself. I did not consider myself a blogger, did consider myself a creative being an art major. And just got really intrigued with the mission of serving bloggers, serving creators, and went through the interview process to join the team as a on the customer success team. So I was doing support at the beginning.
Then after not even a year of doing support, I transitioned into migrations, where I helped our new large customers migrate over and get started using ConvertKit. And then a couple years into that transitioned over into account management. And then I want to say, A year and a half ago, we rebranded Account Manager to Creator Growth Manager because we felt that fit more of what we do at ConvertKit. Really, our mission is to help creators grow, help them build an engaged audience, help them monetize, help them really find success doing what they love every day in whatever facet that looks like for each different creator. And the story with the root and rise there is that like when I first joined even back eight years ago, the team was built of creators. So regardless of where people were in the company, if they were in marketing, if they were in success, if they were engineers, people across the entire company were creators themselves. They had side hustles. They had businesses. People were in lots of different stages of their creator journey. But a lot of people had their own projects and had their own things that they were working on. And I always wanted something like that for myself. And it took me four years of working at ConvertKit, being inspired by the creators that I work with every single day, to realize that I had this passion for fitness, wellness, for helping women specifically, build sustainable, healthy lives that they can actually keep, or sustainable, healthy habits they can actually keep to lead long, healthy lives.
And so Root & Rise was born as a result of being inspired by the work we do at ConvertKit and by the people on my team that were creators themselves, and then also by working with so many creators. So Root & Rise is just a little side hustle that I have, but that’s the story. That’s how that all got started.
Rob Marsh: We may come back to Root & Rise because I’m sure that you can give me some advice on how I stick with those habits. Totally. Yeah, let’s talk about creators and this whole evolution with newsletters. Before we started recording, I mentioned a couple of the other newsletter companies that have really gotten popular and people are talking about them. And I’ve seen ConvertKit create some new tools. And in fact, I think you guys just launched a plan a few weeks ago for newsletters that like, I think it’s 10,000 subscribers for free. It’s a pretty cool plan. Tell us about what’s going on in the newsletter industry right now.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah, I think just in the industry as a whole over the last few years, like, I mean, like I said, I’ve been working with creators for eight years now. I’ve been working at ConvertKit for eight years. With people all across the board, that could be people with newsletters, people that have had newsletters for that amount of time. And there were also people that haven’t necessarily had newsletters, but maybe they were just still relying on email to sell their products, services, courses, you name it. But I think as we’ve seen some of these other players step up into the newsletter space, we’ve just seen the rise of publishing, writing online. I think COVID was also a pretty big Component in this of people were stuck at home people wanted something to spend their time in. And people were also finding more success online, growing their audiences. We also saw the rise of TikTok during that time.
There were so many things that happened during that time where I think a lot of people really just saw what was possible to be a creator, to grow an audience, to make money by publishing your writing and cultivating an engaged audience and building relationships through publishing. Yeah, now with now with a lot of big players in the game, we’re just seeing that become more and more popular. And our newsletter plan that we just launched free up to 10,000 subscribers, we really created that so that there’s a really low barrier to entry for people that want to get started. And even with 10,000 subscribers, like, I don’t think I’ve seen so many people, even with lists of 1,000 subscribers, build multiple six-figure businesses, make millions of dollars. I don’t think list size is necessarily correlated to the amount of success that you have. I think there’s so many different components that go into the success that you see. And so us creating that is just like opening the door for so many people to get started, to really invest in their creator business, whether they’re just starting off or whether they’ve been in it for a while and they have less than 10,000 subscribers, they can still send all of those emails for free.
Rob Marsh: So newsletters are having a moment, but email’s not new. How do you guys see the difference between email and newsletters? Because, I mean, they’re kind of the same, but they’re also kind of different.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Totally. So If we’re looking at the entire email landscape and we’re looking at just emails, well, there’s emails that you write with other people, between people in your inbox, right? If I’m going to go email you, we can have a conversation about something. That’s going to be a one-to-one transaction. When we’re looking at using an email service provider like ConvertKit, Substack, Beehive, some of the other people that you mentioned, it allows us to send emails from one to many. The other also really incredible benefit of email is that compared to social media, especially when we send emails, we do know that they are going to get delivered to the inboxes of our subscribers. As long as we are taking care of and implementing deliverability best practices and we’re not sending spam, we don’t have some of these other things in the mix. Just wanted to find that like there is so much benefit in email because we know that our emails are making it to inboxes of our subscribers. Whereas when we’re relying more on social media, we can’t guarantee that a post is going to make it to somebody’s feed given the way that algorithms really control who we reach nowadays.
Now breaking down email newsletters versus other types of emails that you can send, there’s value across the board in all of it. Like if we’re looking at newsletters specific, I think really the value comes down to a lot of people that are really succeeding in the newsletter space. They’re sending something that is extremely valuable. They are sending it consistently on a specific day, on a specific time. They’re following a pretty consistent format. They’re speaking to their experience or at a targeted audience. They’re solving their audience’s pain points. They’re answering their questions. They’re filling a need. And I also think it’s landing in their inbox. So people are already spending time in their inbox. They’re catching up on their emails and doing it through written word really allows you to connect with the readers on the other side. So that’s going to be like a lot of the benefits of newsletters specifically. When we look at all of the other types of emails that you’re still able to send via an email service provider, that is one too many. There’s endless value and immense value in all of those other types of emails. I could talk about this all day, but when somebody subscribes, we can give subscribers an opportunity to opt in for a specific freebie or opt-in incentive. We can then send that out automatically to them, so they opt in, they subscribe, give us their email, and then I’m able to, on the back end of an email service provider like ConvertKit or others, send them that freebie immediately. They get the thing to their inbox, engage with it, and then from that point forward, we can determine what happens next in their subscriber journey. So maybe we then send them a welcome sequence. That could be a handful of emails that’s offering more value related to the thing that they opted in for. We could tell more of our story.
Telling stories can really create engagement between the email writer or the creator and the subscribers on the other side. And then we can send them automated emails that are upselling them to our products and services. After they purchase our products and services, we can send them emails that are going to nurture them with the thing that they had purchased from us. So There’s so much value in all of those other types of emails that you can automatically send as well. And then there’s also the value in sending a newsletter, which is more of like a thing that regularly appears in somebody’s inbox on a specific day in a specific time.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. I think to me, it’s the specificity of the consistent schedule and the targeted audience problem that we’re talking about, is I think about newsletters. Obviously, yeah, welcome sequences, abandoned card sequences, those have been popular for decades. Actually, so I have newsletters, but because of the new tools like what ConvertKit and others are building, Like I said, they seem to have a bit of a moment. And I think part of that is around the value of the content that’s being provided. Like you said, part of it is the fact that it’s guaranteed to show up. But a lot of people have started charging for them. So let’s talk about paid newsletters for a minute. Because again, before we start talking, you’re mentioning there are various kinds of newsletters that people are sending out. So maybe we should just kind of talk through some of those options. A lot of listeners to this program have their own list and we’ll email them, some of them very consistently, some of them every once in a while, you know, inconsistently as busy business owners tend to be. But let’s just talk through some of those options.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Totally. Yeah, I think if you are a creator, you’re a business owner, I think the one of the best things that you can do for your audience is to send some sort of consistent email, whether that is one time a month, whether that is one time every two weeks, whether that is one time a week to determine the cadence that works for you. And then Make sure that you’re showing up for your audience in that way. You’re setting the expectations and that you’re providing the value when you do that. That’s going to be more on like the, I’m going to schedule a newsletter and I’m going to send it on a specific day on a specific time type of email sending. We also have paid newsletters. So paid newsletters are often, I mean, it’s a digital, it’s a digital product, essentially. And so people think of paid newsletters in many different ways. We’ve seen paid newsletters where somebody’s sending out an email, maybe it’s every single day, there are paid newsletters that are going out every single week, that maybe they are a more long-form piece of content, maybe they’re offering value that exceeds the other types of emails or newsletters that they may be sending. Sometimes people have both. Sometimes people have a free newsletter, but then the paid newsletter is where they go into something deeper. Maybe they are doing some of the work for the subscriber. Maybe they are viewing the paid newsletter as more of a a course. Maybe it’s more of a deep dive on a specific topic. Maybe they’re doing a bunch of research and they’re presenting people with different opportunities. There’s so many different ways to think about paid newsletters.
But essentially, it’s just taking some sort of free offering that you have, whether that’s on social media or a free newsletter, and then you are making it a digital product that is delivered, again, at a specific cadence, on a specific day, and every so often. So maybe it’s weekly, bi-weekly, maybe it’s once a month. But because people are paying for it, you do have to offer that extra value. You do have to get people to buy. Taking a paid newsletter one step further, we’ve also seen people set up paid evergreen newsletters. So this could be something where I’m saying, hey, opt into my let’s say 12 week paid newsletter on improving your health and fitness, um, or creating a sustainable, healthy lifestyle that you can actually keep. Whatever the thing is that I’m selling, I could say, opt in for this paid newsletter every single, every single week, you’re going to get one email that is doing a deep dive on a specific topic. That’s going to help you achieve your goals and live a balanced life and live in freedom or whatever the tagline is that I’m selling. And again, this is a digital product that would be delivered though, based on the time of subscription.
So if it’s an evergreen newsletter, people can buy at any time. And then the emails that would be sent out would go out based on the time that they purchase. So it’s evergreen. Somebody could buy today and start their 12 emails. Somebody could buy in six months and start their 12 emails then. The key to creating evergreen content, though, is that it is always relevant. I can’t create a New Year’s challenge that stays relevant in June. And so really thinking about if you do want to lean into creating something that’s a little bit more automated, still in an email based newsletter type format, but doesn’t need to go out on January 1st, January 7th, January 14th. You can lean into that automated format, but it does need to stay relevant to your audience whenever they purchase.
Rob Marsh: So thinking through this, I mean, I guess, you know, four or five years ago, we’d say that this was an email course. But I think that a lot of newsletters now have additional tools that make it less only text only, I guess, is what I’m thinking through. being able to link off to videos or even include videos in some of what’s provided when they come back. Tell us a little bit about like how you see that part of it. So it’s, you know, again, we’re not just sending somebody a long email. Yeah, it’s valuable, but it’s all text. What else can we do with that?
Morgan Kitzmiller: Totally. Yeah. One of the features I love that we have at ConvertKit, I don’t think anybody else in the space has these features yet, but that totally could have changed. We do have the ability to add a YouTube video or a video directly to the email and that video can play within the editor. So let’s say I want to create 12 videos that accompany my 12 emails that are in this automated newsletter that’s going to go out. I could publish those or upload them to YouTube, keep them unpublished, link to them into my email newsletter, and then people would be able to receive the newsletter, watch the video directly within their email. So they’re not clicking on something, taking them out of the email. They can watch it directly in the email and then hopefully they stay engaged with your content and then they keep reading the content that may come after that as well. That’s one way that I’ve really, I love recommending that to different creators because I think With more people leaning into newsletters, people leaning into the email space, you have to think of ways that your product, your digital product, your newsletter is going to stand out.
I do think video content adds an extra layer of authenticity. It can help really increase engagement with the subscribers on the other side. When people see your face, hear your voice, they come to know you, like you, and they want to learn from you more. I also think it’s important to look at what other, like before somebody goes ahead and creates a paid newsletter of any sort, look at what other people are doing and think of ways that you can stand out. Think of ways that you can offer something new or different to your audience, think of ways that you can utilize this medium to create more engagement with them. We also just released an in email polls feature. I know a lot of other people in the space have that feature as well. But that could be something where like, in my first email, again, going back to the example of a 12 week automated newsletter on creating a healthy lifestyle that I can actually keep. You can have a poll in there that says, hey, I want to know. And it’s like. It’s has a really great design when you like hover over each answer, they kind of change colors. So like you really get to interact with this poll in the email and you could say, hey, I want to know what your biggest struggle is when it comes to health and fitness right now. Are you struggling with food? Are you struggling to Go to the gym. Are you struggling with your mindset? Like let me know what your biggest struggle is. Click here and then people can click on that and then that allows you to also learn more about your audience, understand their needs, their struggles, and then you can send them more targeted information later on.
Or if you want to get really fancy and take things one step further and ConvertKit specifically, you can add different sections to your emails that are conditional content, that contain conditional content. So let’s say somebody told me that their biggest struggle was around food. Every single email for that 12 weeks, I could include a special tip that spoke directly to the people who told me they were struggling with food. And so I think that customization, understanding more about your audience and then serving them more content that is relevant and specific to where they’re at, to the things that they’re struggling with, to the questions that they have, can really help you stand out and can help you, again, build more of that engagement, help them get the results they’re after, help them achieve their goals, those sorts of things.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you about this stuff is because for, especially for beginner course creators or information product sellers, whatever that looks like, this is extremely valuable. It almost eliminates the need for something like Kajabi in order to host all of this stuff. Obviously, people can share emails, and so some of that conditional stuff that, you know, if you make it conditional that they’re tagged properly, that it’s the right person, can help control some of that distribution. But this could literally save a beginning content creator thousands of dollars a year until they can build up enough of a base to want to move to those bigger tools.
Morgan Kitzmiller: 100% that is actually in my creator business in root and rise. I sell digital products. I have a monthly membership. So not necessarily a newsletter. It is delivered via email, but I wanted the lowest barrier to entry. Because I don’t have tons of customers right now, I don’t have tons of clients right now, and I didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars a month for platforms that maybe I didn’t need because I could do everything that I needed using ConvertKit by sending out my product every single month to my customers and including videos, uploading things and delivering them as if they were a course, but not relying on a course platform and not having to invest so much money up front when I’m not ready to do so.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, okay. So now we’ve sort of established, yeah, newsletters are good. Paid newsletters can be, you know, a real boon to your business. The biggest problem with growing an email list or a newsletter list of any kind, though, is getting the word out. So, you know, paying for people to, you know, having an ad, paid ad that drives people to your landing page for lead magnet or whatever, that tends to be the way if it’s not organically done through social media or whatever. But a lot of email companies or newsletter platforms like Kit, ConvertKit, are adding in other growth tools. So talk to us about some of these growth tools and how you guys actually can help creators to grow their lists, you know, in addition to the efforts that they’re putting in, you know, with maybe paid ads or their own social engagement.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah, totally. So last year we launched what’s called the Creator Network, and that is a network of creators using ConvertKit. Specifically, right now that’s just inside ConvertKit, but our goal is to build that out so it is an open network. we launched the Creator Network where you can connect with other creators so that you can all grow your audiences together. So the idea behind it is that a rising tide lifts all boats and we can grow faster by collaborating with other people and by getting more exposure through other people’s audiences. So technically this is a little hard to explain without having the visual component. But basically, if you connect with other creators in the Creator Network, let’s say I go out and I find four other people who are in the personal growth and development space. There’s other people that maybe they’re around the same size as me. We’re at the beginning of our creator journey. We’re getting some growth, but we’re not growing as quickly as we’d like. I could go out and partner with all of these people and say, hey, I noticed you’re using ConvertKit. I would love to recommend my subscribers to you if you want to recommend your subscribers to me. I think we complement each other with our content. And I think it would make a great partnership. And if we create those collaborations, we create those partnerships and connect in the creator network. Basically, if somebody goes to my website, they opt in for my freebie. After somebody gives me their email address and they hit subscribe, a modal is going to appear where it says, hey, thanks for subscribing. These are five other creators, four or five other creators that I recommend you check out their content as well because they’re great. They’ll help you in these ways. And from that point, subscribers can choose to subscribe to those emails, those newsletters from those other creators or not. And if they do, their email address automatically goes to the other people that I’ve partnered with in the creator network. The goal is that all of those other people that I’m recommending are then recommending me back and we can all grow together at the same time.
Rob Marsh: Is that a paid referral? I know Substack, Beehive, they have similar tools where it costs a dollar or two per referral that you get back. Is it the same thing in ConvertKit or is it just you scratch my back, I scratch yours?
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah, so in the Creator Network, we have a thing called free recommendations, and then there’s also a paid recommendation side. So everything that I just explained is totally free. You can partner with other creators at absolutely no cost, just in that collaborative spirit of, I want to recommend my subscribers to you, you’re going to recommend your subscribers to me, and we’re all going to grow our audiences faster. We see the most success there when people do form intentional pods of creators. That’s what we call them pods of people that do have complimentary content. It doesn’t need to be the same. I probably don’t want to go recommend five other fitness coaches, but I might want to go find somebody that is really into mindset. Maybe I find somebody that is into nutrition, maybe I have somebody that’s like a hormone specialist, things that really complement my audience and help them learn and grow and develop in related topics so that they’re more likely to stay subscribed. That’s going to be on the free side. On the paid side, last year we also acquired SparkLoop and SparkLoop has two sides of the paid side of recommendations. If we go back to the Creator Network. If I’m somebody that’s just getting started, maybe I’m seeing some growth but not a ton, or maybe I’m somebody that I do want to invest more money in ads, I could join other people what we call their partner programs. If somebody creates a partner program, that’s them saying, hey, I want to pay other creators, let’s say $1, $2, $3 for every engaged subscriber that they send me so that I can pay to build my newsletter that or grow my email list that way. This is pretty confusing just to explain via words. But as somebody just getting started, I could say, OK, maybe I want to run paid ads to my landing page. I’m going to join five people’s partner programs who are paying for subscribers. If I’m running paid ads to my landing page, the modal appears. I could have all five slots enabled on that recommendations modal. B, people that are paying for subscribers so that if my subscribers then that are coming in through ads join those other people’s email lists, they end up staying subscribed, then I will get paid for those and that can help offset the cost of my ads. That ads example is like just one way that that’s being used. We do see people that are growing organically. Utilize paid recommendations just as a means to add an additional revenue stream as well but then there’s the side of paid recommendations where you are the one creating the partner program, where you’re the one specifying in SparkLoop, hey, I really want to grow my email list. I’m willing to pay $1, $2, $3, whatever your price point is for subscribers. And then there are the other people on the other end that say, OK, I’m going to join this person’s partner program because I think my subscribers will join their thing and then they will get paid. Does that make sense? I know it’s confusing how they overlap and how they work together.
Rob Marsh: Definitely makes sense. And I want to sort of underline this idea, though, to make it really clear. It’s not always that you’re paying for subscribers to your list. If you’ve got a good list, you can get paid for sharing those. So like you said, it becomes another income stream. Obviously, if you’ve got 10 subscribers, there’s not a huge opportunity there. But if you’re able to build a list of, you know, 10,000 or 100,000, This could actually become decent monthly revenue for you as an email newsletter provider.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Exactly, 100%. And one great thing, especially about it in ConvertKit, let’s say I want to lean into both facets. Maybe I want to lean into the collaborative spirit of the Creator Network, but I also want to make a few bucks from some of the subscribers that I’m sending to other people. In my recommendations modal, I could specify maybe the first two people are going to be intentional collaborations with other creators where I’m saying, OK, always keep these two people at the top of my recommendations modal. Then maybe I have three other people in there that are paying for subscribers. And so you really do have the customization, the flexibility to do both. If you want to, you can choose one or the other. We do have people that are going like all in on either side, but you really can do both. And you it’s up to you. where those people appear in the recommendations that you are giving to your subscribers.
Rob Marsh: OK, that makes sense. And then with SparkLoop, there are also at least last time I looked at SparkLoop, I haven’t looked at it for a little while, but there are ways where rather than even paying for subscribers, you can give incentives for your own subscribers to start recommending you out to their friends and family. Right. Tell us a little bit about that, how that works.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah, so that’s going to be more of a referral program. So I could say, okay, if you refer one subscriber to my email list, I’m going to give you maybe it’s an ebook, maybe it’s some sort of freebie. If you refer 10 subscribers to my email list, maybe you get 50% off my program. And if you refer 50 people, you get a free 15 minute call with me. You can create different tiers. in a referral program that incentivizes your subscribers on the other end to share your content with their friends, family, other people that might find your content helpful.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, so I’ve seen like some people offer a journal or a mug, so they’ll send that stuff out. Or it can be, like you said, you know, easily delivered, you know, programming or information, that kind of thing.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah, I think a lot of people when they immediately think of referral programs, I think there’s some really big players in the newsletter space that have implemented these and a lot of them do rely on physical product services, merch, mugs, t-shirts, journals, those sorts of things. And so I’ve seen people get kind of stuck into that box of, oh, I can’t create a referral program because I don’t have these sorts of things. And the way I encourage people to think about referral programs is really around What are things that your subscribers would want that you’re not offering anywhere else that would incentivize them to refer somebody to your email list? It literally could be maybe it’s content that you’ve already shared somewhere else. Maybe you take your top five performing social media posts, you turn them into writing, put them into a free five-day email course, and maybe that’s what people are getting instead. You can think of creative ways to repurpose content that you’ve shared other places into something that’s new, different, that is exclusive and limited to the referral program, and then offer it that way. Thinking about what’s going to incentivize at different tiers, obviously, the more referrals you have to send, the more valuable it needs to be. That’s why I mentioned something like, maybe it’s a free call, maybe it’s a free audit of somebody’s something on the other side. Maybe it’s something just like really highly personal that you would offer But you have to think is somebody actually gonna go refer 50 or 100 email subscribers, like, that seems like a really large number to wrap your head around. But one thing I will say is, we just hosted our annual conference craft and commerce at the beginning of June. And john you say he’s a YouTube creator that just started his own newsletter as well. He was up on stage with Nathan, our CEO, and they were doing like a fireside chat of just going back and forth on different questions, topics. And John had posed a question to the audience, and he said, OK, if I’m creating a referral program, he was kind of like using the audience to get live feedback on what his referral program should look like and what people would actually be incentivized to do. So number one takeaway there is if you’re not sure what would be an incentive for your audience, ask them. That’s a great way to figure out what do you want to create. Start asking your audience. But he literally said, okay, if I’m going to do for YouTube specifically, I’m going to roast somebody’s YouTube video or roast somebody’s YouTube channel. How many subscribers would you refer to unlock a personal roast of your content? And some people said 100, which was crazy. Like there was a lot of hands that went up in the audience where people were willing to recommend 100 subscribers for a personal roast from this specific creator. And so I’m not saying everybody should create a referral program where 100 is the top tier. That’s a lot of people to refer. But if the offer is good enough, if the thing is that personal, that impactful, it really could incentivize people to refer their friends to your email list.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. Especially if the people that you are offering this to have their own large lists, it can be very easy, you know, for somebody to just drop a little footnote in and say, Hey, I highly recommend Rob’s email list. You’re going to love this. People click over. So thinking through those, those kinds of incentives, obviously not for everyone, but there are definitely people out there who can do it.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Totally. And in this specific example, when I look back to why so many people said they would refer 100 people, our conference is comprised of creators, of other business owners, entrepreneurs, many of which do have followings across different social media channels or email lists themselves. So then when you think about that, just like you said, of, okay, it gets easier to refer people when you already have that following, when you have that list, when you have that reach. For some people that might not have that, then it makes it harder.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So you just need to know your audience. And obviously as you grow, more opportunities come your way. What other growth strategies should we be thinking about if we’re going to start or we have a newsletter, we want to keep it growing?
Morgan Kitzmiller: Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, like I said, Creator Network, start start partnering with other people outside of the Creator Network. This is something I’m saying this out loud because I’m saying it to myself at the same time for my side hustle. But partnering with other people, collaborating with other people outside of just recommendations for your email list, create content with other people, appear on other people’s podcasts, like really get involved with other people in your space. I think when I go to my social media channels, at least, and I’m looking at, okay, who are the people that are really succeeding in the health, wellness, fitness space? I look at their feeds and I see them with the other 5, 10, 15 people in the space that I look up to as well. And so I think that is the same with people in the newsletter space as well. When we look at the people, individual creators at least, that are really succeeding, they are a part of these communities and these circles, friend groups that are all succeeding. And so I think the more you can build relationships with and collaborate with other people, in person on different projects, um, on, on different things and really, really lean into those relationships. I think you’re going to be more likely to be successful because you can also go to some of those people and say, Hey, I just launched this new freebie. That’s something I’ll talk, I’ll share next, but I just launched this new thing. Would you mind sharing it with your audience? Um, if you have those relationships, those people in your space that are willing to lift you up and support you, you can reach so many more people. Um, on that same note, I think it’s important to think about how are we getting people onto our email list? Are we really incentivizing them to join? There’s so many times where I go to somebody’s website and the call to action to join the email list is a simple statement that says, subscribe to my newsletter. Yeah. And there’s no value proposition. There’s no explanation of why somebody should join a newsletter. And I think maybe it’s like when I look at some form builders, it’s like join my newsletter is like the default text that’s in there. So maybe people just don’t update that. But even if it is just a newsletter, how can we give two sentences a sentence that demonstrates the value of the impact that somebody is going to receive by subscribing to that newsletter? So if we go back to my example of health and wellness, if I had a newsletter and I wanted to spruce that up to get somebody to subscribe, instead of just saying subscribe to my newsletter, I could say subscribe to my newsletter to end the binge and restrict cycle, and to finally create a lifestyle that you enjoy waking up to every day. Like, how can we really paint a picture for somebody on the other side? How can we speak to their pain points and needs so that they see the value in subscribing? They’re not just subscribing to get a newsletter. How can we tell them what they’re going to learn so that they actually want to give us their email? If we take that one step further, is there a way that we can provide an incentive, an opt-in incentive for people that goes beyond the newsletter? So maybe we say, subscribe to receive my free five-day email course, subscribe to receive my free ebook. Subscribe to receive this free thing that’s going to give you this transformation, and then you’ll start receiving my newsletter after. I think offering some sort of download or something that somebody is going to get can really increase that incentive that they’re given, and then also ultimately help increase their engagement as a subscriber on your list as well, if the thing you’re giving them is really providing value, which, of course, should always be the goal.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, and fortunately, most of the listeners to this podcast are copywriters, content writers, so they should be really good at identifying like, what is the transformation? What is the result that you can promise from this product? So I think the mindset shift here is to start to look at your emails that you’re sending out or your newsletter you’re sending out as a product that needs to deliver a result or a transformation as opposed to a broadcast media. And if we’re thinking that way, it becomes really easy to start figuring out what are those promises? Why should somebody sign up? Because you’re going to deliver on that promise transformation.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Exactly.
Rob Marsh: I’m not necessarily intending this to be an ad for ConvertKit, but, you know, I’ve looked across the newsletter provider universe and You guys have competitors in Beehive and Substack, and there may be some others that are starting to come out of the woodwork as well, because again, newsletters are becoming more popular. Why should somebody choose ConvertKit over some of these other platforms? Where are the benefits? I guess, what’s the result of the promise transformation for going with ConvertKit?
Morgan Kitzmiller: I think starting off with who we are and our values, we are a team, like I mentioned early on, we are a team that is comprised of creators building a product for creators. So we always say, you know, ConvertKit by creators for creators. And in being a team made up of creators, we really empathize with the creators, the business owners, entrepreneurs on the other side. We use our product ourselves. I use my product every day, our product every day in my own business. So do many of the other people on the team. And so we really utilize or we use our own experiences to inform how we want the product to operate. and where we’re going and our vision and the roadmap and everything like that. So we really empathize with the creator experience because we’re creators ourselves. So aside from by creators for creators, we I mean, ultimately, I think ConvertKit is the most intuitive email marketing platform out there. I think as creators, entrepreneurs, business owners, so many people are teams of one. There are people that are doing it all. They’re doing their social media. They are doing their email marketing. And there’s nothing more frustrating than being a creator or creator of a business owner and going into a tool and trying to achieve something and not being able to get that thing done. And I really do believe that ConvertKit is the most intuitive email marketing platform. on the market. It’s so easy to log in, create a form, embed that on your website. After you create a form, you can create an automation that welcomes your email subscribers, upsells them to your products, and nurtures them once they do purchase. It’s extremely easy to send your subscribers the right emails at the right time, because we always want to make sure that we’re meeting our subscribers where they’re at, and we’re not sending them emails that are irrelevant to their journey or their experience. Taking that one step further, like we kind of mentioned before, being able to speak to your subscribers and their struggles or things you know about them. So being able to break your audience down and communicate to people that have let you know that they’re struggling a specific thing or they want a specific thing or, you know, leaning into like the segmentation, the tagging, like you can really communicate with different smaller groups of your audience extremely easily. There’s a lot of advanced tools within ConvertKit that will unlock a lot of that personalization and automation that we’re talking about. Our deliverability, that’s one thing I absolutely want to make sure I touch on. We do have a team of deliverability experts that work every single day to maintain the deliverability of all of the customers and creators that use ConvertKit. If you don’t have great deliverability and your emails don’t get delivered, then there’s that value that I mentioned earlier of knowing your emails are going to make it to somebody’s inbox, knowing that somebody is going to see it in their inbox relative to their social media feeds. If you don’t have good deliverability, then what’s the point? Like if your emails are going to go to spam, then what’s the point? And so we do have a team of deliverability experts that work every single day to make sure that our deliverability is some of the best in the industry. And if you ever have an issue with emails going to spam or emails not being delivered or something happening related to your own email deliverability, we have a team of experts that is right there working with every single creator that comes in to troubleshoot and make sure that we can get their deliverability back because we know how important it is that emails get delivered because that’s what our entire product is based on.
Rob Marsh: I want to shift our conversation just a little bit because, again, you have some expertise in the health and wellness space. There are a lot of copywriters and content writers that spend hours sitting in a chair in the office every day. So I’m looking for some tips on how we can sort of overcome that sedentary lifestyle. But more than than just like, OK, how do we start exercising or eating right? Like, how do we stick with it? Help me with my discipline, Morgan.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah. I think when it comes to sticking with it and when it comes to consistency, it really comes down to like, are you doing things that you’re going to look forward to showing up to every single day? Like I think back to the beginning of my health, wellness, fitness journey, and a lot of it was driven by negative feelings that I had about myself. Maybe I wanted to be skinnier. Maybe I was like trying to compare myself to the people around me. Maybe I didn’t like myself at that moment in time. Because it was driven by these negative feelings or trying to look like or be somebody else, I was also doing workouts that were driven by that mindset. And I was also doing workouts and things that I didn’t like, and they were only like reinforcing those negative beliefs. So for example, I, for a very long time, I was going to spin class almost every single day. I was really focused on, let’s say burning 500 calories a spin class, which is a lot. You have to be working really hard to get that. And I would really beat myself up if I didn’t get that number. And while I still do love going to spend class every now and then, the type of exercise that I was investing in in that time was not doing anything for my mindset. And it was only reinforcing these negative beliefs that I had about myself, which also then caused me to totally yo-yo with it. So I would go all in on exercising for an amount of time. And then I would go all out. And when I would go all out, it wasn’t just with exercise, it was also with nutrition as well. So it was like these like huge swings of like being all into something or all out.
Rob Marsh: I totally get that, by the way. That sounds like my, especially with food. But yeah, it’s hard to stick with stuff. And yeah, when I decide, okay, well, I’m not sticking today. I like the whole apple pie goes down my throat. It’s yeah.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah. And so there’s a lot, I mean, I think with that, there’s so much that comes down to mindset of like, what is your mindset around fitness, wellness, nutrition? Are you committing to it for the long run? Like, do you have a perspective and a mindset that is supporting your growth for the long term? Or are you just focused on like the results of something right now? And so I think even working to, to shift that of like, if, if you’re listening out there and you haven’t been able to create a routine with fitness that you are able to actually keep, think about like, okay, am I doing it for some short term result? Am I doing it for the wrong reasons? And if so, how can I shift those to be more long term thinking? So now my whole mindset is, I want to exercise not to lose weight, even though that might be a goal of mine at a specific time, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with that. My the reason why exercise is because I want to live a long, healthy, happy life doing the things that I love with a strong and resilient body. And so like that is my why. And so I think at the very core of it, If you’re not able to create a consistent routine, come up with your why. Establish a reason, a purpose for exercising that goes beyond this next month, goes beyond the summer. We’re in summer season, so people want to lose weight. goes beyond the summer and like is really thinking like, okay, do I want to be able to play with my grandkids? Do I want grandkids? Do I want to be 80 years old and sitting on my front porch reading a book? Like, like what is your longterm vision and what are the things that you can do to support that vision coming true? Um, and then going back to the enjoyment thing that I was just touching on, Like, are you trying to do workouts and habits and these things that you hate? Are you doing them because you’re seeing other people do them? And if so, what’s a version that you could do today that would be more enjoyable? So like, there are some people that maybe are at the very beginning of their health and wellness journey. They don’t really like any of it. They don’t like eating well. and they don’t like exercising. And it’s kind of hard for those people because it’s like, OK, well, you should eat well and you should exercise. So maybe we’re not jumping forward 100 miles. But what is something you could do today that you would like a little more than maybe some of the other things that you’ve tried? What’s something small? People, I think we have this like perception that we need to work out for like 45 minutes or an hour for it to be worthwhile. We need to show up in these like big chunks of time. But again, if you struggled with consistency, what’s a small enjoyable way that you could show up today that you that would encourage you to show up tomorrow? and the next day and the next day. Maybe that is literally starting with a 15-minute walk. That’s something that I rely on so much in my day. I also sit at a desk every single day. I have a standing desk. I don’t stand as much as I should. But getting out for walks, I’ve also found, is not only good to move your body, it’s so good to get a break from the screen and also give yourself a brain break. I find that after I leave to go on a little walk and come back, I am much more awake. Sunlight, light outside can help with that as well. I’m much more awake, but then also more productive the rest of the day. So don’t discount walking as a form of exercise. Walking is incredible for people at desks, behind their laptop screens. Like, we don’t walk enough. And so if you were gonna say, screw it and not work out at all today, like, can you get out for a five minute walk, a 10 minute walk, 15 minute walk? Because ultimately, I think it’s the taking action. Every single day, it’s the showing up even when you don’t want to showing up in small amounts, that is going to build some confidence, it’s going to build some trust within yourself of like, Okay, I showed up for the last four days, I went on a 10 minute walk doesn’t seem like much, but I still did it. And now I feel better about myself. And now I have a little bit more momentum to keep going. I think a lot of times people rely on the motivation to get started when really the whole cycle starts with action. If you can start with action, you are going to get those positive feelings about yourself. And that is going to give you the motivation or the momentum that’s going to give you more action or allow you to take more action and then keep that flywheel going.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, okay. I need you as my personal trainer. I’m 100% with you on walking. I actually have started adding in more walks. I run. I actually don’t love running, but I do it because it’s good for me. I have to make it easy for myself by putting the clothes out in the chair that I would go sit down in or whatever. So it’s like I wake up, I’m like, oh, the clothes are there. Make it easy. I go out. Um, yeah, I, I fit all of the things that you’re saying, you know, I don’t love running. I don’t, I hate lifting weights, but I still do it because, you know, I, I know I need to, so making it easy, but walks, walks are golden. Like the more I walk. And the interesting thing is, you know, I realized at some point, which like, this is a total no brainer and people listening and be like, yeah, duh, Rob. But I sit and I listened to podcasts, you know, on my couch or whatever. And it just dawned on me. I thought I can listen to a podcast while I’m walking. burn a couple of calories or whatever. Now that may be a luxury that I have because I’m not watching kids at the moment, that kind of thing. So obviously some of that lifestyle plays into that, but I’m all about fitting in the five or 10 minute walk at lunch and that kind of stuff.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah, and even things like, and this can’t fit into every single call, but like taking calls and going on walks. Like there are some calls that I have maybe with some teammates or people on my team or my all team meetings that I can just grab my phone, join the Zoom and go out for a walk for an hour. It’s like, yes, it takes a little bit of effort to make that happen. But if I was going to be just sitting here on Zoom anyways, then I might as well be getting 6,000 steps in on an hour-long walk. And so thinking about ways that you can fit in Walks or steps or like little pieces of movement into your routine as it is now podcast. The podcast example is amazing. I love a walk with the podcast more than anything. I do one every single day. But like take these things that you like listening to music. listening to podcasts, calling your friends, family, like if you’re on the phone a lot with people you care about, if you’re catching up sitting on the couch, how can you get up and take that outside? Again, just make that habit of like you’re doing these things that can also be done while you’re moving your body, especially when it’s summer, spring, fall, like these like nice seasons of weather for most people, at least in the Northern Hemisphere right now. How can you take advantage of that and get some more movement in while it’s really enjoyable?
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I’m with you. Okay. We’re all going to go for a walk. If you’ve been listening to this podcast and you’re not walking, start it over and go out for a walk.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Put your shoes on.
Rob Marsh: Exactly. Thanks, Morgan. If somebody wants to reach out to you or connect with you in some way, where should they do that?
Morgan Kitzmiller: Yeah, for sure. So I’m most active on my fitness Instagram account. That’s going to be @_rootandrise. The at root and rise was taken unfortunately, but that’s the best place to connect there. For anything, even if it’s about email marketing, ConvertKit, shoot me a DM there and I’m happy to chat more or happy to chat about fitness, wellness, getting your steps in those sorts of things too. It all makes my world go round.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. Thank you.
Morgan Kitzmiller: Cool. Great. Thank you.
Rob Marsh: That’s our interview with Morgan Kitzbiller. I just want to add a couple of ideas to what we were sharing.
We mentioned ConvertKit a lot on the podcast. It is a great tool. And if you want to check it out, you can visit thecopyrighterclub.com/ConvertKit. That’s an affiliate link. And if you decide to buy ConvertKit and the tools that Morgan talked about, you’ll help support the Copywriter Club and this podcast. Of course, just about everything that we talked about you can do with other newsletter tools, other email service providers as well. So choose the tools that work best for you, but just in case you want to try out ConvertKit or see what they’re doing that’s different, their free newsletter plan, all of that stuff, go to thecopyrighterclub.com/ConvertKit.
This interview got me thinking about creating a course that’s delivered exclusively by email. Now, this isn’t a new idea. In fact, it was actually really common around 2014, 2015. It became less common as content management systems improved and course software became more of a thing. But as low priced products that can deliver your content to potential clients and customers, having an email only course is a powerful tool. Think about your clients in your niche. What do they need to know? And it’s probably not about how to write headlines or emails because you want them to hire you to do that stuff for them. So you’re not teaching them how to be copywriters, but what can you teach them that will be valuable, help them solve a problem, add more of their own clients, bring in revenue, and so on. Imagine that you write for plumbers. What could you teach a plumber about attracting clients to their business that then you can help them accomplish by writing emails, by creating content for them, that kind of thing. That’s what you want to be thinking about. Can you create a short five to seven email course that teaches that thing and might be worth paying for? Tools like ConvertKit are perfect for delivering this kind of content. And because email works so well to build trust, many of these email course buyers could become longer term copywriting or content writing clients. So that’s something to think about.
The other thing that has me excited about tools like ConvertKit or Substack or Beehive are the new recommendation tools that they include. Now, Morgan mentioned SparkLoop. Tools like this make it so much easier to attract subscribers to your list. They do most of the work for you. And as long as the content that you create for your newsletter is remarkable. That is, it’s the kind of thing that other people love and will recommend to people like them, to their friends, to their business colleagues. It is so much easier to grow your list with these tools. They go a long way towards fixing the number one challenge of building a list and starting your own newsletter. And that is finding readers. And I’m not just talking about the first 10 readers. You know, most people say, Oh yeah, get your siblings or your best friends, you know, have them join your list to get you started. ConvertKit, Substack, Beehive, these tools get you people who are actually interested in the content you’re creating and in the services that you provide. You can use these tools for free. At least you can with ConvertKit until you hit 10,000 subscribers, which is a huge number for a lot of copywriters, content writers. And in the case of Substack, until you start to sell a product and then you have to pay a percentage of that. But they are free and easy to check out until you hit those limits. So to find out more about ConvertKit, like we mentioned, check them out at thecopyrighterclub.com forward slash ConvertKit.
I want to thank Morgan Kitzmiller again for joining us to talk about email systems and newsletters and even a bit about getting healthy. If you want to connect with Morgan, check out her Instagram at underscore root and rise, or you can connect with her directly on LinkedIn. Just search for Morgan Kitzmiller. Don’t forget our upcoming masterclass on creating a one email a day business in the copywriter underground to see that exclusive masterclass visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu to join.
A lot of copywriters don’t exactly love working with clients. But what’s the alternative? In the 405th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob talked with copywriter Francis Mayan who has build a product business where he sells digital products with an email a day (and grows his list by posting on social media). We talk about what that kind of business requires and how Francis made the switch from client work to selling with email. This is a good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
Stories Sell by Matthew Dicks
Francis’s Email List
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Today’s guest has been on the show before… but since his first appearance, he’s created a completely different business that supports him as he travels the world. His old business was writing copy—mostly emails—for clients. The new business sells digital products with a daily email and regular posts on LinkedIn. He still talks about emails, but the shift in focus is significant and has helped free up his time for other activities.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter and digital product business owner, Francis Nayan. As I mentioned, Francis has been on the show before, but his business has changed so dramatically in the past few years that I thought it would be nice to talk about that change… and knowing that many of you want to sell digital products of your own, this episode will give you a taste of what that requires. Be sure to stick around for this one.
Before we jump in with Francis…
You’ve heard me talk about The Copywriter Underground often on the podcast. Along with the monthly coaching, weekly copy critiques, the community and courses you get as a member, each month we bring in a special guest to go in-depth on a business or copywriting topic. In August, Francis Nayan who is the guest for this episode will be jumping into the Underground to share the ins and outs of his business. He’s going to break down his business model and show you how to sell digital products with a daily email. If after you listen to this episode, you think, I’d like a business like Francis has, you need to join us for this workshop. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu for more details.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Francis Nayan.
The rest of the transcript is coming…
To get better at copywriting, you need to practice. But how do you get the right kind of practice (and perhaps a few portfolio samples in the process)? Copywriter Wendy Ann Jones joins us for the 404th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to share a new resource that helps you get the practice you need. We covered a lot more than that… you’re going to want to stick around for this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers
The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
The Copywriter’s Workout by Wendy Jones
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: There’s one thing that all writers have in common… that is we write. We write for ourselves and our clients. It’s writing every day that helps us get better at the craft. But if you’re not working with a client, you might be wondering what do I write? How can you use your writing time to create writing samples that read as if they are real and help you get good writing practice?
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and I talked with copywriter Wendy Ann Jones. Wendy quit a corporate job in order to start her own business, but when it came time to practice, she realized there weren’t a lot of resources out there to help. So she created that resource—a book of practice clients and projects you can use to get better at the craft of writing and perhaps even create a few portfolio samples worth sharing with potential clients. If you’re looking for ways to build your portfolio, you’ll want to listen to what Wendy has to share…
Before we jump in with Wendy…
We have a new gift for you as a listener to The Copywriter Club Podcast. We went through the past 400 episodes of this podcast looking for the ideas that our guests have shared over the past couple of years related to finding clients. We pulled out a bunch of our favorites and compiled them into a new pocket sized guide that will inspire you as you look for ways to attract the right clients to your business. It’s a bit like having a couple dozen of the best copywriters in your pocket advising you on how to find your next client. To get your copy, visit thecopywriterclub.com/pocket and download this new guide.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Wendy Ann Jones.
Kira Hug: Hi, Wendy. Let’s just start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter? OK.
Wendy Ann Jones: So about February 2021 I was really super disillusioned with my job. I was working in corporate and I loved it. I did love it and it was very fast moving, very motivating and then the company took a turn and it was a bit boring. It was a bit boring, a bit dull, and there wasn’t anything to learn. And I’m quite a lifelong learner. I’m always obsessed with learning things and like to be occupied and busy. And I was also going through the start of the perimenopause, which, you know, I’m sure a lot of women, women similar age to me will be like, yeah, nodding their heads. And I kind of thought, oh, I need to change, to do something different. I found a copywriting ad. It popped up on my Facebook, and it was like, oh, would you like to work the hours you want to work? And would you like to live wherever you want? And would you like to, you know, all these things? And I was like, yes, yes, that’s exactly what I want. Yes, please. Yes, yes. And I’ve said this a few times before, but it was just that hook was my introduction to copywriting, right? Because it was like they were talking. exactly to me at the time that I needed them and I went on to like a free webinar it’s like a five-day little mini training course and I loved it and then I signed on straight away obviously for a full-on copywriting course there and then and yeah just took part in that and obviously the key to that was find yourself a client and And you kind of do a big gulp at that point when they say, oh, you need to find a client pretty much straight away. And you’re like, oh, can I do that? But I was lucky. I had a couple of people I knew that were business owners who agreed to let me write some website copy for them. And that’s how I got started, really. And that was, yeah, that was back in 2021. Early 22, I went into my business full time, quit my corporate job, took a big deep breath. and jumped in and I’ve been doing that ever since.
Rob Marsh: So as you started to build your business, you know, those first clients that are people that you know, sometimes those are the easy ones. And in what I’ve seen with the copywriters that we’ve coached, even in my own experience, that first initial transfer of clients dries up pretty quickly. So how did you take the next step from the business owners that you know, and move into other clients that maybe were outside of that immediate circle.
Wendy Ann Jones: Okay. So the first thing I did was a complete leap of faith. I went on to LinkedIn, which I’d got about 10 followers from my corporate job. and kind of redid my profile. I don’t even want to look at what that looks like now when I go back, but made it look like something. And I saw someone advertising for an actual full-time copywriter. And I thought, well, I don’t want that. I’ve just come out of a full-time job. But I dropped them a message and said, do you work with freelancers at all? And they said, yeah. And I went, oh. And then he sent me a document like, oh, can you write this test document thing? And it was writing articles, actually, so it wasn’t pure copy. It was more article writing. But they said, can you write this? And it was a mock-up. They were never going to use it. And then he came back and said, yeah, great. And they ended up being my first client. I worked for them for three years, pretty much every week for three years. So that was my first jump in.
Then I thought, oh, this LinkedIn thing might not be too bad. And that’s when I started kind of trying to post on LinkedIn and engage with people a little bit. And that in truth, that’s probably where most of my clients came from, was that. So yeah, it’s harder now on LinkedIn because there’s more and more people at that time, two years ago. It wasn’t so competitive in the copywriting arena. There weren’t so many people using it. I see a lot of people now jumping onto LinkedIn that I knew as copywriters before, but they were using different platforms and they’re all coming across now. So it’s very, very competitive now. So it is about finding new strategies and just keep reinventing yourself really, isn’t it? Keep looking out and seeing what else you can do.
Kira Hug: Yeah, it is amazing how quickly it changes, right? Where LinkedIn’s working, you kind of stand out and then two years later, it’s so competitive. So what is working now or how do you think about reinventing yourself? You know, maybe there’s a way to think about it that could work on any platform that starts to become crowded.
Wendy Ann Jones: Yeah. I mean, I am looking more at building my own kind of putting more into my website. I’ve put a lot of effort now into reading, that’s probably on the fourth iteration of my website. And I’ve had, I’ve got to give a note out to Dani Paige, who’s gave me a lot of help with that and gave me some amazing feedback. So my website now is looking better than it’s ever looked. And I am putting myself, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but I am making sure I put a blog on every month. And so I’m building, you know, it’s sometimes difficult, isn’t it? When you’ve got a lot of things, a lot of balls in the air to make that digital estate and make, you know, a place where people will come to all the time. Um, but trying to put one blog on a month, trying to reach out to people like, I mean, you know, business owners, people that are running podcasts and things like that, and speaking to people and saying, you know, here I am, what what can I give what value can I give to your business on a podcast or something like that I think that works as well as well I mean again it’s a competitive arena and it just takes some time to find people that want you to to actually go on but if you find the right fit that can work really well as well.
Rob Marsh: So, Wendy, one of the things that I know you’ve done, because you shared this with me, is this book that you’ve put together, this Workout. It’s a workbook, but a workout. Tell us about where that came from and how, like, what are the, not just the origin story, but how you would use it today.
Wendy Ann Jones: Okay. So, when I started out with copywriting courses, I’m from, an operations background. So I’ve always worked back office, that kind of thing. I’ve put together a lot of training, I’ve trained a lot of people, you know, my kind of role in enterprise before was work out how it works and then teach other people how to do it. And I think that why I’m suited to copywriting is because I’m super nosy and I have to understand all the nuts and bolts of everything so that I can get it clear in my head. So that works really well for me from a copywriting perspective. But when I was learning, I was looking for something that would give me a process to improve my copy. So I had lots of amazing courses, resources, obviously there’s thousands of youtube videos out there and things like that but then everyone says go away and practice and i was lucky i was in a course that had um editing included copy copy editing included as part of the course so that that’s amazing resource but what i was doing i was making up products So I would make like an example, I made up this product as a hit, right? What would I really love? And I don’t know if you’re gardeners, but I’m a gardener. And every time you buy a hose, a garden hose, and you plug it onto a tap, faucet, you plug that in and you turn it on and it always leaks, right? So that was the first thing I thought of. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have this thing that you plugged on and it didn’t leak? So I created this product for myself and I called it The Leakless, right? And I wrote a sales page and I got it edited and I did all this thing. And the editor was like, oh, that’s amazing. You always come up with these amazing products and stuff like that. And I thought, yeah, but I wonder if all copywriters do. Can all copywriters come up with this stuff? And even if they do, Is it industry relevant? Is it actually, is that pushing them to create something as they would need to if they were working with a client? Because when you’re working with a client, you, you have the information given to you. You can’t just make it up, right?
So I started to think this company I was working for, I was writing articles. They were business articles for companies that had won awards. So they’ve won the award for being the best, this, the best, that, whatever. And I would get an interview from them, like a questionnaire sheet, and I would have to write an article about it. So I thought, okay, after you’ve written 400 of these, you’re quite, quite well versed in, in what this looks like and the different kinds of companies that are out there that could potentially use a copywriter, right? So that was my idea for the book. And what I wanted to do is give people the bones of the identity of the company, but go further. Because when I had that questionnaire, sometimes it was really frustrating to just have that. So I wanted to give them something, the middle part. So I would write the middle part as if I’d kind of got the bones of an interview back from that client with the main points, and then give them the assignment to write the copy.
So that’s how I structured the book so that they can go, OK, this is a company. Here are the questions we’ve asked about them. What can they, about their offer, about the problems they solve for their customers, about the transformation their clients can expect, and that kind of thing. And then I can go away and I can practice a proper piece of copy that’s tangible, that then gives me a bit of confidence. Because what I saw with a lot of copywriters in training groups and Facebook groups and stuff like that is, How am I confident enough to know that I can go and approach a client, you know, and be credible? How do I know that I’ve gone through that process? You know, so being able to practice. Now, I didn’t want to step on the toes of guys such as yourself who are like, you know, super experienced in what you do. So you’ve got to train people and you can tell them and I in no way would put myself in that category. So what I wanted to do is create a supplementary resource for people that are going through the great courses that they can pick up all the stuff and then they can go away and practice. And then if they have an editing resource and they want to build a portfolio, they can get their stuff edited and they can put it in their portfolio and there it is. So that was the idea behind the book. So far, people seem to like it.
Rob Marsh: You’re being too kind to us, but can we get really granular? I know you’ve got the book in front of you. Can we look at a sample or example of what’s in the book and the kinds of questions, the description of the companies? Because as I went through it, I thought to myself, this actually is really useful in a lot of ways, as you said, as a launching pad for practicing what is very close to real world copy assignments. So yeah, give us an example of what’s there.
Wendy Ann Jones: Okay, so I’m literally flicking through And here’s one I found. This is number 11. And it’s freedom accounts. So what I’ve said about freedom accounts is basically I wanted to give people an idea what niche they could go in as well, because that’s a massive one, isn’t it? Everyone gets stuck on their niche. It’s like you need to pick a niche to get started. And you just get stuck on that ledge. You can’t get off it. So niches for freedom accounts would be small businesses. accountancy or finance. And then I give a bit of a background information about, to give a bit of personality. So I gave her a name. So it’s Sally that runs her accountancy firm. She wants to help her clients save money so the business can prosper. With her team, Sally takes the strain and hassle out of dealing with the numbers so her clients can concentrate on running their businesses. So I talk about that. And then I talk about the core offer. Um, so she’s offering bookkeeping and accountancy services, and they basically want to say that every customer is unique. Um, and that they tailor their services to fit every client, which obviously with a small business, that’s, you know, when they’re working with small businesses, that was what most people would want a list. What they’re doing. So bookkeeping, tax returns, payroll, budget turn. management accounts and VAT. And then I go into like a little interview, like a little mini interview. So their target market is small business owners, and entrepreneurs that don’t want to spend the hours that it takes them to do the books and who dread doing their taxes, which we know a lot of those, don’t we? So Then I just ask a few questions and I ask the same questions for every company throughout the book so that it’s just got, I’ve had a few people say, that’s really good because I didn’t know what questions to ask my clients. So now that’s given me a starting point, which is just a starting point, right? But you’ve got to start somewhere. So the problem that your product or service solves, so it takes away the pressure of having to understand and complete accounts on your own. The thing you love most about your business, we think fast, react fast and know that anything is achievable. We love finding new ways to help our clients, how they stand out from the competition. We’re flexible and tailor our services to fit the client and their financial goals. And the team is adaptable and they work with humor and positivity. So, and then of just put there a core message. Tell me if I’m talking too fast, by the way, because I do speed up.
Rob Marsh: I don’t think you’re talking too fast. Okay, cool, cool. So, yeah, this is good. So, I mean, I’ll just break in. Basically, you’ve got a page or two that’s company information so that you’re not starting from scratch as you’re doing this practice. You’re giving us, like you said, niche, ideal customer, the services that are there, and then there’s other stuff there too.
Wendy Ann Jones: Yeah, so I’ll talk about the tone or the brand image that they prefer. I mean, obviously, in real life, we know that sometimes we need to do a reality check with that but for practice it’s good to have an idea of what the client wants, the core messages that they want and obviously the call to action and then I’ve tried to put two or three options against each company and the section flex your copywriting muscles so once you’ve read all that You then go on to the bit where you actually have to do some work. So brainstorm some of the pain points your ideal end customer might have. So skimming the text and obviously thinking logically about that industry. You can also go onto the internet and research it if you want to. Summarize a client’s offer, which makes you obviously think about condensing it down rather than rambling on for pages and pages. and then list the benefits to the target audience. So that’s just like your little warm-up. And then for this one, I’ve chosen three types of copy. Write the pop-up wording for the opt-in on the website, write a landing page to ask readers for their email address, and write a sequence of three emails asking people on the list to sign up for the webinar that they mentioned. It’s kind of, some of them follow on, some of them are a little bit random. And then there’s a section at the back of the book that then suggests how they can kind of mix and match the different options. So really, if they want to, there’s hundreds and hundreds. I mean, if they need to practice that much, there’s plenty to go up, you know, and plenty of ideas to go forward.
Kira Hug: So what do you promise to copywriters or, you know, or aspiring writers If they work through the entire book, or maybe if they just work through three to five exercises, what is that shift for them that they can expect?
Wendy Ann Jones: I think the shift for them is confidence. I mean, I’ve called it a workout because I liken it to actually doing a physical workout. And we all know, you know, the first time you come to do a pushup, it’s horrendous, but if you keep doing it every day, you know, before, you know, you can do 10, you can do 20. Um, so it is a workout because it gets you flexing those muscles. I think that’s important, especially at the beginning, if you don’t have clients or, I’ve also had people say to me, oh, I write one type of copy. A lot of people start off writing blogs, but they’re not really sure about things like emails. They’d like to get into writing emails. So they’ve jumped in here and found the email section because they’ve got an index at the back where they can look up the different things and find places where they can practice the type of copy that they’re looking for. So I would say the main thing is confidence. it’s confidence to be able to go out and say, yeah, I can play here. I can play in this arena. I can give it my best shot. I’ve got some pieces of copy. I mean, I would always suggest that they go get some pieces, you know, edited by a professional editor, because that’s always a massive eye opener. And it was certainly super helpful to me at the beginning. And now, you know, you, when you go and get your, get your paid work edited and everything, it’s always great to have that second pair of eyes and somebody that, you know, comes at it from a different angle and stuff like that. So you get that input as well, because without having pieces of work, you’ve got nothing to get edited. Right. So some people can’t get off that ledge and just having, having a few pieces of copy where you can say, okay, right, well, I really, I really think this one’s quite good. put that in, get it edited, you know, you might have to pay for it, but it’s not that much, you know, as long as you’re not writing, you know, 45 pages of copy, it’s not that much money to get that, that input back. And it will really take your copy to the next level. So yeah, it’s just, it’s confidence building and it is having pieces of work that you can show prospective clients as well, because you know, that really shows up to, your talent and what you can do, because I’m sure most people go into copywriting because they love writing. So they’re all good writers anyway, they just need to prove it to themselves, right?
Rob Marsh: Maybe not all, maybe not all, but yeah, they’re They’re definitely a lot of us. So one of the things that I’ve noticed with beginning copywriters is obviously you need this work in order to show samples in a lot of cases when clients ask for samples or if you want to put something on your website. And the projects that they choose are often rewrites of existing copy and they don’t change it all that much because they simply don’t have the experience or they’ll choose something and they’ll mimic a style that, you know, is like hardcore direct response or something. And it just comes off not feeling right. And the thing that I really like about this tool is that these are they’re not real companies, but they’re very similar to very real companies that you would be asked to write about as a general copywriter. And because because you’re giving that typical background information and you’re not showing another copywriter’s work saying, hey, here’s something that they wrote and here’s the existing headline, you don’t start out biased by where they are. And so you do have to go through that creative process and work through it. So that’s one thing that when you showed me the workbook, I was like, oh, this is really useful. And then I think you’re hitting on now the second part, which is once you’ve got that written, getting feedback, not just from an editor, but from a talented copywriter. And there are lots of ways to do that. Yeah, there are. I mean, you compare with a copywriter that, you know, is maybe a year ahead or two years ahead of you. There are groups where this is possible. And, you know, I’ll just throw out our Copywriter Underground. We offer free critiques to to anybody writing any copy, whether it’s spec or real or whatever. So that feedback mechanism, I think, is the next piece to really start taking your copy to another level. So that’s not really a question, but just kind of wrapping up you know some of your thoughts as to why you created this I hope.
Wendy Ann Jones: Oh that’s amazing I love that yeah and that is a good point as well because if you are in those type of groups that are really supportive and everything like that you know I mean people that aren’t in any paid groups I think it probably is a a little bit of a leap of faith to post your copy into some of the free groups or whatever I mean choose your group wisely is all I can say for that you know I mean I know you guys operate a free group which is really good um but obviously you’ve got your paid you’ve got your paid offering as well haven’t you membership and everything and I think you know one of the one of the drums that I do bang is is try to try to get on a credible copy course as much as you can I mean obviously not everyone has a budget for every course but there are courses you know good courses at different levels and stuff so try to get on that course um because it will give you that that grounding rather than just battling your way through loads of free youtube videos which i mean bless the people that have managed to do it but that has got to be hard work without the structure there and the and the support from the group right
Kira Hug: Yeah, for sure. And I want to just talk a little bit more about your early story and go back to how you got into all of this. I think you mentioned that you were happy in the company, but then it took a turn. So I’m curious, what did that look like? If a company takes a turn, how do you know, OK, this isn’t going to get better? I need to jump. And, and then what was the mindset that you had or had to develop in order to make a leap in your career?
Wendy Ann Jones: Okay, yes, interesting, interesting question. So I’ll roll about further than that. So, crikey, 14 years ago, I was living in France. So I was living in France. I split up from my husband and I needed to do something and go somewhere. And I chose to come back to England and I was a single mom and I needed to find a job. And I was lucky because my mom was around and mom could help me with childcare and stuff like that. So I kind of looked around for a couple of jobs and I fell into technology. communications technology, and literally had no clue. You know, they were talking a foreign language to me, you know, everything was abbreviations, everything was like, like, I have no idea what’s going on here. But for some reason, well, I know what it was, I spoke French, and they had some French customers, and they’re like, help, we need someone to help us. And so life goes on doesn’t it and you end up in a place just by chance and I was there 12 years and I moved through the company doing different roles and everything and it was exciting it was you know I was always learning something they were always oh maybe she can do this maybe she can teach people how to do that and it was very very exciting but then the investment went out of the section that we were in And we got, I don’t know if this exists in America, but we got 2P transferred to another company.
So they transferred us to a smaller company and there was no investment and no, no one was interested in moving it forward anymore. And for me, if it’s not moving forward, just the heart of it wasn’t there anymore. Everybody was bored, disillusioned. When you’re working with people, they’re bored and disillusioned every day. That is not good for your mental health, you know, especially you’re going into perimenopause anyway, which is like, what’s happening to my life? And then had this every day. And I was thinking, no, there has to be more to life than this. But of course, you’re looking for the security at the same time. being a single mom, you’re kind of hanging on to it saying it’s secure, I’ve got a paycheck every month. But then my daughter went to university. And I thought, now, I don’t have any excuses anymore. I’m just getting sadder every day. And so I did. A friend of mine is a psychotherapist. And in COVID, he did like, like an online course about mental health and I learned so much. I learned so much about the whole mindset game and things like that and just got fascinated with the whole personal development thing and everything. And then about a month later, this copywriting course jumped up in front of my face and I was like, yes, this is the solution. I shall do this.
Rob Marsh: And it just worked out.
Wendy Ann Jones: Yeah and it was that simple which is crazy and you think you were thinking for like four or five years oh this is dreadful this is terrible and yeah within a month i was like yeah this is better i can do this I’m working towards something now.
Rob Marsh: Can you give us like your one or two top takeaways from that webinar that your friend did that really helped shift your beliefs around your mindset and being able to move forward in something that’s very new and maybe feels kind of risky?
Wendy Ann Jones: I did read an amazing book that was part of the curriculum on there. And it is called a lot of people know this book already, because it’s quite famous, but it’s called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, by Susan Jeffers. And it’s all about yes, you will feel scared. Yes. It is normal. Yes, you will survive. You can do it anyway, you know, and it’s all about that. And the other part is really that you believe what you want to believe, that it’s you that’s in charge of your mind and it’s you that’s in charge of your destiny. So it’s no one else’s fault. It’s no one else’s to blame. You’re not the victim of your own story or the hero of your own story. And it is about taking back control and making your own decisions. And I would say wholeheartedly to anybody that’s like thinking, I’m going to be an entrepreneur. I’m going to have my own business. Don’t neglect the mindset part because we do it at the beginning. And we go, oh yeah, the mindset part’s really important. And then we get in all the day to day and all the business stuff and the accounts and the everything and then, and we forget. about the mindset part and then it gets really busy or really not busy or whatever and that’s when all those nagging little doubts start coming in your head or what have you done why have you done this aren’t you silly whereas if you’re doing your mindset work and you’re doing your mindset work regularly and you’re checking in regularly with yourself then you’re able to cope with that so don’t neglect the mindset work take a good course, buy a good book. I like the Jen Sincero books about how to be a badass, they’re good as well. I’ve got that on an audiobook, listening to it in the car, so you don’t even have to sit down and read it every day, you can play it when you’re going in the car to pick kids up or whatever. And there’s another great book which is called The Slight Edge that’s I’m sure everybody’s heard of, but
Rob Marsh: I love, I love that book. It’s a fantastic book.
Wendy Ann Jones: It’s just a life saving book that as soon as you start to feel a little bit like you’re coming off the rails, just read it again. Cause it’s so small. You can read it in a couple of days, can’t you? And, uh, yeah, just build those tiny little habits every day of, which copyright and practice is one of them, right? You know, if you’re not, if you’re not writing copy paid copy every day, Practice your copy, write a few headlines, write something, do a post with a call to action, do something each day and build the skills.
Kira Hug: That’s great advice. And I have not read The Slight Edge yet, but I’ve been told many times to read it. So I’m just adding that note. I’m curious about perimenopause, you know, you mentioned a couple of times and just what that experience is like. I think it’s something that isn’t talked about enough, probably, especially to prepare younger women for what they’re stepping into. And so I’m curious, you know, how that connected to your career decisions and what that experience was like for you.
Wendy Ann Jones: Yeah. I mean, it is different for everybody. so i’ve got to say that right there because everyone will get different symptoms everyone will it will happen to everyone at different time as well you know some people can come into it super early some people don’t hit it until you know later on in their 50s or whatever but yeah if you’re kind of i don’t know mid 40s onwards and you start asking yourself if you’re going mental I never used to do that or I never used to behave like that or I never used to think that, you know, or whatever. I mean, of course, you’ve got the, you’ve got physical symptoms as well, which are fairly well documented, you know, like hot flashes and stuff like that. It’s the mental part of it, really. You know, people say baby brain is a thing. Sorry about this, Rob. You’re probably like thinking, oh, we’ve got into the women’s conversation here.
Rob Marsh: I probably don’t have a lot of questions to ask here, but let me just say, I’ve kind of lived through this, so I’m fine having this discussion.
Kira Hug: Awesome. Awesome.
Wendy Ann Jones: Love that. Yeah. So baby brain, everyone thinks, oh, baby brain, you know, it’s terrible. You lose half your brain when you’re pregnant and all the rest of it. It’s nothing compared to perimenopause. Great. Literally. So you know, I mean, when you when you’re pregnant, and you start crying, for no reason, and then you think, Oh, when I’m not pregnant anymore, I’ll stop doing that. But you never do, right? You always keep crying at the drop of a hat, anything, you know, like, can be an advert for tissues, and you just say, perimenopause, I multiply that by 10. that you’re just crying even more. You get sad. The thing I got, I got this like black fog thing, like where I couldn’t get out of it. And it was like, there was a black fog coming around my eyes and stuff. And I was like, what is going on here? And that was what prompted me to join John’s course because I just kind of woke up one morning and I thought, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t recognize myself. because I’ve always been quite a calm person. I’m not going to ask my partner. I’d probably like to say, no, you’re not. Um, but yeah, I’ve always thought of myself as quite a calm person, somebody that can kind of sit back from a situation and that kind of thing. But when those hormones start jumping about and everything, you, yeah, it’s a bit of a shock to be honest. So if you feel it, take action, go speak to somebody because he can, you can make it better. just by talking to people, doing the work. I mean, obviously there is medical help, hormonal help and stuff like that as well. But just to get through those initial times, I would say, yeah, go talk to somebody and get on some sort of course where you can have those conversations because yeah, it’s been, I mean, not just for perimenopause, but for me, but all the way across the board, it’s been absolutely life-changing to start that personal development journey. I mean, so late in life, but you know, if you get there, eventually you get there, don’t you?
Kira Hug: Yeah. And just one more follow up and then we can move on to something else. But what do you think is, I mean, it sounds challenging in many ways. So, but what is, do you think is the opportunity, um, for us going through that, you know, is you made a big career decision through it. So I think that almost sounds like a silver lining to do, to experience other opportunities or advantages because of that experience.
Wendy Ann Jones: I mean, I think definitely just getting older in general, the, the opportunities are better because you, you care less. You care less about what other people think of you. You care less about people judging you. You care less about all that. So, and when you’re going through something, you’re going through that time in your life, you build so much resilience. And we’re talking a lot about resilience at the moment, aren’t we? You know, in mental health space and everything like that. But you are building resilience coming through challenges like that. Any challenges that people come through, you are building resilience every day. And it helps you to certainly help me to take a step back and look at things and ask myself questions that I probably would never have asked myself before. you know, I’d have probably just guided through and just kept going on the, you know, on that track or keep doing it, rather than saying, well, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? What am I hoping to get out of it? Do I think that this is the best thing for me? Could I be doing something different? Could I be doing something more fulfilling? Could I make it better? What is it I really want? You know, sitting down and doing that work and say, you know, a lot of it came out for me that I had an ambition to help people that was, I’d lost really in this like corporate little corner that I’d been shoved into. I really wanted to help people. I really wanted to leave some sort of legacy to say that, you know, this is what I’ve done with my life and everything like that. And that came out more, more than a financial goal that was more important to me. So sitting down and doing that work because of going through these things and having these symptoms, it’s absolutely been invaluable really to identify what you actually truly want deep down.
Rob Marsh: So Wendy, you’ve been into this process now for two years, building your own business, maybe a little bit longer than two years. Recently, we’ve been hearing a lot of people say, you know, this is a terrible time to get into copywriting, which I don’t agree with necessarily, although there are definitely some headwinds. So tell us, if you had to start over as a copywriter, what would you do in order to make the progress that you’ve made over the last couple of years? And obviously you felt some of those headwinds, so maybe that’s also a way to transition to what are you doing today to make sure you’re staying ahead of it.
Wendy Ann Jones: Okay.
Rob Marsh: Sorry, kind of throwing two questions at you at the same time.
Wendy Ann Jones: Yeah. So what would I do if I was starting today? Whoo, crikey. That’s tough, isn’t it? It’s tough to start today. I feel like it’s tough.
Rob Marsh: I feel like it was kind of two years ago. Right?
Wendy Ann Jones: Yeah, it’s kind of tough anytime. I mean, I do see that what you guys are doing with the AI, and that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, it’s not necessarily embracing it, but it it’s having it as some kind of bedfellow, right? That you you understand it. I think like it or lump it, we’re in a situation now with technology that we need to at least understand how it works, at least be able to maneuver. I think I was listening to a podcast that you were talking about earlier saying, you know, maybe there are roles for copywriters with helping people with AI and things like that. So it is maybe, looking outside the box I mean I don’t like those jobs where you see oh I need a freelance copywriter and they’re like oh yeah and we want you to be able to do you know this and that and you like you basically want me to run the whole company you know there’s so many things it’s not just writing you know I want to pay you 10 pounds a week but there are certain you know there is a certain amount of um flexing I think that you need to do now so the strategy piece I think is huge I think I’ve heard that so many times recently as being more of a strategist and understanding all the components how it built bolts together how it can work with the technology and that kind of thing I think that’s probably an area it’s a lot isn’t it if you if you’re trying to learn to to write the copy but you’re also trying to learn all this other stuff it is a little bit like a mountain to climb so I’d be I’d be interested on your take really because you guys are more the experts than me but um when it comes to where do you start I mean you need to know how to write and you need to know the components of that so that is a place to start can we still pitch ourselves just to write I’m not sure
Kira Hug: I’m not sure. I think it’s becoming harder. But I mean, the opportunity I see with AI is you could take something like your amazing workbook that you’ve created as this incredible resource and work through those exercises if you are a new copywriter. And the cool thing is you can then take your output, what you wrote, and drop it into just about any AI tool to get a critique. So you don’t even, I mean, it’s in some ways, right? It’s many ways taking jobs from other writers who do that for a living. There’s still a huge benefit to working with those writers and joining the memberships like our own. But when you can’t afford that, there are these incredible AI tools that can serve you. So I mean, that’s the upside is you can learn faster than you could 10 years ago. You have access to every copywriting resource that’s ever been published on the internet. And so I think learning has to happen faster. Now, if you’re new, you don’t have the same window of time to just kind of leisurely, like, figure it out, like I had, just like putter through it. It’s more like, okay, you got to learn, you got to learn fast, if you’re serious about doing this, but you can now because you have access to everything.
Wendy Ann Jones: That’s cool.
Kira Hug: So let’s talk a little bit about your struggles, because I feel like we’ve talked a lot about you’re doing so many things well. I mean, again, you’ve created this incredible resource. You are building this business. You have this incredible mindset. So at this stage, what is hard? Outside of what we’ve talked about a little bit, like LinkedIn is more crowded. There is more competition. That’s been challenging. But what other struggles show up at this stage in your business?
Wendy Ann Jones: The biggest struggle really is find it is finding the clients that you want i think and um yeah i think that is this that is the struggle now um i am starting to look more in my local area than look in looking online just because i’m kind of feeling the swamp of people that are kind of desperately looking for work everywhere, whereas I’ve had interesting conversations in local networking groups where people have run up to me saying, can I have your business card? And I’m like, oh, this is an interesting development, you know, rather than being the, you are the hundredth applicant or whatever it is after the job’s been up for 10 minutes kind of thing. So that’s kind of what I’ve been looking at at the moment in terms of trying to find clients. Struggles wise, I guess time and understanding how to compartmentalize your time is, is a challenge. is a challenge because you end up with an endless list of things. So you’re like, okay, so I need to practice this and I need to learn this and I need to create this and I need to speak to these people and I need to, you know, and it goes on and on and on and on. And I think sometimes the temptation to end up just in that shock paralysis where you do nothing. Because you’re like, I have so much to do. And you’re just like, I’m just gonna do nothing.
Wendy Ann Jones: I mean, that is being brutally honest. I’m not sure how many other people have that.
Rob Marsh: But I think it’s pretty widespread. There are a lot of struggle or, or, you know, have many good options to choose from working on your own business. And because there are so many opportunities, we sort of struggle to make the choice on which one to work on now.
Wendy Ann Jones: Yeah, yeah, it is, isn’t it? It’s like you spread so thin, you’re like, I could do this, or I could do this, or I could do this. And then you just like, I don’t know which one’s the best one. So I think, you know, like the support groups and the mentorship, and that kind of thing really does come into its own at that point, because if you were just on your own, you might just be stood turning around in the corner for a week and not knowing what to do. So reaching out to the people that are in your network, you know, whether it’s the copywriters or, you know, people in groups and stuff like that, that is invaluable. And I think having those touch points, you know, if you’ve got an accountability partner or somebody like that, that you can chat with that works really well as well. I have a couple of those that I touch base with fairly regularly just to keep each other safe.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, for sure. So Wendy, you’ve got the workbook. We’ve talked about the networking that you’re starting to do locally. What else is going on in your business, or what’s next for you in the coming year?
Wendy Ann Jones: OK. So I have had someone say to me that it was a copywriting coach that reviewed my book that he is it in the business to business area and he said I you know I really like your book and I really see the value in it but could we have more b2b stuff so that’s something that’s rolling around in my head at the moment um of how to maybe make a little extra a little extra sequel or something to that. I need to find the time to do it. So that’s one thing that’s rolling around. I have a longer waited email list that I have to start working on communicating with. People join my thing and they just sit there at the moment, so we’ll actually get around to that. I’m also writing a novel that’s on my back burner. It’s not on my back burner, it’s on the front burner, but it sometimes gets worked on and sometimes gets neglected, because that was one of my initial things I wanted to do. My plan was, I’m going to be a really great copywriter and then I’ll write a novel. And then I thought, Why am I doing it like this? Why can’t I just write a novel at the same time as being a copywriter? And so I’m doing that. I think I’m about three quarters of the right way through that at the moment.
Kira Hug: So yeah, what’s going on? What’s your novel about?
Wendy Ann Jones: It is about a character’s journey, um, in their life basically from kind of the age of 14 up to whenever I decide to stop it um there’s a little bit of there’s a little bit of biography style stuff in there there’s a lot of experiences people I’ve met and things that I’ve drawn on throughout my life um I’ve traveled a lot when I was younger um so it’s kind of based around that a little bit but amazing fictional
Kira Hug: Well, let’s just wrap with like one tip for anyone who’s writing their own book right now based off your experience. What advice would you give a fellow or aspiring writer? Okay, to write your own book.
Wendy Ann Jones: I would write your outline, just blurb it down like we say the shirt draft or whatever. Just blurb your outline down or your idea down. Don’t edit it. Don’t think about it. Just get that on paper and then set yourself a time aside to write either each day, each week, whatever that looks like for you that you can realistically do and put it in your diary and stick to it. Turn your phone off and do your writing.
Rob Marsh: It’s good advice, yeah, if you’ve got the discipline to do it. So, Wendy, if somebody wants to get a hold of the workout, the Copywriter’s Workout, or join your list that’s not getting emailed to yet, but will be later this year, or just wants to check out what you’re up to, where should they go? How can they find you?
Wendy Ann Jones: They can find me at www.wendyannjones.com. I’m also on LinkedIn as Wendy Ann Jones Copywriter UK. I’m on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. And The Copywriter’s Workout is available as a paperback or PDF via Amazon.
Kira Hug: Amazing. Thank you so much, Wendy. We appreciate it.
Wendy Ann Jones: Thank you.
Rob Marsh: Thanks again to Wendy Ann Jones for joining us to chat about her business and writing practice, as well as other things. As I like to, I just want to add a comment or two about what we talked about, specifically about practice.
You should be writing every single day. If you’re a writer, that’s what you do—you write every day, not just morning pages or a few paragraphs on 750 words. You need to be writing for clients. You need to be writing for yourself. And if you don’t have that opportunity right now, the resource that Wendy shared called The Copywriter’s Workout, which we’ve linked to in the show notes for this episode, might just be the right resource for you. So be sure to check that out. But more important than that resource is just making the time to write. Write as if you’re solving business problems, copy problems for your clients, getting in the reps, getting in the practice. That’s what makes you a better writer.
And then as we mentioned, the next step after doing the practice is getting feedback on what you write. That’s a big part of what we do at The Copywriter Underground. I mentioned that earlier in our interview, but I just want to follow up. We do a weekly copy critique where members can share whatever it is that they’ve written either for themselves or for their clients, sometimes even things that they’ve been asked to rewrite and they’re just looking for different approaches or ideas that we might be able to suggest, and getting that feedback. It is immensely helpful. Everybody who submits tells us afterwards they really appreciate the additional perspectives, the additional ideas that we’re able to share, and as we’re able to push them to think either bigger or differently about the things that they’re writing about. Hopefully, in an effort to help the copywriters in The Copywriter Underground improve their writing and become so much better at what they do.
Now, most copy critiques, if you hire a copy coach, are going to cost you hundreds of dollars, sometimes even thousands of dollars. We know several copy coaches who charge more than a thousand dollars for an hour of their time in order to go through a sales page or a website and offer you their thoughts. The Copywriter Underground is less than 10% of that. It is such a phenomenal deal. you’ll want to check that out at thecopyrighterclub.com/tcu. And the copy critiques are just a small part of what’s included in everything you get there.
Finally, I just want to mention this idea of resilience that Wendy was talking about towards the end of the interview. So much of what we do as copywriters as content writers on a day-to-day basis requires resilience, whether that’s pitching clients and hear them say no or not right now and then being willing to pitch the very next client knowing that they may also say no and then the next and the next and the next. It takes resilience, or maybe it’s not finding clients for you, but writing every day or sending an email to your list every week or every day. These things take resilience. Running a business takes resilience. And so whatever you can do to stretch that muscle, to build that resilience into your personal makeup, into the way that you approach your days, is something worth considering. There are definitely some books out there that are really good. Maybe we can link to some of those in the show notes as well.
I want to thank Wendy again for joining us to share so much about her business and her book with dozens of practice examples. You can find The Copywriter’s Workout on Amazon or wherever books are sold online. You can also find it on Wendy’s website. We’ve linked to the book in the show notes. on our website to help you find it very easily. So you can go there and just click there. It’s super cheap and well worth the practice research or practice resource, excuse me. And you can connect directly with Wendy at wendyannjones.com.
That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner.
If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please visit Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts to leave a review and let us know what you’d like. Better still, share this episode with another copywriter who you know will be able to learn something from it. Just send them a link to the show and maybe a quick note that just says, Hey, I like this and thought you might enjoy it too. They’ll appreciate it, and that makes you look great for sharing a really helpful resource with the copywriters that you know.
Anyway, thanks for listening, and we will see you next week.
What’s possible as a content creator? If you don’t want to be a CMO or VP of marketing, how high can you rise? Amanda Natividad joined us for the 403rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and shared her thoughts about how writers can carve out a role as an individual contributor and what that looks like. She also talked about research, growing an online audience and how not to add to the social media noise. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:SparkToro
Amanda’s Website
The Brian Kurtz episode Rob mentioned
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Building an online platform on social media where you can share your thoughts has become an important part of a lot of copywriter’s businesses. A platform like this can be a source of leads as well as a place to grow your influence and share your thoughts. Whether you do it on Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram or somewhere else, it’s more important than ever. And when you do it right, your platform can be a launch pad for all kinds of things—including a writing position where you get to not only do the work you love, but define the way you do it.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and I talked with content creator and VP of Marketing at SparkToro, Amanda Natividad. Amanda landed her position by posting great content online and interacting with others on her chosen platform—Twitter. We talked about that as well as how content creators might create individual contributor roles for themselves, how to research using a tool like SparkToro, the platform Amanda would probably choose today if she were starting over and a lot more. This is a great interview with lots of insights. So stick around…
Before we jump in with Amanda…
We have a new gift for you as a listener to The Copywriter Club Podcast. We went through the past 400 episodes of this podcast looking for the ideas that our guests have shared over the past couple of years related to finding clients. We pulled out a bunch of our favorites and compiled them into a new pocket sized guide that will inspire you as you look for ways to attract the right clients to your business. It’s a bit like having a couple dozen of the best copywriters in your pocket advising you on how to find your next client. To get your copy, visit thecopywriterclub.com/pocket and download this new guide.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Amanda Natividad.
Kira Hug: Well, let’s start with your story. I’d love to hear how you ended up as the VP of Marketing at SparkToro and how you got there.
Amanda Natividad: Yeah. This could be too long of a story. Let’s see. Go for the whole hour.
Rob Marsh: Let’s make sure we talk about the test kitchen, all of it.
Amanda Natividad: It all started when I was born. No, I’m kidding. No, let’s see. Here, I’ll try to do my best here. You would think at this point I would be good at this, but I’m not. So here we go. I’ll say I was a marketer like in the trenches for what, at least eight years or so before I ever started publishing online, like under my own name, here are my marketing thoughts. Here are my thoughts and work. And once I decided to do that, I was basically all in. Like I kind of just tend to be the kind of person where I’m either in or out. There’s no in between. Right. So when I decided to do it, I really went all in. I went all in on writing Twitter threads. Eventually started a personal site and a personal newsletter and then grew that and then slowly expanded onto LinkedIn and stuff. Along this journey, one of my marketing heroes, Rand Fishkin, followed me back, which of course meant that I was mortified instantly and was like, well, now I can’t tweet anymore. I think I closed the app for the day and was like, I think I’m done, guys. I got to be quiet now.
No. What actually happened there was I obviously did become more self-conscious but in the best way possible because I really then was like, why would Rand Fishkin follow me back? He doesn’t need my marketing advice. He already knows how to do this. It really made me double down on conveying my perspective, my experiences because then I thought, well, he doesn’t. Rand Fishkin isn’t following me because he doesn’t know how to do marketing and thus wants to learn how to do it, right? He followed me because he wants to hear my perspective on marketing, my perspective on the world of work, my perspective on food, right? So in a weird way, it kind of allowed me to be more myself online. And then we ended up becoming friends, met up for lunch with his wife, Geraldine Deruiter, and we were all just fast friends. For me, it felt like meeting old friends for the first time in real life, right? Even though, I mean, I had never interacted with Geraldine online, very rarely interacted with Rand. And it was definitely one of those people who, when I followed his work, I never commented on it. For the longest time, I was like, oh, he doesn’t want to hear from me. I was just like, cool. What a cool guy. I would move on with my day.
I ended up joining SparkToro. I actually originally joined with the title Marketing Architect. This was initially a very intentional choice because I’m an individual contributor, but at the same time operating at a level higher than coordinator, analyst, marketer, or even director, right? And kind of wanted this unique title to reflect the uniqueness of my role as a high-level individual contributor, but also as somebody who, because we’re a startup of three people. Inevitably, part of my job involves customer support and involves being a product manager, right? All these things that are not really what marketing is. So we wanted it to be inclusive of like a marketing architect that we saw was somebody who would build the foundation of a marketing team.
And then —and I’m saying this because you asked about how did you become VP of Marketing—after my first year, after doing this great work, I knew I wanted to stay and was getting more invitations to speak at conferences, was pitching myself more. And ultimately I felt like, and even being right on, having previously been on the side of being an event organizer, was being honest with myself and realizing, you know what? I actually worry that the term marketing architect isn’t helping me as much as we thought it would, right? Like just really being honest with ourselves. Like it sounds, I think the ethos of it is great. I stand by the ethos of it, but it’s not a real title or a real known title, right? You hear that and you’re like, oh, what’s that? That sounds like a thing you made up. And it was, right? But then we had to really think through, you know, is this making the point we think it is, right? Like, is this actually helping me? And then I ultimately was like, you know, event organizers, conference organizers, podcast hosts, right? Like, they don’t really care about our own, you know, internal buzzwords, right? Like, And ultimately, a lot of these conferences, they’re like, we just want to know who you are. Like, what is that, right? So then I was like, hey, can we just change my title to VP Marketing? And then Rand and Casey were like, yeah, you can do whatever you want.
Rob Marsh: They seem pretty easy going. I want to dive into this idea though, marketing architect. You wrote something a couple of months ago, I think to your own newsletter, where you talked about as marketers, our ability to create these individual contributor type roles, where we define how we contribute to a company and the kind of work that we want to do. Would you share that idea just a little bit or go a little bit deeper in that? Because I think there’s this massive opportunity for people who have been content writers or copywriters and they use the word “just” in front of their titles. I’m “just” a copywriter. I’m “just” a marketer, but what we do is so much bigger. And I think you laid it out really well as you start talking about that idea.
Amanda Natividad: Yeah. I appreciate that. I mean, it’s funny because the notion of a high-level individual contributor isn’t really new, right? I mean, we see a lot in more tech or product-oriented roles.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, IBM will have somebody who’s getting paid a lot of money to just sit in an office and think, right?
Amanda Natividad: Right. Oh, totally, right? And you have like software engineers or software architects, people who actually do the work, right? But they don’t have a team reporting to them. They don’t run a big department. But you don’t really see that in marketing teams, right? The traditional path is still like, well, one day I want to be a CMO and run the team and all this stuff. And, you know, for a long time, I thought I wanted that or let’s just say I did want that for a time. Right. And it was like, well, that’s the only way to go. You go up. You make more money, you manage people, that’s how it goes. And as I was starting to manage more teams, my boss and I, she eventually asked me, like, do you even like managing people? And I sat with that for a moment and was like, I don’t think I do. And she was like, I don’t think you do either. And it wasn’t a dig at me, right? It was just an honest, vulnerable conversation. And she was like, I have a feeling you just really like to do the work. And you like to do some things your own way. You like to geek out on things. And I’m like, it’s absolutely true.
Many days, I am happiest when I am just hunkered down in my office writing out a long blog post. That is genuinely fun to me. And it’s not for everyone, right? Some people like managing other people. And I think that’s a wonderful thing to do. I think people who want to be people managers should do that. And I think those of us who don’t really want to do that, shouldn’t be forced into it. I think there are a lot of ways that marketers can be and should be individual contributors and we should figure out or just put more structure behind how we enable that. Because to your point, Rob, there are people who are, in quotes, “just” copywriters, but they are expert level, so damn good at writing that they should do that. But I mean, that also means that there could be this opportunity for them where they focus on that, we really think that the rest of the team can really think about what they do with that copy where it’s not, you know, in quotes, just writing a landing page, but, you know, being intentional about how that kind of copy informs everything else.
Kira Hug: So I want to hear more about your role and what you’re doing at SparkToro, but I think we should probably talk about what it is, what the company does, and a little bit about the products so listeners have an idea of what we’re talking about.
Amanda Natividad: Yeah. So SparkToro is the maker of an audience research tool, right? Where we help marketers find their audience’s sources of influence. We help marketers figure out where their audience is already hanging out, where they’re not hanging out. We help marketers figure out what are the keywords that their audience is already searching for. And overall, we believe all these insights can help marketers make better decisions about where to spend their money, can help them write better content, the content that resonates with their audience, and even can help them with their advertising efforts. Because we can show you the podcasts and YouTube channels that your audience is paying attention to, right? And that could inform how you allocate your creator spend or your creator budget. But yeah, that’s pretty much what we do.
I think one thing to call out early on is some people think we’re an influencer tool, like marketing, or they think we’re a social listening tool. We are not really either of those things, right? Like if you want to do proper social listening and get a sense of how people are talking about your brand, there are other tools for that, right? Because we don’t provide that sort of real-time like, here’s what people are saying on Twitter, right? We’re giving you the data that probably doesn’t change a lot day to day, right? It probably changes several times a year. or maybe it’s like once a month, right? But we’re showing you that kind of data that overall informs your strategy, not necessarily your day-to-day tactics.
Kira Hug: So what would be an example of a way maybe a copywriter listening could use this tool with their own work or with their client’s work?
Amanda Natividad: So I like to say that Sparktoro helps you do your homework, right? It helps you do the research. So if I were a copywriter listening to this, I would search the audience and I might search the audience based on the website. So let’s say you know your audience goes to a certain niche website like, well, I can’t think of one off the top. Oh, let’s say they go to… they’re plant you know, gardening enthusiasts, right? There are any number of those websites that you could analyze in Sparktoro, right? And maybe there’s a certain brand that’s sort of evocative of your brand, of your own brand, right? So let’s say that brand is called The Sill, right? That’s one of my favorite plant brands, so I thought of it. If you search for the audience that goes to the website, thesill.com, then you can see like the keywords this audience is searching for, the other websites they frequent, the social accounts they follow, podcasts, YouTube channels, the other kinds of apps that they use, right?
So I would look at all this and start to kind of form a sort of audience persona in my mind and start to think about like, oh, like this audience, you know, they’re listening to this show or these are some, you know, these are some social accounts they follow. This is interesting. And then I would start going to some of these channels or podcasts and listening to them, right? And then starting to pick up on some of the language that they’re using. I would try to figure out like, or I would use that to think about like, oh, here’s some topics they’re interested in. Like this is one of the top podcasts I listened to like three of these recent podcasts. Now I kind of know what’s top of mind for this audience. Now I know how to use their language and talk directly to them and figure out how to create the kind of content or the kind of copy that is kind of already in their head, right?
I mean, that’s kind of copywriter 101, right? you want to use the language that they’re already using and you want to show like, I am on your level, whether it’s like, we are peers or whether it’s, I am the thought leader that you need to pay attention to, or I’m your little sister, right? Like, however your brand is. I think getting this really good data informed picture of where your audience is already hanging out will really help you, you know, write copy that resonates.
Rob Marsh: Seems like there’s a secondary use here too, because the way that marketing is changing and certainly the roles of copywriters and content writers, we need to be more than just writers oftentimes. And so having a tool like SparkToro, put you in a strategist seat as well, where now you can say, OK, we did this particular copy project. You know, maybe it’s a landing page for a product. Here are a bunch of ideas for you where you can now go and advertise or talk about, you know, this thing that we’re doing. So you start to actually help sell beyond the words. That’s not necessarily something every copywriter wants to do, but it’s the kind of thing that could really set somebody apart.
Amanda Natividad: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s stick with the example of the Sill, right? It’s a consumer focused plant brand. What I would do as a copywriter is I would do this Sparktoro search and then look at some hidden gem websites, right? So these hidden gem websites are websites that might not be mainstream, right? They might be not as well known, but they have a high affinity to traffic ratio among the visitors. So for instance, people who go to the website, thesill.com, they also go to websites like bloomscape.com. GardenersPath.com, EpicGardening.com, right?
And then I would go to some of these websites, I would go to these top three, and then look at their homepages, right? Like really study, how are they positioning themselves? Who are they speaking to? What is the solution that they’re selling, right? And then try to figure out like, is there a common thread here that my brand can pick up on? Or, you know, like figuring out sort of how do you yes and your competitors, right? Like how do you try to kind of… And I want to be careful not to say, not blend in with your competitors, right? But kind of figure out what is that right balance of that compliment that shows like, how can we show we’re kind of part of this, right? But also being unique enough to know like, here’s why you should follow my website and Epic Gardening, right? Like thinking about that.
Kira Hug: Yeah, it sounds like it gives you a great starting point if your client is struggling to find those customer insights. And it just reminds me of a conversation I had this week with a prospect. And this person had invested in so many different partners, building funnels, coming up with LinkedIn strategies. But he hadn’t actually invested in the initial research, customer research, to pull in messaging So who knows what all these different partners are saying? And it seems like this would be a great tool just to get started to have a place to go to say, here is what your prospects are talking about, what they care about, the other websites. So let’s start here. And then we can go deeper and pull in customer interviews, go even deeper into qualitative research. Is that how you view it as like, this is where you start anytime you’re working on a project?
Amanda Natividad: Yeah, absolutely. And I think to that point, sometimes we marketers are partially guessing, or not even just guessing, but we might be wrong in a sense about who our competitors are. Because when you really think about it, there are a lot of different definitions of competitors. There are people with whom you compete directly against on your product or your solution. But then there also might be people who you compete with for attention, right? Who might be, they might sell a different solution than what you sell, but they’re still your competitor in the sense that you’re still vying for the same attention ultimately. And those might be the people that you’d want to learn from even more because those might be the people who could be better indicative of potential co-marketers or partners, right? Or potential people that you’d want to sponsor if that makes sense for your business, right?
So I think what’s good about SparkToro is that it helps you find these different kinds of competitors in a way that is actually backed with data, right? It’s not like you as a marketer knowing like, well, I’m a plant company. You know, I’m thesill.com. My competitor is easyplant.com. And that’s true, right, in that they both sell plants directly to the consumer. But they might have very different audience profiles, right? Like somebody who buys from Easyplant. So Easyplant has a special like self-watering pot. Right? It’s really cool.
Rob Marsh: Kira actually needs this. She’s growing a forest in her house.
Kira Hug: I need to have some that just feed themselves. Yeah, that’d be great.
Amanda Natividad: Let’s talk about this because I feel like this is going to be really helpful. I feel like your audience will probably kind of geek out on this too, like the nuances. So EasyPlant, right, they have their own pot that is self-watering in that you fill the reservoir with water. And then from there, like the whatever internal system, it slowly waters the plant over the course of a month. So you fill the water or you fill the tank once a month, but then you leave it alone. You put it by the window, wherever it needs to be, right? Thesill.com is more traditional in the sense that it’s a potted plant. These are the same plants, right? The ZZ plants, pothos, philodendrons, whatever, right? And then thesill.com, like they have these beautiful pots, beautiful plants. They’re just, they’re quote unquote, just potted plants, but also beautiful, right? So, but you can imagine that maybe EasyPlant’s audience is people who travel frequently, people who work in an office every day, right? Like maybe that’s a target audience. Whereas maybe thesill’s audience is stay-at-home workers. Maybe it’s people who don’t travel a lot. Maybe it’s people who live in rural areas who like gardening at home. Things like that which you can imagine, those are two very different types of audiences. In a sense, they might not really be competitors. depending on how you look at that, right? So you can also imagine there are very different opportunities for the kinds of copy you would write for both of those brands, even if they are in essence the same D2C plant brand.
Rob Marsh: So I don’t want to necessarily stop plant talk, but I do-
Kira Hug: I’m going to buy that. I’m like the easy plant talk.
Rob Marsh: I know. As soon as you started talking about plants, Amanda, I knew Kira was going to be all over this. But I do want to back up because, well, so there was some serendipity in you landing this job at SparkToro, but it came out of a very deliberate, at least I think, practice on Twitter. And you have, I think I was looking today, like 130,000 followers on Twitter. Like you have a huge audience there. You have your own newsletter. Can we talk a little bit about how you built that audience and exactly what you did to do that? And I guess maybe as a final question to however we talk about this, like, is it possible for people to do that today as opposed to, you know, a few years ago when you started doing it?
Amanda Natividad: Yeah. So let’s see. This kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier. Once I decided to write about my work or my experience, I went all in. I was working for an SEO agency called Growth Machine where I was running marketing for them, the agency, so I was responsible for bringing in pipeline and leads and all that stuff. As an agency, you have to think about what’s the unique differentiator because a lot of SEO agencies are pretty much the same, right? They’re all just different people working there, right? Then it became pretty clear that the unique differentiator was the people. It just kind of became a natural fit to kind of position myself as the face of the brand because it would also just make things a lot more sustainable for our budget. It wasn’t about paying for ads. It was about positioning a person as the front of the brand who would then bring in the leads. A big part of it too is that the founder, Nat Eliason, was the face of the brand because it was his agency.
We also wanted to figure out how we sustain ourselves more than just, hey, Nat, can you tweet this for us? Marketing should be more sustainable than that. So as I took on this role, and this was probably, oh yeah, this is my first time marketing to other marketers, it became clear that the content was marketing. And I was like, well, I know how to do that. So I’m going to write about this. And I think it was just in my philosophical approach to content marketing was I learned SEO, or at least the basic principles of it, because I am not an SEO expert. I learned basic principles of SEO later in my career.
My entry into content marketing was by way of journalism and just knowing how websites like how to make a website and how to write a blog post. Right. But it wasn’t really that I didn’t come at it from a keyword research standpoint. I came at it from a journalistic standpoint, which was how do you write original content? You come up with original information. You know, you have to interview thought leaders or subject matter experts. You interview these people and then write original content based on original knowledge. Right. Like that was kind of always my approach, which is not that doesn’t mean that that’s separate from keyword research, right? You can do both. It’s just that I didn’t come at it from the keyword first standpoint. In doing this, I think it was more intuitive for me to figure out my unique differentiator because that was always how I created content. I’m saying this because I think this was my competitive edge as a content marketer coming up in this space. And I just figured like, well, I’m going to write from experience because that’s what I know, right? Like I can’t do – because we see a lot of these right outside in looking case studies, right? Where people are like, I looked at Masterclass in Ahrefs. Here’s how they grew to a billion-dollar business or whatever it is. Like I’m having worked at other startups and bigger companies. I see a lot of these case studies and I’m like, that’s not how they did it at all. I think you can tell that story when you work your way backwards, but that’s not how they made those decisions.
They didn’t do it that way. They didn’t start with SEO because they knew that would be the play. Maybe they started with subject matter experts because that was the product and then it just so happened to make sense as an SEO strategy. That always bothered me and I always felt like, no, you have to write from what you know. And what you know best is your own experience. So I wrote from that. And then I also, here’s where the marketing comes into play, you know, figured out how to position my content so that people would actually want to read it. Right. And then I would start, I focused on the sort of zero click content, right. Where I was optimizing native to the platform, focused on just building, growing my impressions, right. Like making sure that I and my content would get seen and it actually worked. Right. Like, like kind of early on, I started to go viral with some of these threads, you know, viral within the marketing community. Right. That was my target audience.
And I ended up growing my audience from like, I think I started at like 700 followers and then got to maybe 3,000 followers in a couple of months, which then quickly went to 10,000 followers. And then I think it grew to over 100,000 in about a year and a half. And I think it was even that from 700 to about 5000 followers. I didn’t even have a personal site or newsletter or anything. It was just Twitter.
So I think the key thing there is to focus on one discovery platform first. Like I think I think people kind of get hung up on like I had to start my blog. I have to get my own not rented channel. I need to set this up. Okay, how do I start a personal site? How do I start a blog?” And then you kind of get bogged down, right? And like, oh my God, I have so much to do. It’s never going to get done. Instead, what I recommend to people is focus on your discovery platform first, right? And I’m saying discovery platform. because I want that to be inclusive of social media, but also kind of see how you can kind of think beyond traditional social media. Because I kind of think that discovery platforms now are things like Substack, Beehive, ConvertKit, right? These newsletter platforms where you own it, but you don’t own it, right? Like you own your email list, but theoretically, they can take you down like, you know, they can. But that being said, if they did, they don’t delete your email list. You can still export it. Right. So it’s like it’s mostly owned. Right. But focus on these channels where you can get discovered, where there’s some kind of organic growth element to it. And then from there, like, like master that, get good at that and then expand to the next thing.
So in my case, I focused on Twitter, focused exclusively on that for probably six to nine months, eventually started my newsletter. And then maybe it was even after a year. of that, that I then moved over to LinkedIn. And so by the time I got to LinkedIn, I had this repository of content that I could repurpose, expound on. I could kind of play the greatest hits, so to speak. And also at that point, I had developed some, you know, some social capital, right, on Twitter. Like I kind of had that following there. So then when I went to LinkedIn, there were already some people who knew about me. And so that became easier to grow. So maybe I’ve been talking for a long time. I’ll pause there.
Kira Hug: So many follow-up questions. I know it’s different for every person, every business. But for you, if you were starting today, what would your discovery platform be? Would it be X? Would it be something else? What would that look like?
Amanda Natividad: It would not be X today. Because Twitter’s user base has been shrinking. There are fewer and fewer impressions there. There are also fewer people talking about their niche interests on Twitter. I think there are certainly obviously some communities that are still alive and thriving there. I think it seems like finance and real estate Twitter are still pretty active, but marketing Twitter is a lot quieter. than it was two years ago, right? So depending on your audience, right? So I would start with, I would start with Spectro and I would look at, okay, where is my audience hanging out already? Right? Look, if they happen to be on Twitter, then yeah. Or Twitter X, right? If they happen to be there and you know that they’re there, then start there.
Personally, as a marketer, a B2B marketer, I would start on LinkedIn today. because I know that my audience is on LinkedIn. There are still more and more people to be discovered on LinkedIn. I still feel like when I log on and scroll my feed, I’m still seeing the same people. There aren’t a ton of fresh voices. I encourage more people to be the fresh voice that emerges on LinkedIn. I think there might also be something to be said for threads. It’s not a platform that I have mastered. I think it’s an interesting place to start, or it could be, because at the rate that Threads is growing, I think reasonably it’ll overtake Twitter/X pretty soon, maybe in the next year or so. So I would think about that as well.
Rob Marsh: As you were building your audience on Twitter, there are a lot of people out there that sell, you know, here are all the hooks or here’s the course on how to do it. Did you have templates that you were going to, or were you just sharing your thoughts just as they came? How did you, you know, build each of the things that you were communicating out there so that it did get interest?
Amanda Natividad: Yeah. So I’ll be very honest here. I did take some of those like grow your audience courses, like whatever was free, because I was like, I don’t want to pay for this. And I looked at the basic principles, right? So I didn’t have templates per se on like hooks or ways of writing, but I had like, I took, I took like maybe two courses, two or no, two or three like free courses. which were kind of some mix of like self-paced video modules and like reading through like kind of playbooks. And what I was looking for was what are the common threads here, right? Like how can I learn this from first principles and then do my own thing, right? So a lot of it was the basic principles are one, figure out how to boost your impressions, aka figure out how to get seen. when you don’t have any followers, and then two, make it really easy for people to follow you. Meaning, be very clear about who you are, what you write about, and why people should trust you. Focus on that and deliver on that and stick with it repeatedly over time. Those are basically the two principles. Figure out how to get seen and then make it easy for people to follow you. And so when you think about how do you boost your impressions, how do you get seen? A lot of it is by commenting on existing accounts. Now, you don’t have to comment on the giant accounts. It’s just it’s really just comment on other accounts. And for me, as a as a longtime Twitter lurker, that was very eye-opening to me. I was like, what? Comment on strangers’ posts? You can do that? I was never the kind of person who would comment on someone’s post if we weren’t already friends in real life. Because there was a part of me that was like, you’re not allowed to do this. I just didn’t think I could.
But I started to learn, like, no, you can, but like, be nice, right? Or like, be kind, like, amplify things. Ask questions that are additive to the conversation. Make comments that are additive to the conversation. Think about what you can add, not take away. They don’t come at it as like, yeah, but I think you’re wrong. That’s taking away something. It’s taking away energy. It’s taking away good vibes. Think about what you can add. Like, oh, that’s a great point. Also, I saw another great example of this. Here’s what it is. Let me share it with you. Those are value adds. Those are reasons that people would want to follow you. So do that.
And then meanwhile, make it easy for people to follow you. Optimize your profile so that people actually want to follow you. Everyone’s different. You can be pseudonymous if you want to. For me, I just chose, I’m going to use a clear photo of myself, use my name because that’s who I am and I stand by this. On my Twitter bio, I write about this. And basically here’s a social proof that backs it up. I write about marketing and tech, used to work at Fitbit, NatureBox, Growth Machine. That’s generally what my profile says. And then I actually wrote about marketing. Probably 90% of my content was focused on marketing. The other things I would think through were, well, sort of using my own bias. The way I follow people on Twitter is And this gets me in trouble because sometimes people are like, why won’t you follow me back? It’s I use inform I use Twitter for information, right? Like I follow people because I want to see their tweets because they have information or knowledge that I want to learn from or information that I think is funny or interesting.
There are a lot of people who might be, you know, very casual Twitter users and look, you do you. This is not an indictment of individuals, but if you’re tweeting like 12 times a day, I don’t want that in my feed personally. Hey, if you want to do that, cool. Do you? I don’t want to see that. Right. And because I don’t want to see that, I don’t want to put that in the world. So I only really tweet once or twice a day if that. Couple times a week at this point because I don’t want to just put noise out into the world, right? So that’s how I think about that and that’s kind of how I follow people back. If someone’s tweet – I have unfollowed people who I like because they tweet like 30, 40 times a day and I’m like, it’s just too much and I start to miss things in my feed because it’s overpowered by somebody else. I don’t want to mute them. I don’t want to miss 100% of their tweets. I just want to see like 10% of it. So I unfollow but don’t mute in hopes that it pops up in my “for you” feed. This sounds so wonky and geeky, but it gets me into trouble because people are like, what did I do to you? Why did you unfollow me? Did I hurt you?
Rob Marsh: That was going to be my next question. How did we hurt you that we don’t have you following us?
Amanda Natividad: I’m sorry. What I want to say is, it’s not you, it’s me, but no, it’s a little bit you because you tweet too much for my personal preference. I’m sorry, but you are a wonderful person, but I can’t do this.
Rob Marsh: If only I could muster the energy to tweet that many times to, yeah, to earn an unfollow. Yeah.
Kira Hug: So what is the ecosystem today and how, you know, because you mentioned, okay, today I do tweet like once or twice a day and then you have your sub stack, which I just subscribed to recently, like today. And it said I’ll get a monthly, I think it said a monthly email. Yeah. And then how does that fit into what you’re doing with SparkToro? Like, how do you kind of view the whole ecosystem of you today? Yeah.
Amanda Natividad: Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, what it boils down to for me is I say something when I believe I have something to say. Right. I really, really don’t like filling a content quota. That being said, for my day job at SparkToro, I kind of do need to fill a content quota, right? I do put some parameters around it. We have an audience research newsletter that goes out every other Thursday. That’s what it is. That’s the cadence that I chose because I felt like, look, twice a month, okay. I can figure out important things to say twice a month. I don’t think that’s going to be overwhelming to people or to myself. And I need to be figuring, it’s my job, right? Like I need to create value at least twice a month, right?
So that becomes a forcing function for Sparktoro and the other things feed into it, right? So then ideally beyond that, then I’ll have a couple of blog posts a month, ideally. Ideally, Rand will have a couple of blog posts a month. And we also will try to have our Sparktoro office hours once a month or so. So this, to me, kind of naturally feeds the newsletter. And that’s kind of the main ecosystem for Sparktoro. For myself, myself is like, that is just when I feel like it, right? Like my personal newsletter is, you know what I want to do, I do want to figure out how I can make this more sustainable or just more frequent. while also making sure that it’s adding value to people. So I try to figure out a nice balance there. I try to make sure that I am sharing interesting, novel, original insights at some kind of repeatable click. I don’t want to just fill a quota. If I have a post that I’ve written on the Spectoro blog, then usually I feel like I did something worth sharing. So I’ll try to repurpose that for my newsletter pull out a couple of principles from there and expound on that for the newsletter and really just try to make sure I’m being, that I’m making the most out of the existing content that I’m creating while also being careful not to just add noise to the internet.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s really, really good advice. Adding noise. I mean, that’s one of those major marketing problems that we’re all sort of dealing with. What do you see as the other issues that we need to be working to make better in the marketing world as you look across the entire spectrum? A lot of people making a lot of mistakes, a lot of people doing things that are harming the industry, but where do you think that we could be doing better and how do we do it?
Amanda Natividad: I was starting to think about this this week. How can we do better? What can we do more of or less of? I was at a conference this week. I was at MozCon. It was a great conference. I met some very nice people. There were some great talks. But I can’t help but feel like I wonder about the SEO industry. I say that as a semi-outsider. I’m not really an SEO. I know some things. Definitely not a technical SEO. But the things that I wonder and worry about are there are a lot of the same names, the big names in SEO for like, how long now? Eight, 10 years maybe. And they’re great. They are, right? It’s not a knock on them, but it’s, I’m not sure that there are a lot of emerging voices in SEO. And this is just, I’m using SEO as one example because broadly that makes me wonder, Who are the other emerging voices in the other subsets of marketing? I don’t know how many there are. I’m kind of posing this as an existential question. Honestly, I hope anybody listening is like, oh my gosh, you could not be more wrong. I know of so many emerging voices. Good.
I really hope there are people listening who think that because as I’m saying this, I’m obviously revealing my own bubbles, right? Like we all have our own bias. We all live in our bubbles. I just worry that I’m not seeing enough emerging voices. And I also need to say, when I say emerging voices, I’m not saying, who are the cool Twitter accounts now? It’s not that. It’s so much more than that. Emerging voices are, who are the people who are learning the first principles, getting this great solid foundation of things? Who are the people that are challenging the status quo, who are asking the questions, who are asking the industry to do better? I worry about that. I worry that there are potentially more people in the sort of up and coming social account kind of space where, hey, that’s cool for you. Like, yeah, get your clout. You know, there’s a big part of you that’s like, I can’t hate on that. If you’re getting good success, good for you. And I don’t want to call anyone out and I won’t, but I worry that there’s just a lot of like emerging or growing social media accounts that aren’t actually doing a lot of good for the industry. They’re not doing anything bad. It’s not that. I don’t know that they’re creating net positive things and opportunities for the marketing industry as a whole. I kind of think it’s like a new flavor of a harmless grifter. Sorry, this is so existential.
Kira Hug: Yeah. I was just thinking as you were saying that, I was wondering if it has anything to do with AI in that space. And I’m not an SEO expert at all, but if that’s making it harder for new voices to show up and dedicate that time to do stepping into that space because they may not see the pathway that maybe some of these past experts saw 10 years ago. Yeah.
Amanda Natividad: I don’t know, because there’s the creator, the optimistic creator in me wants to say, no, that’s a good thing, right? Because that means crappy content is going to stay crappy content. And the current state of generative AI is not better than the individual person, right? Individual people are human beings with lived experiences. Let’s all lean into that. That’s what the optimistic creator in me says. the pessimist consumer in me worries, are we all getting dumber? Right? Because I see, we, me too, right? Like we see so many of these social accounts, right? Who are like, these are the top 10 AI tools. So good. They should be illegal. And then you look at it and it has like 10,000 likes. And you’re like, why? Why do people think this is good? Like that concerns me.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think there’s there’s something going on to where there are new voices or new people, but they’re saying the exact same things that were said five years ago or 10 years ago. And so In fact, even in the copywriting world, we’ve seen people say, you can’t say that because I said that in my course two years ago. And they’re like, wait a second, this is something that has been in the copywriting world since the 60s. They’re just saying the same things over and over as opposed to what you’re talking about, new approaches, new angles. We were in a training with our friend Brian Kurtz, and he said something that really resonated with me. He said, we don’t need more thought leaders. We need results leaders. And I think anytime you’re talking about results, you may be talking about those foundational principles, but because it’s a new project, it’s a new assignment, it’s new results, it’s a new way to talk about some of this stuff. So again, that’s not really a question, but I a hundred percent agree with what you’re saying, Amanda.
Amanda Natividad: Yeah, I’m writing that down. We don’t need more thought leaders. We need more results leaders.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I like that. So I do have a question. You know, we’re talking a lot about fresh ideas. Let’s not get dumber. Let’s get smarter. New voices. Yet I also hear you saying, I don’t necessarily want to share content unless I have something to say. I don’t want to force and just put up content. And so I feel like there is this tension for our audience of copywriters where they do want to be results leaders and thought leaders and share content and be a fresh voice and share their perspective. Yet I think they’re so self-aware and even sometimes self-conscious that they don’t want to just put out trash. So they don’t do anything. So I guess, like, do you have advice for those people who could be a fresh voice but are getting in their own way because they’re worried about being part of the problem, even though those people probably aren’t part of the problem?
Amanda Natividad: Yeah, yeah, I think about this a lot because I think about this in the form of when I see the social media posts that complain, right, about like, oh my God, these people are doing the same thing. All right, I spent 100 hours looking at landing pages. Here are the four things you need to know. And you feel like, oh God, I hate that. I don’t want that in the world. I say, yes, I don’t either. But the bros that do this, like it or not, we can learn something from them because the things that they are keying in on are they are figuring out how to position their copy so that people look at it, so that people consume it and read it and follow them. And they are shameless enough to just keep doing it. And I think the people who are getting in their own way, and this was me for a very long time, the people who are getting in their own way are the only people who are like, oh, I shouldn’t do that. So I guess this is kind of my way of saying like, you know what, these bros don’t care. They will shamelessly keep doing it. How about you take an ounce of that energy for yourself? right? Like lean into that little bit of like, I don’t care, I’m going to do it. And I’m not saying like be dishonest, right? No, no, no. It’s just lean into the shamelessness a little bit, right? Because nobody is overthinking it more than you are. And we can learn from a little bit of that energy. So I say this, I will talk about this, about the bros, right? In like podcasts like this and like these conversations where we could have like the full context together. but I’ll never tweet about it. Like, you’ll never see me tweet, like, I’m so sick of these bros, because I don’t want to put that energy out in the world. I’m happy to talk about it in a nuanced way, but I say, like, no, we can actually learn from that. Like, we should actually, more of us, the people like us who have the imposter syndrome, who have a little bit of shame, no, we can learn from that a little bit, because if we don’t do it, it’s never going to get done. So, yeah.
Rob Marsh: True. I want to ask you about how you get stuff done because, I mean, you’ve got two little kids. You’re vice president at SparkToro. You’re doing your own content and distribution and creation. You have a course on content marketing that is out there in the world. Like, you’ve got so much stuff going on. What does your week look like so that you can actually make it all happen?
Amanda Natividad: I mean, I… I will have to say very first and foremost, I have the luxury of creating my own schedule. I create my schedule at this point around my child care schedule and resources. I don’t have daily child care for my baby. Basically, Mondays and Fridays, I’m with the baby. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that’s when I have some help. The days that I have help, I go hard with work, right? And I think I am all for everybody figuring out what their work-life balance or integration looks like. For me, that balance is there isn’t a lot of it and that works for me. So Mondays, I’m like kind of doing emails, slowly ramping up, doing some things here and there while the baby naps, but I am on childcare all day. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I go pretty hard, maybe 10, 12 hours a day on work work, like Sparktora work, my coursework, newsletter work. Friday, I wind down again. And then the weekends are the weekends. I also have weekends, like I might reply to emails, but it’s whatever I can do in the Gmail inbox on my app is what I do. If it requires me having to go into MailChimp and schedule something for Sparktoro or go into Sparktoro and pull a report for someone, it won’t get done on the weekend. It just won’t. At this point, I mean, Rand and Casey, they know that I don’t work on the weekends, but I come back to it when I can. Maybe the short answer version of that is like, If you can create your schedule, do it, and figure out how to control your energy.
Kira Hug: Yeah. I love that flow of easing in, going hard, and then kind of wrapping up for the week. So I could ask you so many questions, but I want to keep an eye on the time, and I know we need to wrap soon. So maybe in just a sentence, you could share your answer to this question. What do you struggle with? You’re kind of a superstar and amazing and all these things we’ve been discussing. But like what is something that you still struggle with in your own career?
Amanda Natividad: I still struggle with making sure that I’m spending my time on the most high impact opportunities. Sometimes I’m really good at identifying it. Sometimes I lose sight of it and I get bogged down in something silly like a webinar registration page and I lose six hours to that. But I will say it’s a constant exercise in myself to make sure and figure out how to refocus on the most high-impact things.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I struggle with that too. I mean, I’m 30 years into my career and I still struggle with that almost daily. If you could give some advice to younger Amanda to help her make progress faster or to do something differently, maybe subtract a regret, what would that be?
Amanda Natividad: Ooh. I will say I wish that I learned SEO more thoroughly and that I learned it sooner. I think it’s really important to know the rules before you break them. And this can apply to any other job or discipline. I think it’s good, it’s really important to be creative and be an original thinker, but you sometimes you’re limited by that if you don’t have a good true foundational understanding of something.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s true. Well, I want to thank you for joining us on the podcast. It’s taken us a little while to make this happen. went and had a baby and, you know, all kinds of things since I first reached out. But I admire a lot that you do and appreciate you coming to share so much about what you do and your business and even SparkToro. Hopefully there’ll be a few people checking it out after they hear what you had to share. So thank you.
Amanda Natividad: Thank you. Thank you, Rob and Kira. Really appreciate you having me.
Rob Marsh:
Thanks again to Amanda for joining us for this in-depth discussion about content marketing, customer research and so much more. You can connect with Amanda on Linkedin or subscribe to her occasional newsletter on her website at amandanat.com. There’s a lot of other fun stuff about Amanda at her website. And finally, if you join SparkToro’s email list, you’ll hear from Amanda (as well as Rand Fishkin) every few days.
That’s the end of this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast.
What is good content? How is A.I. impacting the creation of content? And what are the opportunities for content writers in the near future? All good questions that we didn’t have answers to. Until we invited Ross Simmons to join us for the 402nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. This is a good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Create Once, Distribute Forever by Ross Simmonds
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The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Before we jump into this episode, I just want to give you a quick heads up that The Copywriter Accelerator will be opening up for the one and only time this year… at the end of August. I won’t share any details at the moment, you can find out more when you visit thecopywriterclub.com/waitlist.
Over the past decade, written content has become a critical marketing component for tens of thousands of organizations looking to get attention online. That content takes a lot of different forms from articles and blog posts to case studies, lead magnets, white papers and other written assets used to attract and keep the attention of readers. But what makes good content? How is AI impacting content writers today? And how do you ensure that you clients see content as an investment that pays off, rather than a cost that they need to cut?
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with content writer and founder of the content agency Foundation Marketing, Ross Simmonds. Ross got his start writing about fantasy football in high school and has been recognized as a top marketer by publications like BuzzSumo and SEMrush. His work has been featured in dozens of publications including Forbes, HuffingtonPost and CBC. Ross answered those questions I just posed and a lot more. This interview opened my eyes to several new opportunities and I think you’re going to like it.
But before we jump in with Ross…
We have a new gift for you as a listener to The Copywriter Club Podcast. We went through the past 400 episodes of this podcast looking for the ideas that our guests have shared over the past couple of years related to finding clients. We pulled out a bunch of our favorites and compiled them into a new pocket sized guide that will inspire you as you look for ways to attract the right clients to your business. It’s a bit like having a couple dozen of the best copywriters in your pocket advising you on how to find your next client. To get your copy, visit thecopywriterclub.com/pocket and download this new guide.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Ross Simmonds.
Rob Marsh: Ross, welcome to the podcast. You are one of the people that I have had on my list for a long time, and have been wanting to talk to you. We’ve had a little trouble connecting the last couple of months. You’ve had some travel and lots of stuff going on. But let’s start out the way that we like to here on the podcast. And that is, tell us about your story. How did you become a content marketer and now ultimately founder of Foundation Content Marketing Agency?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, Rob, thanks for having me on. I’m excited for this conversation. I’ll take people back into time a little bit. So I’ve always had a passion for writing and for creating things from the time I was a young kid. When I was a young kid, I fell into that whole meme and being obsessed with the Roman Empire. And I was writing books about what the Roman Empire must have been like. And I was doing that probably when I was like 10 years old. So early on, I was creating and writing chapter books and stuff like that. As time went on, I continued to be passionate about writing and creating.
And in university, I ran a fantasy football blog. And I was writing every single day about fantasy sports and how I thought people should adjust their strategies in the wonderful world of fantasy football. In parallel to that, me and my sister, we created a community dedicated to a video game called The Sims. Some of your listeners might be familiar with it. We played back in the The early days of The Sims when things were very pixelated and all of that stuff, graphics weren’t close to where they are today, but we ran a community on that and I was writing constantly.
So at this moment, when I was writing about fantasy football in The Sims, the light bulbs went off that I could live in, arguably, the middle of nowhere. I live in a place called Nova Scotia, Canada, up on the East Coast, above Maine, small population, and I was reaching people all over the globe. And at that moment, I knew that this internet thing was going to be special. So I started to continue to work on my writing and my skills. But as the fantasy football blog took off, as the Sims community took off, my traffic went up, but my marks went down. And my mom was like, Ross, listen, you have to start writing about what you’re learning in school. So I shifted my blog to start writing about marketing. And as I wrote about marketing, I started to get interesting conversations from people who were marketers and already had graduated. And I wrote a blog post about how these are the books that you need to read before you break into advertising, before I even broke into advertising. But people were loving it. And I was like, okay, this is fascinating. This thing is gonna stick.
So I continued and continued to write about marketing. And you fast forward a few years and more and more opportunities started to show up at my desk because of the work that I was doing online and writing and sharing my ideas. And ultimately, that led to me being very busy as a marketer, helping people who would reach out, wanting support, whether it was content creation, copywriting, et cetera. That was kind of the craft that I had learned was creating content. And I started to support these brands. started to work very late nights, realized that’s not scalable, started to hire a team and build out a team. And here we are today. So long story, a little bit longer. I fell into, in many ways, a passion for writing and was able to turn that into my career today.
Rob Marsh: Obviously, blogging has changed a bit since you started it. I wonder if there’s still anything, though, that’s applicable from those early days of blogging to what we do today. So for anybody who maybe wasn’t familiar with blogging, you know, way back when, when The Sims was actually a pixelated, you know, video game, whatever. So we’re talking 2003, 2004, maybe 2008, whatever. There was a lot of conversation that used to happen on blogs, and that doesn’t really happen anymore. but there’s still stuff from those early lessons I’m sure that apply to what you do today. Tell us, you know.
Ross Simmonds: I would agree. Yeah, so I think one of the best parts about back then is you could press publish on a blog and conversations, debates, arguments, discussions would happen directly on there. And that’s kind of lost. But still at its core, I believe that when it comes to content creation, content marketing, developing new stories, whether it’s a video, whether it’s a podcast, Whether it’s a blog post, a status update on LinkedIn, or one of the other channels, I think you do want to foster and try to stir up a bit of a conversation. And that ultimately leads to connection and community. So the essence of what I believe we should strive for is to create things that are worth talking about.
Seth Godin had this idea way back in the day where he said, you should strive to create content that’s remarkable. And content that’s remarkable is essentially content that’s worth making a remark about. And if you can create content that inspires people to make a remark, then you have created a piece of content that can facilitate a dialogue, and that is, even back then, the magic of the internet. The magic today is that it gives all of us the ability to have conversations, to interact, to challenge ideas, to support ideas, and to have a discussion with one another. And ideally, be able to become better because of it. So to me, I try to always encourage my teams and other writers that I talk to, to embrace content creation with a simple framework that I call the four Es: educate, engage, entertain, and empower.
When you are creating stories online, you should try to educate people and give them information that they’ve never had before. You should entertain them, put a smile on their face. There’s no easier way to somebody’s heart than to make them laugh, to make them feel good. And then empower because that’s celebrating other people’s success. And that always feels good. And then the last one is engage. And engage is when I believe you’re able to really stir up that dialogue that leads to community, that leads to connection. And that’s when a lot of magic happens. So if you can embrace those methodologies, I think you can win. And those are some of the lessons that I learned back then that I still carry with me today, even though blogging is a lot different.
Rob Marsh: Okay, I want to come back to this idea just a little bit when we talk maybe a little bit about distribution and where that conversation happens today. But before we get to that, let’s talk about content because content world has changed drastically even just in the last couple of years and who knows what it’ll be in two years from now. Um, but in addition to that, there is so much bad content and some, I mean, even, even, you know, yesterday, like you’re right.
Ross Simmonds: Like the amount of volume of bad content now is at a level that I don’t think. anyone could have ever predicted. It’s fascinating.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s awful. And I think that creates both a unique problem, but a huge opportunity. So let’s talk a little bit about content. What makes content good? And I suppose there’s even like a spectrum where there’s content that’s really bad for me, that’s actually good for you. And so how do we suss out good content from bad content?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, it’s a great question when you think about the spectrum. I think that comment is great because the definition of good is oftentimes defined by the reader, right? It’s the same thing as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, similar with some content. Now, there is a level of content that is just bad and should never have been created to begin with. And that goes into a whole different category.
I think At a fundamental level, every audience is going to have different levels of expertise. They’re going to have different levels of specialization, of interests, of capacity, of their own understanding of a topic. And because of that, it opens up a lot of room for people to create and tell stories. If you are a junior copywriter, you can actually still create a lot of valuable content for copywriters who are fresh, like they’re one day into it, right? You can still create value. You can talk to them about what one year at a copywriting shop looks like, or what your first year as a copywriter looks like. You can educate them on things. Now that might not be relevant to somebody who’s been in the industry for 15 years. But if you can create content that is resonating with people in your niche, that are learning from you, who are going up through a journey and a path that you’ve already gone on, that can be valuable.
I think one of the biggest mistakes that oftentimes happens in the internet is that a lot of people who are early on in their careers, they actually make the mistake of thinking they can’t create something because somebody else has already done it. The truth is that you oftentimes will have a lived experience, a experience with a certain industry, a niche that combines things that nobody else has. but somebody else might need to hear the same thing from your voice in your tone with a different perspective that just unlocks a whole new world for them. And that to me is good content.
Good content is content that’s lived is based off of experience that’s lived off of kind of deep research that’s built off of insightful, practical understanding of a topic, deep expertise on a topic, or a shared journey and telling a story around how they were able to accomplish something, leveraging the old-fashioned hero’s journey, that type of thing.
Now, here’s what’s wreaking havoc on the industry. It’s the fact that a lot of marketers, a lot of creators, a lot of copywriters even, have made the mistake of assuming that ChatGPT, that AI tools, should be completely 100% embraced to replace this entire industry and craft. I get it. I’m a big believer in AI. I talk about it often. I preach the gospel of AI and how important it is for us to embrace it because it can give us efficiencies and opportunities like no other thing that I’ve ever experienced. 100%. But when we make the mistake of thinking that an AI tool today can create copy built off of cultural understanding, built off of nuance, built off of just human understanding of psychology, we’re making a huge mistake. It can’t do it to the level that a great writer could do.
And because of this, we have teams that are publishing tons of pieces that are mediocre and expecting extraordinary results. And that is where the gap exists. I think the rise of AI has resulted in a significant amount of what I would say is just like garbage content, trash content, flooding the internet, when what that content actually needs is a human to take it and take it the rest of the way. You might get a very, very, very bad draft from ChatGPT. But if you put a great copywriter or even a good copywriter on it, it’s going to go from bad to decent. And that’s better than nothing. So I encourage people to accept the fact that AI is here, but also reject the notion that AI can replace great copywriters, great content marketers, great writers in general.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I agree 100% with what you’re saying. So while we’re talking about AI, how are you using AI in your work and in your business in order to use the good side of it and avoid some of the resulting bad stuff that’s jammed up content?
Ross Simmonds: I’m a big believer in using it for things that are kind of not necessarily directly related to the craft. So what I mean by that is, let’s say I’m doing deep research on something that I’m trying to understand. I might go out and grab some reports, grab some spreadsheets, might grab some PDFs that have insight that an actual journal has published, things like that. and I’ll upload it to ChatGPT and ask it to give me some of the key points, give me the key notes, give me a quick rundown on it. Or I’ll ask it to support me in developing research where I’ll get it to write a script that I can use in Google Sheets to do a detailed analysis of data that I never would have been humanly able to do in the past. That type of thing is what I use it for often.
On the writing front, I like to use it to challenge my own ideas. Like I love using ChatGPT as a debating partner. So when I go to ChatGPT and I’m trying to figure out what my position should be, sometimes I’ll share an article that I’ve written and I’ll be like, poke some holes in this. What are areas where I did not go in depth enough to really showcase my positioning, my perspective? And then it will tell me and it will poke holes into it. Another great use case, which goes a little bit more to the business side, is taking transcripts from calls and asking ChatGPT to analyze how you did on a call. asking it to give you feedback on how you did on a podcast interview and say like, were there certain things I could have done better? And then it gives you feedback now. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that somebody who’s a podcast coach is listening to this in the same way that I said you shouldn’t use ChatGPT to write. They’re saying you shouldn’t use ChatGPT for a podcast coach, but I find it valuable to be able to get a decent, it’s probably not great advice, but it’s decent advice on, hey Ross, you talk too fast. I get it, it’s something that I do often, but those are little things that I find it to be valuable for. Transcriptions, I find it to be valuable for. valuable for writing scopes of work, not scopes of work, but like standard operating procedures.
One of the things that I love doing because our team is fully remote is making sure that they have in-depth breakdowns on how to do certain things. So if I’ve done something for the first time, I record it on Loom, I talk through the process, and then I’ll upload that to ChatGPT, and I’ll say, ChatGPT, create an SOP based off of what I talk about in this video, and then it will write that for me. So those are some of the use cases. I could geek out on AI for a long time about some of the ways that I use it, but I hope that gives somebody that’s listening an insight and idea that they can use this tool to just be more efficient and effective in their work.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about AI on the podcast, and I think you’re tracking with some of the stuff we said. I love it for brainstorming. I don’t like to ask it to write things. In many cases, it’s worse than having a junior copywriter. And I’m already terrible with junior copywriters giving advice back and forth. I just take it and I’m like, I just got to rewrite this anyway. So that’s one of my weaknesses. And yeah, hiring ChatGPT to you know, just that pushes all the wrong buttons.
Ross Simmonds: And they always start with the same line. It’s like in the ever evolving world of the constantly changing world of like, give me a break. Clearly it learned it from something. So humans have written that way a lot of times, but it feels to me like it’s a dead giveaway when you’re reading a piece now and you can tell that it’s AI created.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s pretty bleak. Okay. So noting what AI is, you know, good for and maybe what it’s done to content. We already talked a little bit about the four E’s, but you know, let’s go a little bit deeper into writing great content. You know, what else should we be considering? Uh, you know, as, as, as we get an assignment from a client, you know, obviously we need to understand some things about the product or the customer, that kind of stuff, but what else really drives great content?
Ross Simmonds: I think one of the things that I always strive for is trying to find something, an idea, a story, a piece of research, a piece of data. that no one else has really covered before. I really find that the most powerful pieces that constantly drive shares, that constantly get sent to an entire company, are those pieces of content that provide people with that light bulb moment, with an idea, an insight, a tactic, a strategy, that no one has shared in front of them before. And it’s oftentimes difficult to come up with these, but there’s a few ways you can do it. One is proprietary research. I believe in surveys, I believe in research, believe in using that to inform data pieces that you create. In the past, for example, our target audience is software companies.
So if you’re an explorer by nature and you get excited by experiments and like doing this stuff, this whole thing becomes very easy. but I love just learning new things. So I said to myself, I’m going to look at a hundred different landing pages in software, and I’m going to analyze where they put their buttons, the color of their buttons, what goes in their nav, whether or not they have chatbots or not on them, whether or not they use real pictures or vector photos. And I’m going to create a spreadsheet that breaks down all of the things that I see. And then I’m going to start to create a report based off of trends that I’m seeing in the way that people design their software websites. That gave me a powerful differentiation in the market to bring to life ideas and stories and content that no one else had before. And anyone who wanted to talk about the subject would ultimately have to reference things that I created.
So that gave me more reach and more distribution. And we’ve applied that type of methodology to the work that we do with clients. We’ve applied it to our own growth at Foundation. And we do it over and over again. And I think the best copywriters in general are very curious people. I mean, I look behind you and I see all these books, you’re a very curious person. Like you clearly have a deep interest in learning. And when you are passionate about learning and you let your passion around learning new things guide you, it makes it easy to create content that resonates with people so much more deeply. For those who are thinking, okay, but I’m writing for clients who are in very boring niches, et cetera, I hear you too.
But you can go into the places where your audience is spending time and put on that same exploration kind of hat and mindset. and go explore the things that they care about. One of my favorite places to do this is inside of subreddits. So we have audiences that speak to a wide range of different types of groups and demographics. We’ll go into subreddits and we’ll sort the content within those communities by top posts. And what we’ll typically find is that maybe four, five, six, seven, eight, sometimes 10 years ago, there was a post that went live from somebody who’s passionate about that niche, that industry, about some random topic, who created something that was ridiculously valuable and everyone in that community loved. And when we see that, we now have a cultural insight into that demographic and that psychographic in that community.
We know that they care about this topic. So we go deeper and we say, how can we give this community that same level of value six years, seven years later, but elevate it to the modern standard? And then we give it to them. We bring them valuable assets, we distribute it back into their community, but we write something that we know they’re going to love because they loved it eight years ago. And humans are still the same as we were eight years ago, except some people are retired. Some people are new in their career, that type of thing. So it’s still at the fundamental level of what those people will care about.
Rob Marsh: I love that idea. Not just for content, but also for finding hooks for copy, you know, product-specific or industry-specific sales pages, that kind of thing. That’s brilliant. I hadn’t thought, I mean, obviously people talk about using Reddit. Go watch the conversations, but I hadn’t thought about the sort for top posts and then looking. That’s just brilliant. I appreciate it. Yeah, there’s a light bulb that is going to change the way that I research.
Ross Simmonds: To your point around like headlines and leads as well, I don’t know if you can still do it. It gave me a lot of inspiration around slide shares that I would create and my decks back in the day would generate like 100,000 views because I would reverse engineer the types of hooks that would connect with people. I’d study like the Gary Halbert letters, like those things, and then reapply that methodology to it. And when you do that stuff, you just I love that approach of just like, let’s understand what works and then replicate it, adjust it slightly, create your own swipe file based off of where industry, what niche you’re in, and then just start to deliver that value back to people.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. What a great idea. And an illustration of what you were just saying, here’s something that everybody does find a new way to look at it. Right. And, and we’ve just, now I’ve got a blog post to put up on LinkedIn later. I love it. I love it. Okay. So we were talking earlier about engagement because we want our content. I mean, here’s another problem with contents. We write it, we post it, and then it just goes onto the blog to die.
And as we were talking about old time blogs, that didn’t used to happen, but it does today because I think conversations have moved to other spaces. So let’s talk about this. How do we distribute the content in a way that fosters that ever-going communication and community?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, it’s so fascinating when you think that we will put 10, 15, sometimes 20 hours into developing a piece of content, but put 10 to 15 seconds into actually promoting it, right? Like that ratio is so broken amongst writers, creators, entrepreneurs across the board. We spend a lot of time to create things, but we spend no time promoting them. And once we get that ratio fix, where it’s more like, all right, I’m gonna spend 20% of the time to create it, and then 80% of the time to promote it, you start to realize, oh, I should be promoting this thing two quarters from now, three quarters from now, three years from now, five years from now, because I’ve created something so valuable.
So when you recognize first that the conversation isn’t going to happen on your site, you then have to think, how can I make a conversation start happening in places where my audience is spending time? For some brands that are going after like B2C, Facebook groups is where you might wanna be. You might wanna press publish on a great piece of content and share it in a Facebook group where you know your audience is, or on a Facebook page, or inside of a newsletter, or maybe you’re going to share it in a subreddit. it’s all going to depend where your audience spends time. In B2B, you might wanna distribute it on LinkedIn. You might wanna share it inside of a Slack channel where your community is spending time. You might wanna spread it through newsletters.
Again, you might wanna go on a podcast and talk about a piece that you created so people will go to that piece and then start to share it and then have conversations on X or LinkedIn or threads, you name it, right? Like you want to understand where your audience is. And then you distribute those stories in these communities that already exist. And when you do that, you’re able to facilitate value in those communities that stirs up dialogue around your brand. And when that dialogue is happening around your brand, or at least around the topics that are parallel to your brand, and your conversation is amplified because your story exists, it’s a magical thing. I’ve done this literally my entire career. I find communities that are passionate about a certain topic in a niche. I’ll seed the content within it that I know is going to resonate. And then I watch people talk about it. I watch people have debates. I chime in, I share, I discuss it. Or if it’s a niche that has nothing to do with me, it will just be like, let’s have this content shared in this community and then let the community take control of it. And that is a very powerful way, I believe, for brands to replicate, businesses, copywriters, et cetera, to replicate what used to happen directly on the blog.
Rob Marsh: So this is a little bit of a challenge for a lot of content marketers because we emphasize the content side and not the marketer side, you know, where we want, we want to do the writing, you know, and when a client brings us an assignment, I want to write it. I want to send them the Google doc and not even think about it again. Like you said, you’ve been doing this your entire career. So help me reframe. this idea of content marketing around that idea of marketing. Not just how do I add those skills because I’m not sure that that’s that difficult, but in being able to offer that to our clients, clearly we become so much more valuable. So how have you done that and how do you talk about that with your clients?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, so there’s two ways to think about it. One, I think When it comes to content marketers who struggle to do it for themselves, they have to recognize two things are happening. One, there’s something holding them back from promoting their work. And then two, they have to ask themselves, what could that be? So are you afraid that you’re going to come off too spammy? Are you afraid that people are going to comment negative things about your work? Are you afraid that you are going to kind of be seen as that person who’s always too promotional, et cetera? You have to do a little bit of soul searching to figure out like, what is holding me back? Am I afraid to be judged by my peers or by this industry, this community? What is holding you back from promoting it? Because at the end of the day, your content is only as good as the people that it reaches and those people who actually act on the stories that you’re telling, unless you’re writing a journal or a diary.
And in those cases, you don’t really care who’s reading it because there’s no business intent around it. But the other thing to keep in mind, if you can say with confidence that none of those things are what’s holding you back, then the question becomes, OK, why aren’t you helping more people? If you are so confident that your content is good, there is probably someone right now struggling with a problem that you have already talked about and you could have helped them solve. But because you won’t share it, they’re going to struggle for the next six months. And that to me is the number one reason why you should be shameless of promoting your work. Because right now there’s another human struggling with the problem that you could help them solve, but because you won’t help them solve it, because you won’t get out of your own way to promote it, they’re going to keep struggling and they might not even be able to put food on the table for their kids because you won’t share that piece that you created. That sucks, right?
So that’s the first piece. Now, let’s say you are bought into all of that and you’re promoting your work now and you’re distributing it. But now you have to convince your clients that they need to distribute their work too. The biggest opportunity that exists when articulating the value of distribution to clients is the idea that your content should be able to generate ROI long-term. So it’s easy for brands to think, okay, we’re just in this production game where we just need to produce, produce, produce. But if the things that you’re producing don’t generate ROI, then you’re probably just looking at like a cost center. And you want to start thinking like an investment center. Now, everyone is familiar with stocks, and every stock is kind of different. But one of the fundamental strategies for stocks is that you should constantly be always going into the market, even when things start to go down, you should be going in, dollar cost averaging. So with your content that you’re producing, you should be thinking the exact same way. Because on January 4th, 2024, when we happened to share our article, everyone on the internet Everyone in our ICP didn’t happen to be on X, didn’t happen to be on LinkedIn at that exact same moment to see our piece. So why aren’t we sharing it on the 14th? Why aren’t we sharing it on the 24th? Why aren’t we sharing it every 10 days? Because we know that we didn’t reach everybody on day one.
So if you want to get the best bang for your buck, you should be constantly resharing your content because everyone that you want to connect with is not online at the same time. In addition to that, Ideally, you’re creating content that’s valuable. And when you fast forward six months from now, there’s gonna be new people who have joined that platform, new people who have followed you for the first time, who will have no idea that you created this thing back in Q1 that was absolutely amazing. So reshare it and replay your greatest hits. That’s my biggest piece of advice. If you’ve been in the content game for four years, two years, three years, even a year, You probably have a couple assets that when they went live was a massive or a decent spike in engagement and traction. Those are the pieces you should start with, right? Bring back your greatest hits and reshare them with your community the same way that all of the musicians do. There’s a reason why when a musician is at the end of their career, they release the greatest hits album is because people want them. Right. I still listen to Bon Jovi. I don’t know when Bon Jovi just came out with another recent album, but I’ll still listen to it because there’s greatest hits and we need to think about our content the same way. If it’s good, it’s going to be good for a very long time. So milk it as long as you can.
Rob Marsh: And how do you have that conversation with clients? Do you actually provide the promotion services as part of what you offer them? Or do you help them set up? Yeah. Like, how does that happen?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, we do. So we ever since the beginning have believed in content creation and distribution as one thing. So when we deliver a blog post, it’s coming with some tweets, it’s coming with the LinkedIn post, it’s coming with the subreddit that you should submit it to, even the question in Quora that somebody asked that you should be answering. a response that includes a link back to the article. So we provide a full package that includes both what we call a distribution playbook and the actual asset that we’ve created. And I did this even when I was just a one-person shop as a freelancer.
So before I had a team and systems and things like that, at the end of a piece, I would take a few extra minutes and just write up a couple of tweets for the client. I would write up a LinkedIn update. I would say, this is one that you can send. This is one that somebody on your team can send. Send this as a template. Here’s an email that you can send to your existing clients. I would craft all of that up in a package for my clients. And it was at the time and now I’m giving away all my secrets so people can do it too. But I’ve been talking about this for a long time and nobody’s still doing it. But that package as a entity itself is a amazing value add that differentiated me from a lot of other people.
Again, if we go back to the early days of like who I am and what I was, I was just a copywriter. Like everyone thinks, oh, Ross is an SEO. I learned SEO through writing and having a blog and stuff like that. But at the core, I was just a writer who happened to get a marketing degree. And then I was like, OK, I’m going to start learning about SEO because there’s a value associated to this thing. I’m going to throw that on my writing hat. Cool. Now I get SEO. Cool. I understand CRO. Cool. I can throw these things in my head. Distribution. I’m excited. Let’s go all in. And then I was able to kind of create an entire agency on the back of it. But at the core, I just started to differentiate myself by saying, you’re not just going to get blog posts from me, you’re also going to get tweets, LinkedIn posts, emails, etc. Is anybody else doing that for you? No? Cool. I win the business. And that was like my in for a lot of businesses early on.
Rob Marsh: It seems like there’s an opportunity for stickiness here, too. Yeah. So obviously, you know, as early on, you were providing, you know, the social assets to people. But you don’t even have to do that necessarily. It’s like, OK, I’m going to set up the distribution for you. I’m going to run your Twitter account or I’m going to post this stuff on LinkedIn for you. Yeah, that the stickiness there is in that if they stop working with me as a content provider, that stuff goes away. Like, you know, I turn off the buffer. you know, promotions or whatever. And so as far as retainers go and long-term clients, there’s something here that I think could benefit a ton of content creators.
Ross Simmonds: Yeah. And the reporting is easier today than ever before. Like I can remember going into Buffer and pulling up the analytics for how many clicks we were getting on different posts and then sending that over to clients over email and then going into Google Analytics, etc. Now you can set it up so they just get automatic reports directly out of analytics. And if you’re using things like HubSpot, it all automatically will go to them. And with AI today, it becomes even easier. AI can be your assistant in writing an email that summarizes the results of the last few months. And it just makes it so much more streamlined.
But yes, I think there’s a big sticky factor in that. And I would advise copywriters to think about, okay, great, you have a retainer associated with content creation. But to your point, like how else can you get connected into the business beyond the production side that allows for that tighter grip on the company so they feel like, oh yeah, we can’t lose them. We need them, we need to retain them. They’re deeper into this business with us than just writing copy.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, and I mean, even saying that, with the tools that you’re using and what you bring to the table, it just feels like, Moving just a little bit away from all content creation and spending 10, 20% of your time setting up these systems that are automated to already do it just makes you so much more valuable.
Ross Simmonds: Right. And the other one that is easy, I don’t want to say it’s easy, but the other one that is a nice value add is when you can bring new insight to the table, but frame it. Instead of just saying, I saw this, like say, I did some research and frame it the right way. It could be as simple as going to review sites. Like if you are in local SEO or if you’re in local marketing, et cetera, go look at your brands, your clients, Google reviews, and look for insights around the things that they are doing, that everyone is talking about.
Pro tip, again, AI is great at this. If they’ve got hundreds of reviews, export all of that, copy and paste all of this into a Google doc, upload it to ChatGPT, ask ChatGPT to look at it and try to identify a trend. It’s going to see whether or not something is mentioned over and over again. And if it is, you bring that to your client and say, I’ve noticed that on our website, on your content, on your ads, nowhere do you talk about the fact that you folks have the fastest Wi-Fi in the city. But that’s what everyone is talking about on Google Reviews. We should probably talk about that a little bit more, right? Like those are the little ideas of research where you can start to even say to them, as a part of our retainer, every month I’m going to spend time doing some research and I’m going to bring you new ideas. they will pay for that. They will pay for that if it is value and you can show them by just doing a quick analysis like that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Okay. You mentioned reporting. So I’m really curious what kinds of things you’re sharing and reporting to clients. What does that look like?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah. Our reporting function today is a lot more robust and we are deep into leveraging things like HubSpot and data to bring to life like deep reports on Serpent Analytics. So we’re tracking Keywords, we’re tracking competitive keywords and how we’re ranking for the value of the keywords. So cost per click multiplied by the actual search volume estimates. We’re looking at MQLs. So we’re looking at the content and how we are actually assisting with marketing qualified lead generation. We’re assigning deals with pipeline to them and then monitoring and seeing how much pipeline we’ve influenced and impacted. We’re looking at follower accounts. We’re looking at referral traffic from social. We’re doing a lot of those types of things now to get a little bit more closer to the businesses and their objectives and goals.
And even early on, I would say we were trying to understand that. But now, because of data as well as like our own reputation, it’s easier to get access to a lot of that info. But I would advise folks to try very hard to get as close to ROI as possible. Try to see exactly what dollars you’re influencing within the client’s business, because that’s when you’re able to show that they are seeing 2X, 3X, 5X, 10X returns off of your work. And you want to be able to communicate that. You want to be able to say to a client, look, we’ve been at this for three months. You’ve closed 10 deals because of our work. I cost X, you’ve made Y. That difference is the ROI between this relationship. Do you want to keep that going? Probably if the gap is significant. If you’re breaking even, not a great story, but you should still continue to get an at-bat a few more months, which is good, but you need to see that increase. You really want to be able to show that you’re not just paying for yourself with this work, but you’re also generating profit for the company.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, even at breakeven, if you can take the timeline out, you know, a year to year because that content asset actually lives, like that should be able to ultimately. demonstrate some profitability there. But yeah, obviously it’s better if you’re selling a lot. So for the copy or the content creator who is new to this whole idea of reporting basics, you know, the basic setup, you know, maybe I don’t have HubSpot reporting or anything like that. But I probably want to set up a couple goals using Google Analytics. So I can track back to my content. Is there anything else that I would add to that in order to get to that investment number?
Ross Simmonds: I would always ask my clients, what do you use for reporting? What do you use for tracking your revenue, your sales associated with online? And then try to get insight into their systems. If they’re using Stripe, then you might be able to connect Stripe directly to Google Analytics. If they’re using Shopify and it’s an e-commerce play, then you 125% wanna just get access to that and always try to get the most access as you can because that gives you the details. And then from there, you wanna connect those types of tools to goals, into analytics and things like that.
Rob Marsh: Okay, good. Okay, that’s probably enough about reporting for now. So one thing that I saw you talking about recently, which really resonated with me, because this is exactly how I talk about copywriting, is the idea that content is an asset. And, you know, we’ve talked about this in our Accelerator program, that oftentimes when we start out as writers, we’re thinking, well, I’m just providing copy, or I’m just giving them, you know, articles, content, whatever. But when I realized this in my own business that I’m basically creating the machinery on the factory floor or the product that’s going out the door and started seeing the work as an asset, it really changed my mind frame. So talk a little bit about that and how you view the content as asset.
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, so the same way in the stock market where there’s different types of assets. So you can buy stocks, you can buy bonds, you can buy crypto, you can buy real estate, you can buy all of these different things that are assets. There’s one expectation that we all have when we make those types of investments. We’re looking for return. And when it comes to content, your clients, when they make that investment, they’re looking for return.
So when you are working with them, you need to be thinking about, okay, if I’m going to support the development of this thing, what is it? It’s an asset. you want to create an asset that’s going to drive return. And not all assets are created equally. Some assets are landing pages. Some assets are blog posts. Some assets might just be a tweet. Some assets might be a slide deck. Some might be a white paper. Some might be an ebook. All assets are not created equally, but neither is crypto. Neither is like bonds and stocks. Like it’s all different and the right portfolio mix of your assets. with content depends on the scenario of the business, right? The same way that the investment approach that you take will be different depending on the stage of the human.
Somebody who’s 85 is gonna have a very different investment strategy, I hope, than somebody 18. They should have completely different spectrums on how much risk they’re willing to take, what they’re willing to bet in, whether or not they wanna go into high growth options and stocks, or whether or not they’re going after something that’s slow and steady. you should be thinking the same way with content.
A brand that invests in blog posts and is expecting a significant amount of return might be very different than a brand that’s investing in podcasting as the content asset. And that’s okay. But you have to understand where the business is and then develop content based off of that. Now, once we are aligned on that idea, as a copywriter, as a creator, it should do two things. One is to make you a little bit less emotional around the content that you’re creating and it should give you the perspective that I’m adding so much value to this organization that I’m going to give them an asset and that asset that I’m going to develop is something that they’re going to get ROI out of and then from there you hopefully Start to think much more from a business sense and start thinking about, OK, if they have feedback, it’s just adjustments in the asset strategy. We’re optimizing this asset a little bit differently. That’s OK. Right. It’s OK. Stand on your own authority, of course, and expertise to be able to push back. the same way that a financial advisor should. But when you do that, you need to recognize that you might want to come with data. You might want to come with supporting facts, things of that nature.
Now, here’s something that you have to keep in mind. An asset should not just live and die the day that it goes live. It should be nurtured. You should be investing and constantly leveraging that asset to get more rewards. That’s why I created the book Create Once Distribute Forever because I see so many people create amazing assets. I can say right now Rob with 100% confidence that there’s probably people who are listening to us talk and they have created content assets for themselves or even for their clients that would have fundamentally changed either their own lives or their clients lives and trajectory and career, but because they didn’t distribute that asset after it went live, Things are all the same. Things are completely the same. Their life is the same as it was two years ago, but they wrote a piece that would have fundamentally changed their trajectory, but they didn’t promote it. They didn’t amplify it. They were too shy. They were too nervous. And this is coming from somebody who in high school’s nickname was Shy Ross. Like, I get it. The fear is real.
But folks, if you have created an asset that is valuable, spread that asset with the masses and the people who you can influence, and it can fundamentally change the trajectory and career that you have. I am a deep believer and example that one single piece of content can fundamentally change your life. I’ve had so many of them over the years where I’ve just pressed publish on one piece of content, I’ve promoted it two months, three months later, and I’ve gotten a DM from somebody who wanted to pay 60 grand for a project in the scope. That has happened time and time again because I am recognizing and I operate with a first principle that these assets that I create are valuable and I need to promote them and amplify them to get more people on them because every single eyeball on them is an opportunity.
Rob Marsh: So you mentioned your book. How has having a book changed your business and the way you market yourself?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, so the book has changed me in a few ways. One, I have never ever expected it to be so difficult to write a book. I started the book with the intention and the expectation that this would be something I could do on the side while running my company and raising three kids and all of that stuff. Holy smokes, what a drain on time. It takes a lot of work. And now everybody wants an audio book. So I have to drain more energy to do that. Folks, if you ever decide to write a book, just recognize this is not light work. It takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, and it’s a lot of self-talk, the same way that I give self-talk about distribution. It’s a lot of that. It’s hard. That was the first thing. So I realized I could do really, really hard things.
Now, the second thing about writing a book that has been fascinating for me is it helps solidify my position in the market as the person who is an authority on this topic. And I think for me, That was one of the main reasons why I wanted to write it. I’ve dedicated essentially 10, 12 years of my life to studying and understanding distribution. I’ve written about it, I’ve talked about it, and now I’ve wrote a book on it. And that kind of cemented me in the position that I wanted to be in. And I think honestly, like for me, that authority in the market on distribution has opened up new opportunities for us as a company to be able to do some pretty cool work with some pretty cool clients. And I encourage people to check it out because the most rewarding part of writing the book is the feedback that I get from the community. Every day I get a DM from somebody who’s able to share their content a little bit more effectively, who’s experimenting with a channel that they’ve never experimented with before. They’re promoting their Etsy shop in a way that they’ve never done before. And that to me shows, one, the value of distribution, but it makes me feel good to know that I’m potentially having an impact on the way that somebody else shows up on the internet, and as a result of that, their life.
Rob Marsh: Next time we talk, you’re going to see Create Once, Distribute Forever on the shelf behind me. I’m adding it to my list and we’re definitely going to link to it in the show notes so that people can get it. Appreciate that. Yeah, I think the way you’re talking about this is critical and it’s really one of the huge missing pieces for content creators’ success. Again, we’re in this creation loop and we have a really hard time getting off of it. So I appreciate that. We’ll get it in people’s hands. Okay. So let me change the discussion just a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your team. You, I mean, you started out as a solo player and did that for a long time, but you’ve built a couple of different companies today. What does your team look like?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, so within Foundation, which is the main company, we’ve got about 30 people. We’re a content marketing firm. We work with B2B SaaS companies. We have everything from copywriters all the way through to account managers, strategists, specialists who have niche expertise in various ranges. We have editors on our team. And we’re always looking for great talent. We do bring in freelancers often to kind of give us the ability to flex up on different accounts and projects. We also believe in expertise.
So if we’re creating a piece of content for a client that might be a little bit more technical, We love having and being able to go to a database of freelancers and copywriters who have expertise in that niche, so our clients can benefit from their experience. So again, I’m going to go a little geeky on you for a second on the SEO front, but one of the things that is fascinating is the rise of DoubleEat. And DoubleEat is this part of Google’s algorithm where they look at experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. And if you have those four factors and you’re an author and you are pressing publish on a certain domain, then that domain is now getting more credibility because your name is associated with that piece. So one thing that I love to see and love to do is identify experts within certain niches, have them contribute to a blog, to a website that our clients host so they can get more reach, get more visibility, but the client benefits because they now have that authority and that voice on their domain. We love identifying and finding writers who have very special niche and experience in certain industries.
We had one client that targets like video game CIOs and video game technologists and developers. And we were able to find someone who like specialized and geeked out every single day about lag within video games. And that’s all they write about. They had journals about it. And I was like, perfect. This is the exact person that we want to create this type of content. Could I ever write that content? Not a chance. Like, I would never be able to geek out about the things that they geek out about. And my Canadians flaring up about a boot, you name it, whatever it is. But like, you got to find those people and then get them to contribute your content as well.
Rob Marsh: Well, and an AI couldn’t write it either.
Ross Simmonds: No.
Rob Marsh: Here’s another argument for niching and really understanding, you know, going deep on maybe not just one thing, but on the things that you’re really interested in working with.
Ross Simmonds: I love that call out. That’s a great point. That’s a differentiator from AI that everyone should be thinking about. The more niche you can go, the better, more specialized you can go, the more difficult it’s going to be for AI to replace you because you have so much clear insight and knowledge into a subject that AI can’t compete with you. Now, that’s difficult for somebody who’s junior in their career. That’s why I say for junior copywriters, it’s a tough time. But find a mentor, find somebody you can work with, intern, work on your craft, and then maybe find somewhere that you can double down and niche down a bit.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So what does a typical project look like with Foundation? I, you know, as you talk about the team, I mean, agency level stuff, it’s probably not, hey, I’m hiring Ross to do three blog posts at $300 a pop.
Ross Simmonds: You know, I miss those times, but no, you’re right. Not anymore. So now it typically starts with a strategy effort and discovery process where clients come with us with a problem. We want to increase organic traffic. Our organic traffic is tanked. We need to recover our traffic. We’ve published hundreds of pieces and those pieces are no longer getting seen. How do we fix all of this? They come to us with a problem. Then we do an audit. We do an in-depth review of the problem, kind of like a doctor would or a good doctor should. And we try to understand the symptoms, the problems, the issues, the gaps. We review the market in general, we understand them, their objectives, their story, and then from that, we develop a plan. And in that plan, there’s likely going to be content creation, there’s gonna be content optimization, there’s going to be volume levels based off of their needs and their demand in the market in general, and we start to craft stories around that.
Now, one of the things that is different, again, to my point earlier, is that we also would include in that engagement distribution services. So how can we distribute these stories through different communities and channels, but also optimization opportunities? How can we fix these things? How can we update them for CRO, for SEO purposes, all of that? One of the things that has been fascinating is as we have leveraged AI more and more frequently, our partners are starting to ask us more about AI solutions. So not necessarily for content creation, but AI solutions for better understanding who’s visiting their website and how to automatically run remarketing campaigns against those people, or how to automatically send emails to people when they download a lead magnet and have it enriched with AI. So the system within HubSpot is showing their first name, last name, university, the company size, all of that type of stuff. So now we’re getting into a lot more full service digital marketing services with video content creation, ads that are going out on social media, social media stories, carousels for Instagram, LinkedIn, all of that. So we’re doing essentially the full suite, which in many ways I always tried to do as an individual, but could never do really well. But as we’ve scaled and we’ve grown, It has given us the talent and the ability to do more of those things.
Rob Marsh: And, you know, obviously you’ve got this big agency behind you doing this stuff. Do you think that it’s possible for the solo content creator to compete now with, you know, promoting content, not just, you know, on a website or a blog? A hundred percent. I’m going to give like, my advice would be,
Ross Simmonds: Like if I was solo, take the agency away. Ross is going into this new, I’m finding an up and coming market. I’m finding a niche that not a lot of people think is interesting. And I’m going to become laser focused in it. So let’s say, for example, I am very intrigued by mobile games. And I think that mobile games with a certain geography based mobile games is like something that I’m passionate about. I am going to write a ton of content on those companies, about those companies. I’m going to geek out about those companies. I’m going to read reports about those companies. I’m going to create those stories. And if you ever had that freelancer versus an agency that does a little bit of everything, that freelancer wins every single time. I believe that I would niche down and become obsessed with a certain niche. I would make sure that the addressable markets there, like you don’t want to go into a market that there’s no money. but I would go all in on that and focus on it. I just saw a piece the other day, I don’t know who it was, but this lady had spent two years writing up with the business model of Disney. And she just recently got a job at Disney as like a director level role, probably pulling six figures because she dedicated two years of her life just breaking down things within their business that she could observe as an outsider. And that’s the playbook that I’ve done with SaaS for the last few years and have been able to build a business off of. And I think marketers, copywriters today can do the exact same thing. Double down, niche down. Like if I ever retired and I was like, okay, what am I going to do? I’m probably going to go back into my fantasy football roots and be like, how can I get a job with the Philadelphia Eagles? I’m probably going to just write a bunch of content about their marketing efforts and then earn my way in because I’ve been relentless writing about their stuff for two years.
Rob Marsh: That’s a great idea. If you’ve got two years to kill, it’s a good way. That’s true. Okay. So what’s next for you, Ross, and what is the future of content marketing?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, so for me, what’s next is a little bit more of the same. I’m still super passionate and excited about content. I’m still super excited about where the industry is going. I love talking about this stuff. So I’m going to continue down that path of trying to add as much value to the industry as I can. And when the industry stops listening, then I’ll say, all right, folks, I get it. I’m no longer adding value. I’ll step out and do something new. But for now, I’m just going to keep trying to do that. The future of the industry, I think, is more fragmented than ever before. I think we’re going to see more and more. We’re going to see more and more brands and businesses recognizing the importance of being in multiple channels. And I think for copywriters, you’re going to see an increased demand of flexibility across different channels. And I think that’s where things are going. And I would say in many ways, AI has a big part of that. AI is making things a little bit more difficult, but also with difficulty presents a ton of opportunity.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. I think that’s probably a great place to stop. So, Ross, if people want to follow you, connect with you, get your book, where’s Homebase?
Ross Simmonds: Yeah, RossSimmons.com. You can do a quick Google search for me. You can find information about the book on there, but also connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s one of my favorite platforms right now. I’ve been spending a lot of time there. And if you’re not following me there, you should definitely follow Rob there. Rob, thank you so much for having me on. This has been a great chat and I want to give you a shout out for what you do for the copywriter community. I think we need more conversations like this in the industry at large. It helps probably that like 19 year old Ross who’s listening to this figure out where they want to go. And it’s much needed in our space. So I appreciate all you do for the community in the industry at large.
Rob Marsh: Thanks again to Ross Simmons for joining us to chat about content, the four E’s, AI, building authority, and so much more. There were a couple of things from this interview that stood out to me as we talked.
I just want to mention again, Ross mentioned the four E’s, educate, entertain, empower, engage. Usually content writers are good at educating and often we do a decent job of engaging, at least at the beginning of the asset that we’re writing. In fact, we often treat this as the job. We’re here to teach readers something that they know, but we don’t always entertain. We don’t always empower people to accomplish the thing that they want or need. That’s because entertaining is hard.
In my opinion, the best way to do this is to tell stories. Well-told stories hold attention. They surprise and intrigue. They open up a loop. To use that well-used phrase from the copywriting world, open a loop. And readers stay tuned in order to close the loop or to find out what happens next. They communicate important information in ways that get under our resistance to sales or marketing. A lot of times when we’re writing content, we’re focused on communicating information and details or features, pricing, reasons to buy, and all of that, and we forget to entertain and to empower our readers to take action and make a change. So storytelling is one way to do that and something that we should all be doing more of.
I also want to mention, again, Ross’s approach to creating unique content. taking old content related to what you’re writing and looking for those ideas that were popular before, you know, a few years ago, or maybe even more than a few years ago, and reworking those ideas into something new. This is a great research hack that almost nobody is using today. In fact, I’ve never heard anybody else share that on the podcast as we’ve talked with literally hundreds of content and copywriters. It’s so much easier just to ask the AI to do their work. But if you go in search of this kind of stuff, it’s so much better because you’re bringing more to the table as a human being with your experience and understanding.
And let’s briefly mention promoting content. Because as writers, we spend so much time brainstorming and creating content only to promote it for an hour or two and then to move on to creating the next thing. There is a real opportunity here for copywriters to help with promotion. And if you don’t want to do that yourself, You can partner with somebody who can set up automations for promotion on social media so that your content doesn’t get lost. It starts to move the needle for your clients. I can think of so much content that we’ve created for the Copywriter Club that could be helping copywriters right now, but because it’s not showing up in social media or in our daily emails or being mentioned here on the podcast, it may as well not even exist at all. No one knows about it except for me. And this is a problem for almost every business that uses content in their marketing mix. If you can solve this problem for your clients, you will be that much more valuable for them. And again, this has the potential to be a serious differentiator for you.
Okay, that’s probably enough. If you’re like me, you’re going to want to go back and listen to this episode again, because there are just so many great insights. It’s almost impossible to get them all with just one listen, maybe even just two listens. Listen to it a couple of times.
And I want to thank Ross for sharing so much about his process for creating content. You can connect with Ross on LinkedIn or subscribe to his newsletter on his website at rosssimmons.com. That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast.
Finding clients is hard. And it might even be getting harder. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. In fact, there are lots of copywriters who don’t struggle to book clients for weeks or months into the future. So how do you do it? On the 401st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with client acquisition specialist, Ryan Guthrie, about the three ways to get clients. We go into depth on this. You’re going to like it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: It doesn’t matter how good you are as a writer, if you don’t have good, high-paying clients, you will never have a successful copywriting business. It all comes down to your ability to attract, connect with, and get hired by business owners who will pay you to help them tell their story. And even though we’ve talked about this topic a lot on this podcast, it seems as if there’s always more to learn.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I talked with copywriter and client acquisition specilist Ryan Guthrie. Like many of us, Ryan started out as a copywriter. But he cracked the code on finding clients early on, so other copywriters began asking him for help with their own pipelines. And he shared a lot of how he does it in today’s interview.
But before we jump in with Ryan…
We have a new gift for you as a listener to the copywriter club podcast. We went through the past 400 episodes of this podcast looking for the ideas that our guests have shared over the past couple of years related to finding clients. We pulled out a bunch of our favorites and compiled them into a new pocket sixed guide that will inspire you as you look for ways to attract the right clients to your business. Ryan shares how he does it on this episode. But once you’re done listening, or now if you are near your phone or computer, visit thecopywriterclub.com/pocket to download your own copy of this new guide.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Ryan Guthrie…
Kira Hug: All right, Ryan, let’s start with your story. How did you end up as a client acquisition consultant?
Ryan Guthrie: By doing a lot of other things first. I started copywriting in February of 2020, which is an awesome time to start something new. But I was going to be a nurse, right? And I just kind of fell out of love with it. I didn’t want to go to work every day and see people having the worst day of their lives. And so I kind of dropped out of college a little bit. And my girlfriend at the time, who’s now my fiance, said, Hey, you’re a pretty good writer. Here’s this course that showed up on my Instagram feed. It’s an ad, take a look at it. So I took a look at it. And I was like, I can do this. Sure. It was a copywriting course. I can, I can do this. And so I like, fully dropped out of college and bought this course with all my savings to the horror of my mother. She was like, you know what, you go do this for a year and we’ll see what it looks like after a year and then we’ll talk about this again, right? So I did that, and so I worked at my regular job from like six to three, six in the morning, three in the afternoon, and then I would get home and I would just do copywriting stuff, right, from like four to like 10, doing hand copy and just trying to learn as much as I could going through this course. After about three months, I got my first client, and it’s a funny story, people always think they need to be super polished for that first client. I did my first sales call in the parking lot of a Trader Joe’s, And I took notes on the back of an organic cookie box. So just throwing that out there. That was my first ever sales call. I got that client. He paid me $400 for some emails. And then I was like, this is it. I’m a paid copywriter. I’m a professional. And I ditched my job. And then the next client did not come as quickly as I thought it was going to come, but the bills still kept coming. And so I was like, okay, we need to make this work now. So it’s kind of like an out of necessity thing. I just, um, did the client outreach stuff that I was taught in that course. And it, and it kind of worked. Um, it was much more of a, just, I can outwork my lack of talent kind of situation. And so after about six months, um, a little over six months, I hit my first 10 K month. And then a little over a year being in this career, I was starting to have those consistent 10K months. And funnily enough, I actually hired my mom for a little while to do some content writing for one of my clients that I didn’t want to do anymore. So it’s funny to see that come full circle. She was like, no, you have to go to college. And I’m like, hey, mom, I can hire you. She’s like, oh, OK. So that was fun. Did copywriting for a while. And then I had a client who was like, Hey, do you, you write all this other stuff for me? Would you help me write a book? And I was like, yeah, sure.
No idea what I was doing again. Dove into it head first, learned how to do it as I was doing it, and we got through that project. I don’t know how it ended up being a pretty decent book, but it did. And I was like, I really like this. I really like these big projects. And so I kind of shifted to doing those big projects. I was like, I can help these people write their books. And then I know how marketing kind of works. I know how book funnels work. I know how this stuff works. I can show them how to do all that stuff. And so I went over into ghostwriting and I wrote for big consultants and agencies or for a politician, all kinds of really cool, interesting, fascinating clients. And then while this is all happening, I also actually became a coach in that initial program that I took way back in 2020. And I was just, every single time I would interact with another copywriter or another freelance writer or anything, it was, how do you get clients? You seem to be doing really well. How do you get clients? How do you get clients?
I guess I’m just a nerd about how to get clients. I’m always listening to podcasts and YouTube videos and reading books and all kinds of things about getting clients. It’s actually very annoying for my fiance. We’ll be going on a trip and I’m like, I’m going to listen to a podcast. And she’s like, Oh no, you’re not. All right. And so I just started helping a lot of people with how to get clients. And I, I had results with things that I was doing and then I would teach other people and they would have results. And I was like, well, you know, I love teaching this stuff. Maybe I should just, Maybe I should do this. And so then I kind of became a client acquisition coach consultant. And that’s, that’s what I do now. I help copywriters and B2B service providers get clients. I work with people one-on-one to create really customized client acquisition strategies. Cause I know a lot of times you get into a course and client acquisition is, it’s a really small part of the course. And it’s like, what’s kind of the biggest hinge there is to success. And a lot of times with the courses and stuff, it’s just kind of like, it’s whatever worked for that person who built that course, right? It’s whatever works for them. Sometimes it doesn’t work for you. It’s not the right strategy, right? Like if you’re a kind of shy and timid person, you go into a course and they’re like, Oh, you got a cold call. And you’re like, uh, maybe not. And then you don’t really go anywhere. So I like working with people one-on-one and we build something that works for them. So that’s kind of my story from a 30,000 foot view.
Rob Marsh: I like it. You said one phrase that immediately stuck out. I immediately wrote it down in my notes, and that is that you had to outwork your lack of talent. Yes, very much so. Let’s talk about that because I think this is a very real situation that a lot of us find ourselves in, especially when we’re starting out or if we’re switching to a new niche or we’re working with a higher level client, there’s a learning curve. So yeah, talk to us just a little bit about your thinking around that and what you actually did in order to overcome the lack of talent because again, if you don’t have the talent to write or if you don’t have the talent to deliver the solution that your client needs, that’s a problem.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah. So I, when I started it, I kind of figured in my brain, I was like, okay, I’m at point a, I want to get to point B. I am probably going to have a certain amount of mess ups, screw ups in this period of time going from A to B where I’m, you know, I don’t really know what I’m doing right now to being a actually competent service provider. So I figured, okay, well, if I can just get through that as quickly as I can, that would probably be ideal. And so I did a ton of just outreach and, you know, cold emailing and networking and all kinds of stuff. And I got a lot of clients early on and like, kind of like to the point where I was like, I was working a lot. Like it wasn’t, it wasn’t looking a whole lot better than a full-time job, but I was able to learn so much by doing so much upfront.
Working with clients while still kind of a newer copywriter. I wasn’t charging a ton. And so I was able to really get paid to learn right up front. Cause I, you know, I kind of came into this, I was an okay writer. I don’t. That’s kind of even stretching it. I was a B minus in English kind of guy. I was decent at writing, but it really wasn’t an awesome skill for me, especially in copies, different from regular writing, so I had to learn that. But how to do a sales call or a discovery call, how to do client communication, how to manage software. I’m probably the worst millennial in the world at technology. I’m terrible with it. So I had to learn how to overcome that with some things. And it was just, you know, I will, I’m going to put the work in. I don’t, I will try to just not freak out about it for as long as possible. It was quite literally just try to fake it till you make it in my head. Like if you just do this enough, you will get confident with it. And sure enough, I did. I just did the work, did the reps over and over again. And pretty soon I was confident talking to people, I was confident pitching people, I was confident working with people. If people said, hey, can you get this kind of result for us? I could confidently say, yeah, I think I can.
Kira Hug: So I just want to jump in fully and let’s just talk about client acquisition and what’s working today in 2024 versus maybe what was working a couple years ago. I’m more interested in what’s shifted or what hasn’t shifted.
Ryan Guthrie: Hmm, I’ll tell you what’s not working very well is when people just throw a little prompt into something like chat GPT. And they’re like, Hey, write me a pitch for this kind of business. And they copy and paste and send it to that business. I don’t know if you guys have received any of those kinds of pitches lately. It’s like, dude, this is bad.
Rob Marsh: I’ve seen several where I’m like, Wow, this is clearly written by an AI, somebody who does not know us. So yeah, we’ve definitely seen some of that stuff.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, it’s bad. And so I think right now we’re coming into this sort of, there’s AI going on everywhere. I was talking about AI, we’re doing a lot of things like mass, how can I reach as many people as humanly possible and create a message that just appeals to the broadest category of person possible. And what I’ve found is that when someone comes across a genuinely human to human pitch that was written specifically for them, that shows that you have expertise and that you know their business a little bit more than someone who would just run it through a spreadsheet, and that you’ve taken the time to actually establish an actual relationship and you’ve actually done a little bit of homework, goes really far. And so I think right now, especially, you know, some of the updates like to Google for cold email and stuff like that, I think we’re really coming into a sort of a time of hyper personalization and really focusing on the human to human factor.
Rob Marsh: So let’s, let’s dive into that. You know, let’s say that I am a copywriter who’s been, maybe I’m new to the business or I’ve, I’ve kind of exhausted my warm leads, the contacts that I have. And now I’ve got to find some clients in order to stay in business. What do I do?
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah. So there’s generally there’s. three-ish ways that a business acquires clients, right? Paid advertising, inbound, and outbound. Usually for service providers like copywriters, we like to stick with outbound, some inbound stuff, and maybe a little bit of hybrid of those kinds of things. But I know outbound is going to be probably the fastest, most cost-efficient way to get a new client. So a lot of what I teach is outbound stuff. And so I know when you’re reaching out to someone, whether it be LinkedIn, cold email, I like email because like I said, not a social media person, not a tech person. So I like email just because it’s simple. There’s really, there’s five things that are going to go into your effective outreach.
And that’s number one is the audience. Who are you reaching out to, right? Are you reaching out to a company that can actually afford to pay you and values what you do? Or are you reaching out to a, you know, a local mom and pop shop that doesn’t really know a whole lot about marketing. So first you have to sell them on the idea of marketing. Then you have to sell them on the idea of your type of marketing, your copy. You have to sell them on all this other stuff. Whereas if you go to someone who already values copying, it’s a lot easier of a sale, right? A lot of, especially newer copywriters think, Oh, I need to cut my teeth on these smaller clients. Okay, sure. Go there, get your experience, get your portfolio, your samples, your testimonials, and then move on. Because the reality is charging more with bigger clients is a lot of the times easier than charging less with smaller clients. And so you really want to find an audience who, one, they can pay you, right? Look for a company that can actually pay you properly for the work that you do. Look for a company that actually values marketing. Look for a company that’s already doing marketing. Are they running ads? Do they have advertorials going? Do they have Facebook ads going? You know, are they paying for ads on Google? Look for a company that’s actually spending money on marketing. And third, look for a company that, you know, they use copy at some point in their customer journey, right? Some companies, their sales journey ends at a sales page. Cool. Good news for you. Some companies, it ends with a sales call with a salesperson. Cool. Do they use copy to move their customers along that journey? Look for those.
Secondly, just think about your offer, right? There’s a big difference between a copywriter who shows up on a client store and they say, Hey, I’m a copywriter. Do you need blogs? I can do that. Do you need an email sequence? I can do that. Do you need a landing page? Even though I don’t really know what a landing page means, but I can do that for you. Right. That’s really different from being a copywriter who shows them says, Hey, this is my offer. These are deliverables. This is the ROI that I can get for you. I’ve noticed some of the symptoms of the problem that I solve. Let’s talk about that. Right. Those are two very different types of offers you can do.
Third is messaging. What do you actually say to people? Hopefully, as a copywriter, you’re already probably pretty good at this, right? What do you need to say to a person to pique their interest, to get some curiosity going?
Fourth, you want to talk about social proof, credibility. Why should this person listen to you? Have you done anything that’s related to this client? Have you worked with similar clients in the past? Do you have any sort of results that you can kind of lean on a little bit, right? And even if you don’t, there are other things you can do. Like you can lean on industry standards. I know when I was getting started, I was doing a lot of email copy. And so I would lean on the fact that email is the highest ROI channel of any marketing channel. It’s like 38 or 40 times return on investment ROI. So I would lean into that. I would tell clients that.
And then last, your ask. What do you want them to do right now? Right. And I found that a lot more conversations will get started if you have a much smaller ask on that first outreach. Right. A lot of people are like, Hey, let’s hop on a call for an hour so I can sell you my stuff. Okay. Good luck. People are busy. Whereas if you say, Hey, you know, I had some ideas. Here’s one of them. I have some more. Would you be open to hopping on a 15, 20 minute call? We can brainstorm some ideas, right? There’s no hard pitch there. And then when I do actual outreach, it’s kind of broken up into two parts, right? You have the first part that is your personalized intro, right? But a lot of people just go to the case study section. They say, hey, great job on working with blah, blah, blah. And they leave it at that. That’s not very personalized.
What I like to do is I like to find something that they’ve worked on, some accomplishment they’ve done that I genuinely appreciate, that I genuinely think is really cool. And then I tell them that it’s really cool and how that applies to me, how it’s affected me. Keeping it still really brief, but really putting in the effort to let them know, hey, I actually care about what you do. I am actually benefited by what you do. I appreciate it. And then I move into seeing what symptoms of a problem are, I see that I can potentially help you with. Right.
So maybe if you’re a if you’re an email copyright, right, you go into someone’s website, and they don’t have any sort of email list opt in, with a lead magnet or anything, right? You just scroll down to the bottom and you see a Hey, subscribe to our newsletter at the very bottom. You’re like, well, I know that probably doesn’t do very well. So you can reach out to them, say something you really appreciate about them and say, Hey, I noticed you don’t have an awesome, like a opt-in for your email list. I’ve seen X, Y, and Z do really well for your types of businesses. Would you be open to just brainstorm some ideas with me over like a 15, 20 minute chat? And then that’s what you do. You talk with them. And I like to do sales in a way that’s very consultative. I, when I get on a sales call with someone, I pretend they just paid me a thousand dollars for that hour. And I try to help as much as possible. Right. I genuinely give them good advice, good strategy. And at the end, I just ask, Hey, we talked about all this. You can do it yourself if you want, but if you’d like someone else to do it for you, I’d love to work with you and help you with that. It’s a very low pressure sales process and it works really well.
Kira Hug: So let’s talk more about that piece of it. So your call to action is likely very low commitment. So let’s just jump on a call for 15 minutes. I’ll share one idea with you. So then you get them on a call for 15 minutes, and you’re treating it like a consultation and giving as much as you can. Are you trying to extend the time while also respecting their time and saying like, hey, do you have capacity to go over? I’d love to give you more ideas. How do you treat that time block?
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, the idea is that you want to provide some sort of value, right? Almost like how if someone is coming inbound to you, oh, they got a lead magnet from you, something like that. I like to do kind of the same thing without bound. So usually what I like to do is that consultation strategy call with people. Some people would do a loom audit or SEO audit. It just depends on what their business is, right? So what I usually like to do is that initial consultation call where I just, I help them and I’ll say 15, 20 minutes at the beginning. Right. And then. I put a little timer on and once we get to 15, 20 minutes, I say, Hey, I, you know, I’ve hit my time, you know, we’re at 15, 20 minutes. I know we’re kind of in the middle of this. Do you want to just wrap it up real quick? Or would you like to keep talking 9.5 out of 10 times? It’s either yes. Can we please keep talking or, uh, I’m really busy. Can we, can we schedule a little bit more time to finish this conversation? Right.
Kira Hug: So at this point, you haven’t pitched anything. You’re just asking for more time and you’ve just given all of this value. Um, can you talk through now if they do extend the time, kind of how you’re framing the rest of the call so that you get to an ask at the end?
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, so it’s at this point. It’s not It’s not pitching anything because I don’t know exactly how to form my pitch to their problem at this point It’s just it’s figuring out what the problem is. It’s doing that those those open-ended questions and stuff we hear about from sales trainers and stuff, right? It’s doing the digging, like, hey, what have you been doing? Like, obviously, if you’re willing to get on this call with me, this is enough of a problem that you wanted my opinion on some things, right? So what’s been going on with this issue, right? What have you tried before that hasn’t worked? What have you tried before that you are not interested in trying again? Has anything kind of worked, but maybe not fully? And you just talk with these people and you understand exactly what’s going on with their problem, what they’re struggling with.
And then once you have a good idea of what’s going on, then you can kind of flip the script and you can go, OK, well, based on that, you can, you know, like mirroring, you can mirror what they’re saying to you and you can say it back to them and then you can say, OK, cool. So it sounds like, you know, ABC is happening. It’s that sound right? And they’re like, yeah. So, OK. Based on that, this is what I, these are some options of things that I think you should do to solve this problem or achieve this goal, right? Cause usually it’s either achieve a goal or solve a problem, right? Those are the two ways that people like to work with copywriters.
So we’ll work on that and I will just tell them what I think they should do. If it’s, you know, their email list is not growing the way they thought it should. I say, okay, cool. Um, have you ever thought about doing a lead magnet? Oh, well, you know, you know, sometimes it didn’t work that well. Okay. Why didn’t it work? Do you think like, I just want to know, and then I can consult them and I can advise them on how to move forward with some of these things to solve the problem, solve the pain or achieve the goal.
And once I think I’ve earned my thousand dollars, right. That I, that I pretend that I’ve been paid. We’ll get to the end. And I’ll tell them, like, OK, so I think you should do this. I think these are your options. If you’re willing to spend money on this problem, throw some money at this problem, you should probably do this option and get it done quicker. If you’re not super concerned about it getting done really, really quickly, and you want to not throw a lot of money on it, you should probably do this option. And that’ll take a little bit longer, but that’s the trade-off. You can do this yourself. But obviously, I reached out to you. I would love to work with you on this. If you want some help, I’d be happy to help.
Rob Marsh: This seems like a really good way to get that first project. So we’re talking maybe a $500 blog post, or maybe it’s a $3,500 sales page, or an email sequence, $2,000, whatever. You mentioned some of these larger projects, book writing, those kinds of things that you moved into. How does your approach change in order to land these monster projects that may be able to put food on the table for more than just a couple of weeks?
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, so I mean, we can talk about both of them. So I mentioned a $15,000 a month retainer, that’s a pretty nice, chunky retainer, right? It started just like you mentioned, like with an initial project, you know, I usually advise copywriters to do that initial project with a new client, especially if they’re newer, because they can’t see some of the red or orange flags right away. So it’s like, okay, do the test project. And then keep in mind, the test project is mostly for you to figure out if you want to work with this person, right? You’re still kind of in control here. This is to make sure that you enjoy working with this person. They’re not going to micromanage you. They’re not going to be weird about paying you like all these different things, right? Do the test project. And then I always, before we even get started on the test project, I say, cool, this is the timeline. It’s going to be done in a week. Let’s schedule the next call to go over what was done and how we want to move forward if we do want to move forward. So I like to schedule that call before we even start working on that initial project. There’s you want to make as few places for a potential client to ghost you as possible, right? Because for whatever reason, if they can find someplace to ghost you, they’re going to ghost you. I don’t know why, but they do. So try to make as few of those places as possible, like to schedule that initial call after we do the test project. Right. So we’ll do the test project and then we’ll move into, okay, cool. You’ve seen what I’ve done here. What is something, that I’ve got my foot in the door with this. And now that I’ve worked with them a little bit, and of course, after that initial consultation call, right, you’re going to know more about the overall big problems that are, you can see from the inside that you couldn’t necessarily see from the outside when you were pitching them.
So now you know more about what’s going on. You can say, Hey in my experience, I see all these issues going and this is probably what it’s going to look like if I were to go full bore and help you in every way that I can help you, right? So I could have $15,000 a month retainer for me. It was a big company that did lots of supplements and every supplement had a sales page. Every, every supplement had its own email sequence and they would cross sell and upsell like crazy. And so that $15,000 a month for me was sales pages and email, right? It was a lot of it. But that’s kind of what that looked like for the retainer side of things. But it started the same way that I talked about that initial. Value-based reach, reach, outreach, and then that consultative selling model.
Now I also talked about earning $50 to $75,000 book projects, right? That is kind of middle of the road for, for a decent ghostwriter, right? I’ve seen ghostwriters charged 90,000, 120, 150. and up. It’s a very wide range. But, you know, you can start at like 10, 15 for something like a book, because you got to remember, like, it takes four to six months to write a book, right, if you know what you’re doing. And so I did the same thing. I would reach out to people who, because who, who, who in business wants a book, right? People that want to be thought leaders. They want that authority, the brand authority. They want to be seen as a thought leader. They want to use the book as a networking tool. Maybe they want to use the book as a, as a top of funnel piece of content.
So I would do the same thing. I’d reach out to these people, do the value-based outreach and say, Hey, I think you have a really, really good story, or I think you have a lot of potential to teach people this unique angle that you have. Have you ever thought about writing a book? Would you be interested in maybe like a 15, 20 minute call? I’d love to brainstorm some ideas with you for a book that you could write. Maybe we could do a real quick brainstorming session about an outline or something like that. I created a nonfiction book planning guide that sometimes I would send to people like, hey, I have this freebie about how to write a book. Would you like it? I would love to see you create a book at some point, right? Maybe I can even go over it with you. Maybe kind of apply some of the stuff to this business of yours. Because I also know with freebies and stuff, if you’re going to give a freebie to someone, something I like to do is I like to offer, hey, I’d love to go over it with you and maybe apply it really specifically to your business. Because sometimes you send a freebie and then crickets, you’re like, did they just read it and just not get back to me? Was it not good enough? All these things. And you’re like, Oh, then I got to do follow up. Um, and so I like to go over my fees with potential clients. And so that’s what I did for, for these particular clients. I know with, with my range of 50 to 75,000, 50,000 is like a, it’s pretty basic, like how to business book, right? Like a sales book or like a leadership culture book or something like that. 75,000 is going to be like. I’m working with a doctor or someone like that. It’s a very complicated book that has to have lots of research go into it. Lots of additional interviews, lots of additional guest expert interviews, stuff like that. That’s going to be the book on the Sony 5,000 side. But I would get those clients the same way.
Kira Hug: So my dad wants me to help him write a book and it sounds like you’re telling me I should charge him $75,000. Yes.
Rob Marsh: You should charge him more than that because there’s all kinds of stuff that’s going to happen here. I see red flags all over the place. You need a PITA tax on this one, Kira.
Ryan Guthrie: With ghostwriting, it’s funny because a lot of people in the ghostwriting industry and book writing industry, they’ll look for a writer to do this. And if you’re not charging at least $20,000 or $25,000, they’re kind of like, you probably don’t know what you’re doing.
Kira Hug: Oh, that’s good to know. I kind of want to continue down this tangent and then we can get back to client acquisition, but what all does that entail when you’re working on, say, the $50,000 book project? Can you just go over what’s included, what you do, and give us an idea of that because I think that’s a really attractive package for many writers.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, of course. I certainly loved it. So with $50,000, I also… I put a lot in my offer that kind of separated me from most ghostwriters. So obviously the book, right? We’re going to come together. We’re going to do discovery calls. We’re going to figure out exactly what your goals are for the book, how you’re going to use the book, how you use the book to grow your business. What do you want the book to do for you, right? If you create this book and then every plan you have for this book goes perfectly, What does the next three years look like? Right? So we get really clear on that. We talk about the audience. We do the outline and finalize the outline. We do the interviews.
Interviews are different depending on if you’re working with something like a business book or if you’re doing like a memoir. I had one guy, one time we were doing his memoir project and we were at like the end of his life in the book. And he just nonchalantly mentioned his time, uh, working as a contractor for the CIA. And I was like, Where was this when we were talking about your late 20s? And he’s like, oh, it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was just a little while. And I was like, you were a spy. You were literally as fine. You didn’t want to talk about that in your memoir. So with memoirs, I learned my lesson. I do all my interviews up front now before I start writing.
But with business books, it’s like, do an interview, write a chapter. Do an interview, write a chapter. So you write the first draft, and the first draft is ugly. Even though the first draft, once I present it to a client, it’s been cleaned up a little bit. It would be horrifying if the client could see what the book looked like as I was writing it. All right, like some people are like, oh yeah, put me in the Google Docs so I can see what you’re writing. No, you’re going to let me go if you see what’s happening in the Google Doc before I get a chance to go through it. So do the first draft, and then we do a whole big editing thing. And I like Google Docs just because you can be collaborative so easily. Like, we’ll get on a Google Meet together, we’ll look at the Google Doc together, and we’ll just go through things together. And it’s very, very easy. So do that.
And then we do the final draft. It looks all pretty and it looks like a proper book. And at that point, I kind of take a step back and I take on a real advisory role. I’m like, OK, cool. Let’s talk about publishing. Well, really, publishing is something you talk about at the beginning, because if you want to do traditional publishing, you have to put together a book proposal and get that kind of going. pretty soon. But we’ll talk about publishing. I have relationships with a bunch of book publishers, hybrid publishers, agents. If they want to do self-publishing, I know book cover designers, ISBN people, book launch people, audiobook people. I can connect you to everyone that you need to be connected with in order to write your book and to get it actually published, to get it in bookstores, to get it in people’s hands, to get it in your hand. If you want to make a whole big book funnel that is a self-liquidating funnel, cool, I know a guy to do that.
And so once we actually create and write the book, I kind of become like a project manager for my client and I make sure that these other contractors do their jobs and we create this book together so that when my client is done working with me, they have an actual book they can hold. A lot of ghostwriters are like, oh, we wrote your manuscript. Here you go. Good luck. And so I kind of take it a step further. I make sure that they have the book in hand by the time we’re done working together. While we’re writing the book, I’ll do thought leadership consulting. Like, how do you use this book? How do you use it to get into a speaking circuit or something like that? And I’ll do a lot of guest experts and stuff like that, that I’ll reach out to on behalf of my client. I’ll network my client with those guest experts and stuff like that. So that’s kind of like what my holistic book writing package looks like.
Rob Marsh: And today, what would you charge for that typical package? If you were helping me write my book, let’s say it’s 10 to 12-ish chapters, we anticipate we can write it over the next four or five months, what would you be charging for that?
Ryan Guthrie: It would be $50,000.
Rob Marsh: Okay, $50,000. Okay, so one of the challenges with being a ghostwriter is that your name isn’t actually on the book in most cases. Sometimes it is. Sometimes you’re in the credits, you know, thank yous, that kind of thing. But, you know, Getting the word out that I just helped this guru write their book is a little bit different. In fact, oftentimes there’s a non-disclosure agreement as part of this because they want to be seen as the thought leader. So before we leave the idea of ghostwriting books, how do you market yourself as a ghostwriter? How do you get the word out there that you have helped create this massive value for your clients when it’s hard to do because of the limits placed on you as a ghostwriter?
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, I kind of hit that head on. I tell my clients because they sign my contract. My contract has a pretty ironclad NDA in it that’s like, hey, I’m not going to talk about your book unless you give me express permission to talk about your book. I take it very seriously. I don’t mention books that I’ve written. Some ghostwriters, they put the titles on their websites and stuff like that. I don’t do that. I say, you know, you’re paying for me to be a ghost. I’m going to be a ghost. But also two things about getting clients.
One, clients of the caliber that want a ghostwritten book, they can usually tell the level of expertise you have from the conversations you have. Like if you’re able to talk to them and you can talk about publishing, you can talk about word counts for chapters and how to break chapters up and how to have an overarching narrative and all this stuff. They get a feel for like, okay, this guy knows what he’s doing. He can, he’s probably worked with some, some decent clients.
The second thing is that sometimes clients will be like, Hey, you know, I don’t want you to go into a public setting and, you know, shout from the rooftop that you wrote my book. But if you’re in a private one-on-one setting with someone and you’re trying to get them as a client, you can, you can drop my name. You can mention me. You can mention the book we wrote together. Just private, one-on-one, not anywhere public.
Kira Hug: Will you ask for that permission if it feels good with that client and you’re like, I’m pretty sure they won’t care? Or do you just wait and you’re like, I’m not going to mention, I’m not going to ask for anything unless they mention it to me first?
Ryan Guthrie: If it’s a project I’m especially proud of, yeah, I’ll ask. Like, hey, no pressure. We have our NDA in place. I’m not going to go blabbermouthing about our work together, but would it be okay if I talk about the work we did together privately, one-on-one with a client, with a potential client in order to get them as a client? And usually they’re like, oh yeah, that’s fine.
Kira Hug: So I guess I shouldn’t ask you all the books you’ve ghostwritten. That was my next question.
Rob Marsh: Not while we’re recording, maybe after.
Ryan Guthrie: I’ve written some sales books, some leadership books, like those how-to business books. I’ve written a memoir for a politician, which that’s a whole real fun story because that was like the worst client I’ve ever had in my life. So that’s fun.
Kira Hug: Okay. Can you just speak to why that was the worst client? Give us a good story about that. Can’t skip over that.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah. So imagine someone who when they’re facing the public, they’re this very charismatic, kind individual, and then behind closed doors, they’re the most self-obsessed, self-brandizing person you can imagine. That’s every politician out there.
Rob Marsh: Right.
Ryan Guthrie: So there was a debate. There was an agent that I was working through, because he was too good to actually do all the communication with me. So I was like, all right, whatever, man. And she claimed that she knew so much about the industry and how to write books and all this stuff. And I don’t think she knew anything, because she’s like, well, I want the structure to be like this. I’m like, well, I don’t think that’s the best way to go. I think we should focus on this, this, and this. She’s like, no. No, I’ve done this before. I’m like, OK. And then all these other like, well, I’ll teach you how to do all this stuff. I’ll teach you how to get into these big circles. And that never happened.
And we got almost the entire book done. And then she took a look at it. And she’s like, well, I talked with so and so. And we think the last half of the book needs to be rewritten. What do you mean? Where was, uh, where was this? I was giving you updates along the way. Why, uh, why all of a sudden? And they were like, do you want to fly out to this person’s, uh, you know, the state they’re in and, uh, get this really nice hotel that you guys can do the interviews and in person, they, they think they need to be in person. And I was like, uh, not on my own dime. No, that’s no, if you want to fly me out and you want to get the room. Probably still no, but I’ll consider it, but definitely not on my own dime. So it was just the phone calls at 2 or 3 a.m.
Kira Hug: How did you resolve the book?
Ryan Guthrie: What was that?
Kira Hug: How did you finish it then? How did you wrap up the book?
Ryan Guthrie: I wrapped it up with the full the text and it was a full completed manuscript. I said this is what we agreed to. This is what you commissioned me to do. I’m not going to rewrite the entire second half of this book. If you want to go bother another writer to finish this in your eyes, whatever, I’m done.” Okay. It was a very clean cut and I never even got a response from either of them, the agent or the person. After that, they just kind of like went cold turkey and I was like, all right.
Kira Hug: Is the book out there? Has it been published? No. Okay. Okay.
Ryan Guthrie: All right.
Kira Hug: Well, yay for boundaries. Well done with your boundaries.
Ryan Guthrie: Most of my contract was built from that relationship. Like, what do I never want to happen again? All of these things.
Kira Hug: Okay, I want to ask you just about stacking projects because, again, like you’re talking about a, you know, a big book project with the client, hopefully not nightmare clients like that, but really intense work and then retainers that are maybe 15k include sales pages and probably a lot of deliverables. So when you were doing that, how were you stacking projects so that it would work and it wouldn’t burn you out?
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah. So I, I am a big fan of working part time hours. So I probably work maybe 25 hours a week. And so with retainers of that size, maybe two, two at a time, you’re going to stay pretty busy with two of that size. You figure you’re writing maybe a sales page in a week, week and a half. Um, Assuming that the client already sent you all the information and research you need to actually write the sales page, the client that I’m talking about that did the $15,000 a month, they were very cool. Before every project, they sent me an entire creative brief. They were like, here’s all the research and everything that we want you to use. If you need anything else, let us know. And holy cow, if I asked any questions, I had the information within two days. They were a dream client. So with retainers like that, maybe one or two at a time, if you want to do part-time work, I like part-time work. I know when I started doing the whole entrepreneurial thing, I was like, hey, I want my work to fit in around my life.
I don’t want my life to have to fit in around my work. I want life to come first. And so I built it that way. And then with book projects, the interesting thing is that you can do an interview with a client, and then you can write their chapter. Say you do an interview on Tuesday, you have that chapter written by Thursday. Well, now your next interview isn’t until next Wednesday. So what are you, what are you going to do? So I usually recommend working with two, three, four clients at a time. Um, that way you can stagger the clients and you always have work to do, right? If you send something off to one client, they have to review it, revise it, give you, um, you know, editing requests or anything like that. Okay, cool. You can work with this other client while that’s happening. You can, it’s. It’s actually much easier to juggle that than you might think, just because these people are typically hiring a ghostwriter because they’re really busy. So if you give them part of that work to do, it might take them a couple of days, maybe a week to actually go through something and give you their feedback on it. So usually for me personally, I would do three to four at a time.
Rob Marsh: To make that work, you’ve got to be pretty disciplined about getting the work done though. A lot of copywriters would do that interview and then let it sit until you’ve got to deliver the chapter a week later. And it sounds like you do the interview and you’re sitting down writing. So do you have secrets around personal discipline, getting stuff done, making sure that you’re not procrastinating and using your time well?
Ryan Guthrie: I think the biggest secret I have to give is to offer a service you genuinely love to fulfill. For me, I loved writing books for people. I loved listening to their stories. I love listening to their expertise because when you’re writing a book for someone like that, you’re getting paid a very large amount of money to be taught one-on-one by them, right? You get to sit down on your Zoom meeting and they teach you one-on-one for that hour. I find that exhilarating, right? Like I said, big nerd. And so when we would get done with an interview, I would want to write the chapter right away. I’d want to get it done. I would want to write it. I wouldn’t want to wait because that’s just how my brain works. And so I think I naturally need a little bit less discipline because I just really like doing the work. I want to go do it as someone else. But yeah, if you If you kind of fumbled the ball on that and you don’t get the work done when you need to get it done, sure, you can do the next interview, right? And the client’s not gonna know that you haven’t written the last chapter yet. That’s your timeline. So you can do the next interview and then you can write two chapters that week, right? Or maybe they’re going away on a conference or something. They’re not gonna be available the next week for your next interview.
So, okay, cool. You have two weeks now to write these two chapters or something like that. But then when you start adding in more and more clients, like you’re juggling four clients at a time, well then if you start letting things slip and things start building up it can kind of be a challenge to dig yourself out from that that hill so staying staying on top of and being disciplined just i mean like any other career you know be especially if you’re self-employed like you have to be on top of your time you have to be disciplined in that manner you’re going to run into a lot of problems
Kira Hug: Okay, so when you’re talking about these interviews, this is getting granular, but you’re talking about with the one, if it’s a business book, it’s with that client. So we’re going to schedule weekly interviews and you are setting up the questions to cover different topics. So it is chapter based and organized from the beginning with how you structure your interviews. You’re not necessarily like having this three hour conversation and then turning that, figuring out how to turn that into multiple chapters and pulling out the topics from there, right?
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah. So we start with the, with the outline, we create the outline and we get pretty detailed with the outline. And I always make sure to tell them, you know, the outline is there to serve us. We’re not there to serve the outline. It will change naturally as this book evolves, as we write it, as we do the work together, the outline is going to change a little bit and that’s okay. So when we get the outline finalized, finalized, um, We’ll come together for the interviews right and say we’re doing the interview for chapter 3. Okay, we’ll show up to the chapter I like using lots of storytelling in chapters, right people remember and learn from stories better than anything else. I say okay, do you have any stories about this particular subject that we’re talking about? Tell me like a time where you succeeded with it you struggle with it. You know someone that maybe you taught how to do this and they struggled they succeeded with it. Then we’ll talk about this topic and I’ll let them know what we’re talking about ahead of time. But I’ll sit down. I’m like, can you teach this to me? Like pretend you’re on stage. I’m the audience. Teach this to me. And they’ll start teaching me. And then, you know, I can keep it pretty on the rails, right? If they start to, and it’s a fine line too, because you got to realize you want to keep them on track, but also know that those, those real diamonds of information and storytelling, those happen in the tangents that they can go off of. Right. And so it’s, it’s knowing when to let them go off on the little tangents and when to keep them on track and keep them. teaching you the material that you’re going to need to write that chapter.
Rob Marsh: Speaking of tangents, we’ve kind of been on this book writing tangent. We started out talking about how to land clients. And when we started, you said there are three ways to do this, paid ads, inbound, and outbound. We’ve been talking about outbound pretty in depth. Let’s touch on paid ads and inbound and the role that those might play. Maybe not initially as you’re getting started in business, but ultimately at some point they become really big, you know, really important ways to attract clients to your business.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah. So paid advertising is the easy one. That’s the one that you want to go into when you want to scale, right? You have some capital laying around that you can invest in figuring out how to reach your target audience with those ads, right? They’re expensive. You’re probably going to lose a few thousand dollars figuring out exactly how to get those to work. With inbound, you can probably start doing inbound the same time you do outbound, you know, create content, do stuff, um, and realize it’s going to take a little while to actually get that, get that ball rolling. What I like to do, and I love direct outreach, outbound, for reaching very specific people that I want to work with. That’s fantastic for that. It’s not my favorite way to get clients, because you’re going to do a lot of it, right? It’s still quality over quantity, but quantity is still a factor.
My favorite way to get clients is actually by building strategic partnerships, right? I build partnerships with people that they send clientele to me. I have people that have sent me Gosh, I think it’s five book projects at this point. Um, which if you do the math, it’s like $250,000 that this one person has sent me. And so that’s probably my favorite way. I think strategic partnerships is a way to combine the best aspects of outbound with the best aspects of inbound and you mesh them together and then you get to do very high leverage, um, activities that result in a lot of clientele coming in.
Kira Hug: So let’s say I want to do that. I want to do strategic partnerships. I’d like to have one or two clients by July. How would I break that down so I can get started today and build some momentum?
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, there’s a couple different ways you could do it. One of the ways that I would do it is I would find someone who offers a parallel service to me. but they don’t offer my service and they service the same type of clientele. So one of the ones that worked really well for me is I would go find book coaches. I’d find people that coach people on how to write books and I would reach out to them and say, Hey, um, I know you’re a book coach. Do you ever get those clients that come along that they want to write a book, but frankly, they’re just not a good writer. They don’t have the time. And so they’re frustrated because they want to write the book. but they can’t write the book. Do you ever get those people? They’re like, Oh yeah, all the time. So I say, okay, do you, do you help them write the books? Well, they say, well, no, we just do book coaching. They have to do the actual work. And I say, okay, um, would it make sense for us to maybe partner on this? When you get those people coming through your door and they can’t write the book themselves, um, you can white label my ghostwriting through your coaching thing.
Say, okay, no worries. We have a ghostwriter that we can assign to, to help you with this book project. Right. So I would do that with book coaches. You can do it with people in the publishing industry, small independent publishers. They’re great to do this with, to be able to offer that to their clients. Acquisitions editors at bigger publishing houses. Those are great because they get paid when they acquire a book. And so they want people to have books coming to them. So they interact with someone who’s like, I want to write a book. I just can’t do it. And they have me in their back pocket and says,
OK, don’t worry. I have a ghostwriter who can write your book with you, get it done four to six months, and then we can acquire your book. They say, oh, great. That’s awesome. Um, agents are another one agents I found are kind of, they’re kind of curmudgeony. They like, they have their people and then they stick with their people and they don’t ever want to like budge on that obvious generalization, but the few agents that I’ve reached out to, like, no, we have the covered. Don’t judge me again. Like, all right, no worries. So it’s finding those people who would, their business would do better by having access and being able to provide your service. Right. So there’s one. The other one that’s really, really fun to do is to do kind of what I call like creative collaborations, right? Find someone who has your ideal clients in their audience, right? For book-ghost writing, because I did a lot of leadership stuff, I would find leadership masterminds, right? Leadership seminars, stuff like that. And I would reach out to them and I would say, hey, do your people ever get interested in thought leadership type stuff? They say, oh yeah, all the time. I say, okay, cool. What do you guys do with that? They say, well, do a little bit here and there and some of this stuff.
And I say, Okay, cool. I’m actually a ghost writer. And I specialize in writing books and creating really powerful thought leadership assets and teaching people how to be thought leaders with their books. Do you think that would be something that’s interesting to your audience? They say, Oh yeah, that probably would be interesting. Cool. Can I, can I do like a free training for them? Can I put on a free workshop for them to show them how to maybe how to outline a book and how to use a book as a thought leadership tool? They say, yeah, that’s sure. That sounds great. So now you, get to go into their audience that they’ve spent years building.
You don’t have to spend years building this audience. You have to go over and borrow this audience and you get to demonstrate your expertise and help people with some sort of free training. I’ve done, you know, I use this all the time. I’ve done YouTube interviews. I’ve done guest blog posts. I’ve done guest newsletters, all kinds of stuff to get my expertise in front of people, help people genuinely. You don’t want it to just be a, Ooh, come buy my stuff. You ought to genuinely be something that’s like, Oh, that’s really helpful. Thank you. So I would do that with ghostwriting too with a lot of leadership stuff, a lot of like sales training organizations and stuff like that with people, their audience would be full of like sales trainers because I like sales. I’m a nerd. Um, so I would do that over and over again too. And those are sort of evergreen lead generators for you.
Rob Marsh: So a lot of that stuff works for books. Obviously, a copywriter who’s listening that doesn’t write books can figure out who are their strategic partnerships. One of the things that we hear a lot about from people as far as inbound goes is that you need to be creating content. We’ve talked to a bunch of people who are putting things up on LinkedIn on almost a daily basis in order to attract their clients or they run their own blog, that kind of thing. Has that ever been part of your strategy, Ryan? And if so, how have you done it? If not, why not?
Ryan Guthrie: It is never a bad idea to create content to start building your brand, right? I’ll say that up front. It’s never a bad idea. Creating content, it’s a very useful and versatile thing. for you to do for your business. It’s a good thing to do. I haven’t done it because I frankly don’t like it. I don’t like creating my own content. I don’t like managing my own content distribution channels. I don’t like doing these things. Right. And so I was like, okay, I’m not going to, cause my business, I am a firm believer that you should enjoy your business. Right. And so I was like, okay, if I’m doing all that stuff, I’m not going to enjoy it. Um, and so I was like, okay, I, I’m not going to. So if you, if you go to my, any of my social media profiles, you’re going to see this really funny pattern of he tried for a week and then he got frustrated and he gave up maybe a month ago by, and you’ll see he tried for a week.
Rob Marsh: And then he gave up again. Same pattern on my social media.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, it’s a it’s a curse fired to write some LinkedIn posts or something. And then he went like cold turkey on it and to do it again. Um, but that being said, right, like I don’t have a lot of content out there, right. That being said, um, I make multiple six figures from my services, not even including my like consulting package that I have going right now, just from copywriting and ghostwriting. I made multiple six figures with no content strategy, just knowing what to say and who to say it to what partnerships to build, who to reach out to, how to do that outreach. Right. So if you want to do it, absolutely go for it. It’s never a bad idea to create content, to create this, this, this brand building tool of content creation, right? Never a bad idea. If you really don’t want to, you don’t have to. Maybe if I’m going to scale up to seven figures or something like that. Yeah. It probably needs to become part of my, my arsenal at some point. I need to devote some time to doing that, but from where I’m at right now, it hasn’t been a big part of my strategy.
Kira Hug: Okay so let’s talk about mindset about client acquisition related to client acquisition because you know you talking about it can make it sound easy and you you know have built your confidence in that muscle over time. But it is something that just can wear a writer down very quickly, especially when it’s like, this isn’t working, or I’m being ghosted by everyone. And I did put in the effort. I did personalize the email. It took me an hour to write it, and I still haven’t heard back. And so do you have advice as far as how we can channel our mindset to stay in the client acquisition game and not just remove ourselves completely from it.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah. You can, the unfortunate reality is that you can put a lot of effort into it and it’s still not that good. Right. You might think it’s good, but objectively it might not be very good. Right. So there’s, there is that it has to be objectively good. Secondly, I like a lot of my, like I said, my value based outreaches, they’re based on being helpful and trying to solve a problem with my service. So if someone says no to that, They’re saying no to solving their problem. They’re not saying no to me. They’re not saying, oh, Ryan, you’re a terrible freelancer. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You know, go back to your day job. They’re just saying no to that service at that time. Right? I don’t take that personally. Fine. Cool. I’ve said no to services where I thought the person was, you know, they’re cool person. Cool. This is a cool service. I just don’t need it right now. Right. So it’s doing that. And I’ll say, once you get a system in place and you figure out something that works, that starts working consistently, getting those first few wins and knowing like, okay, if I send 20 emails, I’m going to get two people that are going to, going to work with me or, you know, something like that. Well, then it kind of starts getting a little exciting. You’re like, okay, I know that if I send a hundred emails, 15 people are going to get on a call with me of those five are going to want to work with me or something like that. Right. Then it kind of becomes a little bit less stressful because you’re like, Oh, I’m not just kind of throwing pitches into the void. I know that I’m going to get something back for this. That’s with direct outreach though.
With building the strategic partnerships, it’s really cool because you can send these pitches out. I’ve never had someone be grumpy when they got one of those pitches, right? Because you’re just offering something valuable. Hey, would it be valuable for you if you could offer this service to your clients? Hey, would it be valuable for you if I taught your audience this thing, right? I’ve never had someone come back and be like, no, how dare you? Go kick rocks. No, because you’re offering something valuable. Because with people that create content, it’s the hamster wheel of death for content creators. They always have to be creating content, always. They’re always thinking about the next thing to create, the next piece that they can put together for their audience.
And so if you come along, you’re like, hey, can I make something for them? They’re like, yes, please, please, give me a break, please. Please do this thing for me. And so doing those kinds of pitches, fun, to be frank, because a lot of people are really enthusiastic when they get back to you. I just had one person get back to me yesterday and they were like, you must know what you’re doing because I loved your pitch. And I was like, OK, cool. I kind of know what I’m doing.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think there’s probably an aspect here, too, where if you’re looking at this as building relationships, building friendships, It’s less about the project, which is really easy to reject and it becomes a longer term play where, and play is even the wrong word. It sounds like we’re being manipulative there. If you’re truly interested in helping somebody solve a problem, truly interested in giving them ideas, making that connection, having them in your circle of friends, relationships, your network, however you want to call that. It also changes the mindset here a little bit. So obviously nobody wants to be ghosted when you’re trying to reach out and create a friendship, but it’s not an immediate rejection, right? And if you can take that time to actually build a relationship, maybe that makes it a bit easier too. Not really a question, just kind of a comment on your approach.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, I think something that a lot of copywriters need to know is like, a lot of the people that you’re reaching out to, they’re genuinely just really busy. Maybe they had every intention to reach back out to, And just, you know, 17 fires popped up that they ought to put out. And they just, they forgot. That’s why follow up is so important. You have to follow up with people. I’ve followed it with people and they said, Hey, thanks for following up. I was meaning to get to this and I just genuinely forgot. And as far as the partnership thing, I use a kind of a dorky name, but I use the barbecue test, right? If I’m building a relationship with this person, the strategic partner, if we were both at a, at a backyard barbecue together, would I go hang out with them?
Rob Marsh: Yeah.
Ryan Guthrie: I want my relationships to be to that point. I would go hang out with them at a barbecue. Sure. And so I think keeping that in mind, if that’s where I want the relationship to get to is really fun. Cause a lot of my, my partners now for ghostwriting and copywriting and stuff, we have each other’s phone number and we’ll just text a meme that we think is funny. That’s really nerdy and really industry specific. And we just, we cackle about it because it’s funny. Right. I think getting to that point, I think doing business with friends is like the best way to do it.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I love that approach. And I know we’re at time, Ryan. So I have, I think one, maybe two questions. If you have time to go over. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, I was also going to add, I don’t know if you remember your pitch to our podcast. But it was a really beautifully and masterfully done as well, of course, because you included a screenshot. You gave a review of our podcast and complimented our podcast with a genuine comment. And then you went further and you were like, also, I just gave you a review and you included the screenshot of you giving us a review, which is what we want, right? Podcasters want reviews. That’s how we gain more followers and listeners. So that was really cool. I don’t think we’ve had anyone do that before.
Rob Marsh: Maybe one other person, it’s been, yeah, it’s not very common. Bad pitches, very common. This is, yeah, a little uncommon.
Ryan Guthrie: Yeah, it’s like how, what can I send as an initial contact point? What can I send to this person that’s going to build a little bit of a relationship? What can I do that they want? What do they want? Okay, they have a podcast. What do all podcasters want? They want reviews. They want views. You know, people saying cool stuff about their podcast. It’s like, okay, cool. I will do that. I mean, all right. I’ve given you guys a five star review for like the last four years, because I’ve, I’ve listened a lot. So I was like, I’m gonna go take a screenshot and show them. Hey, I love and support what you guys do. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna show you that. I would love to come on and talk about some of my stuff, too, I think would be useful for your audience. And I love what you do. So good.
Kira Hug: I’m going to snag it. I’m going to do that with podcasts when I pitch podcasts too. My question is, you mentioned a couple of times working part-time is really important. Part-time hours is important to you and putting life first before business. I guess my question is just how do you manage that and keep that in check? Maybe it’s easier for you than I think a lot of us want to do that, but it’s just It’s a struggle. Business creeps in and all of a sudden we’re working constantly. So how do you keep that in check in your own life?
Ryan Guthrie: Ooh, very timely question. I spent all of last week in Disneyland with my family.
Kira Hug: That’s nice.
Ryan Guthrie: They’re a week gone. Personally, I like to take about a week-long vacation every month. I love going places. I love going on trips. It’s important to me. So I made that kind of a big thing I wanted to do. I want to take about a week every month to go relax, vacation. And so how do you do that when you’re managing a business, right? Um, for me, a lot of it. So with, with, it’s different if you’re going to be like copywriting or ghostwriting, it really depends on what kind of service you’re offering people. Cause like for me now with doing consulting, I just block off that week and I say, Hey, we’re not going to do any calls this week. And that’s kind of that. I talked to my clients. They’re like, cool. Scheduled for the next week. So that’s easy with copywriting.
There’s a couple of different things you can do, do it up front. You know, have that week beforehand where you just like, Hey, I’m going to go on a trip this week. Um, and this, this also really pertains to like the quality of client that you get. Cause if you get a really quality client and you say, Hey, I’m going to go on a trip this next week. I want to do all this work up front. Is that cool? They say, yeah, sure. Right. As opposed to a not quality content, um, uh, not quality, uh, clients, then they’re going to be like, well, no, you can’t go. You can’t, you have to stay here with me and you have to do this with me. It’s so. The quality of your clients is gonna be a big thing there. With ghostwriting, it’s like, hey, do you mind if we push this one interview off for a week? It’s not that big of an ask when it’s a really big, drawn-out project, right? So it’s just, it’s having the confidence to know that you can take time off, like you don’t have to work all the time. That’s okay, you can take time off. You can communicate that to your clients, it’s totally fine. And just being prepared to maybe do a little bit more work this week, or maybe do a little bit more catch-up work or something like that, If you’re like me and you genuinely love what you do, okay, I get back to the hotel from Disneyland at 9 or 10 o’clock and I do maybe an hour of work just because I like it.
Kira Hug: Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that. My last two questions that I’m going to kind of smush together, what is a struggle right now in your business because you’ve shared so many amazing things you’re doing well, but what are you struggling with today and then what’s next for you? What’s coming up next?
Ryan Guthrie: Ooh, I think a struggle right now. It is, it’s just finding out how I can structure things to serve my clients the absolute best that I can. Cause I know with, with courses and group coaching, like that’s, those are great. I’ve gotten a ton of value from those, but the most growth happens from one-on-one really in-depth, intimate, personal coaching consulting. So I’m like, how can I structure this? How can I offer the most value possible to my people? So that they’re like working with Ryan was the best investment I ever made. Right. So that’s, that’s a big thing right now. Not necessarily a struggle, but something that I’m working for, uh, towards and then what’s in the future for me, um, building this consulting thing. I actually, I’ve only been doing this for, uh, since February of this year. So this is kind of like a new venture for me. So it’s, it’s building this thing up and, and, uh, and seeing this thing be successful. Like the last two things were the copywriting, the ghostwriting, and now I’m doing this. I’m going to, I’m going to grow this one up. So that’s, that’s kind of what’s on the horizon for me.
Rob Marsh: So Ryan, if somebody has been listening, they wanna follow you or connect with you in some way, where should they go?
Ryan Guthrie: Ooh, they can head over to my website, theryanguthrie.com. They can connect with me there. If they wanna talk about potentially working with me, we can do a quick little discovery call if they want. They wanna send me an email, they can do that. That’s probably gonna be where I’m most responsive. You can connect with me on LinkedIn if you want. I might not get back to you as quickly, because like I said, I’m not a huge social media person. But you can do that also, but the website and emailing me, that’s probably going to be your best shot at getting a response ASAP.
Rob Marsh: Perfect. Thank you for sharing so much, especially, I wasn’t expecting a lot of the ghostwriting stuff, but as that came up in the conversation, I think it’s been really helpful. It’s got me thinking about a couple of additional things, ways that I might be able to help my clients and just opening up about more of the things that we can be doing to attract clients into our businesses, because it is a challenge for a lot of copywriters.
Ryan Guthrie: So thank you. Thank you so much. It was an absolute honor and a pleasure to speak with you guys.
Rob Marsh: Thanks again to Ryan for joining us to chat about finding clients and ghostwriting books. Before we wrap, let me just mention a couple of things that stood out to me. We talked about the three ways to get clients. There’s outbound, there’s inbound and paid ads. And of those, the one that gives you the most control is definitely outbound or reaching out to the clients that you want to work with. Oftentimes we call it pitching. Without bound, you get to choose who you pitch. You get to choose what kinds of projects to ask them about. You get to set the boundaries for the project. So it’s a really good way to get clients into your business.
Look for clients who have money to spend, who are already using copy or who’ve worked with copywriters in the past. Show up with an offer, something that you spell out yourself, the problem that you solve, and don’t make your prospect have to figure out how you can help. We talked about how a lot of copywriters show up and say, you need a blog post. I can do that. You need email. I can do that. Well, that’s not the best way to pitch a client. You want to show up, showing them that you understand the problem that they have and that you have the right solution at a fair price.
Ryan’s suggestion to always share social proof is also a good one. When prospects see that you’ve solved that problem before, you’re more likely to get their attention. Make sure when you do this, that you’re making a small ask. This is a huge mistake that copywriters often make. We ask for something that adds friction to the entire process, a sales call in particular. Hop on and we’ll talk about how I can help you. Better than doing that is to share an idea for free or share several ideas for free and then offer to share more. Don’t ask for a sales call, but maybe offer to discuss ways that you might be able to help, discuss a brainstorming session, those kinds of interactions that might create that easy yes for you. The bigger the ask you make, the harder it is for potential clients to say yes.
And by the way, if you want help with this process, this is exactly what we share in the P7 Client Acquisition System. That system includes more than 20 different fill-in-the-blank templates that you can use to connect With your ideal clients, you basically just have to put in your information and send it out. You’ll learn how to create a pitching habit. You’re going to get tracking tools to help make sure that the follow-up process is easier, almost automatic, and a lot more. To find out more about this, go to thecopyrightedclub.com/clients, and you’ll see everything there that it includes.
While we’re talking about this pitching and adding clients, pay attention to what Ryan said about strategic partnerships. We’ve coached a lot of copywriters who have connected with designers and agencies and other service providers in order to provide copywriting or content writing services to their clients. The right connections can be a goldmine for your business. And don’t sleep on connections with other copywriters because if they understand that you serve a particular niche or you solve a particular problem that they don’t do themselves, they may refer business to you as well.
Finally, we talked a little bit about the sales call, making sure that it’s a consultative call. We want to treat that call like a roadmapping session, not a call to sell your prospect on all the ways that you can help them or on your skills or on the ways that you work. You’re asking about their problems and you’re having them outline exactly what they need. You’re simply figuring out what the problem is. Then you can suggest ways that you might help. That’s a consultative sales call. Okay. Thanks again to Ryan for sharing so much about his process for finding clients and opening up about what works right now. Also for going into detail on book writing. We didn’t expect to talk about that, but we did and we appreciate that.
If you want to connect with Ryan, you can do that at theryanguthrie.com. As he said, he’s also on LinkedIn, but he’s not there all that often. So you might have to wait just a little bit if you try to connect with him there.
That’s the end of this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please visit Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts to leave your review and let us know what you like about the show.
Boom This is the 400th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And our guest for this episode is the CEO of The Nonfiction Authors Association, Stephanie Chandler. She recently published the Nonfiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan and we thought it would be great to find out more about how to write, publish and launch a book into the world. Stephanie did not disappoint. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Nonfiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan by Stephanie Chandler
The Nonfiction Author Association
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Transcript:Rob Marsh: Before I introduce today’s guest and episode, this is the official 400th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. I’m not sure Kira and I ever envisioned this podcast going this long. In fact, other than wanting to have deep discussions that asked hard questions of expert copywriters, I’m not sure what we expected.
So many people have told us they are copywriters today because they were inspired by this podcast. Or by the stories our guests have shared. Or because they jumped into one of our programs designed to help them grow.
So I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for making this podcast the world’s most popular copywriting podcast. And now on to today’s show…
We’ve talked about writing a book on this podcast several times. But it’s one thing to want to write a book, and another thing to have the tools and plan to make it happen. So when I got a copy of The Non-fiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan, I thought we should probably interview the author on the podcast and dive into what it takes to write and launch a book.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I talked with former copywriter and current CEO of the non-profit author’s association, Stephanie Chandler. Stephanie founded the Non-fiction author’s association, so she was the perfect person to talk to about this subject as well as when you should take a leap of faith you might not be ready for and what gets taken when thieves rob a bookstore.
But before we jump in with Stephanie…
There’s a question that clients ask before they decide whether something you write is worth paying a lot or a little for.
That question is “Can I do this?”
Most clients can write a blog post. Or an email. It might not be as good as the one you would write, but they could do a passable job. Those projects don’t feel all that valuable because clients can visualize themselves creating them. They’re not hard.
Fewer clients think they can strategize and build an acquisition funnel. Or a sales page. Or a book. So these projects are more valuable to clients (which means you can charge more to do them).
And almost no clients have the skills to manage sophisticated email marketing tools like Klavio, ActiveCampaign, or even ConvertKit. And if they do, they’re often too busy to do this work themselves.
These skills are among the most valuable of all. So how do you add a skill like managing email marketing tools to your copywriting services?
This week in The Copywriter Underground, we’ll show you. We’ve invited guest expert and email strategist Matt Brown to share exactly how to make sure your client’s emails get into their customer’s inboxes. And how to use this skill to set yourself apart from all the other “I-just-write-copy” copywriters out there.
It’s a master class for all members of The Copywriter Underground and you can join us if you visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu today. But do it today, because if you’re listening to this a few days after the podcast comes out, it will be too late.
Having these skills, makes getting hired by high-paying clients easier. But you have to opt in to get the training. And with that, let’s go to our interview with Stephanie.
Kira Hug: Let’s kick off with your story. How did you end up as a writer, CEO, and all the things that you’re doing today?
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah. I left the Silicon Valley back in 2003 and I opened a 2,800 square foot brick and mortar bookstore. in Sacramento, California, thinking I was going to write novels in the back office. Sounds like a really brilliant plan, right? But turns out I was a terrible fiction writer and I hated running retail store. And all I really wanted to do was be a writer. I just had known that my whole life and I didn’t know how to make a living as a writer. So I actually started doing some copywriting and writing articles for local magazines and Long story short, I ended up selling that store and then I wrote my first book. I had an agent tell me, nobody knows who you are. You need to go build an audience. So I self-published the first book and then the next year I had an audience. I built a high traffic website and I got a book deal with Wiley and then I signed with an agent and sold a couple more books. Meanwhile, I had seen all these local authors with these poorly produced books. And I was speaking at writers conferences and nobody was really talking to those of us who write nonfiction. So in 2010, I launched the nonfiction writers conference completely online. And remember back then we weren’t using zoom or Zen caster. We were dialing into a teleconference line for three days live. And, uh, I didn’t know if people would come, but they did. And then each year they would say, how do we keep in touch when this is over? And so in 2013, the Nonfiction Authors Association was born from that. And I couldn’t believe nobody was really talking to those of us who write nonfiction. And I saw a need and I filled it. And it was just really great luck to have found the path I feel like I was meant to be on.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, seeing what you’ve accomplished since then in launching it. I mean, you have an event. I think you’ve got like, I don’t know, 10, 15 books that you’ve written. You have done a ton in the space. It’s amazing. You sort of have one of those writer careers where it’s like, OK, well, if I can’t write novels, I might as well have that career. So I’m jealous. I’m a little bit jealous of what you’ve accomplished.
Stephanie Chandler: No, no, no. Don’t be jealous. I mean, honestly, it was heartbreaking to realize I couldn’t write fiction, right? I mean, imagine you guys had some propensity to want to write, right? And I just spent my entire life wishing I was a writer. And then you just kind of naturally think, well, I guess I should write fiction. And then you find out you’re terrible at fiction. But you know what I love about nonfiction is that we get to teach. Yeah. Right. And so I’d always had a love for teaching. I actually set out, I thought I’d be an English teacher. And I did this U-turn and ended up in Silicon Valley in a soul sucking career. So it all worked out the way it was meant to. But yeah, follow the heart is where I’m at with that.
Rob Marsh: I’m not yet ready to give up on my ideas for fiction, but I’m kind of there with you where writing nonfiction feels really good in a lot of ways. So before we even talk about all of the other stuff that you’ve done, maybe we can just take a couple of minutes and talk about the differences between fiction and nonfiction and why nonfiction might actually be a better fit for so many people, so many of us who actually want to write books.
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah, especially in your copywriter community, right? Because I mean, nonfiction is true. It’s real life. It’s memoir. It’s how-to books. It’s history. It’s science. It’s medical books. It’s all those things. Whereas fiction is fake. I always remember that as a kid. Fiction is fake. It’s made up stories. And some people love it and are going to be great writers of it. But statistically, we actually sell more nonfiction every year than fiction, and a lot of people don’t realize that. But when you tally up all the nonfiction genres, those outsell fiction every year.
Kira Hug: And so when you say, I wasn’t, I can’t write fiction and like, how did you know? I mean, is it something where you’re like, oh, I can just persevere and are there signs that we can pay attention to? Maybe there’s signs I can pay attention to so I don’t waste a ton of time. And I just realized this is never going to happen for me.
Stephanie Chandler: I love this question. So when I had the bookstore, I immediately started a writer’s group. And so we would all bring our, you know, little stories in each week. And mine were so bad. And I would hear everyone else’s and think, that’s pretty good. Oh, I like that one. Oh, and then I’d read mine and go, oh, this is awful. So I, and I knew just the process of writing it was really difficult. It was painful. Right. But when I started writing nonfiction, it flowed. It felt good. You know, like Rob said, it feels good to write something you’re passionate about. And I would bet a lot of fiction authors feel the opposite, right? It flows for them when they write fiction and they don’t have a desire to teach or want to dispel facts into a manuscript. So yeah, I think part of it was a knowing and just a feeling that it shouldn’t be this hard. I could have taken classes and all the things, but it was hard.
Rob Marsh: I took a couple of the classes. I still, I mean, I still struggle. I’ve got a couple of what I think are really good ideas for fiction books, you know, novels, thrillers, whatever. But when it comes to putting down the plot points and making it all work, that’s where it comes apart for me. Whereas what I’ve written nonfiction seems to Yeah, flow better. But let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about writing a nonfiction book, because like you said, I think there are a lot of copywriters out there who would like to do this, not necessarily just to have written a book, but to help grow their business, to help connect with people in their niche. Talk to us a little bit about that process. And I’m waving in front of the camera right now this book that you shared with me, Stephanie, that’s called The Nonfiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan. It’s a book that you sent. And it’s amazing the way that it sort of steps you through the whole process of not just writing, but actually launching and selling your book. Let’s talk about that.
Stephanie Chandler: Well, thank you, first of all. So the writing process, it feels like a mammoth undertaking to write a book, right? It sounds huge, but I like to say, you know, if you could write a thousand words a day and as copywriters, you probably know that’s about three type pages. If you could write a thousand words a day for the next 50 days, you’d have a first draft of a full manuscript, right? And so what I use myself and what I recommend is the old storyboard method where I’ll get a stack of three by five cards or post-it notes. And I will write down every topic I want to cover in my book individually, every story I’m going to tell, every case study, every stat I’m going to reference, all goes on an individual card. And I will literally spread them out on my living room floor and start to put them in order. And that starts to form my chapter outline. And then I can see, oh, chapter three is really heavy. I need to split that. Or chapter seven is light. I need to expand it or absorb it into another chapter. And that’s how I create my outlines. And that’s worked for me like magic for many years. Is that what you had in mind, Rob?
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I think that’s a great starting point. And actually, I think it echoes something I’ve read or seen. Ryan Holiday has talked about his process for writing, which he does all these note cards and he organizes them and he’s able to move them into different books and all that kind of a thing. So I think that’s a really good starting point. And then as far as the writing, obviously you’ve got to sit down, you’ve got to put the words on the page, but how do you go from note cards to completed chapters?
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah. Well, and there’s, to me, there’s a step in between that too, because you want to get really clear about your target audience and how the book will serve them, especially if you’re using it as a tool to grow your business or just regardless, what is going to make your book different or better? How is it going to improve the reader’s lives in some way is a really important thing to nail down. And then another exercise I like to do before I write is I write the back cover copy first. Right. And that helps me really get focused on what this book is about, what the benefits are for the reader. And as copywriters, you should be great at that. Right. So writing your description really helps you get focused and, you know, figure out your target audience and get clear about that. And then I don’t always write my manuscripts, you know, sequentially. I might be feeling chapter seven today or chapter six tomorrow or whatever it is. because I like to approach, especially if you’re writing prescriptive nonfiction, right? Some sort of how-to book. We are in a short attention span society, right? So short, pithy, almost like articles that are adding into a book. Lots of subheadings and lists, things that make it really easy to read. My new book that you held up, Rob, is a workbook. Right. And so it’s really, it’s, it’s not something you’re just going to sit down and read from cover to cover. And I did that on purpose. I wanted it to be interactive. I wanted people to really feel like they got value from it. So, and you can approach it that way too. Workbooks are kind of trendy right now. Um, and then the discipline of the writing is something I also, every, I think every writer struggles with. Right. I mean, what did they say? JK Rowling went every morning to a coffee shop, but you know, early in the morning, I wrote my last several books at the Hampton Inn five miles from my house. And I would check in on the weekends, right? When my son was really young, this was a great way for me to get focused writing time. And I can happily write for 10 hours, right? So doordash, a burrito, and some bottled water, and I can bang it out. And then also, I always like to mention, if you’re already blogging or have content, I will always go back to my blog post after I’ve created the outline, and I’ll pull in any content that fits into that line for the book. And obviously you want to rework it a little bit. But I mean, I’m always surprised myself with how much content I’ve already written.
Kira Hug: So I think the part that trips up me the most, and maybe others as well, is the topic for the book. How do you make that determination, okay, this is needed, this is new, this feels like something I could go all in on, or do you sometimes make mistakes where you get started and you’re like, oh, this isn’t it?
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, I certainly have unfinished manuscripts and I’ve simmered on certain ideas for years and it just hasn’t felt like the right time and that’s okay too. I think that For me, it’s always about my audience. So what are they asking for? What are they struggling with? How can I do something differently than what’s already there? So there’s lots of book marketing guides out there, but there weren’t any specifically for nonfiction, right? And I built a course and that book became part of the course and all the things. So I guess it comes back to how do you want to serve your target audience? What are they struggling with? I talk to our author community about what are the needs, interests, and challenges of your target audience, and how do you serve them through your blog posts, your podcast interviews, the books that you write. And when I do Q&A, we do lots of webinars and things. I love Q&A with our community. And if I can’t answer a question with a piece of content, it goes on a list, and it will become a blog post or a podcast or a downloadable report? Because if one person in my community has that question, I know others do too. So I really listen to our community and the questions they’re asking.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s a great challenge, Kira. You know, not choosing the topic. I’m thinking where I get stuck is I check into the Hampton Inn and I’m like, ooh, HBO. And then the writing is done. For the weekend, I’m catching up on whatever I’ve missed. So your challenge is better than mine. What else should we be asking about the writing process, Stephanie, as far as, you know, what you’ve seen and you’ve seen literally hundreds, probably thousands of authors writing, you know, nonfiction work. Where else do people get hung up or stuck or what should we be thinking about as we consider the books that we want to write and getting them, not yet talking about marketing yet, but like getting them to the finish point?
Stephanie Chandler: So, yeah, I mean, look at, study your genre, right? What is there? What is selling well? What is missing in those books? To me, that’s always where the opportunity is. What’s missing? What hole can you fill for your audience? You know, in copywriting, for example, there’s all different types of copywriting, right? There’s copywriting for advertising. There’s copywriting for websites. I did tons of website copy years, many, many years ago. So there’s all different types of copywriting. Maybe you narrow it down. I love a niche, really. And I encourage my authors to do that too, because let’s say you’re writing another leadership book. I mean, there’s thousands of leadership books out there, but what if it was leadership for copywriters, leadership for tech companies, leadership for students graduating from college, right? So the narrower you can focus, the more I think you can stand out. And so that also helps propel that along. And then, you know, I try to set myself a goal. So, you know, if I want to get a book out in the next year, I need to get the manuscript completed in the next six to eight months. I see a lot of authors get hung up on that analysis paralysis, right? It’s, is it good enough? I don’t know. Let’s do another round of editing. Let’s get into 13 rounds of editing. Let’s do 15. It’s too much. So I personally am a huge believer in editing. I usually go through at least four rounds of editing, but that’s enough.
Kira Hug: Maybe we can go back to your first book and talk through some of the mistakes you made just because they might be mistakes that we will deal with as well and love to hear some specific examples of
Stephanie Chandler: how you answer it? Great question. So my very first book, which was I wrote in 2004, 20 years ago, was inspired by my Silicon Valley colleagues. So I moved two hours north to Sacramento, opened this bookstore, quit my six-figure job. They all thought I had lost my mind, right? So they were literally caravanning up to Sacramento to see this store and to see that I’d actually really done this and they couldn’t believe it. And they were saying things to me like, you know, I want to do this too, but the golden handcuffs and I’m afraid to leave. So they actually inspired my first book, which was The Business Startup Checklist and Planning Guide. And so it was meant to help inspire them to find a way to start a business. Well, of course, lots of business startup books out there, right? Even more today. But 20 years ago, I had some competition. It wasn’t massive. So if I were to do that today, I would never write a general anything guide, right? I would narrow that focus 100%. Another thing I did in that book was I included tons and tons of links to resources. Links die, links change, links, it was irrelevant within two years, right? So those are the types of things that were frustrating. But I think I had studied the industry. I had been dealing with books and knowing what I liked and did not like. And so for that part of it, I was pretty proud of it as a first book.
Rob Marsh: And as we think about these things, I mean, you were a bookstore owner at one point. Covers, cover design, like getting noticed. I know now we’re maybe talking a little bit more about marketing and promotion of the book, which is what the workbook that you shared with me is all about. What do we need to be considering there, assuming our content is locked in?
Stephanie Chandler: Marketing is a huge piece of it and certainly cover design. I see so many people in general want to skimp on the production of their books, right? And as business professionals, our community is a little bit different. You’re making an impression on potential clients. So that’s where good editing comes in, expert cover design. And when authors tell me, oh, my cousin’s a graphic designer, I go, yeah, but has he ever designed an actual book cover? Because there’s different approaches and single point of interests and the way the fonts are balanced with the image, and you don’t want too much happening on a book cover. So hiring an experienced book cover designer, to me, is super important. Figuring out that title is always hard. I mean, my titles, I have gone through, we call them working titles for a reason. They will change over and over again, as they should. But then you go through all this work, you get your book published, and nobody buys it. Because there’s millions of books being released a year now, thanks to self-publishing, and Amazon is a C. So without also building that audience, this is why publishers want authors with a quote platform. A platform is an audience because they know you’ll sell books. If you don’t have a platform, your books are just going to flail on Amazon. So planning the marketing in advance is super important too.
Kira Hug: And what does that mean when people say audience and platform? Is it 500 people? Is it millions of people? Do I have enough people if I have a community of 1,000 people?
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah, I think it really depends on the genre, on your topic. If you’re writing a book for people with a gluten allergy, having 1,000 subscribers to your email might be enough to impress a publisher, but if you’re writing a small business guide, they’re going to want to see 10,000. Right. So, and they’re looking at your email list. They’re looking at your website traffic, social media numbers for sure matter, but the publishers of wise depth, they’re looking at engagement on social media because it’s so easy to build numbers. Right. But engagement is a whole different thing. And they finally figured that out. So you really have to show that you’re actively engaging your community in some way.
Kira Hug: So you, you mean we have to show up on social media? This is bad news.
Stephanie Chandler: No, I feel like social media has been a little oversold. And my advice to authors is pick one or two networks where your audience spends time and do those well. We don’t have to be on all of them. You don’t have to go create TikTok dancing videos, Kara. You can just spend a little more effort on LinkedIn, share your podcast episodes, put some clips out there, ask questions, right?
Rob Marsh: Some of us want to see Kira’s TikTok dancing. So don’t discourage that.
Kira Hug: We will only see it if it’s an AI Kira. It’s not going to be the real Kira. Guaranteed.
Rob Marsh: But there’s a little bit of catch-22 here, Stephanie. We write the book in order to establish our authority and to grow an audience, and yet you have to have the authority and the audience beforehand. So will you talk through a little bit of that process of how, if I’m starting out from scratch today, What’s realistic? I could write a book, like you said, in three or four months, maybe have it released in three or four months, but it takes a bit longer than that, at least it seems to, to build an audience, the community, that platform. So what’s realistic and how do we do it?
Stephanie Chandler: Well, it’s funny because this is exactly what I said to that literary agent when I pitched my first book and he said, I like what you’re doing, but nobody knows who you are. You need to go build an audience. And I said, but isn’t that the cart before the horse? Once I have the book, I’ll build an audience. And he goes, that’s not how the publishing industry works. You’ve got to build the audience first. Now I had just left the Silicon Valley. I didn’t want to travel. He said, I need you out speaking to thousands of people every year. And I thought, oh my gosh, the last thing I want to do is travel. So back then I started a website. I was blogging before blogging was a thing, right? I was writing articles on small business and starting a business and running a business. And every time I added new content, I the traffic was going up. And so I learned that blogging had value. I didn’t even know I was blogging. But what I recommend now to authors is to have at least one piece of foundational content. And that is either a blog, a podcast or video channel. And maybe it’s a combination of the three, but at least one so that you have foundational content that’s constantly getting added to your site, that’s giving you something to talk about on social media, and that’s engaging your audience, building out your site. And so you guys are doing that, but then you have to figure out how do you get people there and how do you get them to sign up for the email list, right? To me, the email list, If I had to pick between social media and an email list, I will take an email list all day, every day. It is an asset you own. Whereas, you know, we had, for example, several years ago, Twitter evaporated our account. One day we had 70,000 followers. One day we tried to log in and it was gone. We hadn’t violated any policy. We, I mean, I spent months, months trying to get it back and it was futile, right? So it was rented real estate. And I always worry when, when, when somebody’s entire platform is based on a social media site, that’s a big risk. So I would much rather you be bringing the traffic to your own site. getting them signed up for your email list. That is the value in building your community. Although I will add, I think more authors and experts should be leveraging social media groups. Right, because running groups attracts new people. You can be a leader there. And it’s just a it’s a great way to round up people. But you want to drive those people into your email list.
Kira Hug: Is it realistic to think that I could publish or get published with the first book? Or do you think it’s better just to self-publish, like I think you said you did? I mean, if I have a little bit of an audience, should I still just self-publish, get it out there, show that I can do it, and then go to publishers? So I almost don’t waste my time?
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah. So I mean, there’s so many pros and cons on both sides. I chose to leave traditional publishing for several reasons. First of all, you’re giving up all the control over your own work, right? So I’ve had my book titles changed. I’ve had cover designs I didn’t like. The last publisher called me up right before we went to press and said, we want you to remove a chapter. We don’t care which one we’re trying to cut costs. Right. And I was like, I am never letting that happen again. And I’m already doing all the work because the publishers, it’s a myth that the publishers are going to do all the marketing. They’re putting their marketing dollars into their John Grisham’s and their, you know, James Patterson’s and their Brene Brown’s, because those are sure things. They’re relying on the authors. to bring the audience to show that you’re going to sell books and then they’ll back you up a little bit more. So traditional publishing, by the way, you only earn about a dollar a book and advances have gotten much smaller. I mean, you’ll be lucky to get $5,000 advance and then you’ll never see another dime until you earn that back one dollar at a time. So it’s not, and it used to be, we wanted to be traditionally published to end up on a brick and mortar bookstore shelf. But some are estimating that as many as 70% of all book sales are happening on Amazon. So brick and mortar bookstore placement doesn’t have the cache it once did. I mean, I still love, I’m a bookstore lover, but the fact is I read almost exclusively digitally now. Right. So, you know, and that’s how many people are. So self-publishing, while you spend money up front, you maintain control. You can get your book out faster. Traditional publishers typically take about a year to get a book out once you get a book deal. I mean, as a self-published author, you can have your book out in months. So it’s I think it’s important to look at those things. And then as long as it’s professionally produced, A self-published book, it shouldn’t slow you down from really accomplishing any goal.
Rob Marsh: I was going to ask about the differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing. You’ve kind of answered that. When you say 70% of books or as many as 70% are sold on Amazon, how does that break down versus digital versus hard copy?
Stephanie Chandler: Okay, so we remember there was a time maybe 10 years ago, we thought ebooks were taking over and we would never have a print book again. And it was just so depressing. Well, that stopped. And what we see in the nonfiction space is usually around 30 to 40% of your book sales are going to be ebook. And audio book, which an audio book is the fastest growing segment of the publishing industry right now. So audio books make a ton of sense. They’re not super profitable because they’re all on subscription models now. But, um, yeah, so print books, you will sell about 60% paperback. Hardcovers sell far less. So I often advise authors, if you really want a hardcover, do both a hardcover and a paperback. It’s not a big leap to add one or the other. But don’t just do a hardcover because you will miss out on sales.
Rob Marsh: And what else do we need to be thinking about in that decision between traditional and self-published? Obviously, there are advantages to traditional. You listed a bunch of the reasons not to, and I agree. I think I would probably self-publish because of that. But there are still authors who choose to go the traditional route, even authors who aren’t the James Pattersons of the world. They’re putting out maybe their second or third book. I think it’s still perceived as a little bit more, I don’t know, professional, but what other reasons would we consider that?
Stephanie Chandler: So, I mean, there’s certainly some credibility, right? And being able to say my book was picked up by Random House or whatever the case is. And so that’s definitely a factor for, especially in certain industries, education and things like that. Um, so that, that plays into it. And if you have a lot of patience and you’re willing to give up control, I think, and I don’t regret having done it. I had that as a goal. I wanted the credibility I wanted to be, I wanted the validation of my work. Right. And so I’m glad I did it. But I don’t know that you could ever talk me into going back to it. Just because especially as business owners, right, we’re used to running the show. And then to give up creative control, and the business decisions behind my books, just for me didn’t fly. Now with that said, self-publishing is doable, but it’s a lot of work. There are a lot of steps in the process. People don’t realize how much goes into it. So there’s kind of a midway we call hybrid publishing, where you can hire a firm to do all the heavy lifting and produce your book. It’s still your copyright. It’s still your work. but they do all the heavy lifting. They typically have a recognizable brand and you can pay them to do all of that. So for those of us who are really busy, that’s a really popular option is to hire a hybrid publisher. You know, it’s not inexpensive, but self-publishing by the time you hire, you know, multiple editors, the cover designer, the interior typesetter, the ebook formatter, the indexer, I mean, it adds up, no question.
Rob Marsh: So one really quick follow-up on that. You mentioned with traditional publishing, you only make about a dollar a book. How does that differ if you self-publish? And I guess, you know, we can keep talking about the purpose of a nonfiction book is often not to sell books, but to sell other things. But what’s the money difference there?
Stephanie Chandler: So big difference. So if you self-publish, let’s say you’ve got a 50,000 word manuscript, your book’s about 200 paperback pages, and you’re selling it for $19.99. Your print on demand costs might be $5. Now, Amazon’s going to take 55% off your retail price. So $20 minus 55%. Someone’s going to have to help me with the math, but they’re going to pay you- I think it’s about $11 roughly. Okay. So $11, that means Amazon’s paying nine, right? And you deduct your $5 print costs, you’ve just earned $4 for that sale. Now, let’s say you go and you do a speaking engagement. and you take a case of books with you and you sell them for $20 and your cost was five, you’ve just made $15. Your traditional publisher is only going to sell you your own books at 50% off the retail price. They’re making a profit off of you as the author.
Kira Hug: Yikes. Okay. So I want to talk about mindset for a little bit and just kind of veer off topic because I noted that you went from wanting to write fiction and then realizing, okay, this isn’t for me. And then it sounds like you pivoted relatively quickly, maybe that it wasn’t as quick as it sounds. But I think that takes a lot of, I mean, a positive mindset to even say, okay, well, there’s something else for me. And then later, when you left your what sounds like a really amazing startup gig and job in Silicon Valley, that takes guts and a pretty strong mindset to believe, okay, I can make this work. And so I guess the question is just like, how has your mindset evolved over time and what has helped you the most to make these pivots and decisions that are not easy for most people?
Stephanie Chandler: I love this question. I get asked this a lot because it was a huge leap to quit a six figure job and open a bookstore. And people ask me, were you scared? I wasn’t. I remember driving away on my last day of work. I had a little convertible and I’m in California and it’s like 8 p.m. after we’ve had our last happy hour. And I was like, I am free, right? But for me, what has served me the best in all these endeavors is building a plan. So I spent a year, probably a year and a half before I quit my job, forming my business plan for the bookstore. I hired business consultants. I, you know, I had financial plans made. Now, of course, with business, nothing ever goes exactly as you plan, but I had plans. I had money set aside. I had contingency plans and I knew that I could always be a freelancer. And I knew there was ways to, I had, I had backup plans to my plans. And so that gave me a lot of confidence and, and nothing went exactly as planned. Nothing did. Everything ends up costing more than you expected to. And then things break and, you know, the store was robbed and we had all these issues. But you kind of figure it out. And I almost for me, figuring those things out gave me more confidence. And then I’m running the store. And I’m not kidding you. Six weeks after opening that store, I looked around one day and I was like, Oh my God, what have I done? I don’t want to be locked in this building all day and deal with the public. Right. And we had a lot of, um, bored, retired people and homeless people who would wander in and just want someone to talk to. And it didn’t feel like a great use of my brain. Right. I wanted to be actively creating things. So I think the mindset was, OK, so what next and how do I make a plan? And honestly, what I did while I owned that store was I started copywriting and write and doing freelance writing for magazines. And my goal was to write for Entrepreneur Magazine. That was my big goal. And so I worked up and I built my clips and I worked up and I finally got an article placed in Entrepreneur and I never wrote another freelance article again. I was like, OK, now what? Right. So I would just set these goals for myself, make a plan. And and by making a plan, I would study how other people were doing it. I can’t say enough about that. Rob, you mentioned Ryan Holiday. Look at other people who are doing things that you admire and take from that what you admire and also what you don’t like. Because I saw, especially back then, lots of big red headlines and, but wait, there’s a lot of snake oil type selling and I swore I would never, ever engage in that. So I just really study. I study how other people are doing things. When I decided to start an association for writers, I looked at trade associations in all kinds of industries. What are they doing? What are they offering? Why do people join? What are the benefits? So that I could apply that to my community and make it as robust as possible. Does that make sense?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think it makes sense. So a quick curiosity question. When somebody robs a bookstore, do they take the books?
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah, no, they don’t take books. We learned a rookie mistake. I had this employee, he was a long haired, tattooed, like rock and roll guy. And he was in the store one day while the other one was on a break. And these couple of guys walked in and asked for help in the back. Well, the cash register, we didn’t have it bolted down. And it turns out you can lift it up and there’s an emergency release underneath. So they just quietly took the money out of the drawer.
Rob Marsh: Ouch. Yeah, that’s that’s brutal.
Stephanie Chandler: Rookie mistakes.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, so as you’re thinking about and launching the association, keeping it with the mindset, you’ve left one kind of business. You bought and you’re checking out of the retail business. You’ve started a copywriting business and freelancing. And now you’ve got this fourth business. I mean, how are you juggling it all and making it make sense? I mean, in some ways it feels like maybe you were trying for the thing that is going to satisfy all of your needs.
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah, I was. Yeah. How did you make it work? I was exploring. And I didn’t even mention that I started a publishing business in the middle of all of that. So I sold the bookstore. I sold it to an employee because after the first year I checked out. I was consulting, I was freelancing, I was, I started publishing other people’s books as a hybrid book publisher, all nonfiction. So I was kind of figuring out my lane. And so that was, that was the evolution of okay, well, I checked that off. I don’t I didn’t want to be a freelance writer forever. I didn’t feel like I could keep doing that. And that’s another question to ask yourself, am I going to be passionate about this in five years or 10 years? And, you know, for me, freelancing was, I wanted to tell my own stories, not other people’s stories. Right. So it’s just looking at those things. And like I said, when I embarked on all of this, I knew I wanted to write, but I didn’t know how to make a living as a writer. So I got involved in copywriting communities right back then and, um, and learned about copywriting. And I joined a local business networking group and I met web designers and they were like, Oh, well you write our clients website copy. And I sure I can do that. Right. And so I just. wasn’t afraid to take chances, I guess. And meanwhile, I was letting the employees run the store. And I ultimately ended up selling it to one of them. And that was a great decision.
Rob Marsh: So a follow up on the association, are there differences in building an association versus another type of business?
Stephanie Chandler: Like a membership community? Yeah. Not so much. I chose not to file it as a nonprofit. A lot of trade associations are nonprofits. but the accounting for nonprofits and it’s just so complicated and I’m not about complicated so we are not a nonprofit we make that really clear and no it’s very similar to other membership communities but I liked that to me, association had some cachet to it. And nobody was doing it for nonfiction authors. That was so baffling to me. I mean, to be able to go by nonfiction authors association.com and nonfiction writers conference.com for $12 on GoDaddy was shocking to me. So I’m grateful that I took all those detours because I feel like they prepared me to get where I am. And I love what I’m doing now.
Kira Hug: I don’t know if this is the right question to ask here, but I feel like you have a really good eye for, well, you do have a great eye for spotting opportunities and moving and making the plan. And so is that just a gift that you have? Is that something that other people can learn? Or are there any tips you could give us to help us get better at spotting these opportunities?
Stephanie Chandler: I love this question. And, um, I think it is part instinct, but it is that that studying right and really paying attention to my audience? What questions am I answering over and over again? You know, like how to publish my book and those types of things. And so, for example, that there’s tons of books on how to publish your book. I wrote one on how to publish a nonfiction book. So it hadn’t been done. Right. And so, and there are nuances, there are things to consider. So I saw the need within that niche. I’m all about a niche. So the more that you can narrow it down, I feel like the more you can stand out. And if you’re finding, you know, even within my own community, there are so many sub genres that somebody could be talking to, right, to science writers, to business book writers, to, you know, memoir writers, there is one, two associations. But within that community, there are smaller niches, too. So those are opportunities, right? Writing a science book is very different from writing a business book. Or writing a historical, you know, genealogy book is very different from writing a memoir. So there’s opportunities within, I believe, any community. Right. And just looking to solve their problems, what are their interests, their needs and their challenges. My good friend, Karl Palachuk has a community for IT consultants. So people who fix your computers, right? He used to own an IT company and he sold it and he thought, well, I’m going to teach other IT business owners how to grow their businesses. And he is like a rock star and this very small niche community. and earns a great living because he built he offers courses. And, you know, he listens to what are their challenges. They can go listen to a general business consultant, but he has the direct experience in their industry and is speaking to what they’re struggling with. Does that does that help a little bit?
Kira Hug: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it sounds like you do the right things, right? You niche down and then you observe the space and you’re looking for those questions and you’re doing… It’s all the best practices. I think that… Thank you.
Stephanie Chandler: You’re reminding me that early on, I started writing questions down that people were asking me. I was looking for the threads. I was like trying to pay attention. So that helps too. What are they asking in forums? What are they struggling with? And is there one thread of that, right? That how to be a website copywriter, right? I mean, does that book exist? Probably not. And that was pretty lucrative, quite frankly. I mean, I was hitting every business in town, rewriting all their websites, you know.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s definitely a way to make that book work. I want to ask you about your event. You guys, with your association, you do an online event. You’ve been online for a long time. Most events went online after 2020, but I think you guys were ahead of the curve by a decade or so. Tell us about that event and the kinds of things that happened there. If we were going to sign up and join next year, what could we expect?
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah, thanks for asking. So the Nonfiction Writers Conference started in 2010, and we just had our 14th event in May, early May. And it’s basically three days of live training. And I’m super particular about our speakers. I don’t want these to be sales pitches. I don’t want people to feel like they just, you know, swam with a snake oil salesman. So we really emphasize high content value. And within the conference, I wanted it to also be the benefits that you would get from an in-person conference, but online. So we have lots of industry professionals who volunteer to do one-on-one Zoom consults with attendees. We’d love to invite you guys next year to be pros. We called our Ask a Pro sessions. We have live literary agent pitches. Those have been really popular. So we do a lot of things outside of just the lectures. We do a private group for the attendees and we do online networking. It’s a ton of fun. It’s a ton of work, but I love it. And people ask, you know, are you why don’t you do one in person? And I feel like doing it online as long as we have is kind of what makes it special. Right. Others, like you said, Rob, after the pandemic started doing more of them, but we’ve been doing it a long time. So we’re going to keep doing it.
Kira Hug: I before we start to wrap, I just want to ask you about your schedule, you know, especially as a fellow writer and, you know, a CEO and someone who’s built this organization, you know, how do you think about your time, schedule your time so you still have time to produce in this prolific way and run a business? And I’m sure you’re doing many other things.
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah. So I’ll tell you one of my mantras for years has been the more I hire, the more I earn. So I have a team. I think having at least one phenomenal assistant is so valuable. And, um, so I, but I have multiple people. We have, obviously we have customer service that needs to be handled. We have failed payments that need to be followed up on. So we have people in charge of those things. And for years I had on my computer monitor a sticky note that said, can Sue do this? Right? Because I would catch myself like putting together a spreadsheet and realize I don’t need to be the one doing this. Sue could do this. And it took me a long time to train myself to hand these tasks over. But the more I do that, the more it frees me up to do the things that I’m best at. I should never be the one doing anything math related. I should not be building spreadsheets. I should not be doing bookkeeping. I should not be handling customer service. I’m a CEO, right? So I have put people in those roles and I’ve straddled the business ownership revenue, you know, highs and lows and still paying people. I’ve done all of that. But when it comes back to it, I earn more per hour doing the things I do best and to hire someone for 20 to $50 an hour. to do those other tasks has become way more profitable. And in fact, it’s to the point that we have, I tell authors, go get yourself a great virtual assistant, hire someone for five hours a month to help you pitch yourself for a podcast or find a speaking engagement or help update your blog content. And we have such a need in our community for that. And we don’t have enough virtual assistants to recommend. We were creating a training program for virtual assistants, because I know that this is a value to our community. Right. We’re getting asked for them and we don’t have enough to give them. So we’re creating the program that’s going to connect to them. So that’s that. What am I? I’m looking for those opportunities and those needs to fill.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so to try to bring this all home, let’s say that I’m a copywriter, I’ve been listening, I’m ready to write a book for my niche, for the customers that I write for. Give us just the first two or three steps to really get started so that by this time next week or maybe next month, we actually have gotten far enough along that we can say, yeah, this is happening and I’m going to be able to get this done.
Stephanie Chandler: Go study the books in that genre and see what’s missing and how you can fill a hole. Make a profile for your audience. I often like to have somebody in mind in my head that I’m writing for specifically that helps me really communicate what I’m writing. Write that book description because that’ll choke me up. Even if I have a full outline and I sit down to write the description, I’ll realize my outline needs to be adjusted. Right? Because you want your book description to explain what is the reader going to gain from this book? What is the promise? And if you can’t succinctly describe the promise, you don’t have a successful book. So writing that jacket copy is hugely important.
Kira Hug: All right. I think we’re ready. I think we’re ready to read the books. This is so hopeful. I need to do it. I hope you do.
Stephanie Chandler: I want to hear all about it when you do.
Kira Hug: I don’t think we asked you yet, but where can our listeners go to connect with you to get involved in the association and find all of your books?
Stephanie Chandler: Yeah, thank you. Nonfictionauthorsassociation.com is kind of our main hub. I’m on LinkedIn. Stephanie Chandler, our author, I think is my handle. But I’d love to connect with with everyone. And I love our community. And we’re full of professionals, which is really interesting. So therapists, physicians, consultants, speakers, it’s a really interesting, well educated community. And so it’s unlike the typical writers group of where people are, you know, writing fiction, because it’s fun. And these are professionally focused people, I guess, is the point I’m trying to make.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s good. And like I mentioned before, I’ve got the workbook, the most recent workbook. It’s a great tool. We’ll link to it in the show notes so that people can check that out if they’d like to get along. But thank you, Stephanie, for joining us and sharing so much about the process. And hopefully we’ll see a bunch of books coming out of the Copywriter Club in the next year, not just from Kira and me, but from a bunch of our listeners, too.
Stephanie Chandler: I hope so. Keep me posted. And thanks so much for inviting me. This was a fun conversation. Thank you.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Stephanie Chandler. This conversation got me thinking about my own book projects and what I need to do to make more progress on them.
First of all is this idea of niching in books. We talk about this all the time for copywriting. If we choose a niche, if we go after a particular industry, or a deliverable, or a kind of voice, or a type of project that we do, there’s so many different ways to niche. It helps us focus in on the right audience to work with. It makes for projects that tend to go smoother. It helps us to build expertise. And the same thing applies to books, obviously, as Stephanie pointed out. There are so many different leadership books that she talked about, but you can niche your leadership book into doing something very specific. Leadership for copywriters, leadership for SAS business owners, or maybe it’s not an industry type thing, but rather it’s positional, you know, leadership for CEOs, leadership for the just hired manager, something like that.
If the topic was leadership, there’s so many different ways to address what we would put into our books for a particular niche. And That’s what we see so many times, even with copywriters, is the copywriters want to write to and talk to other copywriters. Same thing with content, content writers. They want to write content that gets consumed by other content writers. Well, that particular audience is relatively small compared to all of the other niches out there that you could address your ideas to. So if you’re writing a book about marketing principles or even copywriting ideas, you’re better off aiming them to marketers in specific niches who don’t know so much about what you’re talking about as maybe copywriters and content writers might do. So think about niching when it comes to not only the way you set up your business, but if you’re going to write a book, you want to choose a niche for your book.
And then while we’re talking about writing a book, a couple of things stood out to me there as well. Stephanie talked about describing the promise of the book and the promise of the book looks like success. Well, obviously this feels really familiar to anybody who’s written any kind of sales copy. That is, we want to focus on that transformative moment when the customer experiences success with the products that we’re writing about. That’s the exact same thing that we want to be doing when we’re thinking about the book. What is that transformation that the book is going to produce?
The book is simply just an offer or a product that is going to help deliver a transformation based off of the information that you’re giving the person that’s reading that book. a copywriting principle that applies again to the book. We want to find that moment of success. And that’s really the promise of the book. And then all of the content in the book leads to that transformation or that moment of success.
I love to what Stephanie pointed out as far as the storyboard method goes and taking every story, every stat, every case study, every quote, everything that we want to put into the book and put it on post-it notes or on pages that we can move around and shift around to make sense of how it all fits together. We want to get clear on that audience and how the book serves them. So going back to that idea of the moment of success. And then we want to talk and write about how it’s going to make your reader’s life better. She starts with the back cover copy. I think that’s a great idea or some kind of capsulation of what your book is about. And then even thinking about your nonfiction as a collection of short article type chapters, almost as if they’re blog posts or the content you’re publishing on LinkedIn. Obviously we’d want to build them out just a little bit from that. You don’t want 900 word chapters. But, you know, a two to four thousand word chapter, that makes a lot of sense. And so there are lots of ways to do that.
And finally, we talked a little bit about leaving a six-figure job for this opportunity that’s really undefined and kind of scary and doesn’t guarantee a six-figure payoff. What Stephanie did And I think there’s so many copywriters who do this as well in our own businesses as we leave. Maybe it’s corporate America or university or this thing that we have been doing. And we move into copywriting, which has a promise of success. And certainly it’s possible to build those kinds of businesses. That’s exactly what we show you how to do in programs like The Copywriter Accelerator, The Copywriter Underground. but it’s not guaranteed and it takes a lot of work. And so having a plan, and then if nothing goes to plan, you sometimes you just got to burn the boats. You’ve got to make sure that the plan is going to work, that you’re not setting yourself up with plan B or plan C or plan D, which allows you to fail or not try as hard as you need to try in order to succeed. If success is the only option, you’ll figure out a way to get there. We talk a lot about that, like I said, in The Copywriter Club programs. You might want to check some of those out.
I want to thank Stephanie Chandler again for joining us to chat about writing a nonfiction book and leaping at the right opportunities and so much more. You can find her on the Nonfiction Authors Association website, where you can also join her list and find a ton of free resources that are designed to help you write your own book. There are recordings from their previous events. We talked about the online event on the podcast and the interview. So check that stuff out.
And if you want to learn how to add those high-value skills, like helping your customers, your clients, manage their email list and provide that service that can turn into long-term, high-value retainers, you’re going to want to join The Copywriter Underground so you can join us for that workshop with Matt Brown that’s coming up this week.
That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner.
If you enjoyed what you’ve heard, please visit Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts to leave a review of your show. Let us know what you like, or just pass this episode on to somebody that you think might benefit from it. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.
When you start writing copy at age 16, you’ve got to connect with prospects and stand out or you won’t be able to compete with more experienced copywriters. And that’s exactly what Emilia Tanase, our guest for the 399th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast did. Rob and Kira asked Emilia about how she launched her business, how she connected with two high-level mentors, and her approach to writing emails. There’s a lot of good stuff in this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Get Rich Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield-Thomas
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Emilia’s website
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Over the past 7 years of this podcast, we’ve interviewed a really wide variety of people who have made a living out of writing copy and content. They come from all over the world and from all kinds of different backgrounds. But I think today’s guest is different from all of them in at least one way—she started working as a copywriter when she was still in high school. She’s taken a pretty interesting path to copywriting success and her early start is just a small part of her story.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder Kira Hug and I interviewed copywriter Emilia Tanase. Emilia has discovered the formula for getting noticed by mentors and figuring out ways to get found by clients without pitching. As you might imagine, starting out in high school meant she’s had to hustle to figure out how to make business work. And there’s a lot to learn from Emilia’s story.
Before we jump into the interview, I want to let you know about an upcoming training happening in The Copywriter Underground that’s absolutely critical for anyone who writes emails—either for their own business or for their clients. Copywriter and email deliverability expert Matt Brown will be sharing his hard won secrets for getting emails into the inbox—rather than the promotions or spam tabs in gmail, yahoo and other bigger email programs. This takes much more than avoiding a few smammy words or reworking your subject lines. And when you know how to do this, clients will hire you to not just write emails, but to manage their web marketing strategy. It could be a game changer for your busienss. But as are most of the masterclasses we curate, this training is exclusively for members of The Copywriter Underground. You can learn more about this upcoming masterclass at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Emilia…
Kira Hug: All right, Emilia, let’s start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Emilia Tanase: It actually it goes back in time to when I was 16. I started when I was in high school because my mom got really sick and so she was really struggling with keeping up with our bills and holding the household together Unfortunately, at the same time, my dad also lost his job. So she was the sole provider and money was really scarce. And when you’re in a small Romanian town, it’s pretty hard to find a job right away. So me, a teenager at the time, I was like, hey, how can I make some pocket money, help my parents out, make this a bit easier for all of us, if I can.
I went online and of course I typed in, how to make money in high school. And, you know, there were the typical answers, like, wash cars or walk dogs and whatnot, but these are not really jobs that we do here in Romania. In America, sure, but here not so much. And then I found, be a copywriter or do copywriting work. I was like, what is copywriting? It sounded like, you know, patenting some intellectual property. But I Googled it and I found out it was like this whole thing that people were doing for other businesses.
And when you’re that young, you don’t think that much about things. So I was like, oh, I can do this for sure. So of course, the next step was like, okay, how do I find a copywriting job fast?
I landed on Craigslist and people are always very surprised when I say this. And I was shocked too, because I didn’t know what Craigslist was at the time. So I was seeing these ads for opportunities like, I’m selling a washing machine. I need a chainsaw or something like that. And then someone was like, Hey, I need an about page for, they had this local arts magazine. So I was like, cool, I can do that. I can write. So I sent them a cover letter. It was very cringy… dear sir or madam, I can do this job for you. And I think it was like $40. And I got it a couple of days later. They emailed me. And I’m pretty sure it’s because no one else had applied to that job. And that’s how I got it. But I got it.
And then I went online because I was like, God, I don’t know how to write an about page, let’s figure this out. So of course, you know, the internet is filled with articles on how to write copy, at least to start with. So I used that. I did the thing. I sent it out. They were happy, so they hired me for more small jobs like this. And basically, it all started from here. It snowballed because I started making $1,000 per month, which was, at the time, and in Romania, a lot of money. But of course, I also had my studies, so school to take care of. So this is kind of why I was on and off with copywriting, like making bits of money and then making a pause and then going back at it.
Eventually I had to stop, or I thought I had to stop, to go to university because that was the direction everyone was taking back then. And still is, a lot of people consider uni So I did that and then I picked digital marketing because I saw that they had the module about copywriting. So I was thinking ahead. I was like, maybe I can go back to copywriting in the future. Let me learn something here. And that module ended up being one class where I was the only one who knew how to answer the teacher’s questions. So it was pretty basic stuff, unfortunately. And time passed, and I realized more and more that I want to do my own thing. I did this before. I’m pretty decent at it, so maybe I can do it again. But the problem was that time had passed, and It was a lot more difficult for me to restart copywriting. After getting that first job from Craiglist, I actually went to Upwork. So that’s where I started getting more and more jobs. But now, after a couple of years, there were a lot more copywriters on Upwork. And so I had to find a way to stand out in my proposals, like everyone else, and to start making a name for myself, basically. So that was the big hurdle. And that’s also when I had my biggest breakthrough, because I started doing things on the side to grow my brand and grow my authority. But yeah, in a nutshell, that’s how I got started.
Rob Marsh: So let’s talk a little bit about what you did so that you could stand out. Because I think not just you coming back to copywriting, but across the board, copywriters today struggle with this. There are, I think, close to 2 million copywriters on LinkedIn around the world. So what did you do to start to stand out from that group that you were competing with on Upwork?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. First of all, I started creating my own samples because the work that I was previously winning wasn’t the work that was being requested those days on Upwork, right? So nobody wanted an about page for a magazine. The jobs I was seeing at the time were for full websites or emails or ads, and I didn’t have those things. So I started creating samples for fictional businesses, applying those to or attaching those to my cover letters, and also taking some unconventional directions with the way I was introducing myself. I would look for their names, the client’s name, which is not so easy to find, right? Because you can’t really see it on Upwork. So I would look through the past reviews they have from people they hired and find their name, or I would start with some kind of silly jokes that I would think of in the moment, because I had learned that the first line in your proposal is kind of the one that determines if it gets read or not. So I kind of started doing these things and some of them worked, some of them didn’t. And then at the same time, you know, I was getting better and better at copywriting as well. And I started doing like the typical PAS or using the AIDA model, like just applying copywriting to these cover letters. And then I think I got one big job. It was like a $3,000 or $4,000 job from there. And then I went out of Upwork and just continued with that client for a longer time.
Kira Hug: Can you share the timeline? I really need to kind of understand the dates. So if you’re okay sharing that, like when you started at age 16 and then any other dates, like when you decided to go back and go on Upwork and give it a go the second time too? Yeah.
Emilia Tanase: At 16, I don’t remember what year it was and I’m bad at math, but I know that I left for university in 2017. It was my first year of university. So that’s kind of when I quit altogether because I was focusing on that. And then in 2020, I remember the year because I registered my company here in Romania. But actually, I didn’t do much work that year because I was still working part-time for my university for a job I had. So 2021 really was the year when I restarted my career altogether.
Kira Hug: Okay, and so did you finish your college degree or did you not finish? Did you share that part?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, I finished it in 2020, I think.
Kira Hug: Okay. Amazing. And so let’s just kind of finish the story and we can dig deeper into it. So since 2021, when you jump back in and leading up to where we are today, 2024, um, what are the key moves that you’ve made that have helped you the most over the last few years?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. I would say networking and trying to build my authority in the eyes of my clients have been like the biggest moves I’ve made in my career. Because after I left Upwork, I never cold pitched any client, like I never cold pitched for clients, everything has been inbound. And I think that’s the preferred way for me because I’m an introvert and I don’t necessarily like to go there and pitch people. So once it happened once, and I can go into that, it was kind of a snowball effect, right? So from there I was like, okay, this thing worked, this thing worked, let me try to do it more and more so I can only get inbound leads, basically.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, let’s talk about that. What did you do? And I’m assuming this is the breakthrough that you mentioned earlier.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, exactly.
Rob Marsh: Let’s go deep.
Emilia Tanase: Let’s do it. So the first thing I did was to pretty much leech myself onto someone who was already at the top in my industry. And for me, that person was Joanna Webb, who I admire very much. And I found out about her community. I signed up. You know, I didn’t have that much money at the time, but this was like the perfect place for me to start at the time. So I signed up and I became the most active person in that group, basically. I knew nothing, or I acted like I knew nothing, because I wanted to learn as much as I could. So I started asking questions. I started having wins based on implementing the things that she was teaching in that community and sharing that with the community.
Then I started answering other questions that people had in there. And slowly but surely, I kind of like quote unquote, grew my authority in the group. So just people noticed me a lot by posting there, right? And one day, I think Joanna reached out to me because she had heard from me being active in the group so much that I started copywriting in high school. And she was like, hey, do you want to write an article on our blog? And that was crazy to me because I was previously trying to write an article on their blog, and I knew from their requirements that I think they said something like, we only accept very few pitches, maybe one in 10. You need to be really good if you want to write here. And I was like, yes, absolutely. Let’s do this. So I wrote that. And then other things followed from that, that I don’t know if I can talk about, but they proposed more things to me that we did together. Everyone was super happy about the piece.
And that gave me a logo to put on my website because now I can put under the trusted by headline, I can put copyhackers. That was the first thing I did. And then I moved on because I discovered Daniel Trossell that I now intern for. And I was obsessed with his emails, with his courses, with everything he did. So once again, I repeated the process. I bought what I could so I can learn. I became one of his top students in all those courses that I bought. I shared my testimonials with him. I shared more than testimonials as well, because by this point I was kind of realizing that, okay, if I want to build a relationship with these people, I need to give, give, give as much as I can and things that I know are valuable to them. One of those things was you know, a good testimonial that he could put on his sales page. And I cannot tell you the amount of times I have gotten messages from other copywriters saying like, Hey, I saw you on this sales page, on this sales page, this sales page. Like, how’s your business? I want to join your email list. ‘Cause I think copywriters are attracted to other copywriters who are doing the work they want to do as well. Um, and this was like a great way for me to attract more people into my tribe as well.
I think in the copyhackers article, I linked back to his website because I knew about the power of backlinks and how maybe that will help him. So he didn’t ask for that, but I was like, Hey, I did this thing. And he was very grateful for that. So it went on and off like this. And then at some point I mean, multiple times I think he featured me in his emails, you know, cause I was giving him all these testimonials and stuff. And then he posted or he emailed about the job for, you know, he was looking for interns. And I was like, great. I have built up this relationship. I learned how to write a great pitch. Like this is my chance. And I wrote it and I was like, so, so happy when I got it. Cause obviously he’s an amazing guy and copywriter. So yeah, that was thing number two, breakthrough number two.
And then another example would be like the way I got kind of my biggest clients to date followed this very same process. It started with finding someone on Instagram. I really loved his content. It resonated a lot with me. And so I obsessed over it. I would respond to his stories. Or whenever he was asking for something, I would be the first one to interact with him. And I did this a lot of times. And then I don’t even think I did it that many times with this person. Because after a week or two, he was like, hey, you’re a copywriter. I want to work with you. And this is how I reached my first $10,000 a month. This is how I got referred to a bunch of influencers on Instagram that were friends with him. And like I said, this was just all a big snowball effect from just being a fan.
Kira Hug: I just want to jump in and ask about interacting. So you mentioned interacting with this person, but can you be more specific? Because I think interactions can look very different for many of us, and I think some of us think we’re interacting.
Rob Marsh: You’re clicking the heart, right? That’s interacting, for sure.
Kira Hug: And they’re like, why are they not hiring me? And so I have a feeling you’re doing more than that.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, for sure. So liking is definitely not going to get you noticed. A lot of people like these people’s posts.
Rob Marsh: There goes my strategy. I’m out.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. So for example, I remember he posted a story. He wanted to launch some new offer and he was like, Hey guys, can I get some feedback? What are your main problems right now with this and that?” I answered that one. Like, you know, a lot of people don’t take the time. Maybe they write really short sentences to get it over with, or they just ignore it altogether. I put a lot of work into giving him, you know, voice of customer data and whatnot. Other times he was asking for, hey, do you know recommendations for this and that?
Or other times it was simply just me messaging him about his latest reel and saying, Hey, this really helped me. I used it to do this and that. And this is the result I got. And he actually featured me on his sales page as well. Just what I was saying earlier. Um, so yeah, this sort of things, I think, and I have gotten these types of messages myself from other copywriters where they’re kind of trying to give you tips and advice on things that you haven’t asked for. I would advise against those unless you really are more skilled than the other person in a specific area. Because I couldn’t go to Daniel Throssell and tell him, hey, your website doesn’t look good. Did you know that you can make it look better? He wouldn’t care about these things, right? But a backlink, sure, that’s helpful, or a testimonial, or email fodder. I used to send him that a lot. So something interesting I found on the internet that I knew he would like to comment on, or something like that.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so can we go back just a minute earlier when you were talking about getting back onto Upwork or connecting with clients that you were creating these samples that were very close to what they were asking for in their requests for work. We talked just a little bit more about this. This is the reason I’m asking, is this an idea that’s come up once or twice in the podcast, although not for a while, but oftentimes we hear copywriters saying, okay, I need to build a portfolio. What do I put in the work that I’m going to share with potential clients who ask for it? Sometimes we share old work that we’ve done. But if you don’t have that, you’ve got to create something. So talk about your thought process there and what you were creating in order to meet those needs.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. So I remember specifically someone needed descriptions for a beauty product. I think it was an eye serum. So I didn’t want to create that exact same sample, so a description for another eye serum. I wanted it to be similar to what they needed so they would see I can do it and hire me, right? So I think I did a description for a dog shampoo. Which can be considered a bit off topic, but it was still in the range of beauty products, I guess.
What I did is I went on Google. I googled dog shampoos. I went on a random website. And then there’s this tool I used. I think it’s called Edit Anything that you can input into Google Chrome. You click that tool and you can basically rewrite the entire thing on the page and then take a screenshot and input that into your cover letter. So I literally just rewrote what I thought wasn’t a very good description. And then I said, hey, look, I did something similar. If you want, I can help you out. Something like that.
Rob Marsh: So using the tool, basically, you could take the screenshot that looks like it was the actual web page, even though it was spec copy that you were writing, as opposed to, hey, here’s a Google document that’s got this that I wrote for you. So it actually looks like a real sample. That’s genius.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. Of course, I never said, hey, I worked with this client, and I did this for them. I simply said, here’s what I did, which was true, because I did it.
Kira Hug: All right, let’s talk about the long game, because as you’re talking about this kind of formula you’ve developed, which has worked for you in multiple ways, I mean, to sum it up, it sounds like it’s identifying the person you want to kind of connect with. And then it’s building that relationship through joining courses. So it sounds like you were investing in these people, businesses, for the most part. showing up, being the star student, becoming the testimonial, continuing to build the relationship. And then from there, good things happened. And then the last example was more about social media, which is great, because that sounds like maybe you didn’t invest in the course there.
Emilia Tanase: No I didn’t.
Kira Hug: That’s great for people who can’t necessarily invest in multiple products or courses. That’s a great example, too. But all of these examples feel like you need to be patient, right? This is not something that happens overnight. And sometimes when we’re prospecting, we want things to happen fast. And so I guess, can you just talk a little bit about your approach and how you think about that? Because it’s hard to be patient in 2024. We want things now. And so I guess I would just love your thoughts on how you practice patience in your own business and how it’s benefiting you.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. So while I was doing all these things, and by the way, all the copywriting courses I bought and stuff, they were to grow my business. So at the time, I wasn’t necessarily thinking, oh, I’m going to get this person to like me. I’m going to get information I need, right? So I think all of us at some point have bought or maybe will buy some kind of training. So if you can, become the top student. But the other thing I did, and I started doing this I think halfway through, so like one year and a half ago, writing content on LinkedIn, which has brought me a lot of leads. And I started, you know, with that sign on LinkedIn, 500 plus connections that everyone has, even though you haven’t used LinkedIn, somehow you have connections added.
I started with like 500 something people. And the first month I wasn’t getting any traction, but then by the second month I was starting to get messages from other copywriters who are like, Hey, can you help me with this project? ‘Cause I don’t have time. I’m swamped. So those were the first leads I started to get. And then another month would pass and I would start getting, you know, like actual business owners come to me to get work at the same time. I was looking into how, how can I get more clients out of the clients I’ve already had. So like asking for referrals, which would be sometimes more immediate than posting content and whatnot.
And yeah, it’s tough if you want to get clients immediately. Upwork for me has been like the most immediate kind of source for that. And I have gone back at some points, very briefly, because I didn’t have any leads, for example. So I would go back there, send one, two, three proposals, and maybe get a small job. And in between, all the other parts that I had set up would work for me, and then I would wake up with another lead. So I think it’s very important to, yes, do things Now in the short term, if you want to get clients, but also think long term and set up all these systems and make connections with, with strategic connections with people, um, so that you can have a sustainable business.
Rob Marsh: And what exactly are you posting on LinkedIn when you go on, you know, what links and what are you sharing there?
Emilia Tanase: I honed this a lot since I started. Initially, it was more like how to do this and that type of content. But then I saw that what resonates even more with potential clients is how I type of content versus how to, because that shows that you have experience, that shows that you personally have tried something and it has worked or it hasn’t. Also, case studies. And again, I didn’t always have case studies, so initially I would try to hire myself for my own business. So I started my email list, for example, and then I would try to get people on my email list and then I would make a post like, Hey, here’s how I got 60 new people on my email list this month. So that was a case study for me. Then of course, I started getting client results and I could post those types of studies as well. Another big one is picking fights with industry practices. And this is funny because sometimes I would sit there and try for like two hours to come up with the perfect post. And other times I would be so enraged about something I hear in the industry. I write three sentences and I get like a hundred something likes and I’m like, wow. Okay. I have actually had a client, a lead come to me and be like, Hey, I love that, that post. It got so many comments. I actually agree with you. I can, we work together. Uh, so they definitely work. And then lastly, I think sharing your personality is very important because at the end of the day, you are a personal brand and this is like one of the biggest ways to stand out. Like if people are, uh, if people like you as a person, and if people see that you have the expertise, they will choose you over someone else. So this is actually the kind of system I came up with. I’m not a LinkedIn expert by any means, but I do have a free training on this. Shameless plug.
Kira Hug: I love it. I’m not an expert, but I’ve got a training. It’s perfect. So what are you doing today? And what is the current state of your business? Because it’s been a hard year for writers, although sometimes I feel like writers don’t want to hear that or talk about it. But it’s been hard for many writers we’ve talked to. And so how have you dealt with that? Or have you not dealt with it? Because you’ve built your authority enough. You have enough incoming leads that you haven’t dealt with that.
Emilia Tanase: So I’ve, I definitely feel it more in the beginning of the year. And this happened like, I think every year so far. Uh, but then it slowly ramps up again. However, right now I’m focused on building some assets for myself as well. So I’m actually working on an authority course. It’s called Authority Architect. And I want to start doing my own thing as well. And maybe in the future, just like do this completely, um, write copy for my own business because I think especially in times like these, you know, when, when work dries up or the market is tough, like you want to have your own stuff to sell as well, or even just to compliment your income. Right. That’s kind of where I’m at the moment. And of course, interning for Daniel, which sometimes is a full-time job.
Kira Hug: Yeah, well, yeah, I was going to ask you, like, how do you balance that? Because I think there are many writers who want to build their own products and have some revenue from their products, and then maybe also from services, or make that move like you, maybe fully to products. But how do you kind of stay, continue to build your authority and market and have revenue coming in while also building products? It becomes a lot, and interning for Daniel. How do you balance all of that?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, the honest answer is I’m not very good at balancing things out. I usually do it in sprints or like in seasons. So when I do authority building work, so I went to a conference and I did like some blog post tours, I guess. I posted on a bunch of websites. I did all that. at the same time. So I took three weeks, did all of that, no client work, no nothing, and then moved on to other things. So I guess that’s how I do it. I take time off and then I regroup. I do another task. So like client work for two months, I stop. I do something else because I have tried the alternative, which is to do it all at once. And I end up doing nothing, just being all over the place.
Rob Marsh: That makes sense. Can we talk a little bit about what the typical project for you looks like? So having seen your bio, I know that you help with launch copy, email. You tend to do those kinds of projects. What does that process look like for you? And do you have go-to frameworks that you’re using as you sit down to work with a client, say, on an email sequence or to help with the launch of a product? Or are you starting everything from scratch each time?
Emilia Tanase: That’s a good question. Right now I’m starting to build out these systems, so I don’t have to start from scratch every time. But to be honest, up until recently I was starting from scratch every time. I’ve only recently moved into helping clients with launching. Um, because I, the client I was telling you about earlier from Instagram, we did a lot of projects together. One of which was this recent big launch where I was able to kind of like work on everything in the funnel. And I was like, wow, I really love this. I think I want to do this more and have more people. Um, so on this side of things, it’s still from scratch. I still kind of experimenting myself with things that work, things that don’t work. But on the other side of things, with email sequences and writing people’s weekly emails, let’s say, I do have my own frameworks for gathering voice of customer data on what their customers, their pain points, their desires, and so on. I do have frameworks for coming up with ideas for their emails, depending on the goals they have. or frameworks for the sequence in itself. So what should be in a welcome sequence? What should be in a card abandonment email? Though I don’t do e-commerce that much anymore. I try to focus on personal brands. So yeah, for some, I do have frameworks. For some, I’m still trying to build them.
Kira Hug: How do you sell your launch packages or any packages? I mean, you’re definitely building the rapport ahead of time, like, again, with the Instagram example. So maybe that’s enough where your prospect is sold just from that rapport building. But when you get on a sales call, what do you do to ensure it will go well?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, so that’s correct, actually. Most leads I have gotten from social media were pre-sold. I’ve even tried doubling my prices when I felt like my work was solid. And I was surprised to see that the respective lead didn’t even blink. He was like, yeah, let’s do it. So that was really cool to see. But I have had, for sure, leads who weren’t ready to buy. And they would ask, OK, do you have any results? Or like, can you guarantee that you’re going to bring me more money? Yeah, I don’t really like sales calls in general. So when that point comes, I’m like, okay, now I have to pitch myself. So I generally have in mind, you know, the most recent results I’ve brought someone, I talk about that, maybe like live on the call, I share my screen and we go through the website that I just created or the email sequence I just created. And I explain my thought process and whatnot, which, you know, I don’t go into too much detail, but just to show him a sample and the result at the same time. So yeah, that’s kind of how it goes.
Rob Marsh: As I’ve listened to you share your story, Emilia, it feels like this is maybe a one-person thing. I wonder if somebody who is 16 years old in high school today, if you think they could replicate the success that you had, and if they tried, what should they do differently, do you think, to succeed or to accomplish what you’ve been able to accomplish? Is it possible?
Emilia Tanase: uh yeah for sure it’s possible anything’s possible um i do think that i’m personally i should have focused on one thing at a time maybe Though I don’t know where it would have taken me. So for example, I wish I had done more client work before building out my brand or starting to build out my brand from the beginning and client work being secondary. And I’m saying this as to like, I had a part-time job initially and I was still in uni initially. Right. I didn’t have to fully provide for myself back then. Now it would be a different story. Like I need to do client work, but if I had started with client work for like four or five years, really get all that experience under my belt and then come out and, and go on podcasts and, and write on blog posts on, on websites, sorry, and so on. I could have kind of separated these stages of my business and like fully lean into the task at hand. Whereas now it’s like a bit of everything. And although it has gotten me places, I think maybe it would have helped me get places faster or like in a I don’t know, higher, higher, I guess. But one thing I would say is in the beginning, like at 16 years old, I probably couldn’t have done this, right? I couldn’t have written a blog post on copyhackers or gone to a conference, but I could have learned as much as I can and try to apply as much as I can. And Upwork is probably the best place to start because clients are already there. All you have to do is learn how to pitch yourself and you gain that experience and then from there you start to realize, okay, I need to build a brand.
Kira Hug: Because you work in the launch space like I do, I’m curious what is not working anymore or just isn’t working these days that you’ve noticed with some of your client projects?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, so I think Maybe people don’t think that much about what happens before you launch, which I think can really make or break a launch. So I’ve seen a lot of people even have been asked if I am able to help with launching something now, even though they haven’t emailed their lists in months, or they haven’t mentioned the product in months. And there was one time. when I was young and I said, yes, I can do it. And I could not do it because you can’t do it. Right. And that was a harsh lesson, but then I learned and I said, sorry, like if you want, I can help you, um, tease this course or re-engage your list, but no, you can’t launch. Uh, so that’s one thing. And that all this teasing, like you gotta strategically mention your product in every email you send out prior to the launch. And this can take, you know, the longer, the better basically, because you really build up that desire. And especially if you have people in the product beforehand, like to beta test it, sharing testimonials, like hyping it up, this is how great it’s going to be, how it’s going to transform your life and then launching. So I think One thing that maybe worked in the past, I don’t know, but definitely doesn’t work now is launching without teasing beforehand.
Rob Marsh: Okay, changing the topic yet again. I’m really curious. This is probably just for my own curiosity. I don’t know that this will be that helpful to anybody listening. But what is it to be an intern for another copywriter? Like, well, and maybe being an intern for Daniel is a very different experience than it would be say, Kira’s intern. But what is the work that you do? And what is that experience like?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, it’s incredible, honestly. I still can’t believe I’m there in his Slack channel and he hasn’t just kicked me out. But he’s a very nice guy and he’s not nearly as scary as he makes himself to be on his email list.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, we had him on the podcast, I think, three or four weeks ago. So yeah, you know, people can go back and listen to that. He is a much nicer guy in person than he tries to be in his emails. But even in emails, I think he’s gotten soft in the last year…
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, actually, it’s funny you mentioned that because the very first job I did for him, After the trial period, because we had a trial period, he asked me to write these bullet points for a new course he wanted to promote. And I was like so freaked out. I was like, oh my gosh, this is like Daniel Throssell is going to critique my work. I really need to nail this. Spoiler alert, I failed miserably. And I’m going to tell you why. Basically, You know that moment when you try to be too perfect and you try so hard that it actually ends up being horrible? That’s what I did. I remember I took the day off and I just went through all these copywriting courses I had bought, books I had bought. I was like, OK, how do I write the perfect bullet for him? And then at the end of the day, he sent me a Loom video critiquing them. And he was like, Emilia, with so much love, this is a terrible bullet. It was really funny. I took it really enthusiastically. I immediately realized what I did wrong and how I should have just, you know, write the bullets like a normal person. But he made that joke in our Slack channel that he wanted to shoot me for writing bad bullets. And then he put it in his paid newsletter as well, where all these other copywriters saw it. And I was so happy to be promoted in his newsletter. I was like, I don’t care. Say whatever you want.
Kira Hug: As long as you link to my website, you can say whatever you want.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. So yeah, it’s that kind of work. Now he’s actually given me some homework to rewrite another set of bullets and I feel a lot more confident this time around. But other work involves like giving him like a first opinion on sales pages, because like me and the other intern, we’re kind of like his ideal customers. So the first impression we have is kind of like detrimental to how he’s going to edit the page or not. We also sometimes watch courses for free, which is a really good, you know, perk of this job to give him notes, because sometimes he wants to promote something and he doesn’t have time to to go through the whole thing, so he’d rather go through notes. Or writing small snippets of copy. It depends. A lot of small, or I guess you could say random things like this. But it’s all super helpful.
Kira Hug: Let’s talk about money mindset. You shared your story openly about getting started as a copywriter and just the financial struggle and the pinch that your family was in at that time. And so I’m just curious, how has your money mindset evolved over the last few years so that you are able to kind of lean into this larger business, accept more income, and make that switch, which is really hard to do?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, that’s such a good question, because I have definitely had money mindset issues. So I think, yeah, last year, I had my first $10,000 month. And that was like, such a shock. I was like, wow, I can’t believe I’m making so much money in this country. For me, that’s a lot of money, right? And I almost felt like I didn’t deserve it. The work is too easy and I shouldn’t get paid so much. And for sure, this has impacted me. I see myself on some sales calls sometimes, and I know I I should charge double for some things, for example, but sometimes I’m actually scared to say the number out loud because of these limiting beliefs I have. And even when I set income goals for myself, I’m like, nah, that’s too high. I can’t. Could I? No, I can’t. But could I? So yeah, to solve it, I guess, I started reading these money mindset books. And I remember one in particular. I think it’s called Get Rich, Lucky Bitch, or something like that. It’s a really good book. And yeah, I just try to implement. the lessons there and also therapy. I’ve done therapy on this as well because a lot of the problems I would go to my therapist with were work-related or like mindset-related and self-sabotaging myself because of it, basically.
Rob Marsh: Maybe give us just like one or two of the best takeaways, not from therapy, but from, well, I mean, I guess from therapy if you want to, but books like Get Rich, Lucky Bitch.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. I think the one that comes to my mind right now is thinking back to childhood moments when money was mentioned and trying to kind of rewrite that in your subconscious, which I know sounds pretty woo, but it can actually be pretty practical. So for example, let’s take that time when my parents were in a rut with money. And I would say, hey, I want to buy this thing. And they would say, oh my gosh, that’s so expensive. Do you think money grows on trees? We need to save up. We need to blah, blah, blah. So I guess the key phrase would be, do you think money grows on trees? Like, do you know how hard it is to make money and you want to spend it on this thing, whatever it was. And now I have to actively remind myself that money is a tool. Making money is a game and it’s not difficult. And if as long as you are, you know, an average person, you can make money. A lot of people are making money. You can do it, too. So that sort of dialogue, I have to imprint in myself, I guess, time and time again.
Kira Hug: What is a struggle in your business today? You’ve had so many wins. You’re doing so many things strategically and intentionally, and it’s working so well for you. But what is something outside of money mindset that is a struggle?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, I would say that I am my worst and my biggest critic. very rarely I feel like super satisfied with something and it’s not like in theory you know it’s good like it follows all the practices all the research and whatnot but it’s very rare that I’m actually like extremely enthusiastic about something I do just because I always think it can be better it can be better it can be better and there’s no no end in sight basically, which is not ideal when you have to deliver something to a client and whatnot. So yeah, that moment when you deliver your work for me is still pretty difficult because I know that I can continue working on it forever if I could, but of course you can’t. So yeah, that’s the biggest struggle I’ve had and still have.
Rob Marsh: Do you struggle with that, Kira? I mean, I’m thinking, when I deliver my work, I usually think, OK, this is pretty good. But like you, Emilia, I’m thinking, there’s always something in the back of my head that’s like, is this actually as good as I think it is? Or am I going to be found out? I’ve been doing this for a long time. Am I going to be found out as the imposter? Do you feel the same way, Kira? I mean, maybe this is just a creative thing that all creatives do.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I want to say no, I don’t ever deal with it because I love my copy when it goes up. But if it’s my own content and I’m sending something out, I do have a moment because I try to be pretty open. And so I’m like, am I oversharing? Am I saying something that’s going to offend, hurt? I just question so many things because I’m a people pleaser. I think it’s more about that. Then is my copy good enough? So I think I have other insecurities that we can talk about on a different day.
Rob Marsh: Another therapy session. OK. I’m just curious because, yeah, it does feel like something maybe a lot of us deal with that kind of stuff. without going deeper into that. And I haven’t really asked these kinds of questions recently on the podcast. But how do you feel about AI? I know there are a lot of people who are thinking that this is a really bad time to start as a copywriter. The jobs are going away. How are you using AI in your business? And are those tools making a difference?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, I actually hate AI.
Rob Marsh: Let’s talk about why. Yeah. Why do you do it?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. So every time I try to use it, I never get anything good out of it. And I have tried, like I’ve had prompts that were like, I don’t know, three paragraphs long, right? In excruciating detail on what I want. I would give it examples. Hey, I wrote this. Please mimic the tone. Please mimic the voice. Please try to help me. And it never, I don’t know, it’s never usable for me. I always end up rewriting it. The only time AI has helped me is to brainstorm ideas. Like, I cannot contest that. It’s a great tool. It’s giving me more ideas than I could probably think of myself in that same amount of time. So for that, I use it for customer research.
Again, it’s a terrible tool. It’s giving all these wishy-washy insights that aren’t really going to the core of the problem that people have. So I don’t know how some people are saying that it helps with customer research. I personally haven’t been successful at that. So yeah, it’s mostly a frustrating experience for me to use it for writing copies. So I stopped doing that. I use it only for ideas. And as to your other part of the question, if it’s still a good time to start copywriting, I spoke with Daniel recently about this actually, and he told me his opinion, told it to the whole list actually, that it’s actually not a great time to start copywriting because of that. Because if you’re new and your skills are at the level of the AI when you start out, so it’s a lot more difficult to stand out or to get clients for yourself when the same result can be achieved there. But I think that’s exactly where building your authority comes in. Because if you have that level of skill, OK, then just go and try to write some blog posts with some insights that you read in studies and whatnot. Try to write insights on social media. Try to get yourself on some podcasts or just network with some people. And that’s how you go around it. If you don’t do these things and you just go on Upwork as a completely new copywriter and try to win jobs with that level of skillset, it’s probably going to be a lot more difficult nowadays, for sure.
Kira Hug: Rob, would you become a copywriter today if you were not a copywriter already?
Rob Marsh: I would not not become a copywriter because of AI. You know, whether I become a copywriter as opposed to being, you know, after having been a copywriter for 30 years and then and say, well, maybe next, my next life go around, I’d be a doctor or something. That’s a different question. But I actually am still pretty bullish on copywriting. I think, Emilia, you are exactly right. The big problem is that where you’re starting out, an AI can already do that. And if an AI can do that for $20 for a month’s worth of content, like a chat GPT or a claude, then that makes that beginning startup phase of copywriting really difficult.
However, Once you get past that, once you have the strategic knowledge, you know what frameworks work, you know all of the things that we do as copywriters, once you know that stuff, then when somebody hands you output from an AI, you have the ability to say, wait, this isn’t going to work because it’s not doing X, Y, and Z. It’s not utilizing these persuasion principles, or it’s not, like you were saying, it’s not connecting with a customer on a really visceral level. It’s just giving you these top level takeaways from the research or whatever. And if you’ve got that skill set, then, yeah. So starting out, I think that’s the stuff that I think copywriters are going to have to start focusing more on is those persuasion skills, the conversion skills, as opposed to, well, I’m going to write a blog post or two, or I can just write an email. And that stuff that used to come a little bit later in learning has got to come first now.
Emilia Tanase: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And one very concrete example is I’ve seen this online at some point, someone was trying to write a sales page using ChatGPT. And then there was a parallel with someone who had personally written a sales page. And neither of them had considered the purpose of that sales page, that it was going to a cold audience, not to a warm audience, or the other way around. So these kinds of subtleties ChatGPT is probably not going to take them into account, right? So you need to have the strategic thinking to know, okay, the audience is different here, so I need to adjust my entire strategy for this sales page to make it work.
Kira Hug: Yeah, definitely. You need a driver at the wheel who understands the landscape in order to use these tools at all and make them useful. Well, we could probably talk about AI for a while. But I’m curious, what is next for you? I mean, you mentioned some products. But when you think ahead in your career, maybe it’s only a month out, or a year out, or maybe it’s a 10-year vision, what do you see for yourself?
Emilia Tanase: I see myself doing something similar to Daniel, to be honest. Like the idea of writing an email a day to your list and making money and being silly with your stories and just telling people about your life, which is, by the way, the same model I’ve adopted for my own email list, just like adjusted to my personality and whatnot. I would do that and not have to worry about anything else. And just make products that will help people based on what has helped me. I probably won’t be going out of my way to learn something completely new only for the purpose of selling it as a product. I don’t want to do that. I only want to tell people about the things that have helped me or will be helping me along my journey. and how they could adapt it to their businesses. And also writing books. I like writing fiction in my free time. And with the personality-based business where, like I said, you would send an email every day or every week or whatnot, I think you can sell everything you do. Um, because you end up like growing a fan base, really. Like if Daniel comes up with a fiction book, I will buy it. I want to read everything he puts out. Right. Um, so I think that’s, that’s where I would like to head towards. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: That feels like a pretty good place for us to stop. Emilia, if somebody wants to connect with you, where can they find you? I know you’re on LinkedIn, but where else can they go as well?
Emilia Tanase: Yeah, so the best way is by far my email list. It’s at kaleidocoffee.com. I’m also on Instagram, and like you said, on LinkedIn more than anywhere else.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. Thank you. And we’ll link to all that in the show notes so people can hopefully connect with you and find you when they go looking for you.
Emilia Tanase: Thank you so much. Thanks.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Emilia Tenasse. I made a bunch of notes as we were talking. I just want to go back and recap some of what Emilia shared about finding mentors and getting noticed. This really stuck out to me.
Emilia’s first breakthrough happened when she attached herself to someone in the industry. If you’re going to do the same thing, you might not be shooting for the person at the very top or the expert everybody goes after, but look for somebody who’s slightly outside of your expertise or who is a few steps ahead of you. buy their course, join their group, do something there, and become the most active person in the group. The goal here is to become a case study. You’re going to apply everything they say, you’re going to do the training, you’re going to complete the program, you’re going to share your wins, and you’re going to ask questions. What’s more, you’re going to answer questions and grow your own authority within the group. The goal, as I said, is to get noticed. You want it to lead to some additional opportunity. And in Emilia’s case, it led to an opportunity to write a blog post, and then that led to her being able to use that person’s logo on her “trusted by” banner on her website. So when you can become the top student in the courses, and remember, only between four and maybe 10% of people who purchase a course actually go through the materials and finish it. Be in that group of people. Be sure that when you finish up to give the testimonial, if the person who is offering the course doesn’t ask for it, make sure that you reach out and offer it. Make sure that it’s a good one, that it talks about your experience, maybe some of the doubts that you had before you joined the course or the membership or the program or whatever it is. Talk about those doubts, how the program answered the questions that you had or helped you build a particular skill or helped you go from where you were then to where you are today. Give that testimonial. Emilia did that and landed herself on the sales page of another potential mentor. And then there, other copywriters who are reading the sales page noticed her, attracted to her and started reaching out. possibly even recommending work. So this can work for you too.
Now, a couple of things about mentors. Most people don’t need apprentices, even busy copywriters. It actually creates work in most cases. So you need to do your homework. When you’re approaching them, you need to give them things that are valuable. Do not ask to write their emails for them because that’s not actually giving them something that’s really valuable. They’re going to have to edit your work. They’re going to have to figure out the assignments as they give them to you before you start going to work and doing the work. That’s doing more, creating more things for them to do. And it’s not all that valuable. So instead, think through, you know, I can give testimonials, I can give backlinks, I can give them a case study, I can share resources, help them make additional connections. You need to create these opportunities that are a little bit different and you’re not asking to do work for them or to write something for them because like I said, that actually is harder to deliver on for the mentor. Mentors choose you and so if you want that to happen, You’ve got to show up a way that helps you get noticed as we’ve been talking about it.
We actually talked about this in two previous podcasts and I apologize, I did not look up the numbers beforehand, but when we talked to Brian Kurtz in a previous episode, we talked about how mentors choose their own mentees. And then we also talked to Parris Lampropoulos when he was talking about the mentors that he had that helped him to learn. You might want to just do a quick search in your podcast app and look up those two episodes and listen to them. now.
Find somebody on Instagram or on LinkedIn and, you know, somebody who you resonate with and be a fan, respond to their stories, interact with them to get noticed. Take the time to give good comments, not things like, Oh, I love this or, but you know, something more like, Hey, this really helped me to do this new thing. It changed my, a process, it changed my business, it helped me attract a client, those kinds of comments, or add additional insights, be additive in your comments so that you’re growing and continuing the conversations happening.
This is a long game. And if you play it right, you can not only just build your network, but make the connections that can really give you a leg up in the business, just like Emilia talked about doing.
We want to thank Emily again for joining us to talk about her business, building authority, getting noticed, and so much more. You can find her on LinkedIn and Instagram. Her handle there is @emitenasse. And you can also find her at KaleidoCopy. Of course, we’ll link to both of those in the show notes.
And if you join her list, you’ll immediately see how she uses stories in her welcome sequence. It’s definitely worth checking out.
That’s the end of this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you enjoyed this interview, please share it with a friend or associate who might also enjoy it and learn from it. You can always leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. We always appreciate that.
But even more, if you know somebody who’s going to benefit from the ideas and the insights that we share on this episode or any other, copy the link of this episode and share it with them. We promise they’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness, and it’s another good way to provide your network with resources that help them and actually helps you build those relationships, then, you know, warm them up and help them to continue.
The number of people who have listened to all 400+ episodes of The Copywriter Club is likely small. Probably fewer than 100. But today’s guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast is trying to add to that number. Copywriter Lauren Esmay has been listening to every episode and posting about them on LinkedIn. We talked about that as well as how she’s built her business over the past few years and what’s coming next. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The P7 Client Attraction System
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: In the next couple of weeks we’ll post the official 400th episode of this podcast. Unofficially we’re already past that number as we’ve had a handful of un-numbered episodes posted between the official one. If you were going to listen to every episode, I estimate it would take you about 14 days or so without stopping to eat, sleep or do anything else. I’m not suggesting you do that… but I’m not NOT suggesting that you do it either.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and I interviewed copywriter Lauren Esmay. Lauren recently took it upon herself to listen to every episode of this podcast and she’s been posting her take aways from each episode on LinkedIn. Looking back on what she shares has reminded me of a lot of great, forgotten advice and ideas and insights shared by so many smart copywriters over the years. And as you’ll see as you listen to today’s episode, Lauren has used this content tactic to connect with a who’s who of experts in the copy and marketing world. That’s not all we talked about, so stick around to here more about Lauren’s story.
Before we jump into the interview, you know I’m going to talk a bit about the best copywriter community The Copywriter Underground. We are working hard to make it the most valuable copywriting community and training vault available anywhere. So we’re constantly adding the latest information and help for our members.
One thing that has changed recently is the standard Google, Yahoo and other big emailers are using to determine where the email you send ends up. Sometimes that’s the inbox. Sometimes it’s the spam or promotions folders. And sometimes they decide not to send your email at all. It’s true. You hit send, your email service provider sends your message out into the ether… and Google can simply decide that’s as far as it goes.
So we’ve invited email deliverability specialist Matt Brown to share with the members of The Copywriter Underground exactly what you need to do to make sure that doesn’t happen to you… or your clients. It’s happening this month… June 2024. And if you want the latest insights on how to make sure your work hits the inbox, you need to be in this masterclass. We’ve shared some information about it along with all of the other benefits you get as a Copywriter Underground member at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
Let me just add that if you know this stuff that Matt will be sharing, you’ll be a much more valuable resource for your clients than a copywriter who just writes up some emails and hands over a google doc full of copy. In fact, if you add the skills Matt will be teaching to your services, you’ll be more likely to land good, high-paying email clients on long retainers than if you just write emails. Join us at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Lauren.
Kira Hug: Lauren, how did you get started as a copywriter?
Lauren Esmay: So first, thanks for having me. My way into copywriting is much like many other people I’ve talked to. There was no linear path. I have several degrees in psychology and I went to med school for a bit. I did a lot of different things that I’m just like, I know I want to help people and this is how I’m going to show up. I tried to find places that I thought could make me financially successful and I just kept realizing that I was not happy in these places. And at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the place that I was working for—we took several different crisis lines including high risk suicide crisis lines and veterans crisis lines. It just became very overwhelming for me. And I also had just started my PhD. I’m like, well, what am I going to do? Like I need money. I can’t afford to quit. And one of the projects that I had started for the place I was working, the nonprofit, was putting together a resource list when a lot of the inpatient treatment programs began to get capped for their wait list.
So we had to find plan Bs for these people that needed immediate treatment. And that’s when I started looking at these websites and I was like, these people have credibility with their degrees and 20 plus years of experience, but it’s 2020 and so much lives online. I don’t trust this enough to put this into my resource list. And I was trying to, I’ve always been a very analytical person. And so I was trying to distinguish, well, what does this website lack that others make me feel like I trust that person? So I’m going through this and I have three different lists of this is definitely someone I’m going to put into this resource list. This is someone I’m going to call and talk to them more about what they offer and how they can help these clients. And then the third list of absolutely not. And around the same time, my husband, who is also a therapist, was beginning to think about going into his own private practice and when I decided that I wanted to quit my job, I was like, well, what if I try to make your website? And he’s like, well, I have no interest in that. So if you think that you could do it, I’m all for it. So around that time, just because of algorithms I started getting ads for copywriting courses. I found a really cheap, like $500 copywriting course. And I was like, well, I’m going to try this. And if I decide that I don’t want to do this, I feel like at least I can build a few skills. And that was my entryway into copywriting, I started finding a few different other therapists that I knew were transitioning into private practice. And I started writing websites.
Rob Marsh: You bounced around a bit, like med school, PhD. Was this just a process of finding the thing that you wanted to do or what else was going on?
Lauren Esmay: So it’s interesting, looking back at like even electives that I took in college, like I took creative writing courses. I took a lot of statistics courses that I didn’t need to take just because I have always enjoyed things like analytics and measuring different outcomes… I took several philosophy courses I didn’t need because they were heavily relying on writing and seeing different points of views. I think I’d always been interested in writing, but I grew up thinking you can’t make money writing. Anytime I would take time away from work, I’d be like, I don’t want to go back to work because I’m not interested in this. This isn’t fulfilling to me.
And so when I started doing these projects, and some of the projects, even in the beginning, I was getting paid more for one project than I would get paid in a month at my other job. And I was like, I could easily live off of this just like with the experience I have right now. During this time as well, I’ve still been finishing my PhD. So I’m in the dissertation part now. It’s been a lot of switching from academic writing to copywriting, which I learned is not as easy as some people may think. And so I jumped around a lot. And I think that I used to think that learning was linear, but a lot of times learning now is like learning what you don’t want in life to get to where you are happy and to get to the path that you want to be on.
Kira Hug: Yeah, and Rob, I don’t think you know this, but Lauren and I went to the same college. We both went to Virginia Tech.
Rob Marsh: Oh, nice. You were like best friends at school, right?
Kira Hug: I wish. No, I was a couple year ahead. Only a few years. Only a couple years. But the statistics classes, I definitely took the only one I had to take, and then I missed the exam somehow. So I was probably in the art gallery at the time, missing my exams. So a different experience there. But I’m wondering if you could just tell us a little bit more about your experience in the academic world, especially since you’re currently in your PhD program and wrapping it up. There are probably other writers who are interested. We’re all into personal development and learning. And so that could be interesting to other writers. Like, what do you wish you would have known or someone would have told you before getting into that path? Maybe even just with med school to both speaking to both.
Lauren Esmay: Sure. I think it’s important to know too, that I grew up in a very rural part of the Southwestern part of Virginia. And so it’s a place that most people don’t get out of, but if you do, you never return. I just knew growing up that if I wanted to be financially successful and in better shape than when I grew up, that I needed to go to college. And also, I think that I entered college right as the recession of 2008 was in its full swing. And so it was, it was heavily being pushed on kids as young as middle school to know exactly what they wanted to do for the rest of their life—I just turned 35—and I think that is completely ridiculous because I clearly had no idea what I wanted at that time.
I actually chose Virginia Tech because they have both a nutrition program and a psychology program, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I went to a school that offered both. So if I switched majors, I didn’t have to switch schools. And ironically, I switched out of the nutrition major because they were going to make me take organic chemistry, which I needed to take for med school. So I ended up taking that. In taking organic chemistry, that has honestly taught me one of the biggest lessons of my life and that was—I just loathed the fact that I was going to have to take organic chemistry. I heard all the horror stories, all of the like, I failed three times before I finally passed stories—I did try to take it during a summer course, which I definitely don’t do not recommend unless you’re really into chemistry. But I took both semesters, took both labs, and I did fine. What I learned from that is it didn’t matter how much I didn’t want to take something or go through something in life. If I put my head and time and effort into it, I can succeed. I stayed up A lot of nights thinking, I don’t know why I’m doing this. But even though I decided to leave medical school, I think that was like one of the most important things that I got out of that few years.
And I think that however many years now, like 12 or 13 years since I left undergrad, I think that we’re starting to see things a lot differently instead of like, well, you have to go get this degree and this degree. And then maybe a third degree if you want to be financially stable. And I think for me, it was always looking into a lens of I needed this education to prove myself. I needed this education to prove myself that I was smart enough and that I knew what I was doing for jobs. And especially in this field and copywriting and even in marketing, like people have lots of different degrees. And one of the biggest things that I’ve learned is most of the time, no one cares about if you even have a degree, they just care about your experience and your work, like what you’re able to do. And I think that honestly, academics for me has gotten in the way because I keep thinking, well, I’m smart enough. So why can’t I get these jobs? And it’s because I’m not actually showing up and haven’t done some of the work when I was first trying to pitch people. I think for me, one of the biggest things that I would say to someone in academia right now is if they are considering switching over, is make a few spec pieces in an industry or two that you’re really interested in, whether it has anything to do with your academic background or not. Learn a little bit about copywriting. There’s tons of free resources out there on the internet. And just start talking to people about like what you can do for them and ask around because like, especially like in my earlier parts, getting into copywriting, I just had to like talk to a few people that I knew and if they didn’t have a business, if they needed help, they knew someone that did. And that was really hard for me because I’m really introverted. And I also struggled with this, this idea of like, well, if they see that I’m asking for this work, then they’re going to think that I failed in this academic pursuit. And I’m sometimes so hard on myself that I’ve gotten my own way. But I would just say like, go for it and at least try some things out. Because even if you decide that it’s not for you, and you don’t like doing the work, you’re not going to know until you try and get your hands dirty, so to speak.
Rob Marsh: That’s good advice. So Lauren, since you got to that point where you’re seeing those websites, you can make more money doing this than the day job. What have you done in your business to start to grow and develop what you are building today?
Lauren Esmay: So that’s, I mean, if I could go through each step of the way of my process, I can tell you that I have been my biggest obstacle during all of it. Um, And I that’s something that even a few months ago, I think that I would have been too insecure to even admit, but I’m starting to see that it’s actually like a growing point as I’m talking to people that are just starting out. Because I think that there’s a lot to be said about just trying to jump in and get experience. So honestly, I think it was just really overwhelming when I left. the mental health field. I was just completely burnt out and I wasn’t really sure. I kept saying, well, what if this doesn’t work out? Then what am I going to do? And I was still applying for jobs in the mental health field. And I’m completely serious when I say, like, I applied to over a thousand jobs during probably like that first year. And I kept running into this, this obstacle of, I didn’t want to pour my heart and soul into what I was doing for work because I was still completing my school. And so I think that I was just like applying to jobs that I was overqualified for. And so I wasn’t getting jobs that I was applying for, even though it’s like, I need money. I kept this mentality of, well, if this works out, this is what I’ll do. This is what I really enjoy, but also I’ve spent so much money and time in school. So like, I don’t want to shed that identity. And a lot of times I just kind of get hung up on in this rat race of, well, this is my identity. This is what I’ve spent so many years working for. Instead of going back to these reflections of like, but this new thing that I’m doing that fulfills me in a way that none of these other jobs have ever done. Like that’s what I need to be spending more of my energy on. And so, um, you know, I kept taking projects, um, about this time last year, I started working for a marketing agency, um, that needed some help. And I think that I was kind of using that position as a way of like, well, if this is something that I like also doing in other niches, then I’m going to get really serious about my business. And so I started that job last May. And then when the accelerator opened up this last September, I was like, I’m going to do this and really kind of go back and build like the foundation of my business that I felt like I had just kind of jumped over some of the key important parts because I felt it was too hard or like, well, that’s for like real business owners. I’m not a real business yet. And the accelerator really just made me think, like, change my, my way of thinking instead of like, if this works out to this is going to work out, this is my business, this is my career path, this is what I want to do with my life. And so going back and like building those like key foundations was like, the biggest thing that’s really been helpful for me in the past, I guess, eight months now, um, to just kind of have that structure and have people that were kind of along the way, because up until that point, I wasn’t talking to other people that were copywriters. I wasn’t even in the marketing agency that I was working with. No one really knew what copywriting was. Um, and so it was just a way for me to kind of take a step back, see the bigger picture and kind of rebuild. Um, and from there, I’m busier than I ever was in like the first two years.
Kira Hug: Okay. There’s a lot in there I want to talk about, but I can’t skip over your applying to 1000 jobs in the past. You said in a year or roughly a year.
Lauren Esmay: Yeah. Like I, so, um, here, I think, you know, this about me that, uh, I’m a, I’m a huge animal lover. I have two dogs and three cats now. So it’s a mini zoo, but one of the things that I did when I was working out in Portland when I first started this crisis line position was I would work from 6 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. and I just needed something else before I went home, something that would get me in a better frame of mind. So I started walking dogs. I would walk at least a dog before I went home to also just kind of make some extra money. And so like I was, I started walking dogs and taking care of animals again on the side. So that helped. But, um, I would typically walk a few in the morning and some in the evening, but like from eight to five, I was applying for jobs and tinkering my resume and, doing all this stuff that looking back, I’m like, I feel like I wasted so much time. But at the same time, I think it gave me a real glimpse into the job industry and where it was in 2021 and 2022, which also has shifted how I see job security.
Kira Hug: Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about that because my question, I guess, is just how do you deal with that type of rejection, like a thousand jobs. And I ask that because you also are really great at pitching and developing this discipline that we’ve seen firsthand, where you are, you’ll pitch five people a day, three people a day and do it consistently. And you don’t seem to get down about any rejection involved in that prospecting system. So I guess like, how, how do you view that after applying to all those jobs? And then I have the follow-up question about the market, the job market, which we can, or job security.
Lauren Esmay: Okay. Um, I guess I’ve never really thought about this, but I think that all of those rejections really help strengthen, like how I am rejected. So, um, at that point I had never not gotten a job that I had applied to. So that was really hard for me because I’m also, Super perfectionist, which is something that I work daily at shedding. And so, like, you know, I applied for a handful of jobs the first week thing and okay, well, within a week, I’ll hear back from something. No, because at that point, I hadn’t applied for jobs in like, five years. And I was not used to not getting accepted into a school or a job that I applied to. And I was like, well, this is strange. And so I started applying for more and I kept getting rejected and I got really down on myself about it. Um, but, um, my husband was always like, well, if they’re not responding to you, then that’s also not the type of person that you would want to work with because he knows how much I value communication. And, um, you know, I even went through a few courses on teaching me how to, um, redo my resumes at, you know, in this job market that still wasn’t landing me anything. And, um, I think what it, I think what it really taught me is that. I can handle rejection and be okay with it while still continuing to to work on the things that I do love whether that was at some points I had started just like filling my days with taking care of animals because that was paying me money instead of like focusing on only applying to jobs But also at the same time, I think that if I would have gotten one of those jobs full time, then I probably would have stepped away from copywriting. And I don’t think that, um, looking back, like, I don’t think I would have been happy with any of those jobs. So I would have just kept, you know, reinventing the wheel to get to where I am now just much later.
Kira Hug: And about job security, you said that gave you a glimpse or changed your view on job security. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Lauren Esmay: Yeah. So, Um, and I mean, even in this last position that I had with the marketing agency, um, that kind of solidified this as well. I think society conditions people that if they don’t have a 40 hour a week, nine to five job, then they don’t have a real job and that freelancing is not a real job. Iit’s not job security. It wasn’t secure for me to waste my time on all these job applications. Then I would just like, you know, I applied at first to several with like the method that I’d always applied to. I was like, well, why aren’t I like at least hearing something back? And, um, then I was like, okay, well maybe I’ll go in and change this and I’ll change that. So I was like, you know, doing AB testing just with my resume. And I was like, Well, I’m actually making money doing freelancing, and I’m not making money applying to jobs. And especially in today’s age, I hear my friends struggle with it all the time that some of them have just gotten laid off out of nowhere. So if I’m, if I’m the one in control of who I’m working with, and who I’m pitching, then that gives me job security, where other people that may have nine to five jobs don’t have job security that, you know, their companies are struggling financially. So they’re laying them off. And, you know, that can definitely happen to us as copywriters, but we typically have two or three or more people that we’re working with at a time. So if one person has to back out and can’t go through with a contract, um, we still have these other people that we can fall back on.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. It sounds like, you know, if you’ve got to choose between applying for and being rejected for jobs versus applying for and being rejected by potential clients, I mean, you might as well go for the one that brings you joy, right? Right. Exactly. Yeah. So let’s talk about how you go after clients then, because clearly, you know, that level of rejection and the number of times that you tried finding jobs has an impact on your approach. What are you doing as you go out and pitch?
Lauren Esmay: So I started probably about a year ago, I started making small lists of people I wanted to work with. And I’m going to be completely honest with you and tell you that because I have primarily worked with therapists, I was mainly working or looking for clients in the mental health space. And that isn’t financially viable. I definitely learned that if I want financial security, I need to be talking to people that have more money that they can pay me. That’s where I’m currently pivoting right now in my career. One of the niches that I’ve done some work in is the psychedelic industry. Last year, I went out to Denver for a psychedelic conference and kind of as a way of like, that’s it when, cause I still plan to use my degree when I complete it as kind of like a side thing. And that’s where I would like to show up is, um, helping research in psychedelics specifically for mental health issues. And so I went out there on like a student pass and. I am typically someone that I go to these conferences with and I’m overwhelmed and I don’t talk to people. But I was, I almost kind of felt like, well, these people are kind of like me, they’re kind of weird. You kind of have to be a little weird to be interested in some of that stuff. And I was just able to have these like genuine conversations with people.
So I remember one day I was like, it’s just my mission to go to like the expo and get all of the marketing material that I can, so I can save that for later use. And so over the past, I don’t know, several months, I started really increasing my own process and system with who I’m putting into my leads that I want to be working with. So what I’ve done over the last, I would say, three months is I kind of divided them into people I felt were people that if I get a rejection, I don’t really care. It’s kind of just like a safe budget people that I’m actually interested in. Maybe not even working with right now, but having ongoing conversations with, and then people that I want to eventually work with that I don’t feel comfortable reaching out right now. And so I’ve kind of toyed between the people. that feel confident that i can at least get some response with and the people that i’d like to at least start building a relationship with and it’s been interesting to me over the last especially i would say two months of shifting how i see pitching um i used to pitch in a way of like oh i’m a copywriter i’ve especially if i was like pitching therapists or people in the mental health space I spent 10 years in the mental health field. I would talk about some of the work that I’ve done in building websites, but I would never talk about what I could actually do for them. And it was, it was a pitch and it wasn’t, they weren’t good ones. And sometimes I would get responses, but most of the time I wouldn’t. And so probably, Two months ago, I started personalizing them a little more, and I think that that started getting higher responses. But what I’ve done recently is just don’t even really worry about the pitch in the first email. Just tell them like, you know, like, this is what I do. I’m reaching out to talk to you about X, Y, or Z. That’s typically something about an interest that they are working in. And people love to talk about themselves. And so it creates a very genuine relationship and conversation to move forward. And that’s where I’ve found the most success. And I think a lot of people are struggling to find clients right now. And I don’t see a no as being no forever, I see it as, I don’t have the budget right now. So it’s no for now, but maybe not even in a month or several months. So that’s where I really pivoted with my pitching process to just see what wasn’t working, things that I could change that were working. And honestly, just having genuine conversations with people is a much better way to find clients than to be like, I need this money right now.
Kira Hug: Can you share just some specific language? You don’t have to read a pitch out loud, unless you want to, but just like, what are some of the key elements of this new version of the pitch?
Lauren Esmay: A lot of it goes back to, um, a lot of roles that I’ve been in in the past to have been in training roles. And for me, I understand that. I need to get someone to really listen to me i need to start off with a compliment before i go into constructive criticism so a lot of times i’ll tell them how I found them what i really appreciate about their website or what they’re doing for whatever community they belong to and then i’ll go into more like you know, this is what I’ve, uh, helped other people do. And here are a few like suggestions that you may be able to implement to, to like, um, help your website. And sometimes I was just like adding a few pictures of themselves because especially like, and it’s a, especially in the psychedelic world, it’s a fine line just because of all of the, you know, rules and regulations around it. So a lot of people don’t want to really have their face being seen. But even just having graphics in general can be helpful instead of just like only words, because that seems kind of sketchy. And another thing that I started doing two to three months ago was adding in loom videos just so they can also see that I’m not I’m not a spam bot that have a real face. I talk like a real person. And I think that for me, at least like, and probably this is because I worked five years on crisis lines that you can tell a lot about communication and someone’s voice and tone. So for me, that’s what that translates to. And pitching is, I’m not coming in with like, this is why you need to hire me because I can you know, do so much better with your website and give you lots more business, but it’s more of a like, uh, I’m here to encourage you to, because like, I see that you also want to make your business more financial or financially stable or whatever it seems like they’re going for. Um, so it’s just like being able to have, I don’t know, more of like a, almost like a conversation with them, um, before, ever being on like a, a one-to-one video call with them.
Rob Marsh: So I’m going to change topics just a little bit. You mentioned writing for this particular part of the health world—psychedelics and those kinds of things. Obviously there are some restrictions. A lot of copywriters know about the restrictions in law called DSHEA. And obviously there are some other restrictions when you’re writing in any kind of health field around privacy, but talk about some of the differences in reaching out to those clients and working for clients who have psychedelic products versus say, you know, just any old product. What are you having to think about differently?
Lauren Esmay: Most of the people that I have reached out to have, I’ve at least know someone else that has been connected with them usually. Especially with psychedelics. I feel like this is where I also leverage more on my academic background. For me at least it’s like, well if I have if I have an understanding as to like why psychedelics are useful right now and can connect with them in that way then they see it as I’m a more credible source than a person that’s like, oh, I want to work with you because I want access to free mushrooms to get high for recreational purposes. Because I’ve gotten those emails before and not only does it make me want to delete them super quickly, it makes me want to write really, I don’t know, strong wording back to them because those are the types of people that are holding the psychedelic community back. So one of the things that I started doing almost a year ago was there is a non-profit organization that I began writing blogs for. And this particular non-profit, they fund research for psychedelics specifically for opioid use. disorder, like the treatment for opioid use disorder. And so I was able to talk to them about my background, specifically like in mental health, and also talking to them about psychedelics in general and where I am stronger with the research. And so What I do for them right now is I write their blogs to not only educate the public, but also kind of meet the public where they are. So a lot of times I’m throwing in stats about veterans or younger people with substance use disorder so they can really relate to those types of people. Because I think that unfortunately, almost all of us know people that have fatally overdosed. I think most of us also understand at least some of the struggles of veterans, especially returning from war, and that’s where a lot of the research is. So it’s a way to kind of show up in an academic sense, but also connect with people. And I think that in the psychedelic community specifically, there’s kind of two tracks. It’s either for recreational use or only for academic use. So being able to merge those two right now, I think, is extremely important. So being able to show people those examples of where I have written to merge those two has been really useful. And just having an honest conversation to the people I’m pitching I think that’s been really helpful that I’m not just like cold pitching out of nowhere, that I have people to back me up.
Kira Hug: Let’s talk about your wins from prospecting. Now we’ve talked about how you do it, what you’re doing, but you have had some success and I think sometimes it’s positive to hear that because so many writers we know just give up on prospecting after a couple of pitches.
Lauren Esmay: That’s where over the last few months, changing the way I’ve done it has been extremely helpful. I think before the beginning of this year, I’d only gotten one or two clients from cold pitching, I guess only one. And so that was like, kind of my goal when I started coaching with Kira was I wanted to get like one cold prospect because it’s like I to me is like I have control over who I work with, but I also need to be able to get those people to respond. And so. I guess over the last. Three months, I’ve had six or seven wins with prospecting that I’m like actually doing work for the people now, but out of those out of a lot of those people I’ve at least connect with on LinkedIn, or I have engaged in a back and forth conversation with them via email about, you know, what their next project is, when they plan to launch it. So I have those in my calendar to like, go back and like, follow up with them, you know, and whether it’s two weeks or three weeks, and another member of the underground started talking about how she creates follow-ups as she’s writing the pitches. And I think that that’s also been really helpful, not just in a time-saving way, but at least for me, I’ve already formulated the language from the initial email. So I try to match that language throughout the two follow-ups that I write out. And so that way it’s like a continuation instead of like, oh, I’m reaching out again. So it’s a lot easier to connect with as well.
Kira Hug: Yeah, and you not only are prospecting, you’re building your visibility and kind of making these connections, but also showing up, sharing your expertise on LinkedIn and in other ways. So how do you approach that element of it and the visibility piece in a way that works for you?
Lauren Esmay: I think that when I, I realized that I needed to start showing up because I don’t know who said it, but someone was like, no one knows that you’re out there ready to work unless you tell them. And I was trying to figure out, well, which platform do I want to really show up on? And I also used to kind of be in the mindset, well, I don’t feel like I have anything to share with the world that anyone else has it. And I found that to be not true. Um, because even though someone may say something in a very similar way, um, I have my own way of saying it. And, um, that may resonate better with someone than, um, someone even more credible than me that says the exact same thing, just maybe a different spin or different wordage that I use may connect with someone, um, in a, in a more positive light. So, um, I started, I want to say maybe late January or early February, I started a challenge of, I was going to post on LinkedIn daily and I didn’t know what that was going to look like. And then, I don’t know. I got this crazy idea that I was like, at the beginning of the year, because I had been in the accelerator and realized, I’ve kind of jumped from step one to step five, and so many of these processes, but I’ve also left my business at step one on so many. So I wanted to go back to the foundation to step one on everything and then begin to build.
In my head, it was like, well, what if I went back and started listening to all of the old Copywriter Club Podcasts? And this feels really meta right now. It was either right before the beginning of the new year, or right after I started listening to them. And it became my like, workout buddy—that’s what I would listen to as I was working out. Or just doing mundane tasks at home. And I started realizing that because I was in the mindset, I was like, I feel like so much of this is going to be outdated that I’m not going to be able to get too much. But what I started realizing is while we’re in a different, like financial climate and even digitally, we’re in a different environment. I started realizing that a lot of these key concepts were useful no matter if it was 2016 or now. And so I was like, I had started connecting with people of different stages in their copywriting career. So I just started doing like a few recaps of like, I knew that doing 10 and in a recap was going to be too much. And even now sometimes I feel like having five people in a recap is, I can’t get out everything I would like to say about that person. So I started posting two times a week and I would recap five episodes for each post and pulling out one thing that I thought would be useful and just talk a little bit about it. So if someone wanted to revisit, like, well, I’m interested in just I know a topic that’s been talked about a lot is cold outreach, I can go back to this episode and listen to what this person has to say. So I started doing that. And I think that even in listening to a lot of these older episodes, it started helping me where I felt like I could generate ideas. And where I could generate content that I wanted to talk more about. And so that’s where I’ve consistently shown up and I think that where I want to go from here with that is I haven’t done the best job of talking to the like the audience of the people I want to be working with so I think that that’s where I’m going to start shifting in the next week or so of where I’m posting that it’s tailored more to the people I want to be working with instead of the people that I’m working in the same field as.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s probably going to be a smart shift while we’re talking about this project of you reviewing the old episodes of the Copywriter Club Podcast and posting your takeaways. I know you’ve posted about 40 or 50 of them. You’re getting close to 50 of those that you’ve listened to so far. Like what are the top two or three takeaways?
Lauren Esmay: Today, I think I just recently posted up to 80.
Rob Marsh: Oh, okay. So I’m behind. LinkedIn hasn’t told me your most recent posts. So, okay. Well, yeah, let’s, let’s say of those first 80 podcasts, and that’s probably our first year, a little bit more than our first year, because we used to post two a week, but way, way back in the day. What are your favorite takeaways?
Lauren Esmay: One of my favorite people to listen to is Tepsi. She just needs to go by the name Tepsi because that in itself is a brand. And I said a little bit about this when I talked about Tepsi was that I used to have a very unique name that was my entire personality and my entire brand because I grew up running cross country and playing softball. So, if they said my name and my district and even my region, sometimes they knew exactly who they were talking about. And I think that she does a really good job at the opposite of what I was saying about myself. I feel like I’ve often done this thing of second guessing myself and just not feeling like I could show up and do this work. And she, I think the very first episode she was on was like 26 or 27. And she talks about how she just took on this project that she wasn’t really expecting to fall in love with. And she loved it in that she’s like, this is what I want to do. And she never really looked back. And she just shows up with a lot of confidence that I feel like I’ve often struggled with. Then in this last episode, I think it was like 70 something that she was on. She talks about how she went through a depression and how that impeded her workflow and systems. And I think that that’s really important to talk about in this space. And not only just from a mental health aspect, but I think that in our line of work, we often get burnt out and unlike a nine to five, we don’t just have another team member that can help us with some of our projects. Like it’s all on us. And so, um, learning how to navigate burnout and like when stuff like that comes up, she, I think that she does a really good job at talking about that. And then I feel horrible that I don’t know how to pronounce this name, but it was a more recent episode that I listened to.
Interestingly enough, like in almost every episode, it’s like, Oh, I can identify myself with that. And I can, I can see myself in that. But in episode 82 Eman Zabi, I think that’s how you say it. I think that she was 23 when she was on the episode and she talks a lot about showing up in an outdoor industry that was formerly kind of dominated by males. And I learned so much from her episode. It is one of the more recent ones I’ve listened to, but I think that even in months, this will still probably be one of my favorite ones because there are so many parallels of our lives.
I feel like she also shows up in this way that, it’s kind of the opposite of my own insecurities and places that I have failed to show up in my business. And so I’ve learned. So much from that episode and also just kind of planning out where I want to go from here and how I see my business changing and even the next month or two. But I also, I say that, and I really enjoy listening to some of these people that like, have been in the business since before I was even born because it’s, to me, it’s like, this is a field that you can really learn from some of the, like, hardcore experts. And a lot of their advice is still very solid today.
Kira Hug: Where does this project go from here for you?
Lauren Esmay: When I first started it, I wasn’t even sure I’d make it to 50. And in the next couple of weeks, I’ll obviously be getting to 100. And a month ago, I was even thinking, well, maybe I’m just going to stop at 100. But no, I don’t think I can because I didn’t plan to stop listening to it. I just don’t like another aspect that I have also started doing is like when I post each post, I do tag each person in it. If they have LinkedIn, then I’ll send her a connection request and thank them for their advice that they had on the podcast and just kind of tell them like where I am and ask if it’s okay to connect. And I feel like over the last few weeks I’ve had at least 80% of people not only like accepting my request, but also we have a little bit of a conversation. So I think I’m just going to continue doing that. Because one thing I did forget to mention that I think is really important is I did mention I’m a recovering perfectionist. It’s really hard sometimes for people, especially in academia, to go from the top of something to just you’re kind of in the middle or in this situation, kind of starting all over. And I realized that I constantly was surrounding myself with people that were on lower levels than me, which, um, I think that that’s where a lot of my insecurity of trying to reach out to people that knew more than me, um, came from. Cause I was like, well, they’re just going to think that I’m really dumb and inexperienced, which isn’t true at all. And so I think that there are a few people throughout the episodes I’ve gone back and listened to that one of their top pieces of advice is to surround yourself with people that are at higher levels than yourself. And once I started doing that, that’s where I started getting some really good feedback and learning the bigger pieces that I felt like were missing.
Kira Hug: What would you recommend to someone who wants to do a similar project? Not this project, but something that’s a big overtaking and, um, or undertaking and maybe a little overwhelming at the beginning. What would you, what advice would you give them?
Lauren Esmay: Just start it. I think that, um, we procrastinate on starting because we think of all the ways that, um, it’s not going to work out or that you’re going to get bored by it. And maybe you do. But I just think that instead of looking at those drawbacks of it, try to look at the positives that you can get out of it. I recently read a book called success through failure and I picked it up at a used bookstore and the title of it was interesting to me. And I was like, well, I’m going to read this. I don’t even know what it’s about, and I’m going to read it. And it turns out that it was written by a Duke professor in an engineering department that he based his whole career on investigating how bridges were built, and more specifically, how they failed, which was incredible timing that I finished the book the day before the Baltimore Bridge collapsed. And this professor passed away last year, but I was thinking he would take that and run with it. And so it’s what he teaches, he taught in a manner of like, okay, so this bridge collapsed, but there are so many things you can learn how it collapsed. And you can also learn the things that were implemented as to why it stayed up as long as it did. And so by combining those two, you can move forward. And so one of the things that I’m really challenging myself as a perfectionist is, okay, so this thing didn’t work out, but it’s not all invalid. So what did I, what did I learn through the process that I can take with me to my next project?
Rob Marsh: Lauren, as we wrap up or come to the end of our hour together, earlier you mentioned your work on crisis lines. And I’m curious, really two questions. One is what you learned from that experience that informs your copywriting. today, and I guess two is just your professional opinion. Obviously, the last few years have been rough on a lot of people, and a lot of people have found themselves in crises. So if there is just advice that you have for anybody who’s struggling, those two questions.
Lauren Esmay: Sure. So one of the things that I have taken with me is And I think you can remember that I had a really difficult client that was just driving me bonkers when we first started the coaching together. And what I took away from my work in crisis is it’s all going to be OK. It doesn’t feel like it in the moment, but just like talking to someone about this and brainstorming with other people that have been in that situation or not, like just surrounding yourself with community is one of the strongest things that a person can do. And also on that note, I also just learned to like work really well under pressure, which is something I don’t think many people are necessarily born with, but it is something that we can work on to become better at. And then my professional advice is kind of similar, just like surrounding yourself with community, because so much has happened in the last few years, with the pandemic, and then even in the job industry, as we were talking about earlier. And I think that it’s, it’s really hard sometimes to navigate that because you feel like you’re the only one in the situation and maybe you’re the only one with this specific situation with all of the unique parts of your life, but other people are, maybe they’re not struggling in the same ways, but I think at this point we all have our things that we’re going through and being able to have a support system is really useful and crucial right now. And that can be hard, especially with introverts, because it can be difficult to, you know, kind of reach out and say, Hey, I’m struggling with this thing. But I think my experience has been, whether it’s professional or just relationships in your personal life, most people are willing to talk to you and, and help out where they can.
Kira Hug: And where do you, where are you going next in your business? You mentioned that you had some ideas from. podcast you were listening to.
Lauren Esmay: Another thing that I’ve just really honed in on the last few months is, um, niching doesn’t necessarily have to be by industry. It can be by a variety of other ways. So I’ve recently looked at what my clients have given me for feedback and they all have this same sort of comment. that I work in a very holistic way that I’m not only interested in just one particular aspect. I look at a very broad view of things and then I kind of narrow it down, take it back out, see what is there. Like when we zoom back out and just keep working with that. And I do a lot of work and just like following up with my clients after we’ve done the offboarding process. So I’m learning how to use those same skills and like what I have done for these clients as a way to make that my niche instead of particularly like working in one industry. So I’m expanding a little bit in the types of industries that I’m working with. I think probably in the next few months there can be a little more that I’m doing with in terms of helping people understand the true meaning of authenticity.
Rob Marsh: Lauren, if anybody wants to connect with you and create one of those authentic relationships you were talking about today, where should they go?
Lauren Esmay: You can find me on LinkedIn. It’s just my name, Lauren Esmay, E-S-M-A-Y, or you can find me at laurenesmay.com.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. Thanks, Lauren.
Kira Hug: Thank you, Lauren.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Lauren Esmay.
I’ll just emphasize a couple of things before we wrap.
First we started out talking about education and the need for degrees to demonstrate our capabilities and skills. That is still true for professions like doctors, counselors, and lawyers.
But for entrepreneurs, copywriters, content writers and even many marketers, those credentials matter a lot less today than they used to. It’s not likely that a copywriting client will ask to see your degree or your grades. But they do care about the quality of your writing… and your ability to help them sell their products… or attract more subscribers… or reduce cancellations and refunds… or keep people reading their content and increasing time on site. That’s the stuff that matters for you and me.
I’m not saying don’t go and get that degree. Heck I have a couple myself… and investing in your own education is almost always a good idea. Just keep in mind, it’s not a requirement to be a good copywriter.
We also touched on Lauren’s prospecting wins as we talked. If you struggle to pitch and win clients, you might want to use the system that Lauren used… it’s called the P7 Client Attraction System. I’ll link to it in the shownotes. You can also find it by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/p7. You’ll learn how to use the connetion spectrum to warm up your contacts so they welcome a pitch to work together. It works. In fact it’s guaranteed to help you land a client in 30 days. So check it out.
Finally, we started out by talking about Lauren’s mission to listen to all 400 episodes of this podcast and share her take aways on Linkedin. As of this week I believe she’s posted insights from the first 110 episodes. Her effort in sharing those is commendable, but what’s really impressive is how Lauren is using this project to build her network. We’ve talked to some very successful copywriters and marketers. And as Lauren reaches out to those who have linkedin profiles, she’s building a network of highly talented experts that may turn into additional opportunities at some point in the future. You may not be able to do exactly what Lauren is doing, but reaching out to experts after you’ve heard an interview or read something they wrote, is still a good strategy for building your network. This is something I’m definitely going to be doing more of.
Okay, thanks again to Lauren for joining us to talk about her business. You can find her on Linkedin or on her own website: laurenesmay.com.
That’s the end of this episode of the copywriter club podcast.
If you enjoyed this interview, please share it with a friend or associate who might also enjoy it or learn from it. And you can always leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice.
The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner.
Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next week.
Over the past few years the ways we work have changed. And the work we do has changed too. In the 397th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter and regenerative business designer Helen Tremethick about navigating the changes and creating a business that works for you.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Helen’s website
Helen’s Cuppa Link (talked about on the show)
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: For a lot of freelancers who write content and copy, work has changed pretty dramatically over the past year. Some of us, especially those who are just starting out have been impacted by tools like Claude and ChatGPT. While others may be struggling a bit thanks to layoffs in niches like tech and SaaS. As opportunities change, smart business owners change along with them. And relationships become even more important than ever.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and I interviewed copywriter and regenerative business designer Helen Tremethick. Helen has worked with several business owners as they’ve transformed the work they do. Sometime changing up their deliverables. Other times switching niches or the focus of their work entirely. As we spoke, we kept coming back to one idea… relationships. They’re more important than ever, and that’s one thing that probably won’t change in the near future.
Before we jump into the interview, I want to let you know about an upcoming training happening in June in The Copywriter Underground. If you listened to last week’s episode, you learned a bit about the technical things you need to do to ensure the emails you write get to the inbox and not the spam folder and then get opened. But it can be hard to see exactly what to do as you listen to a podcast… it’s audio only, so seeing where to find the tools and settings to adjust, well, you just can’t. So we asked email deliverability specialist Matt Brown to demonstrate exactly how to set up your ESP and google postmaster tools so your emails have a better chance of getting where you want them to go. This is a skill set that clients need desperately. And when you can bring them along with your writing skills, you have what it takes to land high paying email retainers that can last for months or even years. But to get this training, you must be a member of The Copywriter Underground. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Helen.
Kira Hug: All right, Helen, we are not going to start with your story, because that’s where we started last time, which we figured out was episode 176. And you figured out it was mid-March 2020, so right before the world changed dramatically. So it’s good to be with you again. And I think a good place to start could just be around a line of copy on your website, on your home page, there’s a line of copy that says, burn it down isn’t good business strategy, but when something’s got to give dot, dot, dot, and then you go into your brilliant copy. But that grabbed my attention because I feel like I’ve heard a lot of people around me recently talking about burning it all down and a conversation with neighbors, business owners. And so from your perspective, Where do you feel like people in the online business space, copywriters, where are they at right now with what they’re feeling, what they’re doing in their businesses? From your experience coaching them, what are you seeing and feeling right now?
Helen Tremethick: Oh my goodness. You know, I actually just had a call this morning where I was talking to somebody about exactly this, where it feels like there’s a little bit of a different flavor in the air right now that’s different from what we knew before. And maybe this is before the last time we spoke, which was before the world shut down, or maybe it’s been gradually moving toward that. I’m not exactly sure, but there is a little bit of a different flavor. The way that people want to work with each other is different, the amount of connection that we want is different, and that I think is more and more connection, more community, more togetherness. And opposing that is that the conversation I’m having a lot lately is that people are having a hard time stretching that dollar the way they used to. Grocery bills have gone up. Everything has gone up except for wages. And so as a small business owner, often we are the canaries in the coal mine, so to speak. So we see this ripple effect before a lot of the rest of the world does. And there’s an opportunity there as well, not to silver lining being the canary in the coal mining, but there is an opportunity there for us to start changing and start navigating new ways of working together beforehand. So it allows us to be a bit more agile. The fact that we know then see these things before.
Rob Marsh: I’d love to dive into what you think that opportunity is and what that looks like, because I have recently seen a lot of copywriters. Well, maybe not a lot, but a few copywriting gurus suggest that this is a really bad time for people to become a copywriter or to even start your own business. Or they’re saying, you know, there are different things we should be doing. So yeah. What does that opportunity look like?
Helen Tremethick: Oh, I think it depends on the person. So I’m not going to opt out of that question at all. But it depends on what is really, really relevant. And it’s relevant to a lot of the work that I do. Just like we wouldn’t want everybody’s about page to look exactly the same, or everybody’s homepage to look exactly the same, everybody’s website to look exactly the same. We also don’t want our businesses to be exactly the same. So what opportunities are there for you are going to be different from what opportunities are there for me. So for me, for example, I do a lot of coaching. I was doing this four years ago. I was doing this eight years ago and really still heading in that direction. What I’ve noticed on my end is that people really want to connect with each other. They really want spaces where they can share more openly and they really want to talk about things that are not just business. They’re really recognizing that business is affected by the personal. And so that comes into a lot of the conversations that we’re having. Even though the end goal may be copy, a lot of the way that we get there is very, very personal. Now, for somebody else who is going fresh into copywriting, who really wants to get into the typey typey, they’re really interested in writing. And of course, writers never stop writing. I still write as well. I think at that point, there’s an opportunity there to really lean into done-for-you services for a very specific niche and really lean into that. I think it’s going to depend, the solution is going to depend on the person according to their capacity, according to their lifestyle needs and wants, according to the way their brains work. So it depends. And also with a little bit of kind of uncovering and diving in, we can often find an opportunity there that works for everybody.
Kira Hug: Yeah, maybe we can talk a little bit about this old way and this new way, you know, the new way being more connection, more community and how you are changing in your business, maybe how you show up, how you help clients, maybe even how you market yourself. If you can make that comparison with the old and the new.
Helen Tremethick: Yeah, I think Well, okay, so I’ve been doing this since 2011, which, you know, makes me officially internet old and If you recall, there was a lot of emphasis on building your list and getting the most followers. And that, I would say, is very old way. And we touched on this four years ago where we were talking about what is the future of copywriting? What is the pattern that we see going forward? And the three of us agreed that relationships were that, that we were going to see a lot more connectivity. And this was just about the time that you had done your event or about to do your event. So you were really leaning into that as well. And I think there’s a lot more of that. It’s a bit more difficult. COVID isolated us and still is isolating us. And, you know, there’s an epidemic of loneliness. And so we want to see that in our businesses as well. How I’ve been marketing is I’ve really pulled away from that one to many kind of marketing that we saw in the old way, get my freebie for your, in exchange for your email address or, you know, giant webinars. And I’ve really started speaking specifically to people, really building on the relationships that I already have, whether that be complimentary service providers or my referral network, or my old clients, my current clients. and really crafting solutions that fit for those people. So that’s the way that I’ve been shifting toward is something that’s a lot more grounded, a lot more personal. And frankly, I find that much more interesting as well, because it means that I’m having different conversations and hearing people’s different perspectives as opposed to speaking into an echo chamber.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I tend to agree. And that one on one relationship thing is obviously something Kira and I have leaned into for a long time. But also, as I think about this, or if I’m listening to this, you know, as a new copywriter coming into the business, and I’m hearing somebody say, well, you’ve got to do it differently for every instance, or everybody’s different. That becomes really hard to wrap your arms around because, and this is why I think people sell formulas and swipes and whatever, because if you can repeat the process, it makes it a lot easier. But what we’re basically saying is the old process is kind of breaking, or at least in parts it’s cracked, and we might need to reinvent this thing. So for somebody who’s kind of thinking, okay, well, how do I do this in a different way for every single person? There’s got to be some kind of framework or way we can think about this that makes it a little bit digestible.
Helen Tremethick: Yeah, I’m nodding up and down very quickly. Yes, absolutely. This is totally my jam because I want us to stop thinking about formulas and templates and start thinking about guidelines and frameworks. So with a guideline, with a framework, you have the structure that you need in order to work the brilliant way that you work. But it’s not so cookie cutter that everybody feels robotic, fill in the blank, copy or marketing. So the swipes are good in that they’re easy. Gosh, don’t we just love something easy? Frameworks, however, give us a lot more play. I used to do brand voice roadmapping for my copywriting clients, and there was a framework that I used in order to create somebody’s brand voice. I wanted to consider their values or their guiding principles. I wanted to consider what really made that organization that organization, what really influenced them. And I would build that out. Each one was very personal, using a framework, using those guidelines. So I had the structure that I needed, but it was still fluid enough to allow for personalization, just like the way that we would write for somebody. that is very structured, we have our way, and also there’s some fluidity there as well.
Kira Hug: What do you recommend to people who are stretched with their capacity and they are burnt out? Because I think a lot of what we’re talking about, we’re talking about stretching the dollar and more connection, more community, and that’s all wonderful. I’m all for that. But it also takes time, investing time in building community and showing up in your local community, online community. And then trying to get paid, you know, at the same time and pay your bills. It feels really tricky right now for so many copywriters. And so I know this is something you help people with, with capacity planning and thinking more holistically. How do you approach that struggle?
Helen Tremethick: Yeah, the question is how do you live in the system while breaking the system? It’s tricky, right? There’s no really straight answer for that other than it’s really freaking hard sometimes. Capacity is one of my favorite things to talk about, capacity and business models. But capacity is one of my favorite things to talk about because we are infiltrated with messages about the 5 a.m. club with the four-hour work week. We’re really infiltrated with the way that we’re supposed to. And then we turn around and we’ve got one kid that’s sick and one that’s waiting for the school bus and a veterinary appointment to get to and a full inbox. So how do we create those structures and systems or those frameworks for us so that we can thrive while also having to do all of the things? Personally, I found this is where you’re looking at your business model is really great. If you have three kids under three at home, you are not going to be 24 seven available on Voxer. You’re just not. And so maybe at that point, you want to look at like not online not live stuff you want to be able to do your deliverables when you have time and not have somebody who is like breathing down your neck or on camera with you however if you have much more time then you can create like one-to-one where you’re on zoom so there’s a lot more um i really want us as copywriters as brand strategists as self-employed people to start thinking outside the box of what our jobs look like because we because we are all stretched but we’re all stretched in different ways even though the message is that we should be able to do it all. We can’t. So the answer really is in finding what will work for us based on our capacity, based on the way our neuro-spicy brains work, based on what our responsibilities are outside of the job. And this is something I talk to my clients about a lot, that before we even talk about their business model, before we even talk about who their client or who their audience is, we want to know What are they doing at home? What is on their plate? What are their responsibilities? Because I can’t come down the chute with offerings and ideas unless I know everything that that person is holding. Because if they have to take their mom to a doctor’s appointment every Tuesday afternoon, that’s something we need to factor into what their business looks like too.
Rob Marsh: Let’s keep talking about this even more deeply. When we’re talking about capacity planning and figuring out what am I even able to do, obviously we need to start, like you said, what’s going on in my life? How many hours do I have that I can give to this thing versus that thing? What else? What else do we need to be thinking through so that we can actually build a functional capacity plan for what we need to get done?
Helen Tremethick: Oh, wow. How do I work best? That is a huge one, especially for my clients. There are so many people who are finding new diagnosis for the way that their brains work, who have recently learned that they’re ADHD or have autism or are odd HD, and that will greatly affect how they work, how they work best, when they work. And so that would be something that I would say right off the top, like how do you work best? What works really well for you? I have clients who do really well with time blocking and I have clients who will rebel against any kind of time blocking that’s put down. This is really important to know because I’m not going to give you theme days if you’re immediately in week three going to say, you know, screw all of this and throw it out the window. So how do I work best? What responsibilities do I have in my family? Who can I delegate things to? So do you have people that you can offload some of your tasks? And maybe you don’t want to. I love taking my kid to karate. It’s something that I don’t delegate, even though I could. It’s actually something that I really enjoy. But knowing that, having that outlined helps with capacity planning. So what are you responsible for? What could you delegate? How do you work best? Who are your people? This is something that comes a little bit later on. Where do they live? If you’re working with somebody, I’m in Eastern time, but if I’m working with somebody who’s in the UK, that’s a factor. I’m going to want to probably have earlier meetings so that they’re not meeting me in the evening time. So these are also factors in play. Ultimately, the better of a picture that we can have before the planning goes into place, the easier the plan will be created.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I’m wondering where we mess this up for ourselves. I mean, yes, if we work with someone like you, that will help, you know, hold us accountable and help us work through these questions. But I feel like so often, you know, I’m my own block, because I think I have more capacity than I do. And I’ve always thought that for years. So it’s like, how do you help people really truly realize their capacity, especially if they’re doing this on their own and they’re not necessarily working with someone?
Helen Tremethick: Oh my goodness. I mean, me too, Kira, right? I fall into this trap all the time. And one of the things that I’ve learned, and this is learning about myself, is that I will always write a longer to-do list than I have capacity for. But even the awareness of that, even the awareness that this is not a doable to-do list, is so helpful because inevitably at the end of the day, when I haven’t completed it, I’m no longer saying, Oh, I failed. I’m the worst. I didn’t even get this done. The more I’m able to say, okay, Helen, like obviously you did it again. You’ve got really high expectations of yourself. So I would say you ask, how do we even get into this? You know, we’re very well trained. um you know into this system we become our own bosses but we become pretty bad bosses for ourselves so you know recognizing that and trying to separate ourselves out of that while also incorporating—Dr. Kristen Neff she’s known for mindful self-compassion. Her work is brilliant for this. Now, you know, I know we’re talking about business, but the ripple effect of mindful self-compassion is so beautiful because it allows us to see that we are human beings having very human being experiences and build that compassion into our to-do lists, into our expectations of ourselves, into how we deal with a mistake or a failure and so on and so forth.
Rob Marsh: So this isn’t really a question. I’m more responding to what you’re saying. But this tracks a lot with what Oliver Berkman writes in his fantastic book, 4,000 Weeks, which is really about the idea that time management is impossible. First of all, because you can’t manage time. I mean, it flows. But also because we have this idea that we can get it all done if we just manage our time effectively. And the reality is, you can only get a couple of things done. And that’s if you’re managing your time effectively. If you’re not managing your time effectively or not at all, you’re not getting anything done. And so we have this tension between this need to get stuff done for our clients, for our family, for our boss, whatever, and also this reality that you can’t do it all. So you’ve got to choose, which comes back to what you’re saying about capacity planning.
And so, like I said, this isn’t really a question. It’s almost like me vocalizing this frustration that we can’t get it all done. And so it’s like, you get your one, two, three top choices, and that’s it, which for most of us creatives who want to do a ton of things, you know, it’s immensely frustrating because that means that sometimes the painting goes unpainted or the soccer game doesn’t get attended or The client work, well, the client work has to get done because you’re taking money for that, but you’re sacrificing so much. So again, not really a question, just venting back at you, I think some of the stuff that everybody’s feeling.
Helen Tremethick: For sure. And I want to riff on that and say, this gives us an opportunity to redefine productivity. It gives us an opportunity to redefine rest as well, because I don’t know about you, but my resting also looks very similar to work. I’ll go out into the garden and I’ll weed a bed. It’s very similar to work. For a lot of people, gardening is restful. We grow a lot of our own food here on the farm, and so it’s restful but also work. Yes, this is a great opportunity for us to say, OK, so prioritize one, two, three, knowing that at least one of those will be chucked out the window and replaced with something that we didn’t expect. And then being OK with that, defining what productive looks like and what productivity looks like for us, really making sure that we’re taking care of ourselves, and that we’re resting.
And something I also like to talk to my clients about is, often on our to-do lists, we put projects, but we assume them and we label them as tasks. So I’ll build that out a little bit. A project is made up of a number of different tasks. And our to-do list, we’ll put it on there, we’ll say, okay, write a website. Writing a website is a big project. So even if you had on your to-do list, you’re like, oh, well, that’s a big project. I should break it down. Even if you wrote on your to-do list, write about page, it’s still a bit big for one item on your to-do list. Like rough out the outline of the about page. And if you’re doing design pieces, choose the images for the about page. This is where we can start saying, okay, these are actually tasks for this to-do list. And because a lot of what happens is, not only are our to-do lists too long, but our expectations of those pieces, each individual bullet point is going to take us much, much longer than we’ve mentally assigned them. You know, the task for the day is to write the book. I’m like, well, it’s going to be your task for the next six months.
Kira Hug: I wonder what we have to let go of with all of this too, because am I letting go of ambition here? Am I letting go of a big dream? I feel like there’s something I need to let go of to really adapt to a new productivity model and way of living that I’ve been clinging to for a while. I wonder if you’ve seen anything with your clients as they’ve progressed, if it was like letting go of something along the way.
Helen Tremethick: Yeah. I don’t know if this is going to be a well-received answer, but wealth When we’re talking about redefining, that’s one of those things. And I’m speaking about how much money is enough. and knowing that a lot of people have these arbitrary revenue goals that are again sort of fed to us from the same like four-hour workweek 5am club formulas and templates place we have these arbitrary revenue goals once we start looking at what we really need what we really need and then factoring in future self-care as a buffer right that we all will probably hopefully retire and that we need a little bit of extra in case something happens. Once we factor all of those in then we can start moving the pieces into play so that what we’re giving up is less of a physical tangible thing and more of an idea of the way it is supposed to be.
Rob Marsh: And I guess we should think about the opposite because if you’re giving something up, you’re also leaning into something or grabbing something bigger. And I think part of my thinking around this is that most of us want to do a lot of things and we want to do a lot of things well. And the reality is that maybe we can do three things well at any given point in time. Maybe three is too many, but it’s certainly 10 is too many and probably five is too many. So there’s got to be a lot of thinking and intention into what it is that we want to be doing. And like you’re saying, maybe, maybe that elusive six figure business is thing number four. And as long as you’ve got enough, or maybe six figures is what enough is in a lot of places, you know, it has to be, but you know, you give up on the dream of the million dollar business, right? So, in order to get something, hopefully better. Yes.
Helen Tremethick: Yes. Time with your family. You get to go to that soccer game that ordinarily would have missed. I have a client that I worked with recently. I’m shifting gears just a little bit to riff on this. I have a client that I worked with recently who was training for the New York City Marathon, which is really great. Something I will never, ever do. And I still love this. You and me, both. I love it for the people who do. There’s more space in the marathon because I’m not there. So she also has kids at home. She was missing swimming lessons, wanting to take them to the park, and had a job, has a partner. and has a business. Now, I’m sure this sounds very, very familiar to a lot of people. Replace marathon with whatever you like. She needed time to train for the marathon. She wanted time to take her kids to the park. And she still had these other things.
So we really needed to look at how do we tweak and mold her business so that it fits with her life? As opposed to the other way around, which I think a lot of us do is we tweak our lives so they fit with our businesses. And so I think you’re right, Rob, that it is about gaining something. It’s about gaining the soccer games. It’s about gaining the training time. It’s about gaining the time with your kids or the time with your parents. It’s about gaining the time to be in the garden. I would say A lot of what we come back to is time. We’re such a time deficit culture that when we start factoring wealth into our business ecosystem, time is something that people really, really want. So how much money do we need to make in order to have that time?
Kira Hug: Yeah, I don’t want to ask you to predict the future, but I am going to ask you to predict the future. Do you feel like this is going to be something that we just see continue to shift across maybe our industry, other industries, where there’s this leaning in, moving away from productivity for productivity’s sake, moving away from this idea of wealth and way more than we need and embracing these other parts of life? Or do you think this will just remain a pocket for those people who kind of see that opportunity?
Helen Tremethick: That’s a good question. I hope it shifts and changes forward toward people adopting this. I do think in our current system, you know, in late stage capitalism, something does need to shift. I think that we’re seeing that happen a lot in the world right now. And that people are realizing that they need and want more than the idea that we’ve been fed: get a good job, make the money, have the, you know, the very status quo, happy life. And people are seeing that that’s not really working for them. So then what? And they’re starting to fill in the blanks themselves, starting to redefine what feels good for them. for their own sake and I’m really inspired by that. I do hope that that’s the direction that we are going in and in part because I would love us to see more community. I would love us to see more in-depth relationships. I would love us to see less of that loneliness and more of that time. So in this magic eight ball, yes, I hope so.
Rob Marsh: I kind of want to flip this on its head just a little bit because we spent the last half hour or so talking about this ideal, creating more time or whatever. But underneath this is the thing that makes it work, which is our business, right? Like in order to have that time, you still have to put food on the table. You still have to pay the bills. And so we need to be building businesses that support that. So instead of working eight, 10 hours a day, six, seven days a week, what does “the enough business” look like?
Helen Tremethick: Hmm. Well, again, this comes back to what does your life look like? What are you able to give to begin with? So capacity to start, but, and it will also vary on like, how much are you selling? Like, how much are you selling your things for? So what widgets are you selling? How much are you selling your widgets for? How much time do you have to dedicate to it? So somebody may find that their business works best with group programs so that they can bring people in at a more affordable rate, but still make the money that they need in order to make their monthly net. that may work really, really well for a person, whereas somebody else who’s still super into copywriting, they may instead want to be doing full content packages and they want to partner with an agency so that that happens because they have the time and energy to give. Somebody else, we talked four years ago, we talked about the platypus model. Somebody else might want to hybridize that. They might want to do like done with you about page workshops. And so there are ways that we can, so what is enough is variable. And what does this enough business look like is also variable. But that is the exciting piece about it, is that we don’t have to fit into this one particular idea. We can say, OK, hey, I’m really crafty with words. What am I going to do with this particular skill? What do I have time for and how much am I going to sell it for so that food is still on my table, the roof is still over my head, that future me is still cared for?
Kira Hug: And how have you evolved your business over the last few years? I know you’ve moved away from brand voice, I believe, and some copywriting. So how have you shifted your enoughness and what you have time for, what you don’t have time for?
Helen Tremethick: Yeah. Thanks for asking. I have shifted in a lot of ways and I think it has been more of a deepening than a pivot or so quick to call a pivot. And oftentimes it’s not really pivoting, but a deepening into the work that we do. So though I don’t sell myself as a brand voice strategist or a copywriter, any longer. A writer will always write. I don’t do public-facing copywriting, but I still will do copywriting for a good project because yum. But a lot of the way that I work now is through, I have a group membership called the Love and Badassery Motorcycle Club. We meet every other week for hot seat sessions. I also have guest experts come in during the summer and we do quarterly planning. There’s a whole headquarters where people can pick up courses about brand voice strategy, about finding your ideal audience, about writing your website copy. So the other stuff, the doing stuff, the stuff that’s on the task list and a lot of the things that we talk about, we do talk about copy sometimes, but a lot of the things we talk about is really that capacity planning and And is this idea a good idea? Does it work for me and my business? So the way that the work I’ve done has shifted has gone from that brand voice strategy, from that copywriting into a deeper place of what will work for me, what will work for me and my business in my particular way, showing up the way that I do. That is the primary question that I help people answer. And then once we know that, the words come pretty easy.
Rob Marsh: So I’m curious, Helen, how you promote your business now, you know, as you’re not talking about copy, copywriting, you know, how do you get the word out about what you do and how you help? What does that all look like?
Helen Tremethick: Oh, it’s the same as ever, Rob. I write my list. I promote my list on the socials. I meet people. I do workshops. I was recently at a workshop for the Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce, and I’m running another one in a couple of weeks. Also, I was working with virtual gurus a couple of months ago, it’s really just the same way as ever. But referencing that old way versus new way and really emphasizing making connections to people, seeing how we can reciprocally help each other, build our communities together, and then support each other that way. So it’s deeper than a referral situation. It’s much deeper than affiliate. Yeah, that’s essentially it, is really knocking on doors, shaking hands, and kissing babies, but with a six-foot radius.
Kira Hug: How does permaculture fit into how you think about your business and working with clients? Because I don’t think you were working on or living on your farm when we last chatted, right?
Helen Tremethick: I was here. We were fairly new. I think we’d been here only two years or so. So we were still fairly new when we had moved here. And it is, as you’re alluding to, it’s a permaculture farm that we live on called Three Acre Permaculture. And we bring students here. We teach them how to do permaculture, usually in a real land-based way. Although we speak about social permaculture quite a bit. How do we engage with each other? And that is one of the ways that permaculture fits into my business is through that people care aspect of permaculture. But more than anything, I call myself a regenerative business designer. And the reason being is that I like to look at businesses as an ecosystem. And this is where the permaculture comes into play. That when we’re thinking about any ecosystem, we want to think about what factors in.
So for ourselves and our businesses, as we started at the top of the call, we were talking about Who am I responsible for? What am I responsible for? Who am I affecting? Who am I impacting? So not just my business and my family, but also my clients and their families, their communities, my community. These are all pieces of this ecosystem, albeit like further along ripples. When we start thinking about all of those, so, you know, Who am I marketing to? What does my business model look like? How am I shepherding my money properly? When we’re thinking about all of these pieces, it’s not just what am I selling for how much money and then making that money with a real top-down look. We’re looking at what else is impacted? How do I work well? How do I show up to business? How much time and energy do I have? If I’m chronically ill, I don’t have nearly as much time and energy as perhaps somebody who isn’t dealing with the same challenges that I am. So then we need to factor that in.
And that’s the business ecosystem. And that’s where permaculture comes into play. It’s like, what are the impacts? What are the factors? What do we need to consider while we’re building this out? And then when we do, then we can start talking about how we’re going to talk about it.
Rob Marsh: I kind of want to ask you to do a workshop with us right now, because we’re talking about this very theoretically. But it might be really easy to say, oh, well, you’ve got to think about these inputs and how things fit together. But at the end of the day, when I’m sitting down to actually build my business, I’m like, OK, what products am I going to offer? Well, I’m going to do website copy. But that doesn’t actually relate to this other thing that I want to do, which is teaching workshops in businesses. They’re different. And so it feels like talking about it is easy and the practicality of this is really difficult, especially to get it right in a way that produces the kind of revenue, the kind of time, all of the positive outputs that you want. As I think about it, I’ve said this in one or two other places. I see a lot of experts online talking about, Oh, if I had to build my business again, I would do it this other way. I would do something different. I’d show up for my kids’ soccer games and I would make sure that there’s time to cook dinner. And the reality is that oftentimes that’s rewriting the very things that made them successful. Like if they had done that the first time around, they wouldn’t have this business that everybody admires. Right. So again, I know this is a long winded way of trying to get into some of these details, because this stuff is really hard.
Helen Tremethick: It is really hard. Right at the get go, I was like, well, it depends. This is not an easy button to hit. And I think that’s where it kind of sucks as an answer, like it’s not pithy, it’s not shiny, and it’s not certainly not convenient. But you know, you were talking about like, let’s workshop this. So you want to write website copy, but you also want to run workshops. Like, let’s talk about, you know, the through line there. Do you want to run workshops on website copy? Or do you want to run workshops on something else?
Rob Marsh: I mean, if I again, I threw that out as a hypothetical, so that’s not really what I want to do. But if I did want to teach workshops in businesses, it would probably be around like persuasion and copywriting as opposed because, you know, if I go into a business, they only have one website, right? So teaching them website writing would be less practical than other things I could teach them.
Helen Tremethick: 100%. So then what you’ve spoken about there is a little bit about who you really want to work with and also that through line of the writing copy, which will be like persuasion copy, and then teaching workshops on persuasive writing. So there’s a through line. It’s not two different things at all. It’s just doing and teaching, which a lot of people do. They just hybridize. So then I would say, you know, you want to be home for dinner, you want to cook dinner every night. So at what point in time do you need to leave the office in order to make that happen?
Rob Marsh: Well, unfortunately I get to work at home. If I was working in an office, you know, that’s probably got to be some time around four or five o’clock, you know, that traditional end of day. When I’m working for myself, I tend to stay longer, which is kind of ironic, right? Because I’m working on my own business. So it’s easy to justify and I like it. So yeah, oftentimes I’m not done here till six 30 or seven.
Helen Tremethick: Yeah, yeah. And I think there’s a saying about that, about how we get into business to work 60 hours to avoid working for 40 hours for someone else. You know, it’s very, very common. So what I would say is, okay, do you like, do you like working until 637? Or is it part of a pattern or something in between?
Rob Marsh: I mean, I like what I do, and so when I’m working that late, I don’t end the day thinking, I hate that I have to work these extra three hours. But that also means that, OK, what if I took those three hours and used them differently? I don’t have little kids at home, so it would probably be more me-focused time. It means that I could get out on my bike, or I could spend time reading, or I could sit out on the porch and just sort of watch the neighborhood, which I love to do, by the way. I just love to sit out there and just kind of look at stuff. So it’s trading something that’s valuable to me for something else that’s also valuable to me.
Helen Tremethick: Right. So this is great because it means that we don’t have to force your schedule in any particular way. And I use the word force very, very lightly for the word force. But I would then ask. So this 6: 30 to 7:00, when you’re working over, Is it because of, are you hyper focused on something? Is it like you get into the zone and then all of a sudden it’s 7?
Rob Marsh: Sometimes, but not always. Sometimes I’m just doing stuff, right? Checking, clearing out the inbox or, you know, wrapping stuff up that probably isn’t a priority.
Helen Tremethick: Right. Okay. So this is really good noticing as well. Cause if you’re in the zone, there’s something really beautiful about being in the zone. And I do not ever want to be like, you get out of there.
Rob Marsh: That’s the thing that I hate about pomodoros. It’s like pomodoros are really good for getting started but when that timer goes off and you have to stand up like, wait a second, it’s working right now and who knows if it’s still going to be working in five more minutes, right?
Helen Tremethick: Exactly so this tells us though that for you specifically that um and beautifully you have the spaciousness to do this, that when you’re in the zone, that you allow some flexibility there. In this hypothetical case, you really like cooking, but on those hyper-focused days, you don’t really have time for it because it’s a little bit late. you have your meal prepped stuff in the freezer that you can pop into the oven or what have you so that you’re still eating really well. So now we’re taking care of Rob’s body and Rob’s brain, but we also want to start thinking about Well, you want to run workshops. So you want to run workshops as well. And you want to run workshops for companies that, OK, they already have a website, but they want to do more persuasive writing in-house, which sounds a whole lot like consulting with bigger organizations, which then sounds a whole lot like daytime workshops, and maybe on sites.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, I would entertain any of those for sure. Yeah.
Helen Tremethick: Right. So with an onsite, with an onsite, then we’re looking at more travel time. Is your life fluid enough that you could go and travel and come back? Are you open to that kind of idea?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, mine is at this point in my life. It is for sure.
Helen Tremethick: Great. Okay. So, and the other, the offset of onsites is that they also tend to pay more than a virtual workshop. So you can offer virtual stuff if you want to, but you also have that flexibility to move and therefore also um, balance out that, that income as well. So in this hypothetical place of, you know, like rejigging Rob’s business to start incorporating workshops along with writing website copy, we’re thinking about making sure that you still are eating well, making sure that you notice whether you’re in the zone or whether you’re doing non-priority work. And if you’re doing non-priority work, creating a ritual or a system so that you’re like, nope, I’m out of here. I’m going to go sit on the porch because that’s my lovely place. So we’re thinking about that. So this is ecosystem stuff. We’re also starting to think about, okay, so who am I going to want to connect with? Well, I want to connect with these bigger organizations. They can start looping through. You write their websites and then you come in and teach them how to build that further. So then they refer you to somebody else, and you give them an affiliate or something like that. And then you do the same. You write their website. You come in. You teach workshops for them on how to build out that voice further. So maybe they want to do one-offs, or maybe they want to do series. This is where you can start building out from there. But these are also the pieces that we need to consider when we’re shifting out robbed business. Now, let’s say, hypothetically, in this situation, you do have little kids at home. So that means, then, that you’re not so flexible to travel, and you may want that cutoff time. But you probably, let’s say, your kids are school age, you then have this school hour period where you can run virtual workshops. Maybe you want to start doing regular webinars once a week. Maybe you want to do training for organizations during the day. So there are ways to start playing with that, and you can see how it would shift if we factor in school-age kids.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah. I’m hopefully talking through some of that. I didn’t really mean to hijack the last 15 minutes or whatever, but so much of this is esoteric in theory, and it’s really helpful, at least I hope it’s helpful, to take it down to this level. It’s like, okay, this is actually how I would apply it in my business and think through some of this stuff. We should probably take the next 15 minutes and think through Kira’s business because she does have little kids. She does go through the struggle that I don’t have.
Kira Hug: Yeah. No, I mean, I think it all makes sense and I really like the part about looping back and finding clients that then want workshops, and then finding referral partners. And so it’s all kind of coming back to you. And it feels a little bit easier than starting over with every single client, and starting from scratch, and then trying to get the workshops going. So I think that’s where that permaculture model really resonates with me. As someone who’s listening to this, they might think, well, I want to move away from copy. Or maybe I still want to do copy, but I want to do more coaching and consulting. What advice would you give them to help them move in that direction?
Helen Tremethick: I would say, firstly, I’m so glad that that resonated with you, even though Rob’s life and your life look very different. And also that when we’re making shifts in our businesses, I spoke earlier a little bit about how we’re very quick to call it a pivot and oftentimes our work is really more of a deepening. So if you’re being called toward coaching, you’re being called toward teaching workshops, I would ask, what do you really love teaching? What do you really get on a soapbox about? What are you really interested in? And then starting to build out from there. You know, we talked four years ago about taking the idea of a workshop and then making it smaller and making it smaller, making it smaller, making it into a tiny, tiny little bite. And that’s what I would say for somebody who’s looking to do that switch. What’s the tiny bite that you can then offer that out? And maybe it is an about page webinar. Have a go, have a little play and see how it goes. If it goes really well and you’re like, I’m going to run that again, run it again. If it goes really well and you’re like, actually, I have some things to say about the homepage. Let’s talk about that. Then you can start running a series of workshops. Really, you know, we have three rules in my house. It’s show up, do your best, try and have fun. And so often They apply to everything. So somebody who’s switching from copywriting to coaching or to teaching or workshopping, that’s what I would say. Show up. What are you interested in? Give it a try. Do your best, whatever that looks like on that given day, and then try and have fun with it. The only thing I would add is then to reflect back and say, okay, so how did that work? How did that feel? Did it feel aligned? Is this something I wanna do again? Is this something that I really want to explore further? And lather, rinse, repeat.
Rob Marsh: So we’ve sort of danced around this idea of relationships and I think this idea of deepening applies to those as well. But the facts of life of the last couple of years have sometimes made relationships difficult or harder to establish or maintain. The fact that so many of us work virtually as opposed to in offices, For a lot of copywriters, that was the way it was before. But many of us are introverts, and so establishing those kinds of relationships can take time. And when you don’t have face-to-face, in-person time, that’s really hard to develop. So we don’t have a ton of time left, but maybe we can talk a little bit about this idea of deepening relationships and how do we create them, foster them, grow them with all of the stuff that’s happened or that we’re dealing with still over the last couple of years?
Helen Tremethick: Yeah. This is a great question. I find that it’s a beautiful thing to find a like-minded soul on the internet. It just really is, especially if you’re introverted, especially if you live rurally and my closest city is an hour away. I am not going to the business events. It just is not going to happen. So it’s a beautiful thing to find a like-minded soul on the internet, and that is where I would start. That’s my recommendation across the board, is lean into your like-minded soul. Ask them who you ought to know. Ask them to a virtual cup of coffee. I regularly invite people to come and have a virtual cup of tea with me. I will offer you the link as well if you want to share it to your audience. People can come and have a little cuppa. We can get to know each other. There’s no sale. It’s just two people making a connection. I think that marketing really needs to go in that direction with us, not thinking as much about How are we selling this? And so much more on us being two humans showing up, having a conversation and seeing how we can build community together.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I like that. I love that you just gave out your, your scheduling link as well, that you’re open, you know, that you’re that open to sharing. And I think that’s where it starts, right?
Helen Tremethick: Yeah, absolutely. That’s where it starts. And, you know, sometimes you get on a call and you’re like, Hey, it was good to meet you. And we probably won’t do this again. And that’s all right. Right?
Rob Marsh: Like, that’s every call I’m on. Thanks, Rob.
Helen Tremethick: But that’s, we’ve had enough. I’ve come back, I came back again. It’s really just about making those connections. And I am that open with my calendar. I will also say, I am in charge of my calendar. What you see there is not all of my availability all of the time because, well, because capacity. So for cups of tea, I open up a certain number of spots in my week where I can meet somebody new. Whether I call that marketing, or whether I call that community building, or whether I call it having a cup of tea with a stranger, it doesn’t really matter. And so if anybody takes that idea, I would say, please be careful with your calendar. If you’re going to open it up, make sure that you open it up in a very particular way that you can work with. That’s really key.
Kira Hug: That’s great advice. And before we wrap, we started talking about transparency at the beginning, I think before we hit record. What would you like to see copywriters, online business owners, maybe just all business owners, being more transparent about as we move forward?
Helen Tremethick: Oh, my goodness, Kira. Like, everything. Can I just say everything? so curated, we’re so crafted, we’re so polished. We want everything to be just so. And I don’t mean, you know, the vulnerability porn of pouring our eyes out all over the internet. I don’t mean necessarily airing our dirty laundry or telling the world about everything that’s happening. But I do mean You’re talking about how business is really going. Is it really going well or not? Because it’s really hard to tell what’s genuine and what’s not because we’ve gotten so good at polishing it, at curating it. So I would say off the top, business, acquiring business, money. Money would be a really great one to be transparent about. Our numbers in this industry are across the board. You can find somebody to write for very, very little, and you can find somebody to write the exact same thing with a whole lot. The vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle. I’m not asking for a regulatory body, but I do think that having more transparency out would be really helpful for people who are coming new into the industry as to what to charge, what to expect. Also, for those of us who have been around for a while, whether we need to be upping our prices or not. I mean, yes, probably yes. But still, these are something I think that would be really beneficial to us as a whole, if we were more transparent about it.
Rob Marsh: This whole conversation’s been great. A little different from our typical, how do you write subject lines and the business of copywriting, but a nice take on how to think about this just a little bit differently and maybe something that more of us need to spend some time on. So Helen, if people want to connect with you or get in touch, learn more about your approach, where should they go?
Helen Tremethick: Thanks, Rob. Yeah, it’s been great being here. I’m at Helen Tremethick. everywhere. So that’s hellentraumatic.com. It’s hellentraumatic on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, just on TikTok, even though I haven’t posted there. I just went and grabbed the handle. But hey, follow me there anyway. Maybe I’ll show up and dance at some point in time. So yeah, I’m hellentraumatic everywhere. And I’ll also give you the link to my have a cup of tea with me. I’m really just super open and interested to have more of these types of conversations. And if people are interested in thinking about what they need to focus on next for their businesses, they can grab my freebie. It’s at bit.ly slash beyond sustainable. And that’ll be in the show notes as well.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. Thank you.
Kira Hug: Thank you.
Helen Tremethick: Thank you.
Rob Marsh: And that’s the end of our interview with Helen Tremethick. There’s quite a bit there to think about and unpack. So I’m just going to emphasize a couple of things that I made notes about as we were talking with Helen.
First, as we mentioned in the interview, I’ve heard a few people recently say this is not a good time to go into copywriting. But I want to be clear, I’m still bullish on copywriting as a career and as a needed skill. Even if clients are using AI tools, you need to understand the principles of copywriting in order to use them properly or to get the most out of them. Now, to be sure, it is harder to get started. It’s getting harder to get that experience, that starting out experience, because tools like ChatGPT and Claude are taking some of that low hanging work that used to act as training projects for new copywriters. That kind of work is likely gone forever. But the truth is, you didn’t want to do that kind of work, certainly not forever. So if you can add the copywriting and persuasion skills that you need to operate at a higher level, there’s still an opportunity in the worlds of content and copy.
And I’ll just mention quickly, our Copywriting Mastery course can help you develop some of those skills if you’re lacking them. And our Copywriter Accelerator course is designed to help with the development of the business skills that you need in order to succeed. And if that’s where you are in your career, those tools might help you. You might want to check them out.
One other thing that I wanted to add to what Helen shared, when we’re creating businesses that free up time for life outside of our work or enable us to do other things, you have to be able to charge more for the work that you do. Most of us want to work fewer hours, but the house payment or the grocery bills, Those don’t go down when you work less. In fact, thanks to inflation, they’ve been going up. But working less can lower your income if you don’t charge more for the work that you’re doing. And to make sure that you are charging enough, you need to understand the value that you create for your clients rather than simply accepting what someone online says that you can charge for a copywriting or a content type project. There’s a bit of science to doing this. You have to ask the right questions before you start the work so that you can tease out the details and do the math so that it’s clear exactly how much money your email sequence or your sales page or your content is going to bring into your client’s business. This is another thing that we talk about in the Copywriter Accelerator, so you can learn more about that at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Okay, thanks again to Helen for joining us to talk about capacity planning and business transformation and so much more. You can find her at helentrimethic.com. If you would like to connect with her, I highly encourage you to do that.
This is the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast.
We’ve been talking a lot about email on the podcast lately (see the last four or five episodes). But getting your emails opened takes more than good copy. So for the 396th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob spoke with copywriter and email deliverability specialist, Matt Brown about all the non-copy things you need to know about getting your emails opened. And…how to add deliverability and ESP management to your services so you can attract long-term email clients. This is a good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:deliverabilitynow.com
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Looking back at the last four or five episodes of this podcast, you might notice a theme. It wasn’t intentional, but somehow the last several guests have all focused on email, email strategy, and creating or running a business focused on a regular or daily email. For some reason, email seems to be having a moment. Maybe it’s the rise of new email platforms like Substack and Beehiv that make writing emails and growing an audience easier than before. Or it might be the fact that it is getting harder to connect with a regular audience on social media… posts, tweets, reels just don’t reach as many people as they used to. And paid ads on those platforms are getting more expensive and less effective. So attracting an audience that you can connect with regularly with email is as important—maybe more important—than ever before.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed copywriter and email deliverability expert Matt Brown. I wanted to talk with Matt because it’s one thing to write and send emails and quite another to do what it takes to make sure those emails actually arrive in your reader’s inboxes and get opened. It happens less than you think. And Matt knows how to fix that. He shared a lot of technical stuff that you have to get right. If you know this stuff, you can be far more valuable to your clients that if you just hand over a google doc with the text of your emails. This is a skill set that can result in long term relationships with great clients. So stick around.
Before we jump into the interview, I want to let you know about an upcoming training happening in The Copywriter Underground on this very topic. After recording today’s interview, Matt mentioned that it can be tough to wrap your head around some of the ideas he shared without a demonstration where he opens up an email account and shows you how to make adjustments. So he offered to show us exactly how to make sure your emails land in the inbox in a training for members of The Copywriter Underground. If you’re listening to this episode and think, I need to know how to do this, or I want to be able to offer this skill to my clients (and earn thousands of dollars from them in the process), then this training is for you. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu and join the Underground today. And we’ll send you details on how to access this incredibly valuable training.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Matt.
Matt, welcome to the podcast. I reached out to you because we’ve been talking to so many people about email. I feel like there’s kind of been a change around the way people are thinking about email with all of these new tools that have come online in the last couple of years as far as managing email newsletters and that kind of thing. So I thought it’d be really helpful to have you on, but before we get into all of the things we want to talk about email, tell us how you became not just a copywriter, but an email deliverability expert and copywriter.
Matt Brown: Yeah. So I’ll give you the long story since we’re on a podcast together and it has the inciting incident from a story and then the point of no return. I think this was back in like 2019, I kind of got my start in marketing and SEO and content writing, and then I wanted to learn more about copywriting. And I kept learning about that. And then I started working with people who were doing course launches and sort of Jeff Walker style product launch formula emails and for a few years, I was working with people where I’d write my 12 emails, 15 emails in a Google doc, and then just send it over to the client and say, Hey, here you go. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you want any edits. And then we’d work on the copy from there. And then either they or their team would load the emails into whatever email platform they were using. And I was like, great. And after the launch, we’d check in like emails did great. We loved it. Yada, yada, yada, that sort of thing.
But I was working on a launch—’ll have to go back and figure out exactly when this was, but it was 2019, 2020—and my client was like, Hey, Matt, our ActiveCampaign person just bailed on us. Is there any way you can build the automations and load these into ActiveCampaign? I had never done that. I had used other tools like Drip and MailChimp and ConvertKit and stuff like that. I’m pretty technically savvy and I wanted to help the client. I was like, sure, yeah, no problem. Not realizing that this was its own skill set and this was like its own thing that people paid for. And I just did it for free. They gave me the login credentials for ActiveCampaign. I went in, I figured out how to use it in a basic way, built the automation to deliver the emails.
Because of that, once the launch started, I had access to the backend metrics, which I had never really looked at before throughout a launch. And I think this person’s launch list was around 15,000 people. And I was like, Oh man, we are going to crush it. This is going to be awesome. It was a really great offer. And he already had a super successful business. And so I knew that the launch was going to perform well. And I was kind of like, Oh, I’m going to turn this into a case study and I’m going to do all these cool things. And we went through the launch and at the end, the launch did very well for this person. So he was selling an annual membership that was billed monthly. So people were signing up for an annual commitment, but it was split up into 12 payments. And he ended up adding about $20,000 to $21,000 in monthly recurring revenue to his business. So that was like a really solid lift for him. And so I was like, okay, that was great.
But as I was looking at the email metrics, I was like, man, these emails got a 7% open rate or a 10% open rate, 8% open rate, like what is going on here? I had really no idea at that time what the factors were that impacted email performance and placement and deliverability. And so that was the moment where my eyes really opened up into, okay, we did well with this launch, but what if we doubled the open rate? Or what if we got the open rate to 30% or 40%, how much better could we have done? That’s when I started going down the rabbit hole of, What, how do you increase the performance and open rates and click rates and visibility and all of that? And then there was a year-long exploration process there. Then I had a conversation with Brian Kurtz, who you actually have had on this podcast a couple of times.
Rob Marsh: Brian’s an amazing mentor and friend. He’s great.
Matt Brown: I love Brian. Brian has sent me a lot of free stuff over the years. He’s just such a good guy. So this is my moment to pay it back to Brian. Thank you so much, Brian. I was interviewing him for a podcast I was working on at the time. I was kind of doing a pre-interview, information-gathering sort of thing. We just started kind of talking about some of the stuff that I was doing and thinking about and I was talking to him about things like list management and email lists because I knew he had a background in mailing list management and then he just gave me this whole download. I wish I would have recorded it because I now just kind of have to remember it in my memory.
But he just gave me this whole download about the importance of lists and list management and all of this stuff. And I was like, OK, there’s really something here. So that’s when I shifted my focus to trying to do everything I could to optimize this performance email deliverability. And from there, I took a lot of courses. I’ve talked to a lot of ESP support people, tier two deliverability support people. And there was a time where I’m having more conversations with active campaign deliverability than I am with my own family. It was a lot of learning. And it was around 2022, I think that I developed my own process and I started working with people almost strictly in an email performance optimization capacity.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So as I listened to you talk about looking at the numbers, the metrics and seeing, okay, they’re not that great. Most copywriters would respond, well, let’s try a different headline or, let’s try a different topic or maybe, that idea was wrong, but there’s a whole bunch of stuff before we even get to the copy that impacts deliverability and whether people are opening or not. Let’s go through these almost item by item. And in some ways, I’m almost asking for a 30-minute webinar or podcast-inar about all these things that we need to do to make sure that our emails not just get to the inbox, but get opened.
Matt Brown: Yeah, absolutely. As a copywriter, I tried all of those things, you know, I was like, okay, maybe this subject line isn’t working. And then I would do split tests, and then maybe the preview text wasn’t optimized. And let’s try a trick in the preview text line. And no matter what I tried from a content perspective with the from name, the subject line, the preview text, it never significantly moved the needle. So that’s when I discovered deliverability and placement,. There are levels to a deliverability problem, like a true deliverability problem usually arises when your technical setup is not done correctly. This has only increased this year because of all the new requirements, sender guidelines from Google and Yahoo. But in the past, it was still a problem.
If you hadn’t properly authenticated your tools to send email on behalf of your domain, then they were just going to go to spam or not be delivered based on your DMARC record and things like that. I never worked with a client that had a true problem like that, that’s such a basic problem. Most of the people I worked with had reputation issues where they were getting a really mixed placement. Some of their emails go to spam, some go to the promotions folder, some go to the inbox. It wasn’t until I learned how to essentially guarantee that a message can go to the inbox or the primary tab of whatever inbox somebody’s working with that those 15% open rates became 30% open rates or the 20% open rates became 40% open rates.
So to go through a step-by-step checklist or like a deliverability checklist: the first thing is your reputation as a sender. So your reputation as a sender, and I’m primarily working with people who have lists that are almost entirely made up of Gmail and Google Workspace contacts. When we do audits of lists, we typically find that 70 to 80% of all the contacts on the list are using a Google product. So it’s really what we want to optimize for. Google has its own set of criteria that it uses to determine your reputation as a sender and the quality of your domain and things like that. So the first thing I look at is to see how does Google actually rate your domain as a sender? There’s a tool—if you’ve been reading my emails, I’ve talked about it in basically every email. It’s Google Postmaster Tools. And when you install it and where you get it configured with your domain, it will start aggregating these reports about how it views you as a sender.
So to give you an actual graph-like report of how they rate your domain on any given day, and you can have a high, medium, low, or poor reputation. And so if I started working with a client and they started with a low or medium reputation, I knew that that was immediately an issue and that was going to be significantly impacting placement. So then you have to take steps to improve your domain reputation. Most of that can be done within the email environment itself. But there are some other external factors where Google—it really depends on how you’re using your domain as well, like for your website or how old the domain is. So the goal initially is always to just get the sender reputation as high as possible, because no matter how good your content is, it doesn’t even matter if you’re sending promotional emails or not sales emails. If you have a low reputation, you can’t even get a personal one-to-one style email into the inbox of your subscribers. So that’s the first thing I look at.
The next thing is the general tool or the tech stack that somebody is using. Your email tool isn’t as important as a lot of people think it is. A lot of people are like, oh, what’s the best? ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo, Drip, Ontraport. Most of the tools are basically all the same. But they do have unique ways of doing things. And so just like you have a domain reputation, you also have an IP reputation that comes from your ESP. So not only is your domain sending emails, but there actually are IP addresses that are then connected essentially to your domain that you’re authenticating these specific IPs to send email from your domain. And those IPs will have their own reputation as well.
So the way these email tools work is they put you on a shared IP with hundreds or thousands of other senders. And so it can be entirely possible that you’re on a set of IPs that are being used by people who are spammers or are doing not necessarily nefarious things, but just aren’t properly managing their list, aren’t keeping their list clean and are bringing down the reputation of that IP pool. So if you’re at a high enough volume, Google will start giving you reports about the IPs that you are using as well. So you can go in there and see, okay, I’m on a high, medium, low or poor IP pool. And then you can talk to your ESP, just be like, hey, is there any way that you can put me onto a better pool or upgrade us? And depending on the tool that you’re using, they each kind of have different ways of doing that.
Rob Marsh: Is that something Postmaster Tools from Google, they’ll tell you the IP rating or how do you check that IP reputation?
Matt Brown: They will tell you the IP reputation because it’s checking the IPs for DKIM authorized emails. So as long as your emails have been authenticated, like I know yours are, if you’re sending a high enough volume, and I don’t know what the exact volume limit is, but I think it’s probably somewhere between a thousand to five thousand emails at a time. As long as you pass that value threshold of your daily sends, you’ll start getting reports about that. So that’s something that you can check there. But some tools, they assign the same IPs to everybody and other tools will automatically put you into pools with similar senders, if that makes sense.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, as we’re talking about this tech stuff, I know you said the tool doesn’t matter all that much. Most of these tools, because of the changes that Google made this year, they implemented some systems to make sure that this stuff gets set up in the first place correctly. So you talk about the DKIM or DMARC setups, you almost have to have that in place properly to even use most of the big tools today, right?
Matt Brown: Exactly. There was kind of a major shift where in the past you could allow the email tool to basically manage your deliverability for you. And that’s when you would see something like Rob at thecopyrighterclub.com sent via ontraportmail or some long server name like that. And so it was almost a proxy way of sending email from your domain where they’re letting the inboxes know it’s coming from you, but it’s really not. It’s being sent from Ontraport or ActiveCampaign to Convertkit’s internal system, and you haven’t fully authenticated these tools to send email from your domain.
That was one of the major shifts of the new guidelines that Google and Yahoo introduced in February, that now you basically have to do that. They do, if you’re below a certain threshold, if you have less than a thousand or five hundred contacts, there are still ways to not do that. But in all of the support documentation, they’re saying we highly recommend getting this set up when in the past it was more optional.
Rob Marsh: You mentioned there are ways to not do it if you’re under 500. But I can’t imagine a reason you would not want to do it if it’s going to impact your deliverability. Eventually, you might as well set it up properly from the start.
Matt Brown: Oh, yeah, you definitely want to do it. I think it’s more like the tools, they just created these safeguards, because they know there’s going to be a certain percentage of the user base that never opens their emails. They have no idea that this is going on. And so they kind of have to create these systems to protect their platform because they don’t want rogue senders just bringing down the reputation of whatever tool that is. For example, Kajabi while you can add your custom domain and authenticate all of that, if you don’t do it, they push you into this way of sending where you’re not actually even sending from your domain. They create an email address for the user. So it would be like Rob at KajabiMail.net. And so they just bypassed that whole thing and created a workaround to protect their platform. That’s how I view it.
Rob Marsh: That makes sense. So what else technically do we need to be thinking about when it comes to sending?
Matt Brown: So I think the design of your email is very important as well. I am not a designer. I’m not good at making things look good. I always create very simple email templates. But if you have a bunch of super design, custom coded blocks in your email or are using emails that are primarily image based… I know that this is something that a lot of e-commerce companies do, where essentially the entire email is one long image, or there could be 10 images that are two megabytes each that have different design elements. And they actually convert the copy into an image file, which is actually no text in the image or in the email at all. That’s the sort of thing that I would shy away from for sure. But what’s funny is that if your reputation is high enough, you can get away with sending those emails. If your engagement rates tell Google and the other inboxes that even though it’s all images and takes forever to load, people want to receive these emails and they respond to the calls to action. You can still do that, but if you’re having placement issues, I would shy away from using a super graphic, heavily designed email template. And at least start testing a simpler format of sending your emails.
Rob Marsh: Okay, that makes sense. And again, a lot of the ESPs, the email providers… they have ways to set this up so that you don’t necessarily have to create images to send, but you can create the HTML blocks, that kind of stuff. So it really shouldn’t be a problem, but I know sometimes the default is create it all in Photoshop, kick out a PNG or a JPEG or whatever, and you can just load that up and make it happen that way.
Matt Brown: Exactly. And then from there, this is kind of a technical thing, but it’s now leaning a little bit more into the content reputation relationship side of email. is that it’s really important now to keep your spam complaints as low as possible. So previously, it’s always been recommended to keep your spam complaints low. But now it’s basically a hard and fast rule that with Google, you have to keep your spam complaints below 0.3%. So for every 1,000 emails you send, they don’t want to see more than three spam complaints. And as long as you’re doing a good job with your opt-in path and keeping in touch with people and informing people about who you are, how often you’ll be sending them, what sorts of things you’ll be sending them, giving them lots of opportunities to opt in for future communications or opt out. You should see those low, but there are people out there who click the spam button and you’re going to see spam complaints.
It’s not concerning if you see consistent small spikes, but if you’re sending a high volume of email and you see over 1% spam complaints, then you’re definitely going to run into some trouble. And that’s the sort of thing that’s then going to lower your domain reputation. So it’s almost like this direct correlation if I’m working with the client, and they get a 5% spam complaint one day, I can almost guarantee the next time I pull up the domain reputation, it’s going to go from high to medium and then you kind of have to work your way back from there.
Rob Marsh: Cool. Anything else technical that we need to be really diving into?
Matt Brown: I think maybe the last technical thing is the actual email address that you’re sending from. And it’s not like there’s a hard and fast rule. You must send from a name, like rob at the copywriterclub.com. But you want to be sending from an email address that is also used in some way as a conversational email address. Based on what I’ve seen, Google and the other inboxes, they tend to deprioritize messages from email addresses that only have a one-way communication where it’s like, all right, this email sends out 50,000 emails and it has no one-to-one conversations with anybody else from there. So even if you’re using hello at the copywriter club.com, as long as there’s a support person that’s responding to emails from that email address as well, [that’s okay]. It’s a signal that this is a conversational email address versus just a promotional email address. So that’s another recommendation I have, if you’re going to send emails and if people are going to be replying to that email, use that same email address to send responses versus assigning it to some support ticket software to some other email address or something like that.
Rob Marsh: I think we’ve seen a big change in that. You know, 10 years ago, it used to be really common to get the do not reply address… nobody watches this inbox or whatever. I don’t see those very often. I did see one a week or two ago, and I was actually surprised because it’s been so long since I’d seen one. I was like, oh, somebody sending emails. And I’m guessing that a lot of those are usually used in the delivery of something rather than part of a help box or whatever, but I think that’s something that, setting up… oftentimes we’ll set up a hi or an info at whatever the address is. And then we’ll do most of our correspondence in a more personal box. I think that’s a really good reminder that if you do the two, you’ve got to make sure that you’re playing around in both boxes.
Matt Brown: Absolutely. And a lot of tools too, they give you the option to set two addresses, the from address and the reply to address. So that if you send from Rob, but the reply goes to hi, when somebody actually clicks reply to respond to your email, the way the email is coded, it’s going to override the response to the from address and then go to the hi. And so then the hi at thecopywriterclub.com email address is going to get all the benefit of the conversation. And maybe you set up Rob to appear personal, but in reality, you never actually send anything but marketing emails from that address. So you’re kind of losing the benefit of the reply.
Rob Marsh: Okay, that makes a ton of sense. I want to go back to, I think it was the first thing we started talking about, when we said this technical stuff that we need to watch out for like reputation, obviously is critical. What are the things other than not having the technical stuff set up properly? What are the things that we do with our emails that impact the reputation that we need to be looking out for?
Matt Brown: Yeah, so the biggest thing is engagement. I see people running into reputation problems when they consistently send to disengaged segments of their list for a long period of time. Let’s say that you have 25,000 active subscribers—people who opted in to receive email, and you’ve been mailing them for two years. And over the course of that two years, you have a 20% open rate. If you dig into some of the metrics there and you pull up a report of everybody who’s subscribed, everybody who’s received an email from you over the past 2 years, and then you add a parameter that says, show me someone who hasn’t opened an email in a year or two years or ever. A lot of people would be surprised to see exactly how many people have never opened an email, who haven’t opened an email in six months, nine months, a year. And so what brings down your reputation as a sender, in my experience, is when you have a really large chunk—it doesn’t have to be a majority chunk—but let’s say out of your 25,000 people, you have 10,000 who haven’t opened an email in a year or longer. By consistently sending to those people who aren’t opening, it sends a signal to the inboxes, specifically Google, that people don’t really want to receive the messages from this person. Yes, there is a section of them who are consistently engaging. But if you’re not muting those disengaged contacts or unsubscribing them, that’s going to shift you from inbox to the promotions folder or into spam. The larger that segment gets and the longer you send to those people. So to improve your reputation, you basically have to undo that process where you only send to your most engaged contacts for long enough so that you build up a signal of trust to move back into the inbox.
Rob Marsh: You said long enough, but how long is long enough? I’m guessing it depends. If I’ve blown up my list, I had, let’s say 20,000 people, half of them didn’t open. I still mailed them for two years. Can I fix that in a couple of weeks? Is it going to take me a year?
Matt Brown: Definitely more than couple of weeks. The shortest I’ve ever fixed this process was a month. That was somebody who really didn’t have that big of problems. I was honestly surprised that we were able to get it done as quickly as we did. The longest a project has ever taken me is nine months. I worked with someone last year and we started in May and I was like oh yeah we’ll be done by the end of summer, no big deal, because their list wasn’t that big. But I just didn’t have a real sense of how truly disengaged a big section of the list was.
The other thing too is that this process is kind of delicate where it’s easy to think, okay, great, we’re back in the inbox, we’re all good to go, let’s mail everybody again—you can undo that work really quickly. So you have to maintain these sorts of really high engagement rates, I like to see, you know, between 35 to 50% true open rates, you have to maintain that long enough, and then be strategic about how you re approach disengaged people to attempt to reactivate them or unsubscribe them. So anywhere between, I’d say two to six months for most people would be long enough. If somebody out there knows a faster way to do it, by all means, please get in touch with me. I’d love to hear what you say, but I’ve done dozens of these projects and that’s typically what I see.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so engagement is really critical for reputation. Anything else?
Matt Brown: The content definitely matters. Once you solve your reputation problem, that’s when content becomes a much bigger factor in where emails go. Once your reputation is high enough, you can basically send whatever you want. I actually have this test that I do at the end of a project where I have a document with every spam phrase you’re not supposed to say in an email from every ESP. It’s just copied in there. It’s only spam phrases. Like, become a Bitcoin millionaire overnight, free pills, all the stuff you’re not supposed to say. And if we can get that message to inbox after a deliverability project, I know my work is done because inboxes are saying, we trust you so much as a sender that we know people want to hear from you, even if it has the most crazy things in this email.
Now, I never send that email to a live list. I’m only sending that to seed lists for specific deliverability tools. It’s not something that ever goes out there, so it can never damage the reputation, if someone’s worried that that would happen. But when you’re in that middle place, things like subject lines do really matter. Preview text, the length of your email, the number of images you have in there. And so you can get really granular.
I went through like an obsessive phase where I tested everything about an email multiple times before I sent it. It’s really easy to spend a lot of time over-optimizing or really trying to perfect an email, which is now why I really focus on just getting the reputation as high as possible. Because once that happens, you can worry a lot less about [about things like] is this image size too big? Or is the promotional percentage of this language too much? Or did they not like my link CTA copy? Because you can get messages to place in the primary tab of the inbox by tweaking those things. But it’s a lot of work, and it’s kind of a pain.
Rob Marsh: That makes sense. You mentioned, and this is just my own curiosity, you mentioned the preview text. I didn’t realize how preview text might impact that. Are you saying you should always include preview text or is it just the kinds of words that you’re using in preview text?
Matt Brown: It’s the words that you’re using in preview text. Preview text is definitely secondary to the subject line and the from name and the from address and everything else. But there’ve been weird situations where I didn’t change anything else about an email and you take a word out of the preview text and all of a sudden Google likes the email or you delete the preview text entirely and it likes it or you add an emoji and it likes it. So this is getting into like the crazy making part of optimizing emails, but it does, it is a factor in where an email place is.
Rob Marsh: Okay, and then what about multiple links in content? So for instance, today, we released a podcast, and I will always include a link to our website where you can listen to the podcast online, usually link to the episode on Spotify, I’ll link to the episode in Apple Podcasts, there might be an offer in the PS that there’s a link to. How’s that impacting reputation and maybe not just specifically to me, but any grouping of links like that, or even worse, links that have nothing to do with each other. How does that impact deliverability and reputation?
Matt Brown: Yeah, from what I see, it’s more about the total number of link destinations than it is the number of links that you include. Linking to a podcast episode, for example, and you have three calls to action interspersed throughout the email that are all going to the same place. My opinion is that’s treated as just one link, but then when you have links to a lead magnet and maybe an offer, and then you have your social media links at the bottom… What I see is that the more links destinations that are added in an email, the more likely it is to get a deprioritized placement. But again, f your reputation is high enough and if people engage with these types of emails for a long enough period of time in a meaningful way, you can still get great placement.
I will say this, my theory right now is that Google is really cracking down on affiliate links in emails because what they don’t like is a bunch of redirects. So If you’re using click tracking in your emails, every link is essentially going to be a redirect where the first link that gets triggered is like the Octoport link or the active campaign link. So they know, this person clicked the link and then it’ll redirect them to Spotify or your website. For example, I did like a breakdown of an email that Tim Ferriss sent and he had like 60 link destinations in one email and the most of them were affiliate links for like Helix Sleep and Athletic Greens. And there are tools that can show you the actual paths that a link takes to arrive at its destination. And that email that I analyzed, it went to spam. And my theory for that one specifically was that Google was testing how to treat emails with a ton of affiliate links, where it goes from ConvertKit to ag1.com slash Tim to click.shareasale.timferrisathletagreens to some other like specific landing page. So there’s like five redirects because that’s actually a technique that spammers use to cloak links and deceive people. So I would definitely test placement before sending out an email with a bunch of affiliate links in them now.
Rob Marsh: I imagine a lot of people are thinking, well, no big deal. I don’t do affiliate deals, but I’m guessing that link shorteners like Bitly, Owly, and whatever may have the same… basically it’s the same process, right? So does that have that kind of impact too?
Matt Brown: It’s not recommended to use Bitly link shorteners in your emails. I haven’t had issues using redirect plugins, like pretty links and things like that, where the the link is going to like the root domain and then it’s just going to a 301 redirect on the same site. I haven’t had those same issues, but yeah, bitly links. I would not recommend using those.
Rob Marsh: As we’re talking about deliverability, obviously this is critical, but also it’s not all that exciting. Maybe a lot of copywriters who want to talk about copy and how do I write great emails, but anything else we should be talking about when it comes to this deliverability? We ghave ot to nail this stuff in order to get it through.
Matt Brown: Well, one, if you are responsible for the performance of emails, I would definitely start tracking and monitoring this stuff. So if you don’t already have Google Postmaster set up, you should just set it up for the domains you manage and for the brands or businesses you work with. And set up a weekly reminder or weekly task to check it. I check it every day because I’m obsessed about it. Because you want to understand what are the factors out there that are going to be impacting my emails?
As a copywriter, you want as many people as possible to see your messages, to open them, read them, and respond to your calls to action. And then I would also recommend getting into the practice of testing the deliverability of your emails before you send them to the entire list. Once you’re good and in the clear, you don’t have to do this as much. But if you’re having problems, I recommend a tool called Glock Apps. Basically, the way that it works is that you sign up for this tool, you buy test credits. I think they give you three test credits per month. And they then give you a seed list of email addresses from every inbox around the world. So Gmail, Google Workspace, Yahoo, like Yandex, like mail.com, Zoho, every inbox that has a meaningful user base. They’ll create an email address for them. You then load that seed list into your email tool. And you can put it in its own list or tag it so that it’s quarantined from the rest of your contacts. And then you take the message that you want to test and you create a duplicate of it where you insert like a little text snippet, which is how Glock apps identifies that you’re the sender. This is the test credit that’s associated with this. You then send the email only to those seed contacts, and it’ll give you a report of what percentage went to the inbox, tabs, spam, undelivered, and it can be really helpful in identifying mailbox specific issues. Maybe you’re great with Hotmail, but awful with Google. And start, you know, taking steps to improve things from there.
The thing about seed lists is that these are not real email addresses. So this is just one data point. If you can inbox with all the seed lists, in my eyes, you are golden, because these are basically unmanned email addresses that tools and algorithms and robots are monitoring. And each ESP handles IP assignments differently. So I know, for example, with Ontraport, I actually encountered this issue with Ontraport. They dynamically select the IP address to send an email based on the previous engagement of that contact. So their best IP addresses are reserved for the most responsive contacts and their worst IP addresses are reserved for the least. So a seed list, these are emails that are never really going to open an email or click a link. So they’re always sent an email from the worst possible IP pool. And so you can kind of get a false negative, but can be a really helpful data point in determining where do we stand in general with the inboxes? And then you can work with your ESP if you want to get a slightly more specific or more accurate way to test these. So a lot of them have deliverability tools, like Ontraport uses a tool called Validity to test their own deliverability. So if you ask nice enough, they will sometimes share that information with you about your account.
Rob Marsh: OK, I want to change what we’re talking about here just a little bit. Obviously, we’re still talking about email, but as we listen to your story and how you became an expert in this stuff, a lot of people who are listening are probably thinking, OK, clearly there is a valuable skill set here that our clients need. And in fact, I’m guessing that a lot of the stuff that you’ve been sharing here, most clients have never thought of, maybe don’t even know it’s even out there other than the fact that, man, my open rates are terrible. And so let’s assume I’m a copywriter who has been writing emails, or maybe I want to write emails as one of my packages, the services that I offer to my clients. How do I add expertise in deliverability? What do I need to do to pick up these skills? How do I approach a client as far as, hey, I can take over your deliverability, your ESP management. What does that conversation look like?
Matt Brown: Yeah, this is a great question. And this is really when I started getting a lot of traction with the freelance side of my business and working with clients was that I realized, there’s a lot of copywriters out there who hate the tech. Like I was in a bunch of groups and I was like, I hate the tech.
Rob Marsh: I don’t want to do the automation. I only want to send a Google Doc.
Matt Brown: Yeah, exactly. I just want to write. I was like, Oh, I like the tech. I really enjoy it. I think it’s just as interesting as writing copy. And once I started talking to my clients about that, it basically went from like, we’re considering you among other copywriters to like, how soon can you start? Like, oh, you can do the tech, like you can handle both sides of this? They were like, yes, let’s do this. And when you can basically guarantee that your messages will perform well, it’s very attractive to clients, especially most of the people I’ve worked with, they have a smaller team or a team of VAs who are capable of following directions, but can’t do the strategy.
And there’s this void where there’s nobody really managing this very important aspect of their business because they have no interest in learning it. They don’t have the knowledge. And then the people on their team, they just want to do their job and do what they’re told versus make these sort of more meaningful changes. So for a copywriter who wants to add this in, especially if you’re already working with emails, I would recommend first, picking one or two email tools to really just go all in on. If most of your clients work with Klaviyo, become a Klaviyo expert. Just like take all of the free courses that Klaviyo puts out by Klaviyo education courses, and really learn how that platform works so that you can start using it in the best possible way. If it’s ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit, just pick a couple of the ESP tools that you know your clients use and master them.
Then deliverability is kind of weird because there are a lot of documents out there on each ESP’s website about how to improve deliverability—deliverability best practices—but they’re very vague and they can be very technical. And there’s this void between what the ESPs educate you on, what the inboxes are willing to educate you on in terms of deliverability. So you really have to learn from somebody who has mastered this process.
I’ve bought a lot of deliverability courses, some of them good, some of them not so good. One that I would highly recommend, I don’t have my own course, but I would highly recommend a course from Chris Orzakowski, who you’ve had on your podcast. He’s got a course called Double Your Deliverability. I paid, I don’t know what the current price is, but I think I paid 200 bucks for it. I’ve paid a lot more than that for deliverability courses and I learned the most from this one. It was very helpful and you can go through it in a weekend. So that would be a good place to start. And then really just start testing and get a sense of how your emails are currently performing and then do some of the things that we’ve talked about in this podcast to work towards improving them. You can also subscribe to my newsletter where I’ll share all of my tips about how to do this.
Rob Marsh: I can’t remember if this was something that you shared in your newsletter, but there’s this idea that has been kicking around the back of my head, and that is that old email addresses, as they get retired or people move on from an employer or whatever… sometimes Google will pick some of those up and use them as trap emails in order to test sendability. Is that something you’ve talked about or am I conflating that?
Matt Brown: I think I did two editions about that. I talked about robots, spam bot accounts. And then I did another email about spam traps and honeypots.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Talk about that. Why is that important to know about?
Matt Brown: II always get these two terms mixed in my head. So if you’re a super technical person and I get this mixed up, you can email me and I’ll make it up to you. But I believe that what happens with honeypots is that anyone can sign up for a Gmail account today, five years ago, 10 years ago. And they recently went through a notification process which was basically: if you haven’t logged into your Gmail account, we’re going to be deleting it. We’re taking it over. It’s no longer yours. If you want to keep an old address, log in and claim it as yours again, basically. And all the inboxes do this.
But what they do with some of the accounts is that they don’t actually delete the email addresses. Like if I owned Matt Brown 99 at Google.com. they’ll leave it active and then they’ll convert it into what’s called a honeypot. It’s still a hundred percent deliverable address… like a list cleaning tool, like emailable or Unbounce, they could pick it up, but your ESP will still be able to successfully deliver an email to this account. So it doesn’t appear like a dead email address. And so what the inboxes use that for then is to find all of the people who are probably spammers. What spammers do is they just scrape the internet for any email address. They try every possible combination of names and numbers and things. They just send emails with the hopes of getting their crazy message into somebody’s inbox. And so if you aren’t regularly cleaning your lists based on engagement and time, it’s possible that you have an email address or a couple of email addresses on your list that you can successfully send to, but that are no longer consumer addresses that are owned by the inboxes to find spammers. So if you get one of those hits, it’s like a spam trap or honeypot hit, that can bring down your reputation as a sender and put you into sort of a purgatory zone where you’ll need to take steps to rectify that. It’s very hard to find those accounts just within your ESP, which is why you need a third party tool like Emailable or Clean13 to do it.
Rob Marsh: So yeah, that’s an argument for cleaning your list. Not just checking to see who’s opening your emails and doing that, but actually doing a clean of your entire list where they identify known traps, known honeypots, all of that, and then give you that report that says, okay, these ones definitely take off your list right now. These are a little risky, whatever, and this part of your list is clean, and keep emailing them forever.
Matt Brown: Exactly. Yeah, that stuff’s valuable.
Rob Marsh: Okay. I think that’s maybe enough about technical stuff. Let’s talk about email copywriting because again, you’re a copywriter and this is where you started. Obviously, a lot of copywriters are adding or want to do email as part of their services. In fact, my guess is that email is at this point the most in-demand copy deliverable out there. You can create a website, but websites are good for three to 10 years. You can create a sales page, but other than rewriting them occasionally, those are good for several years. But email, some businesses need emails every single day or at least every single week. So what are some best approaches to… what have you learned as far as writing emails for clients?
Matt Brown: So the broad strokes for how I approach email, and I actually learned this from another one of your guests, RySchwartz. I think early on when I was learning from him, his goal is to never be boring. And that’s kind of my approach as well. Never send out an email that could bore somebody. And you don’t have to be flashy and over the top and have a really well-defined sense of humor. But as long as you can write emails and send content out that you know your audience is going to find interesting and engaging and entertaining. I find that whenever I write emails and send those out, they tend to perform very well, not only from an open rate standpoint and a click standpoint, but through sales and conversion rates for different calls to action as well.
And so I use a ton of copywriting frameworks and they’re just deeply ingrained in my brain at this point. But I really like to center emails around problems, urgent problems. I like to try to make those problems as real as possible in the mind of the person that’s reading the email and then connect that to promises and way better desired outcomes. Kind of set a scene and paint a really captivating picture and make it fun for someone to read an email. I think one of the first courses I ever took on copywriting was John Carlton’s course. And he was like, make your copy the most interesting thing the person is going to read that day. And while I’m nowhere near as entertaining a writer as John, I’ve always kind of kept that in the back of my head, too. Just try to make this the best thing this person’s going to read and that’s going to be specific to them. And yeah, that’s certainly worked well up to this point. Obviously you want to make it extremely readable and to create a very seamless, smooth experience for the person to consume the content. Telling stories, you know, it’s all in there.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’ve actually started collecting examples of emails, the different approaches that people have. Obviously, story emails are great, but very few emails that I get are actually just story. There are conversation emails where people are reflecting a conversation, teaching emails, so many different ways to approach it. And I think that idea of never being boring is good. Coupled with an always be useful frame, I think maybe helps with that. So, you don’t have to tell a story. If you’re giving me your email, oftentimes they give me something that’s like, oh, wait, I need to go check that because it’s going to impact this part of my business. So being useful, I think, is maybe the counterpunch to be entertaining.
Matt Brown: Absolutely, yeah. I think actually it takes a lot of bravery and courage to just purely tell a story in an email. It’s incredibly difficult to tell an entire story or part of a story in general. There’s a lot that goes into it in terms of aconflict and the different tensions that are keeping the story together. And from my experience, whenever I try to write a story email, it’s very easy to just fall into narration, where it ends up just going very long, and I’m kind of losing the point.
So I applaud people who are just excellent storytellers in emails, and it is always something that I’m trying to improve in my writing as well. I think that might be one of the reasons why you don’t see too many of them. It’s easy to open with the story and then lead into a solution or a broader, useful piece of information. But like Tarzan is really great at telling stories. I mean, she did a launch a couple years ago. I think it was just one story the entire time. And I just had to tip my hat and give her a round of applause because we’re like, dang, you had the guts to do that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, Tarzan, I think, is a really good illustration, too, of getting vulnerable in her emails, which helps create that personal relationship with a lot of her readers, especially if you connect with where she is in life, with the situations that she goes through. Sso vulnerability, I guess, would be another way to make sure that your emails connect.
Matt Brown: Totally. But like useful vulnerability, too, where it’s not just like cracking open the pages of your journal. It’s both captivating and like you said, useful to the person that’s reading it.
Rob Marsh: What else do we need to be thinking about when it comes to high-performing emails?
Matt Brown: It’s funny you mentioned the relationship because that’s really what it comes down to. Ultimately, you want to get to a point where people are opening your emails because you’re the one that’s sending it, not because of the time they got it or the subject line or the preview text. If through each touchpoint you have with a reader on your list, if you can start building that resonance and that connection to you as a sender so that they actively look forward to receiving your emails, you can honestly forget about everything else we’ve talked about in this email.
I have clients who have “the Oprah status” in their industry where they’re just so beloved and known and people seek them out. They’ll find their emails in the spam folders that everything is broken with their systems, but they still get a 60% open rate and make tons of sales because they have done the actual hard work of building their authority, telling their story, becoming known, and building that relationship with their readers. So yeah, that would probably be my biggest piece of advice.
And also, if you have a deliverability problem, it’s a great problem to have because it is incredibly fixable. So if after this, you go start testing your emails and everything looks awful, don’t worry. There is a systematic way you can get back from that. It is very solvable. It is much harder to completely dial in your messaging and your offer and your relationship to your audience. So if you’re already doing a good job at that, you are miles ahead of everybody else.
Rob Marsh: And how to do that I think would probably be an entirely different podcast or maybe a whole course.
Matt Brown: An entirely different podcast, exactly. You have to go back and listen to every episode you’ve ever recorded and then piece it all together and then combine it with everything else you’ve ever learned in your life. That’s the big thing. Exactly.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So what should I have asked you about when it comes to emails, deliverability, marketing, and getting all the things right, creating high-performance emails that I haven’t asked you just because my expertise isn’t deep enough to know what else I should be asking?
Matt Brown: That’s a great question. I feel like you did a really good job of asking me about all the things that I’ve been kind of blabbering on this entire time. So I feel like I’ve covered a lot. I think one thing that a lot of my clients ask me kind of privately, like, okay, Matt, how do we beat Google? Or how do we trick Google? And you can’t. Google is not going to be tricked, you should not be trying to trick Google. If you see little fads out there about how to do this or that, they will only work for a very short amount of time. And it’s possible that you could be penalized long term because of them. So I would suggest learning to work with Google and the inboxes. They’re not your enemy. 45% to 50% of all emails sent on a daily basis are spam. So they have an impossible job of filtering out the good from the bad. And as long as you learn what they’re after and can then build your strategy around that. You’ll have no problems in the future.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so before we started recording, I mentioned to you that I’ve heard a bunch of people mention your name. Chanti Zak, I think is somebody who’s used you. There’s a few others. You’re kind of becoming, or maybe you are, the email deliverability expert to a lot of the stars in my universe. If somebody’s been listening and they’re thinking, I need to learn from Matt or I need to be on the email so that I’m as up to speed as I possibly can be, where should they go? How do they connect with you and continue to learn from you?
Matt Brown: Absolutely. So the best place to go is deliverabilitynow.com. It’s just a simple landing page, but you can opt in for my newsletter there. That’s how we got connected, Rob, actually. I think Chanti recommended my newsletter in her newsletter, I saw your name pop up. And I’m like, No way, this is not THE Rob, is it?
Rob Marsh: It may not be THE Rob, but it is A Rob.
Matt Brown: It’s A Rob. So you can sign up there, I send out a weekly email. And for new subscribers, I actually have a catch up email where I kind of send out some of the greatest hits of my recent newsletters. I talked all about the new rules from Google, I talked about Spamtraps and honeypots and Google Postmaster Tools and email design and testing and all of that. So yeah, that’d be the best place to learn from me.
I actually love partnering with copywriters on projects. So some of my best clients have come from my copywriter friends pulling me into saying, hey Matt, we’ve got problems. Can you help us out? And it’s great because they get to write the emails and I get to fix all of the technical stuff. So if you’re working with a client or you have clients that have some potential issues, you can shoot me an email and I offer free deliverability audits for people so you can pop in and take a look at things and then you can be the hero to your client because you found the solution to the problems.
Rob Marsh: I’m guessing there’s a huge need for that across the board. Because like we said, there are people who are not paying attention to this stuff. They know they need better emails. They hire a copywriter. The copywriter writes an email, but it’s not the content of the email that’s the problem. It’s not even necessarily the offer. It’s this deliverability stuff. And so if you’re a copywriter and you’re seeing that stuff, it might make sense to call Matt and get him on your team. And like we talked about earlier, maybe you start adding these skills to your own skill set so you can fix them, learn from Matt so that you can do it yourself.
Matt Brown: Absolutely, it’s a great skill to have. If you touch email in your job, you should know a little bit about this, at least so that you can advise your clients and understand if you have a deeper issue, because you can often double the performance of your emails without changing anything about the content.
Rob Marsh: That’s a headline right there. Double the performance of your emails is a great promise and something that a lot of my clients would love. So thanks, Matt, for spelling it all out. And you know I’m on your list. I pay attention to what you say. So thanks for sharing so much with our audience.
Matt Brown: Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Rob. Really appreciate it.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Matt Brown. Maybe you’ll do what I did as soon as you stopped listening, and that is go to check your Google Postmaster tools, or if you don’t have them set up, get them set up so that you can check them once the data comes in. You can get a ton of information there, spam reports, sender reputation, IP reputation, and a bunch of other metrics that can be useful to keep an eye on. I was pleasantly surprised that our reputation looks pretty good.
Now I want to go back to the idea that Matt shared during the interview that he got from Ry Schwartz, who said that his key to good emails actually is a key to good copy: never be boring. It’s good advice. I see a lot of boring emails. And like I said, it’s good advice, not just for emails, but for copy sales pages, whatever it is that you’re writing. Never be boring, but also be useful. It’s not enough to be entertaining. At the end of the day, you’re building trust, you’re showing that you know what you’re talking about, you’re building your authority, and most importantly, you’re helping to solve problems. But writing an email that is the most interesting thing that your readers will see today, that’s a high hurdle. And if that’s the standard that you use, you may struggle to come up with ideas that you want to share. It’ll be easy to dismiss almost everything that you come up with for being not entertaining enough. So if you’re struggling with that, if you’re struggling to be entertaining or interesting, reframe this idea by looking for the least boring thing that happened to you today. That’s something that our friend Kennedy from email heroes teaches. You don’t have to be interesting. You don’t have to be entertaining. You just have to be not boring. And usually the least boring thing that happened to you today or this week qualifies as that.
Let’s emphasize right now that the most important part of deliverability is the relationship that you build with your readers. If you’re sharing interesting, useful ideas and insights, that’s a good start, but you can do more. Re-listen to our interview with Daniel Throssell from a couple of weeks ago and learn from his world-building and dialogue creation ideas and strategies. These less obvious ways of engaging readers help them look forward to what you share in your emails, whether that’s every day or once a week or whatever the pattern is you have for sharing your thoughts and ideas with your readers. You want readers to see your name in their inbox and open your emails, even if they don’t read the subject line, even if they have no idea what’s in the email, because they know that no matter what, you’re going to teach them something or help them solve a problem, or you’re going to reframe an idea in a new way, or you’re going to entertain them. And yes, sometimes you’re even going to pitch them with offers that are going to help them and you want them excited to get that pitch.
Now, if you’re on our list, I hope that we clear that benchmark for at least part of the time or some of the emails that show up in your inbox. And by the way, if you’re not on our list, you can join that list by visiting thecopywriterclub.com. Just scroll down that homepage. There’s a form there, or you can do the quiz on the homepage, or you can click the form at the bottom of any of our blog posts or podcast transcript pages. We would love to have you on our list. And if you are on our list, let us know what you think about what we send to you.
I want to thank Matt again for joining us to talk about email and deliverability and even how to add this to your service offerings if that sounds interesting to you. I think there is a big untapped market of clients who are willing to work with copywriters or actually wanting to work with copywriters. long-term if they know that they can help them improve their deliverability, help them increase their sales by getting more emails into the inbox. And you can find Matt at deliverabilitynow.com. Go get on his email and start learning this stuff directly from him. He is a master. He knows what he’s talking about.
That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. If you enjoyed this interview, Please share it with a friend or an associate who might also enjoy it or learn from it.
The demand for emails is enormous. And there are probably more copywriters writing emails than any other product. But that doesn’t mean those emails are great. Some are barely readable. Others go straight to the junk folder—where they belong. There’s never been more need for better emails than today. So for the 395th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we asked email strategist and copywriter Donnie Bryant to share what he knows about email. Donnie is the author of Subject Line Science, a short book that will help you get more emails opened. If you write emails for clients or your own business, you’ll want to lick the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript now.
Stuff to check out:Subject Line Science by Donnie Bryant
Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown
SubjectLineScience.com
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Let’s talk about email. When copywriters reach out to us, they often ask what’s the best way to learn how to write emails and probably more importantly, land clients who need help with regular emails. And it kind of feels like there’s been a sea change around email over the past couple of years. Maybe it’s because email is a great way to connect one on one… or at least in a way that feels one to one. OR maybe it’s the shift in buying behavior that’s happened over the past decade. I’m not sure… but what I am sure about is that email isn’t going anywhere. It’s getting more important, not less. And it’s a great service to offer for clients who need ongoing help… that is the kind of clients you can work with long term.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed copywriter Donnie Bryant. Donnie recently wrote a book about subject lines and what it takes to write them, so he was the perfect guest to invite on the show to talk about email, strategizing a campaign—which I asked him to walk through step by step, as well as what it takes to break into the financial copy niche. If you want to write emails as part of your business, you’ll want to listen to this episode until the end.
Now before we get to the interview… you’ve heard me talk about the copywriter underground and what it includes. If you’ve been thinking about joining this amazing community, I want to give you two reasons to jump in now. The first is a limited time Client Emails Masterclass with copywriter Michal Eisik. Michal launched her business after completing the copywriter accelerator and think tank. What she’s built is amazing. We asked Michal if she would share her masterclass with The Underground. But because Michal actually sells this to her own email list, she asked us to limit access to just a couple of day in May. Which means if you want to get the Client Emails Masterclass for free, you’ve got to jump into The Underground now. NOTE: Sorry, this bonus is gone.
We also have a second bonus… it’s the strategic plan that copywriter Daniel Throssell used to make his client’s book a best seller in Australia. Daniel has only shared this plan one time… to subscribers who paid to recieve his newsletter. It’s not currently available anywhere. Even new subscribers to his newsletter don’t have access. But he offered to give this strategy—completely free of charge—to members of The Copywriter Undergound. And like the Client Emails Masterclass, this member exclusive is only available for one week during the month of May—and only for members of The Underground.
If you were to purchase these bonuses sepearately, you’d pay more than what you pay to join The Underground for a single month. Plus you get all the other training, coaching, and community stuff that comes along with your membership in The Underground. There’s never been a better time to visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu to claim your free bonuses now.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Donnie.
Donnie, let’s kick this off with your story. How did you get to be a copywriter? I think you’ve been described as one of the best email copywriters, sales copywriters out there. So tell us your story.
Donnie Bryant: Yeah, well, it didn’t really start out that way. Right. I think I feel like a lot of us copywriters kind of stumbled into it. When I was a very young boy, I always wanted to write. But I really thought I would write science books or some kind of nonfiction books. I often tell the story. My grandmother had, in her house, 25,000 books—kind of like your wall there. That’s nuts.
Rob Marsh: People won’t be able to see it because we don’t have the video here, but yeah, there’s a lot of books behind me.
Donnie Bryant: Okay. So I grew up loving books. I thought I would write them, but it’s kind of a childhood dream. I also wanted to be an astronaut, but that didn’t happen. Getting into regular life, I went to college, got married, and then got into the working world, retail, to provide for the family. And over time, I continued to find myself in roles where I was doing marketing and or communications for the companies I was working for, even though that wasn’t in my job description or anywhere near it.
But these opportunities kept bubbling up. And my wife, being the intelligent person that she is, she said, you always said you wanted to do something with writing, so why don’t you just explore that? And I did. And so in 2007, while I was working 70 hours a week at Kmart, for everyone who remembers Kmart. There’s a handful of them left.
Rob Marsh: Blue light specials.
Donnie Bryant: That’s right. I started to study while I was working. There was a library directly across the parking lot from the Kmart I worked at and Bob Bly’s books were over there. So I just went over and started to study and that’s where that’s where it all began. I love the written word and I like selling. And so the two married pretty nicely.
Rob Marsh: So it’s one thing to love that and to think, “Hey, I want to do something with writing.” It’s quite another to start making money at it. So as you discovered, what this thing is, how did you turn that into a business opportunity?
Donnie Bryant: This is funny. I don’t remember how I discovered this, but at least back in the day on Craigslist there was a little section at the bottom called gigs and in various cities they would have gigs and I would just look for writing gigs. Anyone who I thought I could help or who I thought I could convince, I sent messages. And because you instantly know or quickly know, if I ever want to have a crack at this, I’ve got to start making some money. So I probably started soliciting clients before I was responsibly capable of earning their money. Actually, that may not be true because some of my early projects I think turned out really well. But I started very quickly trying to solicit clients. I began through Craigslist and I looked at some job boards, but the first clients came through the little gigs section on Craigslist. Not long after that, you know, as you study, you see the experts say you got to have an online presence. So I started doing a blog, and I started my own email newsletter. And I got on LinkedIn, which seemed like ages ago, must have been about 2010. Started spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, and things kind of developed from there.
Rob Marsh: Cool. So again, I just kind of want to follow the career path. With those initial gigs, if I remember right, and I was writing way back then as well, a lot of those were like $15 jobs, $25 jobs. Basically, you’d spend three or four hours or maybe even longer writing a project and make less per hour than you might at a retail job. What was it about it that made you think, “hey, this is what I’m going to lean into and I’m going to make this work?”
Donnie Bryant: I think it was something that I could see and control because job boards—it’s the same—but everything else was different. A mystery to me. I didn’t know anything about promoting myself. I didn’t know anything about outreach or anything like that. But I knew that these jobs existed. People were paying people to write. And so, like I said, I don’t remember how I found out about it. Maybe someone mentioned it. But yeah, I remember I got some very tiny projects. I did an eight-page sales letter for $25. And the client paid me $35 because he gave me a tip for doing a good job. And he actually ran that sales letter for at least three years. So I have no idea how much money he made from it.
Rob Marsh: That’s like $7.70 per page, and probably less than that per hour.
Donnie Bryant: Yeah, it was bad. And it wasn’t a topic that I wasn’t super well versed in, so I had to do some research. I just was reading his material to get a hang of it. I think it performed well. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have used it for three years. And that was how it went.
The breakthrough job for me, it was similar in the pay per project thing. It was a very small payout. But they had an unlimited number of pages that you could do. You got paid per page. It was actually for speed dating. Speed dating, I think, was a new phenomenon at that time. And we needed to do SEO. And we had speed dating pop-ups in every city in America. So unlimited may be a stretch, but there were thousands of sites, geographically, specific sites, and they all needed four or five pages. And so it was like, write as much as you want. And I would work all day and come home and write all night. And I was able to start making some good money and gain some confidence that way. But you’re right, they were small paying jobs. But I also met a great client. The first person who told me “You need to charge me more than you asked me for this.” But he was a consultant who used to work at Microsoft. And I met him on Craigslist, surprisingly, and turned that into a long-term engagement with higher-paying projects. You kind of build brick by brick, learning lessons as you go.
Rob Marsh: And so is this the point at which you’re doing this now full time? Or how do you shift away from supporting your family, doing retail, working, all of the stuff that the real workers do versus writers? What was that turning point? And what did your business start looking like at that point?
Donnie Bryant: Yeah, it was right there. When I found out I could write an unlimited amount of paid work, I wasn’t making all that much in retail. Right. Well, yeah, who does, right? And I think about the numbers now. I know inflation and cost of living are way up. But there are people who can walk in the door at McDonald’s and make $15 an hour, depending on where you live. I was making about $15 an hour as an assistant manager at Kmart at that time. Maybe a little bit less when you factor in the hours. But $35,000 was what I was earning then. So to replace that income didn’t seem so far out there. So I just, I ground it out and just doing this quantity of work. And my relationship with my wife suffered at that point because I had to spend as much time as I could writing the projects that I could write and still trying to build a presence online, trying to find better gigs and develop relationships. I probably spent 17, 18 hours every day just either writing projects, low-paying projects, or trying to build up from there with LinkedIn and things like that.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. So let’s fast forward to what you’re doing today. Obviously you’re not writing seven page sales pages for $35 anymore. Talk to us about the kind of work that you’re doing and the kinds of clients that you serve today.
Donnie Bryant: Okay. These days I’m mostly working with financial clients, publishers, you know, newsletter publishers tend to be my bread and butter or have been for the last eight or so years. Maybe nine years. Also, I enjoy writing for financial educators, people who are doing training, educational stuff, courses, and financial service providers as well. Totally different world, because in publishing we make outlandish claims and really ramp up the emotionalism. And then as a financial service provider, the regulations are much stricter, so you have to work within the confines of what’s permitted, what you’re permitted to say. And it’s a lot more subdued, but I really enjoy those spaces. The majority of my clients for the last eight or nine years have been in various financial spaces, but I do all kinds of projects. I really love email marketing. I love it. That’s probably my first love, but I’ve done, you know, the hour long video sales letters, Google ads, advertorials, video scripts like for YouTube ads, Facebook ads, pretty much anything you can think of—just depending on what the situation calls for.
Rob Marsh: I think there’s a lot of people who look at the financial industry and think that everybody talks about how it’s the most profitable one out there. I’m not sure that’s always true because any niche can be profitable if you have contacts, you’re doing the right work, but there’s a lot of people who do make pretty good money writing in the financial world. Will you tell us, if somebody were coming to you saying, “hey, Donnie, I want to work for a financial newsletter, how do I break in? How do I get there?” What would you do if you were trying to break in there today?
Donnie Bryant: The first thing, and I do get this question a lot, the first thing that I always recommend that people do is go and study the game. Sign up for the email list and click on all the ads from A Motley Fool or Agora Financial, companies like that, because you have to know how they operate if you want to have any prayer to become a writer for them. You have to see how they write, the kind of things that they write about, the style that they write in, and understand why. So the first thing I always say is you have to go study what they do. Watch the whole 60-minute sales video. You got to sit and watch it. And some of them are very fun, so they don’t make it drudgery for you to do that. But you begin to do that and study and try to understand why they work.
I think the second thing that makes a lot of sense is to begin to connect with other people who are financial copywriters. A large percentage of these companies these days are hiring in-house writers. So you’ve got a team of people. They’re not freelancers. They’re not necessarily all over the place. But you can still find them online. They’re on LinkedIn, they’re on Facebook, and they’re talking about copywriting, and they’re in the copywriting groups. And so if you can find some of those individuals and talk to them, it gives you an opportunity to understand the workings of those organizations, and then also knowing someone who’s in the company, they can let you know about opportunities, put in a good word for you. That’s happened for me more than once, being connected to even just regular copywriters, but you can connect with higher up people in the organizations as well.
And then going to events is a great way. AWAI Bootcamp, for example. You’ll meet publishers there, financial marketing summit. I’m just naming names. I don’t want to leave anybody out or overly promote anybody. But when you go to places like that, you’ll be able to connect with the people who make decisions, the people in that space. And it also helps you to learn and grow very quickly.
And then outreach. You have to be creative, because a lot of people are reaching out to these people. The publishers and the decision makers act like Agora. Everybody wants to work for Agora. You need a creative outreach. Joe Schriefer talks about getting weird things in the mail. Somebody sent him a gold coin or something. You can’t ignore that. Now we’ve got to have a conversation. I know another guy who recorded an interview with AI. talking about a future hypothetical situation. You send a flash drive via FedEx. OK, I got to listen to it. You show how engaging, creative you can be. And that gets your foot in the door. And then you got to show up with confidence when you’re having those conversations. It’s easy to be intimidated. But if you shrink back and seem like you’re nervous, that decreases the chances that you’ll win the gig because the person who’s talking to you wonders if you really have the chops, if you’re showing up like you’re nervous.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, and while we’re talking about having the chops, what kinds of samples or previous experience would you bring to the table there, too? Because obviously, you’ve got this Catch-22. You’re trying to break in in order to get the experience, but you need some experience in order to break in. So how do you overcome that problem?
Donnie Bryant: I’m glad you asked that question. These days, it seems like most of the publishers, if you’re not already established, they start you off on the short form stuff anyway. Ads, like space ads, emails, yeah, the shorter form things. That’s where they want to see you begin. And a lot of times, they bring in new writers in-house. Your first day, you’re not going to write the video sales letter. You’re not going to do that. But they put you in on smaller, short form email writing and things like that. So you can just write them, you know, not so much on spec, but mock one up. I’m going to write one so you can see how I would approach this. And you should do it for existing promotions. I see that you’re promoting this trading service. Here’s some additional angles that you could use, additional ways of presenting the idea. And when a promotion works, they need a million emails. And they need a million ads. So if you write good ones and send them as a sample, they might hire you and buy them from you right now, immediately. That’s a good place to start. So you kind of have to do it on your own. I don’t see a lot of people just saying, hey, write something and send it to me. You had to take the initiative. But that’s where you would start, emails, probably, space ads, maybe even advertorials for the 800-word range, maybe 1,000-word range. Some of the companies still use advertorials for lead gen. Not so much lead gen, but top of funnel.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. OK, so starting out with small stuff, email. You mentioned earlier that email is one of your favorite things to write. I’m going to tease it right now. You’ve written a book about subject lines and emails. So let’s talk about email marketing. And before we started recording, I mentioned to you, I feel like there’s been this change around email over the last year. Maybe it’s since the pandemic. I don’t know. But where companies seem to realize they need more of it, there’s more opportunity around writing emails for copywriters. Again, you obviously have this book about how you break through. What’s going on with email, and why should we be doing more of it?
Donnie Bryant: I think that you identified one of the key factors. During the pandemic, We all started thinking about things differently. Well, most people started thinking about things differently. I need to be able to sell online. And even for the individuals who aren’t, they’re already online anyway. But seeing how the world now collapsed, we had to figure out a different way to get in touch with people. And social is not always the most productive place to put your words. They go into a black hole. 2% of your audience sees it unless you pay for an ad and not everyone is ready to do that. So I think there was an awareness shift.
I think there’s also a lot of training, a lot of copywriters are saying this is the easiest way to become a copywriter, get into email. And so there’s a lot of awareness on the service side in terms of copywriters coming into the game are now talking about email and pushing email as a service that they can provide. And so we’re seeing an awareness Awareness from the entrepreneurs and the businesses, there’s also an influx of copywriters who want to write email. That’s like the easiest way to start. But I think also, what I mentioned a second ago, social media is inconsistent, and it’s increasingly difficult to have consistent visibility unless you’re paying for it on social media. Then you’re in paid ads territory. And so email, as long as you can get it delivered, has a much higher percentage chance of being read by opted-in individuals. And so I think that there’s kind of a confluence of those factors.
Rob Marsh: Okay. And when it comes to email, obviously, like you said, there’s a variety of factors that impact our ability to get through. One is, you know, who the sender is, that kind of stuff. Obviously, you know, catching attention. So subject line, that kind of thing. And then there’s the email itself. Can you break down for us how you think about, you know, as you’re working with a client, how do you think through, you know, the strategy behind the emails that you’re sending? And yeah, let’s go deep on subject lines while we go through here.
Donnie Bryant: This is one of my favorite things. Well, I want to point out that you said something super important that everyone doesn’t think about. And it’s part of my book. Even though the book is called Subject Line Science, as a preliminary foundational reality, the most important factor is not the subject line, but it’s who the sender is. And so we all have to be conscious of how we bring people onto our list. who we present ourselves to be. And the connection between the lead generation or the acquisition of names onto the list, we had to be cognizant of how we bring people on and the reasons behind why they signed up.
And then our messaging, how it connects to that reason. Because a lot of times, we’ll bring people on for what seems like a very exciting trend. AI is everywhere, right? And it should be. But if you say, you know, 10 super prompts that will make your AI perfect. And then you deliver on the lead magnet. But then your emails are talking about other things. You quickly disengage. That’s just an example. But I think a lot of times we kind of do that. We want a lead magnet that’s sexy. And it’s the most exciting topic that anyone’s talking about. But that’s not necessarily what we’re ready to deliver long term.
And so we bring people onto the list. It’s kind of not an intentional bait and switch, but we bring them on for what ends up being the wrong reasons. They really want to know about AI. We presented ourselves as AI experts or our email newsletter as an email newsletter or AI newsletter. And then it turns out, I really want to talk about something else.
So the first thing is what you said, establishing ourselves as a person who, people know, our subscribers know, I’m a person who sends valuable, relevant content. And then they’ll open anything. They’ll open anything. And we’ve all seen that, where we send a subject line that is kind of mediocre, but it’s, you know, it’s just what I got for today. And you’re surprised by the open rate. It’s not necessarily because it was a great subject line. It’s because people want to hear from Rob. They want to hear from Kira. They want to hear from whoever. So that’s the first part.
As we begin to develop the strategy, though, it’s important to, again, really understand what you ultimately want to accomplish with the people on that list. Where do you want to take them? What’s the journey we’re taking them on? What are their feelings about that? What do they already believe? When people come onto your list, they have certain beliefs. They may be correct, or they may be incorrect. I won’t say that. They may be your beliefs that you want them to hold, or they may be ones that are detrimental. And so you had to think through, how do we connect where they are currently so that we can bring them where they need to be on a belief level, and on an emotional level, and then on a practical level? What’s the situation that they’re in that they want to improve upon? In whatever way you do that. For the health experts, we want to help you get fit. Or for the financial people, how do we help you build a nest egg so you can retire and feel great about that? So what’s the journey? So you have to factor all those things in as you begin to think about what the strategy should be.
I like to think about the strategy from lead gen through forever, because how you bring people on, again, really impacts everything that happens afterwards. So that includes the lead gen, the ad, and the lead magnet, and the welcome sequence. When we bring them into our world, how do we do that? And then after you’ve kind of set the stage there, then emails take the journey further, or take them to the ultimate destination. So it’s really understanding them primarily. Everything else you can retrofit. Whatever you’re selling, it attaches to their current situation and then also their dreams and desires and their fears and frustrations and their pains and their problems. How do we get them from that place to where they want to go using our service or our product?
I say it like this, really what people want is they want to accomplish their dreams with what they already have with just a little bit of help from you. They don’t really want to change their life that much. They want to change outcomes. They don’t want to change their routines, not most people. We’re taking them from where they are. and bringing them to where they want to be with minimal disruption of life and maximum enjoyment of the things that they’re already enjoying.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s actually really important. You think about even our own personal behavior, right? Most of us want to stay within this comfort zone. Or we’re like, maybe I can step outside of my comfort zone, but I only want to go one or two steps. I am not willing to jump off the cliff, or I’m not taking on something totally new. And I think you’re hitting on something really important here, because a lot of us do it when we email, we’re asking people to take pretty massive steps, you know, not just, “hey, here’s a $2,000 program to spend your money on.” But also time commitments, moving from something that they’re comfortable doing into something that is really uncomfortable. This is why we all want the magic pill, the silver bullet, because we want it easy. And I think at some level, we understand everybody wants it easy. But then how do you sell those big steps to somebody if we only want to take a step or two outside of the comfort zone?
Donnie Bryant: It’s a great point. And a lot of that comes back to the offer. We need to make offers that are better. As we’re creating our own stuff, you can do whatever you want. With a client, you may or may not have influence over what their offer is, in terms of the actual deliverable. But you want to work on projects where people don’t have to jump through hoops to begin feeling some sort of progress. And of course, you gradually move them. You’re comfortable taking one step at a time. So depending on the kind of program it is, you may be able to gradualize them into the big change. But you’re right. If you make it obvious—you have to give up ice cream if you want to be fit. I was planning on having ice cream tonight. So I don’t want to do this—we had to figure out other ways.
You want to be honest, of course. You don’t want to tell people that you can eat whatever you want and then find out you can eat whatever you want from this restricted list of eight things that include barley and flaxseed and wheat germ and cucumber. We want to be honest. Again, we want to frame things in a way that people can see themselves doing it. If you can’t visualize yourself taking the steps, or you can’t visualize yourself accomplishing the final outcome that you’re thinking about, the copy can’t connect. They don’t even believe it in their own mind for them to say, oh, this is great. They would probably say, yeah, that’s for somebody else.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s a good point. Okay, so I wonder if you’re able to do this, can we actually talk about a real campaign, maybe something that’s out there in life, but talk about sort of start to finish, the different elements, your thinking on it, how you put it together. I know I’m sort of throwing that at you out of the blue, and sometimes clients don’t want you sharing that stuff, but hopefully there’s something that we can talk through. So really make this tangible for anybody who’s listening.
Donnie Bryant: Sure. I can give some pretty good details about a recent campaign without giving away everything. It’s not a super complex campaign. Obviously, sometimes we’re doing 20 message campaigns. There’s more steps that you have to go through. It really depends on what you’re attempting to accomplish. But a recent campaign that I worked on—it’s for a financial newsletter and we were promoting, well, you know, as we were recording recently, we’ve heard nuclear fusion, you know, with AI, we’re starting to figure out how you can create energy, actually create positive energy from nuclear fusion. Whereas in the past, it would take more energy to make the fusion reaction happen than you would get out of it. So it didn’t make sense, but scientists are working on it. And then with AI now, we’re discovering. You actually can make fusion energy positive. I don’t know if that’s the right term. You can make more energy from it than you’re putting in. And so now there’s actually companies that are beginning to really develop this technology. We’re probably 10 years away from it being really feasible, but whatever. As an investment opportunity, it’s exciting.
But to our previous point, it’s kind of long term. I don’t want to invest today in something that may pay off in 10 years. I need to at least begin to start seeing something happening now. So this is the opportunity. The thing we’re trying to sell is a nuclear-based report. And so you kind of have to work backwards. Where are our readers at right now? They’re a little nervous about nuclear energy. This is something that we’ve just found. They’re a little nervous about nuclear energy. Because Fukushima was not that long ago. We can remember that. We remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl never goes away. There’s six leg dogs out there in Russia somewhere. And we’re a little uneasy about it. But the fact of the matter is, all around America, nuclear power is a significant source of energy. And then around the world, they’ve just committed to really ramping this up for the reason of clean energy, because carbon fuels are poisoning the planet. I’ve gone way off in the deep end.
Rob Marsh: That’s okay. We’re tracking, so we’re good.
Donnie Bryant: Okay. You have to consider all these things before you start writing where people are at. They’re a little nervous about nuclear energy. They’re unsure. So we have to give some education and reassurance. Also, they’re not necessarily confident, at least not instantly, that this is going to be an immediate payoff as an investment. And it’s not. So understanding these things… you work backwards.
Nuclear is a bigger topic than just fusion. Fusion is kind of top of mind because it’s in the news. But nuclear fission, the reactors we have now, well, they’re even developing new technology for that. There the companies that are working on these are there’s two things Uranium is that like all not all-time highs but super high prices so you can see profits happening right now. Over the last two years you could have doubled your money on this So we work our way back backwards. Here’s it one of the most exciting opportunities.
So this is email 1 in this sequence. One of the most exciting opportunities in the market is something no one is talking about. Here’s a chart, over the last two years, you could have more than doubled your money. It’s close to triple your money on a couple of these stocks. It’s not AI, but AI is related. It’s not crypto, much safer than that. But it’s actually embedded in American society today and it’s going to become even bigger.
Email one is very short. Because it’s designed to send people to a sales page. So it’s basically that. You could have doubled your money. And guess what? The future is looking even better. So email one kind of sets it up, hands it off to the sales page. But the sales page explains the big picture. Everything that’s happening. Uranium is going up. There’s new reaction technology, which is beginning to come into play right now. And Fusion, in the near future, will be a viable option because of AI. So that’s what’s happening on the sales page.
Email 2, then what we did was to maintain high curiosity. So here’s how I think about campaigns. The longer campaign is, the more you have to break it down. But in the initial few emails, I really like to be high on curiosity. All I really want to do is get them to the sales page.
And as you get a little deeper in the campaign, you add more specifics to the emails. Because if they haven’t clicked yet, they’re not going to click. And if they have clicked but haven’t bought yet, they need more information. And you really don’t want to just try, OK, get them to the sales page again. You just want to further show them why this opportunity is massive. And then when you get even closer to the end, you get even more detail, and then you go into urgency. That’s kind of how I set it up.
But in this case, email 2 is still curiosity. Turns out, I don’t know if many people knew this, but Amazon just bought a nuclear powered data center.
Rob Marsh: I did not know that.
Donnie Bryant: Yeah, new to me. They finalized the deal in March. So in Pennsylvania, there’s a nuclear reactor that Amazon now uses to power its business. By the way, Amazon as a company uses more electricity than the whole country of Ireland. The whole country. So what do you think it’s doing? It’s buying nuclear because this is the power source of the future. Find out more about how you can profit from that. It’s really that. The subject line that compliance wouldn’t let me use was, Amazon just bought its first nuke.
Rob Marsh: That’s a good line.
Donnie Bryant: We settled on Amazon just went nuclear or something like that, which is true. It’s an allusion to the stock going straight up. The stock isn’t going to go straight up. But Amazon is still a great buy, no matter what. And we’re not even recommending Amazon. But I really like the idea of the curiosity play. They just bought their first nuke. Jeff Bezos is, I always knew he was a little crazy, but he’s buying nukes now. We’re in trouble. So anyway, curiosity.
Carrying on a little bit more, then in the next one, email 3, do a little bit more about the specifics. We can show you uranium prices are going crazy and here’s why. We can show you that companies, like Rolls-Royce, the car company, makes nuclear reactors now. Or I don’t know if now is correct. They’re working on new reactor technology. And so real companies that you know are doing exciting new work. And guess what? In December, countries around the world, like 26 countries, committed to tripling their investment in nuclear energy. What do you think that’s going to do to these stocks? So again, we’re building more information.
So the curiosity gets you to the sales page in the first couple. And then in the next few, we just do specifics like that. Uranium prices. There’s 200 different companies working on this new reactor technology. Which ones are going to win? Well, you could guess. Or you could get research from somebody who’s in the field doing this. And the Amazon thing. Anyway, we’re layering on details. Because we want you to be somewhat convinced.
Like I said, the first few are curiosity where you’re going to be convinced on the sales page. But for people who haven’t bought yet, we’re going to do some of the convincing in the emails, the next two or three emails. After that, we just go into an urgency thing. This report is only going to be available until Sunday. Our editor has picked this and that stock in the past. They’ve done 1,000% or whatever. And we believe these next picks could be just as profitable. It’s up for you to decide. You’ve got until Sunday. So we do that through the next three emails. And that’s it. It performed well. It could have performed better, but we also ran over Easter weekend. So I think that had something to do with the numbers.
Rob Marsh: So let me recap this, to make sure I understand it, because I I really like the deep dive. This isn’t something that we do a lot on the podcast, at least for me, as I’m envisioning. It’s really helpful. But early on, curiosity is the number one thing. You’re just trying to get the click to the sales page.
Donnie Bryant: Right.
Rob Marsh: So that’s the first, say, three to five emails. After that, if they haven’t clicked, they probably won’t. So now you’re shifting to the audience of people who did click previously, but now they just need more information to bring them back, to get them re-excited, to reconnect with them. Then finally, if that hasn’t worked, urgency is the play. And that’s going to take you through a sequence of maybe 15 or 20 emails as you go through. Did I get that right?
Donnie Bryant: Yeah, that’s right. I think that applies across anywhere where you have a good sales page, I would use that kind of a framework. If your sales page is not very well developed or you’re not really sure it’s going to perform well, you may want to do some of the selling more early on, do more selling in the emails versus just curiosity. But after a few curiosity emails—Amazon just bought its first Nuke. You can only do that a few times before people know what you’re doing. So that’s why I use the curiosity factor while I can. Curiosity is always going to be a factor, but pure curiosity for the first few emails. And then the deeper, more detailed and adding some of the selling into the body of the email happens in the middle phase. So yeah.
Rob Marsh: Okay. I like it. Let’s talk about subject lines in particular and your approach, you know, what you teach in the book. Obviously we’re going to link to the book in the show notes and hopefully people will decide to pick it up. But I have a feeling that my subject lines that I send out, maybe one out of 10 is solid, really good. And the other seven or eight, maybe even nine, I’m just like, yeah, I probably should’ve spent some more time thinking about that one. So how do I fix this problem that I’ve got?
Donnie Bryant: Number one, you’re probably being harder on yourself than you ought to be.
Rob Marsh: Maybe so. But let’s assume that I am not very good at subject lines and I could use some improvement.
Donnie Bryant: By the way, I was just remarking to my mastermind, imagine the pressure that you feel when you wrote a book about subject lines. And now I got to send an email out. Yeah, exactly. I can’t mail it in because then Donnie’s disproving his whole book. So I feel additional pressure. But I love subject lines. I love to do crazy things with subject lines. But again, you can’t always do crazy things. You shouldn’t always do crazy things. But you always need to have something that people are going to either be curious about. Like I said, curiosity is pretty much always in play. Even if you’re saying, even if you’re leaning into a different appeal, they’re still curious to know more about what you’re talking about. 30% off, select items. I’m curious which items it is. There’s still curiosity because I’d like to say 30%. The main appeal is the discount, but they’re curious if they can get the discount on the thing that they want. So curiosity is always going to be in play.
Okay, so in the book there, I have 11, I call them made-you-look ideas. So it’s really 11 different ways that I think of—and there’s probably more—11 different ways that I think of to get people to open your email. And I suggest cycling through, not cycling in a methodical way, but burying the different appeal that you use because If people think they know what you’re going to say in an email, I’m not going to waste my time opening that because I know what Donnie’s going to say. I’ve seen this before. So you want to vary things and use different appeals. So I think a lot of people lean too heavily on one style. And if you pay attention over time, you’ll likely see diminishing returns on if you’re always doing emails that sound like it’s from a friend. You know, hey Donnie, and that’s the whole subject line. That’ll work great, but not if you do it every time. Right? Like, OK, what do you want, Donnie? What do you want? You’re not my friend, and I’m not going to fall for that. But the same thing is true for, you know, 20 ways to make more money, 35 ways to increase your income, you know, how I doubled my income last year. And so it’s like, that sort of appeal, it’s really cool. But if you do it too many times, people will say, I’ve seen this before. Hey, Donnie is one. How I doubled my income in 2024, that’d be another one. And so varying them keeps it fresh in the inbox. Being predictable is dangerous. So anyway, there’s 11.
So some of them are like story. I love using—you can tease a story in a subject line. I’m going to tell you one that is one of my favorites. Homeless folks need Netflix too. That was for my list. It wasn’t for a client. I don’t know if any client would let me do that. But it was a true story about a relative of mine who didn’t have a place to live, but had the four-screen Netflix account. There’s a lesson in there. But when you read the subject line like that, you say, there’s got to be a story here. And you want to know what’s going on in the story. Another one that I wrote, again, from my list. I always talk about this, and it’s probably corporate clients who would never hire me because I say this, but the subject line was: dot, dot, dot, and they left the cocaine.
Rob Marsh: That is a great line.
Donnie Bryant: And the email isn’t even about cocaine. There’s cocaine in the email, but it’s really about something else. I would tell you the story, but it’s long. But the idea there is when you see that subject line, you know there’s an interesting story inside. So I’m not recommending that you have to talk about salacious things like cocaine. But, you know, implying a story that lets people automatically engage with stories. They want to hear how things play out. They want to see the dramatic narrative arc happen. And so when you can do that in the subject line, And it takes practice, but when you begin to do that, where you can imply that there’s a story, people automatically want to know the rest of the story. That’s why movie trailers work. You see a trailer, and then you know, I want to see the rest of the movie. And so that’s one thing.
Now, again, you probably don’t want to do that every time, but that’s a good one to have in the arsenal. Another one, which I call the Tootsie Roll Center of Selling, or the Tootsie Roll Center of Persuasion, which is insecurity. Now, I’m not talking about making people feel bad, but realizing that your audience, your list, there are things that they feel insecure about in their own lives. So, like, if you said, the real reason nobody opens your emails, Rob, or this is the real reason no one opens your emails, and you would say, If this is true, now it’s not true for you. But you say, yeah, I think my emails aren’t getting opened like they should. And so internally, you have that insecurity. But also, there’s an offer of solution or a resolution inside. I’m going to go get relief from this insecurity. So to use that occasionally to point out, make people check in with themselves, I am coming up short in that area. Because it’s personally relevant to you, it’s hard to ignore that. If it’s important and it’s relevant, like, yeah, well, I really do need to know why people aren’t opening my emails. And then you open that email so you can find out what the real reason is. So again, this is something that you wouldn’t use all the time. And we’re not trying to make people feel bad. But we realize it. your audience has things that they feel bad about. Because they just want to be better. We all want to be better in areas of our lives.
I remember seeing one, I didn’t write this, but it was like, it was something like, four signs your wife hates you. And, you know, if you’re married, if you’re not married, you’re on the wrong list. But if you’re married, and your spouse has been acting a little funny lately, and you think it’s probably your fault. just that flash of insecurity in your own mind, maybe she is starting to think about leaving me. And you gotta open the email to find out how I can identify if this is really where I’m at and how can I fix that. So insecurity is another one.
Again, don’t use it all the time, but occasionally, it’s, you know, pleasure, pain, the variety of emotions. is a great way of keeping people engaged and making sure that they never feel like I can ignore this email. I can safely ignore what this email is going to contain because I believe I already know it. We don’t want them to feel that way. So that’s just a couple of examples.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think I’m sort of thinking through these. To me, the piece that draws it all together is there’s really a test that every time we write a subject line that we should be asking or putting our subject line through, and the question is, does it make me ask what’s next? Or some variation of, I need to know more, click to open. And as you’re talking, I click over to my inbox, and I’m seeing a whole lot of subject lines that I actually don’t really need to know anything more than what’s there. I won’t say who the sender is, but here’s one: the time is now. Yeah, that, you know, I can’t imagine somebody thinking, I’ve got to click on that and find out, well, what does that even mean? It doesn’t have the hook to get me to say, okay, the time is now for what, right? And so it feels like there’s something missing.
Donnie Bryant: I think I was walking downtown in Chicago, I’m in Chicago. And there was a sign that said free, all it said was free. Somebody’s trying to sell something and free is a cool appeal like you said if there’s a hook but if you’re giving away free vasectomies I’m not ready for that just yet. I’m not ready for that yet. Actually, now maybe I am.
Rob Marsh: If you’re a woman, half of the audience isn’t ready for that ever, right? Or maybe they are for their partner. So that’s maybe not entirely true. But yeah, I can see the problem there for sure.
Donnie Bryant: If you said free chocolate, now 90% of people are interested in at least finding out what kind of free chocolate you got there. So just like you said, it’s time. And actually, I remember seeing one. I won’t say who it was either. And I think the subject line was: it’s time. The body of the email said, don’t you agree? Click here. This is a very smart marketer. And maybe he got great clicks. I don’t know. But my thought was, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And you haven’t given me a reason to click. How can I agree? I don’t know what you’re saying. You know how curiosity works. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but people cannot ignore when curiosity is sparked in their mind. I remember reading a study, a clinical study, where people were given the option, I could talk all day and I won’t, but given the option, they were shown a magic trick. And you could wait five minutes and I’ll tell you, it’s not exactly correct, but it’s something like you can wait five minutes and I’ll tell you what the secret was. I’ll tell you now, but you got to accept an electrical shock.” And a surprising number of people said, yeah, shock me, I want to know now.
Rob Marsh: There’s a similar study where they put people, subjects into a room with pens that would shock you if you click them. Some of the pens are marked with a green sticker, they’re safe. Some of the pens are marked with a red sticker, they’re definitely going to shock you. And some of them are marked with a yellow sticker and you don’t know if they’re safe or not. And subjects are just left with the pens on the table while the experimenter is like, I’ll be back in a few minutes. And they watch and people click the yellow pens, because they can’t stand not knowing if it’s going to shock them or not. There’s no positive payoff here. All of the risk is this thing is going to shock me or it’s not and because they’ve got to know they still click. It’s amazing to me how well that works. And this is probably something that all of us as copywriters need to work on, but how do we dial up that curiosity muscle so that we can get people interested in our stuff?
Donnie Bryant: I’m glad you said that because it is a muscle. And I think We develop it over time by practice, by testing our own, you know, when you’re sending something out, test and see what seems to work. But also, you know who’s great at creating curiosity? Comedians. If you listen to comedians, how do they set up the joke? How do they bring you to the edge of the punchline? And you’ve got to know, if they started choking and didn’t finish, you wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. How do they do that? And so as we study our craft, but also I think you can study comedians and things like that, how do they generate curiosity? Because the human mind works the same across all these planes. And comedy has a lot to teach us as communicators. And so, yeah, that’s a muscle that we have to develop and we should intentionally be working on that. And I think curiosity is just great for conversation too. You know, you want to be a good comment analyst. Figure out how to keep people curious so they don’t tune out. They don’t pick up their phone and start, you know, scrolling for something. That means you’re boring them.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. You know, as you talk about this, some of the stuff that I love reading. So magicians have the same issue as comedians, right? Like you’ve got to take people through this trick. There are actually books about how do you develop the patter of a magic show. And it talks about building the ebb and flow of how you catch people’s attention. And magicians in some ways have to do it even more because while they’re talking, they’re directing your attention one way so that they can pull off the trick by doing things other ways. And so this is maybe like a high level persuasion secret. But check out some of the books about how you put together, not just how you do magic, but how you put together an act. Yeah, because that is really, you know, there’s some really high level stuff there.
Donnie Bryant: 100%. And I couldn’t agree more. I have Derren Brown on my bookshelf. Derren Brown. There’s a couple others up there. Now we spoiled it. Now everyone will have our secret advantage. But it’s a great point—comedians and magicians. I also think, great musicians also, you know, the way that they build anticipation, storytellers, all these things are we can use to build the muscle, like as you described it of how do I build and maintain curiosity across, you know, 100 200 300 500 10,000 words.
Rob Marsh: So what else should I be asking about email? What are some of the other things that we need to be doing better as writers so that we’re delivering for our clients or even on our own lists and getting people to open, to engage, possibly to purchase if whatever we have to offer them will help?
Donnie Bryant: I’ll tell you something that’s interesting, and I cover it in the book. I haven’t dialed in the science part of this, but there’s unmistakable, that’s the right word, unmistakable correlation between subject line and sales in a way that most people don’t understand or appreciate, even notice. Some of your listeners will, but I’ve seen examples where across an A, B split test of emails, where the subject line is the only variable. So the body of the email is the same. Landing page or sales page is the same. Buy page is the same. Send time is the same. The audience, big audience, so it’s statistically significant numbers. Everything is split in the middle. We don’t have any reason to think there’s a distinct difference between the two. And the subject line is the only thing being different. And one subject line almost tripled the sales. I’m talking about sales. Even though I think the open rate was a little lower. The click rate was—I can’t remember what the click rate was. It’s in the book. And the sales were essentially triple. The subject line sets the tone for everything that happens afterwards. The subject line gets people curious or gets them, I’ll just open this and see what happens, see what it is. It gets them into an empowered mood or frame of mind or puts them into a place of fear.
And fear is useful if you use it right. It’s one of the 11 secrets in the book. It’s not a secret, but one of the 11 methods. But if you put someone in a place of disempowerment, they don’t buy. They freak. And we don’t want that. And it carries through. You would think, once the open happens, people are basically in the same place. It’s not true. Also, you would think, once people click from the email to the sales page, most people are in the same place. But it’s not necessarily true. People can still be, I’m in a different frame of mind clicking through. And we can prove it from the math. When you go back and look at your own campaigns, your clients’ campaigns, you’ll see it. Where you do A-B split tests of subject lines, conversion rate, final conversion rate to order is different. So it can be different, and wildly so. And so I don’t know how to. tell you exactly how to manipulate that, or to exist through that.
But what I do advise is for you to pay attention to your tests, pay attention to how your list responds to different things, and be intentional about how you test different appeals. And watch the numbers, and you will see we always have to be testing, and always have to analyze what’s happening. Because the thing that matters in the end is how many people purchase the thing that we’re trying to sell. Or if we’re just pushing people to content, how many people click to consume the content? And the subject line absolutely impacts whatever the final action that you want them to take is. So we just have to look and try to adjust as we go. What is the optimal presentation that we can make, starting in the subject line, that makes people want to consume in the right frame of mind to take the action that will help them and help us to accomplish our goals?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, you’ve given me a lot to think about as we email our list almost daily. Obviously, we’ve got a lot of email copywriters who listen to the podcast and do the work. So there’s a lot of really good stuff here. So Donnie, let’s say somebody’s been listening, like, OK, I’ve got to get my hands on Donnie’s book. Where do they go? And where do they go to get on your list as well?
Donnie Bryant: OK. Well, the book is that if you go to subjectlinescience.com, no hyphens or anything, just subject line science. It’ll take you to Amazon where you can buy the Kindle version or a paperback.
Sometimes, depending on the day, I’m ahead of Dan Kennedy’s books, which he’s probably sold way more in life. But on Kindle on any given day, sometimes I’m hanging out with him. I could see Alex Hormozy from where I was yesterday. I could see him. I was like, in one category, I was like number 12. Anyway, that sounds braggadocious. I’m having fun and I’m enjoying this. I’m not editing that out at all.
Rob Marsh: I think that’s a good place to be. I hope whatever book I end up writing next is up there as well.
Donnie Bryant: I wrote the book in three weeks. From the first word in the Google doc to the designer making the version that’s Kindle and Amazon ready. Three weeks. You’ve got it in you, too. You’re just sitting there and committing to doing it. Actually, it was my mastermind. I said, I can write that book in, I said, two weeks. And they said, prove it. Go ahead and prove it. Oh, okay. I got two weeks now. It took me three. Sometimes we get in our own way. But the book is on Amazon, subjectlinescience.com. If you go to my website, which is donnie-bryant.com, you can sign up for my list. There’s not much on the website. It looks like a blog. It basically is a blog, but you can sign up for my email list there.
Rob Marsh: And I see you on LinkedIn quite a bit, sharing content there. I was going to ask about how you’re promoting yourself today, but I see you doing that there. And if we had more time, we could go maybe more deeply into your thoughts there. But what you shared about email, I think, has been, at least for me, a good reminder of how much more thought needs to be going into things like, where are my readers right now, belief wise? And how do we get them to where we need them to go, whether that’s in today’s email, or, you know, a month from now? Yeah, it’s a lot of good stuff to think about.
Donnie Bryant: Yeah, well, I hope I get excited and kind of go off on tangents. I hope there was there was some pull outable nuggets.
Rob Marsh: There’s definitely some gold there for me. So thanks, Donnie, for for sharing so much about your business.
Donnie Bryant: My pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Donnie Bryant. I want to emphasize just two things that we talked about through this entire interview. And I think it’s probably worth going back and really listening to how Donnie was thinking through a specific campaign, the messaging, the questions that he’s asking, because as he was reviewing that copy, as we were talking through, you could kind of see how the thinking happens. where the reader has a particular belief and we know that we need to move them to a different belief and sort of seeing him step through that. The way that Donnie broke down the behaviors that you’re looking for as a writer or as a marketer when it comes to email, I think it was a bit of a masterclass in email strategy. And if you combine what he shared with our interview a couple of weeks ago with Eman Ismail and even last week with Daniel Throssell, you are going to be in a much better position to call yourself an email strategist as you hunt for the clients who need help with their emails. But aside from thinking about the beliefs that your reader has and how you need to shift those beliefs over the course of a campaign, understanding the actual behaviors they’re taking is also important.
And I really liked that Donnie mentioned this stuff. Early on, those first one to four emails, you’re trying to get the click. It really is all about curiosity. You may not be selling a whole lot. You may not even mention a lot of detail about the program because you just want them to click to that sales page. And like Donnie said, this is assuming that the sales page is dialed in and it’s really good. Later on, if they haven’t clicked, they’re probably not going to click, certainly not based off of the curiosity. And so it requires a little bit of shift in strategy again. In fact, you might even move those non-clickers to a different campaign to see if you can get them interested in something else.
And if they did click, but they didn’t buy, they’ve obviously shown some interest, but they need something else to get them to the point where they are ready to buy, whether that’s a shift in an additional belief, whether that’s a reason to act now, any of that. And so those next several emails are all about providing that kind of information so that you are doing that. belief shifting and creating reasons for them to act now. And then finally, the last few emails are all about getting them off the couch. If they’ve clicked through the sales page more than once, you know they’re interested. They just need that reason to act now. So you’re focused on urgency and thinking through where those different behaviors happen in your sequence is an important part of strategizing the messaging for your email sequence.
What matters in email—we talked a little bit about this, the sender name and the trust that you build as a sender. There’s a famous email case study that talks about how effective the one word subject line, hey, was for the Obama campaign way back when he was running for president. Lots of people saw that and they saw the open rates that were going on with that particular email and the donations that came from that particular subject line. And they talked about how this personal message, this hey, and it was just three letters, H-E-Y, coming from Barack Obama directly. was the kind of thing that we should be doing with all of our emails. But the thing is, the magic wasn’t necessarily in the word, hey, it was the fact that the sender was Barack Obama. And for the people who signed up to be on his list, there’s a really high level of trust already. So when that subject line hit their inboxes, it felt like a personal communication from President Obama. It wasn’t necessarily the subject line itself. It was the combination of those two things.
If you try using, hey yourself, you know, in the subject line of say, an email that you’re sending, or if you saw that subject line in an email that you got, maybe it was the third email you got today from The Gap, and it just says, hey, it’s not gonna hit the same. Or if you’re getting it from Chase Bank or somewhere else, it’s not gonna be the same because you don’t have the same level of trust and belief in those senders. So sender trust matters a lot.
Think about who opens up the emails you send or whose emails that you open up without fail. That list probably includes your mom and your dad. If you’ve got a good relationship with them, you’re always going to open up what they send. It probably includes your siblings, your best friend, probably your boss. These are people that you either trust or you have a close relationship with for some reason. And it’s less about the subject line or even the content of the email. It’s just, you know, that this person that you have this relationship with is sending you something. So you’re going to open it and check it out. That’s the goal. That’s the relationship that you want to build with everyone that you’re mailing on your list. And if you’re doing it for your clients, that’s the goal that you’re helping them with. You want them to build that exact relationship with the people on their list.
Okay. This is probably enough for today. Thanks again to Donnie Bryant for joining us to talk about his business, emails, subject lines, and more. Be sure to check out his book at subjectlinescience.com. I have it on good authority that our friend Parris Lampropoulos said it was a great book, and Parris would know. He’s widely regarded as one of the most successful, maybe even the best copywriter who’s actually writing copy today. You can find Donnie also at his website, donnie-bryant.com. And like I mentioned, he’s on LinkedIn quite a bit.
That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. If you enjoyed this interview, please share it with a friend or an associate, another copywriter or content writer who won’t just enjoy it, might actually learn from it. You can always leave us a review if you’re impressed with what was shared. Wherever you listen to podcasts, we love to see them show up at Apple Podcasts.
Someone’s got to be the best. And at least a few people believe that Daniel Throssell is Australia’s best copywriter—even if only because Daniel told them he was : ). In the 394th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob brought Daniel into the studio to talk about his email strategy, world building, and how he turned a children’s book into Australia’s best selling book. And Daniel got real when it comes to what a day in his life really looks like. This is the second time, Daniel has been on the podcast (the first episode is here). Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript of today’s appearance on the show.
Stuff to check out:Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
Tough Titties by Laura Belgray
A great book (Dark Matter) by Blake Crouch
Master and Commander by Aubrey Maturin
Stop Reading the News by Rolf Dobelli
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Daniel’s Website
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: If you’re going to say you’re the best at something, eventually you’re going to have to back it up. The late Gary Halbert once sent out a newsletter titled “why I am the best copywriter alive”. Of course, any one can make a claim like that. But eventually you have to back it up… and at least when it comes to Gary, he had the clients, the sales, and the results to make a pretty strong claim on the title. Which brings me to the guy that many people call Australia’s best copywriter.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder Kira Hug and I interviewed copywriter Daniel Throssell, who has been called Australia’s best copywriter by many in the marketing world. But does he have the chops to back it up? Indeed he does. We covered a lot of ground in this interview—we went really deep on his approach to email, which in many ways he treats as if he’s writing a novel. He also shared a few of the details about his strategy for pushing several books to #1 on the best seller list, a strategy by the way that works for all kinds of products, not just books. And Daniel got real when he talked about what a typical day looks like for him. We think you’re going to like this one.
But before we get to the interview… you’ve heard me talk about the copywriter underground and what it includes. If you’ve been thinking about joining this amazing community, I want to give you two reasons to jump in now. The first is a limited time Client Emails Masterclass with copywriter Michal Eisik. Michal launched her business after completing the copywriter accelerator and think tank. What she’s built is amazing. We asked Michal if she would share her masterclass with The Underground. But because Michal actually sells this to her own email list, she asked us to limit access to just a couple of day in May. Which means if you want to get the Client Emails Masterclass for free, you’ve got to jump into The Underground now.
We also have a second bonus… it’s the strategic plan that today’s guest Daniel Throssell used to make his client’s book a best seller in Australia. You’re going to hear a little bit about it in this episode, but Daniel only scratches the surface here. Because the only other time he’s shared his strategy was with his paying subscribers and he wants to make sure to honor them by not sharing it elsewhere. However, he has made one exception. He’s sharing it for a limited time with the paying subscribers of The Copywriter Underground for just a few days in the month of May. If you want to learn more about the strategy he teases on this episode, jump into the underground today so we can share the details of how to get your hands on the whole thing with you.
There’s never been a better time to visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu to claim your free bonuses now.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Daniel.
Kira Hug: All right. Welcome, Daniel. I want to kick off with a question about the last year in business. So we can zero in on the last six months, last year, but I’m curious, what has surprised you the most about your business in particular over the last year or so?
Daniel Throssell: Wow, that question kind of hit me. That’s the most surprising. I was not ready to answer that. The last six months.
Kira Hug: I don’t think I’ve ever asked that.
Daniel Throssell: So yeah, I wasn’t even expecting that as the first question. I thought it was gonna be like, Daniel, nice to nice to finally get on the podcast with you.
So okay, last six months, what’s happened? Honestly, what has surprised me? I don’t know how relevant this is going to be to people. But I’ll just be honest—how well my monthly subscription has gone. I don’t follow a lot of news, but I’ve heard people saying, you know, bad economy, whatever. People are not spending as much. I literally have a zero news policy. I don’t watch anything. There was an eclipse, not the one you saw, Kira, recently. There was one last year and the eclipse went over Perth and I didn’t know everyone in Perth knew and I was sitting in my house and I was like, Why is everybody outside looking at the sky? The sun’s dying. Well, no, no. I was alone. There was no one there. And I was like, I think the sun’s dying. Because I’ve just been listening to some sci-fi Audible books. I was like, maybe this is like Project Hail Mary. This is really bad. What’s going on? Because the sun just went dark. It wasn’t a circle. And so that’s the only thing that has been a negative out of my no-news policy. Otherwise, I’m a happier person. But the point is, I just don’t know.
I have heard people saying the economy is no good, whatever. I have personally found that my business has done really well the last six months and again, I don’t know how relevant this is to your people but, it does make me think there’s a lot of people who get really caught up in listening to what other people say about the economy or no one’s hiring no one’s buying, people are being more conservative with their purchases or whatever.
All I know is that by keeping my head out of that and just focusing on what I’m doing each day, which is nurturing my list, working on good products and selling them as best I can, I have not seen any big hits. And supposedly, as copywriters, we should be really exposed to that sort of thing because we’re intimately connected with the selling of stuff. So if people aren’t buying stuff, they don’t need sales copy. And my market is entirely copywriters.
So that’s been the biggest takeaway for me for the last six months. I’m just not noticing whatever other people are saying about an economy being bad. If you just keep your head down and focus on what you’re doing, it seems to work out really well. Now, I don’t know if that is just going to come off as like, you’re so insensitive, because everyone’s losing their jobs. I’m just being honest. I got hit with this question out of the blue first on the podcast. So I hope that was insightful.
Rob Marsh: Fair answer. The last time that you were on the podcast, I think it was 2020, just coming into the pandemic, if I remember right. Well, I should have looked it up before we started recording, but I feel like it was spring of 2020. And so maybe in case somebody hasn’t gone back and listened to the entire back catalog or heard our previous interview with you, Daniel, maybe just break down really quickly what your business looks like and exactly what you’re doing. Those who know you are probably going to know you do a daily email. You’re widely known as the self-proclaimed Australia’s best copywriter, although there are a few people who seem to agree with you. But yeah, tell us what your business looks like.
Daniel Throssell: Yeah, so like my business model, what I’m doing.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, or just the pieces of what’s going on.
Daniel Throssell: Well, just a quick backstory kind of thing. I was a freelance copywriter for several years. I started copywriting in 2016. And so I worked for a long time freelancing first, and then I worked with an author called Scott Pape for several years. I was kind of the right hand man in his business from maybe 2016, 17-ish until he shut down his newsletter in 2020, I think. So, after 2020 is when I started building my own brand. Before that, I’d never really done anything for myself.
And so, I think you had me on shortly after that, maybe a year after I started. It might have been 2021, I think, Rob. And so, I just started building my own brand, which is just kind of teaching the things I had learned And that’s mostly what my business is now. Like I don’t do any client work anymore. I create copywriting training and sell it. So I write a daily email. I’m very inspired by Ben Settle and what he did. He was a huge influence on me. So his business model, I’ve taken a lot of that and applied it to myself. So it basically revolves around publishing a monthly newsletter, selling courses, and I sell them with a daily email to an email list. It’s a very simple business model, but it’s very fun, very effective for me.
Kira Hug: Okay, so you mentioned building your brand. And I think when you were on the show last, you were building it, you were becoming well known. And since then, you’ve become a bigger name in the copywriting space for sure. So when you look back, are there certain ingredients that you think have helped you build that brand that you’d recommend to other writers?
Daniel Throssell: Well, one of the biggest things I’ve done—and you know, it’s just a very unpopular message. I talk about it all the time, but I’ve just continued to write that email every single day. I have written something new to my email list and I did it from very early on when no one was watching. No one was paying attention. I had like 40 people on my list that had opted in for some old lead magnet and I was, it was like a dead list.
I am a big believer that you know if you are putting the work out there if you’re doing well nothing can happen if you’re not doing anything so number one is, I have consistently showed up even when I didn’t feel like it to create create stuff. And that’s, that’s probably number one, because a lot of people who are asking this question, they’re just not doing much to actually promote themselves. You know, they’ll write an email once a week, or they’ll write some content once a week, but it’s just not enough what they’re doing. It’s also got to be really good. I don’t want to say you got to spam stuff. Cause I also put my heart into making everything really good. So the foundational pillar was doing enough work to actually get noticed.
And I’ve also, it’s not really everyone’s cup of tea, but I have aggressively pursued, how should we put it? A self-aggrandizement strategy—self-promotional. And I’ve really embraced playing that character, if you will. In person, I’m not really outspoken. I’m actually very shy and conflict-averse, you know. So people who know me in real life are often shocked when they read some of the stuff I write. And frankly, I am too sometimes. But it’s like this persona that I put on. I was like, I am not interesting enough to have people talking about me on the internet. And if I want to build a really well-known brand that people talk about, I got to be more interesting than I am in real life. And so there’s this sort of persona that I’ve had which you alluded to Rob, very, um, boastful. You know, even talking about my persona is kind of awkward for me because it’s like, he’s just a different guy—very obnoxious, very cheeky, takes shots at people all the time. And what I found is there’s a lot of people in the copywriting industry who really take themselves very seriously or don’t really have a sense of humor.
Over the years, over and over again, people have gotten really wound up by me. It’s like, this guy calls himself “Australia’s best copywriter”. Who does he think he is? Whatever. And, you know, they’ll get mad about it. They’ll talk about me. And part of me finds it really funny. I think this is fun. I don’t know why you guys are so mad about it, because it’s funny to me that you’re talking about it. I’ve used that to get people talking about me. And I’ve done really, really well in a series of affiliate promotions over the years against some other copywriters, placing first on the leaderboard. In person, I probably wouldn’t talk about that. But, you know, in my emails, I’m like, I’m the best copywriter in the world sort of thing. It is tongue in cheek, but it also people like that energy, people like that obnoxiousness. And I think that’s another big thing that I’ve done.
I’ve been creating content so there’s something for people to actually look at. And I’ve also had this persona that’s had people wanting to talk about me. And I think if I had a third pillar in there, it’s that I have tried to come up with new ideas that are worth talking about. And in fact, the first thing that you guys had me on the podcast for was that parallel welcome sequence that I came up with, which is kind of a creative new way to do welcome sequences. And so I’ve come up with things like that, ideas or techniques that are actually worth talking about or interesting. And things like that have opened the door to me. It’s how I got on your podcast. Rich Sheffrin had me on Steal Our Winners to talk about it. So there are things like that.
And I guess if I could put those three things altogether, it has made it harder than not. That doesn’t even make sense. It’s made it harder for me to not grow a brand than to grow a brand. Because when you’re doing interesting things, you’re coming up with genuinely interesting ideas, you’re constantly creating new content, and you have a very interesting personality. It’s hard for people not to talk about you and be like, oh, go and check out so-and-so.
Honestly, most of the growth that I’ve had over the last, especially two years, I think, I have really dialed back on any kind of promotional strategy. I’m not even really advertising or anything aside from one little arrangement I have with one guy’s website. It’s almost all referral and word of mouth. So even this, this is the first podcast I’ve done in probably a year. I just don’t really do that sort of stuff because at this point people talk about you organically. And I think it was those three things, putting them together helped get to the point where I am now, where I sort of can step back from that a little bit and just kind of focus on the work I’m doing, the emails and the newsletters I’m publishing.
Rob Marsh: So Daniel, you mentioned you’ve modeled your business a little bit off of what Ben Settle built. I can totally see the influence. You seem to be a “nice” version of Ben. Although I will say this, in credit to Ben, I think the Ben of today is a lot nicer than the Ben of three or four years ago. He’s kind of mellowed out. I think probably because he has a kid now. You know, family. But let’s talk a little bit about world-building because obviously that’s something that Ben does. That’s something that you’ve done with your emails. When you pick up a Daniel Throssell email, you’re sort of stepping into, or maybe the better way to say this is, I’m stepping out of reality and into whatever it is that you’re building. Sometimes you’re writing question and answer type emails, which are kind of fun. You oftentimes will use, insert first name, list merge techniques to make fun of your readers, which I know sometimes doesn’t go over very well. You already talked about self-aggrandizement but all of this stuff kind of plays together to create something that’s really unique or pretty rare. There’s three or four copywriters. I can think who do it and you’re one of them.
Daniel Throssell: So you mean what’s going on with the email strategy?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, if somebody has been reading your emails and they see this world-building and they think I want to replicate it, but obviously they don’t want to copy—how do you build your own world?
Daniel Throssell: Yeah, that’s definitely a Ben thing. I think world building is sort of his concept. And I’ve been influenced by Ben for sure, but a lot of what I’m doing actually came from my work with Scott. So I mentioned that I’d worked with Scott Pape, the author, also known as the Barefoot Investor. I’ve helped him with his book launches, which I think we’re going to talk about.
One of the things he has done very, very successfully for a long time is to create his, if you want to use the terminology, because I hadn’t heard it at the time, world building, where he would use people in his life as characters in his emails and columns and stories. And one of the best pieces of advice I ever got from him, and this was probably before I’d even heard of Ben, was make characters of the people in your life. It’s what he does, and it’s what I’ve done from day one, really. I have recurring characters or themes that come up in my emails, and I want people to have “a sitcom style” email marketing. I want people to have the same experience when they’re reading my emails that they do when they’re watching an episode of Friends or something. Because there, what you have is the continuity of these characters that you know, and these settings that you know. And what’s interesting is seeing how those people interact and you get this payoff from in-jokes that were set up a long time ago. The longer back the joke was set up, the funnier it is to you. So I will have things like that.
For example, I have a recurring gag that my wife is the bad idea zombie. And that’s just a name that I came up with for her a long time ago, because she always gives me these terrible ideas. So it’s a recurring gag. And when it comes up, the longer you’ve been on my list, the more satisfying that joke is, because you get it. And someone who’s new to the list isn’t going to get it as much.
So in a way, you create this thing where the deeper people get into the world of your stories and so on, the more rewarding it is for them to see those things. And so what I have done from the beginning is to take characters and things from my life and themes and have them repeating. So my wife, my kids will always come up. I try to make sure to introduce people like my brothers and so on who are regularly in my life and make them recur with enough familiarity that people start to get to know them. So you have that sitcom effect.
So the first part of the answer, Rob, when someone’s saying, how do I do something like that is—you’re never going to have the same world as someone else because your life is unique. Your people. Your characters and so on are going to be unique to you. One of the big problems I have seen especially with students of mine in the past when I’ve looked at their emails is they took what I was doing but they wrote their characters the same way as I wrote mine and especially my projection of myself in my characters. I have a caricatured version of myself in emails and I’m not talking about the arrogant jerk guy, I’m talking about when I tell stories about my daily life. It’s meant to be a representation of me in real life. There’s a certain way i portray myself and often it’s kind of hapless and chaos is going on around me like i’m at subway ordering a sub and I ask for a tiny bit of chili sauce and the girl’s like slathering it on and I’m like too nervous to say please stop and I’m like you’re just killing my dinner here lady. It’s just this certain characterization of myself and one of the big mistakes I’ve seen when people are trying to use the same kind of storytelling is they’ll characterize themselves the same way as I characterize myself. They’ll use the same kind of humor, they’ll have the same quirks, and they’re not really making their own character. So that’s an issue that if people are going to be inspired by what I’m doing, you can take the style, but don’t copy the characters and their personalities as well. That’s one big issue.
Now, the sitcom style storytelling is kind of one half, I guess, of what I’m doing in the e-mail, Rob, because I also have this thing—and I think this one is, as far as I can tell, it’s unique to me—I’ve never seen anyone doing it, but it’s that I blend half of that with, with fiction. And so in the welcome sequence, the parallel welcome sequence, which we talked about on the first podcast, I set up this parallel universe, if you will, where it’s fictional and it’s like this island and I call it copy land. And it’s part of my world building that it’s this fictional place where there’s like giant copywriting themed monsters. And all my products are weapons in this world. And I actually have—I think I showed you Rob—I’ve got a mobile app that integrates with my business. And I got my designer to design it like Pokemon, because I flippin love Pokemon. You can probably see all the Pokemon on the wall behind me. I was like, I want this inspired by Pokemon. And so it’s meant to feel like that. And so half the time I will—not half the time, but often—I will also tell these fictional stories. I’ll take real emails I got and I was like, I was in my evil lab on Copyland and I got this request. And then suddenly sirens were blaring around the island because there’s this customer service request. And I’ll write this really tongue in cheek, fictional thing.
What is kind of strange I guess you could say about this is I have these two worlds. One’s like real life and one is fiction and I freely blend them. Sometimes I will start telling a story from real life and then I’ll cross into fiction. I will just start writing wild fiction like things explode or you know a plane crashes in my front room or a ninja comes in. I don’t know… some giant copywriting robots invade the scene. And it’s really, really fun for people. And I think, again, you can do that, you can have fiction, but make it your own style of fiction.
And the the error that people are going to make if they’re trying to copy that—I don’t mind if you want to do it, if you want to say, I want to do what Daniel does, and I want to blend fiction with my real life—but just make the fiction your own. Make the characters, make the style, everything should be unique to the way you write. And if you do that, you can build something for yourself. It was my idea to sort of do that in the first place, but there will probably be a way to integrate that with your own personality, your own world, your own storytelling style, where you could build something interesting for yourself.
It’s not for everybody because it is quite silly. And one of the things I’ve done is embrace that. Before I started doing this, like I said, copywriting was really, really serious. A lot of people were really serious about it. And I was like, I’m just going to make this really fun. I’m going to have silly stories, giant monsters, weird stuff. And some people are going to say, this is so dumb. And some people are just going to say, I love this so much. And they’re my people. And that’s kind of how I’ve looked at building that world, if you will.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I think we’ve written a couple of emails where Rob and I are fighting. And I think there was one, Rob, where I tied you up and put masking tape on you and strapped you to a chair.
Rob Marsh: When you say we’ve written them, I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a say. Let’s be honest.
Kira Hug: Right. That’s right. That’s why it’s fun. Yeah. So I definitely, I’m with you. I love the idea. And I think that we can have so much more fun. And even recently, I feel like I’ve moved away from that. And it’s just like all very truthful. It’s like, this is what happened. These are the details of my day. And it’s almost like we forget, because there’s so much beauty in the truth, but we forget that we can also pull fiction in and have more fun with it.
Question is, how could someone listening who maybe isn’t familiar with your work, integrate characters like just the basics… is that we start with our partner if we have a partner and we’re like that’s character one and then character two is a parent or uncle what are some basics?
Daniel Throssell: Well that’s how I started so for me in the beginning it was my wife and honestly with one character you can do a lot and a mistake a lot of people make will be to try and set up too many characters too soon and what’s a lot of the characters I have introduced have been, they were kind of there by chance once.
For example, there was a guy at my supermarket who worked behind the deli counter. And every time I would order some meat from him, he would just do this weird passive aggressive shtick where he’d be like, I’ll think about it. And I was like, bro, just give me my meat, man. I just don’t want this. And I wrote about it to my email list. I wrote a little story about it. And it really resonated with people. And so I’m going to write about him again. And I went there the next week. And he did something similar. And I tried something else. And I wrote about it. And he became this character called Rude Deli Guy. And I ended up riffing on him a lot. So that wasn’t planned, necessarily. Sometimes there would be just guest characters, if you will, And I’m like, oh, that worked out really well. Or I might introduce someone. And I won’t even think about them. And then like a year later, I’ll do a little callback to them. And people who saw the original email, I remember that guy. So it doesn’t have to be this big plan. And I think honestly, if you try too hard to do that, you’ll go wrong. Because what I started with was just using my wife and then occasional little scenes from my kids. And that’s like one main side character and a few little guest characters. And over the years, as people have recurred, they start to build up. But it’s not like every email has everybody. Honestly, some of these people, they come up like once every few months.
So I’m not trying too hard and I think that’s a mistake some people make is that they are trying too hard to jam all these people and all these scenes and it’s like you will understand my world. It’s like just back off and make it a lot more organic. And it’s really about just telling stories that have other people in them.
The biggest thing for me is, and one of the biggest keys is using dialogue. If you can actually show someone a scene that has two or more people talking in it, it’s so much more engaging. than just writing as yourself. And so that to me, that’s the gold standard. I don’t always have the energy to do it because I’m writing an email every day. And honestly, it’s hard to find a scene every single day that you can make super funny or interesting or that’s worth talking about. But I try and do it as much as possible because people love it. People love seeing dialogue in emails. It’s just one of my favorite things to do in email and that organically builds characters. So you don’t have to sit there and think about, what does this character do? What is their personality like? You just put dialogue in. What are they saying? Because that’s how we see, that’s how we perceive things in a sitcom. We just see what they’re saying and what they’re doing. So it’s just kind of, that’s my storytelling style, I guess. I try and put a lot of dialogue and a lot of visual storytelling.
I will show often what characters are doing. They put their hands on their hips. you know, they’re leaning on the door, whatever it is, you can see it. I learned that from a guy called Matthew Dicks. I don’t know if you know of him. He’s written the book Storyworthy. That book was a really big influence on my storytelling. I got a lot from him. And one of his things was, you always want people to be seeing the story as you’re telling it in their mind. You don’t want to have the equivalent of a movie where there’s a black screen and dialogue voiceover. Always have something they can see. And so that kind of infused itself into my email writing style. And to answer your question, Kira, that organically builds the characters. When you’re just showing what people said and what they did, it automatically builds them up without you having to tell them.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, if anybody wants to see how this works in real life, they should sign up for Daniel’s email, which we will promote at the end of the episode. So stick around because it’ll be worth getting to. But I want to shift gears here a little bit, Daniel, and talk about the thing that you and I have talked about several times offline. And you teased just a moment ago, and that is the promotion strategy that you use to get Scott’s book to the number one bestseller spot, at least for a while. And just to set it up, I know you’ve only shared it with your own list, and so you don’t talk about this. So when we said, hey, let’s come back on the podcast, I’m like, okay, but I want some of these details that you don’t talk about anywhere else. So let’s spill the tea.
Daniel Throssell: Right, so I’ll give you a bit of backstory so people have the context on what happened. So I mentioned I’d been working with Scott Pape from around 2016. The very first thing he hired me for, he was like, I’m actually launching a book and I need someone to help write the copy. And so that was the first job I did and neither of us knew at the time. So I actually came on to write a little launch funnel for this book, which went on to become the best-selling Australian book of all time. It was called The Barefoot Investor. Following on from that, a couple of years later, I helped him with the writing and editing process of a new book, and we launched that one. It also became a number one bestseller nationally, and that was called Barefoot Investor for Families. But the one that we’re talking about now was his third book. It’s called Barefoot Kids, and we launched that in 2022, I think. And that became, I think it might, I haven’t checked, but at the time it had the record for the biggest pre-launch in Australian publishing history. We sold 120,000 copies in the launch, which was bigger than anything that had ever been done in Australia.
So that’s what you were like, oh, can you come on and talk about that? And so there are a few big ideas to the launch that kind of made it work. And as a bit of backstory, in 2022, Scott actually flew me to Melbourne and we were planning the launch. And one of the things that I actually did, I actually pulled up while we were in this meeting room in the heart of Melbourne, I pulled up these notes from a course that I actually sell to my email list. which was built on how I do affiliate promotions and how I’ve been really successful at them. And so the first thing that we decided was that we were going to try and base the launch around an email list. So in your traditional book launch, you kind of have all these parts like PR and book tours and deals with bookstores, book signings, podcasts, and so on. The author is spread very, very thin. And so one of the strategic decisions we made for this launch was we are going to primarily focus it around our email list.
I mentioned that we’d done two launches before that and we hadn’t used emails to launch the book and that had been effective, but we hadn’t really gone all in on creating a promotion, especially the way that I had learned how to do on my own email list. And so that was the big thing is that an email list can really move the needle more than anything else if you do it the right way. Which kind of leads, do you have any, do you want me to just keep talking or are you going to jump in?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, keep going. And you’ve set the backstory. So let’s talk about what you did to make this happen.
Daniel Throssell: Yep. So one of our big ideas around this, I guess, was that the way that most people do their launches is backwards. And by that, I mean, they kind of write their book and they sort of, go into their shell, they don’t really say anything about it. And then they come out of the woodwork and they’re like, “hey, got a new book to buy, go buy it.” And they start, they do this long promotional period where they are trying to get people to buy for as long as possible and just keep pushing and pushing and pushing people to buy. And one thing that I had found in my experience, selling to an email list—and you’ll remember this, Rob—In 2021, there was this affiliate promotion on Black Friday that all these copywriters in the industry were doing. And it was a really, really big deal. And I ended up selling more than everyone else put together. And what I did was really weird because there was this 10-day cart open for that promotion, and everyone else promoted for 10 days, and I only promoted for four, and I made more sales than anyone else put together.
And so one thing I had been finding over the years was that with these really tight launches, you could make more sales if you did them right than really extended one week, two week, longer cart open windows. And so what we did when I went to Melbourne, I was talking to Scott, I was like, I think we should do a really short launch. And we’re going to flip it on its head instead of not much beforehand and then a long push afterwards, we decided we are going to tease for a really, really long time. We’re going to talk about the book as much as possible and say, the book’s coming, the book’s coming. And I’m talking for months and months in advance. The book is coming. It’s going to be fantastic. And then we did a very, very limited launch window. I think it was three or four days. And the entire pre-launch, all those 120,000 copies were sold in those three or four days, compared to normal book launches, which are, they’re coming in over weeks to add up to that much. And a lot of people think if I close my cart, early, I’m going to miss out on a lot of sales. I get that logic, but it just did not prove to be true because we set the Australian publishing record with one of the shortest launch windows you’ve ever seen.
My friend, Laura Belgray, when she was publishing her book, Tough Titties, and I gave her this advice, she was like, that’s completely opposite to anything the publisher has ever told me. You’re the first to ever tell me that, but she went and applied some of this stuff and she, I think she made it to the bestseller list too. So it worked really, really well to limit our cart open. As for what we, you’re probably asking like, well, what did you do in that, in that cart open window?
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Let me jump in and ask the question while you’re taking a drink of water. Daniel, what did you do during the cart open window?
Daniel Throssell: So the other thing, and I’m just going to backstory that one too, the other thing we realize is that most people don’t want to buy a book. And so the problem with most book launches is they’re selling a book. The thing is, only book buyers buy books. And it’s like, duh, that’s obvious. But think about it. Most of the people on your email list probably aren’t book readers. Like they’re not the kind of people who are like, I will buy that book and I will sit down and I will read it. There will be some, sure, but those people are going to buy no matter what you do. Most people don’t want to buy a book. And that’s the real problem you have with any book launch.
So what we did, again, this was taken from principles of email marketing. It’s like, well, how do you sell products in an affiliate launch? How had I successfully done over the years? Well, you offer bonuses with the book. And the bonus should be something that people want even more than the book and actually targeted to the list, even if the book isn’t, so that people are actually buying for the bonus. So what we did in this short launch window is we actually came up with a bunch of targeted bonuses that were each individually more valuable to the list than the price of the book. And essentially, we weren’t selling the book so much as we were selling the bonuses, because we’re like, yeah, well, a small percentage of people on this list are going to want to buy a book that is for children about money. But they all are going to want this report on how to survive the coming crash, for example. And this was a financial list. That’s something that is appealing to a lot more people, even if they don’t want the book. And so we had a few bonuses like that. And our strategy was, these are only available for this three or four day launch. They’re never going to be offered again. and if you want this stuff, you have to buy during this launch window.
And during that launch window, if you are doing this, you have to go really, really hard. You cannot just send one email or two emails. You have to push hard. And I say that, and even with Scott’s List, we actually canned a few of the emails. I think I can’t remember how many we sent. It was nowhere near what I would have done because I have sent like 5, 6, 7 emails on the last day of a promotion and I definitely would have put on my list, but his list was 500,000 people or something and he just did not want to get his account shut down. We just had like maybe four or five emails go out because we canned some that we’d written because the sales were coming in so fast. He was like, okay, I just don’t want to push it. We’ve already done really well. But you have to be aggressive about it. In this short window, you have to make sure people are opening their inbox and seeing you in there and seeing that there is a limited time offer. And by reframing it so that we weren’t actually selling the book, but we were actually selling the bonuses and doing it over a very short period of time, we ended up making more sales than anyone ever had when they were pre-launching a book with these week-long windows and bookstore interviews and signings and so on.
It was just so effective to just go back to the principles of email marketing. As copywriters, we’ve kind of known about this stuff for a long time that it works, but authors don’t really know it. They don’t really know how to apply it. So all we did really was apply good email marketing principles to the launch. There was, you know, I did say this to you guys, there was other stuff that we did that like incentivizing the average order value. And there were certain ways that we wrote the copy on the sales page that we’re pushing to that I kind of don’t want to talk about because I had people buy this info from me. So out of respect to my customers, I don’t want to give it all away. But it was honestly a large part of it was reframing to this short launch window, focusing on an email list and reframing that we’re not selling a book, we are selling these bonuses. And that turned it kind of into an internet marketing launch, if you will, which was a really unusual thing for an author to do. And yet it worked really, really well.
Kira Hug: Amazing. Are you comfortable sharing some of the numbers from your subscription business as far as like, how many people are on your list and how many people are part of your subscription and paid community or just like rough numbers, rough?
Daniel Throssell: Yeah. Okay. Well, my list, I think it’s 12,000 active subscribers at the moment for the newsletter, and for my paid newsletter, I haven’t really talked about that publicly, so I don’t really want to give numbers away. It’s in the hundreds, I will say, but I just don’t really like talking about my revenue too much in public.
Kira Hug: I ask because I think there are a lot of copywriters, freelancers, creatives who would love to use this model in their own business or transition to this model and consider a subscription similar to yours, and pulling their own ideas into it, obviously. Do you have advice for them on what it really takes to make this model work? It’s obviously not as easy as it looks on the outside where it’s just writing an email and then you get paid subscribers. What does it take?
Daniel Throssell: Yeah, so are we talking about copywriters doing this for, you know, their lists or helping their clients set it up?
Kira Hug: The reason I asked… Yeah, they could help their clients. I was thinking more for their own business. This is a great model we could all use. We’re all writers.
Daniel Throssell: Sure. Okay. So the biggest thing is you have a lot, like a lot of people are teaching copywriting. So one of the hardest things in running a model like this, I will say, I see where your question was coming from now. So I’ll say the business is very profitable for me. Okay. So it does very well. I’m not worried about anything. So I think that was the intent of your question. I just get uncomfortable sharing numbers. It’s kind of like pyramid scheming to me. It’s like, look how much money I make selling training to you showing how much money I make. It’s like, come on. So I deliberately make a thing of not selling that way. I don’t talk, I say, yes, I do well, but I don’t really want to talk about numbers. But yeah, it’s good. It’s a good model.
The biggest problem with it is it’s very, very hard to have something genuinely worth paying for month after month. And I’ve been doing this for 20 months and you know, I’m not feeling like I’m running out of ideas or anything, but I will say like, I hate my life the week before I’m publishing. Like it’s just, Oh my gosh. I’m like, why am I doing this? This sucks. I hate deadlines. And uh, no matter what I do, that happens every single month because you will have a lot of people get really, really excited about signing up for this thing. But to actually retain people is really, really hard. Because number one, they get bored of stuff, like they stop opening it. We’ve all bought stuff that we don’t open. And with a one-off course, you have enough of a dopamine hit that you can get them to buy it and not think about the fact that, wait, I have 17 other courses I haven’t finished. But when you have the same product, a newsletter that you are selling every month, It’s very, very hard to get away with that.
I want my people to open the thing, but you cannot rely on someone just continuing to buy it month after month and not use it. They will get sick of it and they’ll be like, yeah, I’m not using this, I’m going to cancel. It’s really, really hard to come up with ideas. What I’d say is first, you have to be really confident in the value you are offering to people. You need to be really, really good at whatever it is you’re teaching so that you have ideas that other people can’t sell. And so that’s one of the big value props that I try make in my marketing. It’s like, these are ideas that you’re not going to find taught everywhere else because copywriting is such a competitive market because everyone you’re competing against is a copywriter. They’re supposed to know how to sell this stuff. And so a lot of people are jaded. They’re like, oh, well, I can learn this. It’s just the fundamentals that you got from some old copywriting books. And so I have to work really, really hard on saying, no, this is stuff that I’ve come up with that you’re not going to find elsewhere. So I would say that’s the biggest challenge. You need to be like, do I have enough ideas that I can teach them and that they will be useful to my audience?
I would also say it really, really helps to know who that audience is and have it really niched down. Because even me, I like to say that I’m only selling to copywriters, but I have a huge amount of business owners who are who are on the list and they have different challenges to copywriters. And frankly, they are better customers.
Copywriters are really, really flaky. I mean, okay, I just realized I can rant and you guys have just been nodding your heads because you saw the copywriter… It’s like, copywriters will be like, oh, yes, I found a YouTube video. I’m a copywriter now. I watched this video yesterday. How to make six figures in a year. I’m a copywriter. And then three months later, that guy’s like, copywriting sucks. I’m going on to the next thing.
If you are selling to florists or bakers or something, he’s not saying I’m going to be a florist today. And then three months later, being a florist sucks. I’m going to sell my shop. They can’t. They have to be whatever they are. They’re too invested. Copywriters, nope. They’re not invested. So I have people who’ll subscribe and they’re like, this is the greatest thing ever. I love you. You’ve made me, I just closed my first client. I’m like, well, sweet. You know, I’ve changed your life. And then three months later, they’re like, I’m not a copywriter anymore. I’ve moved on to something else.
Dude! What? There’s a lot of that. And you are both so familiar with that. So, you know, as much as I would like to focus on the copywriters, they’re also a big bunch of flakes with all love to copywriters out there. they’re very flaky and so you kind of want to appeal to the business owners.
But then that makes things harder because if I only sold the copywriters and I think you, Rob and Kira, have an advantage over me in that regard, you are even more niched about like we are for copywriters and so you can just talk about getting clients, for example. I can’t publish a newsletter on getting clients because that would alienate half my subscriber base. They get nothing out of that because they’re not looking for copywriting clients. And so the reason I bring this up is if you’re going to do something like this, you need to have a really good idea of who your product is going to be for so that you know you are delivering things that are useful to them. And so me, I would love to say it’s for copywriters because then I could talk about getting clients, but I can’t.
I know that everything I write has to be related to something that you could use if you’re a business owner or if you’re a copywriter. And that makes it a lot harder. So those are two things related to coming up with ideas. So you have to be really comfortable with coming up with enough ideas and you also have to know who you’re going to be writing for.
And then I would say you have to actually have that subscriber base of a free list that you are going to start selling into a newsletter. And I know like, it does seem really appealing to have this kind of thing. And it’s good to have a recurring newsletter. But I spent three years building up that list to the point where I felt comfortable in actually having those ideas to share, committing to doing it once a month, and being able to get enough people in through the free list to sell to. And if you If you haven’t first built the discipline of mailing a list regularly and building that relationship with them, you’re not going to be able to take the next step and start actually selling something.
So I’d say if you’re looking to do this, you need to make sure like, do I already have a list of, I’d say a few thousand at least you want to have, because I probably had around 10,000 on my list when I launched Adventures in Copyland. I’m not sure. But you want to have at least a few thousand that you are regularly in contact with. They’re buying your other stuff. They’re buying one-off courses and offers from you so you know that they are going to buy from you before you take the next step, which is to get them to commit to something recurring. Because that’s the hardest thing to do, recurring things.
I have a policy that I got from Ben Settle, which is once they cancel, they can’t come back. And it’s intense. And even as a customer, I used to hate it on bans like that. I feel trapped in that. It was only when I started running my own that I realized why you do it. Number one, cancellation is a hassle for me. I don’t like it. Number two, I’m selling really, really good stuff like the book launch model. I thought the whole book launch strategy, which probably could have been a several hundred dollar product, and I sold it for $50 in an issue of a newsletter. I was very honest. I said, I just don’t want people coming in for one month, paying me $50 to learn something so valuable. And then canceling and being like, I’ll see if next month is for me. You know, I want people who are committed, who are like, yes, I trust you, you’re going to deliver because to me, it’s a two way deal. You need to trust me to deliver and then I need to not have to worry that you are just going to keep cancelling every month so I can just stop worrying about retention and so on. I say, I know I’ve got the subscriber base. I’m going to focus all my energy on coming up with really good ideas. And to me, people who buy, cancel, buy, cancel, buy, cancel were violating that trust and they didn’t allow me to focus on just coming up with ideas because they have to keep worrying, oh, I’m going to lose my entire subscriber base. To me, it’s kind of a trust relationship. It goes both ways, and that’s why we have the policy there.
Rob Marsh: A lot of what you’re saying rings a bell, feels familiar. Obviously, we sell to copywriters, so we deal with a lot of that. And one of the things that we advise a lot of copywriters to do is once they start seeing, hey, I’m actually pretty good at this thing, maybe I will start talking about some of these skills and helping other people do it, is to not focus on other copywriters, but talk to your niche, who don’t know anything about copywriting or know very little about it. They know very little about marketing. You’re so far ahead and it becomes so easy to provide value to your niche that just is the same old, same old if you’re talking to other copywriters.
Daniel Throssell: I completely agree. I think that’s what I was getting at too with, if you’re trying to do this to sell to copywriters, it’s so, so hard. If you’re teaching copywriting to people who’ve never heard copywriting, you can be like, write to one reader and they’re like, oh my gosh, wow, this is so cool. So it’s just playing the game on easy mode. I would completely agree with you there. I think it’s just a very advanced thing to do. You have to know that you can deliver. You can deliver on your deadlines, that you can hit deadlines, that you can keep coming up with ideas. And to me, that’s even more important than any numerical things like, do I have enough people on my list, blah, blah. It’s like, am I the kind of person who can thrive under this model? Because I will tell you, before I started this newsletter in September 2022, I didn’t have any subscription stuff. I made all my revenue through launches and new products. And frankly, I did really, really well for myself. I’ve made a lot of money doing that. And yeah, it’s nice to have the recurring revenue, but it’s also an added layer of stress that you don’t have if you’re just coming up with individual products. And there are some people in the industry, they just launch stuff, they just sell new products. And honestly, that has more of a new shiny object appeal to it than a recurring newsletter.
And people are way more likely, I actually lamented about this the other day in my emails, like the total cost of my newsletter until now has been $1,000. And I have taught so much good stuff, it blows my mind and yet, Like people are still like, oh, I don’t want to commit to a $50 a month thing. And yet they will. buy a $1,000 course like, oh yeah, sure, no worries. They’ve probably bought five of them over the last two years. And it’s like, I can’t make people see that. So it’s very, I will say like, you know, the grass can look greener on the other side. Yeah, it’s nice to have the model I have and it works for me, but you need to be the kind of person who enjoys that, who can deal with that. And if not, if you don’t like the deadlines, if you don’t like the stress, you know, maybe just stick into a launch model or offering services or productized services that can actually be a way to do it because it takes a kind of person more than any business metric. You have to be the kind of person who is able to show up every month and say, I’m going to deliver something fantastic, no matter what. And frankly, people have to be honest with themselves. A lot of people don’t have that in them, I don’t think. And you have to be, you have to know the kind of person that you are. And so I had written a daily email every day for, you know, three years running when I launched that thing. So I kind of had that idea that I’m the kind of person who can do this.
Rob Marsh: Or they have it in them for six months or nine months, but not for years and years and years, which is probably why most newsletters end after I think 12 or 14 issues is kind of the standard.
Kira Hug: Well, and unfortunately or fortunately, I mean, there’s deadlines with subscriptions, but there’s deadlines with services. If you’re a copywriter working with a client, you’re going to still have deadlines.
Daniel Throssell: I’m not disagreeing with you, Kira.
Kira Hug: The deadline will always exist. We just have to adapt to the deadline.
Daniel Throssell: It’s true. It’s true. I cannot think of anything I hate more in life than client work. It was just the worst thing I’ve ever done. I just wanted to be out of that as soon as I could. It was my goal from day one. I don’t want to work with clients anymore.
Kira Hug: So to thrive under this model, you are focused, right? You have this consistency that we can see from the outside looking in that’s allowed you to be successful in this model and to grow your business. I’m curious about your day and how you structure parts of your day. I also know you have kids. How old are your kids?
Daniel Throssell: Seven, four, and two. And they’re running around outside this office right now. I can hear them.
Kira Hug: I love hearing them. I also have three kids. So yes, you’re in it and you’re doing all this and you have this focus enough to bring in new creative ideas, which is not easy. Being creative is not easy. So how do you structure day to day so that you’re able to execute at this high level?
Daniel Throssell: The important thing for me is understanding what my goals are at the moment. And so my view is that everything, everything is just going to be for a season. Like that’s just one of my philosophies. Everything’s just going to be for a season. And there’s going to be times when my kids, when I’m going to have a newborn, and not a lot is getting done in that season. And that’s okay. That doesn’t mean the rest of my life is going to be like that, but it means for that season, it is going to be. And so that’s, that’s a big realization. It’s been a big realization for me over the last few years to not judge the stage that I’m in now by any stage that’s come before and compare my output to, to whatever I’m doing. So a few years ago with just one kid, it was very easy to find a lot of time to do stuff. And you know, with one kid, you outnumber the kid two to one, parents are like, great, you know, even with like, you can handle it, you can split up, but when you have two or three, it’s just not like that. And so what I have had to do, as of late, is I mentioned, I had pulled back on a lot of you know, promotional stuff and doing things like this is the first podcast I’ve done in ages.
I realized my main goals right now are getting that email done every day and getting that newsletter done every month. If I do those two things, I will at least maintain, if not grow my business. Frankly, like I told you, it’s been growing, it’s been doing very well. I’m going to have my best year ever this year, I think. But I know that I’ll at least maintain what I’ve got if I do those things. And so I organize my day around like that’s the goal. I don’t have to come up, there’s other courses I wanna make, there are advertising strategies I wanna pursue, there’s other things I want to do, but they are not the main goal right now. So if I get them done fantastic, the truth is I haven’t made any progress on them for the last six months, that’s also okay, because I’ve hit the main goals. And the main goals are, do the email, and do the newsletter.
So the days don’t really look like super productive, honestly. Like yesterday, I’ll be honest with you, yesterday, what did I do? Like in the morning, you know, I wake up, I’ll do some Bible study for like an hour and then I’ll do a workout. Yesterday’s workout took way too long. It was like two and a half hours.
Rob Marsh: Every workout takes way too long.
Daniel Throssell: It’s just the way they are doing this program. My brother’s a personal trainer. He has me on this special program at the moment. It’s just taking so long. I hate it. But yeah, so I finished the workout at like, 10:30 or something like that and then I get a call from Scotty who’s like, oh, can we can we talk about my column for this week? And so I’m on there for the next hour. I was talking to him and so I was like 11:30 a.m. And I haven’t done anything at all for my business yet. And by the way, I have my youngest kid there because I’m looking after him because Haley’s gone to work so then I have to feed him lunch and put into bed and now it’s midday. And so I’m having my own lunch, and I still haven’t done anything for my business. And so I’m like, Hmm, what am I going to write an email about? And I came up with an idea. And I wrote it in about half an hour. And then I sat there for about an hour and a half trying to work out how I was going to end that email. And literally I did nothing else. I was just like, I don’t like this. And I’m just, I will often write at my coffee table, and I’m just like lying there on the floor, like looking up at the roof and my wife walks past me. She probably thinks I just don’t do any work. I think she knows she can see the thinking look on my face, but I’m just literally lying there on the floor. It’s like, what am I going to do? And then I get distracted. Then I go think about it again. And so by about three o’clock, I think I finished. I finished that email and I loaded it up. So that was yesterday’s email. That was the first goal achieved. And then I’m like, okay, I’m going to start working on an affiliate promotion that I’m doing. And so I opened up Google Docs, and I started writing some notes for that for about half an hour. And then I was like, yeah, I should probably just go and call it a day now. And so that was the output of my day yesterday.
I share that with you, because that was a very real day. I’d love to be like, oh, I wake up and do a cold shower, and then I do the 10-mile run. But it doesn’t look like that often. Because at about 4 PM, I went, and I was playing with my kids. And then I went and cooked dinner, and I watched football. That was the ultra productive day of an entrepreneur there yesterday.
But what was important to me is like, I am always going to get that email done. I’m going to get it done. I know that’s not negotiable. Because I published the monthly newsletter on the 15th, today is the 19th. So I kind of give myself five days to just be in holiday mode and not think about it because it’s so miserable. The week or two leading up to it just sucks so bad, like the publishing deadline and everything. So I’m just like, yes, I’m on holiday. So that wasn’t part of my day yesterday, but if we were closer to a deadline, that also would have been part of the day and I would have got that done. So it’s not that it looks super productive or anything. It’s just, I know the things I have to do and I make sure I do them. And if other things happen, that’s fantastic. They probably won’t. That’s lamentable, but that’s okay. And one day my kids will be older. I won’t be working out for two and a half hours that day, whatever. One day this season will be over and I maybe will get more done. And that’s how I console myself. I don’t lose hope. I’m like, okay, this is my current season. This is what I can do. And so I’m very pragmatic about it in that regard, I think.
Rob Marsh: I’ve been on your list a long time, so I’ve seen the breadth of what you write, the different things you bring to your emails, and even some of the courses that you create. I’m curious, aside from just living life, where else do you get inspiration? Are there particular books that you love reading? And by the way, a long time ago now, you recommended Blake Crouch on some of your emails. I immediately went through all of his books. His books are so good. They’re just good enough to reread or re-listen to. But where else do you find any inspiration?
Daniel Throssell: For emails, honestly, I try number one is daily life. And for the reasons I said earlier, dialogue is my favorite thing to have in an email. So I will try and get a moment from my life because that’s just the gold standard. If I can’t get that, the next place I’m going is my inbox and just riffing on things people have sent me from readers or other things I’ve read from other copywriters, what they’re doing. Because to me, dialogue, my stories is number one.
Number two thing people love is just clashes of opinions and controversy and just opinions on opinions. That’s why I watch a YouTube video for five minutes and then you spend half an hour reading the comments. You know, just this long argument between two guys who just resorted to calling each other idiots. And it’s like, you’re fascinated by it. You just can’t stop reading. So I will try and just do opinion or commentary on anything I’ve seen that someone else has said, because people find that fascinating.
And if I can’t do that, those are the days that I’m sitting there lying on the floor next to my coffee table for two hours. Like, what am I going to write about? I don’t know. Sometimes I just have to make it up on those days where I’m like, you saw the email that had 15,000 O’s in it. Like that was just sometimes things like that happen.
Rob Marsh: That was, that was Daniel fell asleep at his laptop and somebody hit send. Yeah.
Daniel Throssell: It’s really just trying to react to things that I see online. And I don’t like doing that because I don’t like spending time on the internet. I hate the internet. I don’t like watching news. I don’t have social media. And frankly, I don’t like being in my inbox either. But sometimes it’s a necessary evil to come up with. When you’re creating daily content, you can’t really escape it, unfortunately. I just don’t think I’m getting inspiration for emails from books or anything because Most of the books I’m reading are fiction. And copywriters, I don’t know, there’s not many ideas I get out of fiction that I can write about. And one of my pet hates with people in the copywriting industry is that, especially newer people trying to come up with content, it’s like, three marketing lessons I got from watching this or reading this. It’s like, what a miserable way to live your life that you’re just enjoying fiction or a work of art and you’re like, what’s the marketing lesson in this? I just, I rebel again.
Rob Marsh: I’m going to be the email promoting this episode is going to be titled marking lessons from listening to this podcast.
Kira Hug: Yeah, unfortunately, my brain is also wired that way, where I’m like, oh, there’s a marketing lesson. And it just goes there. And it’s hard to shut up.
Daniel Throssell: Yeah, I get it. Because you’re actually a copywriter. And you think in terms of that. And that’s okay. But I mean, people who approach fiction thinking they don’t approach it as a work of fiction to enjoy, they approach it as like, yeah, what marketing lesson am I going to get out of this? And I’m just like, that’s true. There’s no joy in your life when you live like that. So I will. Yeah. I listened to audio books. I love the Sherlock Holmes audio books. I love the Aubrey Maturin series. I just like fiction and it was a shift I made a few years ago to stop reading so much self-development and start reading a bit more fiction. And it’s just enjoyable. It’s nicer than listening to self-development stuff.
Kira Hug: All right, I have three quick questions like a real lightning round.
Daniel Throssell: Oh, I’m nervous. I feel like I butchered some of the questions.
Rob Marsh: There’s no such thing as a lightning round with us, Daniel, just keep that in mind.
Kira Hug: I can’t even remember all three. And if you don’t answer one, that’s fine. So first one, when was the last day—you said you don’t read the news typically, but like—was there a certain date where you cut it off? And you’re going to make this change and go from this to this?
Daniel Throssell: I read a book called Stop Reading the News by Rolf Dobelli. I think it was 2021 that I read that book, maybe 2022. Just fantastic book. Honestly, I recommend that book so much. Stop Reading the News by Rolf Dobelli. You’re like, oh yeah, well, I know what it’s going to say. Sure. But it’s the arguments for it. So whenever I read that book, I was like, I’m not reading news anymore. And I use an app called Freedom. It’s blocked on my devices. I can’t. I try and load a new site, it won’t open.
Kira Hug: Okay all right so should we tell you when the next eclipse is happening? Should we look that up for you?
Daniel Throssell: That’s the one hole in my system is the other copywriters I’m subscribed to and they talk about stuff and I’m like dang it stop. You know Sean McIntyre you had him on recently. He’s a good friend of mine. I actually unsubscribed from his investing thing. I was like, dude, I’m sorry. I love you. It’s a great newsletter, but I just don’t want to know. My whole investing philosophy is about passive investing. I invest. I buy the index fund. I don’t look at it. And then Sean’s sending me this weekly email like, gold is going up 3%. You better buy. It’s like, dude, I love you and your writing is fantastic, but I have to unsubscribe. And he’s like, I understand that. So yeah, I even just try and pursue active ignorance about things that I don’t consider important to my life. So if there is an eclipse coming over Perth, yes, feel free to shoot me an email and let me know. That way I won’t freak out.
Kira Hug: Not on social media, but we’ll email you. Okay, second question is, how do you feel about AI in a sentence or two?
Rob Marsh: This is not a lightning round question with Daniel.
Kira Hug: You have to answer in a sentence or two. Those are the constraints. You cannot go past that.
Daniel Throssell: Overrated. I don’t know how I can answer that in a sentence or two. I want to share this one thought, like everyone talks about AI, like, give it five years. It’s gonna get so good. One day it will do everything we do. And I just want to give a perspective. It may not even be right, but no one’s even thought of it. What if that’s not true? What if like people say in 1960 we’re gonna have hover cars just you wait look we’ve gone from horse and cart to petrol engines like by 2024 we’re gonna have flying cars just watch it’s inevitable. Maybe it’s not, maybe it actually has a ceiling. And I just want to put that out there. I’m not going to argue for it. It may not be true, but everyone is just so hooked on the idea that AI will get better and better and better. What if it doesn’t? What if it actually has an inherent limit to how creative it can be? And it’s currently, in which case it’s not that good.
Kira Hug: That’s fair. And we don’t argue in the lightning round. We can’t argue.
Rob Marsh: I’m not going to argue, but I’m going to throw out my two or three sentences, which I think the limit is actually going to be energy use and cost of equipment, because at some point the VC money dries up. And if it doesn’t pay for itself, AI doesn’t work anymore. So a lot of the tools that we use are going to get more expensive. A lot of them are just going to go away. And I think that’s where we’ll start to find the limits. But there might be some intelligence limits, too.
Kira Hug: All right.
Daniel Throssell: There are severe intelligence limits on that thing.
Kira Hug: Moving on with the lightning round. Sorry. Third question. Final lightning round question. Is there someone that you’d like to have a battle with online? They don’t have to be a copywriter online.
Rob Marsh: I’m pretty sure Daniel put me in the hospital in an email one time.
Kira Hug: Someone else you haven’t had a battle with that you would like that you’ve been eyeing and that you’re like, oh, I might battle that person at some point, but I’m not quite ready.
Daniel Throssell: I am not going to say anything on the record for that.
Kira Hug: Give us a hint. Give us one hint.
Daniel Throssell: Aanyone who’s been on my email knows very well, I have been in several. There are a couple. There’s more than one when when we stop recording, I will regale you with tales that I would just not want on public record.
Rob Marsh: You do take on groups like copywriting on Reddit, the Reddit subgroup copywriting. That’s one of your enemies.
Daniel Throssell: It was. Yeah. A while ago, that was one of my targets. I don’t like people who don’t really have their audience’s best interests at heart. And there are some in the industry, they’re selling stuff. They’ll literally say, which of these products will you buy? And then they’ll make the product that people will buy. There’s no question of, is this really going to be the best thing for you? Is this really going to help you? It’s just about, can I make money? And I really rail against that kind of stuff. And I feel a lot of my hatred for AI stuff stems from that, from people who’ve tried to use AI as a way to make money off copywriters rather than helping them. And my anti-AI stance is that when you are relying too much on it, it’s actually really cool. I use AI all the time, but just not for copywriting. But if you’re relying on that to paper over the skill gaps that you have as a copywriter, you’re not going to progress. And the reason we talked about this in this episode, like if you want to have a business something like mine, you have to be the kind of person who can come up with creative and valuable fresh ideas worth paying for. AI will not help you do that. And so I just really feel like it’s not good for people and a lot of people selling AI prompts and so on. It’s going to get outdated. It’s not valuable. It’s just a cash grab. And I just really have an issue with that. So that’s probably a serious answer to your question, Kira.
Kira Hug: We like to end on a serious note. That’s perfect. All right. Where can listeners go if they want to connect with you? Obviously not LinkedIn. Tried to connect with you there. Not there.
Daniel Throssell: So, yeah, LinkedIn’s blocked on my computer. I set up the profile to link to my homepage and then I blocked LinkedIn. So, I can’t even go and change that now. So, I don’t see anything there. I only have one point of entry into my world and one alone and that is persuasivepage.com. That’s my website and my email list is the only place I create anything. So, it’s very simple for people to find me and very simple for me to manage. I’m just not on all the socials or anything.
Rob Marsh: Okay. Well, thanks Daniel for opening up a bit about the launch plan as well as, you know, what you’re doing with emails. There’s a lot of stuff here to consider and think about. So we really appreciate it.
That’s the end of our interview with Daniel Throssell.
I want to add just a couple of thoughts to the discussion that we were sharing. While we were talking, Daniel mentioned the Black Friday promotion where he doubled the sales of all of the other participants put together. on that promotion. He did an incredible job. We were part of that promotion and saw what he did firsthand. And when it comes to promotions that work and turning ideas on their head to find new ways to do things, Daniel’s really good. He’s worth listening to and paying attention to.
Also, don’t miss the fact that Daniel has written and sent an email to his list every single day for more than four years. That includes when he was on vacation, sick days, he doesn’t miss. In fact, I think he’s missed one in something like seven years. There’s a lesson in that. You can call yourself the best, but it’s stuff like showing up every single day that actually proves that you’re the best. And like Daniel said, nothing happens if you’re not doing anything. I’m encouraging you to take a lesson from that. How can you show up, maybe not every single day, although that’s definitely not a bad idea, but how can you show up consistently more than once a week over and over to prove that you’re the best at what you do? It’s worth thinking about. Actually, do more than think. Once you know what you want to do, start showing up. There’s a little bit more to it than just showing up because most of what you have to do has to be good. Now, not everything’s going to be a hit. You’re going to make a few mistakes. You’re going to fail, especially as you’re getting started. And as Seth Godin likes to say, half of all of your posts will be below average. But by continually doing good work consistently, you’ll eventually build the audience that you need to support your work.
One other piece of Daniel’s approach that I think is worth thinking about is the fact that Daniel’s online character is a bit brash. He mentioned how he’s self-aggrandizing, and that’s part of his approach to every email and to the character that he’s building. And while that kind of character may not ring true for you, there’s something about that kind of self-assurance that attracts attention, and sometimes it attracts criticism. But even critical attention helps him build his brand. Like I said, this isn’t going to fit most people, so think of it as showing up larger than life. What can you emphasize or use to play big? If you know the answer to that, then you may be on your way to being the best at what you do. Whether that’s copywriting or marketing or some particular deliverable, you want to be the best.
I want to thank Daniel again for joining us to talk about his business and the characters that he’s building, his launch strategy. Be sure to jump on Daniel’s email list at persuasivepage.com. That’s the only place that you can connect with him. His approach to writing emails is unique, and it’s probably worth paying attention to if you write emails for clients or if you write emails for your own list.
And don’t forget, if you want to get your hands on the full strategy that he used to help Scott Pape get three different books to number one on the bestseller list, and remember, this strategy can be used to sell a lot more than books, you need to be a member of The Copywriter Underground, which you can join at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. We’ll be sharing details with members there shortly.
That’s the end of this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this interview, please share it with a friend or an associate or anyone else who might enjoy it or learn from it. And you can always leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. We’d love to see your reviews at Apple Podcasts, where it really does make a difference.
What is the difference between showing up as a copywriter and showing up as a strategist? In the 393rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Eman Ismail about how she changed her title and the work she does to reflect a new and more satisfying role of “email strategist”. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: When we coach the copywriters inside the copywriter think tank or in our group coaching groups—which by the way are open now and if you’re interested you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/coach—sorry didn’t really mean to take that tangent… but when we coach copywriters one idea that comes up a lot is the need to not just show up as a writer… an order taker… or as a vendor, but rather you need to be a problem solver. And often that means taking on the role of a strategist in addition to the work you do as a writer. But how do you do that? It’s one thing to say, I’m a strategist and quite another to actually do the work that strategy requires.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed email strategist—not copywriter—Eman Ismail. Eman share why she rejects the title of copywriter today and what it really means to show up as a strategist. This might not be the kind of thing a beginner can do, but if you’ve got some experience creating copy and serving your clients, you may be picking up the expertise you need to show up as a strategist for your clients. Be sure to stick around to hear how Eman does it.
Now before we get to the interview… you’ve heard me talk about The Copywriter Underground and what it includes. If you’ve been thinking about joining this amazing community, I want to give you two reasons to jump in now. The first is a limited time Client Emails Masterclass with copywriter Michal Eisik. Michal launched her business after completing the copywriter accelerator and think tank. What she’s built is amazing. We asked Michal if she would share her masterclass with The Underground. But because Michal actually sells this to her own email list, she asked us to limit access to just a couple of day in May. Which means if you want to get the Client Emails Masterclass for free, you’ve got to jump into The Underground now.
We also have a second bonus… it’s the strategic plan that copywriter Daniel Throssell used to make his client’s book a best seller in Australia. Daniel has only shared this plan one time… to subscribers who paid to recieve his newsletter. It’s not currently available anywhere. Even new subscribers to his newsletter don’t have access. But he offered to give this strategy—completely free of charge—to members of The Copywriter Undergound. And like the Client Emails Masterclass, this member exclusive is only available for one week during the month of May—and only for members of The Underground.
If you were to purchase these bonuses sepearately, you’d pay more than what you pay to join The Underground for a single month. Plus you get all the other training, coaching, and community stuff that comes along with your membership in The Underground. There’s never been a better time to visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu to claim your free bonuses now.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Eman.
Kira Hug: Let’s start with recent moves you’ve made to level up in your business. Because when you were here last, we talked about your origin story in your business and how you were leveling up at the time. And what I love about you and just watching you and, and, um, hearing from you is you’re like constantly leveling up in big ways. And so why don’t you just describe maybe the most recent changes that have helped you get to that next level?
Eman Ismail: You know, I’m going to say really thinking of myself as a strategist and positioning myself as a strategist. So I have always loved the copywriting aspect. Obviously, I am an email strategist and copywriter, so I do a lot of emails. But, you know, it took me a while to get out of the idea of, only I can do this. You know, this is why I can’t hire anyone else, because only I can do it, how my clients want me to do it. It took me a while to realize this, but finally realized that’s not true. There are plenty of amazing email copywriters in the world who can do what I do and who can support me and help me help my clients.
So I’ve I’ve actually leaned into the strategy role even more and got um help and hired writers to help me with the execution so um that means I get to do more of what I enjoy which is the like the putting the pieces of the puzzle together and figuring out what the sequence needs um and then I get to hand over my email strategy to someone I work with or someone that I hire and let them know okay this is what we’re going to do and then they do it and it’s just it’s amazing it’s amazing because well yeah I get to focus on what I enjoy most and then also I get to hire another copywriter which is fun and I enjoy doing that and then I get to come back in and copy chief at the end which is something I really enjoy doing as well.
Rob Marsh: Eman, let’s go deeper on that idea of being a strategist. Could you walk us through a sample project, or maybe even make one up as you go along? We often talk about how, as copywriters, we need to take more of a strategy role. I think with the emergence of AI, that’s becoming a really common theme to hear in the copywriting world. But a lot of people may think, okay, but how does that differ from just being a copywriter? So walk us through a project and how you see it, how you approach the strategy, the kinds of things that you’re thinking about as you put the pieces of the puzzle together, as you said, so that we can see what that really means.
Eman Ismail: Yes. Before I do that, can I tell you what I used to do and then tell you what I do now? Because I think the difference is just so stark. So what I used to do was, my clients would come to me and say, I need five emails on you know whatever it is that we’re trying to sell. And I would say okay, great five emails cost x amount and then I would do that and they’d pay that and then they tell me exactly what they want me to write in each email and I remember at one point a client giving me what they wanted me to write and thinking this is terrible. But I was so early on in my career as a copywriter that I didn’t have the confidence to say to them, this is terrible. We probably shouldn’t do this.
But I realized that was really to my own detriment because not having the confidence to tell the client this isn’t a good idea meant that. They put the emails out there. They were happy with my work, but then they put emails out there and then, it didn’t get the great results that we wanted. And that was no shock to me because I knew the strategy wasn’t great.
And I realized that actually what my clients need from me is they need me to be a leader. They need me to be able to give them kind of constructive criticism and let them know when something’s not working. That’s what they pay me for. That’s what they prefer. So I ended up just finding a bit of confidence somewhere in me and telling clients that the strategy piece was no longer an option like they they cannot come to me and say oh we don’t want you to work on the strategy we just want to pay you for the copywriting which was what was happening a lot of the time like in their minds they’d separate this the strategy and the copy so that they could pay me less basically and so I stopped I stopped doing that I told them that’s not an option anymore in order to work with me so that I can help you get the results that we want I need to do the strategy and I need to do the copy and um initially well that meant my prices went up and so I did lose some clients. But I gained better clients which was very exciting. So that was the change.
What happens now is well my clients come to me and they know that they’re getting the strategy and the copy and if anything My clients probably value the strategy side more because they can convince themselves that they can go and write a sequence. And they do. Before they’ve hired me, I know that all my clients have tried writing their own sequences and they’ve probably done okay. Like I’m working with a client right now who can write pretty well. I was reading over some of the emails that she’d written for a previous launch and the emails are pretty good. But she has no idea why she’s done what and you know, the strategy piece is really what’s missing for her. And so I know that my clients really value that the idea of hiring an expert to figure it out to do all the like the brain work. And so that’s, that’s what I do now.
And I’ve been able to charge so much more because of it and also get really high quality clients who appreciate the work that goes into the strategy side of the email. Now, I mean, I always start off with audience research. So I have two different packages. Generally, all my packages come with customer surveys. So at the very least, the client will get customer surveys. I’ll also pitch them on a bigger research project with customers, with voice of customer interviews, so we can do like the whole thing. And so we either way, we always start off with research. And then my job then is to is to either go through the research myself, if we’re doing surveys, if we’ve done interviews, I hire someone else to come in and do all the interviews. So they actually present to me the findings, which is amazing. So all I then need to do is read through their, their report, their messaging report and understand what’s going on with all the, with all the voice of customer data. And then I need to map out how we get the subscriber from point A to Z in this case.
So I want to start off at the end. I usually start at the end and figure out, well, okay, what’s the goal and then work backwards. So what do we need to say? in order for the subscriber to say yes to this offer. And so I really kind of break that down email by email. And, um, and then it becomes really simple and it’s about hitting those specific points. So I know in order for the subscriber to say yes to this, uh, you know, they have the objection of, well, right now I’m working with, um, a money mindset coach. And I know that a lot of the, one of the objections that came up quite a bit was, well, I don’t know if I want to join a group coaching program. I think I would prefer one-to-one coaching. And so of course, one of the emails is going to be, is going to be about that. So another one is investment as always. People are worried about spending their money. In this case it’s a 15k mastermind so you know they are concerned. So we want a whole email based on money objections and why it’s worth them spending their money on this mastermind. And so I feel like that’s the easy part. The easy part is figuring out what goes into the email sequence. I think the hardest part is probably, what do we not need to put in there? Because you can just put so much in there. So we also need to figure out like, okay, this objection came up, but it didn’t come up enough for us to put it into the email sequence. Or this pain came up, but actually, this pain, if we talk about this, will attract the wrong ideal, ideal client. We don’t want to attract those people who are having that pain. So let’s remove that and not even think about that, discuss that. We don’t want to bring that to people’s attention, you know? So often when you have the research, I feel like the research is the biggest part of this. It’s really about piecing it together and figuring out what needs to go inside. That part I feel is the easier part. The harder part is like cutting it and figuring out what doesn’t need to be in there.
Kira Hug: Maybe we can get even more granular. When you’re sitting down to map out the strategy, what else is happening? Are you using any AI tools? Are you just really starting from scratch each time? Are you using previous templates where you’re like, OK, typically this is the flow of a seven email sequence, but I’m going to also make sure that it works for this sequence, but I have a starting point. And then what does the communication with the client look like? Are you getting any type of approval on strategy or are you just like, this is a strategy we’re moving forward. You won’t see it until the end.
Eman Ismail: Oh, good question. So, in terms of the second question I used to have a part in my process where I would present my strategy outline to the client and get their approval. But then I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore. Because honestly, first of all, I work with clients who are very, very busy, they’re generally kind of mid six figure, seven figure plus clients, like they don’t have time for extra steps that maybe aren’t totally necessary. And I feel like when I did do that, it was often because I was a little worried, my confidence wasn’t where it is now. And so I just I wanted that like extra reassurance that the client was really happy about it. I don’t feel like the clients felt like they needed that extra step. And so I actually decided to cut that step. So for the past few years, I have not been getting approval from my clients at the strategy outline part.
And instead, what I do is, I write up the sequence, and then I will send them a loom video walk through and actually just kind of defend my decisions and explain my decisions so that they really understand why I decided to do what. And I generally already know what their objections are going to be. That’s the great thing about being a copywriter, right? We already can see the objections. So my goal in that kind of handover is to really handle the objections that I know they’re going to have. I had that with a client recently. I knew which part that she would feel iffy about, so I walked her through it, explained why we did it, and then also gave her a couple of other options for, you know, if she was truly against it. And then we have a round of revision, so anything that needs editing, which usually isn’t a lot, gets edited.
Again, one round of revision, because I found three rounds for me was just, it was unnecessary, and gave clients just, a lot of extra time to tinker around with the document and they don’t need all that extra time. Let’s just do it one time. I tell them you have a week to go through it. Give me all your edits in one go and then I will go back, do those edits and we are done. We’re done. And so that’s how it works now and it works really well and I think it works so well because my briefing process is so kind of nailed down. And because that part goes so well, I can really have confidence in the end result. I think if my briefing process wasn’t the way that it is, I wouldn’t be able to do that. Because I’d be worried that I’m doing the wrong thing, but I’m not worried because I know what my client needs.
And then also, again, if there’s something that they might not like or they might disagree with, I know to handle that before it even becomes a conversation. Um, and then they feel really kind of, I guess, eased by the fact that I already know what they’re thinking. I already know what they’re worrying about. And so, and I’ve already considered that and they know I’ve already considered that. So they can kind of trust me with that moving forward. Um, my, I, the kind of clients I’m working with now, they just need somebody to just take, just take it over, just do it. Um, and you know, they don’t want to be, They don’t be doing extra steps, getting on extra calls, doing all that stuff if they really don’t need to be. And then your other question, which was. How do I map out? Oh yeah, do I have any templates or anything like that? Do I use anything?
Kira Hug: Yeah, like when you sit down, are you starting from scratch? Are you starting with a template? Are you using different tools to figure it out?
Eman Ismail: Yes. OK, so I’m actually really big on not using detailed templates, because I really, truly believe that sequences need to be customized for the client. So when people are selling, welcome sequence templates and, you know, fill in the blanks kind of stuff. I passionately, I’m just like, I don’t love it. But what I do have is an idea of what needs to go in a welcome sequence, for example. And so I know that there are going to be emails and well, I know that the first email is always going to be the lead magnet delivery, whatever that is. And then I know there’s going to be an intro email or like, you know, meet the founder kind of email.
I know that there’s going to be an almost like a values or philosophy kind of email. Sometimes that will just go in the intro email, but sometimes if it’s super strong, like with one of the clients that I currently work with, it needs its own email because it’s just that important. And then there are going to be the value emails where we’re trying to prove the client’s expertise and authority. So I have an idea of what’s going to go in it but I’m really make sure that I don’t I don’t limit myself to that and there’s always the there’s always flexibility in there and that if something needs to be changed or something needs to be added or if it doesn’t need anything if it doesn’t need a certain thing then I’ll take it away.
So again I go into it with a with an idea of what’s going to go into it. But again, I do have an open mind in terms of, um, in terms of AI, I don’t use AI too much. I’m still figuring out how to use it. I’m really using it for, um, things like subject lines or, um, I work on a few sales pages, um, every now and then. So things like, um, you know, hero headlines or crossheads, that kind of thing. So I’m still figuring out how to bring AI into the process. I really need to listen to your podcast on it. So I’m not using it as much as I would like to. But I do have one template that actually Kirsty Fanton showed me in her BrainCamp course. and essentially it’s just an outline.
It’s an outline of the information that I need going into a project. So it’s literally just like fill this in for each client and it goes into all like there’s like general notes at the top then all the usual stuff that you can imagine, panes, you know, a big idea or promise, objections, hesitations, sticky VOC. It’s just like a blank template that I know, okay, fill this in. And the great thing about this is that Kirsty Fanton actually told me that and told us that she gives this document to her clients. And I was a little bit unsure about doing that at first, because it’s very, very much a note kind of format. It’s just my notes. And I was a bit worried about it not being, you know, perfect. But I did start giving clients access to it. One of the clients I worked with two years ago just did a VOC interview for me because I’ve got a new website coming out. So we had VOC interviews for that. And she mentioned in the interview that that doc, that note stock that had my ideas and stuff in it, she still uses it two years later. That was amazing to me. So those are the kinds of things I use to go into creating a sequence.
Rob Marsh: So while we’re still talking about this, I have two questions. One, when you pulled back on the strategy and stopped getting client buy-in early on, was there any pushback at all, or did clients even notice, or was it smooth?
Eman Ismail: No, it was totally smooth because the majority of clients that I work with, they’ve never worked with an email strategist before. They’ve likely hired a copywriter, probably a generalist who does kind of a bit of everything for them. But I’m usually the first person there they’re hiring for that email specifically. So they come into it with a very open mind and kind of very much like just guide me, tell me what needs to be done, tell me what your process is. And they are totally, totally fine with that. So no pushback.
Rob Marsh: That’s what I would expect, too. I think a lot of us would think, oh, wait, I need to have this step or this part of my process. And yet when you implement it, when you make it better, when you make it work for however you want to run your business, clients don’t even notice that. So a lot of times I think internally we think we need to do X, Y and Z. And really, maybe we only need X and Z or Z and not all of the other stuff. So, yeah, I love just being able to simplify the way that we work with our clients.
Eman Ismail: Let me just add to that because the one part that I really thought I would get pushback on that I was a little bit worried about going into was the revision cycle. So for my VIP week, which I don’t offer any revisions for the VIP week. And that’s a $6,000 VIP week. And then for generally like custom projects, I only offer one round of revision. And we all know that the general kind of consensus in the creative world is that you will get multiple rounds of revision. So I’ve really expected there to be some pushback there or to be some frustration or annoyance, but there hasn’t been. And I do think one of the reasons for that is probably the fact that well, I explain the process in detail before they hire me, they know what’s coming. And so I’m very clear about the fact that they get one round of revision. So it’s not a surprise to them. They know that before they choose to hire me. And I’ve had absolutely no pushback on that, which has been amazing. And I was totally expecting to. So that’s one thing that did surprise me. And yeah, I feel like I’m an advocate for not necessarily having three rounds of revisions. I actually think that it’s, it’s just, What is the law? Is it Parkinson’s law, the time one? Well, you know, the task that you have expands for the amount of time that you give it. I feel like that’s the same for revision cycles. Like the revision cycle will take as long as you give the client, you know, the opportunity to tinker around in the document for. If you tell them like you’ve got one round of revision, they’ll get serious and they’ll make sure the revisions are done for that one round.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s 100% right. There’s a psychological thing that’s happening here is when you tell the client that their job is to do revisions, they go looking for things to revise. And if you tell them to do it two or three times, yeah, I mean, it just makes sense that of course, they’re going to keep changing a document.
Kira Hug: Exactly. Well, they invested in this project, right? And they’re investing a lot of money. So they’re like, well, if I hired you, and you’re the strategist, and you’re telling me to critique this, I better do it. And I better do it well. And I better spend a lot of time on it because I put $6,000 into this. So yes.
Eman Ismail: Yeah exactly and then there’s also the fact that I give guidance around, I know a lot of corporates do this, but just giving guidance around like the type of feedback to give and I actually tell them to limit their feedback to like tone of voice issues or things like inaccurate messaging or things that are just wrong because actually, and I say this to them, you know, a lot of, a lot of strategy has gone into this. A lot of work has gone into this from the VOC, um, research to just the persuasion and sales and marketing. And so, you know, everything that I’ve done is super intentional.
And so we don’t want to be messing around with things and playing around with things, but I do want to make sure that everything I’ve said is accurate, that it sounds like you and that you are happy for this to have your name on it and go out into the world.
Rob Marsh: Okay, my other follow up question here is when you first mentioned the switch from just writing emails to adding strategy, your pricing changed. Could you give us like a before and after look at what prices look like, even if it’s just estimates?
Email Ismail: It was 2020 that I became an email strategist. Going into it, I was charging anything between kind of $75 an email to $100 an email. And when I decided to niche down truly into email and become a strategist and give clients this whole package, strategy and copy, I was then charging between $400 to $450 per email. Yeah, big jump. Big jump.
Kira Hug: Before we move away from strategy, although I actually do have a couple more questions, can we just break it down and give someone listening maybe two Maybe three, maybe it’s just two actionable concrete steps they could take today, tomorrow, if they want to move into this strategy role. I mean, you’ve already given a lot of advice around leading your client, but what else could they do that’s maybe a baby step?
Eman Ismail: Sign up to as many newsletters as possible and study the emails that are coming through to your inbox. Like I for fun have an entirely separate email address that’s just dedicated to me signing up to newsletters because I just enjoy reading newsletters and reading emails and following sequences and following launches and really kind of reverse engineering what’s going on and seeing what maybe the trends are, what’s working, what you like, what you don’t like So that’s the first thing, study emails and really love them. Maybe the second thing I’m going to say is join an email course. There are quite a few different ones from like Laura Belgray to Samar Owais to Joanna Wiebe over at Copyhackers. And I mean, all of them are slightly different and serve different purposes, but I think all of them help you get into the mindset of strategizing email and not just writing emails.
Rob Marsh: As you think about that, so again, this is a conversation that I think we’ve had in a few places where we talk about hand copying or studying. What is the process that you go through as you study them? What are you looking for so that you’re learning from them? Because I imagine that just signing up for a bunch of emails, at least half of the emails that are going to show up or the sequences that you’re in there, there’s not a lot of strategy. And so figuring out which emails to learn from versus which ones not. So talk through that thought process as well.
Email Ismail: OK, the first one is: sign up to as many email copywriters or email strategists as you can. So I have a lot of email copywriters on my list who tell me that they’re on my list because they are watching how I do email which is amazing because I’m on like Tarzan Kay‘s email list for the same reason, I’m on Laura Belgray’s email for this email list for the same reason, Samar Owais’, even Joe Wiebe’s, I mean Gosh, Jo’s emails is just so clever and she’s always going against the grain as well. So that’s something really interesting about Jo’s email strategy. And I also like to join the list of people who are making lots of money because, or who say they’re making lots of money because you know, you never really know, but people who say they’re making lots of money because they seem to be doing something right. So I’ll sign up to their emails as well and see what’s happening there.
Kira Hug: So how have you changed your marketing since you moved into strategist role? You know, you need different clients now, clients who can pay more, clients who are looking for a strategist. What does that look like for you?
Eman Ismail: I love this question because there are so many different parts to it. The first thing was I actually changed what I call myself, like my title. I used to refer to myself as a copywriter. And then initially I was struggling between email copywriter and email conversion copywriter. And then I realized, well, actually, I want to be known as an email strategist and copywriter. So the strategist always comes first. It’s always email strategist and copywriter. And I always correct people if they refer to me as an email copywriter. I would prefer, I would rather they refer to me as an email strategist and drop the copywriter than just email copywriter. And so that’s the first thing. And I made sure that, you know, people are referring to me. using that title.
So I’m always instructing people on how to introduce me. And even now I still call myself an email strategist and copywriter, but you know, the copywriter might go at some point. Um, that’s what I’ve been kind of thinking recently. I think a big change, one big change was my website. I had a website rebranded completely. I had a completely new website done. and that changed the game for me. Really investing in my website and investing it in like my brand photos and that kind of thing really changed the game because you go on my website and you immediately know that this person is going to be kind of expensive. This is not, this is not a cheap copywriter. So, um, the great thing about my website is that some people will go on it and then leave because they’ll know that this, this budget isn’t going to work for me. And I’m actually going to be, again, I’m in the middle of upgrading my website. Again, I’ve got an entirely new website coming because the website that I have now, I wrote all the copy for it and created it when I just become an email strategist and copywriter. So I was really guessing at you know, what my clients need, what they think, what they want. Um, I think something really subtle is, you know, back then I thought my clients would hire me because they didn’t have time to write their own emails because I knew that they do, they do write their own emails and often they enjoy writing their own emails, like their weekly newsletter, that kind of thing. But it’s not that at all. Now that I’ve been working with these clients for four years, I know that it’s not about time at all. They just really value hiring an expert and they want to pay more for an expert to do it and to do it properly.
So it has nothing to do with time or lack of time or anything like that. So really like subtle changes in messaging that are actually really important. Those kinds of things have changed and are going to change. Again I just upgraded my brand photos again which I think you know, a lot of people say you don’t need a website to, um, to be a copyright or do what you’re doing and to get clients, which I think is the case for some people. I will say that someone who has made the really good point on threads recently that I don’t think applies to people who look like me. I don’t think I get afforded the—I am black cause you can’t see me. I’m a black Muslim woman. I wear a headscarf—I don’t think that applies to me. I have to work extra hard to gain people’s trust in terms of my authority and expertise. So I have to have a website. And when I upgraded the website and put, you know, just investment and thought and a lot of time into the copy, the messaging, the design, the photos, the, the types of clients who are coming to me completely changed. completely changed. And so often the budget isn’t much of a conversation. It’s really, are we the right fit to work together?
Rob Marsh: And as you made the switch to strategist, you also mentioned that you focus on the strategy and sometimes hire a writer or work with another writer to do the copy. So I’m curious, what do you look for in that person in order to deliver on your strategy for your client?
Eman Ismail: Yes. Okay, so the people that I work with now are people who have their own niches so I work with one sales page copywriter and she just she just does sales pages and she’s amazing at them and I work with someone else who just does email and she’s great at email and so knowing that they have their own specialisms and their own interests and that’s what they spend the majority of their time doing um I love that because I really value a good niche and I know the power of having a niche and specializing, so that’s the first thing.
The second thing is being open to feedback, which is something I guess you don’t really know until you’ve worked with a person, but being open to feedback and not being offended by feedback. I recently, just a few days ago, was working with one of these copywriters and she tried something in an email and I said oh actually I’ve tried that before and it didn’t work out too well and here’s why it doesn’t work too well and she just responded so graciously and she said you know thanks so much for sharing your experience that’s really great to know I’ve never done this before so it’s good to know what your experience of this is and I’m gonna get on changing that and it was just so refreshing and it was so nice and it was just she was open to feedback and just really positive and also they all deliver on time which is great and if they don’t they communicate it they communicate that something’s going on and so I think more than anything else it’s having people who are good communicators who care as much as I do about um about the clients and delivering great work to clients and of course they’ve got to be good copywriters as well.
Kira Hug: And how do you structure it with them currently? Are they employees? Are they contractors and they actually have their other clients in their own business? What does that look like right now?
Eman Ismail: Yes. So, actually the arrangement that we’ve had so far has kind of been just like, whenever I have work available, I’ll get in touch with them and their contractors, they have their own businesses and then we’ll, we’ll, you know, see if the timelines kind of work out. I’m actually, relaunching as a micro agency in the next couple of months, which is why my website is being redone. And so it’s going to be the same, the same, I think, process. They’re still going to be contractors. They still got their own businesses, but they’re going to be a bigger part of my business. They’re going to be on my website. They’re going to be part of the team kind of thing. And so right now, yeah that’s how it works.
When I have projects available I’ll get in touch with them. I know who to get in touch with for what and yeah we’ve been chatting more recently about bringing them onto my team but as contractors I think when it’s if I ever do get employees or hire employees I think they’ll have to be someone people in my country because the laws are so strict. So I feel like I’m restricted in that sense. And having them be contractors just keeps everything flexible. And also, I really value freedom and flexibility. And so I love the fact that I can give them a project and I don’t have to, like, I’m not on their backs. They know when it’s due. If they have any questions, they know they can always get in touch with me and contact me. We’re always in contact via Boxer. We’re chatting, you know, in Asana as well. And they work when it suits them. And I don’t tell them what to do. I just give them the assignment and they do it. I like that freedom. And also, almost a bit of, it’s less responsibility for me, right? Than to have an employee. It works for all of us.
Kira Hug: Yeah. And I mean, if you have these team members, um, you must obviously have enough work to give them to have this team and shift into this phase confidently with the micro agency. Um, and a lot of writers, as you know, have struggled over the last year, year and a half. And so what are you doing to, track these clients beyond what you’ve shared about new brand, updating websites, like kind of leveling up that way? What are the marketing tactics that you focus on to keep the clients rolling in?
Eman Ismail: Yeah, great question. And actually, I’ve been really open about the fact that last year was a bit of a crazy year for me. And in the first four months of 2023, I hit six figures in the first four months. And then within another two months, I had surpassed my 2022 revenue. And then the middle of Q3 in 2023 was just like a ghost town. It was crazy. And then things picked up again in Q4, which is fantastic. but definitely yes to those ups and down periods. I think something that’s really helped me is to expect them instead of hope they don’t happen and just prepare for them. So you know in that time I was still able to hire the people that I was hiring, I was still able to pay the small team that I do have, I was still able to pay myself, nothing changed in that sense and so I was prepared for the dips rather than it just come in and then me panicking and having to fire everyone and you know not having a great a very great time um but in terms of your question which i forgot okay how do i get clients um i do a lot of i’ll do a lot of marketing i market myself every single day.
So my main two social media platforms that I use are Instagram and LinkedIn. And it’s interesting because I used to think that LinkedIn got me a lot of clients, but when I actually started tracking it, I realized LinkedIn gets me a lot of leads, but those leads don’t often convert to clients. So, when I tracked Instagram… What do you think that is? I think that they’re just, they’re not my ideal clients. These people who are interested in working with me, but we’re not a great fit. Whereas on Instagram, we have the coaches, membership makers, the course creators, we are a really great fit. And they’ll also be attracted to my style of marketing and the way that I talk and you know, the, the posts that I’m posting. But I did find that what LinkedIn is great for and is, which is why I’m still kind of trying on LinkedIn. It’s great at getting me speaker opportunities. I get a lot of speaking opportunities there and speaking opportunities are a great way for me to to get clients. So that’s that’s another thing.
So first thing is Instagram, LinkedIn, social media, speaking opportunities, whether it’s guesting on podcasts or doing, you know, workshops in masterminds and communities and that kind of thing. I’ve realized I need to be picky about the places that I go in and do workshops in. I find it often very hard to say no, and I realized recently, still working on this because I’m a people pleaser, as a mother of two kids who’s running a business, it’s not helpful for me to say yes to doing workshops in communities that are not going to be fruitful for my business, even if I just want to be nice to the host, because, you know, I don’t want to say no, because I have a problem saying no. But now I’m getting really strict with myself. And I’m asking a lot more questions about, well, who’s inside? Who’s it for? Thinking about, you know, is it going to really serve me?
I have I have a query in my inbox waiting for me to respond to right now. And it’s someone who hosts the community for e-commerce brands. And while I used to work with a lot of e-commerce businesses, I don’t really anymore. So it’s also just protecting my time and saying yes to the right speaking opportunities. And then also my podcast. So I have a podcast now, which is another big change since the last time we talked. It’s called Mistakes that Made Me and I interview extraordinary business owners and ask them to share their biggest business mistake. It just interviewed Kira on it. And what’s interesting, I think about my podcasting strategy is that the people who listen to my podcast are generally people who are going to buy my digital products. They’re generally not going to hire me as a client. They’re not going to become my client. They’re not going to hire me because they want me to do their emails. My ideal clients are my guests. So I use my podcast to basically speak to my ideal clients and to get to know them and create relationships with my ideal clients.
And so a lot of the people who I’ve invited onto my podcast, or as we didn’t have a relationship before, after speaking to them for an hour and a half and getting what is usually like the most amazing, you know, hour and a half coaching session for me, we, you know, we build a relationship and they’re my ideal client. And then, you know, the goal is for them to know who I am and what I do. And then, you know, hopefully the relationship builds from there. And even if they don’t hire me, they know who I am. And so when their friends who are usually just like them are talking about needing someone to help with their emails, hopefully I’m the first person they think of. And this actually just happened as well. I interviewed D.L. Sharon on season one, which was, I think it was two years ago now. And a friend of hers, who’s super successful, sent me a message and said, hey, I’m looking for someone to do my emails. D.L. told me that you do email. And I was amazed that she remembered from two years ago. But I think that’s the power of those conversations. So my podcast is helpful for that as well.
Rob Marsh: So you’ve shared a lot about where you’re showing up and some of the activities you’re doing. Talk a little bit about the messaging that you’re sharing there so that you are connecting with the audience that you’re sharing stuff with. What are you talking about?
Eman Ismail: Good question. And you know, I actually just got a brand voice and messaging guide done to get this down on paper, the things that I am talking about, my specific points of views. So here are a few things. The first thing is the fact that I’m an email expert. I’m not a generalist. My love, passion and expertise is email strategy and copy. And so even if I’m working on other projects behind the scenes, which I often am, like I do a lot of sales pages for my clients, I’m never talking about sales pages on my socials or anywhere else. You won’t ever hear me talk about that because I don’t want people to think of me as a sales page copywriter. That’s just a secret add on service that I’ll do for clients who need it. I want people to think of me as an email expert. So that’s the first thing. And I often talk about the benefit of you know, hiring an email expert specifically. I talk about my prices that working with me as an investment, but it’s a worthy investment. I share a lot of social proof. I like to call it organic social proof as well. So often in conversations with clients, you know, the little comments that they’ll make in the Google doc, any like really positive comments or emails when they, you just finished reading the sequence and they’re like, Oh my gosh, I loved it. That was amazing. Take a lot of screenshots of, of that. So it feels super natural and exciting. So there’s that. I talk a lot about how important customer experience is to me, because honestly, I think so much of what we do is about just creating a great customer experience and making sure our clients are happy. I’ve hired a lot of service providers over the past year and I feel like a lot of service providers just get it really wrong. I think a lot of people don’t understand that. 50% of what we do is the work we deliver and the other 50% is the experience we deliver and how we make our clients feel. I talk a lot about the fact that I am conversion focused so a lot of my clients will come to me and say I’m looking for a conversion copywriter I need someone who can help me convert people and that’s perfect because I don’t help people grow their email lists that’s not what I do I help them convert existing their existing audience.
I talk a lot about the fact that we’re research driven as well. And so we were never winging it or just making up your sequence or your strategy. We’re using the information that we get from customer interviews and surveys and polls and review mind and that kind of thing. And that’s something actually that a lot of my clients say was a reason to work with me. A lot of people are surprised, like happily surprised in the sales core because they’ve hired copywriters before but they’ve never had anyone do any research. And I think for the people that do research, like when us as copywriters do research, it’s just totally normal to us. It’s just what we do. But I don’t think we realize how many people don’t do that. And so it’s still a really big deal for clients. So that’s something that wins over a lot of the people that I talk to. And then finally, actually, I am now officially a ConvertKit paid partner. I’m in a partnership with ConvertKit. And so I think that’s helped with some of my authority building. I love ConvertKit’s brand. So when they approached me to work with them as an influencer, basically, they send me a brief every month. And then I create three reels for them on Instagram. That’s been really exciting. I’ve really enjoyed working with them, building that relationship with them. But then also, it’s great for me, for people to see ConvertKit working with me.
Kira Hug: You mentioned service providers you’ve worked with don’t necessarily nail the experience and they get it wrong. Can you just speak more specifically to what are many of us, not all of us, getting wrong that could be easily corrected?
Eman Ismail: Oh, OK. I mean, where to start? I recently hired someone to do something for me. I’m not going to say what or out the person, but I recently hired them to do something for me. And then they sent an off-boarding report, right? Only I didn’t know that they sent an off-boarding report because I never received it. It didn’t, it didn’t land in my inbox. I did not get this off-boarding report. So as far as I was concerned, they kind of did the project and then I just kind of didn’t hear from them. And I was like, are we, are we done? Is this finished? Like, are we good to, you know, say bye? I don’t, what’s happening? And she got immediately defensive, really started stressing out. I have so many other clients to work with. I’m really busy with other projects. I can’t answer these questions for you. If you want me to answer these questions, you’re going to need to hire me for a strategy session. And so.
Rob Marsh: What?
Eman Ismail: Yeah. And so I think that’s an extreme example. But I think the thing here is to Assume the best of your clients, of the people that you’re working with, because had she thought like, oh, like Eman should know this already. Like she should have got the report in her inbox. Maybe something happened. Maybe she didn’t see it. Maybe it went into her spam. Not even, you know, maybe it didn’t deliver, but maybe it went into spam. Maybe she didn’t see it. Let me just check and just make sure that everything’s OK. Instead of stressing out and thinking that I’m a terrible client, I’m being annoying, I’m being frustrating, I’m asking for more than I’m paying for. And that relationship didn’t end very well. But it turned out she thought she’d sent the report. I mean she still maintains she sent it—that’s great—but I didn’t receive it, so that’s unhelpful to me right.
I think a good example of this is the time that one of my clients didn’t show up for a call and just kind of completely ghosted me. And so instead of me being frustrated and bear in mind, I was heavily pregnant at the time. So the last thing I wanted to do was to sit around waiting for a client who didn’t turn up on a call. But instead of being frustrated and annoyed, you just assume the best of the person and you think, you know what, maybe they forgot. It happens to all of us. Maybe something happened.
So I actually sent her an email and said, hey, you missed our call. I just wanted to check if everything was OK. And she replied the next day and said she’d fainted and she’d been rushed to hospital. So imagine if I’d gone in there with a bad attitude or I was frustrated, which I think a lot of us do and feel, um, and we, we communicate, imagine if I’d gone into it like that, instead of just, you know, giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe something happened, you know, just being a bit more patient with our clients. I think another example is poor communication.
I hired someone recently that actually things turned out really well with this person. I absolutely loved working with them in the end. I was really happy with what they delivered, but initially there was an issue where there was like, there was a communication issue. And then she sent me an email talking about how if I didn’t do X, she just wanted to remind me that this was all non-refundable. And it was, I was like, first of all, nothing is non refundable because I can go to like, I can go to my bank now and get the money back. So let’s not go there. Second of all, that you really escalated this it didn’t even need to go there you went so far beyond the point that we needed to go to so it’s really about um communication just communication and um I think things your communication being in proportion and in line with what the situation is a little bit yeah exactly because then what happened was I saw the word non-refundable and was not very pleased so the next few emails that we had the exchanges that we had didn’t go didn’t go very well um and so you know all of that could have been avoided by her just not using not just just not saying that like we didn’t need to talk about refunds like I was excited about working with you keep me excited about working with you like I’m I’m excited to get started um let’s let’s just be mindful of like what we say to clients and when we say to them as well is very important. So I used to think that some of this customer service stuff was common sense, honestly, but I realized it’s really not. And it’s something that you need to, I think, learn. It’s a skill. And I think I’m just really passionate and realized I always have been because I did. I’ve worked a lot in retail as a teen in my early 20s. I’m just passionate about customer service and creating a great customer experience. And so I think that’s been really great and being able to move that into my business with me.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so as we wrap up or get towards the end, I’m wondering, aside from the new website, the agency, what else are you working on in your business, Eman, that is new for 2024, maybe 2025?
Eman Ismail: I’m actually making a bit of a shift. I have, I sell digital products and digital courses. I have a 12 week self-study DIY course called Like a Boss that takes you from, or to take a freelancer to boss, business owner, someone who’s like, you know, lead in, you’re leading your clients, leading your projects. You really become that leader and strategist that your client needs. Uh, but since I started the podcast, I found that my audience isn’t just copywriters anymore. And so it was kind of weird to go on the podcast and say, okay, this thing is available, but it’s only for the copywriters. And if you’re interested in working with me, you’re not a copywriter, sorry, I can’t help you. So I’m working on shifting all of my digital products so that they’re not just for copywriters, but that they’re for service providers more generally. And so I have the big job of kind of going through my existing, my existing digital products, which is mostly just, it’s like a boss. I have designer VIP day, which is a, like a prerecorded two hour masterclass. I’m actually going to shift that as well. So I’m going to change the name probably to Design Your VIP Week and make it available to not just copywriters, make it available to all service providers. And so I think what’s happened is as I’ve just really got to know who I’m serving, who I enjoy serving as well, and really what makes the most sense for the way my business is going, I’m kind of going back and kind of course correcting and just making a few changes here and there. It’s great that, you know, the content is already there. I’ve already created these things. Now I just kind of need to refine them and make them available to a wider set of people. All right.
Kira Hug: I’m going to shift into a kind of lightning round as much as we can do lightning round. I want to fit in a handful of questions before we wrap and also be mindful of the time. So first is, you know, Instagram, you’re using Instagram. How are you using it? What’s working right now on Instagram?
Eman Ismail: Stories. Stories are working. I use stories a lot to show a lot of the behind the scenes of my business. But I think it’s really easy to fall into behind the scenes. the behind the scenes kind of stuff. And so it’s important to mix that great behind the scenes content and interesting stuff that people can’t really find anywhere else about you. But you also need to mix it with what you do and how to hire you and how to buy this and how to buy that you know. So definitely stories. I think that’s where the relationship building happens.
Kira Hug: Great. And what are you struggling with right now. I mean there’s so many things going well that you’ve shared with us but like at this level what is a struggle.
Eman Ismail: What am I struggling with? I think probably systems and processes. So I’ve always been really proud of the fact that my systems and processes have been good and I think work really well. But every time you kind of change one thing in the business, your systems and processes have to change with it. So I think just really understanding that a business and certain systems and processes in a business is never something that is truly done it’s always evolving and you kind of really need to be open to the idea of constantly evolving things and changing things you know um so as I as I work towards becoming a micro-agency um all my systems and processes are changing all over again so I’m working really hard on on getting that back into into place. I think I feel like I have it down for when it’s just me, just me in the business. But now it’s like, OK, how do I make sure that I’m making this really easy and smooth for the other copywriters that I’m working with and also my assistant as well? How can I make this as easy as possible and almost as templated as possible for everyone involved?
Kira Hug: A couple more. We talked about VIP week briefly. We’ve talked about VIP days, VIP intensives on this show many times, but is there something new that you’re doing or something different that you think it’s worth us considering in our own businesses?
Email Ismail: I mean, I don’t know if this is helpful, but I think one thing I’m good at is doing the prep before the VIP week. So I make sure that everything is prepped before the VIP week. And that includes customer surveys as well. My clients get customer surveys in their VIP weeks, which I think is something that a lot of people don’t provide because you just don’t have enough time to do it all. And so what I do is I make sure that the research aspect has actually finished before we do the briefing call. So by the time we get on the briefing call, I have the briefing questionnaire. I have all the survey responses. And now I have a week to go through it and write it. So that prep part, knowing that that doesn’t have to be part of the actual VIP week was just game changing.
Kira Hug: And my last one, you have some great partnerships. You mentioned ConvertKit, HubSpot, right? You’re part of the HubSpot podcast network. You have other partnerships as well. Like, what do you think? What is the question here? How could we look at partnerships in a way that you have to level up in our businesses? How can we approach it or think differently, think bigger about partnerships?
Eman Ismail: Yeah, I think a lot of the time people look to like brand deals and partnerships and are looking for the instant kind of monetary return. And I think often it’s so much more than that. I think if you can think about it in a kind of like long term, I like ConvertKit pay me, HubSpot doesn’t pay me, ConvertKit pay me, but you know it’s not like I don’t know what Charli D’Amelio is being paid you know, but it’s really a long term, a long game right so I’m not just thinking about the money and the invoicing that the invoicing that’s happening I’m thinking about well how does this help me in the long term like the authority, the authority that I get to borrow from ConvertKit, the way that it helps me look like even more of an email expert, a trusted email expert, I feel like that’s even more valuable than the money they pay me. It’s so much more valuable than the money they pay me and it’s much more, you know, it’s much more long lasting as well.
And also, again, it’s not just about what they’re paying me now, it’s also about building those relationships. You know, I spoke to ConvertKit about potentially sponsoring my podcast and they were like, you know, we don’t, we don’t sponsor podcasts right now. Um, we’re not doing that right now. I was like, okay, great. And then they sent me another email that was like, well, actually, can we just ask your rates? And so it just goes to show that again, they’ve not, they’re not sponsoring my podcast. They’ve not said they’re going to sponsor my podcast just to be clear, but it just goes to show that like building those relationships and sowing the seeds and, and getting in the right rooms with the right people. Um, all that stuff really, really matters. It’s really important. Even like with the HubSpot podcast network, They don’t pay me, but one of the things we have is a Slack group for all the creators. Amy Porterfield’s team were in there up until recently. They just left the Hopes Power Podcast Network, but they were in there up until recently. Like Jay Clouse and like other amazing creators that I usually would never get the opportunity to talk to or be around or learn from are in there asking questions and answering questions. And it’s just so, so valuable. It’s more valuable than being paid, you know? So don’t just think about how much they pay me? Or will they pay me? How much money will I get? Some things are just worth so much more than money.
Rob Marsh: That feels like a pretty good place to stop. Even if people want to connect with you, see the new website when it comes out, where should they go?
Eman Ismail: You can find me at imancopico.com. You can find me on Instagram at imancopico. Or head over to my podcast Mistakes That Made Me. I have interviewed Keira, I have interviewed Laura Belgrave, Tarzan Kay, Belinda Weaver, Amy Posner, Kirstie Phampton, a whole bunch of amazing copywriters who are all sharing their biggest business mistake.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. Thank you.
Kira Hug: Thank you.
Eman Ismail: Thank you.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Iman Ismail. I want to add just a little bit more color to some of the ideas that we talked about. We’ve already gone pretty long with Iman, so I’m not going to add a ton here, but I want to go back to the idea of positioning yourself as a strategist. That’s what I mentioned in the intro. It’s a big part of what we talked about and what exactly strategy is. So as you think about strategy, it’s not the same thing as tactics. It’s not trying to think through how do we get somebody to respond? Really, strategy is about thinking about the goals, the end points, the things that we want to happen. And so as Iman was sharing, before she moved into strategy, she would be asked for five emails, rely on the client to determine what those emails needed to say, and she would write the emails and turn them over. But afterwards, You spend time doing research, possibly doing voice of customer research or surveys, but trying to understand the goal, trying to understand where the person who’s reading the email, or if you’re doing sales page strategy or website strategy, whatever, the person that is engaging with your copy, where they need to go, what is the result? And not just the result, but the transformation, the thing that they need to experience. And as you start thinking about that, there’s thinking that needs to happen around what beliefs need to change. How do we shift them from where they are today to where they need to be in order to make the right decisions? All of that is strategy and goes way beyond tactics or the actual creation of copy.
Another piece of that is objections, you know, trying to figure out why people are going to respond in certain ways and how to overcome those objections, or at least help them overcome the objections themselves. So the end result, of course, of being a strategist as opposed to just a copywriter is that you can charge higher prices, you can work with better clients who understand the value of what you’re bringing to the table. And so as we talk about this, showing up as a strategist, not just showing up as an order taker, showing up as a copywriter who solves bigger business problems and doesn’t just say, yes, I can write that for you. That’s what this means, and it can make a massive change to your business. So I just wanted to draw a line into that.
One other thing, we talked a little bit about building your authority. This is a theme, of course, we come back to over and over on the podcast and in so many of the different training groups that we do. But you need to be marketing yourself every day. You need to be putting yourself in front of your clients wherever they are. That’s not necessarily on social media. It’s wherever your clients are. And if you’ve got a niche that doesn’t live on Instagram, figure out where they are. But you need to be in front of them every day. That might be with email. That might be with a printed newsletter of some kind. It might be showing up at conferences and events. wherever they are, you need to be appearing in front of them so that you’re seen, you’re recognized as an authority, as an expert in the thing that you do. And it helps if your message is focused. In Eamon’s case, she only does emails or she only does email strategy. In my case, I usually, not always, but usually focus on sales pages and the impact that that has for my client’s business. But you figure out what it is that you want to be known for, and it can go way beyond a niche. and focus on that. You need to be showing up, sharing things like your social proof, your customer experiences, the research that you come across, the work that you do, building your authority every single day. That’s how you start attracting clients so that you don’t need to be cold pitching or on this constant treadmill of fighting clients every single day or every single week.
Okay. We want to thank Eman for joining us to talk about showing up as a strategist, about building authority, working with other writers. You can find Eman at eamoncopyco.com and be sure to check out her podcast, Mistakes That Made Me. And she mentioned Kira’s a recent guest on that podcast. So you’ll want to check out that episode in particular. And I’m hoping someday that I might be on that podcast too. We’ll see.
That’s the end of The Copywriter Club podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or an associate who might also get something from it. Maybe learn something that you learned. You can always leave a review wherever it is that you listen to podcasts.
When it comes down to it, the thing most copywriters want to build is a business that is high-margin (it makes money) and fun to run (it’s enjoyable). But achieving that goal is harder it appears. So we invited Ian Stanley to join us for the 392nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We asked Ian about how he did it—created a business that is profitable and fun. We also asked him about sales coaching, breaking up his partnership, his approach to email and his new comedy special. To hear what Ian had to share, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: How do you create a high-margin company that is fun to run? That’s pretty much the goal we all share… earn enough money for the lifestyle we want—however you define that—that’s the high margin part. And enjoy life doing whatever it is you do, from work to whatever you do in your personal time—that’s the fun to run part.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter, entrepreneur and comedian Ian Stanley. This is actually Ian’s second appearance on the podcast, so we caught up on how his business has changed in the past couple of years. And as we talked about that, we asked Ian about sales training, breaking up a partnership, commedy and buidling a company that makes money and is fun to run. One caution about this episode, Ian likes to swear. We’ve cut most of that out of the interview in order not to offend the censors at Apple who like to put an explicit label on anything rated higher than PG. But if we missed any, we apologize. That’s just who Ian is and how he shows up.
One other thing before we get to the interview… you’ve heard me talk about the copywriter underground and what it includes. If you’ve been thinking about joining this amazing community, let me give you two reasons to jump in now. During the month of May we have two incredible bonuses for members. The first is a limited time Client Emails Masterclass with Michal Eisik. Michal launched her business after completing the copywriter accelerator and think tank, and will be sharing this usually-paid masterclass with members of the underground… but only for one week in May. And we have a second bonus… it’s the strategic plan that copywriter Daniel Throssell used to make his client’s book a best seller in Australia. It works for non-book products too. Daniel has only shared this plan one time… to paid subscribers to his newsletter. It’s not currently available anywhere. But he offered to give it—completely free of charge—to members of The Copywriter Undergound. And like the Client Emails Masterclass, this member exclusive is only available for one week during the month of May in The Underground. If you’ve been thinking of joining, these are two very good reasons to jump in now—if you were to purchase either one of these bonuses sepearately, you’d pay more than what you pay to join The Underground for a single month. And I haven’t even mentioned all the other training, coaching, and community stuff that comes along with these two bonuses. Visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu to claim your free bonuses now.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Ian.
Kira Hug: All right, Ian, let’s jump in, not with your story, because we know part of your story from our last interview, but let’s just start with changes, at least one change you’ve made over the last four years. Maybe we talked to you four years ago, Rob, do you know? We’ll say four years ago.
Ian Stanley: Something like that.
Kira Hug: Over four years ago.
Rob Marsh: I mean, it was definitely, it was what? Episode 208. So it’s closing in on four years anyways.
Kira Hug: Yeah. Yeah. All right. So what is one big change you’ve made to your business since we last chatted?
Ian Stanley: To my business? I feel like little businesses like this change constantly. So honestly, the biggest change that’s happened is my business partner and I, so basically I was living in LA. I’d gone there to pursue standup. And then this COVID thing happened and stand up itself was, you know, in question. Cancel culture was at its absolute peak. I had a guy tell me that I was, I said in an ad, I said, I’m a white man. Not exactly. And he said, you can’t say that. And I went, I, what do you mean? That’s a fact. What am I supposed to say? Um, and that’s when I was like, Jesus, this is getting bad. While I was in LA watching nonviolent protests, violently, uh, protest from my actual window. Um, and so I was like, I gotta get out of here. So I left LA and I mean, it sounds weird to say now, cause I feel like standup is almost bigger than ever in certain ways. Um, But it died off for a while there. And I think that the worse the world is, the more important stand up is. Because it’s just funnier in ways, too, because things are so insane. It’s easy to write material when the world itself is a ridiculous place full of people getting mad at white men that say that they’re white. So I moved to Idaho and said, OK, I’m going to focus on business now for the next little while here, because There’s no standup. And so my business partner and I went hard into like, let’s build a big business. Let’s do this whole thing. So we ended up with, you know, selling high ticket stuff over the phone. We had, you know, six or seven phone sales people. We were running a bunch of traffic on YouTube.
I was coaching the sales team, which I’m very good at, but I despise. It’s basically like being a therapist. And basically if one of your phone sales people,, if his wife says something mean that morning or he doesn’t sleep right, you lose money, you know, and, and you realize that like every, or they just have one bad call or whatever. And it was just not for me. So, uh, And I know this is a slightly longer story than you may have asked for, but it’s a pretty relevant one, I think. So last March, about a year ago, my business partner and I had been watching The Office for the, I don’t know, sixth time all the way through. And I had this thought, what would happen if we were in an office for eight hours a day? Like, how much would we actually get done? How good would that be? And so we had rented this house we called The Hoffice. So it was just like a home office that two of our employees lived in and that we would work at. So we did this. I was like, let’s just try it for a week.
So we go in Monday. We had a great time. I’m like, oh my God, we got so much done. This was really cool. We go in Tuesday. And by the end of Tuesday, I’m like, this is perhaps the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I hate this. I hate this so much. And because and there’s only like seven of us, but they’ll ask me questions, ask Kim questions, who is my business partner and you don’t get anything done. And I went home and I was like the most tired I’ve ever been. And I understand that for anybody here, they can make Europe pathetic. How can you not work one eight hour day? I don’t, I’ve never had—the closest thing I had to a real job—I would be there for like five to six hours and I was writing copy and I would, you know, I figured out my schedule in a way that worked for me. And I was just so exhausted and depleted and annoyed. And I just, I was like, there’s something’s wrong. Like, this is not right. And the phone sales is such a nightmare.
I would recommend most people, if you want to do a high ticket phone sales program, just understand that either you will be miserable for an extended period of time, and then And then you maybe will have a sales manager who will do it for you. And then they’ll probably quit. And then you’ll lose all your money. And I wasn’t actually miserable. I’m a very happy person. So it’s very relative. But for me, having to do one hour of coaching calls a day is like a non-negotiable. I can’t do it. I just can’t do that part of it. And so that night, I was just like, something’s got to change. And I was so tired. It was like my bones we’re giving up.
And I was just thinking like, someone’s got to change here. And I wrote out this plan for how my business partner and I could split up the business and we could stop doing phone sales. And I had all this energy, like a huge burst of energy at like nine at night, just like, Holy, this could be it. This could work. But then I’m like, Oh my God, I got to tell my business partner that I don’t want to do this anymore. And we’re best friends. And so the next day we go to the office at the end of my K let’s, uh, Let’s go get a drink. And we go get a drink. And I’m like, hey, man, I don’t want to do this anymore in this way. And he’s like, oh, my God, me neither. That’s so exciting.
And so we basically just realized that because we were doing a few hundred grand a month and but the margins are never that like, you keep growing and you’re like, why don’t we have more money? Like, I’m making less money working six to eight hours a day sometimes than I was making when I was working an hour or two a day and had all this free time for these other things and didn’t have all these people to manage. And so we figured out this breakup plan and he took the email list management agency and I took back the company and it was glorious. Beautiful. And so since May of last year, so nearly a year now, I’ve been running it on my own again. It’s been super easy and fun and profitable. And then I recorded my first comedy special in November. I released it five days ago. It premiered. And so that’s a huge, that’s like, you know, as a comic, that’s kind of what you work towards. After taking basically a couple years off from LA to move here and not really having places to perform, it’s a completely changed trajectory. And so I’m primarily doing that and then running the business as well. So a lot of changes. Living in Idaho instead of LA, a very different vibe, much prettier, much less traffic. much cleaner air, much nicer people, much less human feces on the ground. There’s not even dog poop on the ground here. Like there’s not, I have not seen trash in downtown Boise. Like if somebody drops like a bottle, they pick it up in LA people, they throw it at you. And so, yeah, lots of changes.
Rob Marsh: Wow. Yeah. Boise is one of the cleanest places I’ve ever been. I live in Salt Lake, which is another clean city. Yeah.
Ian Stanley: Your air quality is so questionable.
Rob Marsh: In the summer, if there’s a fire or in the winter, if it gets really cold, we actually didn’t have an inversion this year, which is kind of nice. That’s nice. This has been our best air year in forever. But we didn’t come on the podcast to talk about our air.
Ian Stanley: I don’t know, man. This could be riveting podcast content. They’re like, wow, I went to listen to this thing and they talked about the weather.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Why is there so much smoke in the Salt Lake Valley since the 1840s? Who knows? I have some questions based, I mean, there’s about five different things that I want to ask as we go through this. But I want to jump back to what you were doing coaching the sales team, because I think this is something most copywriters don’t do. We might have a sales job at some point where we learn those sales skills. But when you’re building a sales team, you’re instilling those skills into people so that they can sell. So even though you didn’t love that part of the job, what were the things that you were teaching your sales team in order to make them better at selling? How did you get that stuff into their brains?
Ian Stanley: That’s a good question. Well, well done. I, uh, that’s a great one. Um, I actually enjoyed doing it. Like I would enjoy being on with them and watching them change and watching their energy shift and, and, but What pissed me off was just it was the complete anti-lifestyle business because literally my entire business and traffic was based on human emotion and human energy, basically. Like, if this person’s… Like, any split test you ran, you didn’t know if it was valid because it might have been that salesman number two’s wife drank again. And he didn’t actually even take calls. But you know, like so many little things that would or they just lost confidence for a week. Or there was a lot of two steps forward, one step back of like learning some strategy to selling, but then falling back on their confidence. And so I’d say the main stuff that I could tell that I thought that’s different than what most people do, because I was working with Cole Gordon, who’s a buddy of mine who I’d consulted for, and we joined his group and It’s really good sales training, like the tactics and techniques. For me, I was basically just coaching their beliefs and their belief in themselves. But ultimately, the way that I sell is very different than most people. And we did not do the high-pressure, douchey, fake tactics and things. I was very adamant that people had to leave the call feeling good either way, because we did some secret shopping of other people’s calls, and it was heavily shame-based. So it was pretty much like, they’d be really nice to the person. And then towards the end of the call, if the guy was like, I don’t think I don’t know if I can do it right now. They’d be like, Oh, do you want? Oh, you want your kids?
Rob Marsh: They really, they really said that.
Ian Stanley: Honestly, not far off certain ones. And it’d be like, Oh, you want your kids to think that dad’s a pussy? Is that what it is?
Rob Marsh: Or even provide for your family, like that kind of stuff.
Ian Stanley: Yeah. Yeah. Like very much like, Oh, I thought that you said you wanted to change your life. Now you’re saying that you don’t. It sounds like this is why you’re going to be a loser forever. Like stuff that’s like, we had one of my employees had gone on a call and he literally felt bad about himself for like two days. Now he was, you know, had his own insecurities and stuff, but I mean, they were like to the point where he was feeling terrible for a while about this. And I was like, dude, that’s on them. That’s not you. And so it was about selling in a really authentic way. And so really the most useful thing I would teach them, and I think that applies to copy and any form of selling is that we’re not selling a result, we’re selling a feeling. And that feeling is typically in this case is freedom.
So teaching people how to write emails for other companies and you know, and our product has like the highest success rate of any I’ve seen at least. And, um, you know, so we knew, we know it works. We know that it’s legit and it’s, it doesn’t require investments. There’s also not all the bull like, Oh, here’s my $5,800 product. Now you need my coaching program and upsell. It’s like, here’s the program and there’s no expenses. There’s no ad costs. There’s nothing. So we felt good about all that. But it was really like, What I would tell them is figure out the thing they actually want and then just talk about that thing. So as an example, it would be most people think they’re selling a program on how to write emails to make money. And I’d say, that’s not what you’re selling.
Let’s take an example of one guy’s. I keep missing my son’s soccer matches, right? I just want to go to my son’s soccer matches and be there for those. So now we’re no longer selling. So, and that would be, and that’s the advantage of phone sales and one-on-one selling is discovering the actual thing underneath the thing, right? So they say, well, I want to quit my job. Okay. Well, why do you want to quit your job? Well, I just, I don’t like my boss and I don’t make enough money and I don’t have freedom. Okay. Well, what would you like, what would you like look like if you didn’t have your boss and you only had to work two hours a day? Well, I’d live in a different house. I’d, I’d be able to, you know, hang out with my family and I’d stop missing my son’s soccer matches. Cause I keep having to go in on Saturdays. And you go, that’s the thing. That’s the thing that this person actually wants, because my goal is to get them to stop thinking in words and start thinking in pictures. So if instead of a thought of, I’m going to not have this job, instead in their mind, because it takes them out of their logical mind, when I can get them to just imagine being at the soccer field.
Or like another example, guys, like I just want to have a house with a big enough yard so I can play with my kids. you know, it’s whatever that thing is that they say is the thing or somebody back, I want to buy this car for my dad. Okay. So what color is that car? Okay. What’s the, what’s the make of it? Okay. So just for a second, just imagine your dad behind the wheel of that car. How does that feel? It feels amazing. That’s what I want for you. And so it would, and then basically throughout the sales process, it’s bringing them back to not to 10 grand a month, It’s bringing them back to the car for their dad or not missing the soccer matches. And so it was really just a very human approach to finding out what a person actually wanted and then continuously reminding them that that’s what they were actually buying.
They weren’t buying a course. They were buying this future that they had said that they wanted. So that was a big part of it. And then Honestly, the other part was I would have them meditate before their calls. I had like a three minute meditation I created for them to just shift their energy because ultimately sales is just a transfer of feelings. And if your feelings and energy are off, then you could say all the right and completely fail. And like I sold the first 50 people into the program myself and I closed 49 out of the 50 people. And, and there’s partially because I was the guru and the face of it and whatever, but I just treat people like people. And I had one guy who was like, oh, I don’t know if this is right for me. And I was like, OK, cool. He’s like, I got to talk to my wife. And what guys will say is they go, oh, you have to talk to your wife?
Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know she wore the pants in the relationship. That’s interesting. And they’ll go, oh, I would just go, oh, that’s awesome. Definitely you should talk to her. The only question I would ask you is, what would it feel like? where buying a program for $5,000 was such a small, inconsequential amount of money to you that you wouldn’t have to have that conversation. And then I’d go, go talk to her though. I’m not trying to then close. And I let them actually go. And then a day later, the guy comes back and say, yo, I’m in. Instead of me having that desperation, it’s that commission breath. That was so much of it was having them not come from a place of desperation and the need to sell because the second you get on the call and you’re in that mindset, the person on the other end can feel it and they are out. We’ve all been there. We’ve all experienced that salesperson who you’re like, this guy, like I think he needs this or he’s not eating and it just turns you off completely. So it was largely, and this isn’t to say that the tactic side isn’t important and understanding price reveals and you know, building rapport and things, but ultimately all of that can almost be transcended by just giving up. That was really, I was like, remember that even if in the beginning you think they don’t have the money, you think they’re a bad candidate, you think whatever, just treat them like a person, care about them. And you may be surprised cause this person’s like, Oh, I make a thousand dollars a month. And then you find out at the end of the call that they got in a car accident and have $25,000 in their account from a settlement. And they can’t afford it, and they’re a good person. And so it’s like, yeah, it’s largely just managing their feelings, which is.
Kira Hug: It sounds like you’re really, really good at sales, 49 out of 50, and coaching, and helping change the beliefs in other people. But from your story, it sounds like that’s not something that you enjoy as much, or it was draining you.
Ian Stanley: I hate scheduling calls. I hate scheduling. I hate things on my schedule. So like the idea that I, yeah. And it was also like, well, the best time to do it is in the morning before they start their day. And I was like, yeah, but I want to write in the morning and like have my life, you know? And so it just really wasn’t congruent with my personal lifestyle. If you’re willing to work a lot more and even so like literally if you didn’t talk to them for a few days you would watch sales go down like it’s it’s that fickle of a beast where like they need to be motivated and it’s largely therapy is what it is it’s just really working on the individual more so because until they get to that point of sales skill once they had the skill like they know how to sell they would just start doubting themselves or they would you know, get worried about not making enough sales or they’d get arrogant. That was one that happened is that was a big mistake as they start to get overconfident and they would go, Oh, I don’t need to ask all these questions anymore. I can just go on and close them. And you’re like, no, you’re now mistaking the result for, you’re not realizing that all those little pieces of why you sold them as well. So I’d rather just sell it for $2,000 on a video. and not have to have anybody in the way.
Kira Hug: Yeah. So, I mean, you realize this is not for me and then you pivoted. How do you know when it’s just simply not for you or you need to push through and you need to get to the next stage and that it could be for you if you just rearrange a couple of things or when you just need to jump and tell your partner this isn’t working?
Ian Stanley: I think there’s two things for me. One is, do you actually want the end goal? And that was what really became clear to me was, I don’t care. I don’t care if this business does 20 million a year. That doesn’t matter to me. And I don’t want 25, 30 employees. I want, I’d rather have 100,000 a month in profit, work in an hour to a day, then build this bigger thing and do all this stuff. So that’s the, I mean, I think so many people are climbing a mountain they don’t actually want to get to the top of. And then they think that committed and that, you know, well, I’ve already, I’m already here. I’ve already done all this. I can’t change now. I mean, there’s a difference between quitting and giving up. And I think it’s a huge distinction. Giving up is when you stop doing something and you still want the end result. Quitting is when you realize that you don’t actually want the end result. And quitting is a incredible skill to have because it’s so many people just do a thing they don’t want to do because they think, oh, that’ll make me a quitter. We should be a quitter. You just shouldn’t ever give up. I’ve never given up at something. If I want the goal, I’ve never given up. It doesn’t matter how much pain I’m in with physical stuff that I’ve done, my crazy endurance stuff or whatever. I won’t give up. But if you decide you don’t want the end goal, then you should quit. And so that’s a big one. And then if energetically and like, just like instinctually, it feels just very wrong and you’re fighting your nature. Like what I struggled with for a while was I’ve lived, a large portion of my life now based on the concept of surrender. And so, which like the main book is The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. And I’ve read it like 18 times. And so you sometimes ask yourself, where is the surrender? And am I surrendering to myself and my preferences? And so it’s like one of his things is there’s a really good thing that I’d recommend anybody listen to. It’s like, I think it’s on Audible. It’s a one of his surrender audios around like work or surrender in the workplace or business or something like that. And he goes, it’s like an hour and a half. And he talks about how the primary function of business is to let go of parts of yourself. And so, and business will do that, you know, working with other people and all these things. But what I realized is I was like, okay, well the surrender is I don’t want to do this. So therefore I have to let go and just do it. And it’s like, no, the real surrender was I’m doing the wrong thing. And I have to let go of the business in its current way and let go of the relationship with my business partner and deal with that and move forward. So I think if it, if it just feels off energetically and you’re constantly tired and you constantly don’t want to work, you’re probably doing the wrong thing. Like if I start writing, I’m working on a novel right now and a screenplay. And then like with standup, it does, I have to make myself stop. doing those things. Like I’m like, I should write an email for my business. One more scene. I’ve got this idea, you know, and it’s like, and it’s not to say that all work is going to just pull you through it and all of that, but it’s, it’s that like, if it doesn’t naturally pull you in some way, there’s probably something wrong, you know? And it’s, it’s probably not the right thing. So it was just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and watching. And also I think another huge one is actually just like, It kind of fits in with, are you climbing the wrong mountain? Is this someone else’s dream that I’m trying to achieve? And do I want the lifestyle of the people who are where I think I want to be? So I’d go to the event with all the guys doing a bunch of phone sales. And I’d talk to them. And even at the events, when I go to events, I’m partying. I’m having a good time. I’m drinking. I’m bringing the fun. I’m not that worried about the next day. And these guys, they’re like, especially at this event, like, Oh, no, I gotta, I gotta be dialed in. And I realized it’s actually because running a phone sales business is so challenging that you need the event to do it. And you got to be focused in there. But all of them either worked constantly and weren’t very happy. Or if they didn’t work constantly, they did for an extended period of time. And then they have a sales manager. And almost every person there had fired what had had one of their sales managers quit. And then they had to restart and say like, man, none of these people are that stoked. You know, they all want to either sell the company or be done with what they’re doing. So why would I want to do that? You know, and so that’s part of it is just looking at other people who are where you think you want to be actually where you want to be.
Rob Marsh: So let’s talk a little bit about the discussion with your partner about breaking up because clearly he also was feeling something the same. It was mutual. But what was that discussion like and your mindset, his mindset going into it, coming out of it? How do you make sure that, you know, it stays amicable? I’m sure it helps the fact that you both were kind of done. But there’s a lot of risk going into a conversation like that where the other person takes a lot of offense, maybe it doesn’t go well. So I’m just interested in that whole discussion and how that all came together.
Ian Stanley: Yeah. I mean, I just knew I was like, we got to talk about this. So I had written out my idea on what that breakup could look like. I think that’s an important piece is like doing some math on what something might look like if you do separate. And so once we said, and he was like, dude, me too. It was like a huge relief, you know, in general. And then I was like, I have some ideas on how we could do it. And here’s what I was thinking. Cause he had 33% of the company and I had 66 and I had run the company for like four years before we partnered up. So, and it was my face and my name. Um, and so it was creating that win-win where I was also just like overly generous with, what I was willing to give away. And I wanted it to feel like we both walked away legitimately happy, not like one of us won. You know, you go, I won the breakup. I won the split. It’s like, no, no, no, we both won. And so, I mean, I think that was a big part of it was having an actual laid out kind of plan. of what this could, and it was a loose plan, but it ended up being pretty much exactly that when we did split it off. But we ended up, we had a great night. We had like as much fun as we had had in a long time that night, just drinking and hanging out because we were like, Oh, this is so freeing. We don’t need to go hire more people and do all this stuff. Like this makes sense. Um, and we did it over a couple of months. We didn’t rush it. It wasn’t like, yo, we’re done. Let’s finish this. It was very much like, Hey, let’s take our time. And. make sure this is right. And the hardest part was honestly for the employees, making sure that they understood where things were and trying to get everybody into a good position. So like one, I kept on one sales guy, but like the other one, I placed him with a girl I know who he ended up, he’s been killing it and doing ridiculously well there. He’s better off than he was with us. That felt really good. Another guy were like, I will help, we’ll help you get a job stuff. We didn’t have to do, but like, Making sure that each person still had a place to go if they weren’t part of the future plan, I think was a bigger thing almost because we just feel, we felt responsible for them. Even though you learn that employees will leave you at the first drop of a hat if they, you know, certain ones, if they find a better deal and you’re like dragging along this limping critter and then they get some off and you’re like, wow, why did I do that? Why did I, you know, and it’s just, it is that you should be fast to fire and slow to hire, but I’ve known that for years and basically practiced fast to hire and slow to fire. So now the team it’s, is literally just people I love. And that’s one of the coolest things is like when you hire, here’s a hit. One of the biggest lessons was when we were scaling, cause we’re scaling, you know, and you hear all the, we’re scaling bro. No expenses are real when you’re scaling. Every little software, every mastermind, every course, everything that falls across your lap when you’re scaling is not an expense, bro. It’s an investment, dude. And then you realize one day you’re like, Jesus, we’re spending $25,000 a month on these things we’re not using that we thought were important. And so I think there’s a delusion in this entrepreneurial scaling mindset that’s a little bit in the same way you’re hiring people that aren’t actually quite right. We’ll find a place where we need we need a CFO for our company that has really basic finances. Let’s go pay somebody five grand a month for an hour of work a month because it feels cool to have a CFO. Like, what are we doing? So, yeah, I think the biggest thing was just coming at it from a place of genuinely wanting us to both feel like we won when the breakup was over.
Kira Hug: And then how did you approach setting the vision for the next phase of your business when you were able to make that pivot and go off on your own again?
Ian Stanley: I mean, I think it really just came down to running a profitable company, like a really high margin company that’s fun to run. Part of the, probably the biggest problem with having a business partner and Cam could listen to this and be absolutely fine with me saying this. was this sense of guilt that you have when somebody else is a partner where like, it would snow. And I’m like, I really want to go snowboarding this morning, but I want him to know that I’m doing, and I don’t want him to think I’m not working. So therefore I’m not going to go snowboard when it’s just drops out seven inches of powder. And it’s not because I’m actually going to do less. It’s because of this weird guilt feeling that you want to, you feel beholden to this person. And so you want to really like, No, you want them to know that you’re pushing it and that you’re working and you’re doing stuff. And by doing that, at least for me personally, I ended up working way less than when I have all my freedom and I go snowboard and I go travel and I go do all the things I want to do. So that was definitely a big part of it was the vision was just, I want to do whatever I want whenever I want, which is what I had done for most of my life. And so it became, let’s run a high margin, you know, fun business. And I made a rule, I’m just not going to hire anybody new unless it’s absolutely necessary. We’re going to grow with just these people that I like, and I’m not going to just hire based on some concept of, oh, we need more people or this or that. And then for me, it was really just what lets me do stand up and what lets me focus on what matters to me most, which is stand up. So if there’s something that counteracts, because part of that, too, is when you have a business partner, that’s a big owner of the business, you feel like they should be involved in each thing you do in some way, and you want them to know, even though he’s like, no, no, I don’t care about you doing stand-up or this or that, you have this little part of you that’s like, yeah, but just so you know, this isn’t taken away from the business. And now it’s like, it doesn’t matter. It’s me. It’s my company. I can do what I want. And as long as I have the freedom and time to do stand-up and make YouTube videos and focus on that, then That’s the main thing.
You know, I’ve thought about getting rid of the business at times because I really like it. I like what I do. I love the testimonials. I love helping people. I love people saying, Oh, I just quit. Literally yesterday I was going to call him. This guy’s like, I quit my job. And I’m like, Oh, how long did you have it? Thinking he was going to be like a couple months. He’s like five years. And I quit and I’m full time doing email copy now. And I’m like, that feels great. And I love that. And that’s why I want my products to exist and to do that. But then I’m like, what would it be like to wake up and only do YouTube videos and standup? But then you also realize, well, if you have to make money from the thing that you love more than anything, like what’s so weird about standup is like people like, what would you do for free? What job would you do if nobody paid you? I paid to do standup. Like, Imagine a job you love so much that you would actually pay to do that job. Not only would you do it for free, you would pay.
So it’s like, okay, well, what situation can I create where that’s the main thing that I get to do? And if I didn’t have the amount of money coming in I had, then I’d have to take weird gigs or like, have this pressure of this. I think there’s certain things where you should burn the boats, go all in, put you back against the wall, make it work. But I would also have to replace like, I don’t know, 50 grand a month. So to have suddenly have 50 grand a month coming in from stand up in YouTube is not the same as 10 or 20. And so what it does is it actually gives me this insane amount of freedom to be able to do stand up purely from a place of creation until it’s making 100 grand a month. then I can replace, you know, the other thing. So I think it’s really like, it’s given me a ton of gratitude for this business where I’m like, I see these other comics and the second that shows up, they’re walking up to the owner of the club to make sure they’re getting paid, you know, their $1,200 or whatever it is. And I’m like, I don’t even take my future pay. I don’t care. Take my head. I don’t care. Like, this is fine. I’m just happy to be here and doing this. So it’s given me like a whole different approach where I don’t have to worry about the thing that most people are worried about, which is paying their bills and taking random gigs and random places and, you know, trying to make ends meet while they’re trying to build their audience. And they can’t necessarily hire a video guy or, you know, whatever these things might be. So it’s, it’s really just creating a, an environment for myself where I get to do as much of the fun as possible.
Rob Marsh: So Ian, you mentioned the goal really is to create this high margin company that’s fun to run. I think a lot of people like have that as the goal. So in some ways, this question is maybe an outline for a course, a future course of some kind, but what is the Ian Stanley formula for creating a high margin company that is fun to run? You know, the, the three steps or the 10 steps, or, you know, what are the pieces that we need to put in place in order to create that?
Ian Stanley: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, you know, actually had a real big realization, like a month and a half ago that we were running pretty much all of our traffic, not all well, not for the last six months or so, but all of our traffic to 90 days to freedom, which is the $2,000 course that teaches people how to write emails for other people. The business model that I’ve followed for ages is basically run ads to an opt in page, hopefully near break, even on day zero, and then make all of the money on the back end through the email list. partially through an order responder and then through more or less daily emails, selling other stuff, either stuff I’ve already created or new stuff. Honestly, the biggest thing is whenever I create new products, we’re really profitable and we lost sight of that as we’re trying to like, when you’re trying to scale a thing and you’re like, Oh, this is our main product. Let’s not get distracted by creating new products. I like creating new products. It’s really easy for me. I have like 60 courses and every time I do one, we make a bunch of money and it’s all profit. And so when I lost sight of creating products is when we would have low emergence. Because even if it’s an affiliate offer I do or promoting something I’ve promoted before, when I create something new, it’s just going to do really well. And it’s all profit.
And so basically it’s, can I get leads that are going to break even within right now on Facebook and Instagram, it’s like seven days, seven to 10, and then just make money on the backend from all of that. But basically with the 2k offer, we were breaking even on the front, but we didn’t have a backend. Like I don’t have a $7,500 coaching program because I just don’t want to coach people on how to get clients. It doesn’t interest me at all. Um, So the biggest difference that’s happened now is we built this AI tool. Actually, this guy built an AI tool, a customer of mine kind of behind my back, more or less. He went and took all my emails, trained this AI model, built this thing, sent it to me. And I was like, bro, I hate AI. Like, I don’t want to do this. I’m not interested. But that was honestly what I said. And I was just like, I mean, if I hadn’t, if I didn’t do stand up or make money online, I’d have a fax machine and no cell phone. I’d have a landline and a fax machine and no email and I would just live my life. And so AI to me was in a way not really a threat to writing because I found it to be so bad that I didn’t think it was a threat at all. It was more like annoying and who knows what’s going to happen with it. I had fiddled with it a little, but I just didn’t really enjoy it. And so he actually had sent me this tool and for a few months I just, I like looked at it and I was like, I don’t, I just don’t care. And then we were at our annual meeting in January and I was like, let’s just pull it open and play with it and see if it’s something that we could use to make selling 90 days a lot easier. Because the biggest pain point people have is getting their first client. And he built this client outreach tool where you can put in like, You fill out like six fields, it takes like 30 seconds and it spits out an email that’s like a custom personality driven email to this company. And I put in this fake coffee company and it wrote this email and literally each of us in the room is like, holy, this is like more human than most humans.
Okay, let’s do something with this. And so over the next month and a half or so, we figured out how to get the tool actually ready to go. And then we launched it. And I’ve never had such good testimonials like ever, like people are literally just like, I’m a subscriber for life. I’m never not going to be paying for this. It’s so good. And so it’s like, okay, well, let’s reassess kind of where we’re at. And so literally over the past month and a half, we have restructured the entire company where the sole goal of our business is to get people into the AI subscription. And there are people who are anti-AI and that’s fine. That’s kind of one of the cool parts of the story. I was anti-AI like I hated it. And here I am like, and it’s not to say that it’s going to replace a really good copywriter’s writing. Like I like writing, I’m still going to write, but it gives me ideas and sentences and lines and things. But for a normal person, they can literally put in two sentences and it will write like a more personality driven human email than most people write. And so to help like a normal business owner or a person trying to get clients, I’m like, Oh, this really actually works.
And so we’ve restructured basically everything we’re doing now is if we’re getting front end leads, are they people who could use the AI? If yes, we’ll run that traffic. If no, we won’t run that traffic, even if it was profitable, even if it was attracting people in the money space or something, but they, they weren’t email driven around it. Like then we’re not going to pull them in. So now that’s what’s really cool is this company has never been sellable because, I mean, theoretically it’s sellable, but it’s worth very little compared to what it earns because it’s so dependent upon Ian Stanley and my face and my name. So now having a software tool, just that recurring already, you can see it growing. And that’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen yet is because I’ve had memberships before, but when it’s an AI tool or a software tool where people like either it’s a part of their business or it’s not. Growing that is basically the primary focus at this point. And so it’s honestly, it’s like an incredible amount of clarity is the biggest difference is we’ve had, we’ve tried, like we do traction. You guys know what traction is the. So we do like a quarterly meeting and an annual meeting. We have an implementer who, you know, takes us through then every few months we’re changing directions, right? Let’s try this. Oh, we’re going to run ads to a Facebook group and we’re going to make millions. Oh, it didn’t work. We’re going to, let’s pivot, let’s do this. And now it’s like, no, no, let’s just get people into the tool. And so your whole business, like there’s a company I consulted for called USCCA. They do 250 million a year. And all they do is put people into their membership. And they’ve done that for 12 years. And that’s why they’re so successful.
When I asked the CEO, I’m like, are you into crypto right now? And he’s like, no. I’m like, man, you should be. You’re so rich. What? Because I want to get more people into the membership. Like that’s when you, the richest people I know are the least distracted. They have one goal and for most of them, it’s either they’re building an email list or they’re building a membership. And so that’s the biggest thing now is just when you have that singular focus, everything becomes significantly easier because you’re not questioning what should we do next? Is this the right thing to be working on? You just go, does it grow this? Yes or no. And I tried that. I had like a newsletter, this almost passive income newsletter. I’m like, this is it. Like it’s too broad. It’s not the right thing. So really just that clarity is the biggest thing of just like what we’re focused on. And then if I ever did want to sell the company, having a software is significantly more valuable than any other, you know, membership type. Uh, and then it’s not just Ian Stanley, it’s email game changes. And then it’s actually like a sellable asset. So many people think they have a company they can sell and you’re like, no, you don’t. You have a personality.
Kira Hug: What advice would you pull from that that would be relevant to copywriters listening? I mean, you shared one around focus, but is there anything else we could pull from that, even if we’re not creating our own AI tool?
Ian Stanley: Yeah, I’d say, is it mainly copywriters who listen to this, like people who write for other people?
Kira Hug: Yeah.
Ian Stanley: So get really good at one thing and be more narrow than you think is probably what I would say. get really good at writing health emails or credit, you know, the credit space emails, or find an area where you don’t have to keep doing research again and again, and just get really, really good at understanding that market and that demographic. And then anytime you write for that space, it’s just significantly less work, but also like, are you working on the right things? Being a copywriter, there’s two skills. I compare it to being a doctor, like the best doctors, aren’t necessarily the ones who make the most money. The richest doctors are the ones who run the best business practice. They have the best practice. They may not be the best surgeon, but they run the best business. And with copywriters, there’s lots of good copywriters making $5,000 a month who are better writers than people making $10,000 or $15,000. But they forget that there’s also the business side of copywriting, which is getting clients, keeping clients, really getting clients. Because if you’re good, you should keep them.
That’s the other thing about writing email instead of writing VSLs and sales pages and stuff is that it’s recurring. Like if you’re writing emails for people, they’ve got to keep paying you every month because you’ve got to keep having emails every month. Whereas like I’ll charge 25 grand for a sales letter, which I rarely, rarely ever do anymore because I just, if I write my own and that’ll take me an hour and a half rather than, you know, a week for someone else, I’m going to make more than 25 grand. But it’s one-off, you know, you make it, And then it’s gone. And now you’ve got to get another client and another client. So I think from a focus perspective or from a skill perspective, focus on one skill at a time. So if you want to get better at copy, don’t try to get better at copy, get better at a specific element of it.
When I was at Crisis Education, I remember I was not very good at transitions. So I was really good at writing like sections. Like I could write a great lead. I could write a great little value piece or an argument. But the way they transitioned was pretty weak. It felt like what I call like hammer transitions where you’re just getting hit over the head by a hammer rather than like a sandpaper transition where it’s very smooth. And so for like two weeks, I would just work on transitions. And then once I’ve done that, I’m like, okay, I’m going to work on using more interesting words. And so for two weeks, I’m working on more interesting words. Or for a month, you’re going to work on just leads. And that’s going to be the most important thing always is going to be a lead in sales letters. So just spend a month on leads, then a month on writing really good closes. Don’t try to get better at everything at once. Get better at one thing. It’s like if you’re playing tennis, don’t try to improve your forehand and your backhand and your serve all at the same time. Just work on your forehand for a couple of weeks. then move to your back end, then work on your serve. Don’t try to get better at all the things, because you probably will get better at nothing. It’s just another, I guess, focus. Do less, better. That’s the main advice I give to most people when I consult now, is just do less, better. Because I was the number one doer of all things mediocrely. Just chasing so many different things in so many directions. Just get rid of everything that’s not actually essential. and then do that one thing really, really well.
Rob Marsh: So Ian, before we run out of time, I want to ask you about comedy. Obviously, there are at least those of us that know a lot of copywriters, there are a lot of copywriters who do stand up. Obviously, Kevin Rogers, you’ve done it. Justin Blackman. Amy does like there, there’s so many people that do it. And so clearly, there’s a connection between the creativity of writing, standing up in front of people exposing yourself a little bit. But just walk us through how you think about stand up. And then, you know, after you’ve shared all of those stand up secrets, tell us how to access your comedy special.
Ian Stanley: Yeah, so I think maybe the most relevant thing to everybody here would be, so I recorded my special November 4th and 5th, so did three shows in two days. And I always had this idea that you’ve got to be perfect on stage because that’s what goes out. And then you realize, oh no, you get to edit. And so you literally take these pieces. So I spent at least 50 hours Watching the special and and I don’t actually do the editing of like pressing the buttons and stuff but editing for story Essentially of what’s going where what you’re killing in stand-ups very similar to copy where? What’s weird is when you start doing stand-up you just you want people to laugh You know and you’re happy when they laugh then when you get good at it You literally have to kill jokes that get good laughs. So you’re you’re not Like there are parts of the special that I cut completely that I really liked that get good laughs, but it’s not quite as good as the other ones. It’s not quite as the same level. And does it fit the narrative? So does it, does, what is the sequence of events? It’s like with a sales page, you can write the best copy ever, but if it’s in the wrong order, it’s not going to convert very well. It’s the same with standup. You’ve got to present things in the right sequence. So I’m very controversial with my standup.
So just as a precursor here, if you are going to go by the special, uh, if you’re easily offended, please do not. You will have a terrible time. The special is called controversial. If that gives you any sort of ideas to what it’s like. So, um, what I’ve learned, I’ve got these few new bits I’m working on right now. I had some shows this weekend and they’re very edgy. Even for me, it’s pushing the boundaries. Now, 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been. It’s not actually offensive. It’s just words that you’re not supposed to say anymore. And I’m talking about the show Love on the Spectrum and Down for Love, which is the show about autistic people and people with Down syndrome. And you can say a very different thing 30 minutes into a show than you can one minute into a show. And it’s the same with a sales page where once you’ve presented certain facts or stories or things, you can say very different things 15 minutes into a sales letter than you can at the first minute. And you have to get people in. You have to get people on your side. You have to win them over. And a special is different than on stage, because on stage, people aren’t going to just walk out of the show unless you really suck or you really offend people or something. They’re not going to leave. With a special, you have 10 to 15 minutes as the inflection point. That’s my own. And from everybody I’ve talked to, that’s what they say as well, is basically if they put a special on, they’re giving it 10 to 15 minutes to say, I’m going to keep watching or I’m done. If you make it past that 10 to 15 minutes, you’re going to make it to 60 or 70 minutes, however long the special is. So as I’m editing this thing, what I really, one of the biggest lessons I learned was I have never worked this hard on a sales letter in my entire life. Like not even close. I basically write something and then I go, here it is. And I don’t edit, I don’t go back. I don’t rewatch my own videos. And I was like, what if I had one VSL that I worked this hard on? It would probably make literally millions and millions of dollars on repeat, if I just gave that much of a to sit and watch it again and again and again.
And with comedy, you can’t go rerecord. So even if there’s bits, I’m like, I wish I’d said this, or this could be a little different. Or that’s not quite there. With a VSL or something, you can go rerecord that you can, you know, film it again or whatever. So if I was just like, man, if I put this effort into something, I can’t imagine how good it would be. Like that was one of the lessons was just like, wow, this is what it feels like to try. You know, and which is a very good feeling. But those first 10 to 15 minutes is such a crucial piece where I have like seven minutes of crowd work in the beginning. We’re part of it. I don’t want people to think it’s a crowd work special, but it’s so it hits so hard that it was like, I can’t not put this in here. And I had my parents watch it, which was a fun thing in itself. And I was like, what’d you guys think of the crowd work in the beginning? Should I get rid of that? And they’re like, no, that might’ve been the best part. Cause people love crowd work so much that no matter how good your jokes are, the, just complete spontaneity and like unplanned piece of crowd work, people just love it.
But those first 10 to 15, we cut this bit about me being English in America, where I talk about dating girls, because even though it’s funny, I kind of sound like a dick. If you aren’t on my side already, and it’s too big a risk in the first 10 or 15 minutes for people to go, this guy, I already look like a douchebag. I already look like I started a frat or, you know, like, and I talk about what I look like and make fun of myself, but you really need to win people over. And so even though it’s funny, there’s a chance that new people wouldn’t, would find me unlikable from that, to be honest. And so it gets cut. And that’s emotionally challenging to cut these bits that you like, that you think should be there, but you realize they don’t serve the narrative or they don’t serve the greater purpose of what it is. But it’s also, comedy is the same as sales. It’s a transfer of feelings. If I’m afraid of a bit, especially because I do really controversial stuff, if I’m afraid of that bit, the audience will be afraid of that bit. If I don’t give them permission to laugh, then they won’t laugh. If I just go, you know what, this thing crazy, and I’m going to say it, and I’m going to laugh probably too, because I actually think it’s funny, then they’re going to as well. And so there’s that permission and that transfer of energy and feelings. And a lot of stand-up is just working on how relaxed you are. within a bit and just committing, especially to the edgy stuff. You just got to commit. You go, this is, this is what I’m doing. I’m saying, so I know what I’m saying is what is not what I’m supposed to say. I understand that if I was at a dinner party as just a normal person, I’d probably be kicked out of that dinner party. It’d be a pretty boring dinner party, to be honest, if they kicked me out, but you’re pushing the boundaries. And so it’s, it’s your presentation of it. It’s the same as like any VSL or ad. I can give you the same exact, script and have you say it five different ways and one of those five is going to outperform the other by 30 to 50 percent simply by how I say it and the energy I say it with or the background.
The background for the special actually well this isn’t on video but I have this huge half American half British flag in the background and it looks like a Netflix special like the production quality is insanely high. If my background was just the black curtains from the club it would look like a YouTube special. And so it’s the same with ads. We have the best ad that we continue to run that I somehow can’t beat is me driving in my truck. And for some reason, people just like when I’m in my truck. I don’t know why. I’ll record a video in front of a fjord in Norway or in Amsterdam in canals or in Paris. And I’m like, this ad’s going to crush. Nope, they want me in my truck. But we recently did one where I’m on a hoverboard. And I’m drinking, I have a gallon of milk in my hand. And I do not acknowledge the gallon of milk at any point. So I’m just carrying a gallon of milk and I take a drink and I don’t say anything about it. And that ad is the only one now that’s truly competing with the truck ad. And it’s just that, it’s just being interesting. It’s just finding ways to do something that other people haven’t done and had, you know, just not be boring. uh, within the context of what you’re doing. And so it’s, uh, it’s an insane, if it’s also adding movements, you know, if you’re doing a bit about a T-Rex, well, act like a T-Rex and it’s going to add to that bit. So with ads, with comedy, with sales pages, literally, if you can be doing something in the video, that’s not related, you’re going to get more people to pay attention than if you just stand in front of a white wall and say words.
Kira Hug: I think it’s worth talking about if you’re comfortable talking about what it takes to get your own stand-up special. I mean that’s something that’s coveted and I’m sure there are many writers listening who would love to do that or something similar. What does it actually take to do that?
Ian Stanley: Money.
Kira Hug: I had a feeling it was money.
Ian Stanley: Yeah, I mean. What else? Beyond that, it’s also you got to be able to sell out. You got to be able to sell out a show. or preferably three to four. We ended up using about 80% from the third show, about 10% from the second show, or maybe 15% from the second show, and maybe 5% from the first show. And it’s not that that show wasn’t good or anything like that. It’s just the energy was so high on the third one. And I’d had two shows to dial in material. But I mean, I spent about $20,000 on it. And so the production company who did it, I mean, he did all the trailers for like Marvel movies and all these, you know, they’ve done stuff for Netflix and all that. And so I spent, I wanted to look incredible rather than like decent for like, but for like five or 10 grand, you can get a pretty good special film, but you do have to be able to sell out a room. So like I had to sell, you know, 500 tickets for three shows. So you have to have some sort of a, either an audience, I used ads. I mean, I have an audience in standup, but not all of them are here in Boise where you’re going to be able to do that. So the comedy club, I’ve developed a relationship with them. I said, Hey, I want to film my special here and book this weekend. So you booked the weekend. And then I ran Facebook ads to a, uh, 50% off for the ticket. Cause I don’t care how many, I don’t care what they pay. I’m not trying to make money. I made a few grand from the, from the weekend of shows. Um, but I, I just wanted a full room, you know, I just wanted it to be full.
So you got to be able to sell out the room, which again, which was, that was, that’s been, what’s really fun is to use direct response to grow this other thing. And so we recorded like 20 ads and then I, and they were all fine. And then honestly, energetically, I just got to the space and I sat on this cannon in front of the, um, Boise capital and just, was being a silly goose and my legs were dangling like a toddler in a high chair, like sitting on this cannon. And that ad got 95% of all the ad spend and, you know, probably 50% of the sales came from an ad to fill the special. And so, and then I hired the production company. I mean, and then you’ve got to work for years on your material and dial in what that, you know, what that special is going to be. And then you got to edit out of it. I mean, you could theoretically just throw it out as is, like just what the people experienced in the room.
But the difference is going to be just a speed, like how quick that special feels where you cut out any moment that’s not a nine. Even if it’s a seven, you go now, let’s just and even there’s one little bit in the special right now, there’s about two minutes that I think are a little slower than the rest, and I just didn’t quite have time to figure out how to cut the intro without losing the end of the joke, because the end of the joke’s very good. So if I release it again later in a different place, I may cut those two minutes, but that’s being super nitpicky over an hour and nine minutes of special. But yeah, you’ve got to work on the material, the sequence, your energy. You don’t just go and record a special if you’re not good at it at that point. I mean, actually, lots of people do. Netflix has many specials that are not very good. But yeah, I mean, I think that’s the biggest thing. Any questions you have from your perspective, I’d be happy to answer. That’s kind of my thoughts.
Rob Marsh: I’m curious what the goal here is, Ian. You know, when you spend 20 grand on a special and you’re selling ads to advertise it, you know, or to get it out there, so it’s even more spend there. I mean, just to break even, you’ve got to sell, you know, I think it’s $15, you know, to get in. If nobody uses a discount or whatever to buy it, you’ve got to sell 1,400 people, right, to break even and then even more with ads. So, and then also, you know, with something this controversial, it’s probably, you know, a lot of people aren’t looking to saying, Hey, we can put Ian in a, you know, in a TV pilot or, you know, that kind of thing. So what’s the goal here for you? Is it just expression, creative expression, having fun, or is there some bigger thing?
Ian Stanley: No, I’m going to make a ton of money from this. Okay. From standup is my belief. That sounded a little bit douchey, but what I, the purpose of the special is to build a fan base. So, um, I believe that I’m not chasing money in standup and in acting, but I know that once it’s there, it’ll be a lot and it’ll probably be more than business has ever been or anything. Standup’s weird. You either kind of make no money, you make enough to pay some bills or you make like tens of millions a year, you know, for the higher end guys. Right. So I do want to do TV shows. I do want to do movies. I think part of that’s going to be that I have to write my own.
And that’s the novel I’m working on is essentially a screenplay that I’ve turned into novel format, which I won’t say what it is because it’s good enough. It’s one of the only ideas I’ve had where I go, this is a very stealable, good idea. I wonder about that with the TV pilot stuff, but you see like Shane Gillis, he’s got his own coming out now and he said all the most offensive things possible. And so I think, I think culture has shifted back where people are kind of like, whatever, this is ridiculous to cancel people for words. And so I think it’s shifted. I mean, there are things that people are always going to be offended by. But also if you do watch the special, you’ll see there’s no malice like that’s my my barometer for myself is. Is this joke malicious? Am I trying to be mean to a group of people like I have? like for trans jokes. And one of the waitresses at the club is trans and she loves it. Literally came out after the special was like, where is this going to go? I can’t wait to watch. Like, this is so cool. And so to me, that shows this is jokes. You understand that I’m messing around. There’s no malicious intent here. And that’s super important to me because I’m not trying to be mean. There’s a difference. I think there’s certain comics who hear talk about a topic and you can feel like an undertone of actual maliciousness towards that group of people. That’s not my goal. But so the goal, the goal with the special is to build a fan base, like a, so that I can do a tour and sell out the tour without having to work my ass off at selling tickets so that I can go places, do standup.
So the first thing would be to be able to go and sell out comedy clubs across America and sell out clubs. Then in a year or two, be able to do theaters and then in, you know, three, four years, be able to do arenas and stadiums and that type of thing. And so that is the goal is to do this as the only thing that I do. And YouTube, I love making sketches and YouTube videos and stuff. And so I think with a lot of what I’ve learned in marketing and stuff, I can apply that to the online realm in a way that others can’t necessarily, and invest in production and things. And so the goal here is really just, if I can break even on this special, great. But ultimately, after the release on Moment, which is where it’s at now, which is a paid thing, there’ll be a second release in a few months somewhere else. And I don’t know exactly how that’s going to go. But the goal is, I don’t care if it’s free and it’s on YouTube and I don’t make a dime, but a million people watch it and I get 100,000 true fans who are willing to go to any show in their city. That’s the goal, because the money comes from touring and then other stuff.
The other difference is I have a merch company that I started called Feed the Wolf, where we have our rated like comedy merch. So I won’t say the the merchandise on there. If you want to go to Feed the Wolf dot com, you can see it. But the words on the shirts and stuff are not exactly appropriate for this podcast. But we have mugs and t-shirts and things. And really, the way that the biggest YouTubers make their money is from their own businesses that they own. And so my goal is, if I can spend money to grow the channels and things, whether it’s through production or whatever it is for the videos, and then I can make that back through people buying merch, on my site, then I can at least break even and just grow and reinvest into growth. So the goal is absolutely just a fan base of people that are genuine, true fans. And then the money will follow. I know how to monetize stuff. It’s just about growing an audience of people who are like truly want to see everything you do.
Rob Marsh: I suppose if Jimmy Carr can land a TV show, there’s a space for anybody who does that brand of comedy to land a TV show.
Ian Stanley: Yeah, and it’s very, my jokes are very, very different than his brand is very much jokes. Mine’s, you know, storytelling and different stuff, but there’s only two comics in America who’ve made it that are English really. And that’s Ricky Gervais is probably my favorite comic. It’d be more, my stuff’s more similar to that. But Ricky and Jimmy have both made it here, which is really interesting because most English and Scottish, well, Scottish comics can’t make it in America because English people can’t understand, or American people can’t understand. Nobody can understand them. Yeah. There are even times that I’m like, okay, can you, what are you, what are you saying? Yeah. So it’s a weird thing because they don’t really make it and being half English and half American, it’ll be, I’m really interested to see how it translates for me as like building a fan base in England. And in America, and then I’ll end up with a big Australian fan base just because they think I’m one of them. So that’ll be interesting to see.
But yeah, I think worrying about, it’s a really fine line to start cutting your own jokes, because they might be too offensive. And I actually went and saw Ricky Gervais in Norway a month before I recorded my special. And he had this bit. We had a bunch that’s just like so far. It’s the Armageddon special. And it was so good. And my girlfriend, I left and I had this bit that I was probably not going to do in the special. And then we both went, if Ricky said that bit, we would have gone. That’s so funny. And that’s genius that he did that. And I think if there’s one, if you start to draw a line somewhere, then you, you just start moving that line to be like, Oh, I don’t want to offend. You just got to say whatever you want. And if it goes too far, then deal with it. I just think if you start to self-censor, you lose the best parts of yourself.
Kira Hug: Well, I think what you said originally is most important here, just pulling the audience in initially in the first 10, 15 minutes so they like you. And then you can take them wherever you want to take them to whatever jokes you want to present because they’re on your side.
Ian Stanley: Yeah, if you open up with your absolute most insane bit, they might just not be ready for it. And they’re like, okay, whoa. Can you ease us in?
Kira Hug: Let’s do a little bit of foreplay for this. I need a drink before this starts.
Ian Stanley: Yeah, exactly.
Kira Hug: All right. Well, where can we find your special? If we want to check out your special, where should we go?
Ian Stanley: Yeah, go to moment.co slash Ian Stanley. And it’s there and you can use the code Stanley for $5 off since you’re a copywriter. Um, and then, uh, feed the wolf.com has the merge. Um, and then if it does, if you’re past, there’s like a 30 day viewing window. So I don’t know when this will come out, but if it’s not there, just, uh, go to my Instagram at becoming in Stanley and you’ll find out when I released the next one.
Rob Marsh: And I think if, if people hit your, your Instagram, but get a sense of what the jokes are like, and whether they’re a fit for actually purchasing the special or not. Might be a good place to start.
Ian Stanley: Exactly. And then if you want to just get on my email list and you try out the AI tool, that’s emailgamechanges.com. And then you can see if I’m actually good at email and test out the tool. There’s a right now $1 trial, but it might be a free trial by the time you get there, Adam.
Rob Marsh: Excellent. Thanks.
Kira Hug: Thanks, Ian. Thank you. I’m excited to see where everything goes for you with your show and maybe Netflix will pick it up.
Ian Stanley: Maybe. We’ll see. We’ll see. It’ll be someday. Yeah. If it’s not this year, next.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Ian Stanley. I want to add just a bit more color to a couple of the ideas that we talked about with Ian. Ian talked in depth about sales training, the training that he provided for his team. And I think there’s a lot to be taken away from what Ian was sharing, even if you are the only person doing sales for your business. And for most of us as copywriters, that’s the way that our businesses are. We are the salesperson, we’re the writer, we are the support team. So what Ian shared that he was telling his team is also applicable to us as individuals. Number one, you’ve got to believe in yourself. You’ve got to believe in the product that you’re selling and your ability to deliver. And as you talk with your clients, just to get them to the point where they can see you are confident in delivering what it is that you’re selling. I love that Ian focused on no high pressure tactics or the fake sales tactics, that he really wants people leaving a sales call feeling good. We should also be feeling the same way. There’s no reason to push somebody to make a decision on a call, a decision that they’re not ready to make. And it’s always a good reminder that you’re not selling the result.
You’re selling freedom. You’re figuring out the thing that your prospect wants and you’re focusing on that. And I know we’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, but that looks like this on a sales call. Your client is asking you for something, usually a deliverable like a website or a sales page or an email sequence. But what you’re really delivering isn’t a web page or a sales page or an email sequence. It’s the thing underneath the thing, the thing that a web page gets you or the thing that a sales page gets you. And oftentimes that’s going to be authority, believability, credibility. Oftentimes it’s going to be sales and revenue.
Sometimes it’s going to be something like retention and being able to bring people back for a second or a third purchase. It’s those things that you’re really selling. So those are the things that you want to focus on in the sales call. Not necessarily the web page, not necessarily the sales page or whatever, but it’s the thing underneath the thing. And the faster, the better that we can understand what our clients are looking for, the better we are going to be on our own sales calls. I also love the “ask your wife” objection or “ask my partner” objection. We talked a bit about that. Obviously, A traditional sales team will push you to make a decision on a call, but we’ve always taught copywriters that that’s actually a good thing when somebody says, Hey, I want to talk this over with my partner because if the partner supports the decision, they often become a second part of your sales team. They’re basically encouraging the person you’ve been talking to. to invest in themselves or to do what they believe is going to be best for their business. And so rather than pushing somebody who wants to talk it over with a partner to make a decision now, I think it’s usually going to be better to say, go ahead, have that discussion.
Here are all the things that you can share with your partner about why you’re making this decision or why you think this is a good idea for your business and come back and let me know. And like I said, oftentimes they will become a backup sales team for you. Another thing that we chatted about that I think is worth drawing a line under is this idea of knowing whether to push through or quit. Specifically, we’re talking about this as we talked about the end of this partnership. But this happens a lot in our business. We have a product that maybe doesn’t sell as well or a service that we’re getting tired of providing. And oftentimes, understanding what the end goal is and whether or not you’re climbing a mountain that you want to get to the top of or not is a really good framework for helping you decide, is this where I want to be spending my time?
This reminds me of our interview with Kieran Drew just a few weeks ago, where he had invested years into his dental career and then understands he needs to make a switch. And at some point, you’ve got to stop investing in the thing that no longer serves you, get off of that ladder and start climbing up a different mountain, a different ladder, or have a different goal. Might be worth going back and listening to that Kieran Drew episode if this is the kind of thing that you’re dealing with in your own life or business.
And then finally, we talked a lot about how to build that high margin company. Ian walked through some of the specifics and I just want to emphasize some of this because oftentimes as copywriters in our own businesses, we do not do these things. Most copywriters do not run ads. to an opt-in for their products or services. Obviously, this is something we will usually do with training or physical products, but it can also be done for services. Oftentimes, copywriters aren’t thinking about sales on the back end. As you sell that first service, how does that turn into another sale later down the line. Again, this is something that we tend to do with webinars or physical products, training, that kind of stuff when we sell it, but don’t necessarily think about it as much when we’re selling services and we’re talking about actually providing content and copy for our clients. So it might be worth just thinking, you know, what would my business look like if I did run some ads to sell my services or if I did have a backend product or a second service that I can add on after I sell that first service in order to become more high revenue in my business. Definitely worth thinking about as you build your business as well.
We want to thank Ian Stanley for joining us to talk about creating a high margin company that is fun to run. Also talking about email and comedy and so much more. And as he said at the end of our discussion, you can find him on Instagram at Becoming Ian Stanley. He also mentioned a couple of websites where you can find his trainings. You might want to check that out. If you decide to check out his comedy special, be warned, Ian is not joking when he said his comedy is pretty offensive. His show is something to watch without the kids in the room. And in some cases, you may not even want your partner to be in the room. So you’ve been warned, but feel free to check that out if that’s of interest to you. If you’ve enjoyed this interview, please share it with a friend or associate who might also enjoy or learn from it. You can always leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. We always appreciate those.
We’ve talked a lot about building your authority and finding clients on LinkedIn on this podcast. But I don’t think we’ve ever spoken with anyone who built a six-figure copywriting business entirely on that platform—without a website or any other social media presence. On the 391st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we spoke with Alefiya Khoraki who did exactly that. And if you’re looking for clients on LinkedIn, you’re definitely going to want to listen to this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: After recording almost 400 episodes of this podcast—the official number 400 will be released in about 9 weeks and that doesn’t include several unnumbered bonus episodes we’ve recorded—but with that many interviews under out belts, it gets pretty easy to identify trends and shifts in the copywriting world based on what copywriters tell us about how they find clients, the services they offer and the struggles they go through. And one of the trends we’ve heard about over and overa again in the past year or more is how effective LinkedIn is for finding clients.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter Alefiya Khoraki. She’s built a six figure business in less than a year, primarily by posting content on Linkedin and commenting on other content there. That’s pretty good for someone who got her start trying to raise $800 for a project while she was in school.
But before we get to that, if you’ve been wondering how to use AI in your copywriting or content writing business, I’ve got something for you. A couple months ago i shared the way I use AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT to write bullets, headlines and subheads with the participants of a copywriting summit. It’s a simple google document with the exact prompt I use to write hundreds of great headlines and bullets in seconds. Plus instructions on how to go back and forth with the AI model you’re using to get even better results. You can even add a short ten-ish minute video training where I show you how i use it. If you’re new to writing with A.I., this is a great way to get started. And if you’ve been using A.I. for awhile, this training may open your eyes to what’s possible with a megaprompt. The document is free. And you can get it at thecopywriterclub.com/aiwriter.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Alefiya.
Kira Hug: Let’s kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Alefiya Khoraki: So it started in a very weird way. You probably hear this a lot from copywriters. Back in COVID, I started my bakery business because I was still in university and for the final year, we had a very special ceremony for which I needed to raise 800 USD. And I was like, OK, let’s try something. So every day I was trying new things. Let’s try selling cottage cheese one day. Let’s try selling this. Let’s try selling that. And then I ended up starting my own bakery because I was working. I was studying in the morning, so I had time for myself in the evenings. And then I started running Facebook ads for that. And I was like, oh wow, I really enjoy this part.
I didn’t even know what copywriting is. I didn’t even know what A-B testing is. Because for my bakery business, that was the first time I downloaded the Instagram app. So I was very far off from the whole online marketing world. And then a lady was introduced to our community and she hosted a workshop. And there, she introduced me to Boss Babe. Boss Babe is Natalie Ellis and Danielle Canty. And they were doing a summit with Tony Robbins, Young Guys EOC, and all that. And then at that time, to learn all these marketing skills for my bakery business. And I was studying Sabri Suby’s book, Sell Like Crazy, and I was like, I really enjoy this. But I didn’t have the courage to quit my bakery business because people started calling me the brownie queen of Kampala. This was back in Africa. So I was doing all that, and I was really enjoying it. And then I had to travel to Pakistan for six months to my grandparents’ place. And I was like, oh, shucks. OK, now my pocket money’s stopped, and I need to do something. So what I did is I pitched, like, 50 bakery owners that, hey, let me be your bakery consultant, and let me help you grow your business. Nobody replied. And then I was like, OK, I’ve got to do something in this marketing thing. And somehow I came across Alex Cattoni’s YouTube channel. And I was like, OK, this is something called copywriting. And if I want to pursue marketing and I have to write for that, OK, maybe I was writing my Facebook ads. So how hard can this be? And that’s how I started writing on LinkedIn. And yeah, I became a LinkedIn ghostwriter. And that’s about it. And then things kept happening.
Rob Marsh: We’ll get to the “things kept happening” part in a second. I’m curious… pitching a ton of potential clients, no responses, what did that pitch look like? And as those responses didn’t come in, did you make changes to your pitch or how did you adjust your approach?
Alefiya Khoraki: I don’t even remember. I didn’t even know it was called a pitch. It was sending random emails from my Gmail account. I don’t even know if I was searching the right email addresses and probably going to support. I didn’t even know there are tools built for scrapping email addresses. I’m a rookie who doesn’t have any idea about this whole online marketing world. And of course, many things change after that. Like currently, my biggest source of client acquisition is Pitching and LinkedIn, obviously. But I don’t even remember what those pitches were. Probably just sharing that, OK, I made this much money from my bakery business. And I was supposedly called. It was bullshit. So that’s what the responses I got.
Kira Hug: OK, do you have your baking business anymore? Or is it shut down? Or you ended it?
Alefiya Khoraki: It is shut down. I was doing this in Uganda where I had a whole monopoly for the bakery business. I was charging $200 for a brownie tray and my parents were like “you ripping people off.” I was like okay. My brother is a photographer so I had elite photography and very shitty packaging but the photography did the job. I had a nice Instagram page. I was looting people left, right, center. And I had like $300 cakes, $200 cakes. There’s no chance I can charge that much money in India now that I’m married and living in India. So that’s why I chose not to continue my bakery business here.
Kira Hug: Got it. OK, well, are there any other lessons from the bakery business that you have pulled into your copywriting and marketing business?
Alefiya Khoraki: Everything. Customer care, how to handle crises. I remember when I was charging this much money and then a lady called and said, “hey, I think you’re just too overrated.” And I could get these cookies for free or for cheaper from this XYZ bakery. And then I was like, OK, let me just return you and replace you with more cookies or I can just refund your money. And then she came in and she said, I’ve raised these complaints to many, many places, but I’ve never heard a response back. And that’s the same thing I carry back to my copywriting business. If a client is not satisfied, I will do everything in my control to make that client satisfied. If it calls for more free work, I’ll do that because it’s like my first year, right? I can afford to do that. If it calls for doing more… I remember one of my early clients said she was not happy with the tone of voice. Immediately I DM Justin Blackman to help me with this. I’m really terrified, send me a course. Let me do this in two days. I did that. I was like I told this client that I’m new and I just took this course, so let me just cover this and you won’t have a tone of voice complaint ever. So that’s the thing. I know many small entrepreneur lessons and people ask me how I’ve picked up so fast. It’s because I had this bakery business background of running an actual business.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, which helps for sure, right? So you grew pretty fast as you launched your business. If I’m not mistaken, you were having six and seven thousand dollar months in the first six months of your copywriting business. So going from bakery business to copywriter, how did you make that happen?
Alefiya Khoraki: So I was in Pakistan for six months, and that was the transition period where I was figuring out, OK, what do I want to do? Then I came to India, where I am today. Now my husband lives in India. And at that time, I forgot about the business. All the ambition went down the drain. It was the honeymoon period. And then my husband traveled to Saudi Arabia for 40 days. And I had nothing to do because I don’t have any family here. And I had to do something. I wanted to do something. So that’s when I started binging all the other copywriting stuff, and started writing on LinkedIn every single day. And I landed my first client for $30 within like three days. And then I started improvising and doing small things. But because I wrote those Facebook ads, I had the idea of copy and how to do A-B testing. I still remember when I used to launch those two campaigns, one campaign was how I catered men. I was targeting men and selling like, okay, treat your pregnant wives with a box of brownies and attracted lots of men from there. So at that time, I was not sure what I was doing, but when I find a winner from the campaign, what does it feel like? So I had those certain elements which I was bringing in and I was not doing copywriting per se, like when I started on LinkedIn.
At that time the whole LinkedIn vibe was ghostwriting, ghostwriting, ghostwriting. So I just googled “what is ghostwriting?” and then I gobbled all that I could on LinkedIn and started offering ghostwriting services. So the thing which helped us scale, and then two months later I asked my husband to quit the family business and join us. So then we both combined. And there are certain challenges. We are not Prerna and Mayank. So there are certain challenges. And we had to figure a few things out—how do we work as husband and wife in the business? Which took us a year. And now we are good. But last year we did this. And the things which helped us keep getting clients on repeat was they were making good money from all the sales posts and case study posts we put out there.
Kira Hug: OK, so let’s back up a little bit. And I just need the timeline in my head. I know you made this shift. Would you say 2023 was your first year as a copywriter in business, or was it 2022?
Alefiya Khoraki: 2023 in June. And I was still in my graduation year, so I only worked for four or five months in 2023, because then exams came in, and final exams came in. And then I was like, OK, and now my exams are there. I can’t work on more projects.
Kira Hug: OK. Yeah, and I definitely want to touch on you working in combination with your husband, which is definitely interesting, tricky, and all those things, and also, I’m sure, magical and great. But first, let’s talk more about LinkedIn, because it sounds like you’ve really grown using LinkedIn. So I guess I’m wondering how you even decided, I’m going to go all in on LinkedIn. Were you experimenting with different social media platforms at first? Or was it just you chose that one and it took off because you were consistent?
Alefiya Khoraki: No, I was experimenting, of course. I have crappy design skills. So Instagram was off the charts. TikTok is banned in India. I tried Twitter when my whole family was prepping for my wedding. Choosing the dresses and all and that at that time I was busy figuring it out Twitter posting like 10 tweets a day and It didn’t just pick up. I had no traction and then the friend I have who has been constant with me for entire my bakery business and he just suggested that LinkedIn is a writer’s platform. You don’t need to have very good graphics and all that and you don’t need canvas skills. I was like, okay yeah, no canvas skills. I’ll do this. And then I started writing on LinkedIn. And yeah, it picked up. Within 30 days, I had people messaging me that they’re following me, my advice, more than they’re following Alex. I mean, some people are just nice, but then they started saying these things. And then I was like, okay. But at that time, the mistake I made was I had no idea what I was just writing about. So I started with what I started with is writing. I had a 30-day cold email challenge because I was fitting people. So I was just sharing, day one, do this tip. Day two, that’s how I started on LinkedIn. And I landed a cold email client who asked me to run some cold email campaigns for their marketing, their software development agency.
Kira Hug: OK, so just to dig in a bit more, then, what was working on LinkedIn? Again, other than you were showing up consistently, which I think is what most of us miss, is we just don’t do it frequently enough. We try it, and then we’re like, eh, it didn’t work. But were you tagging people? Were you sharing a specific style of post that started to pay off over time and attract clients?
Alefiya Khoraki: So there is a lot of advice around LinkedIn. And there’s a very simple formula, like write your about section as if you’re writing a landing page with a very strong headline, very strong conversion copy principles. And then just have a catalytic link in your feature section. This is like the basics when you’re starting. This is how I started out. And then you have like the biggest mistake I see everyone making on LinkedIn is not focusing a lot on formatting. And I know when we are writing in the flow and we are writing, it’s different from other writing platforms. Like how you write a page, how you write emails, you have to format your posts because that’s how it pushes more people towards your post. That’s how it picks up. However, like if you put long sentences, however good the copy, it does pick up. But then you have to build a very strong, engaged audience for it to pick up. So of course, formatting matters. And then the other thing which matters is being active, which I didn’t know about in the first one month or two months. And then someone shared that, OK, you have to treat LinkedIn like a job if you don’t have any other job right now, which I didn’t at that time. And do 50 comments a day and DM 10, 15 people every day and send 10, 15 connections, which is a lot to do. And it’s not sustainable. But at that time, I didn’t have anything. I was like, OK, they’re doing this. I’ll double that or triple that. And my husband wasn’t there, so I had nothing to do. So the whole day after my university classes finished, all I was doing was LinkedIn. DMing people, messaging people, writing comments. And when they read my comments, and then I brought the premium LinkedIn. When they showed up in my profile, I went in and said, hey, I noticed that you dropped by my profile, anything that caught your eye? Or, hey, I checked you dropped by my profile, what led you here? And some of them said, a future project. Or someone said, I like your comment. And then, or someone said that, I write how you put up your opinions. And that’s how that led conversations. And yeah, landed the first 10 projects came from there.
Rob Marsh: And how have you continued to use LinkedIn? Do you still, so you said it wasn’t sustainable to do, you know, three times more work than the recommendation. And for most of us, that recommendation of a post every day and 50 comments, that even is difficult to sustain. So while we’re talking about LinkedIn, how are you using it today?
Alefiya Khoraki: I have someone who helps me a little, who helps me manage it because now it’s picked up so much that I can’t handle it. So that person helps me. Okay, these are the comments that you need to pay attention to. This is the person who’s checking your profile and maybe you need to lead this conversation forward. Now, these are the people in your DMs who might feel like future clients. And what most people fail to do is what I leveraged it. I knew I couldn’t be on more than one platform. It was just not possible. But I knew that not all my ideal clients are hanging around on LinkedIn. So I was active like kind of everywhere I could be and then leading all of them towards LinkedIn. Like if I’m reaching out to someone who is very active on, on Instagram and they’re my ideal client, it didn’t stop me from reaching out if I was not on Instagram. I started the conversation there or I pitched them and then drove, drove them towards LinkedIn. And I attract like everyone, even in the, in the cooperating circles, my ideal clients, my peers, every, I was driving everyone towards LinkedIn. and showing that, okay, I’m writing on LinkedIn, I’m an authority on LinkedIn. So many people are like, oh yeah, you’re not anywhere else and you’re on a scam because you’re so active on LinkedIn. Okay, you have these posts, you have people commenting on. So you can’t be a scam, who’s pitching us? Even though it was from a non-business email at that time when I was pitching people. This is like early 2020. I’m talking about June, July, August, September, 2023. Okay.
Rob Marsh: And so today, do you still post every day?
Alefiya Khoraki: Yeah, I post every day. Monday to Friday, sometimes Saturday, Sunday as well.
Rob Marsh: Okay.
Alefiya Khoraki: And how often? I use past posts as well right now. Like when I see winner posts, I post them every day. They go at 5.45 Indian time every single day. I try and at least respond to 15 comments by myself. I at least try and start two conversations every day, which is like very little from what the LinkedIn influencers recommend. But now that I’ve built relationships and the thing which I did was really early on in my business, like in early 2024. So I’ve never had a client drop, unless it was August last year, where we had taken a three month break because of my exams. And then I came in and then I have another story to share about going for a wrong program and that time in August and then I was like putting all this energy in the wrong program which was not which well I was not trusting myself and my client acquisition abilities and then that wrong program it was like a 40-day period but I was still getting clients from LinkedIn but I was not getting clients from the other client acquisition method which was shared in that program And then, so what I did in early, so December was the other time I had a client drawn, which was like 25 days. And my biggest quality which, between my husband and I, is I can land, if you give me a deadline, in 24 hours I can land a client. And I can do something, I can go on Facebook. I’ve done that in the past. And these 25 days, tried every single thing. Instagram, yes. LinkedIn, yes. Fast clients, yes. Nothing was happening, it’s just, I was like, OK, maybe I have to reconsider the whole copywriting thing. Will I ever get a client? I don’t know. And that’s when I pitched the biggest LinkedIn influencer. And LinkedIn has this whole thing where it has a favicon rating where they rate people. So you can say top one, top two, and then it’s like top UK. And then it has like overall the whole LinkedIn thing. So she’s the number one female creator on LinkedIn. according to those Faircom ratings. And she shared in her post that her current click-through rate for her launch was 6%. And then I had a case study where my click-through rate were like 49% or something like that. And then I pitched her, and I shared that screenshot in that pitch that, hey, I saw this, and this is something that I’ve been able to do in the past. And looking at your audience, I easily think that this is possible. And I think within six hours she’s like, let’s talk, let’s do this. And the thing I did was because I knew that how influential her name can be and how it will help me grow my confidence. So I was like, okay, you don’t pay me anything until we finish the project. So if this is successful, if we hit 150K with the launch, then only you pay me. We did. and then I could use her name to get more projects which wasn’t necessary but you know that sometimes there’s an internal confidence shift and a major shift internal confidence shift happened when I was in CSP as well so you know just being able to talk to Joy in person also made that okay now I’m between the elites and now I get to think like the elites So that’s the internal confidence shift also that happened that maybe led me to pitching this big influencer.
Kira Hug: Okay, so what could someone listening do to get that type of mindset shift? today because, I mean, the way you’re talking about pitching this influencer, you came in confident and with dropping a screenshot and saying, I feel confident I can increase your click-through rate. And I love that. It clearly worked. But I know so many copywriters would struggle with that level of confidence in their mindset and would probably never even do that. So what would you recommend they do? to channel that energy you’ve got, that mindset?
Alefiya Khoraki: I’ll tell you the truth. So the thing is, it doesn’t always work. I pitched a huge another name, top five Yahoo coaches. You know, you have those listings. It’s really nice. And even that was performance basis. But it didn’t work. But what happened is, I shared that sales pitch with a few potential clients, and they loved it so much, I got projects based on that. So if you have the rents and all sorted, and if you’re not really, really struggling financially, like what’s the worst that can happen? You don’t end up getting paid for two to three works of projects. Because this is like talking about my first year in business. Like if I would be three, four years in, I wouldn’t do all this. But since it was my first year, I needed those big names I could associate myself with. I said, OK, what’s the worst that can happen? And even after that project, maybe the client twisted a few things and maybe we didn’t, we did not, um, I did not have access to her data, which we could control at that time. And which was something I learned along the way that, okay, if I’m doing a performance basis, I should have access to all their data. And that’s how I went in, in the next project that, okay, I will have access to all your data. I will monitor this, I will do this. And then you just learn and there’s nothing to lose. So this pitch to this LinkedIn influencer, I literally wrote an invite I had written a pitch three months ago, which I never sent. And I said, OK, what’s the worst that can happen? Let me just send it. Maybe she’ll ignore it. Maybe she’ll reply. Whatever happens, happens. So there’s really nothing to lose when you think, like, the mindset you’re talking about. If they say yes, it’s a project. And then you work the hell off on that project. What I’ve even done is I’ve invested my money into the project as well, maybe getting another really successful copywriter and asking them, OK, can you run through the strategy? Can you run through the copy? And although I’m not getting paid for it, I’m still investing money, which even after maybe one failed project, it will lead to ROI in one. It’s just a hustle game. So you have to keep trying until you land a big fish. And then just this is how I don’t know how you believe that or not. One big client leads to 10 others because they have this huge network, huge influence. And maybe one small client doesn’t lead to many other clients. So it’s like you just have to amp up your game. That’s what I learned through this experience.
Rob Marsh: While we’re talking about mindset, let’s also talk about how you priced the work that you did, because a lot of people starting out, especially in Asia, where you live, tend to start out charging very low prices, sometimes pennies per word, sometimes ridiculously low prices that they really shouldn’t even be considering. there’s a mindset when you’re starting out, you have to charge less. You didn’t really do that or you quickly ramped up your pricing. Talk a little bit about that and the thinking around that. How did you justify that to yourself as you started to build your business?
Alefiya Khoraki: Okay. I’ll be very honest. I did the same. So my goal was, okay, I was earning X, Y, Z in the bakery business. And I was like, okay, how can I earn the similar thing in this new business? And it turns out, okay, $10 email, fine. Okay, that’s so much money. I just get $10 fighting a normal email. That’s good. Until you get into circles where people are talking about $500 for email. And then that’s where your business, your mindset shifts. So there’s an interesting story. When I started the business, I reached out to Iman Ismail to hire me. And then she was like, your copy game is not still there. This is like, very mid just like the first month of starting the business. And then I was like, I’ll reach out to you a year later and you’ll see where I am. So let me just put in everything I can so I can reach there. So at that time, I saw like what Eman charges. And then I was like, okay, who are the Asians who are crushing it currently? And Prerna came up, Esai came up, and Samar came up. And then I looked at their charges and they were charging a lot. Then I was like, okay, why can’t I?
Then I looked at their work. Okay, okay. Now, if I have to amp up my work game, let me invest in it. And we invested a lot. Last year, I don’t think we’ve saved anything in the business. All what we earned went back into investing. Everything. We made some mistakes. Some programs were not worth it. But most of it was. I’ve heard about like the think tank and CSP and programs like this what it does even if it does not like if even if you’re not getting the coaching coaching like the the knowledge part what happens is just getting into a room with Kira or Joel or people like that it just makes you feel like okay now you’re you’re a big person like you’re you’re someone who as an authority you’re someone who is known in those circles Maybe the coach doesn’t see you that way, but it’s just internally, it shifts many things. Like, okay, now I can be friends with this influential person. I can be friends with this one. Now this person knows my name. Now this person is seeking out to you. I’m speaking with this person.
So that just builds network, and that’s what helped me shift my mindset around pricing. Okay, if these other influential people who I admire, they can do so. So let me do, and then it’s, I was increasing price after every project, very slowly. So I started LinkedIn with $35 per post. Then it went to 45, then 55, then 75. The highest it went to was $150 per post. And then similar with emails. It started with like $25 per email, coming to 250 right now.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I mean, it seems an observation is what, some of the many things you’ve done well is relationships. boldly reaching out to people, building those relationships, and having the drive and the confidence to reach out and say, Okay, even if you’re not ready for me now, or you don’t think I’m good enough now, I’m going to come back and I will be good enough and just believing in yourself to know that you’ll circle back and they will want you. I love that on LinkedIn, You reach out to people who have checked out your profile. I don’t know if you do that, Rob. I’ve never done that. And I check out who’s checking out my profile all the time. And so now I think I might reach out to them and ask them your questions. What was the question you asked? Like, hey, do you see anything you like?
Rob Marsh: This is actually one of the ideas that we put in our Find Clients Now report that we’ve made free for everybody, is to use that check out, people checking you out. And when you’re checking each other out a couple of times, it’s a little bit like dating, right? It’s like, wait a second, that guy’s making eyes at me. Maybe we should be friends and start that relationship.
Kira Hug: Yeah, they’re looking at me. But I love that approach because it’s a great way to engage And they’re mostly going to respond. So I’m going to start doing that. Before we move away from LinkedIn, because I would just love to talk about the content you’re posting. You’re posting daily. How do you think about content? What advice do you have for all of us if we want to post more frequently, based off what’s worked for you or even what’s working today on LinkedIn?
Alefiya Khoraki: So as Jo says, everything is content, right? So we are tracking everything, all client results. And I was very open about everything going on in my business. If a client emailed me saying, this is the part I don’t like about your project, I would put that on there. And hardly anyone does that because everyone’s very busy showing off the results. And what helped that is whenever a client that a potential client who wanted to work with me reached out and said, you’re genuine. I know that all the results you’re posting up are not fake because you posted this thing. So one thing is sharing your story and all the ups and downs, where you’ve traveled, where you’ve been from, your I’m not an overshare. I would not share about my personal life or anything about my family or all this. Some people do that. And their whole entire content strategy is based off their personality, which can work. It very well does.
My content strategy is not very heavily focused on personality-driven content. I’m not saying personality-driven in terms of writing. In terms of writing, yes. But I would not share about very intimate stuff. I’m not comfortable there. And the other thing is, we all have opinions. Sometimes I’m scrolling something on Instagram, and recently I wrote a post. I saw someone saying, there was a huge influencer. I really, really admire that. Maybe I mentioned them on the podcast. And they were launching this 2997 program. And as a bonus, they were selling a $97 sales page template. And it got me a little furious. How can you expect people to convert six-figure, seven-figure funnels based on a $97 template. So that was the idea that struck, and then I’m collecting these ideas, and then I wrote a post that if you expect to see great ROI from this, and that was the whole post. So whenever I’m reading something, it triggers my attention, that goes into the content folder. Then all case studies must, must, must have to be on LinkedIn. Any good connections I’ve built, I would have shared about how I pitched Kira and your reply. But sometimes you can’t overshare. You have to run it by them. Are they comfortable doing that? Sometimes I didn’t. And that was a mistake I made. And I would not do that again. I would always run by people. OK, are you comfortable with me sharing this screenshot? Are you comfortable with me sharing this snapshot? Which will save you a lot of trouble. It would have saved me a lawsuit by one of my, yeah.
Rob Marsh: So we’re never going to come back to that. While you’re talking, I’m thinking to myself, OK, we’re raising all of the prices of all of our templates so that the expectation is that they’re going to deliver. what we promised, because you’re right. There’s a framing effect that happens when you price things low, and I think you’re tapping into some deep psychology there. But I want to go back to what you talked about, or what you briefly mentioned, investing in a program that was not a fit. And we don’t necessarily need to talk about the program, but I am really interested in the process that you went through as you thought, okay, I need this. And then how you came to realize, wait a second, this was a bad investment. And maybe are there takeaways from that experience that we can use as we’re looking at programs to invest in?
Alefiya Khoraki: Yeah, I wouldn’t go very much in detail on this, but so what happened is the main one thing was I was operating from a place of fear. Because I said I never faced client acquisition issues. I just came back from my exams. And I was like, OK, let’s do this. I did not do any research on my end. And I went all in. And I was doing all the work, showing up for 1 a.m. calls, all the calls. and doing all the work, but I was still not seeing results. And then I just started doing it my way, like, OK, ditch this process and let me just do what I was doing before. And then I started getting results. And what happened is I pitched a copywriter and she hired me based on that pitch. And she loved the pitch. She loved it so much that she asked me if I was open to come in and do a mini training about pitching in her Mastermind or her course for her students and I did that and I as I said, I share everything about LinkedIn I did that on LinkedIn and this mentor the person read that and then filed a lawsuit or like the whole the process around IP theft and It was a nightmare and Thank goodness I had mentors like Samar Owais, and CSP, Jo, and everyone. And I’ve never mentioned the name of the program nor the mentor, and I never will, because everyone’s running business, and these things happen. And no one ever should.
We should all protect each other’s businesses, and that’s what I learned from one of the mentors as well. But they guided me throughout the whole time. And Samar was even available at 1 AM, 12 AM, because when it’s morning in America or in the West, it’s night here. So it was a very, very dark time. I did not have clients. I was facing this. And the main part was not about not seeing ROI, because how my brain is, even if I’m not seeing ROI from the particular thing, I’ll just do everything to get the ROI out of it. Like if the program is around funnels, maybe that particular funnels didn’t work for me, but I will do all external research on funnels and get funnels working for me.
So which happened, but I was really, really hurt emotionally because theft is something like as Muslims and like our entire religion is based on faith. and being true and honest. And it’s for every good human, right? And I was really shattered. Someone’s calling me a thief. And I have worked so hard to build this name. And will it all be gone? What will happen? And there were many dis- I’m feeling so emotional. I’m getting goosebumps from sharing this. So it was a very, very difficult time. And I remember one day, I was almost in tears. All this time, I had I had anxiety, I couldn’t sleep, because all of this time I was checking any notification, like, is there an email? Is there an email? And I remember Abby checking in on LinkedIn, like, hey, are you doing fine? Abi Prendergast. And I was like, no. She’s like, let’s do a call. And I was weeping for 45 minutes straight. And then she said this, that six months later, you’ll be laughing about this, talking on a podcast. And it’s not six months yet, but it was a very difficult time. I still have nothing against the mentor or the program or nothing of that sort, but it would have saved me a lot of energy if I would have been mindful and not operated out of fear. And my biggest advice is to at least reach out to three students before joining any program, three to four students. So you have diverse feedback from those students, whatever the sales page says, because let’s face it, we are copywriters, it’s our job. And sometimes we are not all ethical, right? Whatever it says, do reach out to three, four students. And I want to pitch in here, I’m going to pause and pitch in for the copywriter underground, because I’m connected with a lot of copywriters, and they have said phenomenal things about the program. I’ve heard so many good things, like all about sharing like how it has impacted their overall business. And I didn’t do that. And I just had to face that in my first year in business. And I was really, like, we almost had the thought that, OK, how about we just shut it down? Or what can we do? But the mentors and the people who supported me helped me get through this.
Kira Hug: So just to clarify to make sure I understand, maybe I’m getting lost in the weeds. The lawsuit was because you were sharing some of the insights from the course, and that’s what triggered the lawsuit?
Alefiya Khoraki: That was the accusation. That was the accusation. But it wasn’t there. It was just me walking through three of my successful pitches.
Kira Hug: Got it.
Alefiya Khoraki: And I posted about that on LinkedIn. And directly, the email came in that, OK, this is an IP theft you’re sharing.
Kira Hug: So it sounds like it was already not a great experience for you and then that just, that just sunk.
Alefiya Khoraki: I wouldn’t say, I wouldn’t, yeah, I wouldn’t, yeah, I wouldn’t just put it out there, Kira, but maybe, yeah, it wasn’t, but it, yeah.
Kira Hug: Well, the question I would ask that could be relevant to people in our audience is what would you recommend to someone who is going through something difficult? It might not be a lawsuit. It could be something personal. It could be an issue with a family member. It’s just something that is depleting of energy and taking away from business focus and joy and leaving you feeling really hollow. And you mentioned support from your networks. I think you already covered that. But what other advice would you give to them?
Alefiya Khoraki: At that moment when you’re facing all this, you just want to slip in bed and do nothing. You don’t want to wake up. You don’t want to do client projects. You don’t want to do anything. So there’s nothing that can like, even if you try and watch shows, nothing happens. And it led to a lot of fights between me and my husband as well, because at that time he said not to invest here. And I was like, can you just trust my gut? And it turns out my gut sometimes is really shitty in these things. And then he’s like, you got us into this. And so those things happened. But the major thing is having mentors who have been in the game for five years, seven years, and paying for that directly. access. I know it can be a lot in the first year of the business or second year of the business. It just, it has so many more emotional, financial, so many benefits. And then having a peer group, which is not your family, but who are like in the business with you. If you’re a copywriter listening, copywriters, if you’re designers listening, designers who understand, like someone saying, you know, like, When I started and I was seeing all these success stories, I thought none of the successful copywriters had failed projects. But then as I had coffee chats with them, I go, yeah, this project failed and that project failed. I said, OK, this is so normal. These things happen, and I’m not the only one. And you can’t know all that until you start building those relationships. So relationships is the only advice I would give to people struggling.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So while we’re talking, you mentioned your team, while we’re talking about this, you work with your husband, you said there are other people in the business. Obviously you, it’s a pretty young business and to already have a team, talk about the team that you’ve built and lessons you’ve learned along the way.
Alefiya Khoraki: Yeah. So last year it was like a hiring and firing fest. So it was like one month I’m hiring this and the next month I’m firing. because I had no idea how to hire someone and how to fire and what to look. And then along the way, I built an SOP like, okay, this is what I’m looking for. This is what I need. So currently what my team is me, my husband and two other junior operators. And one of them handles the LinkedIn part as well for me. So she’s doing double jobs. Yeah, that’s it. Me, my husband. And so how it goes is I handle the whole PR and marketing side of the business. And client acquisition, that’s what I specialize in. My husband does accounts. We both do client work. And he is like, OK, where are the finances going? How do we keep investing? Is it time for a branding investment? Because my financial literacy is not that good. And he is really good at that. And then he handles the whole management side. OK, no. And then, yeah, so one thing before investing in programs, read contracts. Don’t just do it on the fly. I was like, yeah, I trust this person. Let me just do that. Don’t do that. Read contracts really thoroughly. If there are contracts and you can run them by a lawyer, do that. So now my husband takes care of all that, reading the contracts, reading them again and again, sending contracts to clients and all the I would not say techie side, but the managerial side of the business. And then I handle the client acquisition side and then we both do projects together. And then the team, it’s when I have like a lot of, um, they’re, they’re not exactly employees because last year I was doing on employee basis and it didn’t work out because sometimes you have, it was such a young business that I, I was, I wasn’t having that much income that I could have two full-time employees. So then I shifted to subcontractors. Then when I have excess work, I pass on to them and then I’m the one editing it. And then this year, what I’m planning is adding an editor to the whole process to make the entire copy delivering process more faster than what it was last year.
Kira Hug: What is the scope of the business? What does that look like today? The number of projects you’re working on per month, the type of projects you’re working on. You mentioned LinkedIn, ghost writing for LinkedIn.
Alefiya Khoraki: No, we don’t do that anymore. That was last year. So then we shifted to funnels and that’s when the business really picked up. So now we’re like this very, it’s very fresh since we started funnels like three months and I’m booked out till May end. And we’re doing like one or two projects per month, which is $14,000 per funnel. So yeah, that’s how it looks. And the scope is, it looks like a six figure year this year. My goal was 80K, so we’ve already like 60% covered that. So either we’ll take the year off after we hit that goal, or we’ll move it up to six figures. Scope is a lot. There is like easily, I know this is what hurts me a lot that some copywriters just get because I had a copywriting client and this is also what I want to share that I had a copywriting client like a copy coaching client and she just got into it because of how people are promising that how it’s so lucrative and you make so much money and blah blah and then she was like I’m learning all these new skills and I don’t even know English properly So you know that whole claim that you can get into this even if English is not your first language? It’s true, but you have to have a very serious passion for writing. If you’re just getting into the money, she paid like a lot of money, $2,500. And after four sessions, the fifth session was a therapy session-ish. And I was like, OK, you can do it. And she started crying. I felt so bad for her. She started crying that I can’t do this with my full-time job. all that and then she said okay I just can’t take it anymore and I’ll quit and I’ll go back to my teaching job and sometimes it really hurts and then I wrote I wrote that on LinkedIn too like don’t don’t enter this world because someone has promised you more money. Enter this world if you’re really passionate about writing, if you’re really passionate about marketing, if you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get the clients, get the work done, because even copywriting, it seems like it’s writing. It’s not. There’s so many layers and you can’t always learn enough. Then there’s tone of voice, there’s headlines. One time there’s how to begin emails and then there are personality driven emails. You just have to learn every single day. And if you have day jobs and if you have children and if you have other sort of issues and if you feel like you can’t do a lot, so at least don’t quit your job and don’t give up everything and start this. What do you think about that?
Rob Marsh: I tend to agree that it’s a good idea to have a lot of runway and to allow yourself the time to build a client list and all of that. But there’s also the tension that happens when you have something that’s safe And you can always go back to your day job that you don’t push as far into the thing that you want to do. So there’s a balance there. We’ve definitely worked with copywriters who had the day job and they held onto that so tightly that they couldn’t grow their copywriting job. And the flip side, you know, we’ve worked with copywriters who lost the day job, had to make it work, and within a year or two, you know, six-figure businesses, one that I know of with a seven-figure business, right? So those things happen, and there’s a tension there. So I agree with that caveat.
Alefiya Khoraki: But I feel they should not come into this business thinking it’s easy work, because it’s not. Like, if… 100% agree with that.
Kira Hug: Not, I mean, especially not in 2024. Like this is it’s, yeah, it’s never been easy, but it will only be it will only get harder to be top at your game. With competition with AI. You need to be. Yeah, I mean, it’s just that’s the truth. And that’s the reality of the future. So circling back to what you shared before you said, Something along the lines of, you know, all I need is 24 hours and I can get money in the door. I can get a client in the door. But there was that one period where that wasn’t working for you. So let’s say there’s a copywriter listening.
Alefiya Khoraki: That was the period I was going through this whole lawsuit as well. So I was not in that mind game. But yeah, even external things. And then I’ve heard many successful copywriters, Iman, Shanti, all talk about that particular month, they did not have clients. So I didn’t, I don’t know if December was just a month where we heard that too.
Kira Hug: So, but let’s say there’s a copywriter listening, they want a client, they want to have that client in the next 24 hours. What are three things you would say, go do this now? And I almost guarantee, or maybe you can guarantee, you can have a client in 24 hours. Or maybe it’s just one thing.
Alefiya Khoraki: The first thing I would do is look at my most successful project and circle that client and see if they’re okay with me sharing the results and the case study with whoever I wish to share. Then I look for 10 friends of that particular client. not just anyone else, 10 particular friends of that client. Maybe I could find them from social media following or people who’ve been commenting and going down that rabbit hole, but finding friends or people who are connected with, but first getting the client’s consent that if he or she is okay with me sharing this with other people. And then because it just shortens the cycle so much when you share the name that that’s a friend or they know. So I would just do that and then reach out to them via LinkedIn or directly, but I would not even ask the client to make the recommendation because sometimes it takes a lot of time. Sometimes it takes like, okay, maybe next week or this, if I want a client fast, I’ll do it myself. So reaching out to that 10 clients will, if, and if you’ve worked, if that person is a little influential or Even if that’s not influential, but has the power to lead to at least $1,000 project, I would do that, first thing. Second, if you’re active on any social media platform, see people who are liking your posts, commenting on your posts. And if they are anywhere around your ICP, don’t reach out to them saying, hey, I need a client or blah, blah, blah. Just open a conversation and talk about how you’re looking for someone like them.
One sneaky trick I’ve done is if I really want to work with you, Kira, I would reach out to you and say, Hey, Kira, I recently worked with XYZ and I would love to have clients like Rob. And you identify as Rob as well. That should be the thing. And would you mind being an affiliate or Would you mind making an introduction knowing how much your authority holds? And three times that message has yielded, hey, thank you for this message. And then obviously mentioning a name. I’ve worked with this name, who they might identify, sometimes they might not. And then you can link that, OK, this person has these many followers or this is the type of person I’ve worked with. And many of the times they have said, I’m interested in something like this. So it just lifts off the pressure for them saying, OK, you pitched me. but you’re actually looking to pitch them, but just pitching them as an affiliate. So sometimes it’s genuine as well. You’re looking to get them as an affiliate, but it also helps that because sometimes this, the pitching has become so saturated. Like I’ll get you this, I’ll do this. I’ll do that. And our inbox are so flooded that this just lifts off the pressure that, okay, I’m not getting pitched. I’m just getting welcomed to do something. And if I’m interested, I’ll say yes. The second thing, The third thing, I think that’s pretty much the two things which would help.
Rob Marsh: The third thing is pay attention to the first and second things.
Alefiya Khoraki: Yeah, let’s do it again.
Rob Marsh: You know, as you talk about this too, Alefiya, one of the things with that pitch strategy, when you ask the person that you’ve worked with who is like you or who can I reach out to and they give you that name, adding them as a CC when you send that pitch that says, hey, Kira recommended that I reach out to you because and then Kira’s copied on the email. That’s just another bit of social proof. Obviously, if Kira didn’t recommend that I reach out to this person, she might jump in with a, you know, an email saying, wait a second, I didn’t reach. So it’s that proof and makes it even more real and gives that person an opportunity to respond. And so just, yeah, another thing to do if you follow that strategy, which is a really good strategy for getting a response. Whether or not you get the work, who knows, but it’s a great way to start that relationship for sure.
Alefiya Khoraki: I love that. I’m going to try that.
Rob Marsh: So as we get to the end of our interview with you, Alefiya, one thing that I’m wondering is, okay, what have you got planned for your business coming up? You’ve obviously made some really big changes in the products that you offer, the services that you do for your clients. You have this big goal of six figures. You’ve moved into doing more funnels. What else is happening in your business that’s going to produce big results in the future?
Alefiya Khoraki: One thing is I’m not looking to scale very fast this year. I’m being intentional about it, not taking more projects, although I can with the two people I have, but I’m trying to be a little slow here so that nothing is rushed and everything feels like, okay, I have control over everything. So that’s the business side of it. And the second side is I have nothing, like no website, no branding. nothing, no email list. And it’s time that I take these things seriously. Because now, if someone is inviting me to speak in a summit, all I’ve got to share is my LinkedIn profile, which was working with me fine. But now if I want to step up a little as an authority, so I currently have just a random Google Docs sales page, which is also one thing that If you don’t have all the things in place, if you don’t have a fancy website, if you’re intimidated with tech, design, and all the things, maybe you don’t have the time to figure out, OK, who to hire for branding here. You’re all about Branding, I know. But if you’re just getting started and you’re intimidated, I pushed all these things because of my fear of this. And then I was like, OK, one fine day, I just launched a Google Docs sales page. And that sales page, it has been like three months, and it has already brought in 30K worth of projects just from the sales page alone, a Google Doc sales page on my LinkedIn. So starting messy is fine.
So that’s the second thing going on in the business. I’m looking to get these assets in place. And the third thing is looking to do more speaking opportunities. I had a speaking coach as a client, and then I wavered off a part of the project fee. She was one of my first funnel projects. And then she got me a ticket into her speaking bootcamp. So I’m looking to improve my speaking skills while I do that. Um, I’ve practiced that. I know that’s how I, Kira, I reached out to you like, okay, we were talking in that LinkedIn comments and you’re playing as opposed to, and you’re like, okay, which, so I’m looking to go on more podcasts. I have a goal of 30 and 24 doing at least, two to three guest trainings and masterminds than more of the speaking side of things this year.
Kira Hug: Amazing. And I’m curious to hear what you think the future of copywriting looks like as you think out maybe not too far into the future, maybe the next two or three years. What excites you? What opportunities do you see?
Rob Marsh: What does that look like?
Alefiya Khoraki: The thing which has helped me personally is I don’t think I’ve got business because of being a copywriter. I’ve got business because of being a strategist and a consultant. And I could do that because I had this whole bakery business experience, which really helps you think like a business owner. These are the moving pieces, these are marketing pieces. And even though I was working for LinkedIn, I saw the aerial view of the business. And that’s where your price point can be justified a lot. So I feel the future of copywriting is more of consultancy, strategy, and, of course, AI. But I’ve still not dipped my toes into AI. It’s something that really overwhelms me. And I’m still doing fine without it, at least till now. But I plan to get someone on board on my team who handles that part. So you can’t neglect that. So it’s part of that, you have to catch up on it, maybe streamline some of your processes and learn AI. So if it doesn’t work for you, hire someone to do that. But strategy and AI is here to be for the next at least five years.
Rob Marsh: Well, when you’re ready, Althea, we have a course for copywriters and content writers about AI, how to use it. It’s got some good stuff in there, so you can check that out. Yes.
Alefiya Khoraki: I’m telling someone from a team to get on that course.
Rob Marsh: There you go. Yeah, for sure. So we want to thank you for joining us. And you already told us you don’t have a website for us to link to, but you are on LinkedIn. Is that where people should go to find out more about you or to connect with you?
Alefiya Khoraki: Yes, LinkedIn it is. You’ll find me there. And yes, I’m always there answering the DMs, answering the comments. So you can always reach out to me.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. We’ll find you there. Thank you.
Kira Hug: Thank you so much.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Aleffia Karaki. I want to just add a couple of thoughts like I usually do. So you’ve got a couple of things to think about as you walk away from this episode.
Now, we mentioned this in the intro, but it was funny that Alefiya didn’t actually mention this until the very end of the podcast, but she has no website. She has no branding. She’s never taken a branding photograph. She’s never thought about the positioning from that standpoint. She’s never done any email pitching. Everything that Aleffia has done is done on LinkedIn, and she’s built a six-figure business. So if you have any questions about whether it’s possible, it absolutely is possible. Not only that, but she’s done it from India and she’s done it in less than a year. So that just demonstrates the power of LinkedIn as a place to go to connect with the kinds of clients that can hire you for the work that you want to do. If you haven’t been on LinkedIn posting content or even commenting on other people’s content, dialing in your profile, do those things and get there because especially for certain industries, but almost everybody is there and you’re able to connect with just so many potential clients worth checking out. So go back and listen to what we’ve talked about here, as well as some of the previous episodes we’ve done recently with people like Alex Thompson and how they’re using LinkedIn in their business.
Let me just reiterate what Alefiya’s approach was. She mentioned that she would post every single day. She would comment 50 times. That’s a pretty good amount of comments. And when you’re commenting on LinkedIn, you don’t want to just comment something and say, Hey, yep. Great. I agree. Do you want to be adding something to the discussion? So it will take a little bit of brainpower. You probably don’t have to comment 50 times, but. Alifia did it and it created this six figure business for her. She was also making 10 connection requests every single day. And less than a year later, she has almost 5,000 followers on LinkedIn. That’s 5,000 people who see her content show up in their feeds almost every single day. She also mentioned that she was reposting old content that got a response. So, you know, it’s content ages out after three or four months, maybe six months or even a year, reusing that content is a great way to not have to reinvent the wheel and to connect with additional people who’ve started following you in the past few months, people that the algorithm will find for you. So that’s the approach. Post every day, comment, make connection requests and accumulate your followers. And if you’re doing it the way that Alephia has done it, you could create a very significant business using LinkedIn.
There’s one other thing that Alefiya talked about. She mentioned several other examples of copywriters that she started to follow and mimic. She mentioned Eman Zabi, Asai Arasi, Prerna Malik, Samar Awais. All of them have been on the podcast before. I didn’t have time to look up the episode numbers so that you can listen to what they shared, but jump into your podcast player and look up those people, Aman, Asai, Prerna, and Samar. and you’ll learn from them as Aleffia did. But something else to note is all of these people weren’t just guests on the Copywriter Club podcast. They actually participated in our programs. Eman was part of the Copywriter Accelerator. Asai, Perna, and Aman all were members of the Copywriter Think Tank. And All four of them have been in the Copywriter Underground at some point or another. So if you really want to succeed like some of the people that you see out there, as Alefiya mentioned, it makes sense to imitate and do the things that they do. And if they’ve gotten great results from a particular program, whatever, it might be worth considering.
Now, of course, As Alefya also pointed out, you don’t want to be operating from a place of fear when selecting a program or a course or anything else that you’re investing in. So keep that in mind. But there are definitely worse people to follow than the ones that Alefya has mentioned. Aman, Asai, Prerna, and Samar are all just fantastic writers and good people and worth listening to their podcast episodes if you’d like a little bit more.
Okay, I want to thank Aleffia for joining us to chat about her business and how she uses LinkedIn to attract clients so that she doesn’t have to cold pitch. She doesn’t need a website. She doesn’t need to do all of the things that so many of us have been doing. You can connect with her, of course, on LinkedIn. Just look for Aleffia Karaki when you’re there. And don’t forget that you can get your hands on the AI training document that I mentioned at the top of the show when you go to thecopyrighterclub.com/AIwriter.
That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast.
Want clients to find you instead of always having to pitch and find them? Then you need to be where they are. And in most cases, that means somewhere online—Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn or in your own newsletter. In the 390th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with former dentist turned copywriter Kieran Drew about how he took two years to grow an online presence that earns him six figures a year today. This one is worth listening to twice. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Blockbuster Principle by Michael Simmons (article)
The Almanack of Naval Ravakan
Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger The Status Game by Will Storr
Mastery by Robert Greene
Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
HypeFury (posting tool)
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Last week I started off the podcast by talking about the idea of slow and steady growth. This week is a little different. It’s about overnight success. Or rather, what might look like overnight success, but really is a two year effort to build and iterate something that works.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and social media expert and not-so-funny stand up comic Kieran Drew. Kieran is one of those over night success stories. When I first came across him online, he was in the middle of a six-figure launch that surprised even him. And in the year since then, he’s done it twice more. But the back story is less instant recognition and more grind and fail, then grind and fail again until something works.
But before we get to what Kieran shared about launches, growing a newsletter and social media presence and why he gave up a promising career and guaranteed income for something a lot riskier like copywriting, I want to mention again our free report called how to find clients. I recently took a week to rework and revise one of our most popular client finding resources… this report. it’s completely updated for 2024 and now includes more than 21 different ideas for finding clients… many of them could help you attract a client in the next 24 hours. Wither we’ve used these ourselves, or we know other successful copywriters who have landed good, high-paying clienets with them. I’ve said it before…This isn’t a one page pdf that will get lost in your downloads folder. In fact, if you’re just going to download it to get to it later, don’t bother. It’s too valuable to not get used. But if you’re ready to take action and go after a new client, this report includes the 4 mistakes you can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you make them, clients will not work with you. It also includes more than 21 ways to find clients, templates for reaching out to clients, and finally the five things you need to do to improve your odds of landing a client. Get your copy now at thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Kieran.
Kira Hug: All right, let’s kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter? Yeah, sure.
Kieran Drew: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on because I have devoured your podcast. When I first heard of writing and copywriting, I must have listened to like 80 of your episodes because it was a very exciting and scary world, copywriting.
Rob Marsh: So you only have 320 to go, it sounds like.
Kieran Drew: I know.I had to start doing the work at one point. It’s been a massive help. I got into copywriting while I was a dentist, up until a couple of years ago and when COVID hit. I never really enjoyed my job as a dentist. The pay was pretty good, but unfortunately, I was working six days a week and I sort of lacked that creative fulfillment. And when COVID hit, obviously we couldn’t see patients from home. So I had a couple of months and I thought, you know what, let’s have a little look at what we could do here.
And I actually decided to be a standup comedian and I started writing jokes in the morning and thankfully no one actually heard my jokes, but what I noticed was those few hours in the morning when I was writing flew by. And that was my first taste of flow. So I started to ask myself, how can we build a writing career from this? And I found blogging. I sucked at all that. I failed for like a year. I built a website that all went terribly. I tried writing on Instagram, Reddit, and it all just failed one bit after another.
And then I met a friend on Twitter and he said, have you ever heard of this thing called copywriting? And until that time I thought copywriting was for lawyers, right? Like the circle with the R. Iit was really cool to realize that you can combine writing with persuasion and psychology. I fell in love. I mean, I sucked at it. I’m still not that great, but I fell in love with it from there.
Rob Marsh: So let’s talk a little bit about moving away from what you did before. Obviously you’re not entirely happy with your career, even though you’re making pretty good money. Let’s talk about the mindset a little bit and the shift. Because when you’ve invested so much time, schooling, effort, energy into something, it feels like there’s a lot of tendency to be stuck and to want to remain and to finish. You may not have been happy, but you had invested so much into your career. Talk about that mindset shift and what it took to step away from that into something, as you describe it, totally unknown.
Kieran Drew: Yeah, I mean, the toughest point probably was right at the start when I sort of knew that the career was okay. I wasn’t ever, I was never really that mad about it. Like I said, the pay was pretty good, so I never really questioned it, but unfortunately dentistry is not really transferable. So I used to feel really desperate, um, going into work. And I remember listening to podcasts of creative people thinking, Oh God, I’m in the wrong career, but there’s literally nothing you can do. And so stupidly, like a bad gambler, my, my plan was to double down. So I started specializing, I took a second job and I thought, look, if you can slog this out for 10, 15 years, at least you have enough money. If you save well and invest, you can at least try to retire early and do something else.
And what happened there was, so I started doing okay at dentistry and I remember listening to Seth Godin and he was talking about sunk cost bias. I’d never heard of it before. And I was like, well, here it is. You know, I’ve spent 10 years on a career, uh, over six figures in training. And I always thought because of that, you know, the first 10 years of your career should dictate the next 50. And when you think about that on paper, it’s like, how stupid is that? And, when I realized this, then it actually got a bit harder because every day I drove to work, I was like, you’re making a big mistake. You, you become aware of the opportunity cost of time. But the only good part was it was quite exciting to finally go, “you know what? Changing careers is always really overwhelming because you’re always focusing on things like expert status.” And I was like, “you know, let’s just start by exploring and curiosity. And you’re not here to make money. There’s no pressure on the result. Let’s just get good at a different skill.” And that was really fun. But over time, it’s a bit like having a stone in your shoe, Rob, where you think you could ignore it, but the more you walk, the more it annoys you. And I was coming to work and I was like, I really do feel like I’m in the wrong job here.
My plan was to slowly transition. I go down to three days a week at dentistry, start building up the writing career and do that over sort of five years. I’m really risk averse or I used to be anyway. And what actually happened was, my boss texts me the day before I was meant to start a new job three days a week. And he texts me being like, oh, the clinic isn’t ready for another month. And we’ve been waiting nine months to work together. And I was, I remember I was so happy I was in this flat and I was running up and down fist pumping because I was like, yes, I don’t have to work for a month. I get to ride for a month.
And when that sort of settled down, I was like, how screwed up is this that you’re celebrating so much to do something you love? Maybe this is actually a sign to back out. And I have never been so scared in my life, man. I called my mom, my dad, all my friends being like, “I think I’m going to quit my career here.” And it’s way too early. Everyone was just saying, go for it. At the end of the day, you can always go back. This isn’t a fatal decision.
And then I went to see the boss again. People say I was brave. I had a panic attack outside the practice. I remember I was walking past the door, went to knock, panicked, went to the alleyway, stood in the alleyway for like five minutes. And then when I actually came in, I spent half an hour talking to nurses about jobs I’ll never do and materials I’ll never use and all that. Eventually when I got into his office, I said, yeah, I’m done. And he said something similar where it’s like, oh, you’re throwing away 10 years of a career you’re only 10 years in. And I was like, precisely, there’s never a good time to quit. It’s now. Right. So yeah, a scary decision, but in retrospect went really well.
Kira Hug: I always wonder when people feel this change of heart, if you know, for you, did you love dentistry in the beginning or do you feel like you just, you started on a path that was really never something you loved or did something change for you over those 10 years?
Kieran Drew: We’re expected to pick a career before we can pick a car, right? So, I mean, I decided to do dentistry from about 16 years old. And at the time it felt like the right choice because I’m not sure what it’s like in America, but it’s dentist, lawyer, or doctor, you’ve made it.
I come from a working class family and so no one’s really graduated from uni. So I was like, hell yeah, this is going to be it. And it felt like the golden ticket. And yes, when I was at uni, I was like, Ooh, it’s not actually that fun staring in someone’s mouth all day. And, I’ve got quite a bad neck and back and I was always sore. And it was like, you kind of ignore these little signals. Because we always used to joke, Oh, you know, we’ll have the Porsche and the golf play golf all day. And I don’t like cars that much. I don’t play golf. And so when I graduated, that’s where it started to sink home. It’s like golden handcuffs sort of thing.
I was happy when the paychecks were coming in, just so I could invest and save. But it doesn’t really solve that Monday morning anxiety. Right? And I think the more I started reading about philosophy and what you’re doing with your life, it was, it was kind of like, I don’t know, it seemed to me, you can’t really do great work until you’re loving what you do. The more I realized that the more it just felt like time to throw it away and start a new career.
Rob Marsh: And then as you started exploring, playing around with it, when stuff isn’t working, you created a website—blogging—it wasn’t working. How did you stick with it knowing that there’s a positive business outcome here? You know, writing is one thing. Lots of people have books in their drawers that never get published or they’ve written bad poetry and never make any money. But how did you keep going through all of that?
Kieran Drew: Yeah. It’s easy to paint the story in retrospect. I think I’m going to try not do that. I’ll be a hundred percent honest. I think fear is a brilliant motivator. I really started hating my job that much that I was like, you have to keep trying. So that was pretty handy. The other side of it, I remember having a conversation with my girlfriend and I was like, look, this is going to suck. So let’s expect results in two years, not two months. And that was one metric I constantly ran through where I was like, okay, we’re at month 10, nothing’s working, but you said two years. And ironically, actually the 24th month was my first 10 K month, but it took me 13 months to make $1. So I think zooming out has always helped.
It’s really easy just to say: have faith. I think that really helps people that much because having faith is having complete confidence that something will work. You don’t really get that until you’ve done it. But I used to just look at people who had done it and thought if they could do it, why can’t I? I always said for copywriting, if I could get paid 4k a month or something, I would be in heaven. So I don’t need to be this six, seven figure copywriter. And so it was always like, if they can get to that, surely processes out there somewhere. A combination of those things.
Kira Hug: I have one more question about dentistry before we fully move on, we’ll see if this comes out the way… you’ve worked with a lot of people, you’ve seen the inside of their mouth. What frustrates you the most about patients? Is it they just don’t floss no matter how many times you tell them? Why can’t they just adult and floss and be a good adult?
Rob Marsh: I think this is the second time we’ve mentioned flossing on the podcast in 400 episodes.
Kira Hug: Are you sure we’ve talked about it before?
Rob Marsh: I mentioned I floss every day on a previous episode. I am a daily flosser.
Kira Hug: I do now because of tiny habits. Anyway…
Kieran Drew: To be honest, from what I’ve heard, you Americans are much better at flossing than us Brits.
Rob Marsh: I don’t know that that’s true across the board though. I don’t know very many people who floss every day. One of my friends is a really good dentist. This is not a dentistry podcast, but one of my good friends is a dentist. And he says, if you look at the amount of floss used in America, it averages to like two feet per person per year, which means nobody’s really flossing.
Kieran Drew: Well, the flossing bit didn’t annoy me because I get why people don’t. I mean, it’s very hard to do the whole vitamin versus painkiller thing, right? People start flossing when they come to me, the gums are knackered. The thing that was actually quite tough as a dentist. And one of the main reasons I quit was because… well actually two… for one, no one is happy to see you. And that’s actually quite tough, like emotionally. You know, dentists have one of the highest suicide rates. Every single time you meet someone, you have to be very affable. If anything goes wrong, you’re to blame. And you know, the good part of that is I actually learned a lot about how to talk to people because I’ve never been that great at that. But when you meet 40 people a day, you learn how to do that stuff. So that was pretty good, but it got very demotivating. I’m quite a positive guy. If you’re quite empathetic, you take on a lot of people’s problems. So I used to be exhausted every day. So that was quite tough.
And the other side is perverse incentives. So I don’t know what it’s like in America, but the NHS system, you’re kind of rewarded to be on a hamster treadmill. And so you’re incentivized to not do the best work because your business will go bust. And, iif you’re in a broken incentive system over time, it begins to warp the way you think. One thing I’ve really liked about being online is that everyone’s happy to see you if you’re here to make people money and save them time. Right? I think that that’s brilliant and you can really set up win-wins for everyone. And so that’s what I’ve been doing since.
Kira Hug: All right. I’ll be nicer to my dentist next time.
Kieran Drew: They treat you better as well if you like that.
Rob Marsh: So Kieran, let’s talk about your business today and what it looks like. You know, I actually think, you know, 13 months to the first dollar is an amazing runway. It takes a lot of faith in yourself that you’re going to make it work. 24 months to get to 10K, but you’re doing better than that today from what I’ve seen online and from what other people have said about you. Our mutual friend, John Bijakovic talks highly of you. So tell us about your business today.
Kieran Drew: It’s been a bit of a pinch yourself moment, but this is my 24th month in monetizing. So in two weeks of the 31st of March. I launched my first product two years ago. That was a 5k launch. Uh, that’s probably the biggest rush I’ve ever had to find out that internet money is real after 13 months. That was incredible. Then it was a very scrappy 12 months where I just tried to do everything. I was doing ghostwriting, consulting, coaching… I had my digital product. I was building the email list. I was just trying to, you don’t really know what you like until you try it, right? So I was just saying yes to everything. Like a lot of people, I was a burned out shell after about nine months. But it got me to my first six figures within 12 months. And at that point I said, look, I’m struggling to get anywhere over 8K a month because I was so busy. I couldn’t think straight. And so I decided to cut away everything and just do two things. Which was writing—the more clients I was signing on, I was writing less because a lot of it was coaching. I wasn’t doing my own writing. And Product building, because I think serving people at scale is really, really fun. I love leverage. I find it fascinating. So when I made that decision in January, 2023, I launched my flagship product because everyone was just like a swipe file in May.
I was going into my second launch. I was going in expecting 30 K, which I would have been buzzing about. And it ended up going to 140K in four days. And so that was absolutely crazy. It felt like a massive fluke. And then I relaunched again in September and that was 180 K. Then we launched another product in November for black Friday, which is like the MRR, which is at maybe 4 or 5K a month now. And then I actually just refilmed my whole flagship product. I wasn’t that happy with it. So I completely rebuilt it and gave it away to my current customers for free. And that was 120 K. So actually in the past two years, we just crossed 750 K, which is again, crazy to me. Like absolutely wild.
Kira Hug: Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Can you talk about the product a little bit about what it is and just how you launched it? I mean, anyone listening might think, okay, I want to launch a product and have a 140 K launch. What do I need to do to get there? What had you done before that?
Kieran Drew: Yeah, I mean, so the, just a quick TLDR for the product is called high impact writing. Uh, it’s a social media writing product primarily. And the reason I built it was because actually it didn’t exist when I was writing. So I mentioned to you guys at the start, my sort of journey was I was going to be a copywriter and, but I ended up getting into the social media world and, um, I started to grow quite fast because when you learn the fundamentals of copy, it really works on social media. A lot of copywriters aren’t involved on social media and a lot of social media people are terrible writers. And I wanted to bridge that gap. So, um, thankfully that went quite well in terms of the launch stuff. So, I mean, when people say, how do you have a six figure launch? I always say the first answer is I spent the first year sucking at my first product. Cause you know, it was a 5k launch. I launched as quietly as I could. I was terrified to promote myself. And then throughout the year I was like, well, we’re going to have to learn how to sell this thing. So. What actually happened with high impact writing, uh, we’ve got the email list. So, um, probably at the time there were 15,000 subscribers on that, uh, maybe a little bit more. The biggest change was, uh, again, the concept from Seth Godin and about tension, because you only have four days to launch a product, maybe five, depending on how long you want to do it. And so what, um, I found fascinating is like an elastic band and the longer and harder that you pull. When you let go of that band, the bigger the snap at the end. So for high impact writing, I think maybe four months, four or five months before I started, uh, uh, marketing it. Didn’t know what it was called. Didn’t even know what I was building. I just said, um, on my emails, just at the top, by the way, a few people have been asking about my writing systems. Click it if you want to join the waiting list. And so gradually started building up a wait list as we were going. And I started to use that as ways to test ideas. So for example, if I were to write, um, a post on data driven growth, I’d say, if this is interesting to you, we click on this link and I’ll pop it on the waitlist. And I could see the bits that people loved. So I could use that for the sales page and a copy later on. Uh, and then all, all I began to do to build more attention, cause you can only talk about your product so much. So I’m a huge fan of building in public. So I was very inviting for people to be like, Hey, do you want to get involved in this? What can I help you with? How can I help you doing loads of free courses? I started telling the story of the build. So I was showing the slides, I’m showing the filming process, the bloopers, having a good laugh about it, saying that, you know, I’m losing all my hair building this product. And then the whole point I carry over is that like on the day of the launch, nobody was surprised it was coming. A lot of people were excited. They could see the effort, but in the value and, um, Uh, I guess we’ll say in terms of why it hits six figures before that I had released, um, six free courses, maybe eight. So I’m a huge fan of this like reciprocation, right? I thought let’s give everything we know for free. High impact writing is just the concise systems of everything we know. And that’s how I framed it. Uh, so when I actually came to launch day, you know, the, the mechanisms really it’s urgency and scarcity. So, um. Four days, I think the first one was five. I’m never going over four again. Launches are exhausting. They’re exhausting for you. They’re exhausting for the customer. Four days, I think it’s the sweet spot. Inside there, it became like, it’s just maths by the end of it, right. Or math for you guys, um, where attention to the page, certain conversion rate. And so, uh, I started sending more emails, uh, two to four emails per day, slightly segmented. So, you know, if you’re on the wait list, you got four, if you’re on my full list, you get two. Uh, the urgency was for the first launch was you can only buy it for these four days and then I’m closing it because I want to improve the product with people. And it’s not, I mean, people don’t give enough reasons when they, you know, oh, this is open close. It’s like, no, you have to like, people aren’t idiots. We’re all online here. It’s like, you have to give justifications. And so I just said, look, I want to work really closely with my customers, which actually built hype for the second launch because it was like, this guy’s taking this product really seriously. Um, and just tell me where you want to go with that. Cause I’ll just keep going.
Kira Hug: One thing I just want to dig into is you said you have, you had 15,000 subscribers on your list.
Kieran Drew: Yeah.
Kira Hug: So could you just touch on how you had built your list over time? I mean, from social media, I imagine. Yeah. But that’s, that’s a good list to go into a launch with. Yeah.
Kieran Drew: It’s, I’m grateful to have it, uh, 90 now, maybe a little bit less at the time. It was probably about 98% social media. So fully organic. Uh, the only downside to what I had done was I gave away, um, I know a lot of what we call giveaways. So if you guys are on social media at the moment, but, uh, they’re not great. And so like, it’s like, Oh, we give away stuff. You have to give me your email address to get the thing. And I was chasing the numbers, but what I didn’t realize was that the quality of lead that was quite poor. So my churn weight was really high.
I’ve stopped doing that for like a year now. And the only other thing that I’ve changed, I tried a little bit of courage. So, you know, when someone joins another person’s list, you get recommended, Hey, join Kieran Drew’s and you pay two bucks per subscriber, even with the filters on spark loop, where it’s, you know, if they unsubscribe within two weeks, so they get the welcome sequence for that. The ROI was pretty poor. I think I spent two, three grand as an experiment. And I made two grand or a grand and a half, so probably some tweaks there. So I wasn’t a fan of co-regging.
Then the other thing now that I’ve been doing is cross promotions. So I realized that you can only do so much work yourself, but there are a lot of people out there that are building really good bonds with their audience. And I just started reaching out and making the ask, right? A lot of us writers are introverted. I hate asking people for stuff, but I just started sending messages, starting with people around my level and just saying, Hey, do you want to promote my list? I’ll promote your list. And it’s been a really cool way to cross populate. And now I’m very grateful to say people like Chris Orzakowski have been helping out and John Morrow. And I’ve just been asking people if they wanted to swap lists and promote. So that’s pretty much all the growth.
Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about what you were doing on social media. I know this is a lot of what you teach in your course, so I’m not asking for a free course. But obviously, there’s some basics here that copywriters need to be aware of. You mentioned a lot of copywriters in social media are doing it wrong or not taking advantage, maybe, of the copywriting skills that we have. We’re taking pictures of our breakfasts and sharing those, all of that stuff. So what should we be doing, you know, or maybe I’m asking for, you know, what are your top two or three tips for what we need to be doing differently when we’re showing up on social media?
Kieran Drew: Funnily enough, it’s kind of like if we’re writing a sales page, uh, we all know that it’s about the customer, right? It’s exactly the same on social media. It’s like having a funnel where social media is the top of the funnel and you’re working people down. And so, Um, saying that we need to be talking about what’s in it for the reader and the way I kind of frame that we have three pillars of magnetic writing to attract and it’s advice, personality, and storytelling. And so I tried to kind of do a bit of a combination of this, depending on your platform. So, um, I’m primarily on X, uh, LinkedIn is pretty popular now as well. Um, on X, you probably post three times a day on LinkedIn. You’d post once is the only difference. And. What I suggest to people is trying to get this blend of, if you’re just giving advice, you’re competing with chat GPT. So there’s no kind of real reason for someone to actually like you. If you’re just personality, I, you know, you’re just talking about politics or whatever. Um, you’re interesting to read, but it doesn’t really build a strong brand. And if you’re just storytelling, there’s no utility. And so what I suggest to people is you think, well, what’s we’ve got one person in mind. We’re going to write to our, I say one true fan, our avatar. And what’s the most useful stuff we can give to help them win? Just giving advice that don’t go too in depth because it’s social media. That’s we don’t consume social media for crazy about depth, which is one big mistake. I see it particularly with new people that have got a lot of expertise. Um, what sort of advice can we give to help them win? How can we address their beliefs? You know, what are they seeing, thinking and feeling? And I think. big mistake we make, particularly me, uh, most of us hate being polarizing or we hedge our bets. And so, um, I always say to crank the dial a little bit. I don’t know. I’m not, don’t be like a dick for, sorry about my language, um, for engagement purposes, but you know, like if you’ve got a strong belief, there’s like a seven chances are when you’re writing on social media, unless you’re someone like Andrew Tate, you dial it down to a five, but actually what you want to do, you need that seven or eight because super, super noisy on social media. And so to slice through it and reach your fans, you have to pick certain messages that you can double down on, starting from a few areas. Um, so that’s very, very short, brief social media side. And like you said, no, uh, but pictures of your food and stuff. It’s not actually that bad if it’s the occasional bit of personality, if you really love cooking, but people are here to learn and be inspired. So.
Rob Marsh: So just to bring this home, can you give us some examples of the way you crank up the dial in your posts so that you’re getting that kind of attention?
Kieran Drew: Yeah. It depends on who your enemy is. So my enemies evolved over time. I used to be very anti 9 to 5. And so my most viral tweets have been insulting the boss. I could probably actually have a quick look at one here. But yeah, just looking at the bosses saying stuff like no boss has ever said I care about my workers, creativity, health and happiness, which is why you need to employ yourself. People love this sort of stuff where you’re throwing stones at other people. Again, similar with like sales pages. And these days I am more kind of focused on peace of mind, clarity. I think the thing that’s helped me most as a writer is being able to think straight. And so I actually ironically like to throw a lot of stones at social media and, you know, like constantly scrolling and all that sort of stuff. So. Um, getting clear on an enemy and just trying to articulate yourself in what I call sticky statements. So using stuff like alliteration, rhythm and rhyme juxtaposition, uh, these are quite nice writing tools, just kind of condensing your best ideas into presentation. That’s the shorter form stuff.
And then the longer form stuff would be more the value-based, you know, the steps, the tricks, the blueprints. And, um, one thing that. One thing that’s good for your audience copywriters is that 90% of people in social media have no results. They want to build the audience and have the product, but they haven’t got anything to talk about. And so whenever I talk to someone new that ‘s experienced, like I was just chatting to David Deutsch, he’s been on X for a little while now as well. And it was like, hey, you’ve got so much reputation here to tap into. You have to be your own cheerleader. And so in the hooks, the framing, I say like, you have to talk about yourself as much as you can without coming across as like, hey, look at me. So if you’re comfortable with mentioning revenue numbers, but even just talking about like, hey, I was working with a client instead of it being here are seven random copywriting tips. It’s like, you know, I’ve been working with 67 clients over the past five years. Here are my seven favorite tips. Every single person who reads that now knows that you’re the real deal. So trying to identify your skip the lines as you’re writing, it’s people don’t trust you until you prove who you are. So it’s a great way to put your foot in the door.
Kira Hug: Do you have additional ideas to help us, you know, really speak to our experience and expertise? Cause I agree. I think that’s just, I mean, I know I’ve struggled with that where I’m like, I don’t mention how many clients I’ve worked with. I just, I know it’s important, but I just, it’s a struggle. Um, yeah. Other strategies.
Kieran Drew: Yeah. I mean, like, uh, unfortunately the part about social media is it comes with a certain level of cringe. And you have to decide that level and that’s okay for you. So I think the ultimate one or the big discussion is, are you happy to share revenue numbers? Because unfortunately we’re all just monkeys with mobile phones, right? And people pay attention to money the most, but if you’re not, you can frame it in different ways. I have a number of clients even talking about projects that you’re working on. So, you know, if you were to say that you were building out a 2020 email sequence, all of these things are kind of what most people aren’t doing. So just trying to frame your projects and the way you’ve been working or how long you’ve been a copywriter, or the fact that you guys have almost 300 episodes or 300 or more episodes of all of these things, are little reputation builders. And then I have to remind myself sometimes to be my own cheerleader because I’m like, God, I really don’t want to talk about myself here, but just having a couple of words completely changes the framing of what you say. And having that personal perspective, you know, the problem on social media is it’s full of everyone telling other people what to do.
But if you’re talking from like, Hey, this is what I did. So you’re swapping all of your how to’s to how I’s or being a guide instead of a guru, it’s really welcoming. And. The way I tried to frame it for people is if you post a hundred things on social media that are just platitudes and shouting from a podium versus a hundred posts that are like, here’s what I’m learning, doing, and thinking. The second person is going to have a hundred times better relationship with that audience. So even if they don’t grow as fast and that’s really important to know, uh, I’ve smoked the digital dopamine crack pipe way too much. When, when I started, when I realized I could say certain things, uh, to go viral, I was writing stuff, um, like. eight habits you must do before 8am and going viral. And then, uh, I, I certainly realized that, you know, reputation is much more important than reach. And so how you grow your audience is more important than how fast. So hopefully there are a few ideas there for you.
Kira Hug: Well I was writing a post for LinkedIn and now I think I have to redo it because and pull in my own experience into that post. So it doesn’t feel like it’s just like preachy. So I think that’s, that’s really good advice.
Rob Marsh: So Kieran, there’s a lot of stuff that I’d love to dive into on your process and how you create the content. But first, I want to ask about engagement. Because it’s one thing to post, and then there’s a whole other thing around, do you comment? Do you engage with people in direct messaging, whether it’s on LinkedIn or Twitter or wherever? How do you approach that side of it? If you have a post that goes viral, you could spend all day responding to comments.
Kieran Drew: Yeah. I was smiling because I hate this stuff.
Rob Marsh: So do I, this is why I have struggled so much, especially with Twitter or X..
Kieran Drew: I mean everything has a cost and being, I have before, before I started on social media, I took a five year break from all social media. I thought it’s the most shallow, toxic, biggest problem that we have in society to cause people to think poorly. So it was hell, hell coming back to it. Um, the only way I could do it at the start, uh, Rob was, um, a basic habit forming here is let’s try and make it enjoyable. So I used to put my favorite music on. I put a timer on for 20 minutes, twice a day, one in my lunch break at work, one after work. So I’m not wasting my creative energy. It didn’t feel like I’m like you said, cause you could do it all day. And I have people who have done it all day and now they’re like, Oh my God, no one’s listening to me because I haven’t actually got anything of substance to talk about. So time blocking… favorite music.
The big mistake people make on social media is like they’ve rehashed comments. So they say the same thing as the poster doesn’t do anyone any value. Um, and, or the other is you comment on big accounts because of their size, not because of their content and interesting people are not on boring posts. And the whole point in commenting on other people’s stuff is to go find more interesting people. And so my rules are, I don’t reply to anyone that I don’t like, no matter how popular they are. That made it a lot more fun because actually there are so many interesting people out there. And if you’re not judging by audience size, you begin to build quite a cool network. Uh, number two is kind of having a list of people. So if you’re trying to comment on a hundred people’s stuff, you’re like praying to form a relationship, but it’s kind of less is more. So if you have 10 people that you really enjoy talking to… I just use bookmarks. So I open bookmarks, 10 people appear, I comment on their top post. I move on. Less is more to build that bond.
And again, I guess it comes with a bit of reps, but have fun in the comments. For some reason, people think that you have to comment like a robot, but most of my comments have just been having a laugh and, um, that’s helped a lot. to get in the foot of like quite bigger accounts because they’re like, Oh, this guy’s just, just joking around or, you know, letting your personality come through. So, because one thing I’m very fond of is that you think you’re just talking to one person, but everyone sees that comment. And so if you’re saying some cringe stuff or a lot of my friends use VAs for this, like I just started engaging on LinkedIn last week. I haven’t engaged on LinkedIn yet. I’ve just been posting from X and, uh, I started looking at the replies and I was like, wow. Uh, there are a lot of people using VAs or AI for this and you could smell it a million miles off. Um, I think personally having a little bit of time set aside each day when you, when you’re a little bit tired, but not exhausted. So you don’t suck it up a little bit. Uh, because once you do get that initial momentum, you don’t have to do it as much. Uh, for example, I took like four months off engaging. I was only doing two minutes a day, uh, when I was building my products and stuff. So, um, like I said, there’s a cost to it, but. The social media audience stuff is really, really powerful for a long-term game.
Kira Hug: How do you structure your days beyond spending some of the time, you know, the downtime on social media? How else do you structure your days?
Kieran Drew: Yeah. I’m a big fan of building around your energy. And so. Uh, I wake up at like six in the morning. That’s a habit from, um, or about five, sorry, from trying to write before the nine to five. Uh, and then what I’ll do is I’ll, I love deep work sessions. So 90 minute blocks for writing. And I’ll do two 90 minute blocks in the morning with like a 20 minute walk in between. And during these sort of deep work sessions, um, I don’t go on social media. That’s a big one. Uh, the problem with being a social media entrepreneur is that you’re constantly connected. So I actually don’t go on social media for the first eight hours of my day. No social media, no emails, no client calls until three, 4 PM. So I’ll do, uh, the two work blocks in the morning, go train, have a bit of lunch, do another 90 minute work block, uh, have a little break and then do another 90 minute work block. And in these work blocks, the work is getting less creatively intense. So the first three hours would be your emails, your content, whatever, um, writing I need to do. And then the afternoons I do my lower leverage work. And like I said, I only quite strict about my time. So I only have, uh, no more than four client calls a month or cause in general. Um, uh, I think that’s usually about one call per week. And, um, I spend a lot of time walking and reading, uh, because I remember when I quit, uh, finally quit my nine to five and I was like, wow, you’re going to spend so long writing. You can only write for like four hours, right? Uh, good writing. And so I realized that a lot of it was actually trying to look after yourself outside of writing, because the better you think, the better you write. So I generally walk for 90 minutes a day. Uh, that’s the best time for ideas. And I like to read for about two, three hours a day as well. So. It sounds really boring, but I remember when I was a dentist, I was like, if I could drink tea, write and read books all day, like take me to heaven. That’s the goal.
Kira Hug: Yeah. That’s the dream for people who listen to this podcast. Yeah, for sure. Um, when you say client calls, can you be more specific? Like, are you talking about consulting calls? You’re working with four clients per month and consulting or something?
Kieran Drew: Yeah. Yeah. So a bit of a blend. So I actually only have one client for consulting now, which is just one call per month. Um, that’s just discussing his writing and a bit of his business strategy, mainly around leverage stuff. I think a lot of my friends, they sort of capped out about 20, 30 K a month. And I was always stuck at like the two K a month. And I mean, that leverage long-term play is like building the products, building the automations, the backend of convert kit, helping out with that. The other calls are at scale. So like I have my MRR, that’s a monthly call, um, where people come on Q and a and, uh, critiquing content. I mentioned before that, um, I really liked the service at scale and helping your audience on mass. And that’s something that I made quite early as a constraint. It was, can we do the most high leverage stuff? So the calls are generally group webinars, um, podcasts or another one. So, but, but otherwise. I sound like a diva, but you know, going from 40 patients a day to being able to have like no nothing in a day. Wow. And even if I have one call at 4 PM, it shouldn’t, but if I wake up in the morning and I know I have a free day, like it just feels great. So I just thought, well, why aren’t we just doing this? Even if it means you make less money in the short run, all that time, you can spend building product and stuff. Uh, it’s helping out now. So.
Rob Marsh: So I’m curious about your content creation process and how you think about that. A few weeks ago, we interviewed a woman on the podcast, Amanda Goetz, who creates a month’s worth of content in two days. And then, you know, she’s working on other stuff. And when I say content, I’m talking about her social media content. Then she’s working on course’s… that kind of stuff. What do you do to create your content? Are you creating it all up front and scheduling it to go live? Like walk us through that, how much time you spend on that and your thought processes. How far ahead are you, you know, as you’re thinking through, okay, what am I posting in April? You know, we’re recording this towards the beginning of March, but you know, how far out are you, you know, as you, as you start to create this stuff?
Kieran Drew: I’m a huge fan of batching. I think the hardest part about social media is feeling like you’re on a treadmill. And so I’m always at least a week ahead with my content. Now I’ll tell you what I’m doing, but it’s different from what I advise people starting out. But I’ll explain why I started the newsletter first. So the reason being that I think the problem with social media content is people are thinking quantity is the answer, right? Just volume, volume, volume, volume. And so they don’t put that much time into it. And the problem with that is chat GPT can now do that. And I think if we don’t know it now, I think in two years time, the people that are focused on quantity are going to have a lot of problems.
So I like to do the newsletter first, because if I can spend, I just usually send one weekly newsletter, about 1500 words. But if I can spend 10 hours on that, I can get a full week’s worth of content. That’s really refined, really concise, and, you know, distribute that as social media content. And that takes an extra half an hour to turn it into the posts for the week ahead. Um, most people probably shouldn’t be spending 10 hours on a newsletter. And so if you’re just getting started on social media, so what I always say is like, let’s batch write the process. So for me, it’s always first drafts, Monday, second drafts, Tuesday, third drafts and scheduling on a Wednesday. Um, but I would just suggest people doing that with social media content, a couple of long form pieces and the short form there as well. You kind of, for me, I mean, I’ve got, I’ve probably got about 200 posts scheduled out already because what we also do is if anything performs well. My VA will actually schedule that again in four to six months time automatically. And she also sends it to me and says, Hey, you know, this post did well. And so I’ll quickly turn it into five more posts that removes a lot of mental friction. Instead of me going, what am I writing about? If so, if I see a post that says, Oh, this one on systems did well, I might write five different posts about what I like about systems, how I built my first systems, my commercial automations, and we’ll go schedule that out over a month or two. The reason why I say this is because, um, what happens now with my social media stuff is that I don’t have to, it’s just happening. It’s in terms of time, honestly, it’s probably about half an hour a week. And ironically in that week, I get more followers than I get in my entire first year. So it’s that compounding game.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. That’s crazy.
Kieran Drew: So it’s all like compounding, right? So it all kind of adds up slowly, but it’s that initial friction is horrible.
Rob Marsh: Another question related to this, what are the tools that you’re using as you schedule it that, you know, help you do this better?
Kieran Drew: Yeah, sure. So I’ll kind of run you through the funnel, I guess, and talk through the software if that helps. So I post on X and LinkedIn with hype theory. And we also screenshot that with a tweet, pick and put it on Instagram. And when I say we, all I do is write on a notion. So, um, originally when, when I, when I started, I was doing my writing on Google docs and I was replying to emails and Gmail and I was doing all like, it was, it was absolutely chaos. And so what I did was I built my full business on notion. So the only thing I use is notion and my VA and my girlfriend, they’re sort of trained to take everything away from that. So I write something on Notion. We use HypeFury to schedule that out. So my posts, I’m never writing live. My stuff is just ticking away in the background. When the post gets to like 200 likes, HypeFury will auto plug my newsletter landing page, usually with a lead magnet. So someone will sign up with ConvertKit. Beehive is another popular choice, particularly for beginners. I like ConvertKit because of the business side of things. With ConvertKit, they’ll get a nine day welcome sequence, pitching the product and just giving value and pointing towards my favorite podcast episodes. I use Thrivecart for the product. If they do buy with Thrivecart, there’s two upsells, my old product, which is the swipe file. And then my MRR product, which is a bit more of like breaking down copywriting with content. If they purchase any of them. There’s 30 days of emails scheduled afterwards. Again, just providing value, checking in how are things? And so the bit that really excites me now is that a thirty second tweet is potentially 20, 30 hours of value plus thousands of dollars in LTV. And that’s the one reason that we’re at 750 K when it’s just me and my girlfriend and VA doing a couple hours a week, because the robots are doing all the work. And I just think people don’t spend enough time on process. It’s so easy to get into that trap of busy work when what I did a long time ago was setting aside three hours a week for this stuff. And so I looked at everything I was doing and just kept asking, can we automate, can we delegate, can we eliminate or can we systemize? And so everything has SOPs, everything has routine and it’s just got rid of so much friction, which I think is the big problem.
Kira Hug: So you’re kind of going more, you’re not going all in on X cause you’re on LinkedIn as well, but like, how do you, how do you pay attention to those platforms so that you can make smart decisions moving forward as algorithms change and just products change? Like, are you evaluating them on a regular basis to see if it’s worth sticking around?
Kieran Drew: Yeah, I am actually. team not paying to the algorithms so much. Uh, I used to a lot. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of like outsourcing your happiness. Um, and you’re at the mercy of, of changes, right? These fluctuations and trends kind of come and go the algorithm ebbs and flows. And the one thing that doesn’t change is people. And so that’s why I’ve always been focused on good writing. So I’m actually. moving away from the whole social media is the main focus. Um, the way that I’m looking at it now is that the email is the product. If you can build a very good newsletter, have a system to redistribute it. Um, and then you have to have faith that quality shines through because it’s quite easy to get sucked into that chasing the algorithm game. And what happens is there’s a concept I’ve been thinking about, about incentive drags, where if you, if you’re constantly chasing the algorithm, Your ideas begin to sound like everyone else’s. So if you go on LinkedIn now, there’s like a million LinkedIn people, LinkedIn experts selling LinkedIn. That’s incentive track. And I actually, I looked at my, uh, my first blog posts from 2020 to do the whole meme of see how much your writing sucked. And it was a big kick in the teeth because I was like, your writing suck, but your ideas were really good. And I was looking at my social media content and I was like, This has gone wrong somewhere and it was because of the algorithm. And so I’ve actually stopped looking at that stuff. I think you just have to have faith over time. So there’s still, but the packaging is kind of second nature for me. You need a good hook. Um, but otherwise, yeah, I try not to pay attention to it.
Rob Marsh: So what else are you building? Uh, what’s, what’s coming next as you work on, you know, move away from, you know, the social media more into your email. Are you building additional products? You know, what, what are you working on?
Kieran Drew: Yeah, so we just finished launching high impact writing, but I really like over delivery. I just think it’s a lot of fun to do for people. So for the next month, I’m building out more stuff for the course. Uh, so I want to build a summary version, like a 40 minute version of the course, uh, maybe make it a podcast version, do loads of overshort of the writing sessions. I just want people to have this thing where when they pay me money, they’re like, holy shit, this is, this is the real deal. We then got the MRR, which at the moment, the churn isn’t too good. So it’s 21%. I’ve been too busy to try to address that. So I need to slow down and actually work out what, what I’m doing wrong there. After that may, um, I wanted to build what people have been screaming out for me in terms of my customers, which is the email version of the course. Uh, there’s just been a very good response about the way I like to write. Um, and I did again. I’ve taken so many email courses and it’s all pieced together. And like, I learned most of my stuff from copywriters, who are brilliant email storytellers, but a lot of entrepreneurs, especially social media stuff, they don’t do it that well. So I was thinking about building out high impact emails, which, you know, carry on the product repertoire once that’s done. And this is the bit I’m really excited for. I’m just obsessed with doing one thing. Well, and I think if I look back at the journey, it’s just been a series of trying to shake off the baggage. And so once we’ve got two products and an MRR, um, I just want to write the newsletter. I want to see what happens when you put 30 hours into a piece instead of 10. Uh, there’s a, there’s a brilliant post, um, on Michael, Michael Simmons called the blockbuster principle. I don’t know if you guys have seen it. Um, it’s a great read. It’s just, it’s, it’s this, I think for a prediction for the internet, there is a swelling sea of increasing noise and. Whilst the information is becoming infinite, attention has stayed the same, right? We’ve only got the same, however many hours you actually go on your phone. I think in three to five years, there’s going to be a big crisis of quality. And I want to make sure I’m on the right side of that. I want to be. Um, and so I just want to write my newsletter. I want to do 34 hours, 30, 40 hours, just on the newsletter and social media content, driving traffic to it. Uh, because. I would love to write books and stuff. And I think this will be the next step where it’s just trying to find your ideas. I don’t know what I’d write about, but it’s kind of hard to tell when you’re just writing about writing and marketing. I want to get into more of the philosophy side, the stuff that interested me in the first place.
Kira Hug: And when you say 10 hours, spending 10 hours on your newsletter and you want to increase it to 30 hours, can you just break that down real quick for me? Cause I think if I spend four or six hours, I’m like, that’s a lot of time. So what are you doing with 30 hours?
Kieran Drew: Yeah, well, I don’t know what I’ll do with 30 right now.
Kira Hug: Or let’s say the 10 hours specifically. Yeah.
Kieran Drew: Yeah. So 10 hours, um, for one, I like, I love editing. I’m not a great writer. Uh, I’m not probably a great editor, but it’s the other thing that I like, like trying to come up with really concise, entertaining ways to say it. Um, for me, one of my metrics or one of the reasons I want people to read, uh, is frameworks. So inside that sort of 10 hours, I’m trying to think of frameworks or cool ways to present ideas that they haven’t heard before. Um, because, you know, good content is like novelty. Right. And unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I don’t really read any like trends or timely content, which is like a sin, uh, for the most part, but I figured, well, if you’re not doing that, can you start to frame timeless concepts in new ways? So I spent an hour or two sort of again, thinking about that, usually walking. And then the actual writing, drafting, redrafting process, and then turning it into social media content at the end. So I say 10 hours. It probably would be more like between six to 10. Uh, sometimes they go into like 2000 words. And, uh, one of my rulers is you have to delete 33%, one third rule. And that’s quite fun as well, because it really makes you kill your darlings. Um, so yeah, when it comes to 30 hours, I don’t know what that would look like. I think either it would be two emails per week for one. Or really well researched. Uh, because my, my big mistake, and I think a lot of people’s mistakes with this stuff is clarity. You, you think, you know, that the reader knows what you mean, but that curse of knowledge, that gap is, is a killer. Right. And I think spending more time on stuff would help you give more examples, more metaphors, more analogies, try to change how people think a bit more. So.
Rob Marsh: Kieran, you mentioned that you read three hours a day. This is kind of maybe a two or a three part question, but what do you spend your time reading? What are your two or three highest recommended books? And what are you reading today? Like, what is the book today?
Kieran Drew: OK. So what was the first part again?
Rob Marsh: So what, well, what kinds of books are you typically reading? You know, what, what are the categories?
Kieran Drew: So I split this into three. The only way I can read three hours a day is to treat it like TV. I flick through books quite a bit. So I tried to have one book, which is practical, which is usually business or copywriting or marketing. Once I start getting bored there, I move more into the philosophy mindset sort of stuff. So I’ll go through the ones I’m reading in a moment. And then the third book is always my favorite. And that’s fantasy. I am a sucker for dragons and stuff. So I’ve been reading it since I was like six. It’s just very nostalgic for me.
So that’s how I finish my day. It’s like a three hour thing. It’s first book for an hour, second book, and then the third book at the end.
Top two or three books? For your audience, Breakthrough Advertising. Maybe not only if you’re a complete beginner, but my God, every time I read that book, I’m like, this is it. This is everything you need for writing, marketing, and creating content online. I find it very, very insightful.
The book that probably changed my life the most, I should have a few. There’s one called The Almanack of Naval Ravakan. He’s the guy that is all about ideas. That’s all I’ve been doing. I listened to him every three months. I just do what he says. It works. I’m a huge fan of Charlie Munger.
Rob Marsh: I’ll break in to mention Naval’s book—it’s like $2 on Kindle. Everybody should own that book. Even if you’re only going to read three or four lines in it today, you almost come away with something every single time.
Kieran Drew: Yeah. It’s, for me, it’s word for word, the most insights per book, per page. So that’s really good. Like I was saying, Poor Charlie’s Almanack, a lot of almanacs, but that’s Charlie Munger’s book. I find that really insightful as well. And then you asked what I was reading at the moment. So I’m reading The Status Game by Will Store. So I’ve got that here. I find evolutionary psychology really interesting. I think if you could understand where we’ve come from, it makes a lot of stuff helpful. Now I’m reading Mastery by Robert Greene. Which again, I love Robert Greene. It just took me a year to finish The Laws of Human Nature. Like it’s just as big storytelling. And then I’m reading, for the second time, Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday. Strangely, the first time I read it, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the point about timeless content and building stuff that lasts forever. But now that I’ve spent two years building and building, it’s like play longer term games. And so I’m reading it and I’m highlighting everything.
Rob Marsh: Mastery and Perennial Seller are both among my favorites. I love both of those books. They’re fantastic. I agree. Perennial Seller, I actually shared this recently on LinkedIn, but this is one of those books that’s not about copywriting, that’s absolutely about copywriting, timeless content, and creating an offer that stands the test of time, which is what we’re all trying to do with copy.
Kieran Drew: It really is on point with me because I found a thread from James Clear. Obviously he writes about habits usually, but there was a thread in 2020, which was about his decade long business. One of his tweets, it was just two lines, and it was like: Only create timeless content. The runway is longer for success. And I was like, damn, the problem is that most people keep getting told you have to write about timely stuff, be on topic and be on trends and which works in the instant, the first instance, but where are you in 10 years? And I think I would rather make less money or get less attention if it meant I was building a body of work that I’ve changed about two posts a week for three years. So I would love to do something like that, but you can’t play both games.
Kira Hug: Amazing. Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about in terms of the content I’m creating and thinking about creating. So thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing so openly with us. We really appreciate it.
Rob Marsh: If people have been listening, they’re like, I got to get into Kieran’s world… where do they go to find you on Twitter… or what you might be posting on LinkedIn… find your course… all the things.
Kieran Drew: Yeah, kierandrew.com. That’s where I’ve got my newsletter sign up and then you’ll find your way around or it’s Kieran Drew—that’s my LinkedIn as well, but definitely my Twitter (X). Primarily on X or my newsletter.
Rob Marsh: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time.
That’s the end of our interview with Kieran Drew. If you’re like Kira and me, you’re probably buzzing with a bunch of ideas that you want to try out in your own business or on your social media. Lots of things that Kieran shared have me excited. I want to add just a couple of thoughts to our conversation, as I always do, so you’ve got a couple more things to think about as you apply these ideas in your own business.
I want to revisit The Blockbuster Principle that Kieran mentioned. You can find an article on LinkedIn by Michael Simmons, where he outlines The Blockbuster Principle. We will link to that in the show notes, but it’s really built on the idea that Chris Anderson came up with maybe 15, 18 years ago. And that’s the long tail and the head. And the idea is that towards the head, more people see that content and it’s more popular, makes more money, but that there’s this amazing long tail and people find the content that resonates with them as you move down the tail. And there’s an audience for all of that. And What Michael Simmons argues with the blockbuster principle is that that’s not really the case, that the head, this glut of the most popular, the biggest items, the things that people find is getting bigger and the tail is actually getting smaller.
And when Kieran mentioned the information is trending to infinite, but attention is staying the same. What that means is if you’re not creating content that’s in the head, that’s some of the most popular that people are sharing and resonating with, nobody’s going to see it. It will get lost. And another part of the blockbuster principle is that it lasts. Kieran mentioned Perennial Seller, the book, which is really about the idea of creating content that lasts forever, whether that’s literature or music or whatever. But you need to be shooting for creating amazing content that lives in the head. And that is not easy to do.
Michael Simmons talks about a little bit how to do that in that article. And like I said, I will link to that in the show notes. So look for that.
Kieran also mentioned that when we were talking about how he launched and was willing to leave a sure thing to move out of dentistry and into copywriting, he talked a little bit about fear being a motivator and how it keeps you trying. I love that Kieran set a realistic deadline for his business, he needed a result within two years. So 24 months out, if he keeps failing, maybe he goes back to dentistry, maybe he tries something different. And it literally took him 24 months to get to $10,000, which is a very long time, 13 months to make that very first dollar. Now, most people who may be listening to the podcast, maybe this is you… if we’re starting a copywriting business, most of us don’t have 13 months to make a single dollar. And we don’t have two years to get to the point where we’ve built a business that’s actually working for us. So sometimes it has to happen faster, or sometimes you have to hang on to that permanent job, that full-time job as you build on the side in order to create something that will work. Kieran obviously had this opportunity where he had some money saved and he could make it work. But if you are motivated by fear, that often gets you going and will help you find that success, maybe a little bit faster than Kieran did.
Another thing to keep in mind is Kieran is building products and wasn’t working with as many clients. And it’s often easier because you’re selling your service, you’re selling your time in a client facing business to find those clients more quickly, to get a decent pipeline running, whether you’re out there pitching, you’re starting to attract clients back to you, getting referrals… it generally can happen a lot faster than that 24 months that Kieran talked about. But if you’re building products, 24 months is not an unrealistic timeline. Even Kira and I, when we launched The Copywriter Club, it was six months before we launched our very first product and made any money. And before that, there was a lot of investment in time and energy and even money in the podcast and in the Facebook group and all of that stuff. And of course, that entire process is what builds confidence. As Kieran mentioned, you probably don’t start with that confidence, but it does grow as you build, as you try things, as you gain experience, you become more confident and able to deliver on whatever it is that you’re trying to create.
Kieran also talked a little bit about building around your energy. He mentioned waking up early. I think he said six o’clock, doing two 90 minute blocks of writing time in the morning, two 90 minute blocks of writing time in the afternoon, using his morning for those high leverage activities and the afternoon for maybe more lower leverage activities. He’s doing deep work. And so he’s turning off social media for the first eight hours of his day. All of this is amazing.
This actually reminds me of our interview with Amanda Goetz a little while ago where she talked about her processes of getting things done, a very similar process. They’re similar, but they’re very different in how they’re spending their time and how they’re executing. And I guess really my point here isn’t: hey, you need to adopt Kieran’s process or you need to adopt Amanda’s process. It’s you need to adopt your process. You need to figure out what works for you. And I’ve said in the past, you know, I don’t find that my best writing happens early in the morning. and oftentimes it takes me a little bit of time to get up and running. Sometimes I hit that deep work or that flow state in the afternoon and I can keep going well into the evening. Whatever works for you, find the process and then block out time for it, make it work.
So if you have to work around kids, then work around the kids, work at night, or if you’re working around a full-time job, then do that, but find the process that works for you so that you’re not reinventing your schedule every single week. And I think this is a challenge for many of us.
Finally, just want to mention, it’s sort of a theme of a couple of the last few episodes… Kieran talked about rebuilding a version of his course and shaking off the baggage and creating new elements that are intended to wow his buyers and his customers so that he gets the reaction, “holy crap, this stuff is good, right?” This is all about engineering the client experience. We talked about this a bit last week and the week before with Jason Friedman went really deep on this. But again, engineering this customer experience, the client experience that we’re creating for the people that we work with is the kind of thing that pays off long-term with additional referrals, additional opportunities to work, attracting new clients to our business. So a little bit of a theme that I’m seeing over the last couple of episodes and maybe that’s a sign that I need to be working on my client experience Maybe you’re feeling the same thing.
I want to thank Kieran Drew for joining us to chat about growing a social media presence, his newsletter, his business, and so much more. You can find Kieran on Twitter at It’s Kieran Drew. And that’s K-I-E-R-A-N-D-R-E-W. Or visit his website, kierandrew.com.
That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner.
If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please leave us a review. Let us know what you think, or email us and tell us what you think, whether you’ve got an idea that you want to implement in your own business, or maybe you want to share this episode with somebody else that you know that it might help out.
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You’ve heard the saying: slow and steady wins the race. Well, that’s exactly the approach our guest for the 389th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast built her business. Today we’re talking with copywriter Kim Kiel about getting better month and month, and year after year—and not getting caught up in the hustle. And we covered a lot more. You’ll want to tune in for this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: I love stories about copywriters and other freelancers who find amazing success right out of the gate. They’re working with great, high-paying clients on big assignments almost from day one. Those stories illustrate what’s possible to those of us who are just beginning the journey. But, those are the exceptions that prove the rule. Very few copywriters hit a home run on their first at bat, or even their second or third. For them, slow and steady wins the race.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and brand voice expert Kim Kiel. Kim’s business growth is the perfect example of the slow and steady copywriter business—getting a bit better every year by charging a bit more, upleveling clients as she gained experience and not getting caught up in the rush to hustle. We talked to Kim about that as well as her unicorn client, her take on the nine word email and why she always follows up every pitch.
But before we get to that, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for long, you’ve no doubt noticed a recurring theme… how do copywriters and content writers find clients TODAY. Shortly after we launched The Copywriter Club, we created a special report with a bunch of ideas for finding clients and shared it with the world. I recently took a week to rework and revise that report… it now includes more than 21 different ideas for finding clients… some of which you can use today and possibly attract a client in the next 24 hours. Some of the other ideas will take longer to bring in clients. But they all work. We’ve either used them ourselves, or know other successful copywriters who have used each one of these ideas. And we want to give you this report for free. This isn’t a one page pdf that will get lost in your downloads folder. It’s comprehensive… 36 idea filled pages… including the 4 mistakes you can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you make them, clients will not work with you. It also includes more than 21 ways to find clients, several templates for reaching out to clients, and finally the five things you need to do to improve your odds of landing a client. If you want a copy of this report, visit thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient — find a client is all one word.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Kim.
Kira Hug: All right, Kim, let’s kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Kim Kiel: Well, uh, I got us to tell you, I’m having kind of like a full circle moment because it was about five or six years ago that I was in my kitchen, you know, but bubbling around doing whatever I had to do and listening to The Copywriter Club Podcast and hearing Joel Kletcke, Tarzan Kay, early Justin Blackman talking about this field of copywriting and how they had some really good successes. And it was right around that time that I was needing to find another way to work because I had a day job. In the nonprofit sector, I worked in charity for a couple of decades as a fundraiser, fundraising copywriter, front line communications. And that sort of daily commute and the schedule with the kids, school schedules wasn’t working anymore. And so I needed to make a shift. And so I discovered the Copywriter Club at the same time as I kind of discovered this whole online world of business. The people I heard speaking on your podcast gave me a lot of hope and possibility. And for me to be sitting here now recording on this podcast, like I feel like I’ve made it, like I’m having my little Sally Field moment. So that’s sort of a very…
Rob Marsh: It’s really nice of you to say, and it’s just really gratifying to hear that. Like, you’re not the first person to say it. It makes us feel good. So thank you for saying that, even though you didn’t have to.
Kim Kiel: Well, it’s 100% true.
Rob Marsh: Okay, well, yeah, let’s talk about how you took that early desire and turned it into a functioning business.
Kim Kiel: Sure. So after I discovered this whole online world of business and I discovered the field of copywriting, which I had already been doing, but I didn’t know that’s what you called it. Then I decided to go all in on it and I quit my day job and my first client was actually that employer. So that was sort of how I made the shift from working a day job into becoming a freelancer and becoming self-employed. And as I opened up more time in my calendar, I leveraged some of my older relationships, they would hire me to do smaller projects. And then I joined some different communities.
So I joined Copy School. I joined your community, The Copywriter Underground. I joined B-School. And in there, I found all these other online entrepreneurs who are doing stuff. And I both used them for inspiration, but also many of them became my clients. And so when I was in those other communities learning about online business, joining masterminds, those other women would actually hire me to write for them because I was one of the only copywriters in the group. But even though I had like a decade and a half of experience writing, I still had so much self doubt, still questioned whether I could actually do this thing called copywriting. So joining some of the copywriter programs really gave me the confidence that I needed and maybe a little badge to make me feel like, okay, yeah, I can do this. And made me feel more comfortable when people would come to me. I could speak confidently that I knew what I was talking about.
Kira Hug: Okay, so many questions for you. Let’s start with leveraging older relationships, which seems obvious, but that’s something I feel like is still untapped for many of us. I even feel like it’s untapped for me. I have a lot of relationships, and how often am I going back and leveraging or warming them up? What does that look like for you, and what does it look like today if it’s changed?
Kim Kiel: Yeah, so I still generally have a long follow-up game. In the beginning, it was sort of reaching out to my personal networks and saying, hey, I’m quitting my job. I’m becoming a copywriter. This is what a copywriter is, because nobody at that time knew what a copywriter was. AI has kind of changed that a bit. And as I reached out to those people, they would know people, and they’d be able to make referrals to me. I got a lot of referrals from people within the copywriting community who would throw me the odd contract, and even if I didn’t land it right away, I would still follow up a couple weeks later, a couple months later, even a year later, just kind of like a, hey, how’s it going? And that is something that I still do today with my past clients and with people who I’ve had sales calls like a year and a half ago, they will come back. And it’s that sort of constantly staying on their radar that I think has really helped me to get repeat business and to get additional referrals because as they are going about their business, they see your name pop up in the inbox and they know somebody in their community is looking for a copywriter. They will connect me to that person. So it’s that sort of gentle, hey, how’s it going, thinking about you, and it always seems to work out.
Rob Marsh: And like Kira said, I think this is really untapped for a lot of us. And so I kind of want to probe here just a little bit. As you were going out on your own, that first, your former employer that became your client, what did that conversation look like? And I’m almost asking you here for a script, because I’m thinking there have got to be other people listening who are thinking, well, I could turn my employer into my first client if I went out. So tell us. How did you approach your boss or whoever you needed to talk to and what did that conversation sound like?
Kim Kiel: Well, I guess I was pretty lucky because they didn’t want to lose me. I had to quit to accommodate my family’s needs at the time. And they said, how can we keep you? What can we do to keep you? And I was able to then create a smaller package or carved off a part of my job that I really liked and I knew I could do remotely. And I said, well, how about I just manage all the grants, the grant fundraising grants, as opposed to doing all of the other fundraising that I was doing at the time. And so by saying like, I can do this portion for you, and I’ll just slot right in, I’ll keep working on it. And it was attractive to them because A, they had already known me, they knew how well I worked, they knew I would be able to deliver. And so it was honestly an easy yes for them. If I were to do it again, I, I have made similar pitches to employers in the past, like say where I wanted to move and work remotely. This was pre-pandemic, like 10, 15 years ago. But it’s still coming to them with a solution fully mapped out and say, these are the things that I’m going to do for you. This is what it’s going to cost. I can work remotely. I can do this totally independent. And I’ll just keep this going for you. So I think it’s identifying a need and showing how you can just slot right into their team without it being more headache and more money for them.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I think that’s the key is the solution piece, like whether it’s a warm relationship or cold relationship, it’s like come to the table with a solution rather than just targeting the problem. You mentioned self-doubt, fear, you know, that’s something we can all relate to, and it creeps up at different times. Like for you, you had all this experience, but it still crept up because you were going into a new business. I think for copywriters, it can creep up at different stages in their business. So what else could help you, knowing, what else helped you or maybe even helps you now beyond the courses? Because I agree, like courses, education, getting that badge does matter, but what else has helped you?
Kim Kiel: Uh, it is, it’s a constant battle. I still like on the weekly have like, Oh my gosh, I should burn down my business. Nobody loves me. Oh, look at so-and-so their podcast has so many more downloads than I do. Look at, they’re getting all these accolades. And I’m like here, just like chugging along quietly in the background and filled with self-doubt. When I have those moments of self-doubt, I reach out to my, like my squad. Like I have some Voxer friends who I’m like, guys, I’m, I’m spiraling. I feel like crap and they’ll come in and they’ll be like, no, you’re good. You’re awesome. And it’s like just having that hype squad is so helpful. And then also having, you know, I’m part of some more intimate business masterminds and having a coach who’s able to see what you’ve accomplished over the last year and remind you Well, didn’t you just land that sales? Didn’t you just land that client? Didn’t that client have an amazing launch? Like they’re able to reflect back to me what I maybe can’t see for the moment. So it’s a constant practice, but I think it’s really having other people around you to help cheerlead you on and make you feel less alone. I think that’s a big part of it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. That’s something that we’ve seen. Like you mentioned the underground earlier, we’ve seen that in our groups and our mastermind. And even sometimes just having Kira there to say, hey, yeah, that was actually pretty good or vice versa.
Kira Hug: I thought I brought you down. I didn’t think I brought you up.
Rob Marsh: You didn’t bring me up. It was interesting. We had a sales page that we used for a promotion a week or two ago, and somebody emailed saying, this is the best sales page ever written. Actually, they posted on LinkedIn. And Kira wrote it. I’m like, that kind of stuff is awesome. So maybe this is an opportunity to encourage everybody who’s listening to reach out to somebody who you admire, who you think is doing a great job, and just say, you’re fantastic, and you’re killing it. Because you’re right. I think a lot of us feel like we’re not killing it day to day. or even making it sometimes, and that can be hard.
Kim Kiel: Mm-hmm. And I’m pretty lucky. I have a very super tiny email list, but there’s a few people on there who are copywriters and pretty well-known copywriters. And they will often reach out and say, this was a great email. You know, yours are the only emails that I read. And I get a lot of emails. And so hearing that from people who I admire and highly respect is super gratifying. And I guess sometimes I just have to remind myself that, oh, yeah, I’m actually OK at this thing.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love those emails are amazing when they come in. Okay, so I want to also ask you, while we’re talking about this, you know, the hype squad, whatever, you mentioned that you often get referrals from copywriters, maybe it’s not often, but you do get these referrals. And there’s so much follow up. Let’s talk a little bit about that follow up game. Because again, this is another place where I think it’s really easy to get discouraged. Obviously, we don’t want to be spamming people who are not interested in our businesses and in getting help from us. But there is a lot of power in following up and being there at the right time. So let’s go a little deeper there too.
Kim Kiel: Sure. What really changed my perspective on follow-up was, I don’t even remember where I was or where she shared it, but Denise Duffield Thomas, the money coach, she shared one time that her team doesn’t even respond to pitches or to potential prospective clients unless they have followed up two or three times to show that they’re actually interested in working with them. And so when I heard her say that, you know, the bar for actually getting an interview with us is that you have to follow up two or three times, like that totally changed my perspective. It made me feel like, OK, well, I’m going to do that. And so often people will book a call with me. I’ll have that call. Maybe it won’t be a right fit at that time. Maybe they’ll decide to go with someone a little bit cheaper. And I will still, in about a month after that, send an email. Hey, I was just thinking about you. I’m looking at my calendar. Do you have any copywriting needs? If you do, give me a shout. It’s happened so often where people have chosen someone else and then months, even a year later, they’ll come to me and it’s just that sort of, it’s an inoffensive gentle nudge. It’s almost like I send that nine word email every so often just to kind of touch base and it’s a friendly hey, it’s not like a hard pitch. It’s just, I’m thinking about you. We had that sales call. Do you still need help? Did you get it all sorted out? It’s really coming from a place of service and it’s really served me in the long run. People who I’ve followed up with will come back to me a year, a year and a half, even two years, two years after that initial sales call.
Kira Hug: Yeah. And sometimes it’s still, it’s a long game. Yeah, very long. And it’s not a matter of them hiring someone else. Sometimes it is. Sometimes they decide not to hire anyone and just kind of sit with the problem longer. And then a year later, they’re like, OK, the problem’s worse. We need to work together. What else would you recommend? Knowing that, again, it’s been a rough year for many writers and many are struggling, not all are struggling, what has worked for you more recently that you would recommend to copywriters if they’re struggling just to get projects in the door and grow and they’re thinking about, I can’t do this, this isn’t working anymore?
Kim Kiel: Yeah, 2023 did a real number on me, just like it did for so many. I had huge financial goals for last year, and I didn’t even come close. My revenue dropped back to 2021 revenue levels, so it was tough. What I did find towards the end was offering really quick turnaround services. VIP days, power strategy sessions, small service, small bites, audits, things like that, that sort of helped people say yes to this small amount that could help them move the needle just a little bit, even if they weren’t able to invest in a larger project. But that quick turnaround, maybe sacrificing some of that research piece that we all love to do, but just trying to get in and create an instant shift. And that worked for new clients, but it also worked for going back to my repeat clients, so clients who I’d worked with in the past. I reached out, do you need your brand voice guide updated? How’s that email sequence working for you? Do you need any punch ups or additions to any of the copy projects that we’ve worked on in the past? And so I did get a few people coming back to me to update their brand voice guide, to redo a sequence and to hire me for a day and a half to do something. But those smaller bites seem to be more attractive.
Rob Marsh: And as you did that, is there something you’re doing differently in your pitch at all? You know, as you make that approach, are you having a conversation? Well, maybe you’re not ready for this bigger thing. Here’s something else to try. Or is it just you’ve just made the switch and your clients are none the wiser?
Kim Kiel: No, I think it’s still laying out. These are my top tier offers. And if that doesn’t work for you, here’s this quick hit. And everyone’s finances were a little bit tight last year, so that quick hit was nicer for their budgets as well. And the quick time frame was better for them as well. So they do know what my higher ticket offers are, but they would choose that lower level investment.
Rob Marsh: I love that you’re mentioning this because we’ve literally, I think, in the last two months probably had two or three other people say, hey, if you’re struggling, make it smaller, make it bite-sized, make it easier for a client to say yes. This isn’t really a question. I’m just sort of patting you on the back saying I feel like you’ve arrived at the same solution that so many other people who have figured this out have also arrived at.
Kim Kiel: And like, I’m so glad we’re having this conversation because it’s reminding me that that really worked towards the end of 2023. And so, uh, as we head into the slower seasons to maybe think about doing that again.
Kira Hug: Yeah. And I know we talked a little bit about, you know, self doubt and how that you’ve had your, your hype squad and that’s helped you, but how we are coming out of 2023 and I appreciate you sharing that it was a tough year for you. Um, Then how do you look at 2024? I know we’re already a quarter into it, but how do you plan ahead and think about the future and feel hopeful enough to get yourself focused and on track when you’re coming out of a tough year?
Kim Kiel: I do work with a coach, so I have somebody to bounce ideas off of, someone to reflect back to me what’s working. And in addition to my private one-on-one services that are sort of a more premium level, I also have a mid-tier offer, which is called the Joy of Copy Club, where business owners can come in and it’s sort of like a group copy coaching experience. And I’ve been having a hard time selling it. People are not wanting to join this group coaching program for whatever, maybe I’m not selling it right, whatever. But I’ve decided to then focus on what is selling. And right now what is selling is high ticket services. the people who held off on investing in 2023, whose launches tanked in 2023, they’re like, oh my gosh, we need to hire somebody to get this figured out for us. So I’ve had a number of people reach out to me and book me for their launches in early 2024. and I can see that that pattern is continuing. So I’m actually making a concerted effort to actually focus on my one-on-one services and get those booked out and sort of like let the copy club just sort of hang out in the background until I have more space to actually focus on filling that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, as I listen to you talk about this stuff, Kim, it seems to me that you’re really good at the ebb and flow of business. You know, if this isn’t working, I’m going to try this. And before we started recording, in fact, the conversation that you and I had, you know, and we were saying, hey, you should come on the podcast to talk about this was really all about the slow and steady growth of a business. Oftentimes on the podcast, we talk to people who’ve had a pretty meteoric rise, you know, they made six figures in their first year, or, you know, they’ve, they’ve done something pretty amazing. And I think it’s also really important to hear that perspective of somebody who’s grown a little bit at a time a little bit more each year, and isn’t necessarily worried about huge gains or building a team, or so many of the other things that we often talk about, So with that ebb and flow, let’s talk just a little bit more about that slow growth model and how you’ve accomplished that almost year from year, how your business has changed and you’ve adapted things to make that work.
Kim Kiel: Sure. So I think because I came to online business and being self-employed and a freelancer, As a middle-aged person, like I was 42 when I started becoming a copywriter. I had a family, like my family was older but still young. I still had to, like that was my priority. So my business couldn’t, I couldn’t dedicate as much time to exponentially growing my business as maybe some other people who maybe are pre-kids might be able to. or on the other side of the spectrum whose kids are up and out who can then focus on exponentially growing their business or who have a spouse who looks after the whole household. I had that as a constraint in my life and my business so I had to sort of allow my business to support my family and still grow my business.
I also would hear all the advice out there and then I would just take what I felt was meaningful to me and what I could do. So, you know, build a funnel, build a lead gen, do all this stuff. I didn’t want to do any of that. I didn’t want to set up a big text. I just set up my first funnel like three weeks ago. I have never had a full tech funnel set up. I run a very lean business with Google Docs, with a wave invoice. I’ve never had checkout pages before, so I just kept it very high touch, very simple, and not having those extra expenses for either a team or a tech stack to have to manage all that for me. I’ve had high profitability, but also it just makes it easier for me to then focus on just doing the work and not worrying about all these funnels and systems working for me. But I’ve just found different ways of keeping that engine going and chugging along and listening to the advice. and then deciding what fits with me and my lifestyle and my family. And fortunately, some things don’t work, but a lot of it has worked out. And I think one of the things that really helped me out over the last several years was I did have sort of a core retainer client. who I was able to work with for four years. And that was super helpful because it just provided that sort of steady, a baseline of steady revenue.
And then I could add on these other clients and experiment with these other offers. I also think just having a little bit of life under my belt, I can come to these client conversations and sales calls and meet them as an equal. And it was never, I never have felt like, Oh, I’m subservient to the client or I’m lesser than the client. And I think the clients like that when you come to the sales calls, you show up on your kickoff calls with confidence and you know what you’re doing and they feel like they’re well taken care of. And I think that that’s been part of the reason why I’ve also been successful is because I know how to handle people and, uh, and yeah, just having some of that life experience goes a long way.
Kira Hug: So if you had a retainer for four years, that’s really impressive. It’s not easy to do that. Can you share what worked well, what you would encourage other writers to do if they’re setting up a retainer based off your experience?
Kim Kiel: I’ve experimented several times with different retainers, with different kinds of clients. And I mean, I’ve really had a unicorn client. She still is beautiful, but she doesn’t need that kind of service anymore. But she, from the get-go, was just someone who was beautiful to work with. She had me do a test project at the beginning. And I know that there are some people who shy away from wanting to do a test project. or give me a sample of your copywriting. But every time I’ve done it, it has resulted in tens of thousands of dollars. So I just want to say, don’t be afraid to do those test projects because they can turn into a really lucrative opportunity. And it also is a chance for me to try on that client. It works both ways. So with that particular client, we were able to really, over time, build out what that retainer would look like. I was writing Facebook ads for her. And so I would write sort of, it was almost like an accordion.
Some months there’d be a lot of Facebook ads, sometimes there’d be less, but we had this mutual understanding that We would keep it at this rate to allow for that ebb and flow. With other clients, I have created a three to six month retainer engagement to focus on sales copy. Sometimes it crosses over into that almost an employee relationship where I need the sales page tomorrow. I need a stack of emails. And so I’ve had to learn from my own ways, like suck it up and just do it. But then going forward, being able to set some more strict boundaries around that. So now my retainers are quite clear. In terms of this is what I’m going to do for you on a monthly basis. And over the six months, we’ll work on these three large projects together. Large projects include X, Y and Z. And, you know, I’ll still throw in some bonuses here and there to surprise and delight the client and make them feel like they’re getting a really good value.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, so let’s talk a little bit about what those retainers look like. Because, you know, when we say, well, I’d like a three or six month retainer to do sales copy. How did you manage that, Evan Flo? Were you having meetings to talk about what was getting accomplished that month? Like, how was that all spelled out?
Kim Kiel: With the unicorn–amazing client, we worked pretty much in Slack. She would send me a creative brief, I would do it. Every few months we’d have a call, check in, how’s it going for you? Great. So she’s sort of the pinnacle. She ruined me for all other retainer clients. With my regular retainer clients, we have a monthly call to set the priority for the month. We agree. These are the projects that are coming up. These are the copy assets that we need. This is the timeline that we need. And from there, I would just sort of deliver that. Right now, my retainers, I have sort of two levels of retainer. One is four, four, four, four a month, just under 5,000. And it includes four nurture emails. It includes three major sales copy projects. over the course of the six months, which would be like a big launch. It would be optimizing or writing a sales page in a sales sequence. It might be doing a brand voice guide, or it might be rewriting their website. So it’s those big projects that we can condense into that six month. And then they get sort of a month to month, a few projects, like emails that we can write together. And then there’s a step down from that, which is still about 2,500 a month. And it’s four emails plus some, a mini, like a landing page or like a small, short email sequence. So something a little bit smaller.
Kira Hug: Okay. I love how you structured the six month one, because this is such a struggle. It’s just. how to think about the projects, and then the nurture, how it all works together. How do you hold your boundary with that, especially with launches? Because when you’re saying, OK, we do a launch project over the six months, I mean, that could be a $50,000 launch project really easily. So how do you manage that piece of it?
Kim Kiel: I mean, I make a lot of mistakes in terms of my own boundaries. Yes, I have, there are some late nights that I’m pulling to make sure the copy is done, but that repeatable revenue over the six months is so valuable to me and my peace of mind that I don’t mind. So, okay, May is gonna be really tough because this client is launching and this other client hired me to do something else. Like, oh no, I’m gonna have to put my head down at work, but I’m okay with that. I always feel like I have a choice and I always feel like I’m the one who got myself into this situation. And I just got to suck it up and do it and do it as best to the best of my ability. And then sort of going forward, I might say, well, that’s actually not scoped in or we already covered that. So there are some ways that if someone says, can you do this for me? I’ll say, yes. Would you like me to scope that into the retainer? I can send you a new invoice. So just kind of like. It’s more of I learn my lesson each time, and then just try to fix it going forward.
Kira Hug: And you’re probably a solid planner, right? You’re planning at the beginning of the six months, so you know when the launches and all those events are taking place, and there are no surprises. It’s all built and baked in. So you can manage your calendar, for the most part. I hear what you’re saying, like mistakes happen. And I appreciate you being honest about that. But I’m just thinking to control the calendar, you probably need that ahead of time.
Kim Kiel: I mean, I think the way I’ve structured the retainers now is because I’ve been in retainer relationships before where it was like, oh, I just decided to launch this new mini offer. I’m going to need a sales page and 12 emails. And it’s like, I didn’t have the structure around that or the ability to have the conversation at the time. So now I just have more clear boundaries as I go forward. And yes, those boundaries are going to be wishy-washy at times.
Rob Marsh: So Kim, one of the things that you mentioned as you were talking about the retainers and setting up your business is that you like to keep things high touch. And you won’t have heard this interview yet, but many of the listeners will have heard our interview with Jason Friedman, where we talked about customer experience and building a customer experience. So I’m curious what high touch means to you. Because when you say, well, I was keeping it simple, Wave Invoice and Google Docs, Somebody might argue, well, that’s not all that high touch. So clearly, there’s some personal communication or something else that’s going on here where you’re having a high touch experience. Tell us what exactly you do to make sure that those clients are thrilled with the work you do.
Kim Kiel: I think it starts from that sales call and how you show up on the sales call and how you follow up after that. So when I show up on the sales call, I spend a lot of time listening. I feed back to them what I’ve heard to make sure we’re on the same page. And then after the call a day, maybe two days, sometimes even three, like I’m not like super on it all the time, I’ll send it’s a simple Google Doc with a table that says these are the deliverables. This is the cost. This is the timeline. This is what we talked about. Do you want to move forward? And it’s often like, yep. No proposal, it’s because we’ve had that conversation. If there is further questioning or questions, then they’ll just email me back or we’ll hop on a second call to clarify that.
In terms of how else I provide that high touch is for premium clients, they get my Voxer, they get my cell phone number, they can text me and message me anytime they want. Very few of them ever do. Because they’re at that high level of operating their businesses, they don’t actually reach out as much as you might think. And even if they did, I would wait 24 hours to respond in some cases, you know, like I just set my own boundaries for when I reply. If they do have a need where they’re like, oh my gosh, something came up, I know you need 48 hours to turn something around, can you get this done? I’ll often say yes, just because I want them to feel well supported in that experience. And then, you know, from time to time, I’ll send gifts. I’ll send little care packages, things to make them feel special and to show my appreciation. I’m not sure if I fully answered that for you, Rob, in terms of that high touch.
Rob Marsh: No, you did. In fact, I know as soon as you said, I give my cell phone number, allow them to text, vox me anytime, I’m guessing a bunch of people listening just went, oh my gosh, she’s crazy. But it also occurs to me that in doing that, you are creating a level of confidence with that particular client where, okay, I know she’s there for me. And like you said, they hardly ever take advantage of it. But that trust, that level of support that you add on, I think, That’s over and above what most copywriters would do, probably more than I would do. I’m not sure that I want my clients texting me anytime that they might feel the need. But on the other hand, I do want them to feel like they could and get that support. So I think I really like that, even though I sort of have mixed feelings about that whole idea.
Kim Kiel: And it’s very rare that anyone ever really texts me. Sometimes they’ll give me a voice note on WhatsApp or they’ll definitely voice note me on Voxer. But I really love hearing their voice and hearing the questions they ask because that is how I can write like them. because when they’re talking, then I can write like them, or they’ll say, I had this idea for a thing and blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s just easier for them to get it out on Voxer or WhatsApp than for, let’s hop on a meeting. Let’s talk about what we can write about in our emails this month. Like, just tell me some stories that happened to you, and then I’ll turn that into a series of emails. So I like providing it. The only times people have ever called me is if, like, they’re going to miss a meeting. Like, it’s really just as a courtesy.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I mean, it’s a good way to avoid conflict, too, right? Where you don’t have a client sitting there fuming over some issue. They’re more likely to just text you or send you a voice memo if there’s something, so you’re aware of that. I probably won’t give out my phone number because I have a flip phone, and I just don’t. Texting is really hard. Like, it just is very physically hard to text on it. But I like it conceptually. Let’s talk about launching, because that’s your specialty, one of your many specialties. I also love that space. And I’m wondering what you’ve seen work recently. What isn’t working now with your clients and their launches? What is working? Any observations you’ve made over the last six months or so?
Kim Kiel: I think we can all agree that people are taking a lot longer to make decisions and that sort of five day challenge and into a high pit high ticket $2,000 sale isn’t working so well anymore. People are maybe coming into that and then maybe they’ll buy on the next round or the round after that. Uh, so allowing for a longer cart where someone can experience you a little bit more. Um, I took Brenda McGowan’s pre-launch plan program. training. And I mean, that was probably one of the best investments I made in my business last year, because it gave me so much structure into that six-week content before you get into the launch. And I have used it with a couple of clients. And they were seeing sales before their cart even opened which they hadn’t seen before. So last year they had really difficult sales and this year when we added in a pre-launch and we updated some of the sales emails, they did see a lift in their revenue and their sales. So I think that being more strategic with that pre-launch process, like hat tip to Brenna for owning that space. But I took the training from her, so now I can do it too, which I guess is another tip for any copywriter who’s listening is get certification and training in other areas that you can niche into because it is an additional service that I can add on. It’s a new product that I can serve, provide. So that longer window, what I know from other people in the launch space is that more of that personal touch. So as we’re talking about this high touch, even people who are launching are using either ManyChat or even Video Ask. They’re actually getting into people’s inboxes, onto their phones, into their DMs. That coach or the team is making that personal outreach. while the cart is open. So just adding an additional layer of touch to invite somebody in.
Rob Marsh: So I’m curious, with adding on services like a pre-launch plan, are you pitching that to clients? Or is that part of the discussion when a client comes to you and says, OK, I’m ready to do a launch? Is that when you lay this out and say, OK, the pre-launch is going to take us three to six weeks. It’s going to be x thousands of dollars. And then we’re going to set up all of the launch material. How does that discussion work? And I guess the reason I’m asking this is I’m wondering how much you’re using a consultant role here, where the client comes and says, hey, I need a sales page for this thing. And you say, hold on a second. Let’s back this up and make it work, which is really two different approaches to what we do.
Kim Kiel: With the client who I most recently worked with, it was very much, we need someone to rewrite our sales page and rewrite our sales emails because the emails are not converting, it’s crickets over here. And when I got in and I looked at that, I said, I see a big gap here in terms of your pre-launch strategy. We were so late in the game. They just reached out to me too late for me to actually do the plan and write the content for them. But I was able to basically sell them the plan and say, I’ll write the plan, but you’re just going to have to implement it on the fly. And they bought that add-on, basically. It was, hey, I see this as a gap. So it is more, you’re hiring me for a service, but I see a strategic gap, and I’m going to offer that to you. With this particular service, the pre-launch plan or like brand voice guides, I’ve been able to go back to past clients and say, hey, this is a new service I offer. It’s a brand voice guide. If you’re becoming a bottleneck in your business, I can help create the structure for you so that you can pass on that copy to your team, your outsourced copywriters. And because a lot of people have worked with me before, they know I am attuned to their voice, so they will say yes to that.
Kira Hug: How are you marketing yourself and how are you showing up? Like I know we’ve talked a little bit about networking and you have a really great referral network and community, but what else, if you are doing anything else to build visibility and authority?
Kim Kiel: I mean, I’m like the cobbler’s kid. I’m the worst. I feel like I’m the worst marketer in the world. I have the tiniest email list. I never had a funnel until a few weeks ago. Like, But I did launch a podcast about a year and a half ago, and it still has very small listenership, but the people who listen to it reply back to me and say, this is amazing. This is filling a gap. It’s very short form, bite-sized. It’s like one copywriting formula, one sales formula, one writing prompt, or sort of one theme. It’s really following the rule of one. Uh, and, uh, it’s a short form podcast that both copywriters and business owners are loving. Uh, but I really have two different audiences. So I have the sort of six to six figure $250,000 entrepreneur who wants to join the copy club or need some smaller ticket services. And then I have this seven, eight figure launcher who they aren’t listening. They aren’t consuming my content. Let’s be real. They’re not on my email list. They’re coming to me through referrals. But when they get the referral, I know they’re coming and checking out my website. I know they’re looking at my Instagram. I know that they’re going to probably go over to the podcast and take a peek. So I have active things there. Aside from the podcast, I really don’t create content or build my authority in any other way. I do host monthly marketing moments. So instead of having this complicated event, I just sort of have open office hours, or I’ll talk about how to write a welcome sequence. And I’ll throw open the doors to anyone who wants to come. And I’ll get copywriters. I’ll get business owners. And they come and hang out with me for two hours. Maybe I’ll make a pitch to join a program or share my services in the hopes that eventually when they’re ready, they’ll come to me or they’ll refer me.
Rob Marsh: Your podcast is called the Ill Communication Podcast. Is that right? Yeah, it’s called Ill Communicate. Tell us about the name. Why Ill?
Kim Kiel: I am a diehard Beastie Boys fan and one of their best albums is called Ill Communication and some of their songs reference it. So I like my original email like way back in the day was beastiegirlk at yahoo.com. So when I had the idea for a podcast I was like, it has to be called the Ill Communication Podcast. So like you can become the illest, the best, the raddest communicator when you listen to this podcast.
Rob Marsh: Okay. So why didn’t you lead off with Beastie Girl K? That should have been the introduction of the podcast.
Kim Kiel: I have to, I have to update my intros anyway, so maybe I’ll do that for the next one.
Rob Marsh: I think it’s hilarious.
Kira Hug: So, You know, listening to you in this conversation, you’re so intentional about what you’re doing. Like Rob said, you know, kind of how to zig and zag through business. And I just love the way that you approach growth and the craft. And I’m wondering like what you do to kind of cultivate the CEO mindset that you clearly have. And beyond coaching, you mentioned that. I think obviously we’re big believers in mentorship. But what else do you do? Is it like a weekly check-in, CEO check-in, something else?
Kim Kiel: I have an assistant who supports me in my business. She is another mom at the school, like I met her when my oldest kid was in kindergarten. We met in the hallway and she sort of started her online business at the same time that I did. And she would tell you I do not have a CEO mindset. Let’s bring her into this conversation. I know, right? I have a Trello board. I kind of follow it. She really keeps me on task in terms of like, these are the leads. These are who we’ve got to follow up, but have you followed up with that person? So she really helps me in that regard. I really try to stay in my zone of genius, which is like actually writing copy. And in terms of the outreach, I just know that I have to do it. And I know that it doesn’t have to be hard. It can just, just the other day, I Slack messaged a past client. I had delivered all of her copy by the end of the year. I messaged her saying, Hey, your launch looked like it went really well. Um, following up on the voice guide. Do you need any edits? How’s the website doing? And she wrote back. She’s like, I need to call with you. She booked a call the next morning. We hopped on a call and she bought an audit for $1,200. So like just that little reach out a friendly reach out.
It doesn’t have to be so complicated and hard. I also know that when I focus on something like if I’m hosting a monthly marketing moment or next week I’m hosting a boot camp on writing your welcome sequence, I’m putting so much effort into that and I’m showing up on social and I’m creating content about it. and I know that the money isn’t going to come from that event. Someone else from left field is going to come and book a call and they’re going to hire me for a bigger package. So I just know that it doesn’t matter where I’m focusing my reach out efforts, just the fact that I’m in motion will attract that new client and I have to just be okay with the fact that even though I’m investing so much time and money into this dang bootcamp, someone’s going to come in from some other way, and I’m kind of okay with that. So I just really have a lot of faith that the universe is going to meet me where I am, but it is a constant everyday practice for me to stay in that positive mindset. And I do go down in the dumps, but that’s where my assistant or my squad will be like, hey, you’re actually doing okay. You’re surviving. You didn’t shut down your business like those other copywriters did. I think just sort of that trust and faith goes a long way.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I love that thinking. It feels a little woo, which I’m sure Rob loves as far as putting out energy here will help me receive in a different way. But like, I know it works. I know if I keep showing up and building momentum that I will be able to receive in other ways in my business rather than just freezing and not doing anything because this activity isn’t working over here. And I love that you said that because I think that’s a big part of business is just like keep trying, keep moving, keep just iterating and getting stuff done.
Kim Kiel: I know inside The Copywriter Underground right now, you’re doing the 25 hard, which I think is awesome. I love seeing the posts people are making in there. But I just know that like that kind of action, people are going to be pitching to those five people a week or whatever it is. And it might not be any of those five people who reach out or who close, it’ll be someone else, like It happened when I was a fundraiser. I’d be going and having conversations with major donors. I’d be writing grant applications for this, that and the other thing. And then a big donor would come out of left field. And it’s just knowing that it’s going to happen, but you can’t just sit back and be passive about it. You have to actually be in motion, take action and take smart action, too. Like, yes, you will get some people will buy tickets to the boot camp, but the big money is not going to come from there.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, that echoes something I’ve been saying to copywriters for the last few months about how do you, how do you share, why you need to be sharing what you’re doing all the time because it does, it ripples out and it’s not always from your inner circle. Related to this, you have mentioned probably, well, if I went back and counted, it’s probably six or seven times, maybe it was more than that, but you’ve mentioned referrals at least that many times. Obviously, referrals are really important to your business. Part of getting referrals is doing great work and providing that high touch, but is there anything else that you do to encourage clients to give you referrals or you just let it happen organically?
Kim Kiel: I mean, I’ve tried reaching out and when I was in copy school, I think Jo had, or whatever it was called back in the day, she had like a template for how to ask for referrals. And I tried that template a few times and honestly, it never resulted in anything for me. Um, so I’m less focused on reminding clients to make referrals for me. And it’s more just about, Hey, thinking about you, how’s it going? Because they’re in communities with other people who need great copywriters. And so they talk to each other. And it’s those referral conversations. Those people are pre-sold by the time they get on the call with me. Like those are the easiest sales calls that I have is when someone’s on and they’re like, yeah, how much does it cost? Okay. Yeah. What are you going to do? Okay, great. I’m going to go talk to the CEO and then we’ll, we’ll sign off on this. And there. They’re pre-sold, so I love referrals.
And when people make a referral for me, I send a beautiful gift. Sometimes I’ve sent a referral fee. I follow up. Even when someone makes a referral for me and it doesn’t land, I follow up and I say, oh, that one didn’t land. It wasn’t a great fit, but I really appreciated that you made that offer. Do you know anyone else who might need this new pre-launch service that I’m offering, where I’m now offering brand voice guides? It’s just being in the orbit as opposed to being really strategic. I think that’s kind of the answer to your question, a long-winded way to answer it.
Kira Hug: As we start to wrap up, I want to hear about what’s next for you as you’re thinking about the future of, well, I mean, in the way in parallel, like the future of copywriting and marketing alongside the future of your business and how you see the two
Kim Kiel: One of the things I’m really passionate about is helping women find their voices and helping women have confidence to ask for the sale. In writing or on a sales call, but mostly in writing because that’s my medium. So through the podcast, I really want to have a huge impact. And through the Joy of Copy Club, I know I can help a lot of women business owners find that voice, develop the momentum. Like writing sales copy isn’t that hard. when you know the frameworks and the formulas and the process and for someone who is running a very small boutique consultancy maybe can’t hire a high-end copywriter like you can do it yourself and so I really would love to see my platform expand so that I can serve more of that that group of entrepreneurs who’s kind of not at that seven figure level, not at the newbie level, but like in this middle ground where you have so much expertise, but you just don’t know how to share it in a way that’s going to connect and compel and get the sale. And so for me, I’m very impact driven. So that’s really where I would love to see my business go is expanding that impact and reach. I still see myself delivering one-on-one services, but I also choose those clients because they’re working with the same audience as me. So they’re serving women to help them improve their lives, to gain more authority, to get more wealth into their lives. So it’s really an impact play, and yes, I like money too.
Rob Marsh: This is probably related to that question, but what advice would you have for anybody who’s listening who would like to take a similar path, slow growth, consistent growth over time, not worrying too much about, you know, hitting six figures that first year, whatever that looks like, or maybe this is even advice to a younger you, you know, what would you do a little bit differently to make it work?
Kim Kiel: I mean, the only thing I would do differently was I would have started sooner. I would have not looked at online business for two or three years before I actually pulled the trigger. I would have left sooner. And I think if you do great work, if you are a great human and you do great work and you deliver on time, that that already puts you ahead of the game. Delivering quality work on time is such a low bar, but it seems to be a low bar. And if you can do that, you’re already ahead of the game. And I just really think it is slow and steady. It is just put your foot forward. Some people like to sprint, but I’m not a sprinter. I just want to take a step forward, watch a little Netflix, take another step forward, do a little reach out. Yes, I could grow faster. Potentially, I could grow faster, but at what cost? We’ve seen so many people Like downsize their teams in the last year, the last two years, huge coaches have like completely shut down their business, because they’ve probably scaled too much built too much team can’t handle the stress as they balance those family obligations. And so I really think that. Just being slow and steady and having a small business is fabulous and and is great and just to trust that you know what’s best for you and to stop outsourcing that thinking to other people who are telling you to do it a certain way and to just find your own way forward.
Kira Hug: Well this has been really inspiring and motivating and there’s been so many practical tips that we can use and apply in our businesses today so Thank you so much, Kim. And I hope that you’re speaking on many other podcasts and sharing all your wisdom with other audiences, because this is great. Thank you. Where should our listeners go if they want to connect with you?
Kim Kiel: Sure. So I am kind of active on Instagram. That handle is kim underscore keel underscore copy. You can obviously listen to my podcast, Ill Communication. You’ll find it on all the platforms. And the central clearinghouse for everything is kimkeel.com.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. Thanks, Kim.
Kira Hug: Thank you.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Kim Kiel. I want to add just a couple of thoughts, as I usually do, to our conversation so you’ve got a little bit more to think about as you listen back and think about how am I going to take some of the ideas from this episode and make them work in my business.
Kim talked a little bit about the high touch experience. I want to make sure that I underline this because we did mention in the interview, Jason Friedman, our interview with him, which I believe was the last episode. You want to definitely go back and listen to that because we talked about creating the client experience from A to Z and what’s really involved in that. But Kim’s approach is really good. Again, it doesn’t make people jump through hoops. It’s not really expansive, but she focuses on listening, reflecting back what she hears from her clients. making sure that she’s communicating effectively. She wants them to feel like they’ve got premium access to her. So she gives them her Voxer or her text number and invites them to contact her anytime. That kind of connection creates confidence in a client. They know that they’re going to be supportive. They know they can reach out and while they probably won’t, there is some risk that they will, but they probably won’t. And so what you’re really doing is building trust and confidence in you as a copywriter, if you’re doing those kinds of things. And of course, adding gifts or care packages along the way, especially as you wrap up a project, a thank you note, thank you card, a gift, those things all create a higher touch experience than what a lot of copywriters do, which is just hitting send on a Google Doc and letting the clients try to figure out what’s going on, maybe even implementing on their own without any help or follow-up.
We also touched a bit about the long follow-up game that Kim plays. One touch isn’t enough. We’re building a relationship here when we’re talking about following up with clients on client pitches or even your podcasts or things that you want to do. You need to treat it a little bit more like dating. Now, of course, you don’t want to be creepy, but you also don’t want to give up unless the person that you’re reaching out to has told you to stop, told you that they’re not interested or that they don’t have any availability right now. Follow up three, four, five times at least, and maybe even longer. And of course, if somebody said, I don’t have time right now, that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to work with you at some point in the future. So if you get that feedback, set a reminder in your calendar to follow up in say 60 days or 90 days when they might be more interested or they might be ready with a project, but make sure that you’re following up. That’s the difference between success and failure when it comes to pitching clients. It’s all in the followup.
Finally, I just want to mention in the very beginning, Kim mentioned that her very first client was her previous employer. If you are a copywriter who is thinking about going out on your own and you have a job today, this is a great place to start. Talk about this opportunity that you have to go out on your own with your boss. See if they would be supportive. See if there is work that you can do for them on a freelance basis. Oftentimes that saves the company money because they’re not paying benefits. There’s the expenses of office and computer, that kind of thing. Obviously you’re taking on those expenses. So you gotta be careful that you don’t make under bill and make sure that you’re paying for those things on your own, but it’s often more affordable for clients to be able to work with freelancers than with full time employees. And so if you are in a situation where you’re employed, but you want to go out on your own talk, to your boss or maybe their boss and see if this is even something that they would consider because we’ve talked about a bunch of copywriters on the podcast who have done this very thing and it becomes that anchor client that allows them to set up and run their business for the first few months, maybe even a year or two, and then you’re off to the races.
Okay, I want to thank Kim Kiel for joining us to chat about her business and the slow and steady growth that she’s experienced over the past few years. Make sure you check Kim out on Instagram or on her website, kimkeel.com. And also don’t miss her podcast. We mentioned this during the interview. It’s called ill communications. And on that podcast, she shares bite-sized tips about writing and marketing and all kinds of things. It’s worth subscribing. So check her out there.
What does it take to become a copywriter? How do you learn the skills you need? What are the best ways to “get in the game’ so to speak? In the 388th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter Eddie Shleyner about the process of becoming a copywriter—and how he made the jump from literature student to booked-out-copywriter and author of a book about copy. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joe Sugarman
4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Eddie’s website
Full Transcript:Most weeks on the podcast we take some time to dive into a different copywriter’s origin story. Why they became a copywriter. How they made the switch from whatever they were before to what they do now. It’s a process we all go through, and yet, we tend to skip over a lot of the details. We jump from one client to the next, or from this service to that product. We cover a lot of what and don’t go very deep into the how.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and soon to be book author, Eddie Shleyner. Eddie shared the details of how he learned to write copy, the feedback he got along the way, and the books he found most helpful. And that’s just the beginning. We also talked about sabaticals, burnout and book writing. This is a good one, stay tuned.
But before we get to that, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for long, you’ve no doubt noticed a recurring theme… how do copywriters and content writers find clients TODAY. We recently updated our guide to finding clients… it now includes more than 21 different ideas for finding clients… things you can do today to attract a client—maybe even in the next 24 hours. Some of the other ideas will take a bit longer to bring in clients. But they all work. We’ve either used them ourselves, or know other successful copywriters who have used each one of these ideas. And we want to give you this report for free.
But don’t just download this document and let it die on your hard drive. If that’s your approach, don’t bother. This isn’t a one page pdf that’s easy to ignore. It’s a comprehensive… 36 page mini book… that includes the 4 mistakes you can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you make them, clients will run away from you—the exact opposite of what you want. I already mentioned it includes more than 21 ways to find clients, as well as several templates or scripts you can use to reach out to clients, and finally it reveals the five things you need to do to improve your odds of landing a client. If you want a copy of this report, visit thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient — find a client is all one word and we’ll send you a copy for free.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Eddie.
Kira Hug: All right, Eddie, we want to start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Eddie Shleyner: Oh, well, I guess it was a pretty organic thing for me because I majored in English. I was an English major. I studied literature at U of I, and that’s what I wanted to do, I think. I wanted to graduate and write novels and short story anthologies, and obviously that’s It’s really hard to do right out of college, so I had to get a day job. I got a job in sales, and I was selling software. I was selling computers. It was basically inside sales, but it was trying work for me. I didn’t really enjoy it. I think I really wanted to write, and so after about a year in that role, my buddy came home. My roommate came home and he said that his work was looking for a copywriter. And I didn’t know what a copywriter was. Actually, I had to look it up. I knew somebody was out there writing these ads, but I didn’t know they were called copywriters. So this goes to show how little I knew about this discipline in this profession before getting into it.
But I looked it up and I was like, yeah, sure, I’ll try that. And I went in and I think I got the job just on the back of my English degree, because It was a brand new department. They were writing job ads. It was a contract role. I wasn’t getting any health insurance. I was making $15 an hour. So it was one of those. And I took the job just because I was like, hey, I can make a living writing. And quickly learned that my worth in that role was based on how many times I can get people to click and how many times I can get people to take an action. And so independently, just kind of doing my research, realized that I was doing something called direct response copywriting. And then I kind of went down the rabbit hole. I got really interested in that profession and that discipline and started consuming as much as I could about it. I started just reading books and watching seminars, listening to podcasts, reading articles. Yeah, whenever I would come into an insight, whenever I would hear a principle or a technique that was really compelling to me, I would try to write about it. And that turned into a very good copy eventually, my blog and my newsletter. And then, you know, it just kind of progressed from there. So I think that that’s how I got into copywriting was kind of a slow burn.
Rob Marsh: Do you have a novel in your desk drawer that you’ve been working on in the background, Eddie?
Eddie Shleyner: Thanks for asking, man. It’s not a novel. It’s an anthology of my work, but yeah, there is something that I’ve been working on, if that’s what you’re getting at.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, we’ll wait for that to hit the bestseller list so we can talk about it then. In the meantime, you know, as you were studying, as you’re learning, obviously podcast books, whatever, what were like the main sources that you used or that you were there were your go tos that you were pulling this stuff from? I’m asking mostly because I know there are beginners who are listening to the podcast and may want to replicate that, learn and write about these insights and learning ideas. Where’d you go?
Eddie Shleyner: Well, the first book I picked up was by Joe Sugarman. It’s called The Adweek Copywriting Handbook. And I really wore it out. I mean, it was so overwhelming in its completeness. I just felt like it covered so much. And what was really interesting about that book was when I picked it up and I started reading it, being a literature major and studying English all those years and reading the classics. And I started reading and I was like, man, this sounds like it’s like reading air. You know, it was like it was so simple and so plain. I was almost unimpressed at first. I was like, well, you know, is this really the resource that I should be reading? Is this really where I should be gathering information? Because it seems so trite at first, because it was so simple. But I think that was just the first couple pages, and then I realized that this was really just a treasure trove of information about direct response copywriting. And not just that, but it was something to emulate.
It was a writing style that I needed to emulate, and I referred back to it time and time again and copyworked it time and time again so that I can get that so I could get it into me, you know, the type of writing, the tone that he was using and the word choice and just the sentence structure and the simplicity in general. I really wanted to write that way and not the way that I was writing in college. You know, I had an editor that was like, “you write like a fire hose, I need you to write like a nail gun.” And that was Joe Sugarman. Joe Sugarman was so intentional about every word that he used. He was even intentional down to the punctuation marks. He wouldn’t use unnecessary commas. He was always trying to save space on the page, make it as simple as possible. And so, yeah, I took a lot away from that, both in the principles and techniques of direct response, but also just in the style and how those guys wrote.
Kira Hug: So you shared your lessons. It sounds like you were learning and writing and sharing. Yeah. What was the reason for that initially? I mean, we can look back now and say, that was really smart, because now you’ve developed this entire resource and website, and you’ve grown since then. But what was your initial thinking with that?
Eddie Shleyner: Well, my initial thinking, I think, was that, you know, I missed writing. This was coming off of an entire writing and literature education, so I missed just the act of sitting down and composing vignettes and these little stories, which is something that I did pretty regularly, I think, in college. And so I think I missed it a lot, and I wanted to have an outlet for that. I wanted to exercise that a little bit. Also, I just thought, hey, if I can write about this clearly and concisely, if I can make it engaging, if I had control of this concept on the page, then that meant that I was ready to use it in my own promotions and my own ads. I think that was probably the driving force. They say millennials want to document everything in their lives. Maybe I just wanted to have some way of documenting all of this effort that I was putting in. I don’t know. It’s a good question. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why I chose to do that, but somewhere in the intersection of those three things is the answer, I think.
Rob Marsh: When you weren’t only documenting what you were learning, you know, as part of your blog, you started interviews with other copywriters. Yeah. And there’s some really good copywriters that you interviewed for that. Yes. I’m not necessarily putting myself in that category, even though I was part of that, that series. But I am curious, were there lessons that you learned from them as you did those interviews and post those on your website that you look back and think, oh, yeah, that was brilliant. Anything that you can call out from what was shared there?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, definitely. You were actually, Rob, I think you were the third person I interviewed. I was very gracious of you because, you know, you didn’t have to do that.
Rob Marsh: Well, things really got good after the first three or four people, I think.
Eddie Shleyner: I don’t know. You were great. But to answer your question, themes that emerged were probably more than anything that just the fact that we are so similar. We are also so alike as copywriters and you know as people doing creative work for a living. I was really surprised by a lot of things that people wrote in that? It’s the same six questions over and over again, and the first question is: do you have a routine you have a way of working and this wasn’t like across the board, but so many people talked about how focus was really the key to doing good work and their production in general. Just being able to have blocks of time where they sat down and they were uninterrupted and they could focus on the problem at hand. I took that to heart back then. I think it’s a lot harder after you have kids. You have to be a lot more regimented with your time and just plan everything out to a T. But I think thematically, that was one of the things that really stood out across the board.
Kira Hug: Going back to your storyline, can you share a little bit more about once you realize you’re a copywriter, you have this job, and then you go deep into learning mode, what happens after that? What are the next few steps?
Eddie Shleyner: Oh, you mean like in my career progression? Yes, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I actually worked at CareerBuilder which is where I was writing those job ads for about a year and a half. And so those are like three month contracts. So they just, you know, they extended those contracts probably five or six times. So I worked there for a year and a half and then afterwards I got a job at an agency. And it was, it was an SEO agency. We created SEO websites, but a lot of that work was very much rooted in direct response as well. You know, we needed to capture people’s attention when they got onto the site and convert them as well. So everything on that site was just pointing towards the fill in lead form. And a lot of our clients were, you know, kind of, you know, hand to mouth with their leads. So, you know, dentists, trucking companies, moving companies, that sort of thing. So I worked there for a little while and I continued to build out the blog and build out—I don’t even know if it was a newsletter at that point.
For a while, it was just like a running list of like 50 or 60 of these little essays that I wrote in a Google Doc. I was never going to show them to anybody. They were just there just for me. I just thought, hey, I’m making this repository for myself. So I worked there for a little while. I think I worked there for about three years. And then after that, I got a job in-house at a software company. And that’s where I got a lot of SaaS experience, or at least my first SaaS experience. And then after that, I went and worked really briefly at a content marketing agency. It was called Animals. And then after that, I went to G2.com, which is kind of like Yelp, but for B2B businesses. And I was the copy chief there until November 2020, something like that. And that’s when I went out on my own with their copy. So that was the progression.
Rob Marsh: You mentioned you started out in that sales job that you didn’t necessarily love all that much, and yet you basically became a salesperson for all of these roles that you did. Did you learn anything in that first job that you carry through all of these things? Obviously, there’s a theme here anyway of you learning and picking insights and growing as you move from place to place, anything stand out specifically about sales?
Eddie Shleyner: Oh yeah, of course. I was in sales before this job after college. I did door-to-door sales for a little bit. I think at the end of the day, whether you’re selling one-on-one to somebody or whether you’re selling one-to-many as a copywriter, the point is that you have to gear everything towards the person that you’re speaking to, towards that prospect, towards the person that you want to sell. If you can make it as much about that person as possible, then you’re giving yourself a good shot at engaging them and compelling them in the long run. I think a lot of that transfers over from one-to-one sales to copywriting, is to know your audience, know who you’re talking to, know what they really want and need, and then try to channel that into your copy.
Kira Hug: So I’m going back to the storyline, because I have to complete it in my head. This is how my brain works. I’m like, OK. So then you went out on your own. And how did you get that going? Did you have enough colleagues, former colleagues, that you could just get business going pretty easily at that point?
Eddie Shleyner: I think when I started at G2, that was a really fortuitous thing for me, because everybody there was so supportive of this side thing, this very good copy thing that I was doing. And everybody from the CEO to the CMO to the marketing directors, all my bosses, everybody loved the fact that I had this blog on the side, this newsletter on the side. And I think a lot of that came down to hey, you know, you’re teaching yourself and others how to be better copywriters. That’s only going to benefit the business in the long run. So keep doing what you’re doing. Um, I think, you know, I was performing well in the role anyway, so there wasn’t like a, Hey, you’re distracted, uh, kind of narrative there.
So it was just very lucky that I started at G2 and I was surrounded by people, um, that were supportive and genuinely wanted to help me. The first break I got there was just being around like a bunch of growth marketers, really talented growth marketers, people that taught me not necessarily how to write or what to write, but how to spread my stuff around the Internet really efficiently. And that’s when LinkedIn kind of came into the picture, when I started posting on LinkedIn and when I started creating growth loops from my website to my newsletter to LinkedIn, that just kind of amplified each post. And yeah, I really, I started growing a following on LinkedIn while I was still at G2.
I couldn’t ask for more support than those people showed me. I mean, it was really great. And I think, you know, I was really lucky to have it. So by the time I left G2, I had left because there was already so much incoming so many incoming leads, so much incoming business that I felt safe, you know, walking away, even amid, you know, we were in the middle of the pandemic and everything, which was, I think a lot of people, they just looked at it sideways. They were like, I can’t believe you’re leaving now, but I just felt like it was the right time to go and kind of take advantage of this network that I’d built. So, yeah.
Kira Hug: I like the idea of, who said spread stuff, spread your stuff around the internet and growth loops. Yeah, efficiently. I mean, I want to do that. So how, how do you approach that? How are you doing that today? What’s working?
Eddie Shleyner: Well, certainly in the very beginning, I started creating growth loops from my newsletter to LinkedIn. So every single time I wrote a new micro-essay just as a branding exercise—they’re basically little essays that teach one principle or technique at a time. And so I would post it on LinkedIn, and then I would send out the exact same essay in my newsletter. And then at the end of the newsletter, I would just ask for support and be like, hey, if you like this, go reshare or go leave a comment or like it on LinkedIn. And by posting and sending out that newsletter in such close proximity and transferring my audience from the newsletter to LinkedIn, it would just amplify the post to all those folks. So now there’s the commenting or the pod trend, the commenting trend, where you kind of get together with a bunch of people and everybody comments on one another’s stuff. You know, it’s the same concept, only I was doing it with people that were in my newsletter and just asking for their support organically that way. And, you know, that, I think that helped me grow quickly. Just, just the fact that, you know, there was this audience transfer and this amplification on, on LinkedIn. on the platform itself. And then inside that post, there would be a CTA, a call to action to go to VeryGoodCopy.com if they wanted to read more. And VeryGoodCopy.com, if you look at it, I mean, it’s basically designed to get you into the newsletter. Like, you know, I don’t know how many thousands of CTAs there are across that site, but I would say 90% of them are designed to get you to subscribe. So it would just be a virtuous circle. People would see the post, they would go to the CTA, see that there’s more on VeryGoodCopy.com, they’d go to VeryGoodCopy, get into the newsletter, and the next time I sent out a newsletter, there would just be more people there to amplify the post. So I think there have been You know, over time, there’s diminishing returns like everything else. But in the very beginning, that was definitely an effective way to grow.
Rob Marsh: So I want to ask some follow ups on this. You started doing this when? Is this 2020 or before that? 2020 is when I left.
Eddie Shleyner: I think I started doing this about 2019. Okay.
Rob Marsh: And you were sending out how often? Once a week or less? More?
Eddie Shleyner: I think I was sending out once. I wasn’t that regimented. I mean, I think I was sending out once a week. That was my goal. I didn’t have any sponsors at that point or anything like that, so I wasn’t that obsessed with the frequency. But yeah, I think once a week is a pretty good estimate.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, the reason I ask, obviously, there are people teaching these things on LinkedIn, you know, post three times a week or whatever, and yet you were able to do it at least a few years ago, without that kind of frequency. How often do you post or share newsletters now?
Eddie Shleyner: Well, the newsletters still go out once a week, ideally. I take pretty frequent breaks, kind of like hiatuses. At least once a year, I’ll go three months and I’ll just kind of go a little dark. I won’t go on LinkedIn. I won’t send a newsletter out. Sometimes I’ll even kind of leave an away message on my email and I just won’t really check that or it won’t be that frequent. And usually that coincides with a big project that I’m doing, like this year was the book. So I took a couple months off and just kind of focused on doing the book. Last year was the course that I made and I just took like three months and literally just heads down, didn’t do anything else besides the course. And then sometimes it’s really just to kind of get back to, you know, like craft and just get back to what got me into this in the first place. You know, as a solopreneur, as somebody that’s doing this on their own, I think it’s really hard to balance craft and growth.
And for so long, you know, like in the very beginning, Kira, when we were talking about like, you know, how this all started and I was kind of walking through like, uh, you know, the, the, the, the impetus behind Very Good Copy, that was very much like a craft phase. I was trying to go from like zero to 80% and trying to learn the fundamentals of this discipline. And then after I got that down a little bit and I started writing these essays and sharing them, and I realized that there was an audience for it and there was some potential for a business there, then I became really interested in growth mode. And perhaps that was like, you know, a consequence of the people that I was around. I was around a lot of growth marketers, around people that were good at it and wanted to see me succeed.
So I just went into this kind of growth mode for a little while there, probably a couple of years where I was still writing and still trying to do my best work. But there was this kind of like, I don’t know, there was this tension between like, hey, how much time can I put into writing? And how much time do I need to put into all of the administrative work that goes into growing this thing? And I found over time that that was like, like a perfect way to burn out and a perfect way to really hate your life. You know, it’s just impossible to do all of that at once.
And so now I kind of oscillate between growth and doing all the things that I need to do to spread my work around the Internet and do it efficiently and do it in a way that’s going to be effective. And then every now and then I’ll be like, OK, a lot on that. I got to take a break and I got to really focus on going from you know, really focus on growth going like going from zero to 80% is easy. I think compared to going from 81% to 90%, you know, that’s super hard, you know, comparatively. And then going from like 91% to 95%, you know, is exponentially harder than the last phase, you know, and then going from like 96 to 99, you know, that’s exponentially harder. And then like going to getting to a hundred is probably a fool’s errand. Like that’s probably never going to happen. So it’s just like growth. or I’m sorry, like craft is just this ever increasingly difficult thing to do and to develop. And I think it just, it deserves time, like dedicated focused time. And so that’s what I try to, I try to do that whenever I can.
Rob Marsh: And last question about this entire process, at least for me, as you’re putting this out and talking about giving back to the craft and learning, sharing your insights, does customer acquisition come into it at all as you’re sharing? Are you posting on LinkedIn in order to attract clients? Or is it really about sharing what you’re learning?
Eddie Shleyner: Well, sometimes, yeah, if I’m heads down, I’m probably not posting. I’m probably just dark. My account just kind of sits there. Every now and then, I guess I will. But yeah, the client acquisition piece, I think it’s more like a subscriber acquisition. I think that’s what I’m focused on. I’m not focused on getting direct leads from LinkedIn. I’m focused on getting those folks in front of my brand, in front of Very Good Copy, into the newsletter. And then from the newsletter, that’s usually where people decide to work with me or decide to buy a sponsorship or decide to buy a consultation or my course or something like that. So once they’re in the newsletter, that’s when I think I have much more control over the message. And so that’s always my goal is to get people into the newsletter. whether they become clients or sponsors or consultees or what have you. It all happens in the newsletter, I guess is what I’m saying.
Kira Hug: What does it look like today? How are you getting paid the different ways… sponsorships, consulting. But what are you primarily focused on? Is it all spread out and you kind of have revenue coming in multiple ways at this point?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, definitely. So a few revenue streams, client work. I made a course and I’ve been selling it for about a year. So that’s a revenue stream. Sponsorships for the newsletter and then consultations. So people buy a couple hours of my time and then we’ll sit and talk about their problems. And it’s definitely shifted from the majority of my income coming from client work to the majority coming from just these products. So the course, hopefully the book, sells a few copies. I’m interested in productizing the brand as much as I can and creating things that scale. And I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing client work. I think as a copywriter, it keeps you fresh. Solving real world problems is a great way to stay on top of your craft and on top of your discipline. So I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing it. It’s just there’s obviously an opportunity cost there. If I’m doing client work, then I can’t take the time to create a course or write a book. And so there’s that give and take, and I just have to pick a lane. And so I’m trying to live in that lane, the productized lane.
Rob Marsh: the newsletter and sponsorships, the economics of that, if you’re willing to share. We had a few months ago, maybe a little more than a few months ago, John Bijakovic was on our podcast and talked a little bit about this newsletter he’s building outside of the copywriting space. I think there are a lot of people who are listening who would love to build a newsletter, whether that’s on Beehive or Substack or ConvertKit or wherever, and look at that as possibly its own business or a significant part of their income. I wish it was that easy, you know, put up a newsletter and suddenly you’re making lots of money, but we just kind of talk through the economics of how you do it. If you’re willing to share the numbers, awesome. If not, you can be a little bit generic, but just curious about what that looks like.
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah. So yeah, the numbers fluctuate depending on how many subscribers there are and, and the time of year. And, and so, um, you know, the carrot that I kind of dangle over, over, over folks on the website is like, Hey, email me for, for rates. And so, you know, I can’t, I probably can’t share exactly what I’m charging. Um, you know, I’d like people to, I’d like to have those conversations one-on-one I think. But, uh, yeah, the economics are, um, yeah, they’re pretty simple. It’s a matrix, you know, and, and, uh, the more you buy, the more you save. And, um, you know, it’s, uh, It also depends on what your goal is. If your goal is conversion, then newsletters could be a good medium for you to advertise in. They could not be. Usually I like to go after folks that are interested in raising awareness and getting their brand in front of people, maybe associating their brand with very good copy. Yeah, so I certainly wouldn’t turn away anybody that wants to convert my subscribers into customers, but that would take a very specific offer, a very specific campaign, and we’d probably have to work together on that to make sure that it’s successful. But if it was an awareness campaign and they just wanted to get their logo out in front of 15, 20,000 people every time I send a newsletter, that’s a much easier conversation. And that does happen pretty often, actually.
Kira Hug: So if you’re, if I hire you and you’re my consultant and I also want to sell sponsorships to my newsletter, what advice would you give me as far as what’s realistic? Like how many people do I really need on my newsletter to even have a sponsorship conversation and be attractive to sponsors as a baseline? And then secondly, How do you create that win for your sponsor clients when it’s around awareness, which is sometimes harder to measure? It can be measurable, but it’s a little tricky at times as far as brand awareness and creating a win for them so they continue sponsoring in your newsletter.
Eddie Shleyner: Right. Well, I’ll answer the second one first. I think when it comes to awareness channels, it’s really about, hey, how many people saw this? you know, how many eyeballs from a very specific nature, a very specific discipline saw this. So if I could say, Hey, you know, every time I send out a newsletter, 20,000 marketers and copywriters are going to see your logo and your message above the fold. So it’s the first thing, you know, in my newsletter, it’s the ads are the first thing people see. UThat’s enough for them to say, Hey, that’s, that’s a win. And then if I could just show them the open rates, show them how many unique people opened it and saw the message. For a lot of people, that’s enough. Obviously, if you click through and you take an action on the other side of that click, then that’s obviously another KPI that they take into consideration. But from an awareness standpoint, yeah, sometimes it’s just enough to show people that logo. And a use case for that is like, hey, if you’re raising capital, maybe you’re raising your series A or B, and you just want to be a more known entity in the SaaS space or in the marketing space. That’s a big reason why people pick up ads in my newsletter, just to get that awareness level up. Your first question, I think that was about how many people in a newsletter?
Kira Hug: Yeah, I mean, we have a, our audience wants, I mean, I’m sure many of them would like to do something similar, get sponsors, but maybe they have 2000 people on their list and they’re really excited about that. Is it realistic? You know, Hey, you probably need to get up to 10,000 before you have any conversations with sponsors or like a rough number.
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, I, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t discourage anybody. Um, from pursuing sponsors at really any size newsletter. Because I think what’s more important than the size is just the quality of those people and how alike they are, if that makes sense. If they’re all marketers, or they’re all copywriters, or they all have this one very specific interest, then it’s very valuable for people that are going after that group, that segment, to advertise with you, even if you have 100 people or 200 people? I think that’s my answer is, yeah, obviously, the bigger your newsletter, the bigger your audience, the more you can probably charge. But yeah, at the same rate, if you have 200 or 300 people that are fanatical about a certain subject and somebody with a product that’s aligned with that subject, once they get in front of those people, that’s still very valuable. And that could still turn into sales.
Rob Marsh: While we’re talking about audiences and all of that, I’m curious about the audience for your book. Actually, I’m curious about all things around your book, the decision to write it, your approach, methodology, what it’s about. Tell us a bit about that.
Eddie Shleyner: Sure. Yeah, I appreciate you, Rob. I mean, you know, the book is like very good copy.com, I think in print. You know, I, it’s a lot of people have asked me for some kind of like physical, tangible thing, you know, and I’ve never, I don’t know, maybe one day I’ll make hats or something or stickers, but that just never felt like the right thing to do, and I’ve always wanted to put my best work together into a book, and this is just that opportunity to do it, I think. It’s just, you know, it’s 10 years into Very Good Copy, and I would love to, you know, present all of these essays that I’ve written in a new kind of fresh way. And so I’ve been taking some time to go back and edit like my, all of my, all of the articles that would make it into the book, which is actually, it’s kind of a horrifying thing because it’s like, I can’t believe I, I published this at one point. It’s just incredible, like how much you, I guess, develop when you do something every single day and, you know, just reading some of my work back, it’s just, it’s just unbelievable to me. So I think if there’s anything that I’ve learned in the process, it’s that, you know, That craft bar is constantly moving, or it should be. And as it does, you are going to be extremely unsatisfied with a lot of the stuff that you’ve done in the past, a lot of the work that you’ve done, or at least I have been. So yeah, it’s been kind of an interesting process going back and editing and arranging everything. But that’s what the book is. It’s very good copy.com in print. you know, organized and arranged in a way that I think makes a little bit more sense than the website. And it has the benefit of being like me today, as opposed to me four or five or six or 10 years ago.
Kira Hug: And how does it fit in? I mean, other than you’re excited about it and it’s important to you, how do you see it fitting into the business? Is it like, OK, this is another great way to get people on my list and get them into my world or another purpose?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, I think it’s just another product under the umbrella. And it’s a much more accessible product, I guess. hundreds of dollars and being purchased by folks that have a very specific goal or need in mind, a very specific problem that they’re trying to solve for. The book is probably a much more reasonable price point, a book price point, and it’s much more accessible to people and I feel like it could do a lot of the marketing for a very good copy as well. If people buy the book first and then they can make it into my ecosystem that way instead of seeing me on LinkedIn or Twitter or something first. So yeah, I think it’s a product. It’s a marketing channel. And then it’s also just something that would feed my soul, I think, and make me happy. And a lot of times that’s very much overlooked. by creators. It’s like, what can I do to get bigger, faster? And, you know, a lot of the joy is sucked out of this profession when you do that. You know, a lot of the reason why we started doing this in the first place becomes kind of null and void when it’s all about growth and it’s all about how fast can we grow. And, you know, you start looking at it as a competition between creators. It becomes really unhealthy. So it’s one of those things where, like I said, it’s something that’s gonna feed my soul and give me energy at the end of the day so that I can hopefully go out and put on part two and part three and part four.
Rob Marsh: And when can we expect the book? When’s it hitting store shelves by us?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, so it should be this spring, so spring 2024. Yeah, probably like May, probably like May. I’m gonna send you guys copies. because I really appreciate you.
Rob Marsh: It’s amazing. Okay, so you mentioned earlier, especially with these big projects that burnout can become a thing. We’ve talked a little bit about your experience with that and how you push through it or overcome it or deal with it. I know there’s a lot of different approaches to burnout and making sure that stuff gets done. Just how do you look at those kinds of challenges?
Eddie Shleyner: Well, for a while I just kind of white knuckled it, you know, like I was just like, man, I’m tired. You know, you wake up when you’re burnt out, you wake up and you’re like, man, I, I really just don’t want to do this. I think it’s a hard thing to describe. It’s not like the most tangible sensation. It’s just like this feeling that, Hey, this thing that I once loved or that once gave me energy is now sucking it out of me. And, um, you know, for a while I, I, uh, I just kind of white knuckled it because I was balancing G2 and I was balancing this newsletter and I was balancing the ebbs and flows of that. Not everything I put out was successful. I just kind of forced it and that would usually make the problem worse. I would usually become more unhappy. I’m more anxious. And so that’s when I would start taking these kinds of breaks, these two, three month kind of hiatuses. And I realized that that’s kind of a luxury and not everybody can do that. But at that point in my career, I felt like I was so deep into it that that’s what I had to do, was just step away. So that’s how I dealt with it.
Now having kids and living kind of a more family life, I’m forced to not be in my work constantly. Not forced, that’s the wrong word. My priorities have shifted. I want to be with my family. I want to be with my kids. That’s the most important thing in my life now. And so I’m not constantly around work and I’m not constantly in work. And that’s really kind of healed the problem for me. It’s just like knowing that, hey, I have a certain amount of time, you know, that I can allocate to work every single day. And I just got to come in and I got five hours and I start the clock and I just see what happens. I just see what I can put out, you know. And then after that time’s up, go pick up the kids, go do that thing, you know. And it’s forced these boundaries. Whereas before, I didn’t really have those boundaries. Before, I was just so dedicated to making this thing successful that I might work 80 or 90 hours a week in a silo, not really having a lot of people around me to tell me, hey, you need to back off of this right now. So yeah, I think that’s what That’s the way I see it now is I have these boundaries that I have to respect. And that keeps the burnout at bay, I think, because I’m just not in it. I’m just not doing the work. And so I’m not doing as much work, I guess.
Kira Hug: Yeah. Kids make really good boundaries. Yeah. They help. They help, definitely.
Rob Marsh: They also step all over your boundaries.
Kira Hug: They create burnout in other ways, but we don’t have to get into that.
Eddie Shleyner: Did that make sense, Rob? I mean, I’m not sure if I’m answering it right, but I don’t know how else to put it. Burnout is such a strange thing. You just have to-
Kira Hug: I mean, you addressed it with this sabbatical that you’re taking. It’s like, I want to hear more about that. I mean, OK, I’m listening. I’m like, that sounds great. You’ve talked about it maybe a couple times with Sage Polaris, right? And maybe it’s come up in a couple other conversations. But a lot of people aren’t taking these sabbaticals, even though they’re focused. It’s not like you’re just going to the beach. You’re working on projects. So what advice would you give us? so that maybe we could do it? I mean, is it like, hey, you gotta go really hard in September and October, bring in a lot of client work, and then the best time is to take it over the holidays, take a couple months, come back in February, and get this going? Like, what works, practically speaking, to make this work for you?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, I mean, the timing is a very personal thing, right? It’s like, you know, I usually take them in November, December, January, because that’s a slow time anyway. And I think the opportunity cost of taking it in that quarter or towards the end of the year in general is just lower. And it probably just aligns with when I’m most tired. I don’t know. It’s the end of the year, and I’ve been going for a while. And you just want to take some time to relax and be with your people. But it depends. I remember Brian Clark saying that Copyblogger would go on this really low maintenance schedule in the summer because you only have so many summers and you want to get out there and do things in the summer. And so that was when the Copyblogger team would go out and be with their people and be with their family and do their thing and kind of take these little mini sabbaticals where they didn’t work as much. So the timing is completely up to you. And from an economic standpoint, that’s also pretty personal. It’s like, how much are you willing to take on in order to be comfortable for the next four, eight, or 12 weeks without work? So there is a fair bit of planning that has to go into it. It’s just a matter of how prepared are you to plan and how well can you stick to that game plan in order to enable it. And then I think the third piece is just like, do you have something really important that you want to do in that time? For me, there was the goal of creating the course or getting this book off the ground. Sometimes it’s like, hey, my daughter’s zero days old. I just want to be there for the first three months and just make sure that I’m experiencing this part of her life, you know? Everybody has their own kind of motivations, I think. But it’s just like, yeah, it’s just kind of at the intersection of like, is the timing right for you? Can you get the planning right? And then there’s something really compelling that is worth kind of taking your attention away from more
Rob Marsh: So you may have just answered this question because I was thinking through like, what does the sabbatical look like on a day to day basis? Obviously, you know, if you’re spending time with your kids, you’re working on a project like a book, that’s a big part of it. I imagine that if I were to set aside time for myself to take a sabbatical, day one would start with a lot of Netflix catching up and time wasting. It’s not really wasting if you’re getting something out of it, but a lot of vegetation as opposed to letting me rejuvenate my creative juices in some way, right? So I’m curious if there are things that you’re doing specifically during that time period that you’ve set aside or is it just letting life come as it is and you just know at the end of the three months or two months, whatever that timeline is, you’re going to kick back in and start working just like you always did.
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah. Well, for a while, I did have that kind of feeling of like, Hey, if you know, even if I’m taking a break, I still need to be doing something semi-productive. And I think I read a book called, uh, 4,000 weeks by Oliver Burkeman.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Oliver Berkman.
Eddie Shleyner: That’s right. You’ve read it. I think it’s safe to say we could recommend that book to anybody because it’s, it, it speaks to this. compulsion that people have to constantly be doing something, even when they’re supposed to be taking a break. Just constantly be doing something productive, useful, and maybe that’s not always necessary. Maybe it is just necessary to just totally turn off and feel bored or feel like you’re not getting anything done. And maybe that’s what you need in order to incubate properly and rest properly.
And so I read that book. I read it a couple times because it was just so fascinating to me. I was like, man, I’ve been living my life kind of the wrong way for a long time. And like on one hand, I was kind of, you know, like this like workaholism kind of enabled Very Good Copy and enabled my career. And so it’s hard to condemn it completely, but maybe I just read the book at the right time in my life where this is the ethos that I need in order to sustain the longevity that, you know, a creative career demands, you know. This type of work is really hard and it’s really taxing. And so maybe it only makes sense that, you know, it’s easy in the same way when you’re taking a break. And it’s mindless in the same way when you’re taking a break.
So to answer your question, what does it look like? I kind of work. Like Austin Kleon once said, he was like, I come to work and I put in my hours like a banker. Just four hours, five hours, I see what gets done. I do that. But then also, when I’m away, I’m away. And I binge on Netflix. put the kids down and just kind of try to do nothing. And it’s a stark contrast from the way that it used to be because it’s like I’ve been living a pretty domesticated kind of existence for a while now since my kids were born. So it’s not like, you know, I would put them down and be going out or be doing anything too crazy. I’ll go on the couch, but I would go on the couch and write, you know, I’ll go on the couch and I’d watch something. And I couldn’t get through the show because I would be like, oh, that’s a great idea. And I would pull out my phone and start writing something. Yeah, again, it’s like it’s a double edged sword because those habits enabled a lot of the work that I’ve done. But at the same time, they also burned me out in ways that made me really unhappy.
And so I think coming out on the other side of it, I think the latter is more important. You know, your long term happiness and your long term mental health are going to enable your long term creativity and this career that we’re all trying to kind of make it in. So I prioritize, I guess, those habits now. So, you know, during a sabbatical, that’s what I do. I put in my hours like a banker and then I shut off and I don’t put undue pressure on myself because whatever, you know, we’re all dust in the end anyway. So it’s like, why am I doing it?
Kira Hug: How old are your kids now?
Eddie Shleyner: Bo is two and a half and Sophia is almost six months.
Kira Hug: Oh my goodness. Wow. Okay. So what does the future look like for you? I mean you are someone who seems you’re a planner in some ways enough to plan sabbaticals and so you’re thinking about longevity. It’s important to you. What do you see as your future also considering dramatic changes we’ve seen in the creative space over the last few years with AI and other shifts? How does that change what you’re thinking about if it does change anything?
Eddie Shleyner: well, I’d like to just I’d like to keep doing what I’m when I’m doing, you know, I think you know, I like thinking deeply about what brings me the most satisfaction is is writing these these micro essays and and putting together resources that help folks. And so I’m really interested in continuing along that path and being consistent with my output as far as the essays go. And, you guys ever seen that Giru Dreams of Sushi documentary? I love that documentary. It’s so good. It’s excellent, Kira. If you get a chance, I don’t know where it’s streaming, but it’s streaming somewhere, probably Hulu. But it’s an excellent documentary about this. I mean, during the filming, he was probably 85 years old. He was a sushi chef. And he was just obsessed with creating the same 30 or 40 pieces of sushi and doing it as best as he could. And I drew a lot of inspiration from that. And I would love to just get as good as I can at writing these essays. you know, putting out the best product I can and hopefully just putting out more and more volumes of these anthologies. That would be like a dream come true for me. And I guess the way AI plays into that is, you know, I guess time will tell. We’ll see where AI goes. But right now, I don’t think that AI is capable of really emulating, you know, like the human condition. expressing humanity and these really human moments that we all go through in a really accurate and authentic way. And I think a lot of my work is rooted in my life, my experiences, my people, the things that I’ve done, the anecdotes that I’ve come into. That’s the formula for these essays. I’ll take some kind of story, some kind of narrative about my life. And then I’ll take a lesson about copywriting or creativity, and I’ll see if I could put those together in a kind of flush way in a certain number of words. Those are the three, I guess, prongs or pieces to each one of those essays. And so I think that AI can probably teach the lessons, but it can’t really replicate those really specific human moments that I’m referencing. And so I don’t see it playing a huge part in the future, a very good copy at least.
Rob Marsh: Eddie, thanks for sharing so much about your business and what you’ve been working on, how you grew. I think it’s fascinating and a lot of good lessons to take from that. If somebody wants to get on your list, Join the other 15 to 20,000 people who are there getting your essays, notified about your book. Where should they go?
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, just go to verygoodcopy.com. That’s home base. And that’s where they can get access to the full library. They can subscribe to the newsletter there. They can get on the waitlist for the book there. They can get the course there. That’s home base. So verygoodcopy.com is the place to go for sure.
Kira Hug: Awesome. Thank you, Eddie. Appreciate it.
Eddie Shleyner: Yeah, I appreciate you guys. Thank you.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Eddie Schleiner. I want to add just a couple of thoughts to our conversation, give you a little bit more to think about. Eddie mentioned the book that he loved. It’s called the Adweek Copywriting Handbook. That book is also known as Advertising Secrets of the Written Word. It’s actually the same book. There’s two different titles. One was printed by Adweek magazine, and the other I think was printed by Joe. It really is one of the better books about response-driven copy, how you get people to engage emotionally, how to write headlines, how to find ideas. It’s worth picking up your own copy of that book and we’ll link to it in the show notes in case you want an easy link to do that.
When Eddie mentioned being told by a mentor that he writes like a fire hose and needs to write more like a nail gun, I thought that was a brilliant illustration of the rule of one. As a writer, you can’t write to everyone. You have to write to your prospect, the buyer. Seeing them as a unique person rather than a large group of buyers or people with a particular challenge or problem, it changes the way that we write as copywriters and as content writers. And by the way, the same thing applies to going out there and finding clients. Take the nail gun approach rather than a fire hose approach. You will connect with your prospects better than if you try to talk to everybody in every niche about every kind of project.
Let’s also talk about this idea of sabbatical. So Kira mentioned that this first came up on the podcast a long time ago when we were talking to Sage Polaris way back on episode 32 when she talked about taking four months off every year. It might be worth a listen if you like that idea. It also came up on episode 68 with Ashlyn Carter and again on episode 285 with Tyler McCall. So check out Those other episodes, 32, 68, 285, if you want to dive more into this idea of taking a sabbatical. The idea of taking time off or away from your business is a powerful one. Whether you do what Eddie did and you focus on a project like writing a book, or you’re just getting away from everything to recharge your batteries and refill the creative tank, it’s worth considering doing. Now, you may not be able to take a month off each quarter or even more than a few days in a quarter or in a year. I still think that it’s helpful to think about taking time away, away from clients, away from your desk, away from projects, away from the laptop, away from pitching and marketing, or even thinking about pitching and marketing. It helps light the fire again if you’re burned out, or it helps you avoid the burnout in the first place. Taking time away for weekends, for evenings, putting the work aside is critically important. Sometimes it’s not even taking away time from your business as much as it is just changing the scenery. So go work somewhere else for a day or two or for a week or two if you can. Go to the library instead of working in your basement or the kitchen table or in your office. Get a hotel room and work there. Go sit in the park if you’ve got a laptop. Just change your environment if you can’t stop working right now. And even if that’s not possible, start planning for a future sabbatical or a week off where you can leave everything behind other than maybe a notebook and a pen and just be off. If you make it happen, I’d really like to hear about it, the impact that it has on your thinking and what you bring back to your business.
Okay, thanks to Eddie Schleiner for joining us to chat about his business and becoming a copywriter, that process that we all go through. Be sure to check out Eddie. He’s on LinkedIn. He’s also at verygoodcopy.com where you can subscribe to his newsletter and watch for his book coming out in the next couple of weeks.
Most copywriters and content writers don’t give much thought to the client experience beyond getting the information you need to start a project and handing off the copy at as you wrap up. But that’s a mistake. The client experience you create can be a huge differentiator for you and your business. Our guest for the 387th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Jason Friedman. And what he shared about creating a unique experience for your clients is a total game changer—especially if you want to work with high-end clients. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: When is the last time you thought about your client’s experience—that is, the experience of working with you from their perspective? What does it feel like to work with you? What are they excited about? Where do they get lost? What do they get and how does that feel? Most copywriters don’t give it a lot of thought to this beyond working out how to get the information you need to start the work and maybe what you deliver to your clients when you’re done writing. Although, if you just deliver a google doc, you probably haven’t thought about that at all.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed customer experience consultant Jason Friedman. We talked in depth about what it takes to make the customer experience special. And how it is one of the few things you can do to truly differentiate your business from the other two million copywriters out there in the world. I know this is a big promise, but this episode has several ideas that will practically guarantee clients work with you again and again.
But before we get to that, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for long, you’ve no doubt noticed a recurring theme… how do copywriters and content writers find clients TODAY. Shortly after we launched The Copywriter Club, we created a special report with a bunch of ideas for finding clients and shared it with the world. I recently took a week to rework and revise that report… it now includes more than 21 different ideas for finding clients… some of which you can use today and possibly attract a client in the next 24 hours. Some of the other ideas will take longer to bring in clients. But they all work. We’ve either used them ourselves, or know other successful copywriters who have used each one of these ideas. And we want to give you this report for free. This isn’t a one page pdf that will get lost in your downloads folder. It’s comprehensive… 36 idea filled pages… including the 4 mistakes you can’t afford to make when looking for clients—if you make them, clients will not work with you. It also includes more than 21 ways to find clients, several templates for reaching out to clients, and finally the five things you need to do to improve your odds of landing a client. If you want a copy of this report, visit thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient.
And with that, let’s go to our interview with Jason.
Kira Hug: All right, Jason, let’s kick off with your story. Let’s start with your time working with bands and touring with bands. Let’s start there and then move towards today, because I really want to talk about your time working in the music industry.
Jason Friedman: Absolutely. Well, yeah, so, you know, my background, I was a theater nerd, right? Like, so I went to school for theater. I started doing theater when I was like eight, nine years old at summer camp. And it was just, it was always backstage. So lighting, set design, things like that. And I remember I had just got the bug, like I wanted to be a rock and roll roadie for Rush specifically. And it was like, I remember I got introduced to them by a friend of mine and I was like that nerd. Like I opened the CD case, if you even know, people listen to this, but you don’t even know what a CD is, right? But you open the CD case and on the album jacket, it said Lighting Box.
And so there was a company name there. I was like, I’m going to work for that company and I’m going to go on tour with Rush and I’m going to do this. And over the years, I’ve just been doing shows and doing performances of all these different things. And when I got out of school, I had the opportunity to do anything. Right. So what did I do? I sent my resume in and I went on an interview with that company and they hired me. And it wasn’t all glamorous. I worked in the shop. I was coiling cables and washing things and just doing all the grunt work.
But one day came and they said, hey, you want to go out on the road? And I went out with Fleetwood Mac. And it was a small summer tour. It was only like 10 stops, but I was a roadie officially. Like I went out on a rock tour and it was awesome. And then I went out with Rush, which was my dream. And I also went out with Peter Gabriel as a tour and a variety of other smaller groups that probably most people don’t know. But it was this culmination of setting that intention and having that kind of clarity of goal and just knowing that you’re going to do it. And yeah.
And so it was a wild journey, being out on the road, doing those shows, like being in a situation where you are playing to an audience, right? We all do this in our businesses. We all have an audience. We have customers, we have prospects, but being in that environment where everyone is in a concert, we get there hours earlier, we’re tailgating, we’re sitting there, we’re listening to the songs. We’re so excited about what’s going to happen.
What would happen if your customers were doing that with your business? They showed up early getting in the mood to learn from you or work with you or do something. And then when they’re there, all the problems in the world fade away and they are so present and they’re so involved and they’re engaged and they’re on their feet, they’re dancing, they’re jumping, they’re singing along, they’re sharing your words and singing your song for you. And then at the end, they go crazy with the standing ovation.
I grew up with that over and over and over again. It’s intoxicating, right? And so being with these groups, you learn this. It’s like the Mr. Miyagi, wax on, wax off. You start to see the things, the techniques, the tactics that you use that elicit that kind of response night after night with new people, different audiences, different crowds, how you get them that level of engagement. It was pretty cool. And for the people on the team, the employees, there’s no better place to work than when you’re creating that kind of joy and excitement and engagement with people.
So you see the front stage, what’s going on with the customers and the backstage, what’s going on with the team. And it was amazing. So I started there and then I went on to do some more legit theater. So Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, Man of La Mancha, same experience, right? Night after night, getting those audiences to have that kind of experience and have that transformation and playing a role, it was super fulfilling, super exciting.
Rob Marsh: So while we’re talking about that part of your career… that gets me thinking. Obviously, the experience is everything, but there’s so much behind the scenes that goes into creating the experience. I mean lighting is just part of it, right? And as you’re talking about it, I’m thinking about the message that we have as copywriters—or whatever businesses we’re running—is a little bit like the music. We sit down, the musician sits down, writes a song, But then all of this other stuff has to happen to create an experience that is amazing. So talk just a little bit about the elements of how that all comes together. And obviously, the interest is in how you put together a rock concert for someone like Rush or U2 or whatever. But I really want to apply this to my business. What are those elements that I need to be thinking about in order to create an awe experience?
Jason Friedman: Yeah. I love the question. Let me just start off by saying, like defining what I think experience is. So we have a frame of reference to level set, right? So, when I think of the word experience, experience is not something you do. Experience is something that someone has. It’s not the cause, it’s the effect, right? So experience in my mind, a customer experience, it’s the result of all the things you’ve done, right? That allows the customer to feel something. So experience is a customer’s perception of the interactions that they’ve had with your brand, with your business, with your copy, with whatever it is, right? It’s a feeling and it’s their perception of that feeling.
It changes based on where they start, right? If I come in and I’m having a horrible day, you’re starting with me from a very different place than if I came just off that rock concert and I’m on a high, right? And part of understanding all of these things is how do we bring people in? What is that onboarding, if you will, that gets people in? And how do we look at our different customers or different avatars or personas who are going to be interacting with us, and understanding how to meet them where they are? It’s not a one size fits all approach. And most businesses, most organizations, we kind of treat people that way, which is like, oh, here’s the journey. And here’s how people are going to come into our world. And we just assume it’s going to be a fit for everybody.
So as we think about this, as you think about your copy, I’m not a world-class copywriter. I wish I was, but I know enough that I try to paint pictures with words. And I try to use as many senses as I can trigger and interact with. And I do that in my copy, but I do that in my business. And so I think about how do I? In a theatrical show, the script is one thing. When the words matter, there’s a script. Right. That’s true. When the words matter, there’s a script. And the beauty of having a script is that as we start to put it together, like in the show. If I want an audience to laugh at exactly this moment, night after night, I can get them there with the script, with the acting, with the scenes, with all the other elements that I put in place. And when I’ve done that, I’ve actually been able to repeat that consistently, reliably with different audiences in different cities, night after night.
So how does that work? It’s all the elements. It’s the way that the lines are delivered. It’s not just the words written. It’s how the person says them. The actor or actress recites those words. It’s how the other person reacts to those words. It’s the costumes, it’s the lighting, it’s the scenery, it’s the environment, it’s the colors, it’s the textures of things. It enhances the mood and it sets us up. Just like we’re talking about when people come to the rock concert, they get there, they’re tailgating, they’re having a drink or they’re eating some food and they’re playing the different songs in the background and there’s other people singing. All of the environment, all of the elements come together and they affect how someone’s feeling about that situation.
And so in your business, as you’re writing copy, ask how do I paint that picture for someone where they really have that feeling? Because it’s that’s where that’s where the rubber meets the road. Right. And so what we do with clients all the time is we start at the end. We don’t start at the beginning. We don’t just start writing some copy or start designing a customer journey or deciding what the first moment has to be. We actually go all the way to the end and we say, look, They just finished reading your copy. They just finished attending your show. They just finished an amazing Zoom mastermind meeting, whatever it happens to be. What would the ideal, most amazing customer testimonial be? We call this the ideal customer script, because again, when the words matter, there’s a script.
So what we want you to do is we want you to script that ideal customer reaction, the best word of mouth testimonial they could ever give it. But we don’t want you to do it based on what most people consider the result. Most people consider the result like if I’m selling something for weight loss, it’s like I’m going to lose 20 pounds in 30 days. That’s not the result. The result that I want you to focus on is that I feel better in my clothes, that I was the person that was sitting on the couch and my friend would call me to go out and I would say, I’m sorry, I can’t go out tonight because I would dread walking into my closet and seeing that nothing fit me and I didn’t want to go out. But now I’m actually calling my friends saying, hey, let’s go out. I have like all these different clothes I can pick from. I’m actually not sitting on the couch with a shovel of ice cream going to my mouth. I feel good and I’m doing things. I’m active and I’m living my life. We want people to tell that journey. I was nervous when I first started. I’ve tried so many things. So we want the journey, the testimonial, that ideal customer script really illuminates their journey and the emotional rollercoaster ride they went on and shows these mile markers, these moments where they’ve had these transitions all along that way.
When you’re able to help your clients do that and see that and feel that, now I can reverse engineer the whole journey that the customers go on so that those moments happen for them. I can reverse engineer what has to happen. And that’s how we do it in theater, right? We have the script, we know what we want it to be. Now we say, how do we stage the show? How do we bring that script to life in a way that we get that laugh at exactly that moment, night after night?
So what we teach people how to do really is build a business operating system that allows them to scale their business. They get consistent results time after time again, that gets the response. Because that marketing, those testimonials, those, when your customers say those, that’s what you’re going to start using on the front end of your funnel. I want you to flip your funnel. I want you to focus on the results that people are getting and become so obsessed with your customer results that that is your marketing. Your experience is your marketing. That’s when we put $1 in ads and we get 20, 40, 60, 100, 1,000 back because we know that the conveyor belt that’s bringing people through your program is going to get results night after night after night.
Kira Hug: So this is fun because it has been a couple of years since we last sat through your workshop. And hearing you talk through this, this is the part that stuck the most. And this is the part where I’ve been quoting Jason for years. But it’s the mile marker piece here and the emotional roller coaster and that we can really reverse engineer that for our customers and clients. Could you talk more about the mile markers and how to view that along the journey from the perspective of a copywriter who’s working in a service based business and is thinking, if I’m working with this client over the next month, delivering a sales page, how should I think about these mile markers?
Jason Friedman: Yeah. You’re going to have to help me with this a little bit. We’ll do this together, right? So I’ll, I’ll be the client and you’re probably the copywriter cause I haven’t worked that way, but I have worked with copywriters and I’ve been in that. I think the biggest thing, like when you’re thinking about a journey, is let’s start at the beginning. The most important thing in the beginning, we have a first impression, right? First impressions matter. It sounds very cliche, but it really does. It sets the tone for everything. And so we have to think about onboarding in the beginning, right?
Now, I believe that onboarding actually happens many times in the relationship with a customer, with a spouse, with friends, with everybody, right? Onboarding is something that you do every time there’s a transition in the relationship. So when I first come into your world, before I hired you, you have to onboard me into your universe. I might only be problem aware, I might be solution aware, I might be brand aware, but we have three different kinds of people that maybe coming in and they’re at different places. So how do I bring them in and get them to a place where we kind of have a baseline to have a conversation? So there’s onboarding that happens there.
Now let’s say you hire me, right? Now I have to do an onboarding there because the relationship just transitioned again. And now there might be another major transition where we finished our first project, now we’re going to a second project. There might be another onboarding that happens there. So onboarding is something I like to think of as how do I welcome people in and set and manage expectations and set things up for success as a key shift in a relationship, right? So onboarding is going to happen all the time.
Now, onboarding is not logistics and housekeeping, although most people believe that it is. And so imagine that I just hired you. You’re my copywriter. And you’re like, awesome, Jason. Here’s everything that I need from you and everything you have to do. I just hired this person. You just gave me seven months worth of homework. I want to die. Why did I hire this person? So what we need to do in onboarding is we need to bite size our onboarding in a way that brings people in. We want to bring people in. We want to set expectations. but we want to guide them through an experience that doesn’t overwhelm, right? Because when someone buys something from you, when someone signs a contract, they buy a product, a service, an online course, offline course, it doesn’t matter. I believe that is an intention, not a commitment. It’s an intention, not a commitment.
And so part of that onboarding is like buyer’s remorse is going to set in pretty quickly. Did I make the right decision? The itty bitty shitty committee inside their head is going to start going in cycles wondering, is this the right thing? And so we have to help them reassure and reaffirm that it was a good decision. And if we’re overloading them and overwhelming them, we’re going to do ourselves a disservice, right? So just psychologically speaking, like we’re dealing with cognitive biases. They may have stuff that happened in the past when they hired someone that’s coming up for them because it feels similar. And now you’re maybe at a disservice because they were used to it, they got that with a hot copywriter before. And that was, they almost had the same email. And now they’re like, Oh my God, that didn’t work out. This is going to be bad. So we have to think about those things. Like they’re coming with their own baggage with their own experience.
So what I, what I like people to do is I want you to find, we call it the time to first value. I want you to find the fastest, shortest way to get them a win as soon as someone starts with So that first mile marker, like you’re going to give them some onboarding, you’re going to welcome them in. And then the first thing I want you to do is, how do I get them a win? Now, what is a win? A win is a perception of success. And it’s not going to be that they got their first bit of copy finished and it’s awesome. That’s a big, big, big win, right? That’s down the road. What’s a little win that gets them to say, wow, this is good. This is working.
So as you start to think about that, I want you to think of these mile markers as wins or key milestones that someone sees that they’re moving in the right direction. They have momentum. They’re making forward progress. Right. And so if you wrote that script already, you know what some of those key moments are going to be because you put yourself in the shoes of the customer. You looked at it from their lens. One of the tricks that we like to do is use theater again. Imagine that you’re Matthew McConaughey and you’re playing this character on stage. How do you get into character? I want you to think about that. I want you to think like if you were going to be your customer, you were going to go to the grocery store as your customer, what would you be thinking when you walked into the grocery store? What kind of mood would you be in? What car did you drive in with? How would you, you know, what do you dress as? How do you feel? Are you, are you someone that’s going to say hello to everybody? Or are you going to kind of be in your own place and not looking around? We need to know how you could believably portray your character on stage, like Matthew McConaughey.
And so as you start to put yourself in that role, what would that first win be? What do I need to feel confident and say, wow, this was great? And so you’re going to do that with your script, and then you’re going to reverse engineer and start saying, what is that first win? What’s the next cool thing? And as you start to look at all these things, you can really analyze what success looks like.
Now, the other mistake that I see most people make is that we measure against the ultimate result. So it’s like, oh, I didn’t get there yet. When you measure against the ideal result, it’s always going to be a negative number until you get there. It’s never going to be enough. So I want you to actually measure from where people started. Because it’s always going to then be a positive number. I’ve made progress to here. Now I’m here. And so our job, if we want our customers to feel good and see the momentum and see that they’re making progress with us, we have to show them. We have to communicate that.
So in your copywriter example, how do I know what those key stages are? And how do I know? Oh, awesome. I’m on step three. We’ve already made it through step three and we’re only in two. That’s awesome. That’s amazing. Right. And let’s say that step four is going to be much bigger to get from step three to step four is going to take longer. That’s a bigger lift. Well, I accurately communicate those expectations. I set and manage those expectations. Because it’s like I think about it like in our business, like what we help people do is figure out how do we create this perfect journey, right? This ideal journey that gets people from point A to point B and allows it to be as smooth as possible, right? So imagine that you’re on a water slide at a pool. You go down this crazy water slide, you’re at a cool resort, but there’s not quite enough water. And so you get stuck and you chafe a little bit, right? And then all of a sudden, they realize, oh, there’s a lot of friction there. It’s not working. And they turn up the water. And all of a sudden, the water starts flowing, and you start going, and you’re going up and down. And even if you’re going uphill, there’s enough movement and momentum that you keep going smoothly and fluidly through that experience. We want your journey to be that fluid experience. We need to remove and reduce as much friction along that journey.
So if you think about it from your customer’s perspective, what are the hardest parts? Part of it is not knowing what the next step is. Part of it might not be not knowing where we’re headed or when we’re going to get there. Part of it might be that you’re off in your own place doing all this amazing work. You’re researching, you’re writing, you’re testing, you’re doing all the things, but we don’t know because we’re not seeing it real time. So we don’t know what’s going on. So communication might be, oh my gosh, I just had some amazing things. Like here’s a little snippet. I can’t wait to share the rest of it with you. It might be that showing that you’re engaged and you’re excited that gets them to feel really you know, part of the process with you that there’s like a little bit of co-creation going on, maybe, or maybe it’s just updates. It depends on the client, right? But as you think about that journey, like, how do you make it better?
So if the step three to step four is a bigger lift, it’s like you need to build up a little more momentum to get them over that hump. If you’re driving a car, if you hit the accelerator, and you’re holding it at a steady pace, you’re just going and all of a sudden you hit a hill, you have to hit the accelerator more to get up that hill. So what do you do between step three and four to give it a little bit of a boost for them to know this is a longer spot or this is a harder piece. Or once we get to this place, it’s all downhill and it’s gonna be smooth sailing. It’s just gonna take a little longer. So bear with me, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna check in with you, you know, once a week for the next three weeks and just kind of keep you up on the progress. If you have any questions, you know, whatever that is. But you’re setting and managing those expectations all the way through, those mile markers help them.
And when you share things that will help them feel confident about the work that you’re doing, like maybe it’s like those, like those little nuggets of like some samples or some little pieces or just letting them feel reassured that you’re on the same page. And we’re like, what I’m going to see when it comes out is actually going to be aligned with what I’m looking for. You’re going to find that they’re pretty happy and they’re pretty excited about it. And those are things that they’ll probably tell other people about later because it meant something. Not everyone else is doing that, right?
Kira Hug: It’s so amazing because I’m so proud of my onboarding. I have my email and it has all the things my clients need to do for me and it’s really well organized and it actually works pretty well. But when I hear you talk about it this way, I’m like, I’m overwhelming them at step one. Could I break it up and just give them a piece of it? And could I also create some type of roadmap of visual because I’m a visual person to show them all the steps and to track like, here’s where we are. What do you recommend?
Rob Marsh: At the very least, Kira, you need to be sending them like a protein bar so they have the energy to get through it.
Kira Hug: It’s interesting too because I thought I was doing a good job by being organized and just getting it all in one email because otherwise I’m worried they’re going to lose emails and it’s all scattered. But it sounds like that actually isn’t the most efficient way of doing this.
Jason Friedman: Every business is different. And so I think you’re right to be thinking about it. And most of us are like, oh, I’m doing a great job. Nobody’s complaining. That’s not necessarily the best measure of success. How long does it take people to complete? Could they get it done faster and would it make them feel better and you if we did it and we broke it up? Now, some of us also like to bin. Can we like it all in one email? So maybe when you first talk to me, say, hey, listen, I want to actually tailor the onboarding experience to you.
Let me ask you three questions so I know how to best set you up for success. And you actually tailor that. If it’s someone that says, look, give me everything at once, organized neatly, that’s great. Or it’s like, hey, listen, I like to like, you know, I like to kind of break it up. So, you know, it might be that, right. And it might be like that. There’s something that they do when they submit step one, step two, step three, and it just triggers another note back saying, awesome, congratulations, you finished step one. As you know, from our initial email, this is your next step. Looking forward to hearing back or whatever. It could be that, I don’t know. Again, I don’t know your specific process, but think about it from that perspective. where it can be more like choosing your own adventure, right? It’s like, I can go and do it as I want. And some of us like to binge, right? So like, if I’m doing all this and I decide, hey, you know what, Saturday is my day, I’m gonna kind of get everything set up for Kira so that I have all the stuff in place, then I might want everything in one spot, or at least know that I have all the information, but here’s my first mission, is this. So just look at it through the lens of the customer. Because what you said is exactly how we all think. I organized it. I made sure that’s all clear and whatever, because it’s easier for me as the business to have it all clean and then get it off my plate and get it over to you. It’s just writer’s logic versus reader’s logic.
You know what you’re saying. You know what you’re thinking. But are they getting the same message when they read that thing? So I would just encourage anybody. How do I make it better for my customers so that they feel that it’s not overwhelming? And it could be calling it out, saying, hey, listen, congratulations, this is the first step. We’re so excited you’re working with us. Iin order to give you the big overview, I’ve actually attached a document that has everything that you need to do. But for right now, I really need you to focus on these two things. So you can do both. I think it’s just, it’s just thinking about your avatars. And if you have different avatars in your business, how do I mass customize it? How do I make it so that they all feel like it’s done the way that they most need it? And there’s probably a way to do it where, like I just gave that example, maybe you have both within one email and they’re covered.
Rob Marsh: Jason, as we’re talking about this customer experience, I want to go back to your story and your career path because I think it’s really helpful to see other examples, maybe outside of the copywriting world, the marketing world, where you are basically producing these kinds of customer experiences. So as you look you left the theater world—or maybe you never really left the theater world because that’s really what you’re doing—instead of doing it for Broadway shows, I know you started doing some of this stuff in retail environments. Will you tell us how your career evolved from there?
Jason Friedman: When I, when I started I was brought in to help bring theatricality to retail. So we were bringing in technology like lighting and sound and scent you know, like, because they wanted to kind of zhuzh it up, if you will, right? It started, I’m going to date myself right now, but this was in 1997, 1998. And so at that time, online shopping was just becoming a thing, right? I know many people listening to this probably don’t remember a time when you couldn’t go on Amazon, but it was pre Amazon. And so what they wanted to do was make sure that people came to their store and they found value in being in the store versus just going to some random online, shop. And so the first client was Foot Locker. And they brought us in to help them create what we were calling a store of the future at the time. Like what would an ideal shopping experience look like? How would we take the current shoe store shopping experience and make it be something special so that it would beat the online market?
Rob Marsh: And at the time, shoe stores were like racks of shoes. You’d walk in and that was it.
Jason Friedman: There were boxes stacked up. There was like a sample on top of that. They had some merchandising along the walls, like slat wall design and whatever. It was mildly functional. So they had a bunch of extra inventory in the back and you had shoe jockeys running back and forth, getting stuff and trying to help you and kind of ignoring you when they were helping somebody else. And it was, it was messy. So we did some work and really started to understand what would be the ideal experience for people? They wanted to find what they wanted quickly, but what we also learned was that as people spent more time, shopping and browsing in the store, you know, feeling good about it, excited and engaged in it, they would actually spend more money. The average order value would go up, right? Makes sense.
So we, we redesigned the store quite dramatically, where it would tell stories. And so imagine that the store actually kind of came to life. So you’d walk in the store, and you would feel like you should go to the left, you could go to the right, but you’d feel like you should go to the left. And so the store was kind of guiding you in, and it was partially the way the merchandising was set up. It was partially the way the lighting was moving you, like it was actually moving you through there. Audio was moving around the space, and you just kind of felt like naturally this is the way to go. And as you go through, TV screens and sounds and whatever, the store would come to life.
And it was about athleticism. So we had media that we were producing that would get you in the mood and would be stuff about basketball and, you know, elevating your heartbeat and all sorts of fun stuff. And everything was organized in a different way. And we would feature different products, the way lighting would focus on it. So if you know the Foot Locker, they have this like a crazy, like referee guy is like their logo and he has like a whistle hanging out. So all of a sudden you’re like tweet, tweet, tweet. And then all the lights would pivot and go and they’d highlight a specific product. And then a promotion would come up on the screens for it.
Now, what was happening is people were actually excited about the store. They were going and they would look at the products that were being featured. It was organized in a way that let them find things and was also exciting for them to go and discover more things. So they weren’t just there. They came in like, I want to find this shoe. And they said, wow, like, let me see what else they have. And so what ended up happening through that first store that we built is they had a 400 percent increase in sales. Wait, what? Boom. So they’re like, OK, that’s crazy. Let’s try this again. Let’s do another pilot. The first one we did was in Watertown, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. The second one we did was in Oakbrook, Illinois, just outside Chicago. Same store, same design, different demographic, same results, 400% increase in same-store sales. Boom. And then they’re like, all right, let’s do one more. So then we did one more just outside of New York City in Stanford, Connecticut. Same results, 400% increase. Boom. And so we had figured something out. We figured out a formula of how we would engage people.
Remember, this started out by wanting to make it more theatrical. Let’s hang some screens. Let’s put some TVs in. And what we asked was, if someone saw the screen, what would you have them do? What would you want them to do next? And they couldn’t answer that in the beginning. But over lots of conversation and really understanding it through the lens, it’s like, well, what would the customer want? What would be awesome for them? What would get them to want to be in the store more? When they leave, what would get them to not only have a positive experience and feel good, but what would get them to go to their friends and say, wow, you’ve got to go to check this store out, because that’s what was happening. We were getting foot traffic because of word of mouth, because it went viral within their little communities of what was happening. Anyway, fade out, fade in, we ended up doing like 1,000 plus stores all across the country, different levels of investment. We had a flagship A store, then a slightly less expensive B, C, D, based on the market and the size and the footprint and the real estate. But it was super successful. And from that, Rob, we ended up getting called by lots of different brands.
What it really was, was how do you tell these compelling stories that engage your customers to be more present, to buy more products, to invest in the relationship in a bigger way? And we ended up doing it not just with retail, but hospitality, so theme parks, restaurants, spas, financial institutions, And then ultimately universities, we ended up working with them on raising funds for their endowments. Stanford was a big client, Duke, Yale, Harvard, tons of universities, and helping to tell their story and create an experience for their donors that would actually want them to learn more about the initiatives and not just give money to put their name on a building for the vanity of it, but actually care about the costs. And so we started to bring causes and bring those stories to life through the same formula. It’s the same formula that I’m talking about to write the copy and make that experience better for the customer. It doesn’t matter. It’s online, it’s offline, it’s events, it’s retail, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same formula.
Kira Hug: So let’s talk about shifts in the customer experience space. I know that we had chatted before we hit record on how you’ve adjusted some of your programs and teaching. So I’m curious, has anything shifted over the last few years where you’re teaching in a different way or we should be aware of different things as we think about our customer experience?
Jason Friedman: The world is evolving rapidly, as we all know. I’m sure you guys talk a lot about AI nowadays, right? It’s the great equalizer right now. And, you know, we’ve had this happen many times, uh, since we’ve all been, you know, on the planet and it’s going to continue down the road, right. There’s going to be new things down the road. What is very ironic about all of this—so 25 years ago, I remember saying to a group that I was speaking to, you know what? Customer experience is the most impactful, best way to differentiate your business in the marketplace. It will allow you to rise above your competition. For 25 years, I’ve been saying that. It’s more important today than it ever has been before. I’m still saying that. Today, I mean it even more than I meant it then, and I meant it then.
Here’s the thing. Anybody can put a bunch of prompts into chat GPT or wherever you want to use as your AI tool, and they can create a program, they can create a course, they create a sales letter, they can create a sales page and have it done in just a matter of minutes. What’s going to make them hire you as their copywriter? What’s going to make them hire me as their coach or as the course that they choose to learn? It’s going to be the results that they get. And it’s going to be about how they feel as they’re going through that journey. It’s the conflation of both of those things that really sets people apart. And I believe that’s the experience that you create. I know that the experience you create, it is your fingerprint. It is your differentiating point. It is what creates your blue ocean, if you will, in your business.
And so for all of us today, if we want to have that staying power, if we want to have that longevity, we need customers who love working with us. We need customers who actually become our sales who share their experience with others, who bring other people in. Word of mouth is amazing. It’s important. It’s one of the best possible ways to do it. And when your marketing is the stories of your successful clients, when those become your marketing and your experience is what they’re sharing, when we talk about that ideal customer script, they’re really sharing their journey, you will have an exponential growth in your business.
Every dollar that you put into the front end of the funnel becomes many more returns on the back And so what we do today is we’ve been doing the same thing for a really long time, teaching people this formula. But we’ve enhanced the formula. We’ve learned a lot over the years. And where we were kind of focusing primarily on customer experience before, we’re really focusing more on that kind of customer obsession over positive results. Right. And so what we’re helping you, like if you’ve got a business where you need retention, right, if you have a membership or a subscription or something like that, this will help you.
If you’ve got a business where you want people to buy another engagement or upgrade to another platform or another level of service, this will help you. If you’ve got a business where, you know, having a sales force is expensive, this will help you. This will turn your existing customers into your sales Right. We talk about this, this ideal result. It’s when they rave about your business. It’s when they return to buy more products from you. It’s when they renew their products and services and it’s when they recruit others to come and buy from you. Right. It’s not a referral. It’s a recruit. It’s active. It’s engaging. They’re going out and they’re, they’re selling for you because they had a transformation. And we’re all in this for the transformation. That’s why we do the work we’re doing, right? I’m not in this for the money. Money is a nice, you know, nice measurement. It’s a nice yardstick. We got to eat, we got to put food on the table. But I want to help more entrepreneurs, I want to help more small business owners, I want to help more copywriters get bigger, better results. And so as I’m doing it, I have to get those results. So for me, they have to win. Otherwise, they’re not going to buy more stuff from me, they’re not going to tell more people about me.
And so we help people understand how to shift the funnel, like flip the funnel and put the focus on the inside of the business. All the gurus, all the marketing teachers, everybody out there is teaching us how to get more leads, how to optimize for conversions. And that’s important. It’s definitely important. But let’s say that you’ve optimized everything and then people come in and they don’t like the experience. They ask for a refund, they exercise the guarantees and the warranties and all of those things. When you really look at the cost of acquisition, when you start factoring all those defectors and all of those refunders and all those things in, it’s not such a rosy, pretty picture. And all of our budget is going to strangers. How much of our budget and our time and our focus goes to the people who said yes. And when we do focus our time and our energy on the people who said yes, and we flip that funnel, we really focus on the inside, then once you’ve optimized and done all that great work, now I’ve got a consistent machine that’s bringing people through getting results, and they’re going to keep filling the funnel.
So my cost of acquisition goes way, way, way, way down. And my cost of delight, like I can put more of my energy here, because I’m saving so much money here. It’s unbelievable. Like if you look at just the online business marketplace, right, people that are selling courses, Only 3 to 15% of buyers actually get results from the programs. And there’s a huge percentage of buyers that never even crack the seal. They never even start the program or get going.
So if we started focusing on how we optimize that side of our business instead of just optimizing people that give us a few dollars up front, every dollar that comes in up front will be worth many, many more dollars. And so what we’re trying to do really is create that awareness. And in our program, you know, we call it the kinetic customer formula. I want customers who are in momentum, right? And so, you know, potential energy, energy with potential, not in motion, kinetic energy, energy that’s in motion, that’s taking action. And so we teach people this kind of way to put this operating system into their business that delivers these results consistently.
Kira Hug: I’m going to ask a quick follow up before, I don’t want to dwell on this for too long, but can you speak to just shifts in the online marketing space? We know it’s a tougher market now. Customers are more skeptical because you’ve shared those stats because so many of them don’t get the results that they’ve paid for in the past. It’s just crowded now. It’s shifted. So could you just speak to what you’ve observed in that shift? it relates to what you’re doing and makes it an obvious solution. You have to improve your customer experience. Otherwise, you’re not going to last today. It’s just the market’s not there anymore.
Jason Friedman: 100% like and beyond the experience, right? You have to get them results. People need to get the results. And so that’s why I keep saying it’s more important today than it ever has been before. And it’s true. So like, here’s what I’ve observed, right? Take some of the big marketing gurus out there, right? I’m not going to name drop anybody. I’m good friends with a lot of them. And I think they’re awesome. But when you look at how their business has shifted, the way they used to sell their products was through affiliate relationships. So they’d have other marketers that have an email list and they would promote for them. And the big guys would promote the big guys.
Well, the big guys are not promoting the big guys as much because they don’t have room on their calendar. And so what you see as a shift is the people that are winning affiliate contests and leaderboards and are getting the biggest results are the customers of those gurus that are teaching it who actually use their system and got the results. Now think about that. That’s what I’m teaching you how to do, really. How do you turn customers into your superhero? So your customers are actually getting those amazing results, and then they want to tell other people. And then you’re putting them in a system where you can reward and recognize them for even doing that further, right? And so what you’re seeing as a shift is the big online space, like the affiliate, you know, universe, joint venture universe, and that the ones that are having the biggest success with that are the ones whose customers got results from using the program, and then they’re sharing it with their audiences. And they’re doing it, again, in that recruit, not in a refer.
It’s not passive. They actively get behind promotions because it has changed their life. They feel an obligation or a duty because they’re not just helping someone make more money. They’re sharing their journey of how they actually had a transformation and how it affected their life. And that’s what we’re talking about with the ideal customer script in a nutshell, right? And I’ve been working with some of these gurus as well to help them do this, right? Because that’s the way, right? When your customers get the results and they wanna tell other people, that’s what’s gonna help you win.
And so in the online marketplace, with all the crowdedness, with all the noise, the way that you’re, like, if you’re looking for someone to clean your house, you go on Facebook, you know, local Facebook group, right? And say, hey, does anyone have a great person? You don’t know, you’re taking a referral from a friend, right? Like that’s how we do things. Like we look for the social proof. Now, if the social proof and those testimonials and those case studies and whatever become really expository about their journey and how they were going across that, you start to relate to those even more and you start to buy into them and you can see yourself actually having those success stories, right? Like hearing that someone lost 20 pounds, you’re not seeing your journey in that. You’re like, okay, great. I know a lot of people lost 20 pounds. I’ve tried this a thousand times. But when you hear about the struggles they had, and you’re like, oh my gosh, that’s my story. Wait, they did it? I can do this. Oh my gosh. This is different. The way this person’s teeth, that would work for me. I understand that. Wow. Like a light bulb, breakthrough, right? That’s what’s helping people take action and move forward. It’s that they’re seeing themselves, and they can understand and relate to it in a different way.
And so as we start to understand what those results really are, how to better quantify or qualify the results. And it’s not just about the 20 pounds. It’s about the way they feel in their skin. It’s about how they show up. It’s about how their life’s going to change. And you tell that story, but you tell it with the hero’s journey that they went through, if you will, the struggles and the epiphanies and the moments. People, people fall in love with that and they connect with it. And that’s how we, that’s what we want. We want to help people, you know, so as an entrepreneur, as a, as a small business owner, my goal is to help more people. And the reason that we do what we do, it’s like, I believe that entrepreneurs like us, all of us here and those of us listening, we got into this to help other people and make some money along the way. And I’m going to change the world by helping other people who are also going to change the world. We can’t do it alone, right? We have to do it through other people.
And so I just, I know that this is the way to do it. And I’m passionate about it because, you know, it’s funny when I was, 17 years old, my best friend, Drew, who’s my business partner. We’ve been best friends since we’re about five, six years old. We joke about it like, you know, it’s the longest marriage that either of us has been able to sustain because we weren’t so successful in our actual marriages. But we were driving down the road in my 1985 Pontiac Trans Am. We called it Thunder Chicken. That’s a story for another time. But we had just gone to do something for his dad. He’d given us something to take to the bank and deposit a check. And they just wouldn’t let us deposit this check. and they made it so hard. And we were trying to give them money that would make them more money. And it was like roadblock, friction, friction, obstacle. No, no, no, no. And we just sat there and we’re like, why does this happen? Like, why do businesses make it so hard to do business with us? This is crazy. We had that epiphany then, and we had come up with this dream of a business called Making It Better. Like someday we were going to have a business called Making It Better. And actually, as we look at all the different businesses we’ve had and the different markets and the different things we’ve done, most of them have been really successful. We’ve had a couple of flops. But the theme, the through line of every single one of those businesses is that. It’s how do we make it better for our customers? How do we make it better for ourselves, for our families, for our employees? And I think when you look at things through that lens and you remove the friction, you reduce the obstacles to people having success, amazing things come out of that.
And so I think today in this market, as you’re looking at your business, ask yourself that tough question. Am I making it hard for my customers to have success with me? And how do you find those friction points, those moments that are a little harder that I can either reduce them or remove them? And you’ll start seeing massive, massive improvements pretty much immediately.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’ve got a whole list of ways that I make it hard for people to do business with.
Jason Friedman: Don’t do it and don’t be so rough. Yeah, don’t be so rough. Just start just one at a time. Just start picking them off.
Rob Marsh: It’s amazing what’ll happen. We’ve got, yeah, we’ve got work to do. Okay. We’re going to run out of time, but I really would love to just quickly step through the kinetic customer formula, if you’re willing to share some of those steps that we can think through this on our own. And then obviously you’ve got some resources that we can share if people want to find out more, but tell us a little bit more about the formula.
Jason Friedman: Absolutely. I’m going to give you the quick 10 cent version, right? So there’s four key things that four factors. There’s attitudes, which are how people are thinking and expecting about your business. There’s behaviors, the things that they’re doing to get results. There’s friction, the things that are slowing them down or stopping them from achieving those goals, those goals with those results. And there’s momentum, how do we actually give them those extra boosts. And the combination of those four things are what we help people put into a very specific process to clean that up.
So if you’re going to try and implement what we’re teaching and kind of think about it, literally start at the end, write that ideal customer script. What do you want that person to say and how would they share their journey and use your best copywriting skills? Make it juicy, paint pictures with the words that people are seeing that journey through the words that you write in that script. That’s the first thing.
Then we’re gonna reverse engineer that. So we’re gonna look at like in order for them to get those results that say that script, what behaviors do they need to do? So if you’re designing it from scratch, you do that. If you’re not, the first thing you do is you look at your existing journey and you write out everything they do at every step along the way. When you do this exercise, critically important, you’re doing it from the vantage point of the customer, right? So for example, it’s not send them an email, it’s receive an email, right? See the nuance there. So it’s through the lens of the customer. map out everything they do from beginning to end, and then go deep on each one of those doings, right? So you’re asking, what are they thinking and expecting when they do that? Who are they interacting with when they do that? What are they using when they do that? And how are they feeling, most important?
What you’ll start to see is you’ll start to see this rollercoaster ride of emotions that they go on. And so after you’ve done that, what I want you to do is go through and find the friction. Like, where is it hard? Where do they get stuck? And you’ll be able to easily identify that when you look at the tension that’s created between feelings and thinking and expecting, right? And I’m thinking, expecting one thing, but it’s not actually happening. Okay, there’s probably an expectation mismatch there, right? And so what we might have to do is go a couple steps back and set a different expectation, right? Or if they’re feeling unsure, they might need a momentum boost, or we’ll put another step in there, maybe that’ll help them feel more confident and understand what’s going to happen. Like we were saying about the difference between step three and step four of copywriting, if there’s a long lag, I’ve got to give some communication steps in there maybe.
So you might add a few steps. That make sense? So you’re going to start to look at all those, map those out, go deep on each one. What are they doing? What are they thinking, expecting? What are they using? Who are they interacting with? And how are they feeling? And then once you’ve done that, like I said, find the friction points. And look at the ones that are going to remove the biggest obstacles. Take out the biggest obstacles first and go deep. There’s a lot of nuance to this. There’s a lot more steps. I know we don’t have a whole lot of time, but this will get you started and get you going in the right way. And pay special attention to the transitions. So look at your onboarding, that first transition. Like really make sure that you make it easy for people to get started. And make sure that as it gets harder, either the relationships get stronger so that it’s worth the fight, or that their skills are getting stronger, so that they’re able to do the harder work, whichever it happens to be for your business, right? If it’s always so easy, we’ll lose interest. Also, if it gets too hard, we’ll lose interest. It has to be in this, we call this the flow channel, where the degree of difficulty and the degree of effort and skill are increasing together in lockstep.
Rob Marsh: And I appreciate, too, what you said when we were just starting out talking, Jason, about looking at this journey, not just from the purchase, but from the very first engagement, because there’s a ton of things that happen between that first engagement and a purchase where we introduce friction or we’re not even thinking about a customer experience. So thinking through this process from day one, day zero, I’m about to meet you to result, I think could be really helpful.
Jason Friedman: I love that, Rob. And I would, I would even say, go back to day negative 180, like go backwards. And like, when someone’s having a problem, like, because if you, again, if you get into character, if you do what I say, like you kind of Matthew McConaughey here, right? If you get into that spot, you have to know what brought them to that day. right, where they started to learn and they started to go back further. The insights are tremendous. And you might actually build a customer for life just in your sales process at that point, because you can really connect with them on a much deeper level, and authentically deliver what they need, while selling them what they want in a way that’s so profound, that they really they just the reciprocity is just kind of baked in from the get go. So super powerful, really good point.
Kira Hug: There’s so many takeaways from this conversation. Just thinking about my onboarding, which I’ve been so proud of and thinking of new ways to evolve. It’s just a good reminder that there’s always more to learn and to improve. And even the testimonials you’re talking about. As copywriters, we can rewrite testimonials for clients, of course, get approvals, but we can create them as transformations rather than just these are the results. So I think that’s another power move for copywriters with their clients or for their own products. And so many other takeaways for anyone who wants more information from you, Jason, or wants to jump into a program or course. Where should they go to learn more?
Jason Friedman: Awesome. Thanks. You can definitely check us out at CXformula dot com. If you’d like to get a little bit more information about us, but I have a little present for your people. I’m going to use a copy technique. I’m not going to tell you what it is. I’m going to tease you.
If you go to gift.cxformula.com/copyclub, there’s a PDF there. It will take you less than 10 minutes to go through. But it’s got a really killer strategy that is going to actually have you ask some different questions about your business and it will change the way you think in a very positive way. So I encourage you to read it. And then it will also give you some ways to like immediately, actionably implement this strategy in your business.
I ask two favors. Favor one, if you download it, actually look at it. Like, I don’t want this to be shelfware that just sits on your computer hard drive and gets stale someday. So just take a look at it.
Rob Marsh: You know us so well, Jason.
Kira Hug: Yeah. I think you’ve been around for a while.
Rob Marsh: There’s that friction again, right there.
Jason Friedman: Not my first rodeo. So fight through the pain, it will be worth it. I promise you when you get to the other side, you’d be like, that was a really interesting question. I love this. And number two, I’m going to send you an email that gives you this thing. When you put in your information, if you use it or you like it, or you don’t like it, tell me what you think. I actually am very curious about how people are using this so that I can help more people. So that’s it. I know it’s going to be helpful. I know it’s pretty cool. Um, and, uh, I really would love to see how you’re using it.
Rob Marsh: I’m downloading it right now. I’m already intrigued by the title. Yeah. So I’m on it.
Jason Friedman: So did I do good in the copy?
Rob Marsh: Pretty good. Yeah. I might, I might send you a way or two to improve. No. It looks good. I’m just teasing.
This has been eye-opening, like the last time we talked. I just remember walking away thinking, holy crap, I’ve got so much work to do here.
Jason Friedman: Don’t beat yourself up, just start fixing, because I think that’s the approach.
Rob Marsh: And I just really appreciate the level of thought that you bring to the customer journey. And it’s something that way too many of us as service providers who just like to send our customers Google Docs, We don’t really think about that experience. And so there’s just a ton here that’s really valuable. Jason Friedman: Thank you for that. Thanks for having me, guys. Really appreciate it.
Kira Hug: Thanks, Jason.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Jason Friedman. I want to add just a couple of thoughts to our conversation. I don’t know if this is going to extend a lot of what Jason was talking about, but just some thoughts that occurred to me.
At one point, Jason mentioned the idea that experience is not something that you do. It’s something the customer has. This is a really big idea in my opinion. A lot of copywriters who have worked in agency environments have the experience of working with clients on a level that’s really different from what most freelancers do. In the agency, you invite clients into the office oftentimes or you’ll go to their office to present oftentimes. There’s a lot of drama built into it. They serve lunch or drinks. If you’ve watched Mad Men, you’ve seen this yourself. They’ll show a video or they show all of the work and it’s all mounted on black boards and it’s very professional and feels very high touch, white glove kind of thing. But a lot of us as freelancers, we don’t ever even think about what that level of experience means to our clients. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we need to be presenting over lunch or that everything needs to be fancy, but there’s something that happens in that client experience where they are being treated differently. They are sort of being wined and dined just a little bit that is worth emulating in the businesses that we have all built. So again, not saying you need to take your clients out to lunch in order to present, but maybe there’s something you can do that’s just a little bit different, that creates a slightly different experience. Maybe instead of presenting on plain Google Docs, you are presenting your work on branded documents of some kind, and you’re showing up obviously on video or in some other ways to present it. So you’re not just throwing a Google Doc over the fence and letting the client sort of figure it out on their own. If that’s not what you’re doing, there may be other things that we can do during the process to make that experience of working with us different, higher end, or just feel really good. It’s definitely something worth considering and thinking about as you consider how you work with your clients.
Again, we start with that ideal customer testimonial, which is based on the transformation, not just the work that you do, but the results that you get and asking, where can you find these wins in the process? Is it during the initial interviews and on the sales call? Is it before that? Is it as you’re working with that call and going through your scorecard or your diagnostic process? Is it something that you’re doing with the research and presenting the research? Is it as you’re outlining and writing the drafts? Think about different ways that you can increase your customers’ experience or positive experiences throughout that process.
Lastly, I just want to repeat that formula that we talked about with Jason because I think each of these four elements is really important when we talk about this customer experience. Number one, attitudes, the beliefs that they have, behaviors, what they do to get the results is number two. Friction, what’s slowing them down and causing them problems or making things hard for both you and for them.
Finally, momentum, what keeps them going? What are the things that you can do to keep them excited about working with you? Of course, you’re doing all of this from the customer’s vantage point, not from ours. Oftentimes, when we think about customer experience, we look at it from what we’re doing and we are creating that experience. Going back to what Jason said earlier, it’s not something you do, it’s not something you create, it’s something the customer has and engineering that from their standpoint.
Thanks to Jason Friedman for joining us to chat about client experiences and how to improve them. Make sure that you take advantage of his free giveaway at gift.cxformula.com/copyclub. I believe that’s all one word. I downloaded it. You should too. And when it arrives in your inbox, don’t let it gather dust.
Some people just get stuff done while others get to the end of the day, look back, and wonder what they did all day. On the 386th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob’s talk with brand builder, prolific content creator, and fractional CMO Amanda Goetz. Amanda revealed her secrets for getting stuff done, creating fly wheels (instead of funnels) to keep moving readers to other parts of her business, and adding a thousand subscribers to her newsletter every month. She calls it realistic productivity—the kind you can do when you’re running your own business and have three kids—and you’ll want to hear how she does it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Life’s a Game (Amanda’s course)
Hypefury
Taplio
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Some people seem to have an other worldly ability to get stuff done. While the rest of us struggle through our daily to-do lists and often fail to check off more than one or two items, they post great, well-thought out content several times a day to social media, they create new products, regular emails, launch and promote courses, and maybe even crank out a few pages for the book they’re working on.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I sat down with brand builder, creator and fractional CMO Amanda Goetz. Amanda is one of those people who just gets stuff done. She’s running three different content businesses, writing a book, taking on work as a part-time CMO and is launching a course in a couple of days. So how does she get it all done? We talked about the systems she uses to produce her weekly newsletters and daily social media content so that it all gets written in one day a month, plus an hour or two a week to schedule posts. And her system has helped her grow her newsletter by about 1000 new subscribers every month. If you produce content to support or grow your own business, you’re definitely going to want to hear what she has to say.
But first, I want to tell you about The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard about the library of training that will help you build a profitable business. You’ve heard about the monthly coaching, and the almost weekly copy critiques and the helpful group of members ready with support and even the occasional lead. Last week we recorded an exclusive training for Underground members on the diagnostic scorecard that helps you close just about any prospect or project on a sales call. It’s the kind of business secret you don’t read about in free facebook groups or even on most email lists. But right now, you can watch that training and get the diagnostic scorecard to help you close more projects when you go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu and join as a member. But hurry, that training disappears in a few days.
Now, let’s jump to my discussion with Amanda.
Amanda, let’s get started with your story. You’ve done so many things, vice president marketing, CMO, you’re building three businesses. How did you get here?
Amanda Goetz: Oh, gosh. So where do I start? I grew up on a farm in Central Illinois. I’m a first generation college grad. And for me, my start was I graduated early from college because my accounting T.A. offered me a job at Ernst and Young. And I was still first semester of my senior year. And I was like, OK, I think I can graduate early if I take 18 hours. So I added a course. I graduated early. But my senior year of college, I took 18 hours of classes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I got on a bus every Wednesday night. I went from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, up to Chicago. I worked at Ernst & Young in the Sears Tower in Chicago, Thursdays and Fridays. I studied all day Saturday, went back to my roommates on Sunday and did it all again.
Rob Marsh: Wow, that’s nuts.
Amanda Goetz: I definitely have found that just the way that I’m wired and I am open to pushing myself and seeing what I’m capable of. But through those years I also learned what burnout looks like and where my limits are. I worked at Ernst & Young for a few years. That took me from Chicago to New York, where I finally realized I needed to be more consumer-facing. I didn’t like the financial services. I went to go work for a celebrity wedding planner, which is kind of a whole funny chapter, but I learned so much about what it meant to have a personal brand.
He had a reality TV show that we worked on. He had books, he had licensing deals. So that was kind of my first real mini CMO role. But also seeing the value of a personal brand up close and personal. So I did that for a few years. That also allowed me to travel the world, which was really cool because my parents have never been on an airplane. So It’s a hilarious upbringing. So I was like, I’m headed to Australia to go plan a Major League Baseball player’s 30th birthday. I’ll be back in two weeks. And it was just funny and a really cool chapter of my life.
From there, I launched a tech startup with a co-founder that I met through some nonprofit work. Did that. That was kind of like my MBA. I was managing engineers. I was learning how to build a tech product. I was understanding what it meant to like, what does VC capital mean? And I did an accelerator program in New York City, where it really taught us, it’s called Startup Leadership Program, SLP. It’s a global program. And you really learn what it means to be like a founder. And from there, did that for a few years. And that got me to The Knot, where I led marketing. And I was kind of the first consumer marketing hire, because it was an editorial company. For anybody that knows The Knot, it’s a magazine. And we made it a two-sided marketplace. I was there for five and a half years, then the pandemic hit.
I decided to launch another startup, which was a consumer facing startup, a CPG wellness company. We had actual physical goods. We had supplements, and sold that two years ago to kind of take a break and focus on stability and family and I took a VP of marketing job to just kind of like reset. I call it my spin cycle. Like everything felt really heavy. I needed to get all the water out. And then from there decided I wanted to write a book and kind of share all of this stuff that I had learned throughout my journey. I’m a single mom. I have three kids. I got divorced a couple of years before the pandemic. And now writing a book. I launched kind of this creator community, helping people really understand what it looks like to build an intentional personal brand with the goal of making money.
Rob Marsh: Nice. There’s a, there’s a lot of here and so much we can ask about before we go any farther, what you’re even doing today. I want to go back to the wedding planner days. What is the wildest, craziest experience that you had doing that job?
Amanda Goetz: Oh my gosh, that could be its own podcast. I have so many stories that I’m sure NDAs were probably signed at some point.
Rob Marsh: We won’t name names.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, it was a lot of NFL, NBA, NASCAR, like I’ve touched kind of all of them. I had one family who no wedding venue was good enough. So they said, build us one. And so I had to move to a town and build a wedding venue that they would later turn into a commercial wedding venue that they would make money off of. But the mom was such a savvy businesswoman. She was like, no, if I’m going to spend this much money, it’s going to be an investment that I will get a return on. And so I built a wedding venue.
Rob Marsh: Credit the mom, that’s a brilliant idea when you think of all the money that gets wasted on weddings. But yeah, that’s awesome. Okay, so you’ve got all of these experiences adding up to what you’re doing today. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re building three different businesses at the moment. Tell us a little bit about those.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, so I have kind of my main pillar, which is Life’s a Game. It’s all about success without burnout. So how do you play the game of life and manage your time and energy efficiently? So that is a newsletter. I don’t think of funnels anymore, I think in flywheels, because they should all feed each other. So I have a newsletter. I talk on social media about personal and professional growth. Then that feeds to my newsletter. If somebody wants to go further, I have a course that’s coming out in two days that takes you to that next level where it’s self-guided. It’s seven modules sharing everything I’ve learned about productivity, but realistic productivity.
I’ve got three kids. A lot of productivity gurus out there are like a single dude that doesn’t have kids that’s like, here’s how to wake up at 5 a.m. and do these things. You’re like, I got a kid. Realistic productivity. and goal setting. So if somebody likes that and they want to go deeper, they can join my community. I do group coaching. We have over 100 people that meet biweekly, and we are in a Slack community, and some of those I even do one-on-one coaching with. So that’s kind of one pillar.
Then I’ve got Break an Egg, which I started with Jack Appleby—a lot of people are not like the people listening to this podcast, right? They don’t know how to write on social media. And so we started a very, very inexpensive, it’s $5 a month, email list where subscribers get daily prompts to show up on LinkedIn. So it’s like, today, talk about a time in your career where you learned X, Y, and Z. And so they get that prompt. And now they know, OK, that’s what I’m going to share on social media today. And then they have a community. So that’s another business.
And then I’ve got the book, which is kind of its own business, because it’s not necessarily related to the other two. And with the book, I I do speaking engagements and I go around. So that’s kind of its own pillar.
And then I would say, like, I kind of have a fourth one, which is I’m still a fractional CMO and I still take on CMO work and helping people think about their branding. So, yeah, I kind of keep my hands in all those cookie jars.
Rob Marsh: Listening to you talk about it, it’s clear why Life’s a Game is focused on time management, energy management—all of that, because, as you mentioned, you’ve got a family, you’ve got a personal life, and managing literally four or five different businesses. That’s a lot.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, it doesn’t feel like a lot because of the way I approach everything. But I recognize that when I say this, it sounds crazy.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it sounds a little nuts. I do want to come back to those businesses. But if somebody is thinking, okay, I’m a writer, or I would love to start a business like what you have started, maybe something like Break an Egg, or even Life’s a Game where you’re talking about some of your experiences and how to do something, right? You’ve built a lot of this on social media and with newsletters. And this is something that as I’ve watched you build your businesses over the last year or so, I’m fascinated by how you’ve done it, how you show up constantly, especially at Twitter and LinkedIn. Will you just talk about your strategy there and what you’re doing and how you’ve grown as you’ve been posting there consistently?
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, so I’ll get a little tactical here because I think it’s helpful. People like to talk in “macro” and it’s like, well, that sounds great. But like, what do you actually do? Let’s do that.
Rob Marsh: Tactics is great.
Amanda Goetz: OK, so at the start, I’m really thinking about what are my content pillars? So we’re all writers here. You’re thinking about what are the pillars that I’m talking about? And when you have those pillars created, Then you can figure out, OK, there’s all these different styles of writing a post. So say I’m going to talk about time management. Well, you can then list out.
You could say how to do X by doing Y. That’s one type of post. I have a list of 10 types of posts. It’s like the contrarian take. Here’s the old way of doing something versus the new way of doing something. Anytime I write a post, I’m thinking about what are the eight ways that I can write this post. I call one a fortune cookie post. What’s the two-liner? summary of this thing. One’s a version of like story time. If I’m going to tell a story about how I burnt out, I’ll tell that story. But then I’m going to take that longer story and turn it into six or seven shorter things. Right.
And to your point, the newsletter is usually the starting point. I write a long newsletter and then I chop that into eight or 10 different tweets. And I do the same thing, Twitter and LinkedIn. Sometimes I change it up one day, but you will see the same content on both. I don’t over-engineer that. And then I program that. On Sundays, I sit down for about an hour and a half in the morning before the kids are up, and I schedule that stuff out. And the cool thing is when you have one newsletter and you’re writing about, like, say that newsletter today was like the science of overwhelm—and what do I do when I feel overwhelmed about something? OK, I’m going to then chop that into eight tweets. But I’m not going to do that all in one week, because that would feel very redundant. So I’m going to space that out over the course of eight weeks. When you do that every week, all of a sudden, in a few weeks, you’ve got the full week already scheduled. And it’s kind of this wonderful compounding effect. And so I do sit down on Sundays. And that allows me on the day to day to not get time sucked into social media.
I have two chunks of my day from eight to nine after I drop off the kids and I usually have a coffee and I’m relaxing and kind of transitioning back into work mode where I will engage with people. and then around noon. And those are usually the two times that my two more meatier posts go live. So I’m there to respond to people when they’re engaging with it. So it’s all very, very formulaic.
I think people kind of feel deflated when they hear that because they’re like, oh, I thought everybody’s actually there thinking of this stuff. It’s like, no, the people who are there to drive a funnel or a flywheel, they’re making money. They have got a system in place where they are maximizing the time that they’re showing up. I don’t want to sit down at 8 a.m. and be like, well, what should I post today? Because that’s wasted energy.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’m glad you said that, because I think the perception is, like you said, we see the tweets showing up four or five times a day, or on LinkedIn once or twice a day. We see the newsletter coming into our inboxes, and it feels like you’re ever-present. And which is intentional. And that’s good. That’s what you want people to think. But the fact that you’re letting the system run it, that’s like one of those behind-the-scene things that if we’re going to be serious about building that kind of a business—and I know a lot of people listening are—that’s the kind of thing that’s really, really helpful.
Amanda Goetz: Exactly. You have to understand that this is why Life’s a Game is called Life’s a Game. Everyone that’s out there being successful has learned how to play the game. And it feels icky. It feels inauthentic. But the fact of the matter is, if you sit down every day to try to create a post, you’re going to overthink it. You’re going to sit there for longer. And that’s wasted time and energy.
It’s funny, because even with the newsletter, when I first started it, It was June of last year. Each newsletter would take me about eight hours. So I would break it up. On Saturdays, I’d ideate. Sundays, I’d draft. Mondays, I would edit. Tuesdays, I’d add pictures. Wednesdays, I’d program and it would go live on Thursdays. After about five, six months of doing that, I started to find my rhythm. I understood the formula. Again, everything comes down to… once you have that formula of what works, you’re like, okay, cool. I’ve got this.
Now I write all four newsletters one day a month. I block out the day, I write four, now that’s done. Now when you think about, okay, I have a newsletter and I’m showing up on social every day, that’s actually only one day a week and one day a month. Now I’ve got all this other time to do those other businesses that I’m working.
Rob Marsh: I love that. Let’s talk a little bit about the growth that you’ve seen as you’ve done this. Everybody starts at zero. We all look at the businesses that have thousands and thousands of followers, and I know you’re not yet at the quarter of a million or the millions, but you have had an amazing growth curve over the last few months.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah. On social, it’s been interesting. I talk a lot about creator seasons. I was in creator winter for quite a while. And I want to just tell people that not everyone just looks like an overnight success. I was tweeting and posting for a very long time into the void. And eventually, you start to see these little upticks, and then that starts to build and compound. But with the newsletter, it’s been pretty steady of just slow, but up into the right growth. I started, obviously, with zero. I pre-launched it. I think I launched on the day when it went live. I had about 1,000 subscribers. I think now I just crossed 27,000. And so it’s like 1,000 a week. It’s slow and steady.
Rob Marsh: That’s great. And you’ve seen sort of the same thing with social media. Is that right? Or is that different?
Amanda Goetz: Social media is a different game. Like it’s truly you once you learn the rules of the game. So the number one thing that I teach people in my group coaching is about engagement circles. And this is the thing that like the successful people, they will not talk about, but like I am an open book and I’m like, I want everyone to know the rules of the game. And look, just because what I’m about to say sounds simple does not mean it’s easy. And people confuse those two things.
Showing up every day and engaging on social media is not easy, but it’s simple. So what is an engagement circle? It is a group of people at a similar level—it’s like if you only have a thousand followers, find five other people that are around 2000 followers and say, hey, I’m going to show up every day at 8 a.m. and post. When do you show up every day? And I’m going to comment on your stuff. You’re going to comment on my stuff. And we’re going to show up for each other every day. I am on group texts with different creators. I’m in DM groups with different creators. I do it with my Office Hours community. We do it with Break an Egg community. Drop your post. Let other people know it’s there. You can’t expect the algorithm to do all the work. You have to show up. And the way that LinkedIn algorithm works is when you post, that first few minutes is when the algorithm is saying, is this a valuable post? If within the first few minutes of that post going live, say in the first 30 minutes, a lot of people start engaging with it and you’re commenting back, the algorithm’s like, oh, this creator’s there. That’s good. They want that. They want dialogue. And other people are commenting on this. This must mean that this is a valuable post. And so you just learn that trick, and it’s like, OK, hey, guys, I post every day at 8:15 AM. You show up at the same time, and we’re going to be there for each other.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, the timing thing. This is one of those lessons that I’ve learned, because I tend to post just kind of whenever it’s like, oh, I’ve got to get something up today. So sometimes it’s in the morning. Sometimes it’s in the afternoon. I’ve posted in the evening. And I have posted things that I thought were really good engagement stuff in the evening. and it’s flat because people aren’t there and it’s not until the morning that they start engaging and it’s a much slower build. So that timing is really important. Can I also ask, and I know it’s not about the tools, it’s never about the tools, but what are the tools that you’re using to post and make sure the stuff is showing up?
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, so I use Hypefury for Twitter. The only thing about Hypefury that’s a little frustrating is you can’t schedule long form posts. So on Sundays, I literally will create a little postcard and I’ll make like a it’s like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And if I have a long form post that is in drafts on Twitter, I’ll have like a little like bird or like blue checkmark or something that’s like reminds me that that one isn’t going to publish automatically. I’ve got to go in and click send. But otherwise, anything else that’s a thread or a shorter post, that’s all through Hypefury.
Then everything on LinkedIn is Taplio. And I’m actually I’m doing a webinar March 21st for Taplio, where I’m showing how I create a lot of content in a short amount of time. They have very cool AI tools that generate hooks for you. So you can put in your tweet or your post, the content, and it will generate a bunch of hooks for you. And that’s what I was talking about earlier, which is like, you should have one post served seven ways.
Rob Marsh: I love that. So as you were starting up these businesses, you left your previous work, was it a cold break or did you sort of start that slow build while you were still at Theknot thinking, okay, I know what I’m going to be doing. I need to build some runway for myself.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah. So this creator business is different than House of Wise, which was a VC backed company. That one was different because it was middle of COVID. I started working on it kind of nights and weekends because I wanted to do the development and understand who my customer was going to be and who was going to make the product and where was I going to source the ingredients from. That was a slow build. Basically, I raised $400,000 pre-seed while I had a full-time job at The Knot. My boss knew about it. I was transparent about it. I said, I’m doing it nights and weekends, but I’m going to start talking about what I’m doing. Okay, that was fine.
When it started to become not okay was when I felt my energy shift and that the House of Wise needed more of me. And so that was when I was like, I got to figure this out. So lucky enough, because of Twitter and LinkedIn, I saw somebody posting about like, they needed a marketer. And I was like, Hey, I think if you want a fractional CMO, I could probably do 20 hours a week with you so I could give half of my time to House of Wise. And that worked out perfectly.
So I, left my full-time job, took on a fractional CMO role, helped build that brand while I was still building my company. And it wasn’t until I raised the $2 million seed and we were driving real revenue that I was like, okay, I can now let everything else go and do this.
Now, fast forward to my creator, this new era of my life. I was in a position, and honestly, it was a forcing function situation. I was in a position where I was not happy. I did not love the setup, the culture. And sometimes it takes a bad situation for you to be like, I’ve got to leave and I have nothing. And I remember one particularly hard day, I shut my computer and I looked at my partner and I was like, I think I need to quit. And I’m like, this is really not you know, from an energy standpoint and an alignment standpoint, I’m not there. So we talked through it and he was like, do you know what you want to do? And I was like, no, but I think I’ll figure it out. And so sometimes the scariest things are like removing your safety net. But when I tell you I have never worked harder or with more intention than I did the three months following where I was like, I’ve got to figure out how I’m making money. And so those next three months of me figuring out how to monetize my audience was like real.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, OK. Yeah, I mean, this is something I think that a lot of us experienced as copywriters. It’s like, hey, we leave the in-house job. Or sometimes it’s not voluntary. There’s a layoff that happens. An agency loses a client or whatever. And not having the safety net forces you to get serious. very fast.
I’ve also been in situations, in fact, I was in a startup with four partners, we all had other jobs. And so we were kind of doing it on the side. And we could never get the traction because we were all safe doing—it was like we could play.
Amanda Goetz: That was my first startup, same thing.
Rob Marsh: We could play and build stuff. And it’s like, well, yeah, we’ll get a client. But we don’t need it because every one of us had that runway. Or actually, it was more than runway. We had a total safety net. Yeah. And so it never got traction, unfortunately, because I still think it’s a great idea. But we were just the wrong team to build it. So as you do all of this stuff, you mentioned earlier, at one point, you burned out doing some of the other stuff. I mean, listening to you, I said three jobs. You really have five jobs, as we were talking about earlier. What are you doing to avoid burnout this time?
Amanda Goetz: I’m very intentional about what my boundaries are. Like I said, I have turned down many clients. I’ve turned down many meetings. I’ve turned down many podcasts. I am very, very intentional about what I’m saying yes to. The shift is like, look, in your 20s and early 30s, like I’m in my late 30s now, it’s like, you have to say yes to opportunities because you never know. You have to increase that luck surface area. And I would not be in the position I am today had I not put myself in scenarios and situations and went to events and put myself at the tables of the people that kind of are now just like in my life.
But now I’m very intentional about the level of effort something takes and the level of impact it has towards my goal. And right now I’m very clear on my goals. And this is what I teach in the course, which is everything starts with, what do you see for your life in this current season? What do you want? Are you pushing in your career? And that’s OK if you are. But for how long are you willing to allow that to go? OK, for the next one to two years, you’re pushing in your career. Great. Well, then you need to stop and take inventory and say, are you still good with that a year in? And do you need to shift? Does somebody need to go on the front burner or back burner?
Start with your goal and then align your actions towards that goal. And I talk a lot about where does weak boundaries come from, like meaning you’re saying yes to people’s meetings or saying yes to things that aren’t in alignment? Well, it comes from people-pleasing, right? And where does people-pleasing come from? A need for validation and affirmation and a low self-worth. And so really, the shortest answer to your question is that I’ve done a lot of the inner work stuff to fix those things that actually lead to those weak boundaries. Because once I know my worth and that I deserve to achieve the goals that I’ve set, now I’m in a whole different headspace to say, well, no, my goal is just as important as your goal. And I’m going to work towards mine just as much as I’m going to work towards yours. And that is the shift that I think needed to happen for me.
Rob Marsh: You mentioned the tension between effort and impact. Will you talk a little bit more about that? Maybe even give us a specific example of how that shows up.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah. Look, I could put on my CMO hat right now and talk about like, oh, someone wants us to do a campaign with this landing page and, you know, all this copy and all this stuff. Like, it sounds really cool. OK, well, my first question is, let’s look at the level of effort and the level of impact I have. 100,000 people follow me on Twitter, and if I can get 10% of them to drive to this landing page, what’s the typical conversion of a landing page? Okay, now I get them to a site. What’s the typical conversion from that site? Okay, boil that down, back of the napkin math, I might have 50 people that purchase this thing. Is that the good use of my time? Or should I focus on this thing where I can drive them directly to the newsletter and the newsletter I know has a different funnel? So I think about everything in that way. Like, does this meeting that somebody wants me to take, what is the level of effort and what’s the level of impact towards my goals? And if it’s not high, like every, I love doing this every Friday afternoon, is my email day. That’s when I actually go through all of my emails, because I don’t email such a time suck.
I do not let email control me. I keep it closed most of the day. Friday afternoons, when I look at my calendar for the next week and I say, okay, I said yes to all these things. What am I going to remove? What is truly not in alignment with what my goal is for next week? My goal is to write three chapters next week. Do I have enough space to actually do that? And if I don’t, guess what? Other people can wait because it’s my time. And those are the things I think about.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. Okay, we’ve talked about your book a couple of times. And I, before we started recording, I told you, I have struggled to get out my, you know, book idea, you know, it’s on 30 different documents on my hard drive or whatever. Let’s talk about the process of writing a book. And specifically, what are you writing about? Who’s it for that kind of thing?
Amanda Goetz: Yeah. So process wise, I approach it like everything that I approach. It’s, it’s, It’s like, oh, I want to write a book. That is a big, scary, meaty goal, right? What’s less intimidating? Writing 500 words. Like, that’s just, I can write 500 words in a sitting and not even think twice about that. So every day, like you can see, Tuesday, this is my Tuesday, 1,000 words, okay? That’s manageable. And so I just, I have taken this big, hairy thing and just broken it up. I call it KitKat strategy. I just take big things and I break them up into a million pieces and I do one a day. With the book, I mean, my partner tells this story about the first time we ever met, I said, I really want to write a book before I’m 40. That was like a thing. I said it, I was probably trying to sound really cool. I don’t know. I had no idea what I was going to write about, but one, I put it out there. And that’s the thing that I want to share is accountability and putting your dreams out there. It sounds woo-woo. It sounds a little hippy-dippy, but it truly does hold yourself accountable.
There’s a scientific study that says having a goal, making a plan towards your goal gets you like 35% of the way towards your goal. Telling people that you have that goal takes it up to like 55%. And then making accountability partners takes you up to like 85, 90% when you have those checkpoints. And that, so for me, I’m going to let this kind of fester in my head now. I want to do this. I just made more time to think about what I wanted to write about. And then one day I remember I just had this idea and I sat down and I wrote the proposal in one day. I was like, I think I like this, like it’s giving me a ton of energy and I really want to feel like this is an important message to share.
Then I said, OK, well, what’s the next step? I need to get an agent. OK, cool. I have enough author friends in my circles that I was like, I think I want to write a book. Are you open to introducing me to your agent? And a lot of my friends are still debut authors, their first time help. So their agents are right in that wheelhouse. I’m not trying to go after Jay Shetty’s agent. And so went to New York, met with them. three agents that week and got offers from all three and so secured that. And then I was like, oh, now I have even more accountability. Like this person believes in me and now I have to write this proposal because the proposal I turned in, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was just like, you know, two sheets of paper was like, here’s my idea. Do you like it? And then she was like, okay, Now we got to turn this into what are the chapters? What are the summaries for every chapter? What is the connective tissue of this thing? And that took me like six months. Like that was like real work. And what I started writing was not what I ended writing is the funniest part.
What I thought the book was going to be about ended up being a component of it, but it took on a whole other kind of life of its own. And so now I’m in. The coolest thing is once you have a very structured outline like that with the summaries, I right now and my editor has told me that I am going at a speed that’s not normal. So I’m very aware of this. But. I basically have said every chapter is about 5000 words. That means I’m going to write 1,000 words a day every week, Monday through Friday, so I’ll have a chapter done a week. My book is 13 chapters, so 13 weeks, and the book is done. In my head, it just seems so simple. Now, as I’ve gone through this process, I’ve learned, okay, some days I’m not feeling creatively energized. Some days the kids need me more. All in all, I started it in December. I’ll turn in the manuscript by the end of May. And it’s been a six-month process of now writing the book. So all in, six months of proposal, six months of the book. It’s a year of writing. But I’ve been very intentional about it. I’ve said, this is when I’m doing this. This is the date I’m doing it by. So you just have to kind of give the thing life.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, and you decided to traditionally publish as opposed to self-publish. How come?
Amanda Goetz: I did. This was a tough decision for me because, one, it’s not a sure thing to go after a traditional publisher. And there’s fear of rejection. And truly, I think if I would have gone that route and I wouldn’t have gotten a deal, I probably wouldn’t write it because I think I would have gotten in my head of, well, this isn’t good.
The way that I looked at it and the decision I had to make was, is it a means to the end or an end? Am I writing the book because I want to sell this book and I want to make money from the book and that’s this? Or is it a means to the end where the book sparks a message and a movement that I get to go then speak around and potentially do a podcast around and build more and more and have it turn into the next book. And for me, where I’m at in my life and when I stepped away from it all and really did some of those exercises I put in the course, It was the second. It was the means to the end. I want this to be the beginning of a conversation and the beginning of this next chapter of my career. So with that, a traditional publisher, I’m not going to make money.
Making money from a traditional publisher, you’re not in it for the money. I would make so much more money self-publishing this book. But it’s going to get the message out there. And then I’ll have a publicity team that can then put me on stages and I can talk about it. I’m going through keynote speaker training. I’m doing all the things. So you have to understand, is it the end or the means to the end? I think then aligning the path accordingly.
Rob Marsh: And as you are thinking this out, how does that change the rest of the flywheel, as we mentioned earlier, and how everything feeds into everything else? Does the business evolve into something different or is it, again, a continuation of what you’re doing right now?
Amanda Goetz: I think it would be a continuation. I love people. I love being around people. I didn’t realize how much having a community is like my passion and superpower. I love bringing people together and having them. That biweekly coaching and fostering that, it really lights me up. I don’t see anything changing with that. With everything else, it’s not a huge time suck. I’ve got the newsletter down. I’ve got to show up on social. I think that this is just now adding another piece to the puzzle, but they all kind of connect.
Rob Marsh: Let’s talk about your course, because this is coming out in a couple of days. And I’ve been lucky enough to see a little bit behind the scenes. I haven’t gone through every single module, but I’ve been through a lot of the internal work stuff. Tell us why you created it, what’s the purpose, and who’s it best for?
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, so it’s called Life’s a Game, the Master Class. So anybody that’s been following my newsletter, they’ve got a sense of what it’s going to be. But a lot of productivity courses are all around the external factors. Like, OK, you’re struggling with procrastination or focus, or how do you approach a to-do list? What’s a second brain? How do you use that? OK, those are all important things. But what I’ve found is I’ve done about a decade of coaching with Harvard-trained coaches and cognitive behavioral therapists. And what I’ve learned and what we talked about a little earlier is, My clicks into my flow state and success and taking up space in my own life happened when I did the internal work. And so this course at its highest level is helping you master time, energy, and ambition, but it’s by doing so through a lot of first introspection.
So I say, you know, we are all wired based on previous programming. Like if you think about our brain as a software system, your childhood programmed it, your relationship with your parents programmed it, past relationships programmed it, you have this programming. And if you’re going to install new software, meaning you’re going to change your patterns, change your behaviors, you have to look at the source code and understand where you need to change the coding. So That’s what’s different about this course is every module, whether it’s talking about limiting beliefs, where do those come from? What do you have? And then how do you reprogram it? And if we’re talking about time management, it’s like, okay, where does your procrastination or lack of focus come from? Let’s get curious about that source code. And then now you’ve got a fertile ground for reprogramming and building new skill sets because it’s really, really hard to add on something new when you haven’t created the space for it.
Rob Marsh: And then once you’ve fixed the inner, then you go deeper on how to get straight with the outer in the course as well.
Amanda Goetz: Exactly. So every, every module has what I call the IDEA framework. It goes introspection, decoding, then you do an exercise and then application. And so you really move through that internal to external in every single module.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. And there’s lots of exercises. I think I shared with you, I was going through it as quick as I could. So I was skipping some of the exercises that I now have to go back and really think through. But it’s that kind of thing that, again, if we want to build a business like what you’ve done, this is really the model that you followed as you’ve done all of the things that you’re doing.
Amanda Goetz: Yeah, it really is. People want the quick fix. They’re looking for someone to say, post this thing and you’ll go viral. Do this and you’ll unlock money. And it’s really the culmination of all these little things that add up to those things. And so if you put in the work and do these exercises, you are now setting yourself up to take it to another level. And so that’s, that’s the thing that I get really pumped about. And I made it, you know, it’s, it obviously took me months of work to make it, but compared to, I made it about like half the price of everything else that’s on there, because a lot of people who follow me are like, you know, moms or people doing side hustles. And they’re like, I believe that this stuff should be accessible to people.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. OK, so that brings up another question. You are very driven. You have had some pretty amazing experiences. You know, if somebody’s listening to your story and thinking, oh, I’d love to have a business like Amanda, can anybody do it? Or do you really need something extra to push you to accomplish this kind of a thing?
Amanda Goetz: I believe anyone can do this idea of… I have a goal… And I want to achieve that goal. And I’m going to make a chronological series of steps to get to that goal. And not everybody wants to be like me. And look. I have friends that are literally like, I don’t want your life. You are going hard every day. You’re showing up. You’re doing this. Not everybody’s wired like me, nor should they. But if somebody sees all these things that I’m doing and they’re like, I want to get there, then my biggest piece of advice is you’ve got to figure out how to build sustainable momentum because if you what happens is what I see with really ambitious people is we pendulum swing. We go really hard and then we burn out. And then we’re like, I can’t do anything. And so now you’re over here for a while and then you muster up the strength and you’re like, OK, now I’m ready to go back. And then you swing over and you’re going 100 miles per hour again.
And so my thing has been I steadily go a little above the speed limit, but like consistently. I don’t ever allow myself to pick up too much speed because I know I’ll break down. So I’m really, really focused on helping people stay in this like going above the speed limit, but you’re not going to break down like you’re pushing, but you’re also resting. And I have lots of frameworks for how I incorporate rest in my day. I’m done working every day at 3 p.m. I don’t work after 3 p.m. Like I have these guardrails where I’m taking care of myself so I don’t break down.
Rob Marsh: It feels like that ties back to the idea you mentioned earlier, funnels versus flywheels. Funnels tend to require launches and big bursts of energy versus the flywheel, which takes a lot of energy to get spinning. But once it’s going.
Amanda Goetz: Exactly. The coolest thing about what I’ve done over the last six years or six months with this new world of being a content creator and driving to products and services is that it was a lot of work up front, like to make this course a lot of work, to build a membership community and get all of the pieces in place and the emails that trigger at the right time, like that’s a lot of work and investment in time and energy and money because like some of that stuff I need somebody else to help me with.
And so I had to hire somebody to kind of help me with some of the triggers, but it’s like, Okay, now that’s going, I have steady recurring revenue coming in that is now I spend an hour a day with the community. What took me, you know, 40 hours a week for a few months now is one hour a day and I’m making the same amount of money. So understanding that, like same with the newsletter, a lot of effort upfront, made no money, had no sponsors. Now I make about 10K a month in sponsorships for the newsletter. Okay, great. That’s one day a month to make 10K. So these are the things that you have to understand in this whole creator world is it’s a lot of energy up front.
And most people, if you’ve ever seen that meme, like somebody shoveling And it’s like the pot of gold is like on the other side of the wall. And the only difference is the person who got tired up here, they kept going. And the person that got tired here was like, it’s never going to happen. They walked away. Both have the gold behind the wall. It’s just when you get tired, you kind of have to know, I’m doing this for a reason and you keep going. But most people kind of stop. And the people that you see, the only difference is they just kept going and kept showing up.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. If you could go back and talk to college student, Amanda, who’s flying to Chicago to work, you know, two days a week, busting her hump, you know, through the weekend and give her some advice that would help her, I don’t know, accomplish this faster, do it a little bit differently, maybe avoid a mistake. What would you tell her?
Amanda Goetz: I don’t believe in mistakes and regret. I believe that I had to learn all the lessons. I had to learn to get to where I am. Look, I got married when I was 21. I had kids young, but I don’t I think I would just go back to tell her, like, you are going to be strong and you’re going to get through everything that comes your way. And you’re just going to keep getting stronger. So just know and trust it, that you are totally capable of handling everything that’s going to come your way.
Rob Marsh: Amazing. OK, the course comes out in a couple of days. We have a link that we’ll link to in our show notes. It’s the shortcut will be thecopywriterclub.com/amanda. If you want to check out Amanda’s course. Thanks for being here, Amanda, sharing so much of your journey. I’m a fan. And so this has been a lot of fun just chatting with you about how you’ve built your business over the last few months.
Amanda Goetz: I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Rob Marsh: Okay. That’s the end of our discussion or the discussion between Amanda and myself. There are so many good ideas that got mentioned in this discussion that we really didn’t have enough time to jump into. And I want to touch on a couple of those and add to what Amanda shared.
One thing that she mentioned, and I wish we had had some more time to talk about this, but Amanda talked about expanding the luck surface area. This is an idea that I love, but we didn’t actually specify how exactly you do this. We talked a little bit about saying yes to more things, but in order to expand the surface area for your lock, really what you’re trying to do is get exposed or seen by more people. having more opportunities to talk to more people, create more connections, to create more relationships, opportunities to have people see the things that you do. And so in order to do that, you need to make more offers. Or if you’ve only got one or two things, you need to make those offers in more different ways so that people can be exposed to them, they can see them. You need to create more products and services.
We talked with Josh Long just a couple of weeks ago on making bite-sized offers that clients can say yes to and how to reach out to those clients who are maybe pulling back on their marketing budgets just a little bit in order to find ways to connect with them and let them see how you can help them. Expanding the luck surface area means making more connections, connections with potential clients, other prospects, with copywriters, with content writers, with marketers, with other people who are building businesses like you. Expanding the luck surface area oftentimes means joining a community where you can make those connections. There are free communities like our free Facebook group, the Copywriter Club. But there are also paid communities. Obviously, I’m partial to the Copywriter Underground. That’s the one that we talk about a lot. But these are places where you can make connections with other people who are investing in their businesses right now. They’ve got a reason to go in, to engage, to learn. So paid communities can be one of the very best ways to expand that luck surface area.
You also want to be talking about the problems you solve. You want to be talking about it on social media and in newsletters and on stages, in guest posts, on podcasts, wherever you can show up and share both the problem you solve and the person that you solve it for. The more you can do that, the better. You know, we talked about three weeks ago with Joanna Wiebe on the podcast, and she mentioned the daily non-negotiables. These are the things that you want to make part of your daily non-negotiables. Now it sounds like a lot, but a system can make it doable.
So go back back and listen to what Amanda shared about her system for creating a month’s worth of content with a single day’s worth of work, because creating systems like that will help you increase your luck surface area so that you can make more connections and have more opportunities for things to go right in your business.
One other thing that I want to touch on is that funnel versus flywheel idea. I really like this idea. It’s a great reframe of the work that we do. Most of the activities that we do each day or each work should feed the rest of the machine that we’re building. And oftentimes when we’re working on funnels and launches, we go all in on one thing and then we shift our focus to going all in on another thing. All of those activities that I just mentioned that you need to be doing to increase the luck surface area in your business, if you do them right, you’re getting attention where it does the most good and it connects prospects and readers to your other content, to your products and to your services, rather than launching and focusing on one thing at a time. You’re now building and growing everything together.
This reinforces the connections between all the things that you do. It might take some reflection in your business to figure out, are the things that I’m doing connected in some way that makes sense? If they’re not, maybe change up your offer just a little bit or find ways to create those connections.
This reminds me just a little bit of the Ascension model. We talked a bit about this with James Wedmore a long time ago, episode 25 of the podcast, but it’s basically building in services and products in your business that lay on top of each other and serve each other so that people can move through the different offers that you have and fix the different problems in their businesses that they’re dealing with at different times. It might be worth going back to listen to what James had to share if you’re interested in this idea. And you can find that in episode 25 of this podcast.
Okay. I want to say thanks again to Amanda Getz for joining me to go so deep on her business, on content creation systems, and so much more. We talked a lot about her new course, Life’s a Game, The Masterclass. If you’re interested in checking that out, go to thecopyrighterclub.com/amanda, That’s an affiliate link.
The course doesn’t go live for another two days if you’re listening to the day that this podcast goes live. But if you’re talking about, you know, after Thursday, I think March 14th, then you want to go visit copyrighterclub.com/amanda and just check it out.
And if you use that link to sign up, you’re going to be supporting this podcast and helping us bring you more amazing guests like Amanda.
Now, if you’ve enjoyed this show, I’d really love to hear your thoughts. And of course, I’d love it if you’d leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. But additionally, after we finished recording, Amanda offered to come back and do a training for the Copywriter Club. And if that’s interesting to you, drop me an email at rob@thecopywriterclub.com to let me know that you’d like to hear more from Amanda and even what you might want her to talk about and share. And yeah, that is my real email address. So you can send it directly to me there.
Obviously, there’s a lot that we can learn from Amanda, and I’m looking forward to having her come back and teach us even more.
That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast.
Is marketing unethical? What about tactics like scarcity or significance? Should copywriters be using these persuasive elements in their copy? If not, why not? And when is it acceptable? Our guests for the 385th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast are Maggie Patterson and Michelle Mazur, hosts of their own podcast called Duped where they talk about the misuse of persuasion in marketing. Between the four of us, we figured out the answers to these questions and more (almost). Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Duped Podcast
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: At some point in your writing career, most copywriters bump up against a persuasion tactic that just feels off. Or worse, they’re asked to do something they don’t feel good about. Maybe it’s as simple as adding a deadline timer to an offer with no real deadline. Or it might be something worse… like selling programs to people who can’t afford them, or who will never get the promised results.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and I had a chance to speak with the dynamic duo behind the Duped Podcast, Maggie Patterson and Michelle Mazur. We talked about those dubious marketing tactics, when it’s okay to use them, and when you need to be the adult in the room who says, this is going to far. If you’ve ever wondered where the line is when it comes to marketing ethics, this episode will give you something to think about.
But first, I want to tell you abou The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard about the library of training that will help you build a profitable business. You’ve heard about the monthly coaching, and the almost weekly copy critiques and the helpful group of members ready with support and even the occasional lead. Last week we recorded an exclusive training for Underground members on the diagnostic scorecard that helps you close just about any prospect or project on a sales call. It’s the kind of business secret you don’t read about in free facebook groups or even on most email lists. But right now, you can watch that training and get the diagnostic scorecard to help you close more projects when you go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu and join as a member. But hurry, that training disappears in a few days.
Now, let’s hear what Michelle and Maggie had to say…
Kira Hug: All right, welcome, Michelle, Maggie. So good to have both of you here. Let’s kick off with the catalyst. What was the catalyst for Duped and that partnership between the two of you?
Michelle Mazur: Well, I believe it started with me. Maggie and I vox a lot about things we’re seeing and chatting about it. I sent her a Voxer message and said, hey, I think we should do a limited series podcast episode where we dive into some of these topics. And that was the catalyst. We were already creating the content in our Voxer conversations. And we’re like, well, what if we just open that up to a wider audience? And we intended just to do, I think, eight episodes and maybe a second season. And then we realized, oh, wow, we have a lot to talk about here.
Rob Marsh: So for anybody who’s not already heard duped or aware of duped or even met you, Maggie and Michelle, tell us a little bit about, let’s just lay that groundwork. What is Duped and why should people be listening to it?
Maggie Patterson: So Duped is a consumer advocacy podcast that is really designed to help consumers in the online business space make more critical, nuanced decisions. Because what we tend to see is a lot of stories of, I bought XYZ, or I signed up with this coach, and I had a really negative experience. And from my perspective as a business owner, there’s two ways we can approach this. We can try to get every business owner to reform their practices, which we’re never all going to agree. It’s just not going to happen. Or we can educate consumers so that they’re making purchasing decisions that are going to align with their values, their ethics, what they’re actually looking for, and really do the job of vetting the things. Because we’ve all had experiences of things not being quite what we expected, but because these people are really great marketers, a lot of times really are using really amazing copywriters, we’re easily persuaded. And persuasion is a double-edged sword.
Michelle Mazur: And I think Maggie and I bring a unique set of skills to this conversation because. It is easy for her and I to clock what is happening, like what persuasion strategy is being triggered and being like, oh, they’re using scarcity or they’re using a combination of these to ratchet up the buying tension and pressure and then putting their solution as the only way to buy. And so we’re skilled at seeing that. I really wanted to relay to people that, hey, if you fell for this stuff, it’s not your fault. These are very strategic and intentional decisions business owners are making to sell and to sell as much as possible, to have the mythical six-figure, seven-figure business that we all hear so much about. And so being able to deconstruct and show people like, what’s really happening here? And here’s why you made the decision you did. So don’t feel bad and don’t stop trusting yourself. Because that’s the other thing that really pains me is I see business owners who do get duped And then they blame themselves, like, I suck. I didn’t follow the proven formula for success closely enough. And really, it’s not their fault. And most of this one size fits all that is sold in the marketplace doesn’t work for a lot of different business owners for a variety of different reasons. So taking that pressure and blame and shame off of it and being able to have a conversation and name it for people, I feel is really important.
Kira Hug: Yeah, and I mean, copywriters consume a lot of online products and courses. So I think this is a great conversation for our audience. We’re also influential with our clients, which I know we can talk about as well. But I want to go back to your Voxer. I want to get into your Voxer conversation. So I need to know the details of when did that conversation start? I mean, I know you two have been friends for a while. When did that conversation ratchet up and turn more serious? Is this 2020? Is this before then? And were there certain events that took place where you two were like, this is bigger than us chatting on Boxer. We need to go larger.
Maggie Patterson: I think there’s some interesting things in that. Michelle and I have been friends for, what, 10 years, Michelle? We’ve been friends for a very long time. Michelle decided we need to be friends, so now here we are.
Michelle Mazur: Michelle did a little stalking of Maggie Patterson, too, because I was like, I’m gonna be friends with her.
Maggie Patterson: And we’ve both been talking about, I mean, Rob and Kira, we’ve known each other for a long time, like, it’s not a secret. I’ve always been, for lack of a better word, vocal about these things. And I’ve just been like, yeah, that doesn’t sit right with me. Here’s why. And so we’ve both been doing those things separately. And you know, we’d be having our conversations on Facebook Messenger, and that evolved into Voxer. And then I kind of went through the experience in early 2020, with the pandemic of I had too much time on my hands, didn’t we all? And that’s when a lot of things like some of the business practices that we had both clocked for a long time as being very, not productive or helpful for potential consumers, they really ratcheted up. And I just started getting more vocal in my own work. Michelle started getting vocal in her own work. Like I was just like, I’m going to pull the ripcord and put this out there. Michelle kind of had the same attitude. And then the two of us were like, Oh, yeah, we need to formalize this body of work more. Because we also knew that as people have been talking for so long, if we didn’t talk about it, someone else was going to fill that gap in the market. And we decided to go for it. And then it’s just kind of run away on its own three years later.
Rob Marsh: So as we talk about this stuff, I think there’s a tendency to start out and say, wait, hold on a second. marketing fills a purpose in business, right? And it’s really easy. In fact, I’ve seen people stand up at events or whatever and say, wow, all of this stuff is really bad. And you guys aren’t saying marketing is bad. At least my impression is that what you’re really trying to do is take us back to a place of integrity. and say, okay, hold on a second. Let’s start with helping people solve real problems in a way that doesn’t take advantage of them. Does it go beyond that?
Michelle Mazur: Yeah, I believe it does because I always say I’m marketing agnostic, but marketing is neither good nor bad, just like scarcity is neither good nor bad. It’s all about how you use it. in your business. And since we are a very unregulated industry, Maggie and I talk about this a lot, there are no ethical standards for like, hey, when is it appropriate to use scarcity and when is it not? So everybody is making these personal decisions. So yeah, it’s about bringing us back into integrity, helping people realize that, I mean, I feel like this is kind of the premise of both of our separate podcasts of like, there’s more than one way to market. There’s no one right way to market your business. You have options. And people for thousands of years have been marketing in ways that are in alignment, in integrity. And it seems like in this digital world, we got into … I almost look at it, I feel like it’s like a timeshare salesman. We were taught to market and sell like timeshares people, right? Put on the pressure, get the credit card, get them to sign the contract. Give them all the bonuses just for showing up. And that’s the way we were taught to market. But if you like Maggie and I both have backgrounds in corporate That’s not how corporations do it. Corporations market in a way that is going to align with their values. They’re not putting disappearing bonuses out there because they understand how they want to show up. They have experts in-house to help them create their marketing, whereas we rely on all of these people to tell us what is the right way to market. and that’s usually something that’s a little bit laden with some manipulation and NLP and other things.
Kira Hug: Yeah, we can talk about NLP and get into some of the topics that you discuss on the podcast and get a little more granular. Before that, are you able to share more of a historical context of this, what feels like a bubble that we’re in this online marketing world that we’re in? Just like even since 2020, just kind of talking through the highs and lows, because it has changed dramatically. And I think partly related to pandemic, economy, AI, more education provided by people like the two of you, where there’s just more awareness and sophistication. So maybe this is just more of a State of the Union with some historical context to just ground us in where we are today.
Maggie Patterson: Well, we just recorded an episode on a 2024 State of the Union yesterday. So this is perfect timing. Yes. To say that, to say all that. Yeah. So what we saw in 2020, right, is we saw a shift because everyone was home. Oddly, a lot of, I’m not going to say everybody, but a lot of people had excess financial resources because they weren’t going to dinner. So we kind of created this bubble that happened in the industry. And honestly, for anyone who’s been around for any length of time, this is not new. It was just an intensification of what was already happening. And since 2020, we’ve seen a lot of different things. We’ve definitely seen way more consumer awareness because the bigger the bubble got, the more people became impacted. The more people impacted, the more you have people who are willing to speak out. This is why there’s very lively threads on Reddit talking about these issues. And whether those are fair and objective or not is not my place to say. But I mean, those conversations are happening more and more. But then we also had AI that impacted things, so the pressure’s ratcheted up. People are significantly burnt out at an existential level, so they’re just looking for simplicity, they’re looking to leave corporate. There’s been an entire movement of people who are literally being forced back to the office, who are now looking to entrepreneurship to save them, to be like, I don’t want to go back there. I really like the life I’ve built. So we have more and more interest. We’ve seen a lot of bigger name, what we call celebrity entrepreneurs pivoting towards targeting people trying to leave corporate. So there’s a lot of different things. And then what’s happened is, as consumer awareness has really become, I’m not going to say it’s widespread, but there’s definitely a greater number of people who are like, hey, I don’t really like that. What we’re starting to see is people slowly tweaking the classic tactics to say, I’m all of a sudden, I’m ethical. And I’m like, I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. And that’s not very far. So really having to be constantly staying on top of like, this is the new tactic. This is the new tactic. And let’s be real. People are running businesses. They don’t have time for that. So Michelle and I were like, Hey, I’m noticing this. Let’s have a conversation. Then I go talk to a couple other people. Then I come back, we do some research and then we bring it to the podcast to be like, Hey, have you seen these faceless Instagram accounts? Here’s what you need to know.
Rob Marsh: I feel like saying this is ethical or this is the ethical way to do something is the new marketing tactic that people have layered on as the pendulum swings back and forth.
Michelle Mazur: Yeah. And ethics, like my background, I have a PhD in communication. I taught persuasion and there was ethics baked into it. And the thing people don’t realize about ethics is that they are very personal to the business owner, especially in an unregulated industry. And like Maggie and I sometimes even disagree about different tactics. Like I’m like, I don’t think I would go as hard on that one. And she’s like, no, no, it’s just wrong. Cool, but that’s a reflection of our values and nuance, whereas these people are like, oh, yes, I’m going to teach you ethical marketing. Well, unless you’re actually teaching people how to establish their own values and their own ethics. It’s really hard to teach ethical marketing because some entrepreneurs might be really fine with agitating pain points and making people feel like crap because what their ethic is, is they value making money and getting the sale, right? Like, so it’s fine with them. And we don’t have that more nuanced conversation of like, What are ethics really? But it sounds really good. And I think that’s where we have to be skeptical. During the podcast yesterday, I was saying you have to watch what people are saying and then see how they’re showing up to market. Because what I see a lot is people saying, oh, I’m ethical. And then I see a lot of the old school bro marketing tactics. And I’m like, huh. Interesting, like making a note of that.
Maggie Patterson: And I think to that point in this conversation that Michelle and I keep having is if you’re going to claim that you’re ethical, I want to know what your values are. I want to know what your ethics are. I want to know who you learned from. that’s usually missing. So if you are like, is this person actually ethical? What has informed their work? And an example I give a lot is the terrorist test by Martinson and Davidson. I might be wrong on that, but the terrorist test, that is a very widespread marketing framework that is a framework for ethical persuasion. Is that informing your work? I never see that. Never, never see it. I look for it. So you’ve got to always kind of look at, hey, here’s the claim they’re making that I am ethical, or honestly, another one you see a lot of is trauma informed. What makes this ethical? What makes this trauma informed? Because some of the most egregious examples I have seen in the last few years, without naming names, because we don’t name them, but there’s a pattern there. are people claiming to be trauma-informed, people claiming to be ethical because they’re buzzwords and they’re just throwing them on there trying to monetize or capitalize on a trend. And it’s not a trend, it’s a way of doing business.
Kira Hug: Yeah, and this goes back to our role and responsibility if you take it on as copywriters who work closely with clients who have offers and may want to show up in a certain way or want to show up as ethical. Can you two speak to how you view the role of copywriters today and, you know, what role we can play with all of these different tactics?
Maggie Patterson: So I think the thing we have to remember, whether you’re a copywriter, you write content, whatever it is, if you’re a service provider and you’re being engaged by a client to provide a service. So with a copywriter, you have influence over the tactics they’re using, the strategies they’re going to use, how they’re using the pain points, what persuasion they’re using. So if a client comes to you and says, hey, I want to approach it this way. You have a lot of ability to maneuver and guide your clients and make strategic recommendations to say, you know what? Let’s discuss this. I want to understand why you want to do this. And let me suggest a different way to do it. And a great example is pain points. People are like, well, I have to use pain agitation solution. Well, do you? Can you approach this from an empathetic point of view? Can you create a different type of connection? Because I always say this to my clients. Do you want to get people who are all riled up buying from you? Or do you want to get people who are making a really calm, well-considered decision? I personally, in my business, want people who’ve made calmed, well-considered, well-informed decisions, not ones whose nervous systems are completely shot.
Michelle Mazur: It’s funny. Yesterday in my community, the Expert Up Club, we were talking about the problem agitation solution framework. And someone was like, I don’t want to agitate their pain. And I’m like, I understand that. Because to me, when we agitate someone’s pain, it’s like seeing someone with a broken leg and being like, oh, I see your leg is broken. Let me kick it repeatedly until you pay me to stop. And that’s what agitation does. So we were talking about other alternatives. Are there bigger forces at play, and how can you adapt copywriting frameworks to become, I don’t want to say become more ethical, but to become more conscious of like, how is this making the person receiving this message feel? Like having that self-awareness so that you’re not hijacking somebody’s nervous system and they feel all amped up and they’re buying because it feels like it’s the only solution. But how do we take what we know and break it apart and keep what works and adapt it so that we can approach talking about somebody’s problems in a more empathetic way that makes them feel seen and heard instead of triggered and harmed.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, you’re talking about something that Karen and I have talked about on our podcast a few times where I love the PAS framework, you know, problem, agitate, solve. However, you know, agitation should not be kicking the broken leg, right? You agitate or you mention how that pain shows up in somebody’s life. so that you can show you understand, right? So leaning into empathy. I even said a few episodes ago that instead of talking about PAS, we should be talking about PES. Problem, empathize, and then solve, or however you want to expand out that particular writing formula. So you’re speaking my language here, but I’m curious. So Maggie, you mentioned, as copywriters, we need to step up and influence our clients. But a lot of times, copywriters don’t feel like they have that power. They feel really constrained, like, oh, if I push back against this client, I’m going to be maybe a troublemaker. They may not hire me for another project. They may actually fire me on this project if I feel like I’m pushing too hard. So what would you say to that? copywriter or to me if I’m expressing that, how do we take control of that situation in a way where we’re not actually going to hurt our businesses or our relationships with our clients?
Maggie Patterson: This is a great question. It’s something I navigate with my clients all the time in a mentoring role. They’re like, oh, I really don’t like what this client is doing. What should I do? And the first thing I always say is, listen, I’m not going to dictate what’s right for you. You’ve got to decide for yourself where the line is. If it’s something you feel like is aligned with your values and you can work with it, great. I’m also not going to romanticize. We all need to make a living and get paid. So do I want you to not be able to pay your bills and have your house foreclosed on because you had to take an ethical stand because Maggie said so on the copywriter? No, I want you to think more strategically about how do I get the type of clients where I am being valued in my role as a copywriter for my strategic contributions? How do I start to screen up front for clients who are actually going to do this in a way that is going to work for me? And also, as a service provider, really stepping back before you even talk to that client. Go see what they’ve done in the past. Figure out if there’s things. Have those conversations up front to be like, OK, you know what? I notice in your last two launches, you’ve used scarcity. Can we talk about that? Being able to identify these things. Because I will say, a lot of the conversation and the pushback Michelle and I have got from this is a lot of businesses literally want to do things better. They just don’t know how. So if their copywriter is not bringing that solution to the table and no one else on their team is, how are they ever going to be able to evolve and change? And I think we don’t want to be nitpicking like every little tiny thing, but I think it’s like from the upfront first conversation with a client. How can you screen clients in? How can you get a client who’s going to respect your approach and your strategy and be really clear on where your deal breakers are? My deal breakers are going to be very different from everybody else’s here are deal breakers and that’s okay. But you’ve got to know too, sometimes it is okay if a client is seriously out of alignment to be like, yeah, I’m okay with getting fired. There’s been times I’ve had to part ways with clients because they have taken a turn and I’ve been like, and I’m out. And it’s just because they’ve gone too far down a path that I’m like, I, I’m like, I, I’m not going to be able to sleep at night over this. Like, and that to me is I like to be able to sleep. I like sleep a lot.
Kira Hug: The cool thing about what you’re sharing is it also allows copywriters to step into more of a consultant role, which so many of us want to do. We want to show up as a strategist and a partner and not just an order taker. And so this allows us to do that and to present solutions and ideas to say, there are other ways. Let me share some of these other ways we can go about this, which immediately changes the way your client may look at you when they’re working with you.
Maggie Patterson: I think the other thing to just add to that is just remember too, that just because you work, let’s say you work in the online space today, you’re not comfortable with the tactics. You can easily pivot to another thing. At one point, I was doing a lot of copywriting for, for lack of a better word, the seven figure coach set. And I was like, this is not for me. And I promptly pivoted back to working with tech clients because that was my history. And I’m not dealing with those things over there. So you’ve always got options. Sometimes you’re going to have to make a slow pivot out of there and be like, this is not for me. You don’t have to just accept that your clients today are, this is just the way it is.
Michelle Mazur: And I just wanted to say, I love the idea of the copywriter’s role being elevated to consultant, because I think copywriters have a key role to play in changing the industry for the better. So most of us got into business, not because we had an MBA from Harvard. But instead, we got in here because we really love writing. I love communication. I love marketing. Maggie loves service-based businesses. And we got in for that reason. And so we do not have the education on how to persuade or how to do marketing differently. Sometimes we don’t even know what all of our options are for these things. And copywriters can go in and play this unique role and say like, hey, I saw you’re using a lot of scarcity. Have you thought about this, this, and this? And really start that conversation. And they’re in there and they can help change the online industry for the better, like one client at a time by using their influence. And I think that’s a really cool opportunity.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. So I, up until now, we’ve kind of been talking about this sort of at a very high level, you know, 40,000 foot level. I would love to hear some examples of some of the awful stuff, maybe not so awful stuff. Maybe it’s just questionable that you guys have seen. You’ve been like, okay, I need to call that out. I know we’re not naming names, although I’m happy to name them. Happy to name names if you want to, but let’s talk about some of the things that we’ve seen that we’re just like, okay, that’s over the line and it really should be over the line for everybody.
Michelle Mazur: So I’ll go first because one of the things that really bugs me and it is very copywriting related is the program promises I see on websites where it’s like the program name and then add six figures of revenue to your business this year. And I know there is no way that program provider can offer that. There is no way they can promise that to everyone. But that is the promise. And that is a very sexy promise to the recipient. And we’ve gotten to a point where we have been over-promising and under-delivering for far too long. And anytime I see a promise like that, I’m like, oh! People so desperately want to believe that it can be quick, easy, fun, and lucrative. And they see something like that, and they’re like, yeah, this is going to help me get well above six figures. And it’s only $20,000. Like, wow, what a great ROI. And then they go in there, and they realize that the program’s not aligned with them, or it isn’t right for their business model. But it’s the sexy promise that you can’t actually promise, because it’s not in your control. bothers me to no end, because we have seen it. I mean, it’s getting slightly better, but still, it’s like, yeah, Maggie’s like, not really, Michelle. But it’s just, it’s a prime way that people get duped.
Rob Marsh: So if you want six, add six figures to your business, you got to join Michelle’s program.
Maggie Patterson: Michelle’s program is for a billion dollar people.
Rob Marsh: Maggie, what about you?
Maggie Patterson: There’s two that kind of dovetail really nicely with that, and they’re all interrelated, is the income claim marketing. That to me, I am sick to death of it. Whether that be your Instagram bio, your program promise, your how much money, honestly I don’t care how much money you make in your business. I’m lacking so much context for that and it doesn’t tell me anything about what you’re going to do for me as a consumer. So the whole income claim marketing thing, like I will die on that hill Absolutely. Unless someone can literally show me that that is the actual result audited by a third party. And guess what? I’ve yet to see that. Because I go and look.
Kira Hug: Even if they can, it’s like, well, what does that mean to me though, right? It’s like, great, you did that yourself, but how is that relevant to me?
Maggie Patterson: Exactly. So you’re now like, okay, I’ll use you care as an example, Kira saying I made a gazillion dollars, and I help all of my clients make a bajillion dollars, like, it is so empty, and consumers are sick of it. Because I will tell you this, as much as someone is like, this is the way we have to do it. There’s 10 consumers you don’t know about who you just repulsed. that went, I’m out. And closely related with that is testimonials. These completely over the top testimonials that are truly like the top 1% of results that reflect survivorship bias. This is not reality. You need to be using testimonials that reflect the average client result. If you are only ever picking your star clients, you are misleading people. And you have to be really careful with this stuff Because, especially in the U.S. I’m not in the U.S., so I can do whatever I want, I guess. But, you know, the FTC is starting to pay more and more attention to this. Things like income claims without substantiation and proof, like, guaranteed, there are going to be more public proceedings against this. We’re starting to see it, and we will see more and more of it. There needs to be truth and integrity in what you are saying you will do for your clients and what you are able to provide.
Michelle Mazur: Ooh, I have another one I want.
Rob Marsh: Let’s keep going.
Michelle Mazur: I know. I’m all like, oh, I’m fired up now. I can do it so you can do it to type messaging, where people are basing their expertise solely on what worked for them to build their business. So they say they have the proven process to get to six figures because This is what I did to get to six figures and now I’m going to sell it to everyone because it will work for everyone. And then the problem becomes when you don’t have real expertise and your proven process doesn’t work, real experts can adapt, right? We can pivot, we can think, we can be like, let me find out information and adapt this and tailor it to you. But if you’re selling your proven process and you’ve only done it for yourself, That’s all you got. It’s so shallow and there’s so much marketing and I think income claims, luxury lifestyle fit into this where it’s marketing based on envy, which my friend Jay Klaus was talking about. I was like, yes, we see this. They’re like, oh, they can do it. They have this great life. They have these cars. Purses from Chanel and whatever else, oh, and I can do it too if I just follow what they’re saying.” And that is not true and they might not even be able to help you, your type of business, or they might not even be experts in what they say they are, right? So it drives me nuts.
Maggie Patterson: And you know what goes hand in hand with that is this whole invest at all costs message. It’s like the final part of that sale, it’s like I’m going to turn. the screws to you a little, where it’s basically like, if you want this bad enough, you are going to invest. And this is where we see people doing kind of the classic objection handling that just goes too far. Like questions, answer the questions. But when we get into I’m going to handle objections, you’re now infantilizing your client, potential customers and clients. And what we’ve seen a lot of is this is how you can come up with the money. This is if you believe you will get x, y, and z. It’s just so sketchy and scammy and manipulative. And this I think we can all safely say that there is no surefire invest X, get Y at this point. I think we’ve been trying this as an industry for so long. So for me, it is the biggest red flag. If you see someone encouraging you to override your better instincts to shut down your critical thinking and get out your credit card. And this is why I will say to every single person on the planet, if you are ever on a call and someone wants to commit right there with your credit card, please close the Zoom and leave because nothing good is going to happen.
Kira Hug: Yeah, I’ve been on those calls.
Rob Marsh: But I mean, what’s crazy is sometimes like I’ve seen those calls, or have heard people talk, you know, like, you got to get them to have the commitment before they talk to their partner or whatever. But in my experience, if you trust them with the information to talk to their partner, oftentimes the partner becomes your best ally in, if your program works and actually solves the problem that they have, the partner is oftentimes the one that says, you should totally get that if it’s going to do this thing that you want it to do or you need it to do. So I think sometimes that stuff doesn’t just, it’s not just scammy, it backfires.
Maggie Patterson: A hundred percent. When I’m enrolling people into my masterminds, I have people who are like, I want to sign up right now where we’re having the conversation. They’ve been listening to podcasts. interacting on social media, whatever. And they’re like, I want to sign up right now. And I’m like, no, absolutely not. Go away and think about it. I’m going to send you the link and please sign up in 48 hours. If you are still ready, go sleep on it. We should all want this. We should not want people who are showing up who are like, it’s one thing to be keen, but it scares me when someone is that eager because that to me, I’m like, Ooh, is there a little desperation there? I don’t like it.
Michelle Mazur: And for me, I think this goes back to how can you give people agency? How can you give them the information that they need to make a decision? And maybe that is going to have a conversation with their partner or it’s taking a beat. Like I never make a sales decision on a call ever. It is my policy in my business. And so, and I’ve been on those calls where they’re like, well, if you commit right now, I’m like, no, I’m not committing now. I won’t. It’s not how I work and if they can’t like it’s like. Because I want to make sure that the numbers work. I want to make sure that this is the best decision, that I am making it from a place of being solid, that this is a direction I want to go in versus that rush just to get the credit card. So yeah, I’m always like, how can we prioritize people’s agency and give them what they need to make the best decision for their business?
Kira Hug: I think now might be a good time to say people listening might feel called out by these tactics like maybe they’ve done any of them. I know I’ve done many of them. But that’s what I love about your show is that you two are not afraid to say, we’ve done this or I’ve done this previously, like we’re all we’ve all made these mistakes as we’re learning and thinking differently about how to give agency to prospects and market differently. And so I would love to hear from each of you as far as a recent shift you’ve made and how you market or write or operate your business as of maybe the last year because you’re evolving and how you’re thinking about your business.
Maggie Patterson: Hmm, in the last year.
Kira Hug: Maggie, maybe you made all your shifts a couple years ago. I think so. We can go back in time. We can go back in time.
Maggie Patterson: Oh, I mean, I’m very vocal about the fact I 100% have used income claims in the past. And I will say this, when I use them, I had been encouraged to do so by a number of people I was working with at the time, and I was exceptionally uncomfortable. I was just like, this to me is like, as someone with a long marketing career felt, and I thought, oh, this is what I have to do in this industry. And you know what, I decided that was not going to work for me, ultimately, at the end of the day, because I felt so misaligned. I didn’t even want to promote those offers because I felt gross about it. And like, I don’t believe in any way, shape or form that has hurt me to not use income claims. So I stand by that. Does it mean maybe I’m growing a little slower? Sure. I want to grow in a way that I’m here for the long haul. So I will totally admit I have used income claims and don’t feel good about it.
Michelle Mazur: I think for me, one of the shifts that I have made in the past year is like, so I have a community and that community launches. It’s now evergreen, but I’m still doing semi-regular campaigns. And everybody says, oh, you need to do something like a launch event or you’re teaching them something. And then you switch into the pitch, right? And that has always felt terrible to me. You are here to learn something from me, and then I’m going to pitch you. There’s a huge shift in energy from like, ooh, I’m teaching, I’m teaching, I’m teaching, and now I’m selling, selling, selling. It’s a different vibe. And I was like, okay, so how can I not do that? How can I be 100% transparent that what I’m going to be talking about is this offer? So for the Expert Up Club, I offer an open house, which is actually a really good thing because selling a community is very different. It’s a little bit more abstract. So saying like, hey, you can come in. I’m going to show you around, show you the resources. You’ll get to meet some of the people who are part of the community. And then it’s clear from the get-go that this is your opportunity to book a call with me to explore or to join the community. So you get less people to sign up for your open house. But the people who show up actually know you’re selling them something from the get-go. And they tell me, they’re like, oh, yeah, I got a lot out of this. And I’m like, great. I’m glad you learned something. But I’m also glad that I was just very transparent, like, hey, I’m showing you around. Because I feel like that level of transparency and also telling them, like, yeah, I’m showing you around, but then you can apply and then have a call with me to make sure this is the absolute right decision for you. Because I just want to get like, here is your information. If you’re unsure, apply, book a call, we’ll talk about it. Like there’s no pressure here. And I feel like that has been a very successful way to promote it. And it has just felt in alignment, in integrity, instead of that kind of bait and switch feel of like a webinar or a challenge or other events that we can put on.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’ve seen that happening almost across the marketing industry over the last few years. I think our friend Brittany McBean pointed it out in 2020. She’s like, look, people are signing up for your webinar. They know you’re going to pitch it at the end. So why hide that? Why not just say it right up front? I’m going to be sharing the program with you. And she talked about how that actually helped, right? Because people there’s there’s no drop off when you make that turn and start to pitch or whatever, because people are expecting it. And it’s just a much more more, uh, it just feels better, I guess, uh, is what I, what I’d say. And, and we’ve seen that I’ve seen that switch almost across the board now where people, uh, tend to begin a webinar, not always, but probably 70% of them that I, that I’ve seen, they start with that kind of a, I’m going to share something with you. One thing I have seen twice though, in the last month with webinars that I just like logged onto to, Oh, I want to see what this is about or whatever people promised state to the end bonuses and did not deliver. Like, like, like, I will be giving away a $200, you know, Amazon card. And like, I didn’t, I wasn’t there. Maybe you just weren’t chosen, Rob. No, no, no. I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t there for the card. Like, that’s not what I was there. But I just, like, I got to the end, and I was like, wait a second, they didn’t give the thing away. And then literally, a different, totally different person, totally different webinar, totally different offer, free offer, whatever. Same thing. They didn’t give the state to the end bonus. And I was like, That’s got to be a mistake, right? That’s not a new thing, but maybe, I don’t know.
Maggie Patterson: Oh, it probably is a new thing. We’ll talk about it on Duped soon.
Michelle Mazur: Yeah. It wouldn’t surprise me if somebody is teaching that and hoping that people forget that you offer the stay to the end bonus. I love the fact that people are being more open about like, yeah, I’m going to be sharing my offer with you because I think the industry needs that because I feel like webinars have a very bad reputation and they aren’t as successful anymore because of the years of be like, I’m going to give you like 10 minutes and then a 50 minute sales pitch. And I think now webinars kind of have this bad rap and people are very skeptical of going and signing up. And I think we’ve seen that people don’t show up, like the show up rate is getting lower and lower.
Maggie Patterson: But it also speaks to the entire thing of like, we need to give our potential customers and clients the benefit of being not just transparent, but knowing they’re smart enough to know that if we’re not transparent, they’re going to go, nope, I’m out. And I think often we forget about that. Like I’ve seen a lot of people talk about marketing like a human. And I’m like, well, are you marketing like a robot instead? Like, This is Michelle’s pet peeve. She doesn’t like it. But I mean, ultimately, like, please be respectful of your audience. And like, give them the benefit of the doubt that they are gonna know what you’re doing. And a common conversation I have—this one cracks me up—this is one of my pet peeves is When people don’t have the price on a program and then you have to apply to find out this, like, don’t waste my time. I am a full adult. I know my budget. Tell me what it is. I don’t want to be persuaded. Like, I’m just like, to me, I’m like, nope. And do you know how many things I would have signed up for if I’d known the price? I assume I just go, no, it’s a scam. And every time I talk about this, people push back and be like, people need to be coached, people do this. And I’m like, no, they don’t. Because what they see is they know how many people applied and then signed up. They don’t see the number of people that aren’t even going to touch it. Because they’re not tracking their metrics that well, I can guarantee it. They don’t know how many people were on that page. So please don’t argue with me about that one, because please just be respectful of your audience. And don’t waste their time. Nobody has time to waste. Make it easy for people, and just be straight up about it.
Michelle Mazur: Especially if it goes back to that transparency and agency and giving people everything they need to know, because if my budget is $2,500 and then I show up on a call and it’s $10K, I’ve wasted my time and I’ve also wasted yours because there is no coaching you can do to get me to cough up $7,500 that I wasn’t planning on spending.
Maggie Patterson: Michelle, that’s a limiting belief. You would be able to come up with that money. I think you should open three more credit cards. Yes, I think you don’t want it bad enough and you need to work on your manifestation skills. Clearly, clearly.
Kira Hug: I want to pivot to NLP because I don’t want to run out of time without talking about a couple hot topics. I mean, you cover so many great topics on your podcast. One is NLP. I’m just interested in your perspectives on it, because I think there is some confusion in the marketplace about it, especially for writers, especially for writers, as far as what’s useful, what’s not useful. So feel free to rant or share your thoughts.
Michelle Mazur: So Dr. Stephen Hassan, he created the BITE model for cult indoctrination. And he talks about the fact that neuro linguistic programming is completely amoral, right? Like it really depends on the practitioner and how they’re using it. You can’t really have informed consent with it. because it’s like embedded in so many things and it’s in so many like copywriting techniques and marketing techniques that people don’t know that you’re messing with their mind and haven’t opted in to that. They can’t consent. So it’s completely amoral and you just have to hope that the person you’re dealing with who is messing with your brain has your best intentions at heart.
Maggie Patterson: And I think what’s interesting is where it shows up in online marketing is everywhere. Some of the most pervasive, most common copywriting techniques that we’ve all been taught are laden with NLP because what’s happened is since the 70s when this was created, which if anyone wants the deep dive, go listen to this episode on duped because we go in the whole history. This has come out of different psychological practices, then moves into being a communications thing. I literally had an NLP practitioner who was a master NLP practitioner on my podcast. She couldn’t explain truly what it was. But it does show up in these things like mirroring, repetitive language, how you’re breaking down objections. So you have to, I think, check in with yourself to be like, Where does this, and I think a really good question for a copywriter is, where does this come from? Let me go Google this. What is the origin of this technique? Because so many of the things are, some are pseudoscience, some are very effective. NLP is very kind of in the middle. We don’t really know what works and what doesn’t because it hasn’t been studied because people who are going to study things don’t really have time for NLP. And that, for me, tells me what I need to know. They’re just NLP. This is for pickup artists and scam artists.
Michelle Mazur: Yeah, the industry like psychology, communication, they don’t really see it as a valid form of inquiry. And they don’t think that NLP has validity. So they don’t want to study it. Because it’s not something you want to stake your career on if you’re an academic.
Rob Marsh: I don’t blame them. I mean, I hear, I see people talking about NLP all the time. And I’m like, that doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel like that would work. It feels obvious or over the top oftentimes. So yeah, I don’t blame anybody for looking at it and saying, I’m not interested in looking into that any deeper.
Maggie Patterson: Here’s the funniest part, and this is the two creators of NLP that created it back in the 70s. Eventually, as it became, and it’s baked into so much self-help, eventually they started having a battle. And they had pictured this, the world’s greatest communication system. Guess what? They stopped talking to each other. So if their communication system worked, shouldn’t they have been able to work out their differences?
Kira Hug: They weren’t mirroring each other enough.
Maggie Patterson: Clearly. They messed it up. And I’m sure there’s somebody who’s listening who’s like, NLP, I love it. Great. It’s not for me, and I personally have a lot of issues. But if it’s working for you, bless.
Kira Hug: Maybe the awareness, maybe for writers listening who are not familiar, maybe it’s worth just, like you said, looking into the history, understanding the history, and then understanding some of the principles and tactics just so you’re aware of it, and you can spot it as a consumer, and you can also just be aware of it as a practitioner, whether or not you choose to use it. Okay, let’s talk about parasocial relationships and marketing because that sounds interesting. So I’d love to hear what that is and how that shows up. How can we be aware of it as consumers? And maybe if our role as copywriters play into that, we should also be aware of that side too.
Michelle Mazur: I love this topic because it really goes back to the heart of my communication studies. Parasocial relationships were identified in the 50s by two mass communication researchers. What they were seeing was these one-sided relationships that people were developing with TV characters. It actually got its start in like looking at soap operas and the relationship people had with the characters on soap operas, but have expanded to like journalists and celebrities. And it’s really this feeling like, oh, I really know this person. I like them. I trust them. I’m following them everywhere. And it used to just be this bastion for celebrities, right? Like Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is a master at developing parasocial relationships. She lets her people in. She publishes parts of her journal. Her song lyrics are really personal. So people feel like, oh my gosh, I really know Taylor. Taylor knows nothing about you, though. And now that we’re in the social media atmosphere where we can follow people or listen to their podcast and we’re in somebody’s ear, people can feel like they know us and they can trust us, which is something we have to be really aware of because they’re going to develop these. There’s nothing you can do to stop a parasocial relationship from developing. It’s just going to happen if you’re doing any kind of marketing. But realizing that when you recommend something, like, oh, the other person on the end who has this relationship with you is going to take that seriously. They have developed that whole no like and trust factor. If you go back to Robert Cialdini’s work, there is familiarity and liking happening, which makes you a very influential and persuasive source of information for them. So there’s nothing ethically wrong with having parasocial relationships. Most of them are kind of fun for a lot of us. Like I have a parasocial relationship with Simon Le Bon that I’ve had since like I was eight. So they’re fine to have, but as consumers, we always have to realize that just because we know, like, and trust someone doesn’t mean that they have our best intentions at heart when they’re selling to us because they don’t know us at all. So how is it possible to have those best intentions for you?
Rob Marsh: And this is why this is why celebrity endorsements work, right? Yes. Yeah.
Maggie Patterson: So if you look at it from the copywriting point of view, I really look at it as you have a responsibility as a copywriter to not lean so hard on the parasocial relationship that’s been developed through content and other means, and using it in a way that you are not creating a situation where there’s an expectation. And here’s a great example, we see this a ton. A lot of the big names, air quotes, in this industry, have very strong personal brands. Then they sell these mastermind programs and people get inside and go, but I don’t get person Y. And what happens is there’s a complete breakdown between they have fostered a parasocial relationship and then in the sales copy, in the sales process, people think they’re going to get that person. They bought it for that person. So how do you ensure that if you’re not If you’re using your personal brand or you’re writing for someone with a personal brand and you’re not going to be the person, how do you create transparency about how the program is structured? Are there additional coaches? What does this actually look like? How much of that person do you get, if anything? If there’s a group call, do you have to apply to have your question answered or do you answer all the questions? Are you actually going to get any attention? Because here’s the thing, people get so frustrated by this because it’s a bait and switch for them because they signed up expecting that person and they walk away deeply disappointed because they aren’t getting anything from the person they thought they had the relationship with. And I think that’s where I see the frustration from people. They’re like, this is not what I signed up for. And it’s because the copy is designed to use that parasocial relationship to get people to buy when it’s not actually flowing into things. Whereas I know in your groups, they get Rob and Kira. In my groups, they get me. In Michelle’s, they get Michelle. So we can, with integrity, have those things. But if you’re not doing those things, you need to be very thoughtful about that. I think as a copywriter, you can influence ensuring that the experience on the sales page matches the experience on the inside.
Michelle Mazur: Yeah, and I think the other interesting thing like thinking about it from a marketing perspective is if you are not going to be a part of the relationship that happens within the program. How do you lift up the other voices that people will be interacting with? So when you get there, you know, these people already exist. You have some type of maybe like a, like a beginning parasocial relationship with them. So it doesn’t feel like a bait and switch, but I do think that is the huge danger of personal brands. It’s like, oh, I feel like I know you and now I get to actually talk to you. Oops, just kidding, you don’t. That is going to cause the parasocial relationship to go south and reputational damage, I would imagine.
Kira Hug: That’s great advice. I think as copywriters, it’s also easy, you know, especially if you’re a newer copywriter, you want to write the sales page or the email copy and you want to sell that offer for your client because you need that testimonial and that win. So I think it’s easy to overlook OK, are we being really transparent here? Are we just trying to sell this expert? Or are we talking about their coaches? So that’s a great reminder for me. As we start to wrap this up, I’m curious if you two, as you’ve spoken up, I know you’ve been speaking up for years. But as you’ve leaned into this topic and going really deep here, what has the feedback been like for the two of you? I don’t want to be I don’t want to be negative and say like there must be a backlash but like how what has been your experience because you’re talking about topics that are triggering for people who because they’ve done it or they’ve made those mistakes or they’ve consumed and bought in this way and they feel shame and so how has that what has that been like?
Michelle Mazur: So I will start because since I am not active on social media, Maggie gets the majority of the negative backlash, whereas I do not because I am not. that I’m not publicly available on social media anymore by choice. And I think for me, the way that I see, and I know Maggie has this experience too, is when I get emails from someone who is like, oh my gosh, I almost bought this program. And then I listened to this episode of Duped and you saved me from making this investment. You saved me this much money. We get multiples of those emails and that feels good because it’s like, Oh, we’re actually making a dent. And I think we’ve And I think the other piece of feedback that I have gotten is that we normalize making these mistakes. And there’s no shame in it. It’s happened to every one of us. Maggie and I included have been duped. So for me, I get to see a lot of the good stuff because I’m not on social media. And I do get to see some of the bad stuff because Maggie shares with me on Voxer things people are saying to her. So I’ll let her cover that.
Maggie Patterson: But I, you know, Michelle, I think there’s one kind of interesting point in between the good and the bad. And it’s not been as much lately, but in the, I would, we’re three years in the first year and a half, we got a lot of feedback that was along the lines of demand. Why aren’t you, why aren’t you naming names? You’re being cowardly. You’re like, there were a lot of people that were really trying to, um, enforce what they wanted. They wanted us to create a podcast that was like a burn book that we were just going to take it all down. And I was like, you’ve got it all wrong. If you think I have the emotional capacity to do that, I do not.
Michelle Mazur: Yeah. Oh, I remember that. That was just like, yeah, they’re like, you have to name names. Otherwise, we don’t know who’s bad. And I’m all like, these people are like whack-a-mole. It’s better for you to be able to spot the patterns than Maggie and I creating a good bad list. Plus there’s no room for redemption and change. Like I do not ever want to label someone publicly because that takes away their opportunity for redemption and change and we also worry about being sued.
Rob Marsh: Well not only that, not everybody is bad in every situation, right? You know, so, so Maggie may make a promise that does not work for me and my business, but that does not mean that it’s not going to work for Kira. And so, you know, or a tactic used in one situation is not necessarily negative in every situation. So let me, I mean, let me give you an example. And this, I, I sort of have some weird feelings about this, but my mom had Alzheimer’s and she passed away a few years ago. When she was first diagnosed, she spent some money buying books about brain training and some nutritional supplements that have no way to help her. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s. She knew that, and yet in purchasing those supplements and those books, it gave her a modicum of hope that lasted for a while so that she could deal with her disease when it first started out. My mom was not poor. She was not in some situation where she was spending money that she needed for medication or something else. I don’t know all of the promises that were made and the things that she said, but she bought something that was probably not going to work for her, but it gave her hope. That to me is okay because that hope has value. Now, in another situation, I think it’s completely wrong. If somebody didn’t have money to afford it or was in a different kind of a situation, then that’s a negative. So I don’t think you can have a good and a bad list. I think it’s very situational. And I think as marketers, we need to approach this from a place where I am only going to sell things that work to the people who it works for. And if we do that, we’re probably going to be okay, even if you are, you know, using scarcity or urgency, you know, in your marketing, because the people that you’re talking to are the people that you can actually help and deliver results for. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be in marketing in the first place.
Maggie Patterson: Rob, I totally agree. And I think going back to the whole, like, what is the feedback been is Michelle and I, I like to think we’re doing a pretty good job of straddling the in between of like, we’re not snarkers, we’re not starting snark channels on YouTube or Reddit, like that’s not, I personally bless, I do not want to do that with my time. I know. But also to like, we’re not going to spend our time pretending that things are okay. So there’s got to be a middle ground. And I think for me, the most interesting part of this has always been when I personally got my character called into question, because I’m not calling anyone else’s character into question. But people think the right way to characterize this is people really, even though I continuously say like, I’m talking about patterns here, they become triggered, they react, and they come at me. And I’m very grateful to find a place in my life where I can approach them with a lot of patience and kindness. And I have really good boundaries, and I’m able to shut it down. But for example, every time I talk about upcharges on payment plans, people come at me and I’m like, No, go read the other five hundred thousand zillion comments here about like it’s not just me there’s all these people and you’re the outlier here so please be willing to change and I think for anybody if you’re listening to duped or consuming any type of content where you’re like Oh, I feel attacked. That’s information. And it’s there for you to reflect to say, OK, you know what? Super interesting. Why do I feel that way? And maybe that’s some data that I need to go and prove that versus lashing out. And I think the last part of this is, The most conversation I have seen about this has been on threads in the last little bit. And there is a real pushback against them calling it mean girl marketing. I guess I’m a mean girl suddenly at this point in my life, which is hilarious because I would imply I’m cool. you know, really looking at, like, if there’s all these people trying to negate this experience, maybe there’s something to it.
Kira Hug: Yeah, there’s definitely something to it. And I know that I learned from the episodes I listened to, I always like, I mean, sometimes I can feel attacked. And it’s not you two who are attacking me. It’s just like, Oh, yeah, I didn’t. I did that. I didn’t think about it this way. And I always learn something that I can implement, even if I can’t implement it all right away. It’s just like, you can take one idea and put it into practice. And so I appreciate what you two are doing and the impact that you’re going to make. I know it’s really hard to get that blowback. Thank you for doing it. For our listeners who want to learn more about duped or learn more about what the two of you are doing in your businesses, where should they go?
Michelle Mazur: Well, you can go to Duped.online for all things Duped. We’re in every podcast player everywhere, so subscribe. if you are interested in hearing these conversations. Maggie and I both have podcasts that support the other side, because this is consumer advocacy, so we’re not going to be talking about business models or how to market. If you want to learn more about how to market in a way that is aligned with your values, you can listen to my podcast, which is Make Marketing Suck Less. It is particularly for solo business owners who are juggling all the demands of client delivery and sales and marketing, and they’re really struggling to get the word out about what they do. Maggie, tell us about your podcast.
Maggie Patterson: It’s the BS Free Service Business Show. It’s for freelancers, consultants, creatives, and agency owners. Yeah, that’s a mouthful. And really talking about that journey of staying as a service business, because so much of the conversation is always like, you should stop doing services. You need a program. And I’m like, no, you don’t. You could just do more consulting, sell strategy. Oh, guess what? You don’t have to have an agency. Kind of challenging a lot of the conventional teachings of don’t trade time for dollars culture. And that’s everywhere the podcasts are on the internet.
Rob Marsh: Awesome. Thanks guys for joining us. We appreciate it.
*Maggie Patterson:* Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Thank you.Rob Marsh: Okay, that’s the end of our interview.
Rob Marsh: I usually end the podcast with a few observations related to what we talked about on the episode. Today I want to be clear. All four of us on this podcast love marketing. It’s become common for some in our industry to criticize the use of things like a deadline timer or social proof or tactics like open loops to keep readers engaged. They often call it bro marketing or something similar.
Let’s be clear. Tactics are not good or evil. There is a place for all of them. It all comes down to how you use them. If you are decieving readers, that’s not good even if your product can help them. Manipulation doesn’t belong in a copywriter’s tool box, even if the product or service you offer delivers a result. We need to respect our customers. Trust them to know what’s best for them. Help give them the information they need to make wise decisions. And be okay with it when they don’t.
It’s funny, I’ve even seen a few people who claim to be ethical or some other watchword to communicate they are above using these tactics, turn around and use the same ideas they criticize when others use them.
I love marketing. I’m here to defend it. It is an effective tool set that helps people with problems find the solutions that change their lives. That’s something we can all be proud of. So keep your customer’s best interests at heart. Don’t take advantage. Don’t do things that benefit you but not them.
This thing we do is a superpower. But the thing about super powers is they can be used for good or evil. Use yours for good.
Thanks again to maggie and Michelle for joining us to chat about ethics in marketing. If you want to go even deeper, we recommend you check out their podcast, Duped wherever you listen to podcasts.
At some point in your business journey, you will hit a snag. An obstacle. A bump in the road. These bottlenecks hold you back from the kind of growth or results you want. In the 384th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with business consultant Josh Long about the various bottlenecks that hold us back and what to do to breakthrough and achieve more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:Bottleneck Breakthrough by Josh Long (book)
The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan Kim.
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Every business—large and small, successful or struggling, profitable or barely scraping by hits it’s share of bottlenecks. If you’re struggling or barely scraping by, those bottlenecks are usually obvious. Not enough leads. Not closing enough projects. Or not enough profit. Identifying bottlenecks in a successful business can be a little more difficult… it takes a deeper look at what’s holding you back or slowing you down.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I had a chance to talk with business consultant, coach and author Josh Long.
Josh is the author of a fantastic book, Bottleneck Breakthroughs, that is written to help business owners of all sizes figure out what’s holding them back. And during our conversation we stepped through what it takes to grow and build a business at all stages, and how our businesses are slowed down when we don’t pay attention to the six levers Josh wrote about in his book.
We stepped through all six and if you’re a copywriter or content writer with your own business, you’ll definitely want to hear what Josh had to share.
But first, I want to tell you about The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard about the library of training that will help you build a profitable business. You’ve heard about the monthly coaching, and the almost weekly copy critiques and the helpful group of members ready with support and even the occasional lead. Last week we recorded an exclusive training for Underground members on the diagnostic scorecard that helps you close just about any prospect or project on a sales call. It’s the kind of business secret you don’t read about in free facebook groups or even on most email lists. But right now, you can watch that training and get the diagnostic scorecard to help you close more projects when you go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu and join as a member. But hurry, that training disappears in a few weeks.
Now to our interview with Josh…
Rob Marsh: All right, Josh, I’m familiar with you and your book and some of the stuff that you do, but just to get started here and let our audience know, tell me a little bit about how you became a management consultant, business coach, author and all of the things that you’re doing today.
Josh Long: Yeah, Rob, thanks. Well, when I was in kindergarten and they said, what do you want to be when you grow up? I just thought, you know, that’s what I want to be—a consultant.
Rob Marsh: Yeah.
Josh Long: Not quite, not quite on the radar. Back then I was trying to get into med school and I had a professor who suggested I get my MBA while I was waiting to get into med school. I didn’t even know what MBA stood for. I got in and went to Fresno State. They had an entrepreneurship program. And you could major in your MBA in entrepreneurship. And I was like, that’s crazy. And I loved it.
I had met my wife while I was in grad school, and every doctor that I knew that was married before med school wasn’t married after med school. I knew that I valued her more than my career, so I decided to go the entrepreneurial route.
I got out, tried a software venture in grad school that failed, but it was a really cool opportunity. Then my roommate was in the mortgage business, so I got into the mortgage world. I quickly learned how little I knew how to run a company. So a friend of a friend introduced me to a guy named Dan Kennedy and I latched onto his stuff and just gobbled it up. And it really helped me understand what it takes to get clients, and to sell to clients, and to understand that dynamic of just building demand and then go from there.
And then I filed bankruptcy. I had a mortgage brokerage for four years, and went down in a ball of flames. And while I was licking my wounds, figuring out what I wanted to do, I had read a guy’s book called The Ultimate Sales Machine by a guy named Chet Holmes. And I really liked it so I reached out to him and went to work for him and grew to be his right-hand man in that company for a couple of years. I ended up becoming marketing director and realized I could go out and do consulting on my own. I have done that since about 2010. And so that’s how I ended up getting into management consulting through the door of Dan Kennedy and marketing and Chet Holmes and sales and I’ve been doing it ever since.
Rob Marsh: So mentioned Dan Kennedy, Chet Holmes, you’ve worked with Jay Abraham, I think.
Josh Long: Perry Marshall. Yep. Got to know Jay through Chet. They were good friends. I spent time down in Jay’s office. He’s a very kind, generous, brilliant man. Yeah, and I work closely with Perry Marshall. We’ve been partnering on a project for the last six years called Advanced Mastery Network, where we help companies that are trying to get across what I call a seven-figure desert. Because you can have a really great company in the $1 to $2 to $3 million range that becomes a cash cow. But you don’t want to get stuck at five to seven million. You’ve got to get to 10 million if you’re going to try to cross that desert. So we’ve been running that and Perry’s a great guy. Obviously how we found each other.
Rob Marsh: Perry introduced me to you through sharing your ideas. But you know, as you’ve worked with these masters of business—not even online business, but business—over the last decade or two, what are the biggest lessons that you’ve taken away from those guys?
Josh Long: Yeah, well, the first one is, They have charisma for days like they’re born with it. So anybody that thinks they want to be the next Dan Kennedy, J. Abraham, or Perry Marshall, I will tell you, you can’t. It’s not possible. You either have it, you’re born with it, or you’re not. I ended up teaching at Fresno State. I taught for four semesters, business plan writing and feasibility analysis in undergrad for entrepreneurs. The program director, who was my program director, Tim Stearns, brilliant guy, we would talk and we would debate, are entrepreneurs born or can they be made? And obviously, Tim is an educator. He was the chair of the entrepreneurship program. He created it. It was one of the only entrepreneurship programs in the nation. And so he wholeheartedly believes that entrepreneurs can be made.
This is one of the few places on fixed mindset, I would say, that I actually believe in. Otherwise, everything else is learnable and expandable. But I really do think entrepreneurs are born. I really think they have the DNA, the wiring, the charisma, the ability to communicate, the ability to take risks. And seeing that magnified in Dan and Jay and Chet and Perry—they’re just wired to be on the stage.
The other fascinating thing is just how brilliant they all are and how fast their minds move and how fast they can synthesize ideas and data and connect dots. So that was really fun. And it was really fulfilling because I got to do that a lot with Chet. He and I would have a weekly call and we’d be going through strategy for clients. I was 15 years younger than anybody else in the company and the consulting side, and yet I was his go-to. I was his brainstormer. So that was really fulfilling to validate my ability to just connect those dots.
Other things I would say, being around those guys helped me realize that for you to get the most from them, you have to be incredibly coachable and wired in a way that you resonate with them. Because as coaches, as consultants, as advisors, there’re a lot of different personality types, and there’s a lot of ways that things can get done, right? You can skin a cat a lot of different ways. But To work with Dan or Jay or Chet or Perry, you’ve got to resonate with them. You’ve got to be in their lane, so to speak, on their frequency. Because their way isn’t the only way. It’s a very effective way, and it can work really well. And they’ve got troves of success stories.
But I think this was important for me to realize because, like a guy that’s really popular right now, Alex Hormozy, right? Brilliant guy. And he’s a great educator. But his hustle and grind philosophy does not work with me, doesn’t resonate with me one bit. I don’t care. I’m not that money motivated. I have a family. I’ve got three teenage kids. I’ve got a great wife. I’m not gonna work 80-hour weeks just to achieve something. And so knowing that, I think, is another thing.
And I’d see people that would come into these orbits and feel bad because they couldn’t get results following some of these guys’ advice. And Chet was probably the most hard-nosed of the bunch. He had a very grinder persona. And caring, I mean, all of them have big hearts. I think Dan is the one that reveals his the least. He tries to be the grumpy curmudgeon, but he really does care about everybody. But Chet was the most grinding of the bunch. And I realized I could fit there, I could get along, but it wasn’t my nature. Like, that’s not who I am at my core.
Rob Marsh: So this is an interesting idea, the made versus born idea, but also how much hustle does it take to be an entrepreneur? I actually posted on LinkedIn about this a little while ago, and there were a lot of people debating back and forth. A lot of people push back against the hustle culture. I have a sense that—and this is just from my experience looking out at the world—I can’t recognize a single successful business where the founder founders didn’t have to hustle or if you don’t like that word hustle didn’t have to bust their butts sometimes for years to make it happen and so that probably goes along with what you’re saying. You almost have to be born with that hustle—maybe hustle’s the wrong word… drive. The drive is probably a better word in order to make that happen.
Josh Long: I think there’s a couple paths so like many, I just fell into entrepreneurship. My grandfather had an educational games company when I was a kid, but he was an educator and his two partners were educators. He passed away when I was 18. So he was not around for me in my early entrepreneurial career. I didn’t really have a mentor or guide. And I was just making a lot of mistakes. When you start that route, you’re very isolated, you’re trying to just prove yourself, to get out there you go through the Dunning-Kruger effect, right?
You start with all this confidence and all this bravado and no skill. And as you gain skill, you quickly learn how little you know, right? And as I tell my kids all the time, wisdom makes life so much easier. Unfortunately, most of our wisdom is gained through making mistakes, right? So that’s one path. And that is the most common path, right? I think there’s a better path. And this is the one that I encourage anybody that has the ability and the time and the wherewithal—go get mentored by somebody. Go work in a company that runs really well. And we see this in the PayPal mafia or the Google experience of people that come out of those places. They are able to go launch successful businesses because they’ve seen what success looks like.
Now, I’m not saying they’re not working hard, but it’s definitely not as much of a grind when I see those people come out and succeed. I see this a lot in management consulting on the higher end, like the private equity guys, or people that start in high end management consulting, move into private equity, and they just have a smoother path, because they’ve learned on the job from somebody else that really knew what they were doing. And so that’s the ideal to me is go get the experience, go get the mastery, go learn it without all of the pressure of payroll, without all of the pressure of getting clients, without all of the pressure of things breaking, and the sleepless nights, and all of that stuff.
It’s not that one’s right or wrong. By no means am I beating up or belittling anybody that is working really hard and trying to find their way. I just found there are easier, smoother paths and being around people who know how business works can make it a lot more smooth in the process.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so let’s say that I or somebody who’s listening is in that first group. We’ve been hustling. We’ve been breaking our… bouncing our heads against the wall. We’re basically hitting what I think you call the bottlenecks. Let’s talk about those things that we hit in business and some of the solutions, some of the things that you talk about in your book that help us overcome all of these problems that come up. I think you break them out into six different levers in the business, which cover various things like marketing and strategy, but can we just talk about some of those places where we get stuck as business owners?
Josh Long: Yeah, I think what happened for me early on was I was talking with so many business owners during the recession in 2008, 09 and 10, when I was working for Chet and I just started seeing these patterns show up based on their revenue stage. And so as you go through revenue plateaus, you have common problems that others at those stages have, just like developing a body, human body and a child, like child development and human development has stages that are all going to be the same, right?
And so what I find is when you get to about a half a million in revenue, the most common bottleneck, the most common problem that you start having is starting to organize people around unique activities. Because when a company’s small, when there’s about a half a million a year in revenue, 30, 40, 50 grand a month coming in, It’s all hands on deck, right? Everybody can kind of crosstrain and do kind of everything else. Everybody kind of covers for everybody. And the team is just really an extension of the owner. They’re like go go gadget arms, right? They just make the owner’s arms a little longer to get around everything. And that’s great. And it’s a fun space to be when everybody’s willing to roll up their sleeves and everybody pulls some all nighters together. They’re up for jumping in on the weekends in a pinch.
But when you get to about that half million dollar mark, you gotta start dividing and conquering. You gotta have specialists that somebody’s in charge of payroll or billing or accounts receivable, or sales or marketing. And it doesn’t mean that you have to have one person for each of those. Some people wear multiple hats. But knowing that, hey, here’s your hat, Rob, you really got to take care of our accounts receivable. Because our accounts receivables got too far back, we got too many, too many payments that are over 90 days late. And We all just were kind of dealing with whatever clients we came across, whatever invoice we saw. But I need you once a week for an hour every week to call everybody on this list that’s over 30 days. And we need that money in. And that’s the beginning of an org chart, right?
That’s the beginning of creating structure. And then at a million, I mean, only 7% of businesses ever get to a million dollars a year. So you’re in rare air. It’s a very successful stage. And a lot of entrepreneurs think, oh, Once I get to a million dollars, all my problems will be solved. No, they just change. They get bigger and different. And at a million, the most common problem is you don’t have an operations person. And I call it the little Napoleon that’s just going to keep cracking the whip and making sure the trains are on time and everything’s going well.
So you as the entrepreneur visionary can keep going out and rainmaking and getting more business or being the visionary that’s setting the strategy of figuring out where you’re going and not having to deal with fulfillment. And I find a lot of entrepreneurs that are very successful, very capable, that don’t realize they need that little Napoleon, that operations director, operations manager. What happens is when they start getting into that million dollar ceiling, they start throttling their sales. They start throttling their ability to go rain make because they know if they get more business, they’re just going to have more fires to put out on the fulfillment side.
So those are really common patterns that I see in companies at those stages. And so what I recommend is you do a brain dump, right? You got to get stuff out of your head.
I talk about it in the book of just how to capture all of your ideas and then how do we weigh them? How do we figure out what’s worth pursuing? What’s not, how do we prioritize? Because entrepreneurs like novelty, right? We like new ideas. We like new shiny things. We’re always looking for the new shortcut. It’s not because we’re lazy. It’s not because we’re dumb or whatever. It’s evolutionarily. We’re meant to find the shortcut, the fastest path to the fruit, to the food, to the meal, to safety. Right? So, And in the marketing world, online marketing, there’s only about 11 bajillion new shinies every day coming out, right? AI being the latest.
And so what I walked through in the book, really, in chapter 13, is the profit priorities process. And it’s like, just dump all of your ideas in there. And then let’s go through and let’s actually score them on five different factors. Because when we score them on five different factors of how much time and effort is this going to take? What’s the cost? What’s the upside? And what’s the current pain that we’re experiencing? Then we get a much more sober perspective. And then we just look at the scores and say, oh, I didn’t think that was going to score so highly, but it did. Let’s go do that first.
And then you’re able to get results and they compound. I’ve had some consultants that have wanted to be trained in this in the last year and I’ve taken them through it. One of them said that he took a client through this in the fall, just their leadership team, and they just dumped everything out and they scored it all. And they were shocked at the top one or two solutions that they needed to implement because nobody would have guessed that those would have been the most valuable or that would have made the biggest change.
By going through this process, they all got unity on it, and they all were able to move forward in clarity and take action on it. And so it feels tedious, but to me, this is kind of like sharpening the axe, right? You can keep sharpening your axe so you cut trees down easier and easier, and you’re not just spinning your wheels, staying busy, getting through the end of the day and being like, I don’t feel like I got anything worthwhile done today.
Rob Marsh: Very common feeling. It’s interesting, you’re talking about these larger businesses. I was sharing with you before we started recording, we gave your book to all the members of our Think Tank mastermind. And they felt that it was incredibly valuable. And every single one of them is running a one or two person business. And so the ideas that you walk through—you don’t necessarily need a seven or ten million dollar business to benefit from the ideas you share. Even small business owners think, I need to take a step back here and figure out like, where are my leads coming from, right? Or like, how am I marketing my business? So I want to interject that—simply because I don’t want anybody who listens thinking, oh, my gosh, my business isn’t at half a million dollars. I can turn this podcast off because that is very much not the experience that I had reading your book or the members of our mastermind as well who are using it again, just as as one or two person businesses, too.
Josh Long: Right. And I think for them, when I go through their day-to-day, they’ve got to cut out a lot of things that just aren’t moving the needle. That’s the biggest activity that I recommend is to really get critical at what you feel you have to do versus what is actually making a difference, right? And that’s, again, having a sober perspective, really being critical of Gosh, you know, this is: I love this idea and I’ve got to go create a new course or something and I’m going to have this new offer and you’re going to go spend all the time creating it and you’ve not talked to anybody about it. You’ve not pitched anybody on it. You’ve not built an interest list. And so you can go spend this time on something you really think is going to be powerful and meaningful. And you spend two months in your spare time or extra time building it, and then you go to launch it and you realize, I didn’t even see this fatal flaw or I didn’t get this feedback or I didn’t do this thing.
I think that’s where a lot of small teams and entrepreneurs, freelancers and stuff that are delivering great value to clients, they get kind of isolated and they fall in love with their own ideas and they don’t have community to just go bounce it off of or they’re too afraid to go pitch it to some prospects or clients and get the real answer of where it’s at. And so I think that’s a common one I see.
And so I would just say, again, brain dump, get out of your head all the things you think you have to do. Let’s start go scoring them and let’s start seeing like, did this make a difference today? And I think for freelancers, a lot of times, I mean, I just saw a guy post the other day, I suffer from this, right? I’m not good at building my own list. And he said, every day, I spend a little bit of time offering something to get people on social media to join my list. And then I spend a little bit of time every day offering people on my list something to buy. And I was like, that’s so simple, right? Gosh, even I have been doing this for as long as I have. And I suffer from not doing the basics and not doing the things that are going to move the needle on a regular basis.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, again, like ringing all of the bells for me and my business, we make all of those same mistakes. And I’ve seen everybody do it. It’s interesting, we used to do an exercise with our mastermind, where we have people rate the various parts of their business, similar to some of the systems that you break down in your book. We’d have them rate red, yellow, green, based on how good are they going, right? And at the end, everybody would look at their sheet and see all this red and yellow and very little green, and it’s immediately frustrating. Like, oh my gosh, how is it so bad?
And yet, Oftentimes, they’re running six-figure, mid-six-figure businesses. They’re succeeding. They don’t necessarily even have employees at this point. They’re running a successful business, and yet everything is still broken. I think this is something that we all experience. One of the things that as I was going through your book, became really helpful is to start breaking out where am I in strategy and what do I need to start thinking about a little bit differently? So as we think about those kinds of businesses and how we’re all broken in different ways, can you step through those six levers and just give us a sense of what we should be thinking about with each one? Like what are the one or two hot buttons, the most important things to have right or to be working on getting right?
Josh Long: One bit of encouragement for anybody that’s got those bloody sheets of red things that are broken, but you’re still making money. It means that you’re delivering something of real value. Because you found a market fit, right? You found a product market fit, as they would say that, despite not having all these other fundamentals, you’re still finding people that get value from you. So that’s, that’s the goal, right? That’s the real metric is, Am I delivering value? Am I getting rewarded for the value I deliver? And am I able to do that in a consistent way that pays my bills and makes me have the lifestyle that I want?
And so going through the six levers—I start with strategy because that really encapsulates what Peter Drucker would say is innovation and marketing that innovation, right? He thinks that that is the backbone of all business. Everything else is a cost. Because you have to create an innovation, you have to come up with some kind of offer. And you have to be able to communicate that offer in a way to a target audience that is compelling, that gets them to take action.
As copywriters, you guys all get that. But a lot of businesses still lose sight of that. And so what I did was I walked through the strategy of how are you differentiating from your competitors? What are the factors? And one thing that I really loved was the Blue Ocean Strategy book. And I actually got permission from them to republish some of their content in my book and walk through how I walk my clients through looking at their value curve, looking at their competition, looking at what they differentiate on. And their four factors are: What are you going to raise or create? What are you going to reduce or eliminate?
I think especially new entrepreneurs, we tend to overcomplicate things. We add way too many features. We add way too many details. We add way too much complexity that isn’t going to move the needle. And so Perry and I, we walked through this in our advanced mastery network program of, How do we proposition simplify? That’s something from Richard Koch that is not in my book, but it all fits under the strategy umbrella of as a proposition simplifier, what are you doing to add significantly more value and ease and you’re able to charge moderately more price for it? For example a proposition simplifier… I just keep coming back to the iPad. It was such an easy tool to use, and yet they charge an arm and a leg for them, right? And we don’t have to go into hardware manufacturing and all that because it’s really complex, but what can you do on the service side?
I had a client years ago as an orthodontist, who hired me to overhaul his sales process. And I went and I made these presentation books of before and after teeth for kids. And I missed an opportunity to simplify his experience more by just ordering a hundred of them to sit in his office. I made him, I designed him, and then I gave it to his office staff to order. And I gave him the link and it was like, all I had to do was just buy them for him. And it would have made the experience that much more enjoyable. So that’s looking at the strategy, like how do we make it smoother? How do we make it easier? How do we make it more valuable, especially the perceived value? and how do we differentiate? So that’s what I cover in strategy.
Next, we move to marketing, and that’s what most small business owners think they need more than anything, because out of the gate, we need clients. Without clients, there is no business. But as you grow, marketing is no longer the main bottleneck. Other things show up, and we’ll get to those later. But when you start with marketing, the biggest thing I focus on is where is your most consistent source of quality leads coming from and how can you expand that further? And so I talk about traffic pillars like the Parthenon or Greek or Roman architecture. They have pillars that are part of their buildings that have stood thousands of years, fires, earthquakes, wars. They’re still standing to this day. And so, how can we view your traffic sources as pillars?
Now, out of the gate, you may have some referrals, you may have a Facebook post that went viral, or something that generates a little bit, but then they kind of die down. And it’s like, okay, well, those worked, how can you beef them up a little bit? How can you turn them into more of a pillar? And getting into the fundamentals of like, how many, your funnel, right? Like, how many leads are coming in? How many conversations are you having? How many proposals are you giving? How many are you closing? And just getting an average for that.
And of course, it’s like sales team management or marketing team management. But on a one or two person team basis, you’re still going to have a rhythm, you’re still going to have a pattern of how many people are you talking to? What’s your workload? How many clients? How often does your average client last?
And you may be like me where it’s, I call it bimodal, right? A nerdy statistical statement, but my clients are bimodal. They either last three to five months, because either we fixed it or most often we got something deeper and they got frustrated and they tapped out or they last forever. Like that’s kind of how my clients work. And so once I started realizing that it was like, okay, let’s change the engagement. Let’s just do 90 day engagements to start with just to flesh out things and see if we can build a relationship or if we’re just going to part as friends because it’s not working instead of just jumping in. And I always want to marry everybody cause I love people and I love helping and I just want to put a ring on their finger and say, let’s work together forever. But the reality is half of my clients—we run into deeper and deeper bottlenecks that they don’t want to deal with at the end of the day, or I haven’t figured out how to get them to deal with in a diplomatic way. So that’s marketing. I’ve been rambling for a while.
Rob Marsh: I feel like I feel like I’m in an MBA class learning about how to run my business. But when you talk about those people who tap out, you know, you get to that deeper problem. What’s usually going on there? Is it an inability in their business to do it? Is it more mindset related? Because I have seen the same thing. When we’ve coached people, oftentimes, we’ll go through this, we show them all the things to do, and they still aren’t getting it, and sometimes they’ll leave. Not that often, but it’s that frustration. I’ve had that experience in programs that I’ve been part of as well. I’m looking at what’s the common denominator there that makes us not get to the finish line?
Josh Long: Yeah, and that’s the last lever is mindset. And I put it at the end of the book, because 50% plus of my clients just don’t want to deal with it, don’t want to look internally, don’t want to reflect. But I think it’s the most valuable lever of all, I think it supersedes all of them. Because at the end of the day, if you’re not willing to look at your own beliefs, which drive everything, right? Like we all have subconscious beliefs and things that are running our operating system.
If you’re not willing to look and review those, then you may have a chronic issue that maybe you’re a yeller. Maybe you just, you get to a point and you just start yelling at your staff. And that’s the only way you feel that they’re going to listen to you. And it’s like, well, you’re going to just run the healthy people away because healthy people don’t put up with yellers, only traumatized, dysfunctional people put up with yellers, right? And so you’re just going to end up with this semi-retarded version of an organization where you’re there And your only way to lead is yelling. And the only people that’ll stick around are the ones that were abused by yelling growing up. And you guys have this really twisted relationship, right? And so that’s, that’s really what’s happening at the end of the day is every business grows to the limit of the owner. That’s it. And so unless that owner is willing to look internally and level up and deal with their own stuff, we’re just going to end up at an impasse.
I had a client, I parted ways with a year ago—they were afraid of hiring. They’d had a couple of bad hires. And so they made this 85 deck slide PowerPoint process of hiring. And I’m really good at recruiting. And I can talk to some an applicant, I can create a great ad, I can look at the review, the applicants, I can get to the top five, interview each of them for five minutes, and I can pick out the best one. All in 25 minutes, right? I’ve been doing it for years.
Their marketing was working so well, their support team was running into limitations. And I was like, we need more support. And the owner was just so afraid that I was gonna break something and hire somebody bad. And so we ended up recruiting the person. It was a great hire, but the owner kept fighting me the whole time on my process. And it was because he had some kind of trauma around hiring, having a bad hire. And, and it was just indicative of all these other things that we weren’t willing to get on the same page.
And so I was like, I like you guys, you guys have a great company. But it’s not a fit for me. And I parted ways. That’s a simple example. They just didn’t trust me at the end of the day to deliver a quality candidate, even though I did. And that person’s still there and they’re thrilled with them. And, but the owner even fought and he said, this guy’s overqualified. He’s not going to last. I’m like, I don’t know how to help you. You keep fighting me. Does that resonate?
Rob Marsh: It definitely does. I can think of all kinds of little hang ups like that. You kind of touched on it early on when we started talking, but a lot of copywriters are afraid to go out and pitch for clients because basically it means they’re going to, they want to fill up the day with work, but then it also means, oh, now I’ve got to deliver. Right. And so if you can shoot yourself in the foot on pitching and not do it well, you can sort of limit the downsides of doing the work. That becomes a self-sabotage pattern.
Josh Long: Yep. I see that in every industry, every skill set, whether it’s web designers, graphic designers, copywriters, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Once you start hitting your upper limit of, I’m making enough money, I’m working with enough good clients… This is where I think Dan Kennedy did it so well. Instead of sabotaging yourself subconsciously, and pushing away the ones that you just don’t really want to work with, make the waitlist long and just start raising your pricing.
But then guess what? Now you’ve got to look at your perceived self worth. How worthy are you of earning what you earn versus what you deserve. I’ve got a great case study of a guy who does mineral analysis for health stuff—hair mineral tests—and he was only charging like three or $400 for this test, a huge analysis, and a game plan for rebalancing your minerals.
And I was like, how’s that going? He says, I just got people that don’t show up to calls. I got people that complain. I told him to triple his pricing. This is one of those classic cases where you’re just attracting the wrong audience because your price is so low. And I had a call with him a month ago, and he was probably doing like 60, 70 grand a year, frustrating clients. I said, well, what’d you do last year? He says, 300 plus. And I’m like, and what were the clients like? He says, I loved everyone. But he had to work through that belief system. So that’s the other part that once you start digging, you realize, mindset is the ultimate bottleneck because yes, I’m self sabotaging as Rob said, but then. Okay. I’ll make a wait list. I’ll only cherry pick. I’ll make clients have to jump through hoops and then I’ll charge more. It’s like, Oh no, I can’t. My dad will think I’m ripping people off if I charge more or whatever the belief comes out. Right. I mean, it’s just, it’s all tied to that stuff.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s so many ways we sabotage ourselves in business. Okay, so after marketing, the next lever is management. And I can see applications here with the big C applications with a big team, plus personal management, you know, and with freelancers, oftentimes, the worst of our employees is ourselves.
Josh Long: Well in this case, I would look at client management, because you’ve got people on a team that you’re having to deal with now. And it’s a difficult dynamic, because you don’t have the authority to fire them, push them around, set deadlines, or whatever. But you have all the responsibility for delivery, right? And so you end up in this imbalance, right? You don’t have equal parts authority and responsibility. And so as freelancers, when you end up in that spot, it can feel like purgatory. It’s not quite hell, but it’s definitely you’re stuck. And so the way that I work through that on the management side is whoever hires you starts having conversations about that authority discussion and about the feedback loop, right?
I had this client years ago, they were doing a big project for Starbucks, and they were manufacturing trailer units that were going to go into Walmart parking lots for a Starbucks. They were just dropping them as a drive-thru Starbucks in a parking lot. And Starbucks loved the idea, and my client had manufactured all sorts of stuff like that before, but Starbucks kept delaying signing the contract. And I told my client, I said, Every week that they delay, you have to push your delivery out. That has to be in the contract. It’s like, no, no, it’s a two, two and a half million dollar project. Starbucks won’t do that. I’m like, you’re just getting pinched. You’re just getting pinched. You’re just going to end up squeezed so bad. And sure enough, they did and they got pinched and it was a mess and they still pulled it off, but they were way more stressed out than they needed to be because when they made the proposal, it was based on a six month timeline. And when they got the contract signed, they had three and a half months and couldn’t move until they got the contract signed because you never know, the company may bail.
So when you get started with a company, let that hiring person, whether it’s the owner or marketing director or whoever is in charge, if you’re not reporting directly to them or dealing with them on a day-to-day basis, say, hey, what I found is when I work with teams like yours, a lot of times the team views my requests as nice to haves, not deadlines or ultimatums. And so would you be up for letting them know, hey, this person needs responses within 24 hours, because I can’t guarantee any kind of consistent delivery if I’m not able to get feedback or copy reviews or input or graphics or whatever, and just start setting that management expectation.
This is what I call management by agreements. And with most professionals, this is really, really simple because nobody’s going to disagree with your requests. Nobody’s unreasonable. But by making that request, then if it’s not heated, if they’re not complied with, then you can go back sooner and say, hey, hiring person, you know, I’ve been having this issue. I’m not trying to get them in trouble, but it’s making delays. It’s putting things off. It’s slowing down. And I don’t want to have this come back to bite us. And I know that may not feel like a comfortable thing to go do to have that confrontation. But by having that little discussion early, that makes that confrontation, that resolution so much easier. And I think under management, I talked, I wrote a whole chapter on confrontation, because I realized like, that’s such a huge skill. And I was so bad at it. And my family, we were all so bad or just passive aggressive people pleasers. And Like there was just no modeling of healthy confrontation in my family. So I realized like the most successful people I knew were comfortable and good at confrontation. And so to me, the confrontation isn’t to beat somebody up or to get mad at them or Lord, anything over them. It’s just saying, Hey, there’s a dysfunction in our dynamic and I just want to heal it. I want to make it better. I want to resolve it. And so when you have that conversation upfront and then. are able to go back and say, hey, this wasn’t maintained. How do we make this right? And that’s it. And then people make it right.
Rob Marsh: I think even the word confrontation has that negative connotation to it. So we want to avoid it. And really what we’re trying to do here is just set healthy boundaries, get, like you said, the agreements so that we can move forward.
Josh Long: Yep. So that’s management. And it really is a four letter word for most small business owners. They think it means bureaucracy and or they’ll say micromanagement. And that’s not it at all. It’s just keeping communication priorities and organization together so that we can achieve something worthwhile.
Then from there, we get into systems. And this is where a lot of people, especially right now with AI, that they over focus. And I would say systems, and I wrote about it in the book, I titled the chapter, delegate, document, then automate, and really, it should be in parentheses, maybe, like, Automation is not guaranteed. Most people do not need automation in most systems. But you need to document it. And I said delegate at first because most entrepreneurs aren’t good at documenting. But if you’re a one-man person, one-man crew, then you’re going to have to document some things. And you may go to Upwork and find somebody that’s really good at documentation that you talk it out with and get them to just document it, create it, and then be done with it. But it really is just getting it out of your head and just getting it down on paper of how you do things.
The beauty is when you do this, especially with client fulfillment related items, you can then turn that into a little document to show clients, Hey, when you work with us, here’s what our process is going to be like. Here’s how we’re going to have a kickoff call. Here’s what our deliverables are going to be. And that becomes a great sales tool that helps that prospect see, oh, they’ve really got this thought thought out, they’re really professional, I have a lot of certainty, about 60% of the US population has a personality profile, where they crave certainty, they crave structure, they love rules, they love checklists. And so 60% chance that the person you’re dealing with wants to see that document, wants to see that checklist. And so if you create it of how we fulfill people, and then you’ve got it in a way that you can share it with prospects before they’re closing, you’re providing a whole lot of certainty in the process.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, this is one place where I think freelancers very quickly figure out, wait a second, if I don’t figure out a system here, there’s no way I can grow. Even getting six figures becomes a really difficult goal. If you’re making things up every single time you have to do something, you’re starting over and working from scratch. So this is one we talk about a lot. I’m a full believer. I’m terrible at systems myself. But I’m a big believer in having somebody on the team who can do it.
Josh Long: Yeah. And so from systems, then we move into vision and vision really comes down to what do you actually want out of this business, this career, this occupation that you’ve got. And I, I find a lot of business owners start with a vision of one thing, but after 10 or 15 years, they’re way over here, just grinding it out with no concept of, What is this doing to serve my needs? And I think entrepreneurship is the greatest gift to humanity. I think it has created everything that we love and live with and all the abundance that we have in our society. And I think the number one purpose of any business or occupation or career is to serve the lifestyle we want to create. And there’s a lot of other benefits we get from it from fulfillment and working out our gifts.
At the end of the day, if you’re not getting the lifestyle you want, you’re missing the boat because you’re creating your own reality. You create the rules, you create the rules of engagement, you create the rules of delivery. All of it is made up by you. You may say, Oh, well, this is my industry standard. I’m just following that. It’s like, well, people break it all the time. People create different rules of engagement all the time. And so if, if you’re not actively thinking about the lifestyle that you’re creating, then you’re missing the boat. And for me, as a freelancer, as a consultant, I always said I wanted to have as much time, freedom and flexibility as possible. I want as much autonomy as possible. And that’s just something that I value in my life. And we homeschool our kids. I work from home or around each other all the time. But we love it. And that was important to me. I want to be able to work wherever I want.
And so since 2011, I’ve been working from home. And we have a lot of flexibility. So we take road trips off peak a lot, because again, we’re homeschooling, so we can take our kids whenever we want. And we were able to move to Hawaii for two years from 2018 to 2020. Because we don’t have to worry about school districts or we could stay in Airbnbs and we could figure out until we had some stable housing. And so that’s something that’s really important to me. I told a buddy of mine, we’d both worked for Chet and he went on to work at a bunch of other companies and he was climbing the ladder and he would call me on his commutes in the morning in SoCal for an hour. And I said to him one day, I said, you know, I realized I’d rather make 50 grand a year and have all the time freedom in the world than make 500 grand a year and have no time. And in 2016, we were having dinner down in Orange County, and he said, you win. I’m like, what are you talking about? He says, I’m making 500 grand a year, and I’m miserable. And I said, well, thankfully, I’m making more than 50 grand a year. And he ended up quitting his job a couple weeks later, because he was commuting from Orange County to Dallas for two weeks a month, and just had no time. That’s miserable. So that’s the vision of like, what is it you actually want?
Rob Marsh: So, and is vision always about like the business owner or does it also go into like the rest of the business? If I am building a team, do I need a vision for what they’re doing as well in addition to, you know, what I’m building for myself?
Josh Long: I think that gets more into the strategy of the business, like early on, what are we building here? Why are we building it? What does the team look like? The vision in the book is really just for the owner, because good owners end up being too self-sacrificing, too altruistic, putting everybody else’s needs before their own, and never really think about, well, what am I actually getting out of this business?
Rob Marsh: And then we talked a little bit about mindset already, but is there anything you would add to it?
Josh Long: Yeah, I mean, mindset, like I said, is more valuable than all the others. And it’s a journey, right? It’s not something that’s fast. It’s not something that’s a quick fix. But to me, it’s where all the gold in the world lies of removing the limiting beliefs and the little emotional traumas, and you may have big emotional traumas. There may be things driving your operating system that you don’t know are there that are creating a lot of conflict. And so like some for me early on that I got through with coaching was, you Like, I grew up in a Christian church and a household, and I had a distorted view that money was like manna, like the Israelites in the desert, that it would come from the skies, and if they tried storing it up, it would spoil. Somehow, that was embedded in me. Even though logically, I was like, no, we need to save, you need to build wealth, blah, blah, blah. I did financial planning for people with my mortgage brokerage. But I had a belief that money was like manna.
So guess what? I never had savings. It would always show up the day before I’d need it. I’d have a $3,000 tax bill. Lo and behold, the day before it was due, money would show up. And it’s like, well, gosh, that’s a really stressful way to live. It’s a really dysfunctional belief. And I had to clear that and remove that. And lo and behold, savings starts building all of a sudden. So that’s the kind of stuff for me that has been so fascinating to watch in my own journey get worked out. And the beauty of working through your mindset stuff with your business is that it ripples out to every other part of your life, right? It doesn’t just have an effect on your ability to make money or your ability to lead, but it also makes all of your life more rich and more fulfilling because you’re not, you’re not fighting against yourself internally.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I want to come back to an idea that I think we talked about a little bit earlier, which is around mentorship and being ready or knowing that you’re ready for that coach, that person that you can connect with. I think a lot of times we don’t realize that we’re ready until well past when we actually needed to look for a mentor. We should have been working with, and this is especially true, I think, with mindset. but probably with all of the things that we’re talking about here. Have you, as you work with so many different businesses, do you have a framework for identifying like, okay, this is the problem that I’m starting to see show up now. I need to start looking for a mentor to help me with this, or where you can look at people and say, oh yeah, you’re definitely ready for this kind of a mentor. How do we know when we should be looking for that stuff?
Josh Long: Yeah, I think like I’m much more open to people finding their own way and not scaring everybody into, you need a mentor yesterday. But the thing that I will say that every client has that makes them a great spot for me is they’ve run into the same issue multiple times, haven’t been able to get past it, and now they’re really ready to get the help to solve it. As entrepreneurs, we have egos, right? We want to prove ourselves to the world. We’re always in that state of trying to show that we’re good enough and that we’re worthy in some capacity. Some of us have it more than others, but what that does is it causes us to hold on to our rightness, our belief that we know where we’re going, we know we’re on the right path.
If you’re in that state and you’re like, no, I’m going to prove it, I’m right, this is going to be it, then you’re definitely not in a spot to be coached because you’re just going to argue with that coach or you’re going to undermine their advice or you’re going to subconsciously push back against them. If you’re in a spot where you’re like, you know, I thought I knew what I was doing was going to work, but I keep bumping my head into the same wall. Maybe there is a better way. Like that’s the beginning of being ready for a coach.
And I got a good buddy. He had a software company that was developing in a language called Python and he started it around 2009 and had quick success. And, um, or maybe it was 2007, but he had quick success and he got up to about 1.8 million in about three years. And he thought he was the next Steve jobs. He just, there was no way to tell him otherwise. And I had, I had helped him. We’d become friends, but we just both butted heads. We were both young and dumb. And I left. And then a few years later, we reconciled, and he was still at 1.8 million. And he finally admitted, Oh, yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing. I need help. And so that’s the hard part of early success can give us a lot of false confidence. And early success is almost like a curse for some people, because that means that they’re just not going to be open to input, or they just think they’ve got it figured out. So I don’t know if that answers your question. I think it’s more of the mindset of, are you ready to change? And it’s not at whatever cost. It’s not like you’re going to become a completely different person, but you have to be in that coachable state and not feel like you’re just going to try to argue with somebody that’s coming in to give you guidance.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I agree. So I want to ask this because so many copywriters have dealt with a really rough last year or two where the economy’s been really different. I know you’ve seen this in other businesses too. So many people are struggling to find clients. Obviously, there are lots of different things that can get in the way of that positioning, outreach, all kinds of stuff. But just real broadly, I’d love your advice. If I’m struggling in business to find clients, what are the two or three things that I should be doing to make it more or make it easier for clients to find me or for me to be able to connect with those that I need to connect with?
Josh Long: Yeah, so it shifted. The market has been shifting for a while. 2022 is a real watershed. that when they started raising interest rates in March of 22, but then by the end of 22, around October, when the FTX crisis happened, and then a bunch of layoffs at big tech companies started happening. I mean, Amazon froze budgets. I was dealing with a division of Amazon at that time for a client. Like they just came back and said, budgets are frozen. And so last year, in early 2023, with this one client, they were working with big companies. And I said, you got to change your target audience of who you’re going after.
Now, this isn’t the full advice, but this shows the shift that I’ve been seeing. And I said, you guys are going after all these tech companies. And like, I said, go after basic companies like Procter and Gamble, or 3M, stable companies. And I ended up procuring a relationship with Nestle with them, like, just giant companies that are stable, not going anywhere. The next day, Silicon Valley Bank went under. Silicon Valley Bank was a prospect of theirs I spoke to in November of 22. So I was like, I had no idea that I was that on point that the market was shifting that hard for them. But what happened through the first half of 2023, in just about all industries was the shockwave went through the market and a lot of prospects just sat and they got skittish and they got hesitant.
And so the advice I’ve been telling everybody since then is you have to completely change your offers, not that you no longer are a copywriter, just change the packages. Start playing with smaller packages, foot-in-the-door type offers, things that allow you to earn trust and build a relationship because the market is skittish and people are knowing they need to just sit on cash and they need to improve their cash reserves and they need to improve their cash positions. And so that’s a hard thing because in the small business world, the first expense that is cut when an entrepreneur feels tight is marketing. It’s the stupidest thing. It makes no sense. You can’t, you can’t logic them out of this. It’s just a protection mechanism. It’s like, it’s like marketing is their limbs and everything else is their torso. And they just go like this to protect themselves. They don’t want to get hit. They don’t want to get stabbed, whatever. They don’t want to bleed out.
So then, you have to make smaller and easier, foot-in-the-door offers, I call them, things that are like, hey, you know what? Let me go through your email list and let me see what your email looks like and what your open rates are. Let’s do three emails. I’ll do them for $500 or $1,000. Let’s see if I can increase your open rates. Let’s experiment with that. um and and then you’re they’re like oh wow that worked really well well what else can you do right like that’s the goal of trying to um get that foot in the door and so i would go back to everybody you’ve given a proposal to everybody you’ve worked with over the last two to three years and just go back and start making a new offer of like hey um i know things are tight i know i know things can feel skittish i’d love to come in and really make it easy for you to get a quick result and see if that works. How does that resonate, Rob?
Rob Marsh: It definitely resonates. It also couples really well with what you were saying earlier about making things easier for clients. You know, if you are able to take on, you know, managing that email list so that you’re taking something off, off of their plate, or you’re able to take something and make something else easy for them. Now there’s a reason to keep you around, right? You’re, you’re adding value and helping them find time so that they can, you know, fulfill the vision, all that stuff.
Josh Long: I’ve got a client, she’s got a great company, and she’s been doing Facebook ads and email management. And she just told me the other day, she’s like, and she’s like a million and a half pushing 2 million. And she’s like, I think I’m just going to stop email marketing and just focus on Facebook ads because they’re working so well. And I’m like, no, just go find a copywriter that’s going to manage your email list. Like, but she just was so overwhelmed and hadn’t thought about it. And she’s just coming out of like stages of overwhelm. Um, and she told me the other day, she’s like, yep, I found a copywriter. It’s been going great. Thanks. That was the right advice. So you guys as copywriters can look for those situations of where’s the, where’s the heavy lifting that it’s getting neglected or somebody is resenting it, that I can come in and just take that over and maybe expands your scope a little bit beyond what you’re used to. Um, but it adds a ton of value and then you’re embedded and you’re not, you’re not going to go anywhere. You’ve got more stable client relationships.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, 100%. Okay, Josh, I really appreciate the hour you spent chatting. You know I’m a fan of the book, but if anybody is new to you, your world, the Breakthrough Bottleneck world, where should they go to find out more, get their hands on the book?
Josh Long: Yeah. So the book’s available everywhere. You can get it on Kindle, Amazon, audible. I did the audible for it a few years ago. Some guys, I was at a conference speaking and they’re like, we only listen to audiobooks cause they’re all out in the field. They’ve got home service businesses. I was like, Oh, you’re the first guys that are actually successful business owners that tell me they only listen to books. So I got it done.
But bottleneck breakthrough.com is my site. I’ve got great resources there. I’ve got a new guide I just put together on, um, how to double your close rate and using some cool tools that I like that really help filter and make your prospecting and your conversations with prospects a lot easier.
So you can get that at bottleneckbreakthrough.com. And I’m on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter.
I need to build out my Twitter more. Um, I’m enjoying that more and more, over the last year as it’s been less censored. But yeah, those are the great places to find me. Feel free to connect with me on any of those platforms and, um, feel free to reach out if you need some, some kind of guidance or some feedback on the book that you need more clarity on.
I think it was Juliet. I can’t remember. Is it Peavy? Is that her last name? Yeah. So she was the one that kind of gave it away that you guys were giving my book away on LinkedIn. So she had tagged me and we’ve had a number of great conversations on LinkedIn. So yeah, I’m stoked, Rob, that the book’s been valuable for you guys.
Rob Marsh: It’s funny, this is not the first book that we’ve given away, but it’s easily the one that’s talked about the most. And there’s a couple that really resonate, but this one I think has been number one. I mean, again, when I found it, I went through it, I’m like, every chapter, I’m like, oh, there’s yet another thing that I can be working on and improving. And even as I was prepping just to chat this morning, looking at it, I’m like, ah, I need to go through this again.
Josh Long: Thanks. That was my goal. I always said most books aren’t worth reading, fewer worth finishing. And the ones that are worth finishing, like I want them to get to manual level status, like where you pull them out every year or two. And that was the goal when I wrote the book was that it would be useful for small business owners to just go back to over and over and get something new from it and be implementable forever.
Rob Marsh: I think it’s there. Definitely belongs in every copywriter, every freelancer, contract worker. If you’re working on your own, it’s definitely a great resource to have. So thanks. Thanks, Josh, for your time.
Josh Long: Thanks, man. This is so fun.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of my interview with Josh Long. Before I go any farther, as a business owner, you really should have his book, Bottleneck Breakthrough, on your shelf. You’re going to turn to it again and again as you hit different bottlenecks and challenges in your business. Just go ahead and get that now. We’ll link to it in the show notes, but of course you can find it wherever books are sold. I want to echo an idea or two that Josh shared as we talked.
Right there at the end, as we wrapped, Josh was talking about what he’s seen take place over the last couple of years in the economy and with business spending and marketing spending. I think he hits the bullseye with his analysis. Companies and people are gun shy when it comes to spending and businesses are especially hesitant to spend on marketing. And that trickles down to copywriters and to content and the kind of work that we do. So coming up with new ways to make your offers easier to try, easier to say yes to, that’s exactly the right strategy. If you struggle to find clients, you’re going to want to give this tactic a try. Make your offer smaller, make the value more obvious, give your clients a better experience, and then go back to them for more and more.
Near the beginning of the interview, Josh mentioned the two kinds of entrepreneurs, those that jump right in and figure things out and those who have a mentor for a while and grow their skills and connections with the help of others before jumping in to start their business. I agree that both paths are viable. But given all we’ve said today about mentors, how they help, even if you’re in the jump in and figure it out path, a mentor can still help make things easier.
You may need to stumble or hit a bottleneck before you’re ready to ask for help, but you don’t have to wait for that.
That’s why we created the Copywriter Underground and the other programs that we offer. We’re here to help with mentorship when you need it. But like Josh said, we’re not trying to force anyone in. If you’re not ready, it’s not going to do you much good anyway. But if you are ready, if you are one of those people who doesn’t want to go it alone or would like that expert help, check out thecopyrighterclub.com/TCU.
That’s definitely for you. I want to thank Josh again for joining us to chat about his business and about his book. I highly recommend you follow him wherever you find yourself online, whether that’s on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you want to look him up, bottleneckbreakthrough.com. Josh is just someone who’s worth following and seeing how he thinks about business and the challenges we face.
Success in business isn’t easy. But finding success requires you to do things you may not love—like creating relationships with potential customers daily, working on your business (not your client’s) every day, or even going all in on a daily writing habit. In the 383rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob spoke with copyhackers Joanna Wiebe who says these (and several other daily activities) are her non-negotiables. They happen every day—no matter what. If creating your own daily non-negotiable is all you get out of this episode, it will be well worth your time, but there is so much more. So check it out…
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: It’s been more than seven years since we last chatted with today’s guest on the podcast. In the meantime, she just keeps growing her business. This time around we asked her about the ins and outs of working with family members, building authority, and doing what she calls the daily non-negotiables.
Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and founder of CopyHackers Joanna Wiebe.
Many of you know that Kira and I met in one of Jo’s programs. So we owe a lot to her. But just as importantly, Joanna is one of those online personalities who is just plain generous with her help and advice. And that’s likely a big part of why she’s been so successful.
As usual, we think you’re going to want to stick around for this one.
But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve told you about the benefits you get as a member. We’ve been working hard on how to make The Underground even more useful and helpful to the copywriters and content writers who are members… if you listened to last week’s episode with Csaba Borzasi, you heard him mention the scorecard he uses to close 100% of his prospects on sales calls. We didn’t have a lot of time to discuss what the scorecard includes or how he uses it, but Csaba agreed to share all of that with the members of The Copywriter Underground. That presentation happens later this week and will be available in the Underground for a limited time. If you’d like to learn how to close 100% of your prospects on sales calls—by the way, that’s not a guarantee, but you will see how Csaba does it—you need to be IN the copywriter underground, which you can do by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And Csaba’s presentation isn’t the only upcoming exclusive we’ll be adding in the underground. We’ll have more to tell you about in the coming weeks. thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
Now to our interview with Jo…
Kira Hug: All right, I’m gonna kick this off. You know, we’re kicking off 2024, feeling mostly good so far, right? But when we look back at 2023, it’s hard to not avoid the mammoth changes that took place in the writing space and the impact on the writers that we all know, and how difficult it was for many writers. Not all writers, some writers had great years, but for many, they struggled. And so, I would love to hear from you and your perspective on just like what are these shifts that you saw and what is working today that we should pay attention to in the writers that are more successful?
Joanna Wiebe: Yeah.
Rob Marsh: That’ll only take an hour to answer.
Kira Hug: I can’t ask that in the last 10 minutes.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, we’ll just let you go for an hour. We’ll end the episode and we’ll just have you come back another time for everybody else’s questions.
Kira Hug: We have you for the next four hours, right?
Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I want to hear what y’all have to say about this too. I can say my take. I know 2023 started off super scary for everybody, right? I mean, 2022, November, December was when people started flipping because of chat GPT. What was so funny, wasn’t it funny? I was watching, I think it was John Oliver, his HBO show he does once a Sunday, whatever it’s called. And they were talking about AI. And they were cutting to clips of this expert on AI who was saying what was going to change. And he’s like, so this will impact copywriters and lawyers. And the second he said it, I was like, OK, wait. Suddenly, people know what copywriting is?
For all of these years, no one’s had a clue what we do. And suddenly, it’s all like, everybody knows what we do. And this is going to be replaced. So I was annoyed by that. But I think that kind of set the tone, like hearing those sorts of things set the tone for a lot of people. And I get it. It was like, It was a get on board, you know, befriend the bear before it eats you and then be a slave to the bear, which is scary and no one wants to do that. Writers already feel so insecure. Everybody already thought they could do our job. So to have this extra layer of like, oh, no, really, you don’t have a job anymore. I know it turned off a lot of people who were already kind of spazzing because COVID had hurt everybody so badly, right? Like you’re in mental recovery from COVID, then this news that your job is being taken away. And then everybody who’s been working for software companies, sees all of those layoffs.
So yeah, super tough year. And I think that it’s one of those years for me where I’m like, yeah, some people didn’t make it through. And God bless them and everybody who did make it through God bless us all. Because it’s tough. It’s obviously a tough go like that, simplifying it dramatically. The people who stayed are what I’m seeing at least are the people who’ve stayed and been successful about it. We’re never doing the work that AI does. Anyway, they like, and by that, I don’t I mean, I think what we’ve seen is AI can take your research and help you analyze it. So that’s good using it as an assistant, which we’ve all heard, but like, so few people actually do, you know, use chat GPT as their or whatever tool, you can say Jasper, but everybody just uses chat GPT. So yeah, it’s those who are able to, use it to make their work better and not be scared or intimidated by it. But that was really hard to come by, right? Like even saying that now, I know people are going to hear that and go like, sure. Like, oh, brother, it’s so easy for you to say, just use it. But what if I’m a junior copywriter? Like a junior copywriter who doesn’t know how to do what even chat GPT can do.
So those are the ones who, it’s hard to admit it, but if you were junior and you didn’t take this job very seriously, if you conflate content and copy, you probably had a really hard year and were thinking about leaving or you left. And so the ones that fit the question are like, what’s working for those who stuck it out and are surviving now and are seeing their businesses grow. Like the people I’m seeing businesses, freelancing services, taking off in ways that we didn’t before and so like it’s just to me it’s like it’s the staying power one take your craft seriously so seriously that it’s a no-brainer that I should hire you even if you use AI even if my company uses AI anybody who uses AI knows like wait is this good? Am I allowed to use this? Is this accurate? Is this even right? So if you took your job seriously and you took AI, seriously, not as a threat, but as an opportunity, and you stayed the course, those seem to be the people who are succeeding.
I know it feels like a place of privilege to say that, right? Like, how do you stay the course if you’re not making money? How do you take the job seriously if you’re still really new at learning it, and juniors aren’t getting the same level of employment that more strategic, senior, conversion focused, or even just brand and creative and like big picture thinking focused copywriters are able to make. But I would say those things. Take the job seriously. Take AI seriously. Stick around. That’s what I saw working.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s all smart. And I’m not disagreeing with you at all, but to me, AI feels like it was a smaller threat than the economy overall, especially in the SaaS and tech space where there were so many layoffs. There were so many changes in marketing budgets. And while, of course, AI has had an impact just like you described, I think that AI is getting blamed for a lot of the other stuff that’s happening in marketing.
The other thing, and we haven’t necessarily talked about this, but something that’s happened over the last year, I’m sure you’ve seen it—everybody I know has seen it—our inboxes are flooded with the offers, I can find you 30 different potential calls… clients… whatever. I’ve helped somebody add $40,000 a month to their job. And because that outreach thing has happened (and a big part of that is AI too) I think the way that we have traditionally done outreach and found clients and direct messaged, that kind of stuff has slowed way down as impactful as well. And so it feels like, it’s AI’s fault, but a lot of it’s just the economy and the way people are marketing, too. I don’t know. We could have an argument about this.
Kira Hug: Let’s just blame AI. Let’s just blame it. Use AI as a punching bag. It’s more fun.
Joanna Wiebe: I like having a villain. A villain is good and identifiable. Yes. So I hear you. So for me, the economy, yes, it’s been hurting a lot of people. Then there’s the other side of like, you know, what’s really going on with layoffs? Is it just like a really good chance to scale back on, you know, there’s an NPR show about this, people talk about this, the possibility that the layoffs are like, well, I have a bloated team, and it’s hard for me to get rid of them. But if the economy is bad, and if Salesforce just laid off 10% of their staff, then I can lay off 10% of mine too. And, and it’s not like, it’s not that it’s not real, because the economy is, it’s hard, right? You’re, there’s not enough money out there for the things that we used to have a lot of money for.
What I have seen as a trigger for people reaching out to me for training or for copy chiefing for their team, like come in on retainer or, hey, I need a project done. The trigger is often when a person joins the company as VP of marketing or CMO. So it’s a new hire at an organization where they’re up at a new tier for their role. They look around their team and go, nobody has any copywriting expertise here. So they have this new team, new goals, their own pressure to perform in a bad economy. And they’re reaching out to say, hey, how do you get, how can you help me with my team? Or can you come write this thing for me?
So for me, that trigger hasn’t gone away. People are still going into new roles. We’re still getting new VPs marketing. new product marketing leads, people who have moved up through the ranks, are still reaching out. So I think if your job has been, hey, I’m going to do cold outreach to get clients or I’m going to reach out on LinkedIn or whatever that is, I mean, I’ve never been a fan of that. I’ve always been like, no, people should reach out to you. So to get them to reach out to you, you are an authority.
So a VP of marketing has to know your name in some way. And people get really freaked out about that. How do I become an authority, though? And it’s like, what are you doing right now? What are you doing at this exact moment right now? They’re complaining. Well, how about instead of that, you outline the book? Because you can self-publish a book today. April Dunford self-published, obviously awesome, and has built a multimillion dollar consulting business off this. It doesn’t have to be as hard as you think. And it might be, this is going to be annoying to a lot of people to hear, but it might be kind of the best time ever to put your authority on the page, to use AI to help you generate an outline for this book you’re going to write. write the book, self-publish it, become an authority in this space, instead of wondering, where did all the clients go? Because there are new VPs of marketing who do look around and have teams that need help. And they’re like, we need our onboarding emails done right now. We needed them yesterday.
We’ve had 15-year-old onboarding emails going out. These are real things that are constantly happening. But they’re not going to reach out to you if they don’t know who you are. And they’re not going to answer your cold outreach thing. Because again, like you said, Rob, they’re already flooded with crappy stuff in their inbox. So the answer sadly feels like it’s the same answer as ever. Make people come to you by being an authority, an unreplaceable, irreplaceable authority on X thing in copywriting. You know? Like, Summer had her best year ever last year, trying nothing. She did nothing. But Summer’s the email person now, and so people line up to work with her. Is that too simplified? I always feel like I’m oversimplifying, but it really does always come down to just write a book, just write a stinking book already.
Kira Hug: I think writing a book has been on my list for multiple years, and I’ve shared it on this podcast, and I fail every year. And I’m like, this is the year. But for some people who are like, cool, I’m going to write that book. But in the meantime, I need clients today. What could I do to build my authority this month that I can ship this month that’s working today that maybe wasn’t working a year ago?
Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, do a hard thing. So I have in my calendar every morning from 9 to 10, I have a block that says do hard things you hate doing and some days I delete that block but other days I do the hard thing I hate doing. I’m going to tell you I was in a session, I’m in this big group coaching thing with Dan Martell. He was on a call. This is a really cool moment. We were having this group call, people ask questions, but in order to ask a question, you have to, and I’ve applied this in our Copy School Professional. So anybody who’s in copy school pro and listening, they’re like, you stole that from Dan. Yes. I stole this from Dan. In order to ask a question, you have to say, yes, I’ve been doing my five daily non-negotiables. Then you have to share the money. When five daily non-negotiables include opens—you have to reach out to five people a day to open a conversation that you can then close as a sale.
So people put up their hands and ask a question, say, yes, I’m doing the five daily non-negotiables. And then their question is, where do I get clients? And Dan says, I thought you were doing your five daily non-negotiables. People like, yeah, well, kind of. And he was getting angry on the call. He was getting visibly annoyed by everybody. And then one person, God bless her, put up her hand and had the same question. I’m struggling to get clients. Something like she was an accountant for construction companies or something like that. And Dan’s like, what did you do today? Who did you call today? And she’s like, what do you mean, who did I call?
He’s mad. He’s swearing. Everybody is so feeling so awkward for her. I’m like, she’s going to cry. She’s probably going to cry. She’s being sworn at with love in front of 300 people. And so Dan says, okay, give me the name of the person you want to reach out to, what company they’re at, and where they are. And she’s stammering. And then she says a name and the company they’re at, and they’re in Texas or something. Dan Googles it, picks up his phone, calls this person in front of everybody. He is going to make a cold call to this person in front of us, and we’re all like, What? Like, chat’s going wild. This is crazy that Dan is doing this very hard thing. He’s going to cold call for a company that’s not even his just to show that this is a hard thing that you have to do. And if you actually want to get ahead, you have to do these very hard things. Now, It went to voicemail. We were all very upset about this.
Kira Hug: Because nobody answers their phone.
Joanna Wiebe: And Dan was like, hire an assistant so that you don’t miss a potential sales call, dude from Texas. But it was at that moment, I had brand new respect for Dan. And two, a hard reality hit that we never do the hard things. We’re not going around doing hard things we’re doing. one somewhat hard thing every so often. But this is like, pick up the phone and call somebody. What if you called the CMO of Bitly? You call the CMO of Bitly, somehow find this person’s phone number. You call them and say, I think you need new emails. I want to do it for you. Do a proper sales call, though, like pitch.
Nobody else is calling. Like you’ll be the one person who’s picking up the phone and calling. You could actually land something because most people want a hustler. Most people want someone who’s going to do hard work. Then I will pay you money to do hard work. Companies still have budget to spend on us. They’re still, they have things they’re trying to get done. No one in-house, like anybody who’s a copywriter and has worked with people who are in-house, Love y’all, but there is some lacking skill out there in-house. There are full marketing teams who are being forced to write their own copy, who don’t know what they’re doing, who Google it to try to get an answer. They would love you to come in and help. Why don’t you pick up the phone? If it’s not working, try that. And if your answer is some excuse, You have to realize that it’s on you now. The results are on you. We can tell you what to do. You can know that you have to do it, but you actually have to do it. It’s hard.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. This is a favorite theme of mine. When I email about this particular thing, you’ve got to do the hard work, I get more responses back from people who say, thanks for the kick in the butt. Thank you. I needed to hear that. I’m not sure that it results in people doing the hard things, but they need to get real into it. And in a world where everybody’s saying, hey, it’s easy to add $10,000 to your monthly billings every month or whatever, it’s actually not true. Nothing that brings in money is easy. Literally nothing bringing in money is easy. But being told that you got to do it, is. So anyway, my question is, Jo, what are the five hard things you’re doing every day?
Kira Hug: Yes, I was gonna ask that.
Joanna Wiebe: Yes, I have my five daily non-negotiables and they are, for me, cause I did a dump of 25 things that I’ve been putting off doing, just as fast as I could. And then copy school professionals, students did the same thing too, to find their five daily non-negotiables. And then I categorize them in what turned out to be groups.
Dan’s non-negotiables include, you have to sweat for an hour every day. That didn’t come up as something that I need to work on because I have my own practice where I do yoga and I do like activities so I didn’t find that that was a thing that was lacking for me. The things that came up for me were around evergreen funnels that I’ve been putting off doing or optimizing. My team, do they know that they’re beloved and respected? Are they hearing good things from me and then getting more out there for content? So my five daily non-negotiables are put in my calendar to review at the end of every day if I haven’t already done them because it is a practice, it’s a habit.
Number one, comment on my daily funnel performance in Slack. So how is the freelancing school funnel doing? How is copy school doing? And how is copy school pro doing? I suck at this one, but because I feel like I’m just like throwing stuff at my team, so I have to get better at how to do that. But again, telling my team what that performance is and having a comment about it. Number two, add three short videos to our social Dropbox. That’s where my team, Nicole and Mike, then take those videos and do stuff with them. Number three, connect personally with a team member or contractor. just some quick text or outreach or something that’s just like connecting us. Number four, DM 10 followers on Instagram. I also suck at that one, but you know, I get three or five out. And number five is to add 100 words to my book project, which I am actually good at. Those are my five. Y’all need five. What would be your five?
Kira Hug: I do like a big one—hard thing—every week. That’s my goal. I respect the fact that you’re like busting out five every day. For me, it’s like, what is the big one this week? The thing that I put off for months or years and doing that. So it is something I’ve given a lot more thought recently. Like, what is that uncomfortable, deeply uncomfortable thing? Calling people, I don’t know. As a millennial, we don’t call people. So this is deeply uncomfortable. Gen X, Rob, I know you’re more comfortable with phone calls. My husband is more comfortable with phone calls. He’s like, I don’t get why you can’t just call people. So that’s something I need to work on.
Rob Marsh: If I had a dollar for every time I said that to one of my kids, I would not have to work ever again in my life. They won’t even call me. It’s ridiculous. I’ve never thought through this process, applying it to the business. Although I’m going to once we hang up, I’m going to start making a list. But I do have several hard things or non-negotiables I do. Exercise is a big one. I do it between an hour and an hour and a half a day. I do take off a day every week for rest or whatever. Reading. I’ve got time carved out—it’s basically that 75 hard thing where you read at least 10 pages a day in a book that is not fiction. It’s not a story. It’s something to either build my skills, build my knowledge, something like that. So that’s another piece. I have a spiritual practice that happens every day as well. So there’s that kind of stuff. But thinking about evergreen funnels, thinking about programs that need to be updated, or fixed. I need a list for that. These are the top 10 hard things that are next, where I just, every day I have to do one. I think that would, that would help for sure.
Kira Hug: Yeah, the video content to like, that’s, I mean, to me is such a pain to like, articulate those ideas into place, record it. And so I love that you have how many at one a day, three a day. Geez.
Joanna Wiebe: All right, Dan, I’m just gonna talk a lot about Dan Martell today, because he’s killing it. For real, though, he has one person who just follows him around with the camera.
Kira Hug: Oh, like Gary Vee.
Joanna Wiebe: Is that what Gary Vee does? It’s banal. Yes.
Rob Marsh: Because otherwise, how do you produce that much content? You can’t.
Joanna Wiebe: Every single thing he says becomes content. Everything. Oh my gosh. Wacko, right? Yeah. And these are those roles that don’t cost that much. You don’t need a professional videographer. They need to hold their iPhone up in front of you. And maybe you have one of the little mics that you put on your lapel. That’s it. You can get your nephew to follow you around. Whatever, right?
Kira Hug: One of your kids could follow you around.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, the last thing they want to do is listen to me more. That doesn’t work. When your kids get older, you’ll understand, Kyra. Your kids still like you. That’s the last thing 20-somethings want to do is hear from their dad.
Kira Hug: Okay, so I want to go back to It sounds like I’m being such a downer and I’m not trying to but I’m just trying to keep it real. And so I’m curious about a struggle you had over the last six months. Like as we’re all struggling with many different things What was something specific that you were working through and how did you work through it if you worked?
Joanna Wiebe: Oh yeah. Oh gosh. Many. So, lots of struggles. So one thing was about two years ago, I had a team member quit via a lawyer. So I had to deal with this claim that lawyers then dragged out and it was really getting to me. Like it was. just bad feelings all the time. Like, you know, when you’re getting ready in the morning or those moments when you have time alone and when you’re alone, your brain goes to, it would, sometimes it goes to productive things. Um, it wouldn’t, it would only go to this person and this fricking, what if this turns into like a proper fricking lawsuit?
Then I have to go to court and I’m gathering evidence and stuff. I’m like, this is bull. I don’t want this. And so I was so stressed about it. I actually had, at one point I had a FedEx delivery come to my door. And I had so much anxiety over having this person quit by a lawyer that I thought somebody else was quitting via a lawyer as well. And I was like being served. And so it but it wasn’t it was just like it was something I think it was my banker sent me something by FedEx. And I immediately booked a therapy session after that. I was like, hmm, I have issues. Something’s happened. And so, yeah, my therapist was like, it’s probably a form of PTSD. Don’t worry. A lot of people get PTSD for lots of things.
We had to work through that for a year before I finally said to this one lawyer I was working with, like, can we just try settling with this person? Like, it’s a thing that we haven’t tried. And I would like this to go away. Like, at this point, I would pay anything for this to just go away. Because when I should be thinking about business and opportunities, I’m thinking about this. And so then we did. And like, it was like, between us, even if this person’s listening, it was such a small amount of money for all of the pain that I had been through. So I was like, now I’m mad at lawyers, you ass, putting me through this when it could have just been solved with here. Yeah. So the resolution was really quite simple, but the, the hassle of it, the mental load of that, I know it’s not, if you don’t have a team, it’s not relatable, but think about these surprises.
It could be like a tax bill that comes out of nowhere where you’re like, where are we going to get that money from? Um, or whatever it is. But it was like this, and it just weighed on me. And meanwhile, my team is like, get me a fun video. I don’t have a fun video in me. I’m not built for this right now, but you have to keep putting on a face and continuing to show up for work, doing things you can’t just hide under your bed and wish life would be easy. You have to keep going and doing the thing. And so that was, that was a big, that was a big problem. Thank God the business was going well and I didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing. But then there’s the additional burden of, you know, like we have people in freelancing school and you’re thinking like, Gosh, it’s hard for everybody out there now. And I realize I’m not showing up as well as I could because I’m stressing. So I’m not putting things out there that could help students and non-students actually get ahead of this really difficult time in a copywriter’s life. So it was crappy. That was what I went through. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: I’m glad you shared that. I think this, I mean, obviously it’s maybe not as big as having an attorney reach out, but stuff like this happens for all of us, like even just plain old burnout. You know, if you are tired and exhausted from doing the work for so long and struggling to try to make it, it does get really hard to show up. A copywriter reached out to me last week. Her apartment had been broken into. And, you know, like that kind of a thing, just it threw her off of her game. I was honored that she reached out and just like, you know, help, you know, help me think through this. You know, what should I do? She would even ask for my advice on that. It was awesome. But this stuff happens to us. It helps, I think, if we have a game plan. It’s like, okay, what if everything goes wrong? Like, what would I do? But it’s hard to predict so much of this stuff. And having to show up and be you know, be Joanna, be Rob or Kira or whatever for your clients for anybody else who’s trusting you to do stuff. It’s freaking hard.
Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, it is. And that’s where I think it breaks a lot of people because it’s so hard. And you’re like, well, I just actually do like for me to get through this, I need to stay in bed for a while or I need to go get away and clear my head in the mountains and things that like And that also requires money. So there’s a level of privilege required in order to take care of yourself when that’s what you need most. So it’s, yeah, it’s no joke, the things that people are going through and how difficult it really, really is to get through them. Yeah, this is a very depressing topic, Kira. Thank you for bringing that up.
Kira Hug: I’m really good at that. It’s a gift. We’ll shift to something lighter. As things have shifted in our space, the copywriting space, how do you spot, identify opportunities within your business to direct your team, saying this is worth my time, this is worth the team’s time to shift the business and focus here? How do you think about that and approach it?
Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, that’s a great question. When I think about the shifts that my team has made, two big ones are way more in social media. Uh, so we’ve shifted away from writing long content outside of our like AI prompts section on our site. That’s our only like long content that we write now. Um, and now it’s more social media. So I have one person who’s in charge of Instagram, one person who’s in charge of YouTube. And then, um, shoot there was something else that I had and oh yeah and now many chat as a new like sort of direct selling opportunity uh with dms and sms and whatsapp and all that stuff but that’s really brand new but when I think about like where those shifts came from uh I was away on a retreat um So it’s like the people you surround yourself with are often the people who will give you what you need for what’s next. And sometimes without even meaning to.
So I was away on a retreat with a few of my friends in this thing called Shine Crew, which is like women building women up, lifting each other up instead of pushing each other down, which is how most are conditioned, sadly. So this lifting each other up thing, we went away for this retreat. And I was there. I was talking with Gia from Forget the Funnel. She was on this retreat. Um, and she was like, Joe, something like Joe, you have no social game. And I was like, what? I didn’t know I had to. And she’s like, you need to be on social. And I was like, Oh, okay. And she said it was such a passing thing. Like we were just on a retreat again together in January. And I was like, so I took your. advice, your little snide comment, seriously. And now I’ve got these people on social media. And she was like, what did I say?
She had no recollection that she’d even told me to do this. But the point is, it was good advice. I was like, you’re actually right. We’ve put so much into building our email list and doing stuff that’s like that sort of direct marketing. But when you combine what’s going on like social and all of the tools now to turn social into more of a direct channel as well, which is kind of interesting. So one part it’s being told by people to get your butt in gear, get on those spaces where everybody else is. But then the other one was another Dan Martell. Buy the book, evidently. Buy back your time if you’re listening to this. Go do that. But Dan uses ManyChat for selling people into his coaching program. So if you follow him on Instagram and he opens a conversation with you, and then it turns into, I think, an automation through ManyChat. And then, and you can see this just by following Dan and then see what happens. And then it turns into, it switches over to a closer. So, and this is all set up in Manychat, you have to manually open, like you have to follow some, like when someone follows you on Instagram, you then have to DM them manually to get them started. And once they reply, then Manychat can take over for a bit, which is cool. So those are like the shifts that I’m making, but if I wasn’t in Shine Crew, I wouldn’t really be thinking about this. my social presence being non-existent.
And if I wasn’t in Dan’s training, I wouldn’t know anything about ManyChat either. So to me, it comes back to, are you in a mastermind? Are you in a group where other people are sharing great ideas? And it’s really sad because the number of people who go into programs like your programs and like freelancing school, they tend to leave when things get hard and that’s the moment you should be staying like that’s when you need us most when things are easy it’s really nice to add fuel to the fire but Freelancers, consultants, people who are trying to grow their online business. There’s so much to do. There’s so much out there. You could do so many things wrong or just avoid things. You’ve got to surround yourself with people that are like trying to up level and like new levels, new devils, right? So as you get to that new level, you have to then understand how to deal with the new devil there. But if you’re not around people, you don’t know that. And so you just kind of sit there. point answer, long answer to your question, Kara, is those are the things that we’re working on that are different. And they came about because people basically said, do it this way. And so now we are.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah, we’re big believers in the whole mastermind thing. I know you are. You come home from a mastermind, and you’ve got so many ideas, it’s almost hard to execute on all of the stuff, which that’s maybe the downside of the mastermind is that there’s so many good ideas. I have a very different question for you, Joanna. So we talked to you last on the podcast almost seven years ago. It doesn’t feel like it was seven years because you’ve spoken at our events. We’ve had you at other places, but literally the last time you were on the podcast was episode 14, and that was recorded over seven years ago. So since then, I mean, obviously you were doing this for a while before then. You’ve been doing this ever since. What are you bored of talking about? The question you never want to be asked again, or the thing that you never want to have to say again, what is that?
Joanna Wiebe: How do I do research if I don’t have customers? How do I find new clients if I don’t have results?
Rob Marsh: Okay, and what are the answers?
Kira Hug: That’s how we’ll wrap this conversation.
Joanna Wiebe: Do you actually want to know the answers to them?
Rob Marsh: No, I don’t. I’m not going to make you talk about it. You’ve talked about them so many times. There are no easy answers.
Kira Hug: Yes. Okay. So in your company today, when you look at your website, it looks like you have a team. It looks like a growing team. I noticed some other family members. Yes. So I guess there’s a couple of questions here. What does your team look like today? What is the role you’re playing? And then I’m going to ask about working with family.
Rob Marsh: So I’m going to like, monopolize the questions for me. I’m just going to monopolize. I’ll just be quiet while Kira finishes her question.
Kira Hug: Rob, just let me finish this. I got it.
Joanna Wiebe: Okay. My team today is… we made a switch to a lot of contractors. So we had people, because we were doing so many launches, we had people on full time, but then between launches, I needed a lot of downtime between them. So it was just like twiddle your thumbs a little bit. So we moved to contractors. So some of the team members that we had. I just had a talk with them, like, are you down to move into a contract role? It doesn’t make sense for you to be here full time. And they said, yes. So we moved from having an in-house email marketer to a contractor now that we work with. And then, and that’s really good for his life because he’s got a baby and all sorts of things. And his wife is very busy with her job, her business. So we moved that, we moved our media buyer to a contract as well, which is fantastic. So yeah, a lot of those, there’s others that will come up.
We had Jess Noel working on publishing for a little over a year on contract. She was great. Ghostwriters, of course, are on contract too. All of the people who are filling our AI prompts section are just freelancers. who we work with on an ongoing basis. So a lot of contractors involved. The core team is, as you said, I have two family members in there, as well as three other full-timers. So we’re a team of six full-time right now. We’re having an onsite, because we’re always off site but we have an Edmonton office so we’re having an onsite meeting on next Monday and Tuesday, where we’ll be talking about some roles that we might need to open one of those roles is likely. one or two people in charge of team sales, because we’re seeing team sales really kind of escalate. There’s a lot more demand there than there was even two years ago. So that’s something that we’ll have to explore. But I’ll be working with my team to figure out if that’s the thing worth exploring. So the team that we have, um, my sister, so we think of our funnel as like a rectangle that’s horizontal. So it’s not a funnel at all. Because that’s upside down like that.
We’re like, okay, if there’s a customer journey here, let’s make it a nice big rectangle. Everybody comes in and goes out and stays up on the other side. Um, so the front, before you become a customer, Paul manages that Paul’s my brother. Um, and he’s been working for me for four or five years for a long, long time. So he manages the front and that includes, we’ve got Lindsay, she does support and she also is taking over our mini chat because support takes like two hours a day, but we need somebody always available. So that’s like someone who makes sense to have on full time for us at least. So she’s taken over Manychat learning to really own that. And then Nicole and Mike, Mike runs YouTube. He’s responsible for growing our channel from I think 10,000 people right now to 100,000 by the end of the year. Good luck, Mike. Nicole is in charge of Instagram. She is in charge of moving it from 15,000 followers, I think, to 150,000 by end of year. Also, best of luck to Nicole.
So with that, then we have them in masterminds as well to move them more quickly along in their skill acquisition and implementation and being more strategic about everything. So those are the three people that are working with Paul on the front. before you become a customer. Sarah fully owns after you become a customer what goes on there. And that’s where we have freelancing school. She oversees our four coaches that we have in Freelancing School and in Copy School Professional. She oversees our four coaches there as well. And then I am across the entire journey for now. I don’t see that being the thing going forward, but we used to have a team of 12. And I was run off my feet and doing nothing. I was constantly reacting to people and what they needed and rarely getting ahead of it. So it felt really good to take a bunch of those roles down to contractors. We moved a few of those people over to an agency, which has since become its very own thing. That’s Rashi and Carolyn. Um, yeah, and that’s really where we’re at. So taking it back to a good place, but have you read E-Myth Revisited? Yeah.
Rob Marsh: So we, everybody who wants to run a team or anything bigger than themselves ought to read E-Myth Revisited.
Joanna Wiebe: Totally need to read it. Um, for me, I recognized in reading it that we had, because I was going through that shitty stuff with my ex team member who had a claim against me, against us. I was going through this and that kind of scared me on people. So that’s one of the reasons I like moved to contract. And it also made me kind of shrink into myself a little bit, which he points out in the book is like, it’s a common thing that happens. Now we got to get you back out of that. So that’s the stage that I’m in right now is trusting people again. And then moving out to a place where I can buy back my time, as Dan would say, and be able to bring on the right roles so that I don’t have to do everything. And I don’t do everything, but there are some things that I’m doing that I definitely shouldn’t be doing. Does that answer your question, Kira?
Kira Hug: I mean, I asked five questions in my one.
Joanna Wiebe: That was two, team and my role. Then there’s this whole working with family thing, which is like,
Kira Hug: Yeah, just give us a taste of what it’s like to work with family, the good and the bad.
Joanna Wiebe: Oh, there’s mostly bad. Just kidding.
Rob Marsh: We’re going to have to figure out a way to block Sarah and your brother from listening to the podcast so you can get real with us here.
Joanna Wiebe: They would say the same thing. Like, we’ve actually talked about doing a podcast on things like working with family, sibling rivalry or something. There was a different word in place of rivalry. I don’t remember. We didn’t do it. We might still do it. It’s tough. It’s really, it’s hard, but at the same time, there’s the benefit of a person that loves you, who you love, wants to help you grow a thing that’s important to you and also to them, right? It’s like, they’re not, if you’re an employee, you can often feel like you’re not part of growing the thing. And I think that that’s my challenge with people. who aren’t my family, who work for me is like reminding them that this is theirs to build too.
But it’s harder to understand that when you’re not a partner, you don’t have equity in a company, you don’t get paid, you get paid bonuses and performance bonuses. But if there’s not that same level of ownership that you do get when you employ a family member, who cares about you being successful, and who knows you care about them right back. You care about your other employees, too. It’s just you don’t say, love you, Mike. You don’t. I mean, we don’t say this stuff at work anyway. But that’s the good thing. The hard thing is, of course, all of the baked in history, relationship-y stuff, and how that comes out, and how hard it is to have conversations. that are real and honest that don’t come down to, that don’t turn into problems.
My brother Paul is really good at compartmentalizing me as like his boss versus me as his sister. So I can give him critical feedback and he takes it like a team member, not like my brother. Sarah and I struggle with Sarah’s my older sister. In my family, you were raised to like, you know, if Sarah wanted a glass of water, she would say, Joe, go get me some water. And then you do it. And when I see families that don’t do that, I’m like, that was an option to say no, you could say no to your older sibling. It wasn’t for us. So like, except for Paul, he would always say no to me, whatever. But that’s the tricky thing, right? Those things. So Sarah and I are actually looking at talking to Sarah just came back, she used to work for me. Then she went back to nursing during COVID and now she’s back. So we’re looking at getting a therapist to talk to, to just make sure that we get ahead of things and stay on the same page. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: Remind me not to work with my siblings. I don’t think I could work with my siblings. I love my siblings, but I don’t think that would be… That’d be hard. It’d be really hard. Yeah.
Kira Hug: I could work with one of them, maybe two of the other. Hard no. Hard no.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Sometimes it’s hard enough just to be siblings, let alone to be working together. That’s very true.
Joanna Wiebe: Oh, right. Exactly. It’s hard to get together with your siblings without going like, well, it’s been 20 minutes. I got to go. It’s tough. It’s very tough. And I won’t be hiring. I’ve got two other siblings. There’s no way I’d hire them. I love them and that’s why I just couldn’t do it. Yeah. Yeah. But Purna successfully works with her husband. I know. I think Abby just hired her mom. So there are people who can do it. All the power to them. They need to put out a course on how to do it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Or, or maybe their relationships are just better, stronger. I don’t know that, you know, who knows what it is. So Jo, earlier you mentioned, just write a book. That’s how you pretty much launched your business is that you wrote some books and they were shared in the tech community. Let’s say that you don’t have that option right now. I’m just going to take it off the table, even though that may be unrealistic and you had to rebuild a business, you know, starting out from scratch, whatever, what would you do besides write the book to attract that level of attention, the clients to you. I know you don’t want to be pitching. It’s never been your thing. So what would you do to build that authority faster without a book?
Joanna Wiebe: One thing consistently and that one thing would be something that’s easy to distribute and that might have a baked in form of distribution or audience discovery. Substack was my answer until I saw stuff happen there. But that sucks because Substack has that baked in recommendation engine, which is so powerful. If not that, it has to be a thing where you can show up for it, adding value daily, twice daily, whatever that might be. and have it get distributed. So it’s really like, can you do it? I wouldn’t do it on YouTube because you get, it’s very hard to get results on YouTube until you get to a certain level. And even then sounds like it’s hard, but probably I would show up on Instagram being very, very honest and controversial. Not in a negative way, hopefully not in a harmful way, not controversy that’s mean to people, but like saying something that is true, but that people aren’t saying, and just say it a lot in a lot of different ways. But that’s tricky because if it doesn’t hit, then you’ve put a lot of energy in.
Medium might be a way to go, but yeah, it’s sad that Substack has had this stuff going on because it was a really good way to grow your authority really quickly with people who read. That’s the nice thing about blog posts as they used to be and books. It’s for people who read, who engage their brain and their mind. They’re not sitting there saying, Nobody reads online. They’re like, yeah, people actually do consume information and it’ll help get them to buy from us. So I don’t know if there’s an easy way. What do you think? What’s your take on that? Start a podcast. Yeah. I’m always concerned about a podcast. I know you guys do it very successfully. But it’s this walled garden thing that doesn’t seem to have a recommendation engine built in. Does it?
Kira Hug: There are some. I think HubSpot has a recommendation engine built. So I think there are more and more of those organizations that you can tap into.
Rob Marsh: I mean attribution is hard with a podcast for sure. But I think podcasting has one advantage that no other media has. And I know I’ve said this once or twice before, but all other media is external. to us. You see billboards, you read magazines, you even read books outside of your brain, but podcasts happen inside your brain. Even though we’re recording it in the world, you listen to it usually with headphones in, which means that when you’re listening to my voice right now, it is happening inside your head where your own thoughts happen. And so it’s the most intimate of media.
It’s, for that reason, I love it. And I will say, I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m amazed every time that somebody has joined our program, how often they’ll say, I am a copywriter today because I started binging your podcast, or I’m here because I learned how to trust you on the podcast. While attribution is really hard to say, we took the 5,000 listeners this week and 30 of them joined our programs, that’s really hard to see. I know it happens because we get it anecdotally.
Joanna Wiebe: That’s amazing.
Kira Hug: How do you deal with Imposter Complex if you deal with it at all? Because I feel like we all see you. So many copywriters see you. You’re a leader in this space and it sometimes feels like you’re this force and unstoppable and like you can do anything. So it’s got to be easy for you.
Rob Marsh: Didn’t somebody say that you don’t have Imposter Complex?
Kira Hug: Do you have it? Do you deal with it if you do? How do you work through it? Because I think it’s easy for all three of us to talk about authority building and we’ve done it We’re continuing to do it not to say that we don’t do hard things and still always a hard thing to do But what do you recommend those writers listening who are just like getting in their head telling themselves This is gonna be stupid or someone already said this before it’s too crowded What has worked for you or what do you think could work for them?
Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, I don’t have imposter syndrome like you said, Rob. I haven’t experienced it. And I think that’s just because maybe I didn’t start by taking it that seriously. I don’t know, but like when I started out as a copywriter, I didn’t even know what it meant. So it wasn’t like I didn’t put it on some sort of pedestal. I wasn’t like, there’s so many better people out there. I think there are so many better people out there than I am. Such strong copywriters. And I’m like, well, I’m not that good. But I don’t I don’t know. I just don’t.
Maybe I’m a raging narcissist. I don’t beat myself up for it. I just feel like we all bring our thing. I know I have a thing to bring and end of story. I don’t. I just don’t. I know so many freelancers in Freelancing School and Copy School pro have this, that exact imposter syndrome. My friend, Tiffany, who used to be head of growth at Shopify, same thing. She had imposter syndrome. Um, and I love listening to people talk about it, but, you know, I think part of it is, um, there’s a, I don’t worry that I’m a horrible writer. I like writing. I enjoy it. Um, I enjoyed it in university and I got rewarded for it. So I like it and I feel like I take it seriously. I take the writing seriously enough and I take my reader seriously enough. But I don’t hold it up as this incredible thing. Unlike, if you were to write some novel, then I think as soon as you have to go pitch somebody on publishing your novel, that’s like when imposter syndrome would really hit.
I probably suck at this, but I just, I haven’t had that thought and I would encourage people Listen to people who understand imposter syndrome, and if what they’re saying doesn’t get through, if you’re like, that doesn’t feel right either, try. Try my way, which is just like, don’t really care what people have to say about it. Easier said than done. And if you’re like, Jo, that’s dumb, then ignore me. But if the other things that you’ve heard about imposter syndrome haven’t been working, look around. at some of the big name copywriters out there and allow yourself to be really critical of the copy that these people put out. And then you can ask, isn’t that good? I might actually be better than that person is. And let yourself entertain that thought. You might actually be better than they are. If you’re not, a great way to cure imposter syndrome is the same way that you cure writer’s block. Research. Go find out how to do this stuff well. Surround yourself with people who care about this.
And then you might see that, OK, I can do headlines. Headlines, I rock. And just don’t worry about the other things. Also, don’t try to do everything. Be a sales page copywriter. be the best sales page copywriter, and then forget about emails. That’s not your gem. You don’t have to do emails if you’re a sales page copywriter. Just be that one thing. So maybe you’re spreading yourself too thin. Maybe you’re trying to be everything. Maybe you’re somebody who thinks that you have to get all these results in order to share them because everybody cares. Nobody cares. So just like, I think it’s one part, take it less seriously, and then take parts of it more seriously. Very bad advice from somebody who doesn’t experience imposter syndrome.
Rob Marsh: I have to admit though, I have to, I mean, I relate. I also don’t feel a lot of imposter syndrome in the things that I do either. And I, I’m not sure why I, you know, I can’t put a finger on it. I think I, in your answer, I hear you sort of struggling to put a finger on that. Um, I mean, I, there are definitely things that I feel uncomfortable doing, but like I’ve never thought, Oh, I had a conversation with Sam Woods a long time ago, maybe four or five years ago. We were talking about Gary Halbert’s copy. And Gary Halbert, who is often talked about as the greatest copywriter ever, his copy isn’t stunningly amazing. It’s very simple. He was a master direct response marketer. But his copy is good. I’m certainly not saying, no, he doesn’t deserve the title. But when I read his copy, I’m like, I write like this. Maybe even I write smarter than this sometimes, which is maybe that’s worse in some ways, I know. That depends on the audience. It’s a weird thing. Listening to you answer, I’m shaking my head. I’m like, yeah, I get it. I feel the same way and maybe I should feel imposter complex. I don’t know. I’m broken.
Joanna Wiebe: We’re both broken.
Kira Hug: Okay, so as we start to wrap, I want to get back to what you said about trusting people. I think that’s important. And so how have you started to trust people again? Because I think it is easy. I’ve struggled with this as I’ve grown in our business, trusting people less at times, even as you get like, quote, unquote, bigger. And so how, how are you dealing with that now so that you can trust people?
Joanna Wiebe: Yeah. Um, slowly doing it. Um, only, I guess I’m just being like, I’m just kind of careful about letting people in. I don’t think I’ll ever hire anybody again, who identifies themselves as a fan girl or a fanboy, because there’s this level of expectation that you are somebody who is deserving of fans. And I’m like, I didn’t ask for that. So if you come in and you think, Oh, great. I’m working for Joe. This is going to be cool. And you have this weird idea of me, you will find very quickly that I’m like a normal person who operates rapidly. Um, and so you’ll be like, she expects too much. Yeah, I do. So like, you’re not going to like me. And so I wouldn’t recommend it.
I won’t hire somebody who is like in our, in our world and would say like, my number one thing is to work for you. That’s like, you’ll hate me. So that won’t work. So letting the right people in who I’m unlikely to disappoint, I think maybe that sounds like, whoa, you’ve set the bar low. But kind of that’s the key to happiness I’ve heard. So that’s what’s working for me. And also talking to other founders and business owners who have been through the same. Like the only other time I’ve talked about this person suing me effectively was when Rand Fishkin invited me to talk about it to his SparkToro audience. Rand is so open with the struggles that he’s had. So I think a way to trust is to know that it’s hard for a lot of people. If you’re an employer, it’s a whole different thing to be. So be forgiving with yourself and know that you can forgive yourself and others who judge you by looking around at the people like Rand who’ve had to go through the same thing. So again, it just seems to come back to the people you hang out with, like hang out with people who’ve been through it, and then you can maybe learn to trust again. That’s been my experience at least. Yeah. It’s all about that network is net worth thing.
Rob Marsh: Good advice. So what’s next for you, Joe? What, what’s coming up in the, in 2024, that’s going to make your life, copy hackers, maybe our lives better.
Joanna Wiebe: So I’m working with two research assistants right now on a proper book. tentatively called mine, but it’s just about conversion copywriting. April Dunford and I continue to work toward possibly doing something that we’re calling authority figures, which is like an event based thing where you get together and go through authority building stuff. But that’s That’s the hard thing when you have, I have a business that’s, you know, like growing and doing cool things. And she has a business that’s doing the same and we’re like, we should do this. And then we just end up hanging out together instead. Um, but those are the things. So definitely the book, definitely the book. Um, but then otherwise possibly authority figures, which will maybe be of use.
Rob Marsh: So I’ve been trying to get April on the podcast. She’s, she’s said, well, she’s always like someday, like really busy right now. So maybe if authority figures happens, we can get April on the podcast to talk about it. So that’s going to be my fingers crossed.
Joanna Wiebe: Go ahead, Kira. So I said, hook us up. Oh, for sure. I’ll go with Slacker right after this and see what’s up.
Rob Marsh: She’s not been blowing us off. She’s just like, hey, I’m busy. And I’m like, okay, I’ll follow up in a little while. We’ll see.
Joanna Wiebe: Yeah. I know Q1 is slammed for her, but maybe Q2. That’d be cool.
Rob Marsh: We can always hope.
Kira Hug: All right. So for our listeners who want to connect with you, where’s the best place for them to go? It sounds like maybe it’s Instagram now.
Joanna Wiebe: Where should we go? Maybe Instagram? Yes. I mean, always, if you want to get tutorials and things, YouTube is filled with those. Yeah, I’m sending people off to non-coffee hackers domains and Instagram is all sorts of stuff too. But we do have AI prompts if you’re somebody who’s digging AI or wants to. We’ve got a whole section called AI prompts now, which we also then turn into content on social and YouTube. So you’ll find it in different places. And we’ve got a new series of AI prompts coming. So that’s over on copyhackers.com. That’s like a hub for all of our stuff. Otherwise Instagram is copyhackers and YouTube is copyhackers as well. Thanks y’all. That was fun. Great seeing you again.
Rob Marsh: I’ll see you in seven years.
Thanks to Joanna for joining us to chat about her business. Chances are you already follow her, but if not look for her on social media, she is copyhackers everywhere you go and visit copyhackers.com to learn more about the programs she offer.
A lot of copywriters talk about building a "real" business, that is a business that isn't solely built on writing copy for clients. In the 382nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter Joel Klettke who used his writing and sales expertise, developed as a copywriter, to build a team and service business bigger than what he might have built on his own. And he shared what he's learned from the experience.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Over the past 7 years of publishing this podcast, it’s pretty rare that we bring guests back for a second visit. And the guests that have been back three times? I could be wrong but by my count, that’s only happened twice. Today’s episode makes it three. Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and founder of Case Study Buddy, Joel Klettke to catch up on what he’s been doing for the past couple of years. Joel has gone from being a top performing, in-demand copywriter to the founder of a million dollar business. And in our discussion, he shared some of the lessons he learned along the way.But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the membership for copywriters and content writers… where you can find the training, coaching, copy reviews, and community you need to build a successful copywriting business. To learn more visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd now let’s jump into our interview with Joel...Kira Hug: All right, so Joel, I'm not going to ask you how you ended up as a copywriter because we already covered that in episode, Rob, which episode? I know you know.Rob Marsh: Episode 21 is the first time and maybe like 107, I think, is the second time. It's been a while though. It's been a while since we chatted on the podcast.Joel Klettke: Yeah. I like these, it's almost like a snapshot in time, like journal entry to go back and listen to myself on somebody's life.Rob Marsh: How much better life was back in episode 107?Kira Hug: Well, going back to 21, I think that was the one I was listening to and reading the transcript from. That's when you were, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's when you were just starting case study, buddy, right? That was the origin of it when you were getting into case studies. Or was that 107?Rob Marsh: I think it was even before that.Kira Hug: Yeah, it was before that. We were introducing it. You had that business running at that time.Joel Klettke: Yeah, like technically Case Study Buddy is almost eight years old. It was off the side of our desks initially. And then right before the pandemic, we kind of pivoted to focus full-time on that. So that became kind of a big transition point. And then it's continued to be the full-time focus since then. So we've only really been two years, maybe three now, full-time pushing this thing.Kira Hug: Okay, well, let's go back then to before pandemic when you went all in and just curious, like what, what triggered that decision for you and your business partner to go all in on this business?Joel Klettke: I think there are a whole bunch of different factors. I think, you know, at the time, the grass is always greener in life in general, you know, like you always want to be doing that new thing. The headspace I was in at that moment was I had done the freelance thing and I'd done it well, graduated to basically being in a position of consulting for some pretty great brands, some really great projects. You get to the point that you are now making what your heroes made. I remember listening to Joanna Wiebe talk about charging $10,000 for a landing page and thinking,
Want to make your copy better? More persuasive? More conversion-oriented? The way to do it may be understanding the psychology of your reader. In the 381st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter Csaba Borzasi who explained how he uses psychology to make his copy better. And maybe more importantly, Csaba also explained how he uses a scorecard during his prospecting calls that helps him close almost 100% of his prospects. This is definitely one you'll want to stick around for.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: When many of us start out as copywriters, we're interested in the words. How do we organize them so that they sound right or so that they sound better? Which words should we use to communicate this benefit or this feature? Or which phrase will make the best call to action? But after a while, we tend to become less interested in the exact words, although they are still important, and we still do get a lot of joy out of writing them. And we become more interested in the psychology behind the words. We start asking questions like, which emotions should my reader be feeling as they read this? What beliefs do I need to shift? What do they need to know or think or feel in order to take the next step? Hi, I'm Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club, and on Today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed Csaba Borzasi, a copywriter with extensive training in applied psychology and plenty of experience helping shift beliefs and with writing emotional copy.Csaba shared how psychology applies to what we write every day. He also shared his process for diagnosing his client's business problems that virtually guarantees that they're going to ask for his help on a project. And by the way, this single bit of advice that he gives, this insight could be worth thousands of dollars in new work for you in the coming year. So you're definitely going to want to make a note of it. Finally, we talked about why his welcome sequence is nine months long. There's some good stuff in this episode, so get out your notepad and your pen because you are going to want to take some notes. Now, this is when I normally jump in to tell you all about The Copywriter Underground, all the copywriting business trainings that are in there, the monthly coaching calls, the weekly copy critiques, the community. If you've been listening to the podcast for very long, you've heard me mention all of those things over and over, and yet you still haven't jumped in. Don't wait any longer. If you've got plans to grow your business in 2024, visit thecopyrighterclub.com/TCU and find out more about this vibrant community of copywriters who are working hard to do the same thing that you want to do. And now let's go to our interview with Csaba.Kira Hug: All right. So Csaba, let's kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?Csaba Borzasi: Yeah, so great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Well, I was basically born and raised in in the Transylvania region of Romania. So but I'm not a vampire, I promise. But as an ethnic Hungarian, actually. So it was a totally different culture compared to what you might consider conducive to becoming a copywriter, especially in English, especially on the U.S. market. Right. So basically, I like I always liked to read. I was always a little kind of like a black sheep in my family because they don't even speak English, unfortunately. And they were always telling me, like, why are you learning English? Like, where are you going to use English? And I was like, no, no, no. But I can get better information this way. So I always loved getting information. And then during my studies, I studied psychology, first business, then psychology.
Is writing for non-profit organizations any different from writing for other businesses or clients? It turns out, the answer is "yes". Because most of the time your "customer" won't receive a product or service when they "buy". And that means you need to be very good at providing the experiences and stories they want in the copy you write. Our guest for the 380th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Shterna Lazaroff and she's got a lot to say on the topic, so stay tuneClick the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: If you're looking for a niche with lots of clients and plenty of money to spend, you could do a lot worse than writing for the nonprofit sector. As of a couple of years ago, there were more than 1.49 million charitable organizations in the United States alone and hundreds of thousands more in other countries. And spending at nonprofits accounts for more than $2.46 trillion. And that, again, is just in the United States. If you add in all of the other countries in the world, it's double or triple that. And some portion of that is paid to copywriters. Hi, I'm Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kara Hug, and I interviewed Shterna Lazaroff, who has spent a good part of her career focused on fundraising and helping nonprofits succeed. While many of the principles of good copywriting apply to writing for charity, Shterna tells us that there are a few differences, so you may want to stick around to hear what they are and perhaps use that knowledge to land a client in the nonprofit world for yourself. Now, this is where I usually break in and talk a bit about the Copywriter Underground. I could do that again. I could tell you about the training. I could tell you about the community. I could tell you about the copy critiques, the copy coaching that happens there every month. You've heard me talk about all of that stuff before. So my real question for you is what are you waiting for? What is keeping you from going to thecopyrighterclub.com/TCU and at least checking out all the resources that are listed there? There's a ton of information there about what it includes and what being a member will get you. And just, you know, as a selfish point, being a member is a great way to support this podcast and all the other resources that we provide for copywriters and content writers. So that URL again to visit thecopyrighterclub.com/TCU, check it out. And if it's a fit for you, join, join the more than 200 other copywriters in there who are working hard to build a successful business. Now let's jump into our interview with Sterna Lazaroff.Kira Hug: All right, let's kick off as we do with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?Shterna Lazaroff: So every job I've ever had has always had what to do with writing. I was always like the family writer, the one doing every time someone in the family needed something. So when I first was looking for my first job, just ended up was actually the editor of my high school magazine was working at like a small local kids magazine and I had worked with her in high school. She reached out, she's like, Hey, do you want a job editing for me? So that was my first, first job ever. And I had always wanted to be a writer. It was always like when I was younger and you asked me what I wanted to do, I always said I wanted to be a writer. But there was this conception that like everyone used to tell me like writers don't make money and it's not really sustainable income and all that. And then When I left this magazine after two years, I had this period of like, I don't know what to do next. And I was still very young. And I remember having this realization. I was like, wait, I just spent two years hiring writers.
Brainstorming and creativity are often forgotten in the world of online marketing. We often jump straight into what will convert at the expense of the creative tools used by copywriters working in Ad Agencies around the world. In the 379th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with freelance advertising copywriter Shlomo Genchin about his processes for coming up with creative concepts that attract attention and engage readers and passers-by. Shlomo shared some great tips for finding better, bigger ideas for the work we do.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Have you noticed that the work most copywriters do doesn't exactly fall under the description of creative? Yeah, we write about ideas, hopefully big ideas, but the work of most copywriters is pretty common. It's like all of the other copy in their industry. So here's a test, choose a niche, doesn't matter which one, go to Google, find 10 companies in that niche and open up their websites. Then read the headlines. You can actually do this for the niche that you work in. Every time I do this, I'm amazed that about eight out of the 10 make pretty much the same promise in their headlines. Now, usually it's something like save time, save money. They word it a little bit differently, but it's basically the same. And then the other two headlines are usually so bland that they're not really making any promise at all. They might be trying to describe what they do, but usually that even falls flat. And it's not just websites. With a few exceptions, ads look and feel the same. Even most content blurs into a vast mass of content schlock. Hi, I'm Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder Kira Hug and I interviewed creative copywriter Shlomo Genshin. Shlomo writes a lot about his creative process, how he comes up with ideas, and how to think more expansively when developing things like headlines, hooks, and more. It's really the answer to this everybody looks the same problem. It's something that copywriters and content writers around the world definitely need to be doing more of. So we think you're going to like this episode. But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. That's the membership for copywriters and content writers that includes not just training, literally more than a hundred hours of training on different topics, but actual feedback on your copy, as well as monthly coaching calls from mentors you can trust, where you can get the help that you need to grow your business. I'm not going to share all of the details here. You can find out more at thecopyrighterclub.com/tcu. That's TCU for The Copywriter Underground, where you can join and immediately expand your network of amazing copywriters who are all working to grow and build something bigger together this year. Okay, let's go to our interview with Shlomo.Shlomo Genchin: So I started just like a lot of people, I just started looking for ways to maybe to get rich online. You know, how to start a business, how to make money online. And I came across all those regular scammers that you would see. They would tell you, get rich in 10 days. And I bought one of those courses. And nothing came out of it, of course, because it was kind of scammy and not really possible to apply… to kind of implement all of that. But one thing I learned there was copywriting. Like the magic of copywriting, you can basically persuade any person to buy anything. And it's so easy. You just need some words. And it's so simple. And I was like, that sounds interesting. I could sell anything in the world, do affiliate marketing, and whatnot. And then I just went to Google and looked up the best co...
How do you get stuff done? What can you do to make sure your goals for the new year don't fall by the wayside. In the 378th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk about their strategies for accomplishing goals and resolutions and what they plan on getting done in the coming year.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.We mentioned a lot of books on this show:The Opposable Mind by Roger MartinThe Road Less Stupid by Keith CunninghamA Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald MillerWho Do We Choose to Be by Meg WheatleyBreaking Together by Gem BendellThis One Wild and Precious Life by Sarah WilsonQuiet by Susan CainBittersweet by Susan Cain4000 Weeks by Oliver BurkemanThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven CoveyThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: We're a couple of weeks into the new year, and if you're like the average resolution setter, tomorrow is the day you quit. 17 days is the average length of time that goal setters, resolution setters, whoever, stick to their goals. And maybe you've already quit, given up on what you expected to get done this month or this year, or maybe you're still going strong. Either way, on today's episode of the Copywriter Club podcast, Kira and I are talking about what we do to make sure we get stuff done. and some of the goal setting fallacies that might keep you from accomplishing everything that you set out to do. Stick around to hear what we shared. But before we get into all of that, this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast is brought to you by the Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters, content writers, and other marketers out there. given the value that you get for the very low price that you pay. There's a monthly group coaching call where Kira and I help you get answers to your business questions, your copywriting questions, whatever. We do a weekly copy critique where we take a look at what you've written and give you advice and insights and things that you might want to do a little bit differently. There are regular training sessions on copy techniques, business practices, everything designed to help you get better. And we even talk about AI and tools and things that you can do in order to stay on top of everything you're doing with AI. And that's on top of the massive library of training and templates that are there. The community is amazing. Lots of copywriters ready to help you with answers to any questions you have, even sometimes sharing leads. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/TCU. All right, Kira, we're here just you and me again. and just chatting. It's the new year. I think I've got some goals of things I want to do. You've got some goals of things that you want to do in the coming year. You must have some. I know you're very goal oriented, but before we do all, before we talk about the new year, before we talk about, you know, what things we're thinking and maybe share some ideas that might help people get more done. If they're thinking about their goals, if they actually made resolutions, if they have a word of the year, any of that stuff. Let's just do a couple of warm-up questions. I want to find out a couple more things about you. Even though we've been working together for six or seven years, it's hard to believe there are still things I don't know.Kira Hug: Yeah, I know. I know. I guess we can always dive deeper in our relationship.Rob Marsh: Here we go. So first question, when's the last time you were really, really scared?Kira Hug: I mean, how scared are we talking?Rob Marsh: That's a good question because as I was thinking about this, the only time I am really terrified is in my dreams. I'm not sure that there's anything that terrifies me. that much in real life. But from my answer, I was thinking, okay, if I take away dreams,
How do you stand out in a world where more than a million people are calling themselves copywriters or content writers? You've heard all the "expected" ways to do it: find a niche, develop a personal brand, create a unique framework or unique mechanism. Those are all great ideas, but in this the 377th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter and membership strategist Robert Skrob who suggests a very different—and quite possibly better—approach to solving this problem.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan KennedyRetention Point by Robert SkrobThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Last time I checked there were nearly a million people on LinkedIn calling themselves copywriters. And almost another million with the title content writer. So how do you complete with two million copywriters? Many of whom are better than you?Hi, I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast Kira Hug and I interviewed copywriter and membership strategist Robert Skrob. Robert says that instead of figuring out how to outcompete everyone else, suggests carving out your own niche so you DON’T compete with anyone else. Creating a space where you’re the only on doing what you do. He also shared how he created a stead flow of clients to his business using a strategy we’ve never seen used by anyone else. It has nothing to do with LinkedIn or pitching or social media or just about anything else you’ve heard the so called experts say you have to do.Robert only works with high-end clients paying him at least $20,000 a month. He told us his “fishing for sailfish” secret for finding them. You’re going to want to hear what he has to say.Before we get to the interview, I need to take a minute to tell you about the Copywriter Accelerator. But before you tune me out and think, I’ve heard about this before, we’re trying something a little different. It’s called The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track… rather than taking 5 months to go through the program, you’ll go through the business-changing or business-creating program (depending on where you are in your business)you’ll go through the program in 30 days or less. And because this is the fast track version, it’s the lowest price we’ve ever offered for The Copywriter Accelerator before. You owe it to yourself to find out more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.And with that, let’s go to our interview with Robert Skrob.Robert Skrob: It’s my honor to be here. It took, I guess I’m 148 on the list of the most interesting copywriters to talk to.Rob Marsh: You’re way above that. But, we just haven’t been able to get with you. You’re so busy.Kira Hug: That’s true.Rob Marsh: With a such a great business. It’s amazing to have you here though. Thank you so much for being here.Robert Skrob: I’m honored. I don’t hang out at copywriting events or speak at those things, but I certainly see copywriters struggle and become very frustrated. So hopefully, we can share some ideas that can help simplify this whole business for everybody.Kira Hug: Sounds great. Well, let’s start with your story first. How did you end up as a copywriter?Robert Skrob: Actually, back in 1993, I was an accountant at a public accounting firm and hated it. I was there three months and left, took a job as a bookkeeper for a company that did consulting with non-profit associations, and I ended up buying that company about five years later.So, I had 20 associations that I was responsible for doing membership marketing, event marketing, sponsorship sales, and I needed to know how to get this stuff sold. I ran across Dan Kennedy about ’96 and found his how to write a sales letter book. I can remember sitting at my living room coffee table going through that book chapter by c...
Too many of us get caught up in the doing of our business instead of thinking about our business. So for this 376th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we are flashing back to another one of our best interviews... this one from business strategist Jereshia Hawk who went deep on selling to high ticket clients as well as what it takes to truly grow your business. She calls it super thinking. We call it CEO time. Whatever you call it, you definitely want to hear what Jereshia has to say about it.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Things we mentioned to check out:The Road Less Stupid by Keith CunninghamThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundTranscript:Rob Marsh: Welcome to the New Year. Whether you’re back at your desk today or still taking a few days to ramp back up for 2024, this interview is just what you need… or at least, it is just what I needed to hear to kick off the new year.It is the perfect compliment to last week’s throwback episode with Seth Godin. Because Jereshia is another expert that I love to learn from. When we interviewed her a little over three years ago, she shared a ton of great information about selling to clients with money… what is often referred to as high-ticket sales. And that’s what we focused the title and promotion of that interview on.But we also covered the idea of super-thinking. That is the idea that we need to be creating space for coming up with new ideas and insights and not just reacting to what’s going on. And quite honestly, a lot of us spent the past year reacting to economic issues, artificial intelligence and a lot of other stuff that impacted the way we work.So I think you’re going to like the throwback interview with business coach Jereshia Hawk.Before we get to that, if you want this year to be better than last year, better clients, better projects, and better opportunities, you absolutely need to visit thecopywriterunderground.com and check out the resources waiting for you there. That’s thecopywriterunderground.com.Now let’s get to our interview with Jereshia…Kira Hug: All right, Jereshia, welcome. We want to kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a high ticket sales coach?Jereshia Hawk: Well, I kind of stumbled my way here. I was an engineer by trade before even knowing this whole online world existed. And I started doing some of my videos, started getting into coaching, just people asking me to give advice or insight on how I was able to navigate my corporate career and how I was able to position myself for upward mobility opportunities in a nontraditional way or in a way that just wasn’t the same beat and path of how you’re supposed to excel in corporate. And one thing I started recognizing during my coaching calls at the very, very beginning, when I was charging $60 for a month of coaching, less than what you would pay for a fitness class, and the biggest thing that I noticed was the transferrable skills that I had acquired in corporate America.I was a lead engineer of a $400 million pipeline project, I was responsible for managing our money on a day-to-day basis, making decisions based off of input and output, and so I understood how money moved from a corporates perspective, but then I also understood kind of a gap that I noticed in the industry, or that I noticed just from people that I was discussing on, how do you effectively articulate your value in a way that whoever is in the other position, the buying decision or the position of authority to make a decision, how do you articulate your value in a way where they get it and that it also correlates to how it impacts the bottom line or impacts the thing that’s most important to them, and how do you position yourself to be able to do that repeatedly.And once I started to recognize that those three things were really my sweet spot and as I started growing in the coaching business,
For the 375th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we brought back Seth Godin. But maybe not quite the way you think. We talked to Seth more than five years ago about creating art, freelancing, and the story you create for yourself. It's such a great discussion, but because it happened so long ago, not very many listeners find it. So for our very first throwback episode, we've pulled this great interview out of the vault and are sharing it again... with a few new thoughts at the end. Even if you heard this interview the first time we ran it, it's worth another listen.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Stuff to check out:This is Marketing by Seth GodinThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter AcceleratorFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: A little over 5 years ago, as we were approaching our 100th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and I were trying to think of who would be an amazing guest for the 100th episode of the show. There are some amazing—even famous—copywriters who came to mind. It’s too bad David Ogilvy wasn’t alive. He definitely would have made the cut.But this show is about more than copywriting. It’s about marketing and showing up and making a difference in the world. And when we added those considerations to the list, one obvious choice stood out.Seth Godin.You know Seth. He’s been a vocal advocate for making art or as Steve Jobs once said, making a dent in the universe. Much of Seth’s career, certainly for the last decade, has been about encouraging people to make their art.So I reached out to Seth and asked him if he would be our 100th guest. And I think it was about 20 minutes later, I got a reply back. I still have it, in fact, let me just read what he said… he wrote… I can happily do this, but my publisher asked me to not have any new podcast interviews until November. Can we record it soon, but have it come out then?That timing meant that Seth wouldn’t be our 100th guest, but we weren’t about to say no. And in fact, I think the timing actually worked in our favor. As you can imagine, Seth appeared on many podcasts around the same time ours went live—all to promote his new book. But because we recorded 5 months earlier, we didn’t have the book, so our interview was very different from all the others that went live at the same time.It’s been 5 years since we recorded this interview with Seth, but I have to tell you I go back and listen to it more than any other episode. Seth’s advice on making art, owning the work we do, doing the difficult emotional work, building spec projects, and what happens when we don’t do those things is even more important today than if was when we recorded this interview more than 5 years ago.Now… this is where I would usually mention the copywriter underground. I’m not going to do that today because we wanted to give you something as a thank you for being a regular listener to the show. Just after the new year, we launch the copywriter accelerator. It’s not a course. It’s an 8 part business building program designed to help you build a six-figure business that works for you. I’m not going to tell you all the things it includes here. You can find that out at thecopywriteraccelerator.com. But I will share an exclusive code only available to you as a podcast listener. This is the only place we’re sharing it. If you go to the copywriter accelerator.com and enter the code: POD200, you’ll save $200 off the price of the program. That’s POD200 at the copywriter accelerator .com. And you can find far more details about what the program includes there. Check it out. And if it’s a fit, join with the code: POD200.Okay, now we hope you enjoy this incredible interview with Seth Godin.Kira Hug: Seth, welcome.Rob Marsh: Hey, Seth.Seth Godin: Thanks. Great to talk to you guys.Kira Hug: We’re very excited and honored that you’re a part of our show. Before we start recording,
Copywriter and Publisher of Freelancer magazine, Sophie Cross, is the guest for the 374th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob asked Sophie why she decided to publish a print magazine in a time when many printed magazines seem to be struggling to find readers and advertisers. She shared what it takes to accomplish such a Herculean task each quarter. One of our big take aways from this discussion is that you may need to do something BIG to stand out in today's competitive world. Publishing a magazine is that kind of big idea that stands out. And this episode may give you a few ideas that you can use to stand out in your own niche or industry.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.Important links to check out:Freelancer MagazineThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Want to build your authority? Then you need to be sharing your ideas, insights and content in places where your audience will find you. Linkedin. Instagram. Medium. Twitter. That’s good advice and it has helped hundreds of copywriters rise above the crowd and get noticed by the clients they serve. But if you really want to stand out… the way to do it is by showing up in ways that no one else has thought of before. Instead of posting on someone else’s platform, why not create your own?Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and magazine publisher Sophie Cross. Sophie is the publisher of Freelancer magazine, a printed quarterly magazine about the ins and outs of working on your own. As you’ll hear her explain, Sophie wanted to create a platform to help her get noticed. So she started her magazine and we wanted to understand what it takes to publish and mail a 100-page magazine 4 times a year. Turns out it’s a lot of work. We also talked about freelancing in the hospitality industry, creating courses and other assets, and Sophie’s advice for anyone working as a freelancer today. Stick around because this one is pretty good.But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd with that, let’s go to our interview with Sophie.Kira Hug: All right, Sophie, let's kick off with your story. How did you end up as the editor of Freelancer magazine?Sophie Cross: I ended up with the editor because I made the magazine and made myself the editor.Rob Marsh: That is a very good way to start. Yeah.Sophie Cross: I I was already making a magazine, had a little bit of experience in my backgrounds in hospitality marketing before. Yeah. Well, when I went freelance and went freelance, I had the experience making hotel brochures and collateral and things like that. You can only look back at the stepping stones, can't you can't sort of see where they're taking you. I sort of didn't think much of it at the time, but actually now realizing that I had this real passion for printed collateral and things l...
We're talking all about online business myths and what to do when you're struggling in your business on the 373rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. This episode is a Kira and Rob only show—no guest. And they delve into the realities of running a business today. The path is seldom up and to the right (always growing) and often so challenging, you're tempted to get a "real" job or at least something part-time until client work gets steadier. We cover a lot of ground in this one.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Almost no one expects to launch a business and have everything go easily from the beginning, but after a few years, well by then, things should be getting easier, right? Well, not always, and not exactly. I'm Rob Marsh, one of the founders of the Copywriter Club. And on today's episode of the Copywriter Club podcast, my co-founder Kira Hug and I talk about a couple of business myths. Like the idea that your progress should always be up and to the right. That is that things always get easier and more profitable year after year. Or the idea that replacing clients with products and passive income is easy. or the all-too-common belief that taking a job in-house is a failure. I also talked a little bit about how to prepare for a business downturn. If you struggle to find clients or your business hasn't been growing as quickly as you hoped, you may want to stay around and listen to the end of this episode. But first, this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast is brought to you by the Copywriter Underground. You've heard me talk about this for the past few weeks. It truly is the best membership for copywriters, content writers, marketers of all kinds. And let me just give you an idea of what you get for what you pay every single month. First, there's a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice about overcoming any business or client or writing challenge that you have. When we do one-on-one coaching, we charge several hundred dollars an hour for that. it's included in your membership. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques. Sometimes that's from Kira and myself. Sometimes that's an expert that we bring in to talk about something they're doing interesting in their business. All of those are designed to help you get better at this thing that we do. We've been talking about new AI tools and ways to use AI in the underground. even new tools, techniques, prompts that you can use to have AI help you get more done quicker. And on top of that, there's this massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters who are ready to help you with almost anything, including sharing leads from time to time. What an amazing value that is. To find out more of what it includes, go to thecopyrighterclub.com/tcu. And with that, let's get to our discussion for a few suggestions about how to prepare for the inevitable downturns and hard times in your business. All right, Kira, just you and me again today. And we're going to talk about a couple of things. But before we jump into talking about recessions and making our businesses stronger and all of that stuff, I put together a couple of getting to know you questions that are maybe a little bit different. Let's start easy. Mountain or beach vacation?Kira Hug: I feel like we've covered that one on the pod already. And I feel like last time you asked me, I was like, I don't, I don't know. I can't choose between mountain or beach. Because the question stresses me out. So I remember it, but I mean, I would probably lean towards beach if I had to choose. I just, I like both. It's hard for me to choose. Rob Marsh: Why does it stress you out?
Financial Copywriter Sean MacIntyre is our guest for the 372nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We had the opportunity to hang out with Sean at the Copy Legends Lockdown Event and were intrigued by what he had to say about A.I., positioning yourself as an expert authority, and how to get better at copywriting. There's some great advice here that Sean shares from his mentors as well as direction on how to read a sales page so you learn from it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Small Group CoachingThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: You’ve heard the good and bad about the future of copywriting and content writing. AI is going to take all of our jobs. Or conversely, it’s the greatest opportunity ever to come along… at least for the copywriters ready to take advantage of the new technology. And then there’s the economy, which for many has felt like a recession—in spite of some positive broader economic markers… regardless the ups and downs of the business cycle means there’s a recession coming sometime in the future… whether that’s next year or five years from now. So how are you planning for this stuff? What are you doing to add new skills? And should you get a part time job to hold you over while you figure this all out?Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed financial copywriter Sean MacIntyre. We covered a lot of ground in this episode… we talked about AI and why it may not be the risk some people say it is AND what’s really happening as these technologies develop. We talked about how to protect yourself from a recession and the themes your copy should address to connect with readers in stressful economic times. We also talked about having ideas, how to read a promotion so you learn from it and become a better copywriter, and a lot more. You’ll definitely want to stick around for this episode.But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd with that, let’s go to our interview with Sean.Kira Hug: All right, Sean, let's kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?Sean MacIntyre: Oh, well, I've been writing for money since about 2001. Thanks, mom. And so yeah, I did that to sort of fund my lifestyle at the time. Spent a few years homeless. And so I was actually going to school and writing and working a few jobs on the side there. Did that got one master's degree, then got another master's degree, ended up teaching for about seven years in there somewhere. Then around 2015 while I was actually, helping ghost writing books for business professors, I got a job at a little place called Palm Beach Research Group, which is now called Legacy Research Group in the Agora and MarketWise family of companies. And I got hired as a proofreader. And within three months,
Femtech Copywriter Lanae Carmichael is our guest for the 371st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, and Kira and Rob asked her about finding her niche and framework (which Kira got a little too much pleasure from making Rob name), user testing copy before you present it to the client, and how she landed 50% of the work she did this year from other copywriters.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.A few links related to this show that you should definitely click:Lanae's WebsiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: What’s your best source of leads? Where do the majority of your clients come from? As you look back on the past year, it’s a question worth thinking about. Do clients easily find you based on your social media presence or your LinkedIn profile? Do you seek out the people and brands you want to work with and pitch them on a project? Or maybe you benefit from referrals from past clients and other people who know you.Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter Lanae Carmichael. Near the end of our interview Lanae said something that surprised us. She said that more than half of her clients this year came from other copywriters. This isn’t a new idea. We’ve talked about it before on the podcast. But 50% is a big number. Lanae shared what she did to put herself in position to get those referrals and it’s something any copywriter can do. And we talked about a lot more than that. You’ll want to keep listening to this episode.But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd with that, let’s go to our interview with Lanae.Kira Hug: Let's kick off, Lanae, with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter? Lanae Carmichael: All right, so I started out as a marketing consultant at a small TV tech firm, or a marketing specialist. I don't remember what my title was there. But I was very junior on the team, and I was primarily doing their internal communications. But slowly over time, I started working with the COO, and we were doing executive video scripts, and I was doing some change management communications as the small TV tech firm got bought out by a new company. After three or four years of working with that marketing team, I got pivoted into the product marketing side, and that's where I discovered branding and positioning and messaging, and I loved it. Shortly after that, I had my first baby, and I knew I didn't really want the corporate lifestyle. I had friends that were in the copywriting industry. I didn't really know what the word meant, but I was already doing it. as is the story that so many copywriters have. But I was living in the Bay Area at the time, and there were startups abundant all around. And so I was on Angel's list, and I just started pitching. And pretty quickly, within two weeks,
Copywriter Justin Goff is the guest for the 370th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. He typically works 3-4 hours a day on his business, so Kira and Rob asked about that and what he does to ensure work doesn't creep into the rest of his day. Actually we talked about a lot more than that. To hear what Justin shared, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Most of us have a dream of reaching that level in our business where we call all the shots. We’ve got a little bit of money saved, so we’re not dependent on the feast and famine cycle. And we’ve created a business where we only work 3-4 hours a day… when we want. As I said, for most copywriters and content creators, this is still a dream. But there are more than a handful of copywriters who have achieved this. It is do-able. And given the rewards, it’s a goal worth pursuing.Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and entrepreneur Justin Goff. Justin is one of those copywriters who has reached that place in his business where he calls the shots. So we brought him on the show to talk about that… what he does while he’s working, what he does while he’s not working, and how he keeps it all going. If you share the dream of working a few hours a day and really taking control of your time, you’ll want to stick around for this interview.But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd with that, let’s go to our interview with Justin.Kira Hug: Justin, in one of your emails, I think it was from June, maybe it was from June, you kicked off the email and you said that recently there was a thread in a certain Facebook group with people saying that you had quit copywriting or retired or that you had sold all your possessions and moved to Peru. And in this particular email, you wanted to clear the air. And so it was a really fun email where you talked a little bit about what you're doing today in business and life. So maybe that's a good place to start. Did you move to Peru or what are you doing now? Rob Marsh: Retirement looks good on you, Justin. Justin Goff: Yeah, that was funny. So I actually sent a Peru email on April Fool's Day that I was going to move to Peru and be a shaman. So apparently some people did not catch the April Fool's joke on that. Kira Hug: They didn't know what day it was. Justin Goff: Yeah, even though it was very clearly April Fool's. But yeah, so for the people listening that don't know me, I used to run a copy coaching program called Copy Accelerator with Stefan Georgi. Uh, I ran that from 2019 to 2022. And then last summer, uh, Stefan and I parted ways. I sold my share of the company to him. Um, and I was kinda just trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Um, luckily I I've, I've been through this before where I'd sold a company. Cause I previously sold a company in 2017,
This is 369th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And today Kira and Rob talk in depth about writing sales pages. They share their formulas for writing, how they landed their first sales page assignments, and the best ways to improve your skills when it comes to writing sales pages. You definitely don't want to miss this episode.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Full Transcript:As content writers and copywriters gain experience and work on different types of projects, many of them express interest in doing less content work like blog posts and more sales copy work. There are a lot of reasons for this. One big reason is that sales pages are closely tied to the sale of the product or service you are writing about, so it’s easier to justify charging higher prices for the work you do. The sales page leads directly to the sale, where a blog post or case study may be a couple of steps away.Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug and I are talking about sales pages. How we approach them. The research we do. The formulas we use to write them. And our secrets for making sure they work as promised. If you write sales copy or want to write sales pages in the future, you may want to stick around for this one.But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd with that, let’s go to our discussion for some of what we’ve learned over the past few weeks.Kira Hug: Well I think it's exciting that we are talking together twice in a row back to back. We've never done that on this podcast. Usually it's like 1 podcast for the 2 of us and then maybe ten later we get back on together.Rob Marsh: Yeah, it's definitely been a while, if it has happened at all. I'd have to go back through… I mean it's probably because you and I talk to each other a lot, but we don't record those and share those as podcasts. So.Kira Hug: This is the first. It's never happened. Rob Marsh: Maybe we're opening up the doors a little bit to some of our personal conversations here, I don't know, but hopefully people will enjoy what we have to share today.Kira Hug: Well, it's also snowing here in Maine. It's the first snow of the season. Okay it slowed down. It stopped, but it was snowing all morning. It's absolutely beautiful and it put me in such a good mood, like you just can't bring me down right now.Rob Marsh: Do you have a blanket and hot chocolate anything by the fire?Kira Hug: I've been I've been making stew and just drinking hot water. And I'm so ready for the holidays I just drink hot water… Rob Marsh: Wait… You're drinking hot water, like not tea?Kira Hug: I just drink hot water. So I stopped drinking caffeine since London when I got sick because I felt awful anyway. So anytime I get sick, I'm like, “Well I may as well cut out some of my vices because I already feel awful.” So I'm not drinking caffeine.
The 368th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is all about what we learned from participating in the Copy Legends Lock-in Event, The Top One Mastermind, TCC IRL in London and our own Think Tank Retreat in London. There's something in this episode for everyone, from copywriting tips to ideas for better supporting your clients and interacting with members of your team to be more effective.Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Full Transcript:You’ve heard us talk about the impact that masterminds and events can have on your business. It’s why we talk about The Copywriter Think Tank so often. It’s why we organize retreats and IRL events just about every year. And we don’t just say that because we produce our own events. From the beginning of The Copywriter Club, Kira and I have both belonged to several masterminds from people like Brian Kurtz, Jeresia Hawk, and Todd Brown. And we’ve attended events around the country to add to our own business and copywriting skills.Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, who I just mentioned, talked about the four events we attended over the past two weeks—Copy Legends Lock-in, The Top One Mastermind Retreat, The Copywriter Club In Real Life in London, and our own Think Tank retreat in London. We’re sharing our biggest takeaways and what we learned from these awesome experiences. You’ll want to stick around and listen to this episode.But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcuAnd with that, let’s go to our discussion for some of what we’ve learned over the past few weeks.Okay, Kira we are. It's just you and me today. But we've been up to a lot of stuff. Lots been going on the last few weeks so let's let's kick it off you know where do you where do you want to start with all the stuff that's been going on.Kira Hug: Ah I think we should just start with our health… I mean I'm seeing you on the screen and you have a heat pad on your shoulder and you're in pain and I think we should talk about this. We have been traveling a lot and I don't know how we physically do it.Travel isn’t necessarily is what triggered your pain, but I think it definitely triggered my cold. I'm a little worn out. I know you're a little worn out. What's going on with your arm and shoulder right now?Rob Marsh: Yeah, well we were in London for an IRL event and a Think Tank Retreat but I went a few days early just to do a little bit of traveling around England with my wife and some friends that we have there. I woke up Sunday morning in massive pain. It was the most pain I've ever felt. I could barely move… it was hard to dress myself. It was it was awful and I didn't really know what was going on. I felt a little bit better the next day. Although it hurt all week long I didn't want to go to the emergency room, simply because we were on vacation. We had our friends there then we had the retreat and everything was going on ...
On the 367th episode of The Copywriter Club, Russ Henneberry joins the show to chat all about SEO. Russ is the founder of theCLIKK, a free daily email newsletter covering digital business topics. He shares strategies copywriters can use to increase website traffic and how they can keep up with the evolving digital marketing landscape. It’s an episode you’ll want to keep handy. Here’s what you’ll find out: How Russ went from teacher to marketer and SEO expert. When he was introduced to the world of digital marketing and SEO. Why skills like content marketing and copywriting are essential in today’s landscape. The impact of AI on search behavior and the everchanging search experience. What copywriters can do to optimize their chances of ranking in online searches. How to customize dedicated webpages for various niches to increase discoverability. What is link building and why is it important? Why your content needs to be thorough and how to create a content strategy for your business. Paid advertising vs. organic search… How can they coexist? Should you productize your services? What kind of clients are willing to pay premium rates? The difference between you and the in-house employee. What is the theCLIKK and how do they leverage evolving marketing techniques to scale?Tune into the episode by hitting play below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter UndergroundKira’s websiteRob’s websiteRuss's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
On the 366th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, website copywriter and niche extraordinaire, Masha Koyen joins the show. We walk through Masha’s journey from a demanding corporate marketing career to a thriving copywriting business. She shares her “REVEAL” framework, a six-step process that helps her attract high-value clients, and how copywriters can build their business from scratch. Tune into the episode to find out more about: Masha’s transition from corporate marketing director to website copywriter for interior designers. When do you know it’s time to pivot or go off on your own? How she unexpectedly gained her first clients and how she markets her business today. Burnout after 3 months?! How she navigated the early stages of entrepreneurship. How she decided to niche down both vertically and horizontally. Her methods to delving into her audience’s pain points and challenges. Where she found clients in a hyper-specific market and how she began to stand out. The key to finding differentiating factors within competitive niches. Her six-step framework for strategic website copywriting. The importance of having a framework in your business. What’s a CEO retreat and how can it benefit your overall well-being? How can you gain access to higher-level clients? The impact of The Copywriter Think Tank on Masha’s business. Tune into the episode by hitting the play button below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter UndergroundKira’s websiteRob’s websiteMasha's website The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
On the 365th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob and Kira sit down with seasoned copywriter, John Bejakovic. With a background in IT, John made his way into copywriting and now has a daily email newsletter. This episode dives into the underlying principles that make copywriting effective and how copywriters can position themselves in an evolving industry.Here’s how the conversation goes: Why do marketers gatekeep this book? All will be revealed – no gatekeeping here. How a 500-word blog post changed John’s career path. Why he decided to become a published author on Amazon. The importance of having an email list. When should you pivot your business? Why an email list is the fastest way to grow as a copywriter. Should you create a niche-specific newsletter? (plus how to decide which niche to focus on) John’s monetization strategy and how he’s grown his newsletter. How do magic, persuasion, and copywriting overlap and work together? What’s the push-and-pull technique? Why Jaws is the perfect example of teasing and how to use it in your emails. How to include anticipation for future emails. Don’t forget about proof – how it increases credibility. The effectiveness of transparent copywriting. The future of copywriting and the use of AI. Tune into the episode below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter UndergroundKira’s websiteRob’s websiteJoin John's list John's website Derren Brown's book Tricks of the MindThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
Lauren Hermann is our guest on the 364th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Lauren is a speech-language pathologist (SLP) turned copywriter who now owns and operates The Copy Clinicians, a small copywriting agency for the healthcare industry. Lauren's journey from scrub life to "scribe" life has led to surprising results and a desire to teach other clinicians how to become copywriters in their niche.Listen to the episode to find out: How writing a book on speech-language pathology introduced Lauren to the world of copywriting. The two pitch emails that almost landed her a forward by a renowned surgeon. Why we don’t always need a ‘yes’ to be successful. How to take rejection and thrive. What do people misunderstand about speech-language pathology? How SLPs and copywriters are similar and how Lauren merges the two worlds. The importance of looking at objective and subjective data. How she found her first set of clients on Upwork and through a Facebook post. Why she niched into writing for SLPs and how it’s helped her build her micro-agency. Can you pivot and still be relevant to your audience? The pros and cons of working as a copywriter and SLP. How The Think Tank has helped her business and improved her copywriting confidence. We don’t know what we don’t know – how can we build awareness around improving copy for our audience?Hit the play button below to tune in.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter UndergroundKira’s websiteRob’s websiteLauren's website Join Lauren's course waitlistThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
On the 363rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Eden Bidani hops on the show to chat all things conversion, sales conversations, and pitching prospects. Eden is a conversion copywriter and messaging strategist who uses her anthropology background to get to the root message that’ll attract the right customers to the right offer.Tune into the episode to find out: How Eden went from selling cosmetics to writing blogs. Why she slowly raised her prices and how it built her confidence. Here’s the truth about pitching and some practical advice you can apply. Why you need to be emotionally distant from your pitches. The importance of making promises you know you can keep and how it can impact your business. Should you start doing this in your sales calls? How to guide your sales calls while letting your prospect take the lead. The process for writing an advertorial. How her background in anthropology has shaped her research process. Are you reading between the lines while conducting research? How her business is currently structured to support her lifestyle. Messaging vs. copywriting – what’s the difference and how it can be the key to increasing conversions? When you want to do it all, remember this. Hit play to listen to the episode.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter UndergroundKira’s websiteRob’s websiteConnect with Eden The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
On the 362nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Alex Thompson takes the mic to chat all things LinkedIn. Alex is a website and email copywriter who gains the majority of his clients on LinkedIn by creating parody content. You’ll walk away from this episode with tangible steps you can use to create a LinkedIn strategy that works for you.Tune into the episode to discover: How Alex went from teacher to farm worker to copywriter. Why it’s okay to leave a profession you thought was your end all be all. Alex’s discovery of The Copywriter Club Podcast, and how it helped him grow his business. How he uses LinkedIn as his primary source to find clients. The significance of curating the right kind of LinkedIn feed for your mental state. How to embrace the “sucky” beginnings of anything new. Why every copywriter needs to acquire this trait. Offers you can service and skill stack to gain clients. What most copywriters get wrong when they start their business. His marketing strategy on LinkedIn and how you can make it your own. Why you need to be ridiculously yourself on any platform you choose. What’s in a successful LinkedIn profile? What new and seasoned copywriters need to keep in mind. Not finding clients on LinkedIn? This could be why. Where you need to spend more time on LinkedIn. How to effectively close sales calls (and with ease). The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteAlex's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
Abi Prendergast is our guest on the 361st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Abi is a copywriter and evergreen funnel strategist for course creators who are tired of the never-ending cycles of live launches. She shares actionable advice copywriters can use in their own businesses or for their clients. Abi’s early beginnings on Upwork and how she got kicked off the platform. How she uses Facebook groups to land and secure clients. Why she decided to invest in herself and her business. The switch she made from live launching to evergreen launching. The truth behind a “bad” launch and how to learn from it. How she increased her rates after 30 sales pages and hundreds of emails. What’s the real reason behind an unsuccessful launch? The power behind having a strategic mindset. Why you cannot ignore feedback loops and how they’ll increase conversions. How talking to the wrong people can make great copy fall flat. Tune into the episode by hitting the play button.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join the Accelerator The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteAbi's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
Ali Rector joins the show on the 360th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Ali is a cycle-syncing coach and copywriter who gained her expertise from years of agency copywriting. She sheds light on the importance of not letting your ego interfere with your work and how to build a strong creative process to become the best copywriter you can be.
Tune into the episode to find out:
How Ali quickly grew her skillset and became a lead agency copywriter Her path from agency copywriter to freelance copywriter. The follow-up email that landed her a high-paying contract. The ins and outs of the creative process at an agency. How to communicate your vision to your team. What characteristics make copywriters successful? Why it’s a good thing for everyone to have a different creative process. How to spark creativity as a freelance copywriter. Why she decided to pivot into coaching and how she made the transition. How The Copywriter Accelerator helped Ali build her business. Why community is absolutely essential as a freelancer The balance between intuition and logic.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Connect with Ali The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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Erica Salm Rench is our guest on the 359th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Erica is the COO of Rasa.io, an AI tool used to personalize and streamline email newsletters. She shares insights about the world of AI and how although there’s no slowing it down, how copywriters can use AI to optimize their systems and processes in their own businesses and use it as a competitive edge in a crowded marketplace.
Here’s what you’ll find:
- What exactly is Rasa.io and how does it work?
- Why email is still powerful and why you need an email newsletter.
- The importance of client feedback and how AI can streamline your process.
- How to incorporate the use of AI in your business model and packages.
- The similarities between a sales conversation and offering value.
- Do your discovery questions need a facelift?
- Need a reason to create a bank of content? Here’s why.
- How to repurpose your content and save yourself time and energy.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Accelerator waitlist
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Rasa.io
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM
AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
Full Transcript:
On the 358th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re covering all things law and your business. Taylor Tieman, Esq. joins the show to give copywriters actionable steps they can take to legally protect their business. Legal is an unavoidable part of running a business, and Taylor breaks it down in an approachable way.
Tune into the episode to find out:
The pitfalls of not having a proper contract in place. The difference between owning your copy and the right to use it in your portfolio. Can you have 50/50 ownership of the copy you write? What is an intellectual property clause and how can you add it to your contract? What if you need to end the project abruptly? The specific clauses copywriters need to have in their contracts. When do you actually need to enforce the contract? LLC vs. S-Corp: Which one is right for your business? The 3 most important legal aspects to protect your business. Why you may need a trademark and the different levels of filing. AI and legal… A lawyer’s input. How to better protect your clients’ private info from AI. What about privacy policies and terms and conditions? How to be GDPR compliant. Is there a problem with using “re:” as a subject line
Hit play to listen to the episode below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Taylor's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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Angela Morris is our guest on the 357th episode of The Copywriter Club. Angela is a makeup artist turned copywriter and digital marketing strategist who teaches her clients how to quiet quit Instagram, so they can save time and energy in their businesses. This episode breaks down her strategy and framework for how to take a step back from social media while continuing to grow your impact and your business.
Here’s what you’ll find in the episode:
How to solve problems your audience actually is struggling with. Where she found her first set of social media clients in the midst of losing all her makeup industry gigs. Why you should channel what makes you angry. Is palatable still sellable? How she went from writing captions to strategizing business messaging. The importance of having good perception as a copywriter. What is Quiet Quitting Instagram? Angela’s strategy for Quiet Quitting Instagram and how it’s affected her business. Is Kira quitting Instagram? The process of creating a successful package and selling it. What happens once your static feed is radio silent? What does the data say? Could Quiet Quitting Instagram be for you?
Binge the episode by hitting the play button below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Angela's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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Katelyn Collins joins us on the 356th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. With a background in theater, Katelyn has transferred her many talents into the world of copywriting. Now she writes for 7-figure course creators and is a copywriting educator to those looking to improve their writing chops.
Tune into the episode to find out:
How an actor ignited a passion for email marketing. What are darlings and how can you cut them in your copy? The importance of throughlines and how they build decisiveness as a copywriter. Katelyn’s inside scoop on what it’s like to work for start–ups. When diving head first into your business… Where do you start to find clients? The delicate balance between being the dreamer and generator in your business. What’s really on the other side of uncomfortable pivots and changes in our lives and businesses? The perspective shift every entrepreneur needs to make. How to recover from burnout and notice when it starts to creep in. Is it still worth it to work with course creators? Her perspective on AI and copywriting and what it means for the changing marketing landscape. How to minimize the amount of airtime your negative thoughts get. The perks of working with 7-figure business owners and a few things to look out for. Katelyn’s 4 P’s and how it’ll help you land more clients. Why you need to include potential objections inside your project pitch. How to be more decisive in your business. Her method for nipping writing procrastination in the bud.
Listen to the episode or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Katelyn's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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On the 355th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob take the mic to talk about the 5 critical moves copywriters need to make to build, grow, and scale a successful copywriting business. If this year has got you questioning your business, this episode is for you.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
How to “flip the switch” in your business. What successful copywriters know that struggling copywriters don’t. Why you need to build an operating system to support your goals. How to define your X-factor… The very thing that makes you stand out. The steps to create your ideal client and discover the problems they want to be solved. How to find the right pricing model for your business. Why having a signature service will make you more revenue. The importance of processes and systems and how to begin to build them. Why systems are the solution to imposter complex. How to improve your sales skills without feeling sleazy. The 4 mistakes copywriters are making in growing their business. How to actually find higher-paying clients who recognize your value. Why you need to implement these 4 levers to make your business run more efficiently. How to radically change your business in just 5 months.
Tune into the episode by hitting play or checking out the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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Brenna McGowan is our guest on the 354th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Brenna is a social media manager turned email copywriter and launch strategist who helps her clients implement prelaunch methods that generate greater awareness and sales. If you want to create natural momemtum before your launch, you'll want to listen to Brenna's behind-the-curtain insights.
Here's what you'll find:
Why Brenna transitioned from social media marketing to email marketing. How she repositioned her business in a new industry and grew an online presence. The process she created for validating her offer and expertise. Why she niched into prelaunch and how it can benefit the overall launch of a product or service. What’s so important about your “why?” What are you supposed to do after you pivot your business? Being good at things vs being passionate about them. How Brenna uses the LEAP process to help entrepreneurs find their sweet spot to achieve their goals. What’s working with prelaunch now? Why you’re really feeling overwhelmed by prelaunch and how to stop it. How to build your email list before you launch. Her inspiration behind creating a different style event aka The Voxer Summit. A behind-the-scenes look at her client launch based on her CASE method. How she packages her offers and positions herself as a strategist. What if you only have 3 hours before your next launch? The easier way to create natural momentum for your business.
Tune into the episode to learn all of this and more.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Brenna's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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On the 353rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Lindsay Hyatt joins the show to talk about how to make strategic pivots in your business and step into the spotlight with confidence. Lindsay is a copywriter and empowerment coach who helps her clients build a stand-out personal brand. Before she built her business, she worked in radio ads and healthcare marketing, and she was a 5th-grade teacher before jumping ship to start her own blog, so she knows a thing or two about making big pivots.
Listen in to find out:
How do you know when it’s time to pivot in your business… or life? The steps Lindsay took to meet her salary within a couple of months. How to create a writing habit and build your portfolio. The benefits of setting aside your pride and putting yourself out there. What’s the key to building a personal brand? Her Instagram philosophy for growth and building an audience. What to do when it’s hard to show up on social media. General content pillars vs rigid content calendar – which one is for you? How to stand out on LinkedIn. Why she chose to niche horizontally vs vertically. The reality of creating a new arm in your business. How to grow your visibility with intention and mindset. Want to gain clarity and perspective? Follow this step. Why she started a podcast and how it’s shifting her business. What happens when we challenge our beliefs? The benefits of creating an alter ego and stepping into the spotlight. How Rob’s email was the tough love she (and we) all needed to hear.
Hit that play button or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Lindsay's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
Full Transcript:
Chris Mason is our guest on the 352nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Chris is a direct-response marketer who wrote a companion book to Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz called, Breakthrough Advertising Mastery. Chris breaks down his process for writing this book and he gives actionable tips for copywriters can use today.
Tune into the episode to find out:
What similarities are there between songwriting and direct response marketing? Why you need to build your “sitting down” muscle. How Chris landed Brian Kurtz as a client and how their partnership grew. What is the 40/40/20 mix? The best process for context switching and juggling multiple projects at a time. How to get better at decision-making and what that means for your business. Determining your audience’s mass desire and understanding market sophistication. When do you incorporate a unique mechanism? Two techniques to better understand your audience and their needs. How to build the stream of acceptance and shift current beliefs. How to break things down into actionable steps for your audience. What’s a profit partner and what’s involved?
Tune into the episode by hitting play or checking out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Chris's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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Jess Kelly is our guest on the 351st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She is a copywriter who helps conscientious brands build authentic and true-to-them businesses through brand and marketing strategies. From shifts in careers and misdiagnoses, Jess’s journey highlights the benefits of personal growth and becoming different and new versions of yourself along the way.
Listen to the episode to find out:
Why Jess dropped out of journalism. Experimentation vs expectation – why does it matter? The permission slip you need to give yourself – like yesterday. How she fell into copywriting and her career paths to get there. The 10-minute call that landed her inside of The Copywriter Accelerator. What’s the secret to building better interview skills? Why you need to start showing up and how it’s going to pay off. The diagnoses that helped Jess make sense of her identity and experience. How to connect with more people in your network. What kinds of relationships should we really be building? The best thing about becoming a new version of yourself.
Tune into the episode by hitting play or checking out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Jess's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
Full Transcript:
350 episodes and over 1.5 million downloads later, Rob and Kira sit down to chat about... pitching (and phones?). From setting intentions for a new season to setting your business up for success in Q3, you'll walk away from this episode with ideas and actionable steps you can use right now in your business.
Catch up with Rob and Kira to find out:
The sure-fire way to gain clients in Q3. How Kira’s flip-phone project is going. Creating a theme for a new season. What summer on this side of the globe means for Rob and Kira. What’s new with TCC this summer? The do’s and don’t’s of pitching and why copywriters need to focus on this instead. Is your ego getting in the way of new clients? What business activities can help you come out of a slow season? How are copywriters getting paid right now? What’s new on the AI for Creative Entrepreneurs podcast?
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Underground Annual Membership --> Get P7 for Free The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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On the 349th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Michelle Pollack joins the show to completely shatter your perception of the inner critic and how something as “simple” as values can truly change how you show up in your life and business. Michelle is an Executive and Leadership Coach who shares her expertise in how to give yourself permission to play bigger and live the life you desire.
Follow along to find out:
How Michelle was able to change the neural pathways in her brain. What to do when the “is this all there is” feeling pops up and how to step out of it. The importance of values and how to define them for yourself. Can you have too many values and how to prioritize values for different seasons of life? Is there such a thing as balance? How to LIVE within your values once you’ve actually identified them despite life’s responsibilities. The #1 barrier to facing your own inner critic. 7 ways the inner critic could be showing up in your life. How to create awareness around your inner critic. The critical component of working through your inner critic. What’s a “why” and how do you create one? What does compassion got to do with your inner critic? Why is messy action better than no action? The reality of shifting into new identities. How are you supposed to sit in difficult emotions? Leadership vs power: what’s the difference? How to lead with your values.
Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Michelle's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
Full Transcript:
Dan Nelken is our guest on the 348th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Dan is a copywriter and author of A Self-Help Guide for Copywriters. If you’re a creative, you may have fallen into the inner critic rabbit hole that keeps you in a cycle of stuck. But Dan gives practical and actionable steps to move away from creative burnout and into a process that helps you turn surface-level ideas into substance.
Tune into the episode to find out:
Dan’s experience in ad school and how it shaped his expertise and portfolio. The grind that turned into a sustainable copywriting career. How to come up with ideas without letting self-doubt, inner critic, and the feeling of stuck get in the way. The bucket exercise – how to trick your brain into creating ideas. What’s the creative process and what tools are useful? The two reasons procrastination is keeping you from total creativity. Why you should use AI to feel inspired rather than disposable. How to create a swipe folder system and maximize it. Do you have a habit of following through? How to make your emotions work for you. The variety of work copywriters can do and industries they can dive into. How to keep your business alive without feeling resentful and burned out. Creativity outside of writing – how do we do it? How Dan’s been able to scale back his client projects by 40%.
Listen to the episode or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Dan's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
Full Transcript:
On the 347th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Linda Perry makes her FOURTH appearance on the show. This episode acts as a friendly reminder to take care of your mindset especially in times of financial uncertainty and business (and life) plateaus. Linda shares how we can continue to grow our mindset toolbelt, so we can stop getting in our own way.
Here’s how the episode goes:
How Linda’s work has changed over the last few years. Her dream of moving to Europe and how she made it happen. What’s the challenge with selling something like mindset? The real reason you keep coming back to your mindset struggles. How finding your why will help you craft messaging and communicate better. What tools should copywriters add to their business? Here’s the real problem with continually purchasing courses and programs. The 5 traps keeping you from business confidence. What’s the difference between worth base and value base? Are we telling ourselves a story that keeps us stuck? How to focus on what we can control. Can you be the solution AND the problem in your business? Why Linda paused her podcast and grew her client roster. The importance of having a sounding board. The simple shift that’ll help you save time and energy in your business. Why you shouldn’t be afraid to do something because someone else is doing it. How defining success will keep you from feelings of shame. Is the Think Tank the right program for you?
Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Linda's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
Full Transcript:
Dr. Rebecca Fortgang is our guest on the 346th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, and a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Just a light background, huh? Kira knew Dr. Becky had to be on the show after taking her class, and she did not disappoint.
Take a peek inside the conversation:
Is willpower a muscle? What’s all the debate around willpower? What do willpower and love have in common? Researching topics with inconclusive and incomplete data – this work has to start somewhere. Tools creative entrepreneurs can use to be more productive. Why do people really quit on their goals? What to do when lapses happen and what are they trying to tell us? How to avoid spiraling and what we should do instead. What’s a goal cleanse? Are you a failure if you quit a long-term goal? How to find alternate goals if you can’t let goals go. The clear-cut approach to setting goals and achieving them. What is “gripping the table” self-control and how can we do less of it? How your future self can motivate you in completing your goals TODAY. Is sacrifice needed to attain goals? Strategies to stop procrastinating and how to tap into your willpower. Can you convince yourself to be in the right headspace? How can you prioritize mental health in your life?
Tune into the episode to listen to all the insights.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Rebecca's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
Full Transcript:
Kate Hollis is our guest on the 345th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kate is a copywriter and sales strategist whose alter ego is a librarian, but her skillset doesn’t stop there. Fueled by curiosity, she’s also on track to become a certified Enneagram practitioner. With her “hummingbird” mindset, she emphasizes the value of leading a curiosity-driven life, and how it can lead to a more fulfilling life and business.
Here’s how the conversation goes:
What’s the bus metaphor and how does it apply to business? Kate’s path to copywriting and owning a business. Why creating connections with others will help you become a better copywriter. How to create an identity outside of your business. Is simple messaging underrated? How to build your intellectual and emotional muscles. What is the Enneagram? How books will help you become a more compassionate salesperson. The benefits of using the Enneagram in your messaging and how it’ll benefit your ideal audience. How the Enneagram can influence your sales funnels. The do’s and don’ts of the Enneagram. Could you be holding yourself back from essential growth?
Tune into the episode below or by reading the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Kate's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast
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Paulo Faustino is our guest on the 344th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Paulo is a serial entrepreneur and digital marketing expert who shares his experience in building and scaling businesses even in the midst of chaos. From writing 550 articles for $100 to scaling a millionaire-dollar business, Paulo shares insights all business owners can glean.Tune into the episode to find out: How a gut feeling kept him on the path to entrepreneurship. How he scaled his business to a million dollars and why it took an extreme hit. The pivot he made to save his business and grow his audience. What is affiliate marketing and how can it benefit your business? How to navigate a financial loss and why fear cannot stop you from moving forward. This reality of business can make or break you. The 4 foundational pieces your business need to thrive. Why marketing and authority go hand in hand? When does the sale really start? The effects of a world-class client experience. Why it’s not your job to fix all your client’s problems (including money mindset). How to filter the types of clients you work with. The simpler and faster way to save time and energy in your business. The ins and outs of Paulo’s social media marketing strategy and how he grew his following and email list to hundreds of thousands. How to bring aligned content to your audience. Why you need to focus on value rather than design. What Paulo would do differently if he could start over. Authority grows when you have these two things. The current struggles of a high-earning entrepreneur. Press play or check out the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websitePaulo's InstagramThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
We’re bringing Brittany McBean back for the 343rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. It’s been 3 years since Brittany’s been on the show and a lot of has changed for her and her business. From highs and lows of building a 6-figure business, she’s completely transparent in her journey and how other copywriters can use her wisdom to grow their own business.Here’s how the conversation goes: Why Brittany works on long projects and what it does for her client retention. The benefits of having a highly-automated inquiry process. Why she’s not looking for a 500k year but this instead. The raw and real downsides of business. Her hiring process – why you need to know what you need and how to hire based on two specific criteria. The imposter complex pops up even for high-level copywriters? What is a malleable role and how can it fit into your business (with boundaries)? How to be a better leader to your team when things are falling off track. Her process for letting someone go. Why your role changes as you grow into your business as CEO. How to have humanizing and empathetic conversations with your team. What’s working in the marketing world today and what needs to change? Is your audience jaded? How to create shifts in your messaging to position yourself as the answer. What’s the deal with urgency and scarcity? Her process for strategy and writing copy. What’s the hierarchy of messaging? How to get fewer revisions on the final copy. How belief can hold you back for far too long. Tune into the episode by hitting play or checking out the transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteBrittany's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastBrittany's first episodeFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Growth and change are a natural part of starting and building a business. And sometimes it all goes smoothly, other times it can be a little bit painful. But, ultimately we have to figure this stuff out in order to succeed as copywriters and as business owners. Our guest for today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is returning once again to share what she's learned as she's built her copywriting agency and helped dozens of high-end clients build their businesses too. Strategist and copywriter, Brittany McBean is here to share what's happened to her business over the last couple of years, why she hit pause on her YouTube channel, the struggles of managing employees, mental health, and a lot more. It's another great interview that you're definitely going to want to stick around for.Kira Hug: But, before we jump into the interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind for copywriters, content writers, strategists, marketers, you name it. If you're a creative and you're building a service-based business and creating scalable offers or products, new podcast, you will be a good fit in this room. Brittany McBean, today's guest is a Think Tank alumni member, so we were lucky enough to work with her in the Think Tank. And we do have a retreat coming up in our Think Tank. It's a virtual retreat coming up June 1st and 2nd. So, if you would like to be a part of that virtual retreat and meet our entire Think Tank crew, it's not too late. You can reach out to us and we can chat about whether or not the Think Tank makes sense for you.One thing I feel like we don't typically talk about when we talk about the Think Tank, Rob, is what new members can expect when they join, and how we help them immediately over the first month. And so, I thought we could just touch on that real quick,
Rob and Kennedy of Email Marketing Heroes are our guests on the 342nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. With backgrounds in hypnotism and mentalism, they steered away from traditional marketing and into the world of email marketing. With great success, they began teaching other entertainers how to use the power of email and have since expanded into teaching business owners and entrepreneurs how to use email to its fullest potential.Here’s how the conversation goes: The reality of human influence and psychological triggers. How to excel at sales calls and turn them into a formality. Why you want to get the ‘no’ as soon as possible. The benefits of having an email list and having control of your house. The value behind honest and transparent communication during sales calls. Should your potential clients fill out an application? What if someone isn’t a good fit for your program or service? Why you shouldn’t be attached to outcomes in business. What is the perception of choice? How Rob and Kennedy made a multi-5 figure FB ads mistake and how they recovered. The silver lining to making mistakes in business. Their current business model and how they’ve structured it for growth. Email marketing and being a service provider – what are the best practices for you? Why you need to position yourself to be top of mind. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteRob and Kennedy's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: As a copywriter, you probably write emails for your clients. You almost certainly subscribe to a few email lists to watch what other smart marketers and copywriters are doing with email. And let me just interject here that you should definitely be subscribed to the Copywriter Club email list, but even if you don't use email or if you only subscribe to just a few well curated lists, today's episode is going to change the way that you think about email, persuasion and marketing. Our guests today are Rob and Kennedy, the psychic mentalist hypnotist duo behind Email Marketing Heroes. You'll definitely want to hear what they share about manipulative marketing and the most important thing, maybe the only thing that you should be doing with the emails that you send to your own list.Kira Hug: But before we get to our interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank, which we've mentioned several times recently. So if you listen to the show, you may already know what it's all about.Rob Marsh: Yeah, so what's taken you so long to apply and join us there? Is the real question here.Kira Hug: Yeah, I mean, okay Rob, I'm going to ask you a question about it, but what has surprised you about the Think Tank and what copywriters have been able to do in the Think Tank, recently?Rob Marsh: So I'm not sure that this is recent, well, I mean it happens with a lot of copywriters who join, but just how quickly people make progress in their business. We've had people join who are struggling to make four or $5,000 months and literally within 60 days are clearing $10,000 months. That's not everybody, but it has happened enough times that sometimes I'm thinking the mental switch that you go through when you commit to a program like the Think Tank just has an amazing impact on your business. So I love seeing that happen over and over and over. And that doesn't mean people don't go through dry patches as well, we work through those for a lot of people, but it has real impact and I love seeing that.Kira Hug: And I love our weekly check-in calls. So every Tuesday in the Think Tank, I host a check-in.
Alyssa Burkus is our guest on the 341st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Alyssa is a thought leadership and content marketer. She started her business after being faced with asking life’s big questions after a chronic cancer prognosis but has defied the odds over and over again by building a business that works for her, her health, and her family. While we may not all be faced with life-threatening illnesses, we all face uncertainty and downsides. Alyssa shares the systems she has in place to look after what matters most.Here’s how the conversation goes: How her background in a global change consulting company has impacted her copywriting career. Why she leaned into thought leadership and authority building as her area of specialization. What really is thought leadership and how is it different from other forms of content marketing? Is all content marketing created equal? Tools to cope with uncertainty. The importance of energy management for your personal and business life. What AI doesn’t have on thought leadership. What’s Alyssa’s strategy for working with a new client on building their authority? How to strategically repurpose content. Using the “plant and…” approach to pivoting. How to create writing habits that stick as a writer. Why it’s a good idea to have a place you can relearn information. “Write it in your own words” is making a comeback. How she sold out her first program with no list. What can you modify in your products or services to make them stand out? The #1 question you need to ask yourself when creating a course. Why you can’t hustle culture your way through business. Morning routines vs morning windows… What’s the difference?Press play or check out the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteAlyssa's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMAI for Creative Entrepreneurs PodcastFull Transcript:
Rob and Kira sit down on the 340th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to chat about a few episodes that have stood out to them over the last 5 years. Yup, they’re jumping all the way back in the archives to tap into what still applies to today’s copywriting arena and how you can use past insight to your business today.Here’s how the conversation goes: The copywriting event happening in London in 2023. The FREE A.I. challenge being hosted THIS week. Rob and Kira’s new A.I for Creative Entrepreneurs podcast. Why Joel Klettke didn’t start with beginner rates and jumped straight into value rates? How to turn mindset and confidence into action. The difference between an employee mindset and an entrepreneurial mindset. Do you need a portfolio to start charging higher rates? How to shift our mindset around the imposter complex. The benefits of imposter complex. The 12 lies of the imposter complex and what to do about it. What is The Stone Soup tale and how does it apply to copywriting? How to become the go-to copywriter in the room. Jereshia’s advice on high-ticket sales as a copywriter. The real difference between low-ticket and high-ticket sales. Are you being a spork? What are the POP and the Champagne Closer methods? How to lead a sales call with authority.Tune into the episode below by hitting play or reading the transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join the AI Challenge The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMEpisode 21 with Joel KlettkeEpisode 47 with Tanya GeislerEpisode 36 with Ken McCarthyEpisode 204 with Jereshia Hawk Full Transcript:
Dave Harland is our guest on the 339th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. After starting a career as a soccer (or should we say football) reporter in Manchester, Dave shifted to the world of copywriting where he’s known for coming up with big ideas and a method to execute them. In this episode, you’ll find out exactly how he makes it happen.You’ll also learn: How Dave improved his copy skills with limited technology capabilities. Why he branded himself using “word” rather than “copy.” How he organized his portfolio when he first started his business. A typical day in the life of Dave and how he balances client work with his own business goals. Why writers need time to simmer in their thoughts and why they shouldn’t rush the critical thinking process. How to get bigger brands to notice you. The 3 question test Dave uses when coming up with a big idea. How many projects are too many projects? His method for attracting clients and building his brand using LinkedIn. How to find your voice, break the rules, and connect with your audience. Dave’s path to becoming the “copywriting comedian.” Why you need to create a connection in anything you write. How he uses AI as a firestarter and as a means to eliminate the most common ideas. Why he believes ChatGTP won’t replace dedicated, skilled copywriters.Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join the AI Challenge The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteDave's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:
Corrie Myers is a website copywriter and messaging strategist who acts as a thought partner for her clients. After 15 years in the education field, she made the shift to copy and has found ways to incorporate her leadership and teaching expertise into her business. She’s built a successful business over the last few years by leading with empathy and setting clear boundaries.Here’s how the conversation goes: Corrie’s career shift from teacher to copywriter. Building a business as a parent of three and how she balances work and life. The skills she’s brought from her teaching career into copywriting. Why she treats her own business as a client and why you should, too. The benefits of having less hours to do something. How she built confidence in making big life changes. Being a thought partner for your clients – how do you position yourself as the go-to? How the Think Tank has helped transform Corrie’s business. Why you should pinpoint gaps your clients might miss. How she determines the types of clients she works with. Where she finds leads and projects during unprecedented times and what she leans on during periods of unknown. How her pricing has evolved since the beginning of her business and how she packages her offers. Why day rates are helpful in getting your foot in the door for long-term work. How to selll a day rate or retainer. The subtle shift in language Corrie uses to position herself as the strategist. The messy middle – how do you trudge through? How AI has impacted her business and maximized her energy by being a way to “chop vegetables.”Tune into the episode by hitting play or checking out the transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteCorrie's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:
Carolyn McMurray is our guest on the 337th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Carolyn is a copywriter and host of a community designed for generation Z to learn about copywriting. But how does one start a community and grow towards 100+ members? Tune into the episode to find out.You’ll also discover: Carolyn’s accidental discovery of copywriting and how she landed her first gig. Her advice for getting her business started if she had to do it all over again. How she fell into the tech niche. Why she decided to build and grow a community for gen Z? What’s her community all about and how does she benefit from it? Should you label yourself as a junior copywriter? When she increased her rates and began to build her reputation and brand. How to create a copywriting portfolio that stands out. Where she gathers inspiration to write her list weekly. Why she doesn’t take herself too seriously and how it benefits her brand. Carolyn’s advice for building a successful community. Mistakes she’s made in the growth of her community and what to avoid. Why you need something to get you out of your head. Using ChatGTP for writer’s block – does it really help? Thinking about marketing to gen z? Here’s some advice from a gen z’er. Using AI and the future of copywriting for upcoming generations.Listen to the episode by hitting play or checking out the transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteConnect with CarolynThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:
John Forde is a direct-response copywriter and co-author of the book, Great Leads and the person behind the long-running newsletter called the Copywriter’s Roundtable. John shared his process for getting started with research and copy and the lessons he’s learned from his 23-year copywriting career.Here’s how the episode goes: John’s approach to research – how much do you really need to get started? What does it mean for your copy to be invisible? Do you need to invest in another copywriting formula? How often do you need to check in with your writing process and method? The difference between divergent and convergent thinking and how to use each in copywriting. Why the warm-up is essential to writing your best copy. The benefits of reverse engineering outlines in different copywriting assets. How speed can benefit your copy and emulate positive energy. John’s process for feeding his brain from morning to night. How fiction books can help you develop a better sense of empathy. The 6 leads John teaches in his book. What makes a great lead? Info product vs. a wise product – what makes one better than the other? The discipline that comes with writing a weekly newsletter for over 20 years. His view on the future of copywriting and the lifestyle of copywriters.Hit that play button or check out the transcript below!The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteJohn's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:
Paul Roetzer is our guest on the 335th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Paul is the host of The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Show and Founder & CEO of the Marketing AI Institute. He shares how AI can be used as a tool to increase efficiency and help grow your business.Here’s what you’ll find out: The impact AI is having on children and future generations. Is AI stealing imagination? The 3 questions you need to ask yourself as a creative using AI. Can we avoid using AI? The effects of AI-generated content and the natural human need. Low-cost and free access tools to start experimenting with AI. The areas copywriters should focus on and how they can leverage them. Should you shift your title? How to become a more efficient writer. Finding trusted voices to learn from to become more confident in AI. What AI cannot take away from copywriters. How to rid yourself of the fear that come with the never-ending updates, changes, and shifts in copywriting. Why you need to be willing to put out imperfect work. What can be streamlined with your team using AI? How does ChatGPT really work? How Paul uses AI in his business to maximize productivity without extra work. AI and fears – what does it mean for the future? Responsible principles and ethics while using AI for business and marketing.Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteAI Writer's SummitConnect with Paul on LinkedInThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:Kira Hug: When it comes to AI, it's hard not to wonder, as a creative person, if we're losing something or if we're unlocking a whole new level of creativity. In today's podcast episode, we cover the three questions we need to ask ourselves as creatives, and we dive deep into the world of AI and its applications in the business world. Our guest, Paul Roetzer, host of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Show and founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, shares his insights on how AI can be used as a tool to increase efficiency and solve business problems. Paul shares how his business uses AI for podcast transcription, summaries, blog post creation, and social media content. And naturally, it's impossible not to talk about the importance of responsible AI and how it affects our future and society. We also dive into how we can get excited about AI as creatives and accept it as part of our businesses and our lives. And yes, that intro was written in collaboration with ChatGPT because we've got to walk our talk and start experimenting with these tools. Now, let's get started.Rob Marsh: Okay, so this part of the podcast is not written by ChatGPT. It's just me talking about the Copywriter Think Tank, that's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their business. You've heard us talk about this before. If you've been thinking about joining a mastermind and in particular, the Think Tank, now is the best time to do it because we have a retreat coming up in the first part of June. We also are planning a retreat overseas in London coming in September. Members have free access to both of those, plus a whole slew of other things that we do, including one-on-one coaching from Kira and myself on how to accomplish bigger things in your business, whether that's stepping out on stage, creating a new product, building a podcast or video channel, or maybe you're building an agency, a product company, even if you just want to become the best-known copywriter in your niche. Those are the kinds of things that we do in the Copywriter Think Tank. To find out more, visit copywriterthinktank.com,
Sam Woods is our guest on the 334th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Sam is a copywriter who’s been leveraging AI for copywriting since 2019. This episode dives into how AI is going to integrate into our personal and professional lives over the next decade, and Sam shares how copywriters can use it to their advantage.Take a peek at what we chat out: How will AI create and eliminate jobs and reshape the economy. What capabilities does ChatGPT have and how can copywriters leverage it in their business? How Sam uses AI in his client projects and his process for writing sales copy. Using ChatGPT prompts for market research. What ChatGPT is and what it’s not. Can ChatGPT really write in your voice? Treating ChatGPT like a junior copywriter. Is AI a tool for creativity on tap? How to present using AI to a client. What else can AI actually do? Why your input matters more than anything. The benefits and value of using AI in your creative business. Can using AI make you a better copywriter? What are the first steps to start using tools like ChatGPT?Tune into the episode below by hitting play or reading the transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteSam's TwitterThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:
Juliet Peay is our guest on the 333rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Juliet is a personal brand coach and copywriter who helps her clients “unfrankenstein” themselves, so they can show up authentically online. When it comes to building a business, your personal brand can be the key to attracting your ideal clients.Here’s how the conversation went: Why Juliet decided to start a blog about local business and how it opened up a full-time job opportunity. Freelancing on the side and when she felt ready take the leap in her business. Doing something because you think you’re supposed to. Going from a reactive to a proactive client search and why mindset plays a key role. Finding the right social media platform for your business. Do you have to send hard pitches? Building relationships with people using LinkedIn. How Juliet landed a ghostwriting retainer project. The fine line between personal branding and copywriting. Her personal branding process – what does she use with clients? How personal should we get online? Is there a line we shouldn’t cross? How to find a middle ground when sharing strong opinions and viewpoints. One project at a time vs. balancing multiple deadlines. Implementing shorter deadlines for proposals and sending this key piece in your proposal routine. Hiring a VA + using Dubsado for business. Learning from client mistakes and the necessity of having contracts Common misconceptions around boundaries and how they improve your customer service skills. Finding contractors to make your life easier. Juliet’s cut and clear approach to problem-solving. The struggles of keeping up with the opportunities and not yet having the bandwidth to make it happen.Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteJuliet's websiteNikita's episode The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:
Chloe Barnes is our guest on the 332nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Chloe is a copywriter and creator coach who made her freelance gig a full-time income. After going viral on a little platform known as TikTok, Chloe has been able to grow her business by building her personal brand. But what makes good content and how can you use the platform to your advantage? Tune into the episode to find out…You’ll also hear: Why she ended up studying abroad in Sweden and how it changed the projection of her career. Starting a travel blog and getting a full-time content marketing job out of it. How she maintained working a 9-5 and a 5-9. Why she ended up on TikTok in the first place. How she blew up on TikTok on two different occasions and booked out her calendar. Why you need to be okay with the long game and how to be consistent. How she builds her personal brand on TikTok rather than her copywriting expertise. Her process for posting on TikTok and her content marketing strategy. How do you come down from a viral moment? What about haters and trolls? What do you do about them? Balancing the many ideas that come from quick growth and success. Dealing with wrong-fit clients and how to navigate sticky situations. How to develop your own style on social media. Why you don’t have to pay to get started and how it’s holding you back.Press play or read the transcript below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteChloe's TikTokThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: How long does it take to become an overnight sensation? How much work do you need to put in until something goes viral or your audience starts to find you? And what happens when you finally break through and people want to hear from you? Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast knows the answers to those questions. Copywriter and TikTok sensation, Chloe Barnes, is here to answer those questions and more. We talked about going viral on social media, dealing with haters and trolls, her not exactly strategic approach to creating content and a lot more. So stay tuned because we think you're going to like this episode.But before we get to that interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank, that's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their businesses. Whether that's getting onto a stage, creating a new product, growing the business that you already have, creating a video channel, building an agency, anything like that. Maybe you want to just become the best known copywriter in your niche. That's the kind of thing that we help copywriters do in the Think Tank. To learn more, visit copywriterthinktank.com and fill out that short application.And I also need to introduce you to my guest host for this episode, copywriter and business strategist, Jill Wise. Jill has been a previous guest on the podcast, that was episode 235. She's also a former Think Tank member. She's an amazing copywriter. Welcome to the show, Jill.Jill Wise: Thank you so much for having me. Like I said before we started recording, I was really excited to just hang out with you this morning.Rob Marsh: Yeah, well I mean, when you're talking about all the amazing things... Before we started recording the show, telling me all the things going on in your business, I'm like, I wish we had more time now.Jill Wise: I mean, maybe I'll just come back for another episode.Rob Marsh: Yeah, let's do that.Jill Wise: I'm pitching myself live.Rob Marsh: We should definitely do that. I mean, since the last time we recorded you've had a baby, your business is still growing and doing amazing. So yeah,
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteNess LabsAnne-Laure's Twitter page The Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:
On the 330th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob and Kira sit down after two weeks of in-person retreats to share what they’re most excited about in 2023. Between new conversations around writing a book, learning new languages, competing in an Ironman, and AI and ChatGPT, you’ll want to tune into the few surprises Rob and Kira have up their sleeve.Tune into the podcast to find out: Who’s going to learn Italian – Rob or Kira? Did Rob actually bike 200 miles in one day?! Is Kira going to be the new Ironman? The tentative releases of Rob and Kira’s books. Is there a ghost in Kira’s photo? The power of in-person retreats and masterminds. Will there be a new AI workshop for copywriters? Who should worry about AI? Where will the next Think Tank retreats take place? A Copywriter Club spin-off podcast is happening… what’s it about?Find out the answers by tuning into the podcast below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:If you'd like to be the first to know about the AI workshop + limited series all about AI and ChatGPT, then click here to add yourself to the list!The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Welcome to the Copywriter Club podcast. We don't have an intro today, but we were just talking about the fact that maybe we haven't ever even said our names on the podcast other than occasionally talking to each other. So this is the Copywriter Club podcast with Rob Marsh and Kira Hug.Kira Hug: Right.Rob Marsh: What else should we say about ourselves? I don't know.Kira Hug: Well, Rob, so we're at the beginning of February. What are you really excited about right now? Personally, professionally?Rob Marsh: Personally, a couple of things are going on. So outside of work, I am taking an Italian class with my wife and my oldest daughter, and the class actually started a couple of weeks ago. I haven't been able to take the first two classes because you and I have been traveling out of town. We had our retreat; then we had our mastermind group that met together. And so today that we're recording is my first day that I get to go to this class. So I'm hoping that after missing the first two classes, I'm not hopelessly far behind in my attempts to learn Italian. So I'm looking forward to that.Kira Hug: You got to prove it. You have to say something.Rob Marsh: Well, I haven't been to class yet, so I don't have anything to say, but I will eventually. I think, maybe I even said this on the podcast once. I can't remember, but Italian to me, is the most beautiful language. It's musical. When I hear people speaking Italian, it sounds like they're singing in a lot of ways. My wife lived in Italy for close to a year at one point, and so we have some friends in Italy that we've connected with over the years, once or twice, and usually, it's my wife talking to them at dinner or sitting around their homes, and I'm sitting there quietly picking out a word or two that I might understand because I took high school Spanish and there are some similarities there. And you know what? It's just time for me to pick up another language, so in addition to the very little Spanish that I can understand and joke about speaking, maybe I'll learn Italian. And so yeah, that's going on in-Kira Hug: That's so fun.Rob Marsh: ... In my life right now. Yeah, it's a lot easier than training for a marathon and 112 mile bike race and a two-mile swim all at the same time.Kira Hug: I don't think it is. I am slightly jealous because I do want to learn another language desperately, but I also realize I tend to take on too much. And so I was like, don't take on any other goals for now; just focus on what's in front of you....
Steph Trovato is our guest on the 329th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Steph is a copywriter who has been able to scale her business to $300k a year in just 3 years. In this episode, she shares the tools, strategies, support, and systems she’s put in place along the way to make it happen.Here’s a breakdown of the conversation: How Steph went from marketer for dental practices to freelancer and copywriter. Why she had to make the jump to full-time in her business and how she earned her first clients. Her pitching method – 100 pitches a week?! The most important step in the pitching process. How long she had to pitch before her business was sustainable. Her mindset and perspective shifts as she went full-time in her business. The transition from one-off projects to robust retainers. Can you be profitable and NOT be a launch copywriter? The power of being upfront about your pricing. How to set up a profitable retainer for your business. The reality of finding the perfect work schedule for your business and lifestyle. Steph’s mamba mentality – her approach to business, resilience, and dedication. Is it a sacrifice forever or just for a season? Here come those boundaries again… Why are they so vital for business growth and success? What really is a CEO retreat and how does affect business? How Steph breaks down her CEO retreats and how she stays productive. Why you need to find a supportive group of people who understand what you do. Creating goals that aren’t monetarily based. Creating truth to your purpose and the power you give to those around you.Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter Accelerator waitlistThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteStephanie's LinkedInThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: Is it really possible to make six figures writing copy? How about three times that much. You might be thinking, "yeah, it's a possibility, but only after decades or longer of cultivating the right clients and developing your sales skills." That's certainly one pathway there. But our guest for today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast did it in just two years while primarily writing websites and content, not sales copy. Copywriter, Stephanie Trovato shares how she launched her business as a side hustle during COVID, then went full-time to avoid going back to the office. Two years later, she just cleared over $300,000 in her business. Steph told us how she did it and she filled us in on her CEO retreats, how she manages her time and family, and how the Copywriter Think Tank helped her do it.Kira Hug: But before we get into our interview with Steph, we want to talk about our sponsor for this episode, The Copywriter Think Tank. So I have all this promotional copy in front of me that I should read about the Think Tank and how amazing it is. But I think it's better just to listen to the episode because Steph is a Think Tank member. She's in year two of the Think Tank, and I think she is one of the best examples of what the Think Tank is all about. It's about figuring out what else is possible for your business beyond the basics and beyond what you ever thought was possible for yourself and for your family, and for your own business and for your revenue.And so if you resonate with anything Steph is sharing in this episode, consider a Think Tank mastermind and apply. We'll jump on a call and discuss whether or not it's a good fit for you. But I think the best way to sum it up is like the Think Tank attracts people like Steph who want to challenge themselves and think differently about what they're building and explore what's possible for...
Andrea Grassi is our guest on the 328th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Andrea is a serial entrepreneur with 6 businesses, and he shares how he’s able to manage, build, and grow each business. If you’ve ever thought about expanding your sources of income, you’ll want to tune into this episode.Here’s how the conversation goes: How Andrea became a marketer and entrepreneur. The reality of growing a business. Why he decided to start a second business… and a third business and… The most important part about starting a business. A breakdown of each of his vastly different businesses. Why he doesn’t need to be the expert in every business. The ingredients needed to build any business. How to create profit in your business and create a successful chain. Why your revenue isn’t that important – here’s what is. The importance of paying attention to each weak link in your business. The 3 pillars to any successful business. How to begin making a marketing plan. The mindshifts that take place while growing multiple businesses. Are you making it harder than it needs to be? The 3 positions you hold as a business owner. How to calculate your business value in each position. Finding out when it’s time to grow a team. How to look for the right business partner. The balance between multiple businesses, business partners, and employees. How Andrea breaks up his time and energy between each business. Measuring success through KPI’s. Splitting the stakes in business – what’s the first step? Are you really working or are you just working? Why you need to add in your rest block FIRST. The importance of deadlines for you and your team. The benefits of compartmentalizing. Andrea’s biggest strength and weakness are the same? How riding horses has anything to do with business.Listen to the episode or read the transcript below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter Accelerator waitlistThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteAndrea's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMFull Transcript:Rob Marsh: There's a well known and much shared idea that says that the average millionaire has seven different streams of income. They might earn money from serving clients in their business, from selling evergreen products, from a property rental, from stocks and other financial assets and so on. Our guest for today's episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is Andrea Grassi. He's a partner in six or seven different businesses that generate income for him and more importantly, he makes a major contribution as the marketing expert in each of the businesses he runs. And because running even a single business is a big challenge for most of us, we wanted to find out how he does it all. How does he find partners? What exactly does he do in each of his businesses? And maybe how more copywriters can create businesses like the ones Andrea has. There's lots of great business building advice in this episode, so be sure to stick around for all of it.Kira Hug: This podcast episode is sponsored by New Orleans. This is a city that Rob and I are currently in right now. We're together in New Orleans. We're actually here for our think tank Mastermind retreat, which we just wrapped last night. And Rob, did you have a good time?Rob Marsh: That was amazing. Hanging out with these guys. They're doing such cool things with their businesses and just talking about the challenges they have, working through some of those solutions and also listening to the presentations, the speakers that we had, talking about all kinds of things from processes to running a minimalist business that works, people who are doing amazing things, running six figure businesses,
Mike Garner is our guest on the 327th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Mike is a message consultant who focuses on story-based emails that build connections and convert for small businesses. If you’ve ever struggled to share your story in a way that’s true to you, this episode will give you the inspiration to make it happen.Here’s what we chat about: How Mike went from translator to copywriter and how he uses his past experience today. The art of copywriting vs the art of other forms of writing – how’s it different? How you can use your title or label to your advantage. Why Mike decided to “sit down and do stuff” aka give copywriting a fair go. How digging out the trash, shame, and insecurities will make you a better writer and business owner. Developing your rags-to-riches story. What’s the point of writing for ourselves? Is anyone actually paying attention? Is that a good thing? Why you need to get over yourself… Mike’s personal memoir book writing process. When it might be a good idea to get back to the foundations of your business. Are you neglecting your own business, dreams, story? How The Copywriter Accelerator and Think Tank have given Mike much needed validation and how they’ve helped grow his business. Everyone’s in a rush… baby steps are great.Tune into the episode below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter Accelerator waitlistThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteMike's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FM Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Great writers of all kinds have at least one thing in common. They tell stories in copy, in content, in books, in poetry, sometimes even on packaging and postcards. There's something magical about the way that stories hold our attention, and our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is copywriter Mike Garner, who just finished an entire book about stories, a book that includes many of his own. While we were talking with Mike, we took the opportunity to also ask him about his experience with the Copywriter Accelerator program, what he learned from it, and how it's informed what he's doing in this business today. There's a lot of good advice that you might be able to apply in your own business.Kira Hug: Rob, you are really good at writing introductions. I just have to note that right here, that was well written, well done.Rob Marsh: I don't know. I don't know about that.Kira Hug: I cannot write an introduction for the life of me, so I'm impressed. Before we jump into the conversation, this episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Accelerator, which Rob just mentioned. It is our five-month mastermind/coaching program for copywriters who want to build a profitable, sustainable copywriting business and make 10K a month in their business consistently. If you have interest or want to learn more about the Copywriter Accelerator, especially as we talk about it today with Mike. Go to the copywriteraccelerator.com to learn more about it. Doors do close, so fair warning, doors close to the program today at midnight when this episode goes live. If you're on the fence, definitely move fast.Rob Marsh: Yes.Kira Hug: Okay, well let's jump into the interview with Mike.Mike Garner: Where do I start? Well, I've been a freelancer for 25 odd years. I was living in France. I lived in France for 20 years. I was in about, it's about 10 years into my time in France perhaps, and I got to the end of the road in terms of employment. I've been a travel agent, but I lost that particular job. I trained to be a teacher, an English teacher in France. It's a competitive exam, so if they want to take 2000 candidates for example, sorry, and you come 2001st,
Tara Lassiter is our guest on the 326th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. After a 12-year career as a model and actress for QVC, Tara shifted into the copywriting space and became an email strategist. Whether you need to up your networking skills, need to make faster decisions, or you want to dabble into the world of TikTok, you’ll find yourself scribbling notes through the entire episode. Why Tara went from model and actress for QVC to email strategist. How is QVC similar to copywriting? Where she found her first copywriting clients. How The Copywriter Accelerator helped her propel her business forward. Do you brag about yourself? Here’s why you should. Dating vs marrying your decisions. How to hone in on what your audience wants to see from you. How to go from overthinking to taking action and accomplishing. Starting on TikTok – where do you start? Create two versions of yourself… Here’s how. How to get more done with a limited amount of hours. Navigating the challenge of shifting from copywriter to strategist. Why you absolutely need to find a network and how it’ll change your business (and life). How to tap into your current network if you’ve never done it before. The added benefit of creating frameworks and how they help you AND your clients. Being realistic about your time and why setting realistic expectations is vital. How Tara balances being a homeschool mom, business owner, and wife. Is it really about being the breadwinner? The advice she would give to her past self.Listen to the episode below or read the transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter Accelerator waitlistThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteTara's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMEpisode 157Episode 269 Full Transcript:
Over 271 episodes later, we’ve FINALLY brought back Chanti Zak for the 325th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. From solo copywriter to agency owner, Chanti breaks down her journey over the last few years, and how she became known as THE quiz funnel expert. Her insights on growing a thriving business are ones you won’t want to miss.Here’s what we talk about: Why Chanti made the decision to hire a team and how it’s helped her grow her OWN business. Hitting a 50/50 revenue mark between clients and courses. What unique advantage do copywriters have over other business owners? How to use your energy for what you love and avoid burnout (especially when growing a family). Who was her first team member and what did they do? When to start saying “no” to client work and “yes” to your own business. How to set your team up for success and realizations that will save you time, money, and a headache. Why your business needs to be more like Mcdonald’s. The importance of having a system for everything in your business. How to break the people-pleasing pattern. Why you need to create boundaries and implement them. Where does Chanti’s copywriting energy go nowadays? Mindset shifts to go from copywriter to CEO. The challenges of writing for yourself vs. writing for clients. Should you become an e-commerce copywriter? The negative bias around shifting your content. How quizzes can work for YOUR business and why they’re still effective. Tools for building a growth mindset and handling tough conversations. How The Copywriter Accelerator helped establish foundations for her business. What’s possible in a short period of time?Press play to listen to the episode or read the transcript below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter AcceleratorThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteChanti's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMEpisode 54Episode 141Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: If you listen to last week's episode, you know that from time to time, we like to have previous guests come back and talk about the evolution of their businesses since the last time that we spoke. This week, we're doing it again. Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is former Copywriter Accelerator member and former Copywriter Think Tank member, Chanti Zak. Chanti shared the details about the three phases of her business that she's gone through over the last couple of years since we last talked to her and when she first started out as a copywriter. And if you are just starting out or you're thinking about what your business could become in the future, you're going to find a lot of inspiration in what Chanti has to share today.Kira Hug: But first, this podcast episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Accelerator, which is our five-month mastermind/coaching program for copywriters who want to build a profitable copywriting business and make roughly $10,000 a month in their business consistently. So if that grabbed your attention, if that's what you want to do in the New Year, then join the wait list for The Copywriter Accelerator, and you can do that by going to thecopywriteraccelerator.com.Rob Marsh: Okay, let's get to our interview with Chanti.Kira Hug: Let's just rewind a little bit. We don't have to cover everything that's happened since we last chatted, but can you share a highlight reel with one of your highlights from the last two years post-COVID?Chanti Zak: Oh my gosh. From the last two years, probably one of the biggest things has been building a team and just working with a lot more brilliant humans and learning how to ask for help and support in my business, but also in life.Rob Marsh: We'll link to the first interview.
Our guest on the 324th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Brian Kurtz. His 3rd appearance on the show is a good indicator that there’s no lack of what Brian is able to share with our audience. From gaining rights to one of the most notable books in advertising history to teaching copywriters how to be better marketers, this a conversation you won’t want to miss.Here’s what we cover: What Brian learned from having a near-fatal stroke at the same time as a book launch. Why he decided to launch a mastermind. Gaining rights to Breakthrough Advertising and selling over 10,000 copies. Is Brian a copywriter in secret? How he makes the principles inside Breakthrough Advertising doable. Can a book from the 60s still apply to today’s marketing arena? Creating upsells and bonuses for added value to customers. Is it a good idea to write a book? The reality of book launches. How to get better at relationship building. Why Brian hates the word “networking.” Giving more than you get – is it worth it?Press play or read the transcript below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter AcceleratorThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteBrian's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMKim's websiteEpisode 22Episode 219Full Transcript:
On the 323rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Sara Rosinsky joins the show. Sara’s initial career plan was to be a stand-up comedian, but ultimately she decided to focus on her very enjoyable day job in a Boston advertising agency, writing copy. Sara is also the author of Unflubbify Your Writing: Bite-Sized Lessons to Improve Your Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar, a book intended to help people avoid making common mistakes in English. Sara’s career spans from agency life, to in-house, and freelance copywriting, so you’re not going to want to miss all the insight she shares.Here’s how it all goes down: How Sara landed her first agency job that lasted over 10 years. The creative process at an agency and being able to learn everything on the job. How to become more confident in the words you write. Why you need to have passion for all of your ideas even when they don’t make it out. What’s the real story behind working in-house? Is it a good idea to go rogue and start freelancing? Which route is for you? How her two freelance endeavors are different. To niche or not to niche. Why she decided to get consistent on LinkedIn and how she built an audience who wanted to work with her. How to create a sales force for free. Packaging deliverables for out-of-state projects – what’s the best route? Her approach to LinkedIn and how she comes up with content ideas. Sara’s mantra for copywriters. How she makes many things work at one time. What can you make happen in 27 minutes? Her book writing process and why she decided to write a book. The most common mistakes people make when writing and speaking. How to channel creativity outside of work.Listen to the episode or read the transcript below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter AcceleratorThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteSara's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMEpisode 4Episode 6Episode 282Gin's website Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: A few weeks ago, I wrote an email to all of the people on The Copywriter Club list that included some crazy math about skill compounding. Because I know a lot of copywriters say they don't like math, I added the phrase, "Bear with me," to my email as I explained how it worked. Only I wrote B-A-R-E instead of the correct form of the word, B-E-A-R.What's worse is that I realized my mistake and I meant to correct it, but before I could, I had to run out, pick up my daughter from school. By the time I got back, I forgot. I hit send with my mistake in place. Fortunately, dozens of you caught my mistake and wrote back to point it out, which I really do appreciate, by the way.One of those kind correctors was our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, copywriter and etymologist, Sara Rosinsky. When she responded to my mistake, she offered to come on the podcast and clarify this beastly language that we all speak and make it fun and memorable. We're thrilled to have Sara on the show today to talk about her business and some of the stickiest language problems that we all deal with as copywriters.But before we get to our interview, let me introduce my co-host for the week, copywriter Gin Walker, who writes for educators and online experts. She helps them connect with their audiences. Welcome back to the podcast, Gin.Gin Walker: Hey, Rob, thank you so much. It's so awesome to be here. I'm especially pleased to be here for this episode actually thinking about Sara's fascination with grammar and punctuation and so on, because I spent a good two decades of my life as an editor. And so this is kind of my bag as well. I'm particularly pleased to be here.Rob Marsh: Yeah, that's partly why I thought of you-Gin Walker: Oh,
Martha Barnard-Rae joins the show for the 322nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Martha is a copywriter and TEDx speaker who opens up the conversation about how getting to know yourself makes you a better business owner. After an ADHD diagnosis, she’s learned to put a different lens on her business and lean into tools and resources that work for her, and let go of what doesn’t. This episode reframes what we understand about ADHD and self-discovery and it’s one you won’t want to miss. How she ended up an English teacher in the most isolated city in the world. Finding a mentor and providing equal value to each other. Why her business partnership ended and how she ended it. How she stumbled into a diagnosis of ADHD and how it’s affected her business. The importance of learning about yourself and tools you can utilize. Why you need to show yourself compassion. How she became a TEDx speaker and how she continues to seek opportunities. The time management struggle… How to manage your time. How taking a break when you need one can save you and your business. Why you need to have an honest conversation with yourself. How to stay in your lane and focus on things you love. Do you have the right systems in place when things go wrong?Smash that play button or check out the transcript below.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Copywriter AcceleratorThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteMartha's websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMMasha's website Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Building a successful copywriting business is a challenge even when everything is running smoothly. But that almost never happens as most listeners would know. Several of our guests on the podcast in the past year started their business during the pandemic and worked really hard to overcome the challenges that presented. But there are other challenges to face down things like difficult clients growing your skills and some copywriters even have challenges, like things like ADHD. Today's guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast is Martha Barnard-Rae and she opened up about what it's like to run and grow a copywriting business with ADHD. And if you struggled with focus or lack of attention, you may want to stick around for this one. And even if you haven't, there's a lot of really good advice that she offers that applies to all copywriter businesses.And now let me remind you that this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Accelerator. That's our program that helps copywriters, content creators, and other marketers lay a solid foundation for their business. If you are already a good writer, you're already good at the thing that you do, but you're still struggling to build a business that supports you, the Copywriter Accelerator is the program that can help you get over the hump from thinking about your business as a CEO instead of as a writer or a service provider to strategies for getting yourself out in front of the right clients, building a great brand, creating packages that people want to buy the Accelerator will help you set up your business for success in the coming year and beyond. Go to the copywriteraccelerator.com now to join the waitlist so that you get notified as soon as we open up and we will link to that in the show notes just in case you are driving or otherwise occupied and can't look that up right now.And before we get to our interview, let me introduce my co-host today. It's Masha Koyen. Masha is a copywriter and strategist for interior designers and builders. She's a member of the Copywriter Think Tank and a former Accelerator member. Masha, welcome. Thanks for being here.Masha Koyen: Thanks so much for having me Rob. And thanks for the introduction and I'm so honored to be here.
Mariam Vossough is our guest on the 321st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Mariam is a copywriter and scriptwriter who is breaking into TikTok as a means to connect with her ideal client: Gen X women. The insights she shares will not only help you become a better writer but just might give you the courage to give TikTok a shot.Here’s what we talk about: Mariam’s start in the cutting room and how she became in charge of the entire story office. Her transition to children’s author after becoming a mother. Are children’s book writers cooler than copywriters? Self-publishing vs. finding an agent – which route should you take? Why copywriting is the best career for never-ending learners. How she stumbled across copywriting and why she joined The Copywriter Accelerator. What’s the process for turning a mediocre story into great content? How copy structure is an art form and why it can change the entire dynamic of the reader’s experience. Why your ego has no place in the editing room. How Mariam tears apart copy and creates a better end product. The day-to-day of being on a writing team and writing stories for episodes. How her scriptwriting career made her fearless and develop a thick skin. How to create better open loops and cliffhangers. When she knew she was ready to transition her career. What her business looks like today and why it took her longer to niche down. How she discovered her niche and what helped her get there. Why marketers need to pay more attention to gen X women and why they’re being ignored in the first place. Showing up on TikTok – what works and who should use it? 5 steps to getting started on TikTok TODAY. How she breaks down her content pillars on social media. Creating content on TikTok without dancing.Play this episode for immediate inspiration.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Accelerator WaitlistThe Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteConnect with Mariam on TikTok and Linkedin Rob’s websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FMJenn Prochaska's episode Episode 75Episode 177Episode 276Jenn's TikTokFull Transcript:Kira Hug: Niching down, owning your personal brand and showing up as your wild self on social media often feels like a huge obstacle for copywriters like us. But as business owners, it's kind of unavoidable, especially early on in our business when we don't have a team. The good news is we control how we niche, how we brand ourselves, and how we show up in the world. And our guest on this week's podcast is the perfect example of a writer who's not only taken control over her brand identity, but who has also built a business that provides meaning to her. And she's done it in her own way with a brilliant sense of humor and grace. Mariam Vossough is a copywriter, screenwriter, and TikTok nerd. And after this episode, you just might rethink how you show up on social media and you just might find yourself creating a TikTok account.I know she's almost convinced me, like not quite, but almost, so close. And before we jump into the interview, I want to introduce my lovely co-host this week who is feeling a little under the weather, and I appreciate her being here. So welcome back to the show, Jenn Prochaska, who is a brand messaging strategist, writer, also a guest on episode 307, which is one of my favorite episodes where we talked about overcoming addiction, scaling a business, parenthood. We went deep and Jenn was so transparent and real throughout the entire conversation. If you haven't listened to it, you've got to listen to it. So Jenn, thanks for coming back, especially when you're not feeling so great.Jenn Prochaska: Yeah, thanks Kira. Yeah, I'm keeping it real. I'm a little congested,
On the 320th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob and Kira sit down to debrief 2022. What worked? What didn’t? And what’s coming up in the month of December and into the new year? As you begin to reflect on the past year and plan for the next, you’ll find advice and book recommendations to guide you into a successful 2023.Here’s how the episode breaks down: Why you need to join the Strategic Growth Plan challenge TODAY. The difference between how Rob and Kira change their behavior. Trying out a different email style… Masterclasses and diary entries? Is Kira ready to move again? Early-bird for Accelerator is opening when?! CEO retreats – do you need them in your life? Why roles can change when your business grows. How stepping into a leadership role can help your business. Productivity and time management book recommendations for 2023.Check out the episode below or read the transcript.The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Join The Accelerator Waitlist Join the 5-Day Challenge The Copywriter Think TankKira’s websiteRob’s websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundFree month of Brain.FM Full Transcript:Rob Marsh: Okay, so welcome everyone to the Copywriter Club Podcast. This is our 10th episode since the last time that Kira and I were together and just chatting about what's going on in our lives and our business and the things that we've got coming up that we're excited about. And so as we like to do, we're jumping back in to give you another update on what's happening so that you know what to look forward to from the Copywriter Club.Kira Hug: Yeah. And we thought it would be fun to reflect, as many of us are reflecting at this time of year on what has happened over this past year, good and bad so that we can be more intentional as we move into the new year.Rob Marsh: Every time we talk about what we've done, Kira, I feel like your list is always so long because you always move, you have a new kid, you do all these amazing things and I'm like, "Huh, I wonder what I did this year." I got to come up with something while you're talking.Kira Hug: I think you've done many things you just didn't have quite as much time to prep as I did. So I had lots of time to think about everything that happened this past year. So we're going to share again, just like some wins and struggles, personal, and professional from the two of us. And then we are going to talk about what's happening this week in the Copywriter Club, what's happening next month, this month. So we'll try to stay on track and stay focused. I think focus might be the theme for today's... I was going to say today's interview, today's conversation -Rob Marsh: Episode. Yeah. And if you are used to the longer episodes and you were looking forward to that, we hate to disappoint you. And if you think that other episodes are too long, this one might be right up your alley because it will probably be a bit shorter.Kira Hug: Yeah, because let's be transparent, it's Friday; it's my end of day. Not quite your end of day, but it's Friday. So we're going to keep this short and sweet.Rob Marsh: Yes. So Kira, why don't you kick us off. Let's talk about some of the stuff, the wins that you've had. And since we're really talking about end-of-year reflection, we'll go into that a bit more later. Yeah. What's happened this year that's been exciting for you?Kira Hug: All right. So I do have my lengthy list in front of me. I'm going to try to just highlight a couple. Like you said, I move frequently. So yeah, moving was a big win. Moving is hard. I hope to never move again, ever. So that was a big deal. And it's also rewarding because I really like where I live now and I don't want to leave Maine anytime soon. So I think that's a win.Rob Marsh: Yeah,
Sue Bowness is our guest on the 319th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Sue is a content writer and professor who helps her clients and students tell better stories through content. In this episode, she shares her insights on the content writing industry and how it’s changed over her two-decade long freelance career.
Tune in to find out:
The real difference between being a business owner vs being an employee. The mindset reframe you need to take on when you decide to start your own business. Copywriting vs content writing… Are they the same? What is the true value of content writing and how do you position it to clients? How much can you actually charge for ONE blog post? Are you stuck on finding a niche? Try this. How can you make a boring topic tolerable to read? What does it take to run a profitable business for two decades? How to navigate trends and changes to your industry. How to be more productive as a full-time business owner? Creating multiple income streams to fulfill different passions. How joining the Think Tank helped her business and the power of being surrounded by high-level ambition. Are you writing your business emails the wrong way? Do you need a college degree to be a content writer? The skills that crossover with degrees and other business experience.
Check out the episode below or read the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Sue's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM James Turner's episode (79) Episode 227 Episode 244
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: We talk a lot about copy on this podcast. I mean, it's in the name, The Copywriter Club Podcast. So over the past few years, we've spent hours talking about persuasion, and sales, and calls to action, and dozens of other copywriting strategies and tactics. We don't often talk about content, although the last couple of episodes we have talked about content, but it is a really big part of the work that many copywriters do. So today's guest on the podcast is content writer and strategist Sue Bowness. We asked Sue why more copywriters should take on content projects. We also talked with her about the things that she's done that had the biggest impact on her business, how disciplined she is with her schedule, and a lot more. So stick around to hear what she had to share with us.
Before we do all of that though, this episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Underground. We recently rebuilt the entire back end of the underground to make it easier to find the training and resources that members of the underground have access to. Everything from creating the perfect proposal, which is one of the trainings in the Underground, to running a successful sales call, which is another training that's in there, to more than 40 in-depth newsletters on topics like persuasion, overcoming objections, managing your time, getting more done. I'm barely scratching the surface here. There are monthly coaching calls, weekly copy critiques, and a fantastic group of supportive copywriters in our exclusive Facebook group. Check it all out at thecopywriterunderground.com.
And one more thing before we get to our interview with Sue. I feel like I'm going on and on here, but I need to introduce my guest host for the day, James Turner. James is a conversion copywriter, marketing collaborator who's worked in SaaS, tech, and education and e-commerce and about, I don't know, 50 other niches. I'm going to ask him about that in just a second. Once more, James is a friend going back six or seven years. At parties, I've called him my wingman as he introduces me around. He's a bit of an extrovert, which is an exception around copywriters. Welcome back to the show, James.
Simon De Brito is our guest on the 318th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Simon is a Marketing Automation Specialist who creates inbound marketing strategies in order to turn prospects into customers. Not only does this episode give you the inside scoop on inbound marketing but just how different buyers are in different parts of the world.
Tune into the episode to find out:
What is inbound marketing and what does a Marketing Automation Specialist even do? How the different stages of awareness helps create conversion-worthy content. What’s the difference between B2B and B2C buyers? Why you can’t just throw content out for the sake of content. Scoring systems – what are they and what does it do for business? What mistakes are marketers making in their inbound marketing efforts? Which free tools translate for smaller businesses? SEO – does YOUR business need it? Why you need to STOP solving everyone’s problems. How to save time, stretch your content, and drive more eyes on your content. The future of inbound marketing. Marketing differences between Europe and the U.S. How understanding cultural differences will give you an edge in your marketing efforts.
Check out the episode below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Simon's LinkedIn The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 183 Episode 242 Episode 256
Full Transcript:
Tori Autumn is our guest for the 317th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Tori is an email strategist and copywriter who helps coaches and course creators grow their businesses through fervent messaging. In this episode, she spills how she's quickly grown her copywriting business and what she's had to shed to make it happen.
Here's what you'll find:
How Tori went from broadcast journalism to self-love coaching to copywriting. What to do when jobs don’t go the way you planned them to. The balance between nonprofit work and owning a copywriting business – practical tips for pursuing multiple passions. How she built her business to $20k months in a matter of a year. Why she invests her time in networking and the benefits it's given her business. The REAL benefits of 5-figure months. How The Accelerator and Think Tank helped her business grow and flourish. How to shift your mindset as you’re growing your business. Copywriting vs. strategy – what’s the difference and how will it help you position yourself as the expert? How she went from writing email sequences in a couple of weeks to a couple of days. Why you need to let go of toxic clients for yourself and for their benefit. Choices and decisions. Which one is more powerful? Should we have seasons for connection calls? Referral systems – are they a good idea? The mistakes marketers are making today and how to solve them. How to begin building extra streams of income.
Tune into the episode by pressing play or reading the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Tori's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 184 Episode 261
Full Transcript:
We’ve invited Kirsty Fanton back on the show for the 316th episode! Kirsty is an ex-psychotherapist turned launch copywriter and on top of running a thriving copywriting business, she’s also a new parent. Her expertise in the psychotherapy world makes her the best person to chat boundaries around not just navigating parenthood and business, but creating better boundaries for ourselves as a whole.
Here’s what you’ll find in the conversation:
How Kirsty’s business has changed since our first interview with her. How TCC programs helped her business reach 6-figures and introduced her to an incredible network. The shift her business made since having a baby. Preparing for maternity leave and how creating a passive stream of income helped her business. The process to create an evergreen funnel. How to step back and look at your business from a strategic perspective. How she built a business that worked around her life when her time was so out of her control. The tools she gained from being a licensed psychotherapist and how they can help you practice belief work. Are you holding on to this limiting mindset belief? The fine line of teetering two sides of business – how to avoid burnout. Why you don’t need to rely on having a large audience and how to make money from a small following. How to create an ecosystem of offers that supports your clients in all directions. What surprised her most about maternity leave and having a baby. Advice on how to implement boundaries from the expert and why they’re critical to your business (and life). Setting aside time for the big picture visions in business – where does it fit in? How to increase your reach and grow your email list. What to look out for when you’re trying to find a partner to collaborate with. The expectations vs. reality of parenthood.
Check out the episode below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Kirsty's free workshop The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Kirsty's first episode 106 Episode 268 Brandon's podcast
Full Transcript: Kira Hug: If you are planning on taking a sabbatical for any period of time, whether it's for maternity leave, paternity leave, or any type of leave away from the business, this is a conversation you won't want to miss. I knew I had to talk to Kirsty Fanton, our guest for the 316th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast about her experience planning for and working through maternity leave after the arrival of her little one, Ollie. Kirsty and I had our babies roughly around the same time, give or take a few months. And it wasn't the easiest of times to bring a child into this world. I mean, is it ever an easy time? No. Kirsty evolved her business during this time, despite the harsh reality of caring for a baby during a strict lockdown in Sydney. This entire conversation is a candid one about what worked, what didn't work, and how we can all continue to grow our businesses in new ways as our lives dramatically change. You won't want to miss it.
Okay, So today I have a special co-host. I am so excited to have Brandon Burton here. If you don't know Brandon already, Brandon's a part of our TCC team, has been in the community, growing the community over the past few years. You probably already know him, he's been on the podcast before, but in case you don't, he is a brand voice strategist for Introverted Experts, a podcaster, a new podcaster with a new podcast, which is very exciting, a father to a new baby, Zion. So part of the reason, Brandon, I'm so excited to have you here, is because we're going to talk a lot about babies and maternity leaves and adjusting to business and work after having a baby. And so I'm really glad that you can add to this conversation.
Rob Perry is our guest on the 315th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob Perry is a SaaS and B2B copywriter and consultant who has built a solid pipeline of clients without using a website, email list, or high-profile social media presence. In fact, he grew his business using a platform you may be familiar with: Upwork. How’d he do it? And could you do the same?
Stick around and find out:
How Rob went from President of sales to copywriter and how he leveraged his skills. The struggles of abruptly moving your family overseas. How he used Upwork to start copywriting and became a sought-after copywriter. Standing out on a platform like Upwork and becoming the go-to choice. Are 3 minutes of value worth your time? Upwork 101: Setting yourself up for success in 3 steps. Why you need to filter jobs on Upwork and cut out the noise and save time. How to avoid clients who have unrealistic expectations. Did Kira get kicked off Upwork? How to tailor your proposals to each job. The top reasons copywriters should use Upwork to fill their pipeline. Can you build and make connections OFF the platform? Finding the projects you actually want to work on. How to dig up the pain points of your ideal client and create a solution. Rob’s advice on closing sales calls and being a better salesperson. What mistakes are copywriters making in the sales process? How to step into different personas and voices as a copywriter. Why it’s crucial to practice confidence and adjust (and take care of) your mindset. What NOT to do when adding retainers to your client load. Avoiding bad habits and thinking strategically about your business. When to use Upwork and how to keep it from being your only lead source. Thinking about building a team? Do this first. How to get to where you want to go FASTER.
Press play or check out the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Rob Perry's LinkedIn The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 19 Episode 248 Episode 265
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: In the past five years of interviewing successful copywriters on the podcast, I can only remember one who was running a successful business without a website or a social media presence, or an email list for that matter. And perhaps coincidentally, that person, I believe, is the highest-paid copywriter working in the world today. Now, I'm guessing at that assumption, but if he's not the highest-paid, he's definitely in the top five. And you might be thinking, "Well, sure, a copywriter with a good reputation and a steady flow of very high-paying clients can get away without a website or an email list or a social media presence. But what about an almost unknown copywriter working in places like Italy or Chile or Spain without any high-profile clients? In fact, a copywriter who might be getting the bulk of his clients in a place like Upwork?"
Our guest on the Copywriter Club Podcast today is copywriter Rob Perry, and he says that it's not only possible to do that, but that he's been doing it successfully for years. You're going to want to stick around for this one and hear how he's done it.
But before we get to our interview with Rob Perry, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That's our combination of coaching, training, and Mastermind for ambitious successful copywriters who are ready to take their businesses from where they are now, maybe somewhere around $5,000 a month and doubling, tripling, or doing even better with it. Or maybe they want to launch a new product or a podcast or create a course or membership or something different in their business, the Think Tank is the place that you can do it. And we're just in the planning stages right now of our...
Liv Steigrad is our guest on the 314th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Liv is a copywriter and brand messaging strategist with a psychology and sociolinguistic background. She helps her clients create powerful brands through her B.R.A.V.E framework, and in this episode, she breaks down how copywriters can use it to build their own brands.
Here’s how the conversation went:
Does a psychology degree help in being a better copywriter? How to get better at voice of customer research. Making friends as an adult and applying the same techniques in networking. How to prepare and execute things that are terrifying. The one habit you need to build to gain momentum in your business and life. Do you have a definition of success? And is it really true to you? What is a brand story and why does it matter? How to envision big goals and create your ideal day. The balance between a full-time job and a full-time business. What you need to take advantage of while you’re working a full-time job. What is brand strategy and how in-depth does it get? How to make microcopy both functional and filled with brand personality. The B.R.A.V.E framework – How to apply it for your personal brand. Why brand strategy is essential and how to communicate its value to prospects. Where are most copywriters struggling with UX? BE BOTHERED – How this simple phrase will help boost your business. The two business lessons Liv learned from gymnastics. When your mindset wavers… Remember this.
Hit play to listen to the episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Liv's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 118 Episode 187 Episode 215 Jenn's website
Full Transcript:
On the 313th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Todd Brown makes an entrance on the show. Todd is an expert marketer with over 15 years of experience and in this episode, you’ll find out how he went from making $8.50 an hour as an overworked employee to creating a sought-after marketing approach other experts utilize in their own direct response marketing campaigns.
The conversation goes a little like this:
Where Todd got his start in the direct response marketing industry. What he learned about discipline as a bodybuilder and how he carries it into his everyday life and business. The importance of consistency and why it wins every time. His perspective on discipline and how anyone can add it to their toolkit. The double-edged sword of hiring a team. His shift from marketer to entrepreneur and how it changed the game for his business growth. What is marketing really? How to use Todd’s E-5 method for marketing campaigns and to grow a thriving copywriting business. Two ways to bulletproof your copywriting business and NOT become a commodity. The easy way to compete against AI software. Can you create a valuable USP in a saturated market? Why you should interrogate your own processes and how to justify it to your audience. How to be seen as the genius in the room by solving problems. An inside look at (THE) Todd Brown’s life + a handy book recommendation. Business and life lessons he’s taken from fatherhood with two daughters. The only swipe file you’ll need for the rest of your career.
Do not hesitate to press play on this episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Get on Todd's Swipefile Waitlist Todd's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 24 with Roy Furr Our episode on Roy Furr's podcast
Full Transcript:
Rob: What does it take to become a truly great marketer? How do you learn the skills you need to serve your clients in a way that helps them grow? And when do you step beyond the role of copywriter and take on the title and role of entrepreneur? Our guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is expert marketer Todd Brown. Over the past decade and a half, Todd has become the go-to expert for creating flourishing direct-response businesses. Todd is one of our mentors and we’ve learned a ton from him and his team. And every time we talk, we walk away with ideas and insights to implement in our business. What he shared in this interview will do the same for you. It’s a little longer than our usual, but Todd shared so many good insights. Do not skip this episode.
Kira Hug: So let's kick it off. How did you end up as The Todd Brown? How did you get here?
Todd Brown: I mean, first of all, I don't know if I would say I'm "The" anything. Let me be crystal clear about that. But it’s so interesting. First of all, I knew nothing about marketing or selling. I never liked selling, I was never really good at selling. But I was working for a health club company in central New Jersey, and through good luck, I guess I was promoted in this company. This company, they owned health clubs in New Jersey, that were all about 40,000 square feet, these big facilities, really beautiful architecture. They did something really special back then.
The company was growing very quickly. Actually, an interesting little gem was the owner of the company, I like to say that he was like my Steve Jobs, he was brutal to work for but I learned so much. I don't believe that I would be where I am today, if it wasn't for the experience, seeing how this guy looked at the numbers and was relentless with production and all that. Anyway, what was interesting was that prior to the gym business, he was one of the first people to lease computers.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: P7 Workshop – get more clients The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM
Full Transcript:
On the 311th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Peta O’Brien-Day joins the show to discuss… Politics. But not in the way you’d imagine. Peta is a copywriter and messaging strategist who educates her audience on how to tread in delicate territory by leading with empathy in marketing their efforts.
Here’s how the conversation goes:
Her background in social work and learning how to empathize with teenagers by building relationships. What’s the secret? Working in mentally challenging conditions and the toll it can take. Becoming a widow and transitioning into many different careers. Starting a blog about starting over and getting hired by parent-based companies. Beginning on Upwork and optimizing her profile to appear first in the search bar. How to communicate empathy with skeptical audiences as a business owner. Never say these two things when someone is grieving — take notes. How she upleveled her skills before cold pitching and landing a company who needed email copy. How she went from $500/mo to consistent $4-$5k months. The importance of being strategic about being more visible and how to do it. How she found what truly lit her and began attracting more ideal clients. Why she has a large ecosystem of where she acquires leads. Her framework for writing values and molding them into your message (clear as day!) What tools we can use when having difficult conversations. Why it’s important to keep our perspectives open.
Tune into the episode by hitting that play button or reading the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: P7 Workshop – get more clients The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Peta's website Peta's politics membership waitlist The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 63 Episode 274
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: As a copywriter, you can probably write about just about anything, from products and ideas that you love and use to those that, if you were asked, you could probably even write about things that you don't love or might even find a bit controversial. So if we can write about those kinds of things, why is it so hard for many of us to talk about difficult, controversial, or even objectionable ideas with the people that we disagree with?
Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is copywriter and messaging strategist Peta O'Brien-Day, who has thought long and hard about this problem. In this interview, she shared a framework for thinking about, discussing topics and ideas that often cause arguments and contention, and how to do it better. She also talked about building empathy, dealing with trauma, and how she went from earning $15 for her very first blog post on Upwork to now earning five figures a month and occasionally even more. I think you're going to get a lot from this episode.
Rob Marsh: But before we get to that, let me introduce you to my guest host this week for at least some of the commentary. It's copywriter Gabby Jackson. If you're on our mailing list, you've probably received some messages from her. She's part of The Copywriter Club team. She is an amazing copywriter, and I'm thrilled to have her here just to add a few thoughts to this interview. So welcome back, Gabby.
Gabby Jackson: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Super great to be here.
Rob Marsh: Excited to hear what you have to share. One more thing before we get to Peta. This podcast is sponsored by the P7 Pipeline Workshops. It's not just one workshop or one training, but there's, I believe, five parts, and we really focus in on the missing piece, that is, you already know maybe what you should be doing as far as pitching goes, but building a habit, a pitching habit, whether that's daily or weekly to support what you do to attract clients to your business is r...
On the 310th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob and Kira sit down and chat about what’s new in the world of The Copywriter Club. Catch up and tune into what needs to be on your radar for the last quarter of the year.
Here’s what they talk about:
The 2022-2023 Definitive Guide to Pricing for copywriters – and how you can apply it to your business. What’s the difference in salary between content writers and copywriters? Do you need a degree to be a copywriter? (new blog alert!) Do copywriters really need a niche? How you can get better at prospecting and scale your income. The number one problem copywriters are facing. What do habits have to do with gaining clients consistently? Are you ready for the Think Tank? What podcasts are Rob and Kira listening to lately? A podcast to improve your storytelling game.
Tune into the episode below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: P7 Workshop – get more clients How much do copywriters get paid? Do you need a degree to be a copywriter? Do copywriters need a niche? The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM
Full Transcript:
Melissa Harstine is our guest for the 309th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Melissa is a Customer Research Strategist who helps her clients pull out the best insights for her clients, so they can increase their reach and results. In this episode, Melissa gives us a breakdown of how we can all increase our customer research skills and why they matter in the first place.
Check it out below:
Melissa’s beginnings as a journalist at a small nonprofit for the elderly and how she was able to connect with her target audience. Writing for a demographic much different than your own – how’s it happen? Why she decided to hone in on a niche and how it worked out for her. How to connect with potential clients in your local business networking groups. Her advice on asking better questions during the research phase. Why you need to lead with empathy and how to respond to people’s demeanor and tone. The specific questions she asks clients to pull the best details and information for a project. How she packages research and presents it to prospective clients. The key to communicating value and knowing your target market. Working with well-known leaders in the industry through building relationships. Finding dream clients once you actually know what you’re looking for. How to turn research into strategy. Her process for pulling out the best pieces of customer research. Why it’s important to stop overbooking yourself and what to avoid. Questions you probably shouldn’t ask. How she presents the research report to her clients and helps them apply and implement in real time. Should you position yourself as a “thought partner?” Resources you can use to become a better researcher. How The Copywriter Accelerator helped her grow her business. How to add more value for your clients.
Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Melissa's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 12 Episode 28 Episode 154 The TCC Shop
Full Transcript: Kira Hug: Customer research is one of those things all copywriters need to do in order to truly connect with the audiences we write for, but not all of us like doing it, and some clients hate paying for it. Doing it well can be a bit of a challenge. Today's guest on the podcast is messaging strategist and copywriter, Melissa Harstine. She talked about how she went from a copywriter without a niche to specializing in customer research for a variety of clients, including other copywriters. As we talked, she shared her favorite interview questions, ideas for selling research to clients, and how she turns her research data into a strategy her clients can execute on. It's a great interview you won't want to miss.
Rob Marsh: But first, this episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Underground. That's the membership for ambitious and growing copywriters. As a member, you have access to copywriting and business training, group coaching calls, copy critiques, our bimonthly newsletter, and a lot more, all designed to help you grow your business. And if you join now, as in the week that we're releasing this podcast, you not only get your first month for just $17, which is a screaming deal, but you'll also get a hard copy of our 24-page Copywriter's Definitive Guide to Pricing, which includes data about what copywriters of all experience levels are charging for 22 different project types, as well as things like the six figure niches and so much more. So go to Thecopywriterunderground.com to join now.
Kira Hug: And if you want to get your first month for just $17, like Rob said, use the promo code, TRY IT, that's all caps, TRY IT, and that will get you in for $17 for your firs...
Our guest for the 308th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Kristin Lajeunesse. Kristin is an author and former digital nomad who has traveled to all 50 states in the U.S. and 21 countries on a mission to find delicious vegan food along the way. Her travels led her to copywriting and over the last couple of years, she’s built a thriving business.
Here’s how her story goes:
Kristin’s 3 lives and how they led her top copywriting. Starting a business on Fiverr before hiring a sales consultant. Landing large clients with employees vs solopreneur clients. What it’s like to work with a sales consultant – how does it fit into the budget? Are you doing the same amount of work for less money? The best tool you can use on a sales call. How to turn your sales call into an organic conversation rather than an interrogation. How much do we really need to do to ensure a high-quality customer experience? The two best investments Kirstin’s made in her business. How she manages her small team and hires subcontractors to support her business. How she pays her subcontractors. Her process for being the main point of contact and delegating to subcontractors. What it’s like to write for businesses that may take a toll on your mental state – what should you consider? Balancing being a highly sensitive entrepreneur and setting boundaries. Why she chose the van life? The best destination for digital nomads. What it’s like to write a book for a traditional publisher. Setting up a book tour and finding sponsors.
Hit play or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Kristin's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 81 Episode 137 Episode 305 The TCC Shop
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Every copywriter knows how important sales are to your business. We get paid to help clients get sales, and we sell our own products and services. If we don't do that, we don't even really have a business. In fact, improving your sales skills is one of the best things that you can do to grow your business. And our guest today is copywriter, Kristin Lajeunesse whose business completely changed once she got serious about her sales process. In fact, she hired a sales consultant to sit in on her calls, to help with proposals and help her attract the right clients. And the result was a six-figure business in less than a year. And if that sounds like something that you might want to do with your business, you may want to stick around for this interview.
Kira Hug: Okay, I'm going to stick around because that sounds great. I'll stick around. Before we jump into the interview with Kristin, we just want to share something we're really excited about. At least I am. This week, you can jump into the Copywriter Underground, which is our membership for $17 a month. It would be $17 for your first month to just try it out. If you've wanted to jump in, but you weren't sure this is a really great opportunity to get in there and see what it's all about. But Rob, what do you like the most about the Copywriter Underground?
Rob Marsh: I like so many things about the Copywriter Underground, but I think my favorite thing that we do, or at least that I do is the weekly copy critique or the almost weekly because we do miss them every once in a while. I love having the opportunity to check out what members are writing, the things they're creating for their clients or even for their own businesses. It's just a lot of fun to jump in and give feedback on that. But it's just such a great community, a great place to ask questions, to hang out. There's a ton of training in there. There's just so much stuff in there that it's really hard to choose just one.
Jenn Prochaska is our guest on the 307th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jenn is a copywriter who specializes in message strategy and websites. This episode is truly an inspiring journey as we hear how Jenn has navigated her way through addiction, motherhood, and scaling a thriving business. This episode will leave you with wisdom, practical business advice, and even a email marketing strategy…
Here’s how the episode goes:
Jenn’s 25 year background in sales and marketing and why she went from LA back to Cleveland. The journey to getting sober and realizing the “cushy” job didn’t bring happiness. Going back to school to get a Masters in creative writing and rediscovering old passions. Making big changes in adulthood and investing in yourself. Working for agencies, being a lead copywriter, and diving into freelance copywriting. How tires helped her learn about educating an audience, urging them to care, and how to incorporate benefits. Why is addiction misunderstood? Doing better vs. doing different – is there a difference? Jenn’s systems and processes to make hard decisions and being a successful integrator. Being a good parent vs being a good business owner? The aha advice Jenn got from Rob about writing expectations. Getting permission to shut Shirley up (who the heck is Shirley?) Mapping out workflows and finding holes in your process. How Jenn created her unique framework and niched her business. How Jenn’s support, community, and mentors have helped silence her limiting beliefs and strengthened her mindset. Jenn’s morning routine as a parent and business owner. Communication and boundaries – and how it helps Jenn become a better entrepreneur. The power of the Think Tank community. Jenn’s FORTY-week drip sequence? How did she do it?
Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Jenn's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 82 Episode 270 Episode 301 Erin's website Juliet's website Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Life is messy. Sometimes life is really messy. And it can take a while, sometimes even years or decades to figure things out. And as we've interviewed copywriters on this podcast, many of them have described long winding, sometimes really messy pathways that they followed to get to where they are today.
Today's guest on the Copywriter Club podcast has a path like that. Jenn Prochaska shared how she went from LA's music scene to a somewhat more sedate and fulfilling role as a mom copywriter and brand strategist, and how it took more than a decade to figure it all out. We talked about a lot of things in this episode. Everything from addiction to creating and scaling a business that fits the life you want to mindset and a lot more. We think you're going to like it.
You're also going to hear a lot of voices in this episode. That's because Kira interviewed Jenn while I was on vacation. And invited copywriter, Erin Pennings, to join her to ask questions. So, you're going to hear Erin, you're going to hear Kira. And now as we're recording a few additional comments to go along with this interview, Kira's on vacation and I've invited copywriter, Juliet Peay, to join me to share her thoughts. Juliet, thanks for your help. Welcome to the podcast.
Juliet Peay: Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to jump in and hope Kira is having a blast. She deserves it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. She definitely deserves it. I mean, we should all take more vacation, I think. So, this is fun. Before we get to our interview with Jenn, we just want to make you aware of a new copywriting business training available from the Copywriter Club and Jamie Jensen.
On the 306th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Jamie Jensen makes her second appearance on the show. Jamie is a copywriter, screenwriter, creative coach and some-day showrunner. Jamie’s many lives have led her to her absolute passion of screenwriting and helping other multi-passionate creatives discover how to balance it all.
Here’s how the conversation went:
What’s the difference between hitting a wall and burnout? Walking away from something that’s going well? How to create a step by step process for what comes next. Why you need to give yourself permission to be messy. The balance between business person and artist. What goes into the screenwriting process? The importance of allowing yourself to be bad your craft. The shift in the screenwriting industry – what have been the effects of streaming? What goes into Jamie’s writing process? Why you should treat your projects like relationships – projects as people? What are work retreats all about? What’s a pilot vs a screenplay? How to get into screenwriting. How to get a lot done in a short amount of time. What is it like to work with an editor? How does it help improve the writing process? Dabbling into new projects and passions… How do we balance it all.
Read the transcript below or hit that play button.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Join the Accelerator Join the Flip the Switch Workshop The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Jamie's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 62 Full Transcript:
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Join the Accelerator Join the Flip the Switch Workshop The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Topaz's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 253 Full Transcript:
On the 304th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rick Mulready jumps back on the show to talk about the changes and pivots he’s made over the last few years. Rick is a 7-figure business coach, online ads expert, and podcast host who has shifted to providing just one offer to his audience. This episode will walk through how he’s able to sustain his business with one offer while working just 25 hours a week.
Here’s how the episode goes:
Why he decided to pivot from FB ads to online business coaching. How he combined two offers into one signature offer for his business. What struggles he had along the way and how he overcame them (hint: mindset). Lost in identity and finding the direction you want your business to go. How to create profitable and optimized offers for your business – what’s needed to make them successful? How to effectively listen to the needs of your audience and finding out what they need and want. What does growth and success really look like? Are you subconsciously sabotaging your business and revenue? The effects of burnout and how to redefine how you approach your business vision. Getting stuck in the dark and coping with anxiety and depression. What does it take to work 25 hours a week? Building a sustainable team that aligns with your values and personality. What is the most valuable aspect of a business? How to scale a business with just one high-ticket offer? Do you need to launch forever? Niche vs broad – where should you start?
Tune into the episode or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator Waitlist Join the Flip the Switch Workshop The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Rick's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 88 Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: You ever get tired of what you're doing? Maybe you've been working in a particular niche so long that it's not just easy, but almost boring, or maybe you've been working with a particular client and it has become so familiar that every time you sit down to write for them, you're seated solidly in the middle of your comfort zone and you're not really growing. Maybe you're feeling stuck. Our guest on The Copywriter Club podcast today is business coach and online ads expert, Rick Mulready. Rick has made a massive shift in his business since we last spoke to him and we wanted to find out why. And as we talked with Rick, we also got his advice on creating offers, mindset and how someone's starting out today could create a business a lot like Rick's. I think you're going to like this one.
Kira Hug: But before we jump into Rick's interview, we want to share a little bit about The Copywriter Accelerator program, which we are really excited to kick off this fall. So, Rob, I'm curious what you like the most about this program.
Rob Marsh: So I like a lot of things, especially the community. And that's one thing that we hear over and over, is people talk about the two or three copywriters that they connect with, that they stay connected with for years afterwards. But two things that we've done recently, we reconfigured all of the content, rewrote everything the last time we ran the Accelerator and this time we are adding the training program, the workshop series that we just did, the P-7 training. I know that's kind of a secret. It's going to be a bonus as part of it, but if you're a podcast listener, maybe we just let that out of the bag. There is so, so much good stuff here to help somebody build a business. If you're struggling at all, if you're trying to figure out a new niche, if you're trying to just figure out how to make this all work, this is a killer program to help you do it.
Kira Hug: Yes. And this is a program that we refer back to all the time.
Joel Bergeron is our guest on the 303rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Joel is a copywriter who specializes in blockchain technology and web3. His interview dives into the world of blockchain and how copywriters can learn more about this new technology and even pivot their careers into blockchain writing.
Here’s how the interview goes:
His transition from being a military policeman to international disaster services in Asia. Why he decided shift into marketing and how he found copywriting. How he infuses his past lives into his copywriting career. What the heck is blockchain? What’s the difference between blockchain and web 3.0? How to know when to pause and slow down vs. push and go harder? The thing that helps Joel take a step back and remember his why. Building a lifestyle business and realizing when you need to pivot and make changes. The benefits of blockchain – more than just money? What it means to be 100% in control of your money. The downsides of blockchain and decentralization. How blockchain can apply to copywriters. Breaking into the blockchain niche as a copywriter – what’s involved? Finding a niche that aligns with your values and finding the right business to work with. How to find out more information about blockchain. The philosophy behind blockchain technology and how it has the potential to change world.
Tune into the episode or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Joel's Website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM
Full Transcript: Coming soon...
Raven Douglas is our guest for the 302nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Raven is a Conversion Copywriter who focuses on the user experience for her clients’ businesses. In this episode, we walk through Raven’s beginning stages as a copywriter and the moves she made to go from $55 dollar projects to $37k.
Here’s how the conversation goes:
How Raven became the go-to writer for her peers and how it paved the way for her copywriting career. Her cold pitch method and why she took on free work. Educating business owners on copy and how it helps their business. First website prices… You gotta start somewhere. Getting a feel for different niches and playing around with different writing styles. How a 28 hour bus ride to TCCIRL in NYC was the pivotal moment that turned Raven’s dream into a reality. The sales script Raven uses to quote prices and close sales calls. How Raven negotiated a $37 project without diminishing her value. The guarantee Raven used in the beginning of her career and how it helped her close more clients and boost her confidence. The intake and vetting process Raven uses to find out the nitty gritty details of client results. Ethical selling – How Raven declines projects and shifts gears into consultation calls. How to set a consultation call and how to set expectations. Money mindset and pitching high-ticket services. Humanizing CEOs – Why we need to reframe our perception of CEOs. Living the digital nomad life – How’s it possible as a copywriter?
Tune into the episode or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: How to Find Clients Workshop The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Raven's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM
Full Transcript:
Tiffany A. Ingle is our guest on the 301st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Tiffany is a conversion copywriter and brand strategist who finds much of her creativity from the world of fantasy. In this episode, she walks through how copywriters can tap into their most creative energy and create strong, authentic-to-them brands.
Here’s how the conversation goes:
What is a brand and why do you need one? How Tiffany helps people with their big picture strategy. Tiffany’s process for networking and connecting with others as an introvert. How this one thing is inevitable through building relationships. A natural approach to get to know new people and actually maintain the relationship. Why fantasy can help you become a better business owner and copywriter – And how it will help you become more resilient. How to apply the CRAVE framework to your business and create a strong brand. The process of packaging deliverables as a brand strategist – What goes into it? How to sell something that doesn’t have a direct ROI but an opportunity cost. The importance of anchoring your brand story to your business. What mistakes are copywriters making when trying to create a brand? How to tap into fantasy (+ book examples). Therapy and boundaries and how they’re helpful in business. How to build your toolbox for mental health and negative events. Why you shouldn’t tie your goals to these factors. Running a business, home-schooling kids, and balancing life – How does Tiffany do it all?
Tune in to the episode to find out.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: How to Find Clients Workshop The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Tiffany's Linktree The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: After working as a copywriter for a few years, a lot of copywriters find that the title copywriter doesn't really fit all of the work that they do. Yes, they use words to help their clients communicate the right messages, but often they do a lot more than that. The strategic problems that they solve are bigger than headlines, body copy, and calls to action. They may help with content strategy. They may help with offer creation or with brand strategy. That's what Tiffany Ingle, our guest for today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, does for her clients. In this interview, we asked about her process for discovering and telling better brand stories and what she shared will be useful for anyone who helps clients write and tell their own brand stories.
Kira Hug: But before we get to our interview with Tiffany, you may have seen an email or maybe a couple of emails from us about our new intensive designed to help you find clients consistently. Rob, I just want to share why we created this new intensive. We could have created many different new products, but why did you feel like this one was important?
Rob Marsh: Well, we actually surveyed our email list and we had about 150 people just respond really quickly with the thing that they would like to see us do, the number one question that they're struggling with, and more than half of the people who responded said they wanted help finding clients, help with leads and the process of going through how do they even pitch or land those clients. We've spent a lot of time putting together basically a workshop series that addresses that need and will give everybody who joins the tools, the training, and a system for habits that will make it a lot easier to implement this on a daily or a weekly basis in your business.
Kira Hug: Yeah, it's great if you know that you need a system that can help you find and then book clients consistently and you're struggling with this maybe because you just don't find the time to do it,
300 podcast episodes later and Rob and Kira STILL have things to talk about… That’s copywriters for you. On this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob sit down and answer questions from their listeners and reflect over the last 300 episodes while looking forward to the future of TCC.
Here’s how the episode goes:
The act of mentally preparing for big changes – and getting back to your old self AFTER big changes. Running a business as a parent of young children and going through the motions. Is The Copywriting Club a thing? Rediscovering passions and adding more fun What does the future of TCC look like? The worst business advice Kira and Rob have received in growing their business. If they were to start it all over – What would they do differently? Mistakes Rob and Kira have made along the way and how they’ve learned from them. Rob and Kira’s go-to podcasts – Do they have favorites? What was the tipping point for the podcast? The current books on Rob and Kira’s bookshelves. A new offer all about they key to finding clients.
Listen to the podcast or check out the transcription below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: How to Find Clients Workshop Waitlist The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Okay. So this is episode 300 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And usually, we would start out with maybe some interesting teases about what our guest is going to share, but today it's just you and me Kira, and rather than tease the amazing content of this episode. And I'm saying that slightly facetiously, I mean, maybe it will be amazing. We haven't recorded it yet, but we're just going to jump right into the podcast and into episode 300, this is a celebration for us.
Kira Hug: Yeah. It's a big celebration. I don't think it's fully hit me that 300 episodes is incredible. So we should really celebrate somehow. We're not great at celebrating.
Rob Marsh: No, this is definitely a weakness. And I would love to send every listener a 300 pin, or something like that.
Kira Hug: That'll be fun.
Rob Marsh: But if you've been here since the very beginning, we actually would love to have a comment or hear from you, just your thoughts on the show, how it's changed over time, the impact that it's had in your business, just, maybe we start that conversation in the Facebook group and just let people respond. It's gratifying to hear that people find something amusing from it or helpful from it. And maybe you also have some criticism or something, send that directly to me, not to Kira necessarily, but yeah, we, this is a big deal and most people don't get to a hundred podcast episodes. And so hitting 300 feels like a pretty big win for us and for the people who've been on our show.
Kira Hug: Yeah. And I think that it feels like it's also been a while since you and I chatted on the show. Right? It feels like it's been forever.
Rob Marsh: Well, I mean, we've been trying to, we try to do it every 10 episodes or so, but I feel like we might have missed it last week.
Kira Hug: We missed one. Yes. So, I mean, let's just do a quick check-in because you and I haven't chatted on the podcast recently. I'm just curious, Rob, how is your summer going so far? It's mid-July, how are things for you?
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Summer actually has been enjoyable. We had a friend come over from England, so we've done some traveling, a lot of like, driving through the national parks here in Utah, which are amazing. It's surprisingly green in some of the desert areas, which is interesting because we're supposed to be in the middle of a drought, but yeah, it's been a really nice summer as far as personal stuff going on and having an opportunity to travel,
Belinda Ellsworth is our guest on the 299th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Belinda is a drummer turned direct sales expert who opens the conversation about mastering your craft. She is the author of a #1 international best seller, “Direct Selling for Dummies,” and successfully grew her podcast which is part of the iHeartRadio platform.
Take a peek inside Belinda’s genius:
Belinda’s journey from rock band to a side-hustle in direct sales. Becoming a sales and motivational speaker and transitioning into a consultant helping companies scale from $1-$20 million. Why Belinda decided to go all-in on a podcast – and her invitation to iHeartRadio. How being a drummer set her up for success in every other area of her career. The secret behind Belinda’s success in podcast growth and becoming a skilled interviewer. How mastering your craft will accelerate your growth, career, and lifestyle. The importance of vetting guests before letting them jump on the show. How to analyze data and make improvements when you want to grow anything. Sales conversations – What’s the deal with those? The 4 strategies Belinda offers to become a better salesperson (even if you're a beginner). What does it take to start consulting? How are you supposed to package your expertise? How can you become an expert at anything? Why you need to restructure your onboarding process and how it will take you to the next level. The real deal on client and customer retention. How to get more done through the 4 pillars of success. Structuring your power hour – How Belinda moves the needle in her business. Are you letting the day run you?
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Belinda's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 81 Episode 137 Full Transcript:
On the 298th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Avi Webb joins the show. Avi is a copywriter who specializes in naming businesses and offers (not an easy task). Is there a method to the madness? Avi spills his secrets to his research and creativity processes, and how you can tap into the naming market.
Check out the goods:
Avi’s transition from creative writing to persuasive writing. Why is there a lack of emphasis on copy? Are there any advantages to design vs copy first? How design and copy are two separate languages and how to navigate both. The better way to work with designers, so each vision can come to life. What kind of communication needs to happen between designers and copywriters? How Avi became the name guy. Do you have to love everything about copy? How to find your unique, comfy, copywriting chair. Is there a method to charging for taglines and names and how are you supposed to communicate the value? Avi’s naming process – What happens before the verdict is decided? What mistakes do people make in the naming process? When should you use your name vs a business name? How to stay creative and continue to tap into your creativity. The key to developing your own unique perspective. Avi’s lead generation process for his signature naming offer.
Tune into the episode to learn how you can improve your own naming process.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Avi's website How Much Money Can an Author Expect to Make on Their Book? Blog The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 1 Episode 154 Don't Call It That by Eli Altman Full Transcript:
Our guest for the 297th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Mary Adkins. Mary is an author and writing coach who helps her clients start and publish a book. She walks through her process to writing her first book and how she’s gone on to publish three. This episode is the journey of getting permission to pursue the passion project that so often gets left on the backburner and to fully embrace where your creativity takes you.
And it goes like…
Mary’s journey from law to fiction author in the span of a few years. The affirmations Mary kept top of mind when there was too much rejection to count. Feedback – What’s the right way to get feedback without crushing your vision? What is your first draft meant to be? The reality of how we give feedback and why it’s all wrong. How to find the topic you are meant to write about and how to open it with curiosity. Building the skill of perseverance when you feel like your story belongs in the gutter. How to create something new to your project when things get a bit dull and how it can translate to the copywriting world. Where the best place to learn how to write, edit, and pitch a novel. How much money can you really make in the book writing world? Is there room to negotiate? What’s it like to work with a literary agent? Do enneagram types affect the book writing process? The struggles that may get in your way and how to avoid them. How to properly set writing goals based on your enneagram type. The reminders you need to keep in mind during the process of writing and publishing your book.
Tune into the episode or read all about it in the transcription below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Mary's website How Much Money Can an Author Expect to Make on Their Book? Blog The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Do you want to write a book? We've interviewed a couple of book specialists on the podcast over the past couple of years, but in those interviews, we've focused on non-fiction books that you could use to grow your business. But a lot of copywriters want to write something a little more creative, something like a short story or a screenplay, or a novel. Today's guest for the Copywriter Club podcast is best-selling novelist Mary Adkins, who has published three novels and, in addition to writing, helps others figure out how to write and publish their own work. This is a pretty fun discussion that got us thinking about writing something that could be turned into a movie instead of a workshop. If you listen between the lines, there are a lot of good ideas and some good advice that applies to copywriting too.
Kira Hug: But first, this episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Accelerator. This is our program designed to give you everything you need to start your copywriting business, to pivot your copywriting business if you're changing it up, or to grow your copywriting business if you feel like you've hit a plateau. We have blueprints, we have structure so you know what to do, or we provide coaching and an incredible community so that you can work through and build your business with your peers and you don't have to do it alone. We're kicking it off in August and you can jump on the waitlist if you want to learn more about that program. Just click on the link in our show notes, and you'll hear more information about it soon. Let's get into our interview with Mary.
Mary Adkins: I always loved creative writing since I was in 7th grade actually is when my English teacher turned me on to creative writing. I loved it and I always wanted to be a writer, but at some point along the way, I don't know, I think I lost some confidence and felt like I needed to do something more practical and...
On the 296th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Grace Fortune joins the show. Grace a copywriter and course strategist for copywriters who are looking to launch a digital product. She uses the C.O.U.R.S.E framework to guide her clients through the launch process, and in this episode she gives our audience an inside look at how it works.
Here’s how the episode breaks down:
Grace’s transition from virtual assistant to copywriter to course strategist. How she overcame her fear of calling herself a copywriter. How she used her virtual assistant experience to carry over into the launch and marketing world. Why she decided to start controlling the narrative and how it’s helped her grow her referral network. Grace’s ‘why’ for helping copywriters create offers. The C.O.U.R.S.E framework and how you can use it for your own offers. When should we launch a course or digital product? Is it ever too soon to launch a product? The importance of collecting the right data and knowing your target audience. The mistakes copywriters are making when it comes to creating and launching a digital product. Why we shouldn’t let tech get in the way of launching and overcoming the perfectionistic tech mindset. What Disney does well and how we can implement it into our business. How to keep up with client relationships and keep people coming back. How to create a better client experience – Is it as difficult as we think? The secret to better client communication and avoiding scope creep and sticking with boundaries. How to overcome burnout as a copywriter. The process of growing a microteam and communicating with your contractors.
Check out the episode by hitting the play button or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Grace's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 255 Episode 271 Full Transcript: Kira Hug: A lot of copywriters help their clients sell courses. Some copywriters have created their own courses and still, others help their clients create courses to sell to their customers. If you do any of those activities in your business or want to do them in the future, you'll want to stick around for this episode. Our guest today is Copywriter Grace Fortune. Grace is a copywriter accelerator graduate, a Think Tank member, and an expert in course creation. In today's episode, she walks us through her process for creating a course and shares a ton of ideas you can use to build your own copywriting business.
Rob Marsh: There's some good stuff in this one, but first this episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Accelerator. That is our program that's designed to give you the blueprint, the structure, coaching, and some challenges and community that will help you put together the pieces of your business and really create something that will continue to grow in the future. If you've done programs like Copy School or RMBC, you've done copywriting training and you know what you are doing as a copywriter, but you need help building the business side of your business.
This is the program for you. It will help you go from overwhelmed freelancer to a fully-booked business owner. And we're going to be launching it again, this coming August. If you want to be told about that program when we launch, make sure you get on the waitlist so that you're first to hear about the details. We'll link to the wait list in the show notes.
Kira Hug: Let's jump into our interview with Grace.
Grace Fortune: The way that I got started was actually a few years ago. I started out as a virtual assistant working for a friend of mine who owned her own virtual assistant business. So I went on as her executive assistant, and then I basically learned so much from her.
Ed Gandia joins The Copywriter Club Podcast for its 295th episode. Ed is a business building coach and strategist for business writers and copywriters. He helps his client by teaching them to build habits, strategies, and techniques that help them earn more in less time. In this episode, he debunks the “sales” status quo and gives valuable insight on how copywriters can become better salespeople.
Here’s how the conversation went down:
Ed’s background in software sales and how it was the catalyst for his copywriting career. How Ed went from 6-figures in software sales to a 6-figure copywriting business in 27 months. The play-by-play on how Ed acquired clients with no formal copywriting training. Why he niched down and how that helped him nail his messaging. The 4 questions to decide which niche is right for you. How to tap into your current network when it feels “awkward.” What if you’re a copywriter with no sales experience… How do you close leads? The reality of sales that will change your selling game. How to lead a discovery call from start to finish with the 30/70 rule. The 5 phases you need to start implementing in your discovery calls. Should you have an expiration date on a proposal? The biggest mistakes copywriters are making when approaching potential clients. Intentions vs habits – What’s the real difference? Using the James Clear approach to habit building, so you can optimize your time. How to add CEO time into your business and how Ed puts it into action in his business. The Freedom Triad – How it will help you make more in less time. Why Ed became a coach and his most common struggles running a high level business.
If you want to improve your sales skills, this is the episode you want to listen to. Hit play or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Ed's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 81 Episode 204 Episode 283 Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Today there are a bunch of podcasts about copyrighting, but when we started this show more than five years ago, that was not the case. Can you believe it's been five years by the way Kira? Seems like a long time.
Kira Hug: It seems like 25 years.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. At least. At least. Time flies when you're having fun. Back then, there were only a couple of people who recorded podcasts specifically to help copywriters get better at this thing that we all do and one of those people was copywriter and coach, Ed Gandia. Ed's been sharing what he's learned from being a copywriter for longer than we have. And like us, he's nearing almost 300 episodes of his show. Sometimes interviewing other successful writers and other times teaching important business skills. And today we thought we would invite him onto The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about his business, how he got started as a copywriter, and what he does as a coach, and also to share his best advice for copywriters ready to build bigger, better businesses. Stick around because we think you're going to want to hear what he had to say.
Kira Hug: But first, this episode of the podcast is not sponsored by The Think Tank.
Rob Marsh: What?
Kira Hug: It's actually sponsored by the Copywriter Accelerator. A program designed to give you the blueprint, structure, coaching, challenges, and community you need to accelerate your business growth in four months so you can go from feeling like an overwhelmed freelancer to a fully booked business owner. If you have any interest in this program, you can jump on the waitlist to be the first to hear details about the program when it opens in August. We'll link to the wait list page in the show notes.
Rob Marsh: Yeah,
On the 294th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Nicole Morton joins the show to talk about her experience in product development and how it’s helped her build her copywriting career. From creating products to qualifying them in the current market to writing copy for them, Nicole laid out the whole process.
Here’s how the conversation went:
How Dollies helped Nicole get her start in the product development industry. From idea to store shelf – How to qualify a product to get into the market. How product development can translate to building a copywriting business. The current trends in the copywriting and marketing industry. How to look for trends in your industry. Creating ideas for a product – How do we actually start coming up with ideas? The practical application for brainstorming names for your products. How to uplevel and refine your current skills as you build new ones. Identifying which of your skills are transferable and how you can leverage your background. Client acquisition – How to create a referral system. How to package “ideas” and “strategy” for clients. When it’s a good idea to go back to working a full-time job – Is it a setback? How to reframe “failure” and turn it into a positive. The benefits of going back into the workforce and how it can help you become a better writer and business owner. How to balance working a full-time job, a business, and personal life. Gamification – Can we add it into our business and personal life? What Disney does well and how we can add it to our businesses. Why we shouldn’t underestimate the skills that comes naturally to us.
Tune into the episode by hitting the play button or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Nicole's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 124 Episode 201 Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: I'm pretty sure it was Eugene Schwartz, who first suggested that copy isn't written, it's assembled. And a lot of copywriters have jumped on that statement, believing that the work that we do really isn't all that creative. It's like playing with an erector set or a LEGO kit. You're just putting together a bunch of preexisting pieces to get the end product that will resonate with your customers. But that's just not true. Yeah, we need to draw on research and connect with the conversation already going on in our customer's heads, but creativity plays a really big part in creating the magic that makes that connection happen. Our guest for today's episode for The Copywriter Club Podcast is Copywriter Think Tank alumni member and master of ideas, Nicole Morton. And what she shares about brainstorming, product development, having better ideas will help any copywriter improve the work they do.
Kira Hug: A quick announcement. This episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Think Tank that-
Rob Marsh: Surprise.
Kira Hug: So surprising. That is our mastermind-slash-coaching program, where you could have access not only to the two of us, but also to our team of coaches so that you have all the support you need as you build your business and create new revenue streams, create new products, create new offers with our mindset coach, our systems and growth coach, me and Rob. We don't really have a name as far as the coaching that we do. But what would you say that the two of us specialize in?
Rob Marsh: Well, I think we are really good at helping people see the potential in their business and coming up with new ideas of how to grow in new ways. So whether it's building your authority and getting yourself in front of different, better ideal clients, or whether it's adding some new product or service to your business. We're just really good at helping people identify the par...
On the 293rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Marcella Allison comes back on the show. When she first joined the show, she was in the midst of building The Mentoress Collective, and now after 7 years, it’s time for her to pack it up and leave behind a legacy. In this episode, she talks about her decision to move on and the chance you have to get your hands on what she’s built for a steal.
Here’s how the conversation breaks down:
What was The Mentoress Collective all about? The difficult decision that entrepreneurs are faced with when growing their brands and businesses. What’s changed in the marketing space since the beginning of The Mentoress Collective? Step by step tips to find a mentor – The do’s and don’ts. Is it possible to have too many mentors? The real difference between a copy chief and a business mentor – Which do YOU need? How the most successful copywriters use these two things to create high-converting copy, and how you can use them too. The attitude you need to take on when editing your copy. The three types of entrepreneurs – Which one are you? How are we supposed to balance learning, success, failure, and accomplishment all at the same time? Are you ready for an agency? The difficulties that come with being a solopreneur and entrepreneur – Are they the same? How to embody someone that would demand the rates you want to ask for. Practical advice on supporting yourself during an extreme transition or pivot in your business and life. Why it’s important to allow a time period of business grief and choosing possibility. How you can change the vehicle in which you give rather than give up what you love.
Be sure to tune into this episode all about change and rediscovering passions.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Marcella - Bundle 1 Copy breakdowns Marcella's Legacy of Success - Bundle 2 The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 48 with Marcella Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: We talk about success a lot on the podcast. We've interviewed lots of copywriters who have built thriving, six-figure businesses. We've even talked to a few people who have made more than seven and eight figures in their business. They've shared the habits and processes, and even the luck that they've had along the way, but we don't talk a lot about failure or quitting. So today's podcast is a little different. Our guest for this episode is our friend A-list copywriter, Marcella Allison. In addition to writing dozens of successful promotions in the financial industry over the past few years, Marcella has spent much of the last seven years building a community to help mentor and support women in marketing. Originally, it was called Titanides, and now it's called the Mentoress Collective, but recently Marcella made the decision to close the doors on that venture, and this episode focuses on that decision. We also talked about mentoring, pay gaps, and what comes next. There's a lot to learn from Marcella's story and her decision, and we hope that you'll stay to the end when Marcella makes an offer that we think is almost too good to be true.
Kira Hug: But it is true. It's too good to be true, but it is true. And this is actually the last day before the price increases for the Think Tank, our mastermind. If you listen to the podcast, you've heard us talk a lot about the mastermind over the last few months. If you have any interest in it, today would be the best day to reach out to our team and find out if it's a good fit for your business so that you can jump in there before our retreat, before our virtual retreat on June 9th and 10th, and before the price increases. You can find out more at the copywriterthinktank.com
Rob Marsh: And just a note about this episode,
Jocelyn Brady is our guest for the 292nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jocelyn is a brain and story coach who helps her clients create more out of their lives. She is a former copywriter whose fascination with neuroscience led her down a new path.
Here’s how the conversation goes:
Pig brains – How the heck did they encourage Jocelyn to go down a path of neuroscience? How tragic events can change the direction of our lives and careers. How Jocelyn built her copywriting business and agency by accident and worked with big time clients like Nokia, SunTrust, and Prudential. How persistence is key to building a successful business and why you should think of your business as an experiment. Making a more interesting ‘about’ page and how to get people curious. Is everyone a natural storyteller? Jocelyn’s S.T.O.R.Y framework and how you can apply it to your own stories. Where do most copywriters mess up when telling stories? The key to driving the sale versus justifying a purchase. What are B.S., and how can we Making big pivots in business – How can we effectively make it happen? When it may be a good idea to pivot your business. The #1 struggle in pivoting. Books and resources Jocelyn recommends to start your own brain journey. How to incorporate more play into our lives, and why it’s so important for our livelihoods. Deathbed you – What does that mean and why is it important to Jocelyn’s messaging? How Jocelyn attracts people into her programs – Going from tangible deliverables to intangible results.
Take an introspective look at your brain and check out this episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Jocelyn's website Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg Words Can Change Your Brain by Andrew Newberg The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge Huberman Lab Podcast Play By Stuart Brown The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: It doesn't matter if you write copy or content or whether you work on marketing strategy or sales. Pretty much whatever we do as writers depends on understanding human behavior and the way people think. The more we know, the better we can communicate. And our guest for today's episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is a former copywriter and current brain coach Jocelyn Brady. She stopped by to help us understand how the brain works, what it takes to create curiosity to tell stories, and how you can keep your reader engaged long enough to deliver your message. Everyone who communicates as part of the work that they do will benefit from listening to what Jocelyn has to share in this episode.
Kira Hug: A quick PSA, The Copywriter Think Tank price tag will increase this June. So if you have any interest in joining us inside this mastermind, don't wait; apply today. We are so excited to introduce some of our newest members in the Think Tank to the entire crew this June during our two-day virtual retreat on June 9th and 10th. It's coming up fast, so again, if you've had any interest in the Think Tank, now is the time to apply. Head over to copywriterthinktank.com to learn more.
Rob Marsh: All right. Let's get to our interview with Jocelyn.
Jocelyn Brady: This is a long circuitous journey, I think. But I'll say that the first time I was really that my brain went, "Wow, what brains can do," was... Well, the first time I held a brain was in grade school when we were dissecting a fetal pig, and I really needed to see its brain. That was not part of the assignment. We were just looking at its organs. And I was like, "But that's crazy. We're not seeing the part that powers all the parts." So I was the sole student there with my hacksaw, just determined to see this thing's brain. That stuck with me.
And then later,
Lander Sulser is our guest for the 291st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Lander is a marketing strategist and launch copywriter who helps her clients optimize their offer using her signature framework. Whether you’re trying to help your own clients with their offers or you’re creating your own, be sure to tune into the episode.
Check out the conversation:
Not knowing how the hell you get to your dreams, but you know you have them. The benefits of using mastermind to leverage your skills and business. How you could get the “in” with big names in the industry by knowing one person. The other benefits and value you can provide as a copywriter other than just the writing component. The process of creating the name for your offer. How to create an irresistible offer in 4 simple steps. What has changed in creating offers since the pandemic? How to hone in on your BIG promise, so your message isn’t diluted. The guarantee – How should we approach it? What we shouldn’t be doing when launching our products. How to create exclusivity around your VIP offer. The better way to craft your USP to stand out from the crowd. Creating purpose for every copy element you’re providing for your client. DFY vs DWY copy services – what’s best for YOUR business? Boundaries you should be setting as a consultant or mentor. You aren’t (always) the ideal client… create the separation. The secret to the end of research and learning during copy projects. Being nicer to ourselves – How do we rewrite the stories we’re telling? Implementing systems and processes will do w h a t for your business?! Why white space in your calendar will create a better business. How to build authority as a highly-sensitive person.
This is a not-to-miss episode. Be sure to press play or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Lander's workshop The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Sign up for Typeform Episode 205 Episode 266 Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: You've probably heard the marketing equation 40/40/20. More than one of our guests on past episodes has mentioned it. 40/40/20 represents which parts of promotion are responsible for the sales. 40% comes from your list or your audience, making sure that you're talking to the right people. Another 40% comes from the quality and value of your offer. And the final 20% comes from your copy, the message that you use to sell the offer to the right audience. And if you're talking to the right people with a great offer, you'll almost certainly succeed, even if the copy isn't that great.
Conversely, if your offer is bad, even the best copy won't do much to salvage the promotion. All of that is a long way to introduce our guests for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Copywriter and marketing strategist and Think Tank member Lander Sulser. Lander's specialty is helping her clients dial in an irresistible offer that customers can't say no to. It's a superpower that every copywriter needs to have. So you'll definitely want to stick around for this episode.
Kira Hug: Before diving into the interview with Lander, this sponsor for this week's episode is the copywriter Think Tank.
Rob Marsh: Surprise.
Kira Hug: Shockingly, it's the Copywriter Think Tank. It's a part mastermind and part coaching program, and it's designed to help copywriters dive deeper into their businesses and explore new ideas that maybe they didn't even think were possible. With our two new coaches, Linda Perry and Jonnie Stellar, you'll get personalized focus on systems and mindset. In addition to strategic coaching and support from the two of us. If you're looking to create a new offer or program, scale your income, launch a book, or maybe even a podcast, the Think Tank could be your next step to making i...
In this special edition of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by our three coaches inside our Think Tank Mastermind Program. Tamara Glick, Linda Perry, and Jonnie Stellar share their own experiences inside the Think Tank, and how they now support members inside the program through their expertise in mindset, systems, and community.
Here’s the breakdown of the episode:
How each coach grew their business with the support of The Copywriter Think Tank Mastermind. Gaining insight on what you don’t know through camaraderie. The permission being inside a mastermind can bring you. The specific stories copywriters tell themselves that’s holding them back from business growth and expansion. How not having these specific systems and processes in place are holding copywriters back. Delegation and burnout – how copywriters are self-sabotaging their success. The hand-off anxiety that can come with hiring a team and how to avoid it. How to avoid analysis-paralysis and information overload, so you can set up your business for optimal growth. The network of support you gain by joining a mastermind group (The Think Tank) ; ) What’s the difference between being a visible copywriter and one who hides behind their words? Gaining visibility in business and overcoming the fear of standing out. How even the most introverted copywriter can gain visibility in their niche and become an authority. Why courage has to come before confidence. Who would win at beer pong… Kira or Rob? The benefits of going to in-person retreats.
Check out the episode or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Linda's website Jonnie's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Sign up for Typeform Full Transcript: Kira Hug: Okay. So, we are going to kick this off with our special guests, all of you, and I want you to just introduce yourself by sharing of course, who you are, but your role in the Think Tank. What you're doing in the Think Tank to help the members and maybe share a credential or two. Just brag a little bit about why you're so incredible at what you do. So, let's kick that off with Linda.
Linda Perry: All right. Thank you for having me on. I am Linda Perry. I call myself a success strategist these days, and really what that means is that I combine the tools of mindset and some business strategy to help people bust through some of their blocks and take their business to the next level. I joined the Think Tank really to be that mindset coach to help people really bust through some of the stories they tell themselves so that they can actually achieve bigger goals and do the things that they set out to do. And so far it's been a pretty new role, but it has been a blast. And one of the things that I think makes me really good at what I do is I've worked with hundreds of business owners in different areas, but I have an ability to really see where those blocks are quickly and allow people to really implement the tools they need to move past them.
I like to think of what I do as sort of this active learning lab, and part of what I love about being in Think Tank is that it is an active learning lab. They get to see in real-time how their blocks are standing in their way and really work toward taking steps. This isn't like therapy. This is really about taking actual steps that allow you to grow and become that person that you've always imagined in your head and achieve that kind of success you want.
Rob Marsh: And I should add, Linda, because you didn't say it, but you have worked as a copywriter. You've built a six-figure copywriting business in the past. You've been through all of the copywriting trainings. And so not only have you built a business like so many of the other people in the Think T...
Hollie Tkac joined The Copywriter Club Podcast for episode 289. Hollie is a copywriter for coaches in the online space who has built her multiple six-figure business on DFY copy. She shares her experience in creating sustainable income without the 50+ hour work weeks and how other copywriters can build a business that works for them.
Here’s how the conversation breaks down:
The importance of building your network and how it can translate into 50% of your income. How Hollie transitioned from coaching into copywriting for coaches. The benefits of hiring a coach and how to find the right one for you and your business. Transferring skill sets from coaching to copywriting. Steps to developing self trust and stepping into your sense of worthiness. Having 6 coaches at once and determining which coaches could help you get to where you want to go. How to get the most out of your coaching programs, so you see a return on your investment. Hitting six-figures in the first year of business – How did it happen? Should you add retainer clients to your business model? How to hire junior copywriters and how to effectively work with them. The wrong way to charge for your copywriting services. Creating a strong client relationship and building trust can lead to this. Where do most coaches struggle and how copywriters can help them. When are business owners ready for a copywriter? Systems and processes to use when working with a team and keeping things organized. Client work vs working on your own business – Where’s the balance? Creating financial projections and how to plan for the future of your business.
If you’ve been thinking about adding retainers to your business or hiring a team to help scale your business, be sure to tune into this episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Hollie's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Sign up for Typeform Episode 253 Full Transcript: Kira Hug: If you've ever questioned whether or not you could make six figures as a copywriter without creating and selling products, courses, or group programs on the side, this episode is for you. In this conversation, we'll speak with copywriter, Hollie Tkac, about how she niched down and grew her Done For You copywriting business with just that; copywriting. We talked about Hollie's approach to retainers, hiring, and working with junior copywriters, and a few best practices for running a successful copywriting business.
Rob Marsh: Before we jump into our interview with Hollie, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to think outside the box, build new offers, and add revenue streams to their business. We've recently added a mindset coach and assistant coach to help members of the Think Tank make more progress than ever before, and it's not cheap, but given the results that Think Tank members experience after they join the program, it is absolutely worth it. If you are earning three, four, five thousand dollars or more consistently in your business, go to copywriterthinktank.com to learn more.
Kira Hug: Okay. Let's hear from Hollie about how she got her start as a copywriter. Hi, Hollie. Well, let's kick off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter for Coaches?
Hollie Tkac: Yeah. Really, it all came down to networking actually, and I still think to this day that's one of the main ways I've built my business. What happened was originally I wanted to be a coach myself, and this is in like 2015, so I joined a bunch of programs and things like that and just took that leap to invest in my business. From that, I ended up making connections and people were liking what I was putting out for my own coaching business I wanted to start at the t...
Allison Carpio is our guest for the 288th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Allison is a copywriter, analytics specialist, and food aficionado who breaks down what it means to overcome the headtrash that is holding us back from creating and doing what we truly want. In this episode, you’ll find out the importance of staying in alignment with your values, plus…
Starting a freelance career while working a full time job. The mindset blocks and headtrash that stands in the way of pricing. The benefits of being in paid communities and high level masterminds. How to leverage your network and build your authority. Different support systems for your business – which ones do you need? The 3 steps to identify what is holding you back and how to overcome it. Building a “team” of supporters to work through perfectionism and fear of instability. Accelerating success and making business more fun and energetic. How Allison shifted the way she talks to her own audience and why that shift happened. Shifting your beliefs while shifting your business – How’s it done? How to build your email list with warm leads. Where to look for your collaboration opportunities. Crafting your welcome sequence like a private 1:1 dinner. Shaping your VIP day – How can you get more done in one day? The new challenges that entrepreneurs face as their business grows.
Hit that play button below, you're not going to want to miss it.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Allison's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Sign up for Typeform Episode 234 Episode 258 Full Transcript:
Keina Newell is our guest on the 287th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Keina is a financial coach who helps professionals and solopreneurs with their money. With over $75,000 in student loan debt on a teacher’s salary, Keina knew she had to make a big change if she was ever going to achieve financial freedom. Whether you want to pay off debt, save and invest money, or a bit of all three, this episode will give you practical tips on doing just that.
Here’s how the conversation goes:
A career that is passion aligned but also helps you accomplish financial goals… real or myth? What is the purpose of money in our lives? How to backwards plan where you want to be financially. The steps to getting granular with your financial goals. Why you should pay yourself as an employee. 3 types of budgets and how to break them down. When to start building a financial system. An emergency fund for business vs personal. Taking a leap vs safety first: which are you? How to plan for expenses that come with being self employed. Where should we be investing when we DO have money to invest? How to create a money hell YES and a hell NO list. Why this one thing will impact your investment style. What about debt? Where does it fit into our financial plan? How to reframe your mindset around debt and change the money stories we grew up with. What it really means to charge less for your skills and how it will affect your future. 3 questions to ask yourself when deciding whether to cut down vs earn more. How to decide where your financial gap is. What to think about before hiring contractors. Why you need to start dating your money. Budgets – what’s that all about anyways? How to actually reach your financial goals. Financial tips for beginners – what are the first steps? How to start up money conversations with business partners.
This episode is full of actionable steps to further our financial journeys, be sure to hit play or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Copywriting Income Survey Kira’s website Rob’s website Keina's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Sign up for Typeform Episode 110
Full Transcript: Kira: All right. Keina, let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a financial coach?
Keina: I, I think my, my go-to answer is that God has a sense of humor, uh, which has been the theme my entire life, but I ultimately got into financial coaching because I was really looking at what did I enjoy doing? And one of the things that I really enjoyed was budgeting, and in my own personal story, um, I graduated college and with a lot of student loan debt. And in addition to having student loan debt, I actually joined Teach for America, which anyone who knows anything about teachers teaching is not like the highest-paid position in the world. And at that time, I was making probably like $30,000 a year and trying to figure out how could I actually do something that felt very passion-aligned but also be able to work towards buying a home, saving money and paying down student loan debt. So it was like through my own personal journey of budgeting and figuring out how to buy a house, how to make more money. And that progress over, over a decade, got me into the financial coaching space.
Rob: So as you've been coaching Keina and working with people on their own finances, where do you see the biggest opportunities or the starting point where we need to be thinking more about our finances?
Keina: I would say really knowing the purpose of money in your life. I always encourage people to think about when you're 80 years old, like, what do you wanna have achieved? And I think sometimes people think it's like a silly question, but I don't think that we actually kind of press pause to think about why are we doin...
Carline Anglade-Cole is our guest on the 286th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. While Carline has joined the show before, in this episode she gives us the inside scoop of creating a Youtube channel, writing her second book, and lessons we can all use in our lives and business.
Check it out:
Why Carline decided to channel her content on Youtube. What it takes to get started on Youtube + how to use copy skills to grow your channel. How a thumbnail is like a lead. Why Carline is giving away free content vs paid content. Carline’s Youtube strategy for maximum views. How copywriting has radically changed her life and surprises along the way. The process of shifting gears and getting out of your own way. The difference between selling physical products vs digital products. Why it’s a good idea to rechannel yourself to find things that excite you. Carline’s inspiration for writing a second book about lessons, mindset, and advice. How this ONE tip could change the way you view your copy. The importance of finding a support system that encourages you – but what if it’s not your family? The #1 mistake Carline sees copywriters making and how to fix it. Kira and Rob’s favorite chapters of Carline’s book: Your Copy Sucks, You Don’t. How Carline organized all her ideas to create her second book.
If you’re thinking of broadening your reach by writing a book or starting a Youtube channel, be sure to tune into the episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Carline's website Carline's book The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Our first episode with Carline Episode 65 Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Back when I worked a real job and I'm putting air quotes around “real”, I used to dread Mondays. In fact, when Sunday afternoon would come along, I'd start getting that feeling of dread in my gut and just really wasn't looking forward to work. And I think that's a pretty common thing among people who work regular nine to five jobs. Maybe you felt it yourself in fact. But since switching to copywriting and starting my own business, I can't recall ever feeling that Sunday dread. And I think that goes away when you truly love what you do. That's something that we share with our guest for today's podcast, Carline Anglade-Cole, and as you listen to what she shares, you'd probably agree that Carline is very obvious that she loves what she does. She's excited about writing, about teaching and about sharing the lessons that she's learned over her career as a copywriter. I get excited every time I talk to Carline. And I think that you're going to want to stick around to hear all the great advice that she shares in this episode.
Kira Hug: Before diving into the interview with Carline, the sponsor for this week's episode is the Copywriter Think Tank, which is our mastermind and coaching program that helps copywriters dive deeper and really explore ideas they didn't think were possible, and act on them. And we're really excited to introduce new coaches inside this mastermind experience. We've welcomed a mindset coach and a systems coach into the program so not only do you have our support and our feedback, but these other brilliant coaches in there as well. Linda Perry is the mindset coach and Jonnie Stellar is a systems coach.
And what I'm really excited about right now in the Think Tank is that we are planning our upcoming retreat in Washington, DC, this June. And there's nothing better than getting this mastermind together in person. We were just together in Nashville, Tennessee for TCCIRL for our retreat there. And I'm excited to host a party at my house in DC for the Think Tank members. So we're looking forward to that. And if you have any interest in being part of a mastermind, like the Think Tank, you can head over to copyrighterthinktank.
Tyler J. McCall guests on the 275th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Tyler is an Instagram Marketing Strategist and Coach for entrepreneurs who want to build and grow their business online. With social media being at the forefront of so many businesses, Tyler shares his experience dealing with burnout and how entrepreneurs can use social media more intentionally.
Take a peek at our conversation:
Why Tyler founded onlinebusinessowner.com. How his nonprofit careers kickstarted his entrepreneurial endeavors and how he became the go-to Instagram marketing expert. Should you leave the community you’ve become accustomed to? How to find the right coach and community for you, your business, and your values. The process of healing from a previous business and starting another. Why it’s a good idea to unlearn old beliefs before jumping into something new. How to deal with harassment online – actions and steps to take. Repairing your reputation online – is it possible? The double edged sword of social media. How do you know if you’re burned out + how to fix it. The future of social media and how to not lose yourself in it. The potential of podcasting and the forgotten blog… is it still a thing? A guide to unplugging from social media. The reality of starting a media company and how to monetize when your offer is free. The process of building your writer’s muscle. How to regain trust in yourself and your gut feeling. Building a small but mighty team for business growth.
If you want to use social media with intention and avoid burnout, tune into the episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Tyler's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Episode 177 Episode 191 Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Social media. We've had a lot of people on the show to talk about their approach to Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn. It's almost as if you can't build a copywriting business these days without spending serious time on social media. And while that may not be strictly true, you can, but it's becoming less and less common. Our guest for today's podcast is Tyler J. McCall. Tyler's gone through a bit of a transition when it comes to using social media for his business over the last few months. It used to be the main focus and now it's not. And if you struggle with social media as a business building tool, or you're interested in using it in a more sustainable way, you'll want to stick around for this interview. Tyler also shared how he's reinvented his entire business over the last year, how to deal with trolls and people that are harassing you online and overcoming burnout. Like we said, you're not going to want to miss this one.
Kira Hug: Before we dive into our interview with Tyler, the sponsor for this week's episode is the Copywriter Think Tank. It's our mastermind coaching program that helps copywriters dive deeper and explore ideas they didn't think were possible and act on them. We're introducing two new coaches inside the Think Tank who focus on systems and mindset, so members have the opportunity to ask for support from multiple coaches. If you are looking to create a new offer or program, product, scale your income, maybe launch a book, maybe launch a podcast, the Think Tank could be your next step to making it happen. If you want more information, head over to copywriterthinktank.com to learn more. All right, let's get into the interview and learn how Tyler ended up as the founder of onlinebusinessowner.com.
Tyler J. McCall: I'll give you the shortest version possible. I left my nonprofit career back in 2015 to start my own online business after having a bunch of side hustles before that. And the first business I started was a marketing agency with a really close friend. And that's where I really started learning abou...
Charlotte Davis is our guest for the 284th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Charlotte is a Dubsado Strategist and Business Operations Consultant, and in this episode she breaks down the best way copywriters can use systems in their businesses to create a high-level client experience and maximize their time and energy.
Here’s how the episode goes down:
How Charlotte transitioned from OBM to Dubsado wizard. The difference between OBM (Online Business Manager) and VA (Virtual Assistant), PLUS when you’re ready for each. Are you ready for a Systems Strategist? Why you need to pull your processes out of your head and into a system. What can be automated in Dubsado? The one thing business owners forget or feel awkward doing. Honeybook vs. Dubsado – what’s the dif? Should you set up your own Dubsado or hire an expert? The process of hiring a professional in your business. Best practices for client management while using automation – is it possible? The 3 system standards service providers need to implement into their business ASAP. How automation helps copywriters get out of their own way. The 5 part process to making high-converting proposals. Managing productivity and managing boundaries… Can the two coexist? The method to a better discovery call. How Charlotte manages her team and what she outsources in her business. The mindset that comes with being afraid to do something. Self care practices that keep Charlotte loving what she does and help her manage her energy. The future of the online marketing space means no more cowboys. How Harry Potter and business are the same.
If you need clarity around creating systems and processes, be sure to hit the play button or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Charlotte Isaac's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Episode 44 Episode 207 Full Transcript: Kira Hug: We've noticed a growing trend in the copywriting space. More and more copywriters are up-leveling their systems and creating automated client experiences that far surpass the somewhat sloppy back and forth that typically takes place in the inbox. Today's guest for The Copywriter Club podcast is system specialist, Charlotte Isaac, and she lets us look under the hood of her business. We nerd out on automations, Dubsado, and client management. So if you're trying to automate the processes in your business and maybe, just maybe you'd like to hear Charlotte's number one business lesson from Harry Potter, you won't want to miss this episode.
Rob Marsh: I'm feeling attacked Kira, based off that intro. I'm the guy with the sloppy back and forth in the inbox. If you're listening to this podcast on the day that it was released, that means that we are currently in Nashville at The Copywriter Club In Real Life, hanging out IRL with some of the best copywriters in the world. And we're sharing with them some of the changes that we're making to The Copywriter Think Tank here in the very near future to make it better than ever, like introducing two new coaches to the group. So that members don't just depend on us, but have access to specialists and things like systems and mindset.
The Think Tank is our mastermind coaching program that helps copywriters take their business to the next level, whatever that means for you, that might be a larger income number, it could be creating a new program or a new offer for your clients, it could be launching a podcast or writing a book to grow your authority, whatever you are ready to accomplish next, we'll help you do it in The Copywriter Think Tank. Go to copywriterthinktank.com to learn more. And let's get to our interview with Charlotte Isaac.
Kira Hug: All right Charlotte, let's kick this off. How did you end up as a business operations consultant?
Angie Federico joins The Copywriter Club Podcast for its 283rd episode. Angie is a direct response copywriter who’s been in both the freelance and agency world of marketing. Her ability to craft open-worthy pitches and close sales calls are just a few qualities that make her a great copywriter and marketer. If you need a pick-me-up when it comes to your skills in selling yourself, tune into the episode.
Here’s how the conversation goes:
How Angie went from selling life insurance to her start in affiliate marketing. The difference between selling online vs in person. How copywriting became the key to virtual selling. Can you gain clients on Reddit? The key to being great at sales and how to improve your own skills. What even is affiliate marketing? The beginnings of getting good at copywriting… for free. Creating a referral system that sustains itself. How to write a sales pitch that gets read and responded to. Figuring out who you want to pitch and helping your prospect solve a problem. The difference between the acquisition and retention side of a funnel. Why you need to send bad pitches and get rejected. How to pitch with intent. Sales calls – how do you get your prospect to grab their credit card on the call? The benefits of getting upfront payments from your potential clients. The step by step breakdown of Angie’s sales call process. How to set expectations right off the bat with new clients and community effectively. Agency life vs freelance life. What’s it all about? How to manage your energy and keep yourself balanced while working in an agency. Kicking imposter syndrome and anxious feelings to the curb, so you can step into your confidence.
Hit the play button or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Connect with Angie Episode 6 Episode 223 Full Transcript:
Jason Pickar makes his second appearance on the 282nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jason talks how the last few years have changed and his route to becoming a VP Creative Director. If you’re wondering what it would be like to work in an agency or need advice from a pro, be sure to check out the episode.
Here’s what we cover:
The changes in the agency space for both copywriters and creative directors. What’s involved in being the creative director for an agency. Teams that make-up an agency and the pace of working for one. The process of getting copy written, edited, cleared, and ready to go live. How to write for fans of a brand. The difference between various generations’ style of writing and crafting copy based on different perspectives. How quick service restaurants are pushing the app experience through a loyalty program and celeb advertisement. The psychology that brings people back into the app. The key to balancing brand voice and direct response language. How to create a narrative of friendship in your writing style. Jason’s biggest wins with Mcdonald’s rewards and the use of the app. The best way to get the attention of a creative director and HR in an agency. What makes a copywriter stand out on the team? The benefits of working for and with an agency. The future of copywriting – where is it headed?
Hit the play button or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Jason's LinkedIn Episode 115 Episode 198 Episode 34 Connect with Jenn Full Transcript:
Rob and Kira take the mic for the 281st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. In this episode, they walk through what makes TCC… TCC. Through an introspection of beliefs and celebrating what the last 5 years have brought, they challenge everyone listening to do the same thing for their own business.
Take a sneak peek:
The core belief of The Copywriter Club. No one owns a niche, specialty, or title and why this is a good thing. How to use your x-factor to differentiate yourself from the sea of others in your niche. The golden rule of investing and how to effectively use it in your business. Paid mentors vs free mentors – is one better than the other? How to keep the momentum moving in your business. Outgrowing your title and shifting into a new one. How to find the best way for YOU to grow your authority. The importance of not comparing your goals to someone else’s. How masterminds are like buffets – yes, the food kind. The growth that comes with being the dumbest person in the room. Do you have a sales problem or a marketing problem? How you can do more good in the world and become a change agent. Why it’s good practice to treat your business like an experiment. How the red pen will increase your confidence. The value of stretching yourself beyond your comfort zone. How you can help TCC reach a million downloads.
Hit the play button below or check out the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: This week's episode of the podcast is going to be a little bit different. Every 10 episodes or so, Kira and I, we get together and we just share stuff that's not interview based and we've been wanting to do this for quite a while. So we're going to talk about some of the things that we believe. That we believe around copywriting and around the importance of the work that we do and maybe some of the ideas that hold together The Copywriter Club. Does that sound about right to you Kira?
Kira Hug: Yeah, like you said, this is something we haven't done before, so I'm not sure how this is going to turn out, but I'm excited to see what happens.
Rob Marsh: We could easily find out that we totally disagree on what we both believe.
Kira Hug: That's true.
Rob Marsh: Yeah so, it'll be interesting to see, because we have not really talked through this at all before hopping on to record, we just came up with our own lists and now let's share them. Before we share them though, we should say, like always, our podcast is sponsored by something and this week it is TCC IRL The Copywriter Club, In Real Life, it's happening in Nashville in just a couple of weeks, March 28th through the 30th and it is an awesome event. If you don't have a ticket, there are a few tickets left and you can come and join us.
Kira Hug: Yes. And can I share the new excitement with what we just decided?
Rob Marsh: This is good.
Kira Hug: So, we just decided that we want to help the refugees in Ukraine. And so we are going to find an organization that we both feel like is legit it and doing great work. And 10% of the profit from TCC IRL will go towards a specific organization, which is TBD, but we will figure it out soon. It feels like a good way to do something when it feels like there aren't many things we can do, this is one thing we can do. So we're excited to do that. If you do purchase a ticket, at least that part of that is going towards an organization that's doing great work in Ukraine and supporting people.
Rob Marsh: Yep. That's maybe a small way that we can make a difference for a lot of people that are being very significantly impacted by the war.
Kira Hug: Yes. So let's kick off with some of your beliefs. And again, these are TCC beliefs, but it's fun because Rob,
For the 280th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by Launch Copywriter Ash Chow. Ash helps her clients strategize for pre-launch and breaks down why it’s such an essential part of your overall launch strategy. Tune into the episode to tap into your next launch strategy.
Tune into the conversation:
Having a “is this really my life?” moment and completely shifting gears. How a quarterlife crisis can be a pivotal time in life. The pull to do something greater and make a big impact. The stigma around being a certain age before starting a business or pivoting your career. Navigating feelings of low self worth and shame. How copywriters are constantly scrutinized and how to not internalize feedback from clients. Why validation can be an important part of working through difficult situations. How to respect your boundaries when you’re a people pleaser. Using the comments by that mean girl in high school or an unencouraging teacher to ignite your creativity. Why you need to train your clients on how to communicate with you – you have to lead by example. How to write more empathetic copy even if you’re not going through the same situations. (Lean heavily on your VOC research) The shifts and pivots Ash has made in her career as a copywriter. How Ash has built her authority and visibility by leaning into pre-launch strategy. Ash’s framework to power up your pre-launch. How to address objections as part of your pre-launch strategy. Mistakes to avoid in your pre-launch strategy and what to do instead. How Ash helped with the Accelerator pre-launch. How to create your own stage to speak on.
If you’ve been wondering how you can power up your launches with a pre-launch strategy, listen to the episode or check out the transcription below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Connect with Ash Episode 67 Episode 143 Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: We've interviewed several recovering attorneys on this podcast. All of them got through law school only to realize that the law wouldn't be the fulfilling career that they once thought it would be. And the pull towards creativity and writing is just too strong for these folks. So they answered the call to be a copywriter. Our guest, for this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast is another recovering attorney and think tank member, Ash Chow. Since graduating from law school, she's thrown herself into writing everything from fanfiction to launch copy. And today she's known as the expert in pre-launch copy and strategy. All of the stuff that you need to do before a launch to make sure that it's a success. She knows so much about this, that we focused most of our discussion on the topic of prelaunch strategy.
Kira Hug: Before we dive into our conversation with Ash, this episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Club in Real Life. So that's her are in person event happening March 28th through 30th in Nashville, Tennessee. The room is filling up and it can only hold a certain number of people because it's a boutique hotel. So there are spots left if you want to join us. I am very excited to hang out with people in real life again, since it's been two. And I just, I miss it. I miss people.
Rob Marsh: We haven't even seen each other in two years.
Kira Hug: That's true. This is the first time Rob and I... I feel like I see you all the time, but you're right. We haven't touched each other.
Rob Marsh: Not that we do a whole lot of touching.
Kira Hug: We haven't hugged each other and just like high fived and all those more appropriate things. We haven't done that in two years. And so this is going to be so much fun. We have incredible speakers now that we've nearly finished the lineup speakers like Mike Kim, Raven Douglas, Brigitte Lyons, Ash Chow,
For the 279th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’ve got not one… but 4 guests jumping on the show. You’ll hear the familiar voices of Jude Charles, Justin Blackman, and Ash Chow as they chat about their experiences with both TCCIRL and (N)IRL. Thinking about joining the party?
Here’s what it’s all about:
The first impression of TCCIRL – are copywriters really weird? The experiences you can expect to have at your first or even second and third IRL event. Are A-listers real people? The importance of being able to build relationships outside of your computer screen. Being introverted and going to a social event… how does it work? First look at topics you’ll be tuning into at this year’s event. How to leverage TCCIRL in your life and business once the event is over. Dealing with burnout at different levels and how to maneuver it. How much can happen in a short period of time and not forgetting to sit in moments of accomplishment. Which guest nailed 57 podcasts because of TCCIRL? How TCCIRL gives you a boost of energy when you need it – even after it’s over. Can you be in the right and wrong room at the same time? Embracing our awkward quirks and being confident in our empathy. Where do you want to be in a year from now? How has the copywriting and marketing landscape changed over the last year? Why is 2022 the best time to be a small business owner in this space?
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Episode 216 with Justin Blackman Episode 217 with Jude Charles Connect with Ash Connect with Justin Connect with Jude Full Transcript: Kira Hug: The Copywriter Club in Real Life is coming up fast, in only five weeks. And in today's episode, our guests include this year's presenters and think tank members, Ash Chow and Justin Blackman and returning repeat presenter, Jude Charles. Rob is out of town this week, so my co-host today is one of our team members from The Copywriter Club, Rosie Bynum, our client relationship and event manager. Rosie, thanks for joining me as a co-host today.
Rosie Bynum: Thank you. I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to talk about the next event coming up, our big one for the year, TCCIRL, that is The Copywriter Club in Real Life. TCCIRL is taking over the in-person stage this year in Nashville, Tennessee, March 28 through 30th. And that is coming up pretty quickly. It is a two-and-a-half-day event where you'll hear from other copywriters and marketers about the best tools and strategies you can use to grow your business, skills, and mindset. Getting connected with some of the best minds in the space is the cherry on top. Space is limited, so be sure to grab your ticket as soon as possible. If you'd like more information, head over to thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl-2022. We'll link it in the show notes as well.
Kira Hug: And space is really limited as in we only have a certain number of tickets left because the venue can only hold 200 people. And so, when we say that we actually mean it, is not just marketing speak. So get your tickets if you do want to be there, we want to make sure you have a seat. And now let's jump into the conversation with Jude, Ash, and Justin.
All right, today, we're going to kick this off with a very special episode with some special guests. Today we're going to talk about TCCIRL and also the way that the copywriting and marketing landscape has changed over the last few years. And so, I want to kick this off with my co-host and then we're going to go around the room and everyone will get a chance to introduce yourselves. So, Rosie, why don't you kick it off as my co-host today? Because we kicked Rob Marsh out, you are going to co-host. Why don't you introduce yourself?
Rosie Bynum: Hi, everybody. Yes, my name is Rosie.
Laura Sprinkle is our guest for the 278th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Laura is an affiliate partnerships strategist and has worked with people like Amy Porterfield, Selena Soo, and Todd Herman. Launching can be challenging, but adding an affiliate program could give your launch the eyes it deserves to increase sales and reach.
Laura breaks it down like this:
Laura’s fascination with the ability to sell what you create. Early beginnings as a health coach and how she transitioned to the marketing side of business. How she bumped into big names like Selena Soo and Todd Herman – you never know who you know. What’s working in the launch space vs what isn’t. How to elevate your VIP experience with clients to make deeper connections. Why it’s important to focus on prelaunch – and guidelines on how to make it work. The differences in each style of launch and knowing which is right for you. Deciding what you want to be known for. Navigating multiple offers and how to not dilute or confuse your audience. The importance of content and media repurposing. The benefits of being an affiliate for a program – and how to express that to affiliates. How to find good affiliate partners through the rings of recruitment. Are affiliate partnerships for first time launchers? How to build relationships and network without the aim of just getting something out of it using the 4 wins exercise. Affiliate program best practices… and what to avoid. How her team is set up to help her attain maximum productivity and function. Money mindset – being expensive but worth it. How to reframe failure to raise your rates.
Tune into the episode and learn how to implement affiliate marketing into your business.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Laura’s starter kit Episode 124 Episode 239 Jonnie’s website Full Transcript: Kira: You know you've got a great offer to sell and it's been proven to do well and get your clients results. But now you're looking to expand your reach and help even more people. On this episode of The Copywriter Club, podcast, affiliate marketing expert, Laura Sprinkle, joins us to walk through what it takes to create a successful marketing strategy and how to utilize affiliate marketing to get your offer in the hands of other people's audiences.
Joining me today is a very special guest, Jonnie Stellar. Jonnie is one of the most talented copywriters I have worked with. I've worked with Jonnie on many different projects over the years. Jonnie has written copy for TCC. And his most recently worked with a big marketing agency. So, thank you, Jonnie for joining me today and cohosting. I appreciate it.
Jonnie: Absolutely. I'm so excited to have dusted off my podcast mic that I never used. Yeah. It's such a pleasure to be here again with you, Kira, for the second time I've been on the podcast.
Kira: Yes. All right. So, before Jonnie, we jump in, I'm just going to share our sponsor, TCCIRL. This is not anything new. We have our big event coming up. It's coming up fast. So, we are traveling to Nashville, Tennessee on March 28th through 30th. We're going to host our event in person after a hiatus and last year going online. And we're really excited just to see so many writers in one room. We can't wait. And I could read the promotional blurb in front of me. But I'd rather just ask you, Jonnie, you've been to our event. Can you share what stood out the most to you? Why was it worth it for you to be at TCCIRL?
Jonnie: Yeah. I think I believe I've been to three TCCIRLs of two for sure. First one was in New York and then the second one was most recently last year in, I'm sorry, in 2021 in San Diego. Sorry, if I'm getting my years mixed up.
Kira: It's all a blur. It's all the years are a blur now.
Our guest on the 277th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Erin Pennings. Erin is a B2B storyteller and marketing strategist who has nailed a framework to help others write their own websites with ease. Creating a captivating website can be a daunting task (for copywriters and other business owners alike), and Erin reveals how to simplify the process.
Here’s how the episode breaks down:
The transition from the tourism sector to copywriter. The early days of Facebook and LinkedIn and how Erin used it to her advantage. How where you start may not be where you end up. – Writer beginnings. Steps to finding your x-factor. 2 things that you’ll discover in exploring your x-factor. How to create a framework and processes and how it will help your business. How Erin divides her business into DFY and DWY offers. The process Erin uses to get website copy written in a week. Are live review edits the next big thing? How they can speed up the writing and editing phases. Utilizing a checklist for evaluating website copy. The transition, the struggles, and the mindset blocks that come from starting up a group program. How Erin’s group program students get their website copy done in 21 days. Mistakes copywriters make on their own websites plus how to navigate them. Building your email list and ramping up your lead generation. How to build boundaries around your life while being a yes person. Using your CEO days to get the most out of your time. Building a sustainable business – taking time off and getting paid for it. Her experience inside The Accelerator and transitioning into the Think Tank.
Tune into the episode by hitting the play button below or reading the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Erin’s website Grace’s website Episode 154 Episode 262
Full Transcript: Rob: A lot of copywriters write web copy for their clients, which is pretty natural because so many of our clients need help with their websites. But what about writing copy for your own website? That's a bit trickier. In fact, we've talked with hundreds, and I'm not exaggerating that number, hundreds of copywriters who are perfectly comfortable writing web copy for their clients, but can't seem to get past the blank page when it comes to their own website. You might be able to relate.
Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Erin Pennings. Erin created a framework that makes the writing of web copy, that whole process a lot easier, even when working on copy for our own businesses. And she shares that framework, plus some ideas about frameworks, live edits and a whole lot more in our interview today. You'll want to stay tuned for this one, but before we get to Kira and me talking with Erin, my co-host here to add a few thoughts in today's episode is Grace Baldwin, and Grace is a B2B SaaS copywriter brand strategist who works to help B2B SaaS startups with niche solutions to big problems, helping them tell stories that connect with their audience.
She's an awesome copywriter, has a great newsletter. Welcome, Grace.
Grace: Hi, Rob. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Rob: I am thrilled to have you here. We haven't talked in a little while, so it's just good hanging out with you for a few minutes anyway.
Grace: Nice to catch up.
Rob: So, before we dig into the episode, we need to remind you this episode is sponsored by The Copywriter Club in Real Life. That's our in-person event that's happening later next month, March 28th through the 30th in Nashville, Tennessee. The room's really filling up. We only have about 200 seats in the room. It can't be expanded, and there are a lot of copywriters there that you are going to know. You may have heard of.
On the 276th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Esai Arasi hops on the show. Esai is a Social Media Manager and Strategist who helps copywriters with their content strategy to get the most out of their content. Social media has the potential to expand your reach and connect with more leads, and in this episode, Esai walks us through how you can use it to its greatest potential.
Here’s how it goes down:
Esai’s transition from psychological trainer to copywriter and social media strategist. How to guide someone to change their behavior willingly. Why belief is of utmost importance in creating changed behavior. Human psychology and the roots of how humans change and evolve over time. How Esai has transferred her skills into copywriting. The process for implementing change and making it fun (and easier). Being good at the skill but struggling with the business aspect of acquiring clients. How credentials and formal education can help you build foundational skills in your business. How to create a minimum viable product and implement it into your business. Does it need to be perfect? The benefits of having an insatiable curiosity for learning and mastering the craft of copywriting. How not to get stuck in the learning phase of your business and lean into the doing. Why you need to build stamina for failure and how to use it to your advantage. What copywriters can improve in marketing their business. The worst content strategy advice you could be listening to and what to do instead. Working in other countries and charging a premium price. How to train your team in mimicking your processes. Esai’s future business plans and how she intends to help women learn English and gain better job opportunities.
From social media strategy to strengthening your behavioral psychology skills, this episode is a must-listen (or read).
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Connect with Esai Esai’s episode on The Great Escape with Jacob Suckow PrimalBranding Principles of Marketing Organizational Behavior E-Myth Episode 54 Episode 106 Jared’s website Full Transcript: Kira: For many copywriters, social media is a necessary evil. Many of us dread showing up on social media, I am one of those people. But we also realize visibility on social media can be a game changer for our business. For the 276th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we're joined by Esai Arasi. Esai is a member of our Think Tank Mastermind, a copywriter and a social media strategist who helps copywriters, oftentimes copywriters who dread social media, and helps them navigate social media so they can stand out to premium clients. And today I am so excited to sit here with my co-host Jared MacDonald. So Jared, thanks for being here. I appreciate it.
Jared: Thanks for having me, Kira. Always a pleasure.
Kira: It's been so long since we got to hang out. So, I'm glad you're here today. And why don't you just introduce yourself? Let us know who you are, what you do.
Jared: Sure, sounds good. Yeah. So, it's been a little while, but yeah, if we haven't met, my name is Jared MacDonald and I'm a growth coach for one person service-based businesses, helping with a lot of different perspectives from sales to tech and just overall, just some of the challenges that I've found that come easy to me, but are pretty headache conducing for my friends in the service-based business space. And then on the client side, I do a lot of UX strategy, user experience strategy. So, customer journey mapping and customer research kind of main specialties there.
Kira: And can you just share like the clients, the types of clients you typically work with?
Jared: Yeah, yeah. They've... It's ranged over the years, but largely enterprise.
On the 275th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by Dan Clark. Dan is the CEO of Brain.FM, science-first functional music technology that supports focus, meditation, and sleep. In this episode, we uncover how neuroscience and music can work together to improve your productivity and trigger your flow state for maximum concentration.
Having a moment of realization that makes you shift your focus to finding your purpose. Why it’s a good idea to try new (and impossible) things to build confidence and break through your comfort zone. How “no” will always be your answer if you never ask for what you want. How does functional music work to bring you to your flow state? The difference between functional music and Art music. The science behind getting into your flow state within 5 minutes. Can functional music help with ADHD and neurodiversity? Breaking down 3D sound and how it supports focus. Is it possible to train your brain to go from night owl to morning person? The differences in the focus, relaxation, and sleep modes of Brain.FM. Energy management as a business owner and CEO. How to make the most out of time with specific habits. Psychological triggers that help bring your brain into flow state. How to utilize your surroundings to enhance productivity. Creating a blueprint to help more people and driving your business forward by working backward. How to stay focused on one thing at a time when you have a multitude of visions. The importance of creating intentional space to move the needle toward specific goals. Why hiring support from experts, coaches, and consultants will save you time.
If you’ve ever wondered how music (or sounds) has the power to help with concentration and how you can take it a step further, be sure to listen in on this episode or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Brain.FM 30 day free trial Episode 237 Episode 178 Episode 68 Chanti's episode Chanti's website Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Discipline, focus, mindset, getting things done, these are the topics that Kira and I both find ourselves coming back to again and again, and they're the things that we're trying to practice from day to day, and we're not alone. Lately, it feels like we're hearing from a lot of copywriters who are struggling with their own focus. Some are even dealing with things like attention deficit disorder, and none of this is new. There have always been distractions in the workplace. It's just that now that so many of us are working from home, we're easily distracted by family members, virtual school, spouses, partners, pets, any number of things that keep us away from the work that we do.
If that sounds familiar to you, you're going to like this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Our guest is Dan Clark, the CEO of Brain.fm. That's a music service that provides functional music designed to help you focus, sleep, and relax better. You might call it a Spotify for your brain. Dan talks about the science behind this unique music and how it relates to focus and flow state, neurodiversity, productivity, and managing your energy, but before we get to our interview with Dan, let me introduce my co-host for today's episode. It's Chanti Zak. Welcome back, Chanti.
Chanti Zak: Thank you so much. I am very excited to be here and talk about one of my favorite things.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. This is going to be fun. So longtime listeners are going to remember your name partly because it's been mentioned by so many people who've been on the podcast, but also because we interviewed you way back in episode 54, where we talked about building quiz funnels. Chanti, you're a growth strategist. You're known as the queen of quizzes.
On the 274th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Anna Rosa Parker joins the show. Anna is a brand alchemist and wordsmith who helps artists and creatives develop their brand personality using a holistic approach. In this episode, she uncovers how she uses her background and roots to get what she wants and how we can step into our own inner Viking.
Here’s what we chat about:
The shift from actor and screenwriter to copywriter. Feeling pulled in many directions and being multi-passionate. How knocking on doors can help you acquire new skills. Why Anna decided to leave acting and the mindset that led her in a different direction. How you can use the open-door policy to ask for what you want. Why you need to learn how to be fearless and how to step into your inner Viking. The equality in CEOs and janitors. The benefits of being in the marketing space, and how it can satisfy your ever growing desire to learn. Taking big chances when you don’t have a direction and how community can guide you when you feel lost. The difference in doing copy WITH vs FOR you. Is it a service you should offer? How you can utilize parts of your past into the present and future. The pros and cons of working with agencies. The key to writing holistic copy. Anna’s process in working with artists to find their brand identity. The underlying definition of creating a brand. Attracting clients by being 100% yourself and knowing exactly who you want to attract. Podcast creation and how it came about. Working with a partner who connects with your artist mindset. The struggles of being an artist and how to overcome them. The difference between building a business as an artist vs a marketer.
Tune into the episode to find out how you can step into your inner Viking to ask for what you want.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Anna's website Justin's website Episode 33 Episode 202 Full Transcript: Rob: There's a book that we've referenced on the podcast in the past a couple of times. It's called The Alter Ego Effect, and its author is Todd Herman. And the big idea from the book is that you can adopt a different identity to help you show up in new ways in the various roles of your life, kind of like Clark Kent and Superman. Superman can't just be a normal person, so he puts on a suit and glasses and he pretends to be a reporter, in order to show up in an important way in his life.
Today's guest for The Copywriter Club Podcast is Anna Rosa Parker. She's adopted an alter ego that she describes as a viking in heels, and it helps her to accomplish big things in her business. Actually, it's not fair to say that she's adopted that alter ego because, like Clark Kent, Superman is the real person, and Anna is the real Viking showing up as a brand strategist most days in her business. We'll hear more about that in a minute, but first let me introduce my guest commentator to for today, Justin Blackman. Justin, welcome.
Justin: Man. It is fun to be here. I always love talking with you guys.
Rob: Yeah. For anybody who hasn't heard you, which if you've listened to the podcast more than a handful of times, they've probably heard you mentioned or be a guest. Justin's a copywriter, brand voice expert. He's been a guest on the podcast twice before, episode 59, where he talked about his 100 headline project, the thing that kind of put him in the map, and episode 216, when he came back and shared his approach to brand voice. And if I'm not mistaken, I don't have these episodes in front of me, Justin, you've come back and you've asked Kira and I questions on one or two episodes.
Justin: I did.
Rob: I feel like maybe it's your fifth time here.
Justin: I think this is the fourth, actually. Yeah.
Rob: Yeah, fourth appearance.
On the 273rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by 3 guests. Peta O'Brien-Day, Tori Autumn, and Demetrius Williams join the show to talk about their experience inside The Copywriter Accelerator. The Accelerator Program is our signature program to help new-ish copywriters build the foundations they need to have a successful copywriting business. Whether you decide to join or not, this episode is filled with actionable advice no matter what stage of business you’re in.
Here’s what we talk about:
How The Copywriter Club Accelerator can help transform your business. Why people decide to join + how you may feel when you’ve hit a ceiling in your business. The key to fast-tracking your business. Hint: Systems and processes play a big role. How to go from order-taker to business owner (and stay that way). 3 books you may want to add to your bookshelf in 2022. The secret(s) to shifting your money and pricing mindset, so you can increase your prices. Why it’s important to dedicate time to your business AND business development. Balancing the different roles you play in your business and outsourcing what you can. The benefits of accountability, and how it will propel you forward faster. How branding yourself can be like therapy. Should you start before you’re ready? How to juggle life and business while going through an immersive program. Niching yourself based on your values. Creating packages that feel good and don’t overwhelm you. Why it’s a good thing to change your brand over time. The best time to invest in yourself.
Hit play or check out the transcript, so you can jot down and implement the advice in this episode.
Ready to hit accelerate on your business? Check out the Accelerator by hitting the link below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Underground Peta's website Tori's website Demetrius's website
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: If you're a regular listener to The Copywriter Club Podcast, you know that it's rare for us to have more than one guest on a single episode. But today we're going to do things a little differently. We've invited three different members of the current cohort of The Copywriter Accelerator to join us, to talk about their experience in this transformative program.
Kira Hug: We'll let these copywriters introduce themselves in a moment, but first, let me just say, if you're tempted to skip this episode, because you're not interested in this program, it could be worth giving it a quick listen because many of the takeaways they share about the changes they've made to their businesses apply to copywriting businesses at every single stage. And these writers are doing some pretty cool things in their businesses. You might be inspired by what they've done, and maybe even borrow an idea or two for your own business.
Rob Marsh: At this point in the program, we would usually say something like this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator. And then we would tell you all of the reasons why you should consider joining. We're not going to do that today. Other than to say that after listening to this episode, take a moment to visit thecopywriteraccelerator.com and see what this program is all about. And see for yourself whether or not it's something that you should consider for your business this year.
Kira Hug: So, let's jump in with our guests. We are so excited today to be here with some of our Accelerator members, members who are currently in the program, which we're about to wrap up this month. And so before we dive into this conversation and ask you all a bunch of questions, can you take a minute to introduce yourself, all three of you? Just share name, where you're located, your copywriting specialty, and then bonus points if you want to share a favorite movie or bo...
For the 272nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by Kristin Macintyre. Kristin is a conversion copywriter who writes copy for launches with her signature VIP offer. If VIP offers are something you want to implement in the new year, then give this episode a listen.
Here’s how the episode goes down:
Kristin’s journey from college professor to launch copywriter. Starting and building a successful copywriting business in a short timespan. How copywriting and poetry have empathy in common. The open-ended questions that lead your clients to their true answer. How to teach and mentor with real-world examples. Pivoting your niche and offer for higher level success. Structuring a VIP offer. How does it break down? The difference between a VIP day and a VIP intensive. Elevating the client journey through different touchpoints. How to get more done by observing where your time is going. Adding a VIP intensive into your offer suite – is it possible for your business? How to set your VIP prices and when to increase them. The struggles of executing a VIP project and how to avoid burnout. What to add to your routine to keep up your energy during writing sprints. The power of knowing ‘why’ we use the formulas and frameworks we do. Diving into the digital product space and marketing your business. How copywriting is evolving into a new era of conversion.
Looking to implement a new business model in 2022? Grab your headphones or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Accelerator Think Tank The Copywriter Underground Kristin’s website Rachel’s website Episode 176 Episode 226
Full Transcript: Kira: There's been a lot of buzz in the copywriting world around VIP offers, what should you include? What should you charge? How much is too much? How do you avoid burnout? The questions go on and on. Luckily, we're covering a ton of your question about VIP offers today with think tank member and our guest for the 272nd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Kristin McIntyre. After shifting from a standard VIP day to a VIP intensive model, Kristin has figured out the best way to deliver a true VIP client experience. We'll dig into all the details in today's interview. But first, I have a very special co-host for this episode, think tank alumni member, Rachel Greiman. So, Rachel, thanks for co-hosting with me today. Can you introduce yourself and say hello?
Rachel: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm Rachel Greiman, as Kira said. I am a website copywriter for photographers, it is the nichiest of niches, and I love it. I own Green Chair Stories and we are a small copywriting collective. We have four writers besides myself at this point and we write about 50 websites a year. We don't do anything else, and we like it that way.
Kira: All right, I love it. And we're going to definitely dive into your business today because there is some overlap with what Kristin's doing in her business. So we'll dig in deeper. But before we get into the interview, this week sponsor for the podcast is TCC IRL. That's the copywriter club in real life, our big annual event. Before I give the dates and all the information. Rachel, can you just share a little bit about your experience at TCC IRL because you've been before and you are attending in Nashville this March. So what was it like for you?
Rachel: The first one, I've been to two, I went in 2019 and 2020, and the first one was in New York.
Kira: Oh, that's right.
Rachel: And it was the first time I had ever invested in any type of copywriting education or networking. Even though I had been doing it for a long time, I always worked for other organizations and it was nonprofit. So I didn't know anybody that did it freelance or ran their own business, it was a completely new world to me.
Krystle Church joins us for the 271st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. A former Accelerator member, Krystle is a business mentor and runs a boutique copywriting studio. Krystle is a borderless entrepreneur who runs her business on the island of Mauritius. This episode is a must-listen if you’re curious about running a business abroad and balancing business endeavors all while keeping your mindset in check.
We chat about:
Transitioning from traveling elementary school teacher to borderless entrepreneur. Creating a healthy working atmosphere and getting to choose who you work with. Retiring your partner and defining freedom in your own terms. The illusion of choice and how it can impact business decisions. Utilizing the freedom you have to make CEO decisions. (because you are the boss, afterall.) How to unbox the narrative and stories we constantly tell ourselves. Overcoming cycles of burnout and soaking up the big milestones you reach before jumping into the next thing. Rewiring your mindset and figuring out what you want from your business. The biggest mindset blocks for copywriters and navigating them. How to work as a “workaholic.” Mindset and journaling practices for both business and personal growth. How to manage two aspects of business: mentorship + copy studio. Managing multiple team members who support the growth of your brand. How to train your team to provide the same white-glove experience you provide your DFY clients. Is it time to hire contractors or full time employees in your business? What processes need to be in place before making your first hire. How to raise your prices – Which marks should we be hitting? How to structure a high-ticket day rate. Copy chiefing and how to work with a junior copywriter. Hiring for your business from a financial perspective and stacking revenue. The secret to creating demand in your business. The struggles of a 6-figure business – Does it get easier? The impact of community and leaning on others for support.
Grab your headphones or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Krystle's website Erin's website Aly's website Episode #207 Episode #245 Aly's episode
Full Transcript: Kira: Mindset and pricing go hand in hand when you want to raise your prices. Getting over the fear of charging what we're worth is something so many copywriters struggle with in their businesses. In the 271st episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast, we're joined by Accelerator alumni member Krystle Church, who is an elementary school teacher turned business coach who also owns a boutique copywriting studio. Krystle walks us through how she's been able to raise her prices, build her team and increase her confidence over the last few years.
Before we jump in, I have some introductions to make, because in this interview, I was actually joined by a co-host, I kicked Rob out of this show completely and Erin Pennings joined me. Erin is a Think Tank member and a B2B copywriter who focuses on brand messaging, website copy and visibility strategies. Erin also has an awesome program called Womp Womp to Wow, which is my favorite title for any program. And it's a 21-day web copy intensive. So Erin actually join me for the initial interview. You'll hear her asking questions. And I have another special guest today, Aly Goulet, who is also a Think Tank member. And Aly, thanks for being here with me today. Can you introduce yourself?
Aly: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. I'm Aly Goulet. I'm a B2B SaaS and IT copywriter, and I also create resource for freelancers, including Genius Portfolio for WordPress.
Kira: Very cool. And before we dive into this interview, you know we love to have some sponsor action. And our sponsor today is the Think Tank,
On the 270th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’re diving into the world of Kira Hug. Who is she really and does she even like to hug? She shares her experiences from the beginnings of her own copywriting career to where she is today and where she plans to go in the future.
Tune in to find out:
The rise of Kira Hug. What it was like to live in New York City and what her favorite experiences were. Raising kids in Brooklyn and moving to Washington, DC. Kira’s first writing experiences and learning about her love for interviewing. The struggles Kira faced most as she built her copywriting business. Navigating through the head trash that can be such a constant burden for copywriters. How to stop getting in your own way. Kira’s least favorite client project and how she said “see ya later!” Finding the confidence to know you have what it takes to move forward. Building The Copywriter Club, copywriting agency, and raising young children. Was it love at first sight for Kira and Ezra? Are we going to start training for a copywriter’s marathon? Why Kira uses a tiny paintbrush for big projects. The motivating factors that drive Kira to keep going. The push to continue to get better in life and never staying complacent. The biggest takeaways Kira has had from coaching hundreds of copywriters. How your business can have dramatic change by implementing this one thing. Why you can’t let yourself surrender to the head trash. How copywriters can think bigger for themselves. The legacy Kira wants to leave for the world and her kids.
Listen to or read the inside scoop of everyone’s beloved copy mom.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Four Thousand Weeks
Full Transcript: Rob: Welcome everyone. This is another episode of just Kira and Rob talking on the podcast, which means we don't have a written out introduction. I suppose we could talk about how this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator, which should be opening momentarily, within days of this episode going live, or within weeks anyway. Accelerator is our basic training, 16-week... It's not really a course and it's not really a membership, but it's a program where you go through with a cohort of other ambitious copywriters and basically set the foundations that you need to put in place for a successful copywriting business. The skillset that you need as a copywriter are different from those that you need as a business owner. And, if you want to succeed at both, you need to have both, and so that's where The Accelerator comes in.
Okay, so now that we've dealt with that part, it's just you and me, Kira.
Kira: We've dealt with the whole selling our stuff part, let's get that out the way.
Rob: Exactly. So, 10 episodes ago you interviewed me. We do this every once and a while, where it's just you and me talking, but 10 episodes ago we did a little bit more of like, "Okay, we'll try to dive into a little bit more of behind the scenes Rob." And, of course, we want to turn the tables now and get the behind the scenes Kira, and find out who you really are when you're not necessarily doing The Copywriter Club thing.
Kira: I am the exact same person.
Rob: We're going to find out.
Kira: Shocker.
Rob: Yeah, we're going to find out.
Kira: Yeah, same person.
Rob: Okay, well let's start with a couple of easy questions, warm you up. You've lived in a whole bunch of places. You've been in Chicago, and Virginia, you went to school in Virginia, you lived in New York. I think when we met you even described yourself as, "A New Yorker," that was who you were.
Kira: Oh, yeah.
Rob: And now, you're living in Washington D.C., so I'm curious about the history of Kira traveling around and being in places. What's your favorite place that you've lived?
Our guest for the 269th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is Lindsey Walker. Lindsey is a public relations expert who owns Walker + Associates Media Group – a boutique public relations agency. Lindsey helps her clients position themselves for visibility and growth. If you want to increase your visibility and authority in the online space, tune into the episode to find actionable steps you can take to increase your impact and grow your brand.
Lindsey’s journey into the public relations world and starting a freelance business. The roles that characterize a publicity firm and finding a team that will help you scale your business. How to shift from solopreneur to leader and CEO. – What do you need to have in place? Defining the type of CEO you want to become and how you can begin to look strategically at your business. The process of working with someone in public relations. – What happens first? How long it takes to expect results from PR. How copywriters need to think about their business from a PR standpoint. Are you the bottleneck in your business? The 3 elements to DIY public relations in your business. How to break through when you don’t have connections or people on the inside. How to successfully pitch yourself and the biggest mistakes you need to avoid. The different opportunities to pitch yourself depending on the season and time of year. How to break into the PR space as a writer. The difference between in-house and freelance PR writers. The impact that mindset plays in public relations and how to put yourself out there. When it’s a good idea to think about PR in your business. What is the future of public relations? What Lindsey learned from a life-threatening experience and how it applies to her business today. Advice for business owners who are going through difficult situations. How to handle rejection when sending pitches. Will Kira and Rob become influencers?!
PR is an essential tool to grow your business and create a lasting impact. Be sure to grab your earbuds or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground The Copywriter Club Accelerator waitlist Lindsey’s website Mai-kee’s website Episode 229 with Selena Soo Episode 151 with Patsy Kenney Episode 150 with Brigitte Lyons Episode 152 with Mai-kee
Full Transcript: Rob: One of the most important activities that you do as a copywriting business owner is marketing, and that can take a lot of forms, everything from cold pitching to social media, and almost literally 100 other activities. Continually marketing yourself and your business is the thing that attracts clients to your door. If you want to succeed long term as a copywriter, you can't ignore this activity. Today's guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast is publicist and PR expert, Lindsey Walker. She knows a thing or two about attracting attention to your business. We met Lindsey when she reached out to pitch a guest for our podcast, and while that particular person wasn't a fit, when we heard Lindsey's story, we knew that she would be. Stick around to hear what she shared about getting people to pay attention to what you are doing in your business. But before we get to all of that, let me introduce my guest host for this episode, Mai-kee Tsang. Hey, Mai-kee.
Mai-kee: Hey, Rob. Lovely to be here. I'm not Kira, but she's here with us in spirit.
Rob: Nope. Kira was with us on the initial interview. Yeah, it's just you and me to talk about all of that.
Mai-kee: Exciting stuff.
Rob: Yeah. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you'll remember that Mai-kee shared how she pitched 101 podcast in 30 days way back on episode 152. It's a really good episode. I'll remind you again at the end to listen to it, but make a mental note because you're definitely going to ...
Geoff Kullman is our guest for the 268th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Geoff is a direct-response copywriter and brand strategist who helps online entrepreneurs and personal brands tell better stories and make more money. Geoff breaks down how he uses neuroscience and psychology to write impactful copy that converts.
Here’s all the things we talk about:
The common denominator for copywriters and other writers. Geoff’s journey from devout pastor to direct-response copywriter. The importance of showcasing your abilities and talents within your website and business. How to make niching your own and work for you. The framework that takes people from prospect to customer. How to break down the 6-step framework for strong emails and sales pages. The difference between prompt and pitch and why it matters. Trauma-informed marketing and how to write from a place of empathy. Why the marketing world is shifting and how we can adapt to the changes. How to be more intentional about your client avatar. Finding your brand voice and helping your clients find theirs. Where most copywriters go wrong when creating ideal client avatars. What to leave out of emails to make them more compelling and connect with your audience on a deeper level. The impact neuroscience has on the words we write and why they convert. The psychology of why social proof works so well. What chemicals need to be released during the conversion process and in what order. Can you network as an introvert? Dealing with a scarcity mindset and making the shift to an abundant mindset.
If you want to learn more about the psychology behind copywriting, be sure to tune into this episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Geoff’s website Geoff’s podcast Gabby’s website Episode 89 Episode 232
Full Transcript: Kira: When you first started copywriting, you probably learned about creating a client avatar and all about storytelling, but what if you could take it a step further and tell stories that could make an even stronger impact? Our guest for the 268th episode of the Copywriter Club is Geoff Kullman. Geoff uses the power of neuroscience and psychology to create a deeper, more meaningful connection with people, and today I am joined by my co-host Gabby Jackson. How's it going? Gabby?
Gabby: It's going well. How are you?
Kira: Doing really well, Gabby. So you are on our team, we have had so many people in our audience asked to hear more about our team members, and I want to introduce you today just so everyone can get to know you a little bit better. So why don't you just kick off with how you heard about the Copywriter Club and what you do on the team?
Gabby: So, yes, I am super excited to be here. I discovered the Copywriter Club by wanting to find out more information about copywriting in general, and I was all about podcasts, still am all about podcasts, and I just typed in copywriting. This podcast was the first one to pop up, and I started binging episode after episode, and I decided I have to be part of this community, this club, how do I get in?
Kira: No, wait, when was that, Gabby?
Gabby: That was probably last August or September, yeah, so it's been a little over a year.
Kira: Yeah. I remember when we first met you in the underground on our first ... our meet and greet call with you, and we met you, and you just had such great energy that Rob and I were texting each other, we're like, "We have to figure out a way to get Gabby on our team so we can work with her." We were lucky enough that you joined the team, and so what do you do today on the team?
Gabby: So, on the team I handle a lot of the social media aspects, whether that mean graphics or captions, some email writing, podcast show notes and introductions, and some Pinterest tasks as well.
Amy Collins is our guest for the 267th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Amy is a storyteller and copy strategist who unveils the mystery of creating stories out of everyday events. By taking your conversation skills to the next level, you can craft better stories not just for yourself but for your clients. Win-win, right?
We break it down like this:
Amy Collins journey from the art of writing to the art of copywriting. How to work on referrals, so you don’t have to overload the cold pitches. Is it possible to perfect the art of conversation? And is it even a thing? How to get your clients to disarm themselves and enhance the conversation. The different ways you can niche in your business. Reframing your perspective on being in your ideal client’s inbox. Behind the scenes of a storytelling master’s process. Why open loops take your emails to a whole new level. The common mistakes copywriters make when telling stories in their emails and how to fix them. How you can play with language to take your reader on a journey. Tools you can use to become a better storyteller. When to use VOC data and how to blend it into your story. Using your past lives to add value to your copy. Why “should” needs to disappear from the English Dictionary. How to become aware of your negative self-talk. The active choice to invest in yourself and your business. Going against the status-quo and ridding yourself of the need for validation.
Thinking about starting an email list but have no idea what you should write to them? This is a good place to start. Hit that play button below or check out the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Amy’s website Nic’s website Full Transcript: Rob: When it comes right down to it, copywriting is a lot like having a conversation with your customers, or the customers of your client. And like any good conversationalist, that means that you can't afford to be boring. You have to stand out, engage the person you're talking to, and be interesting and interested. Our guest for this episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast is copy strategist and storyteller, Amy Collins. Amy shares how she's been able to have genuine conversations with her clients, and she gives us a few ideas for how we could all do better at this important skill.
You're going to want to stick around for this one, but before we jump into the episode, my co-host for today is copywriter, voice strategist, and I just learned this a few seconds ago, trained as a radio announcer, Nicola Moors. Nic, welcome.
Nic: Hi, thanks so much for having me.
Rob: Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to have this conversation and have you share some of your takeaways. And of course, if anybody's been listening to the podcast for a while, they'll recognize that you were a guest on the podcast maybe a little over a half a year ago. If I remember, that was episode 200 and, what, 53.
Nic: Thirty-six.
Rob: 236, 236.
Nic: Thirty-six.
Rob: Okay.
Nic: Yeah.
Rob: So, check out what Nic shared, and you shared a ton of really good stuff, your research process, how you were a journalist, and some of the crazy stories that you had to track down as a journalist. It's really interesting episode, good listen, and lots of good advice about brand voice. So, let people check that out.
Nic: Thanks.
Rob: And of course, this episode of the podcast is sponsored by... right now, today, it's sponsored by the Copywriter Accelerator. We're getting ready to relaunch the accelerator in January, so keep your eyes open for that. The accelerator is our 16-week program that helps copywriters some of them starting out, some of them who have been in business for years re-establish or create the foundation for their business. We talk about things like mindset and goal setting.
Angie Colee is our guest for the 266th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Angie is a copywriter and copy chief turned business and confidence coach who took a while to find her way into the copywriting role she is the best fit for. No matter where you are in your copywriting journey, you’ll leave with notes filled front and back.
Here’s what we talk about:
How Angie went from working for the Oprah Winfrey network to underpaid copywriter. Do you have to have a degree to become a copywriter? Feeling stuck with projects and clients but using every project as a learning opportunity. How learning on the fly can make you a better writer. The power to walk away from toxic work environments and open the door to new opportunities. The different levels of copywriting. Where might you fit in? Shifting into a lead role and managing other copywriters. The difference between a full-time corporate copywriter and per project roles. Finding a team that respects your value, time, and expertise. How to deal with comparisonitis and feelings of not being where you think you should be. Why it’s a good idea to take on challenges before you think you’re ready. The importance of swallowing your pride as a writer and receiving criticism. Tips on being a better copy chief. How to look at what you can bring to big, successful businesses as a small business owner. Hint: Don’t assume you have nothing to bring to the table. Why you shouldn’t be intimidated by launching. Steps you can take to create stronger launch campaigns without exhausting yourself. How you can help others in copywriting communities even if you’re not an expert. The switch Angie made from copywriter to coach. Time management between clients, students, and your own business. How to get over writer’s block when the muse isn’t striking. The mindset blocks many face when they’re trying something new in their business.
Hit the play button or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Angie's website The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman Mindset by Carol Dweck Episode 208 Full Transcript: Rob: Becoming a great copywriter doesn't happen overnight. In fact, most of us have stumbled around a bit to get where we are. I spent time at a web startup and running my own SaaS business while Kira learned how to sell and clean cars at Enterprise Rental Service, she picked you up. So stumbling around a variety of jobs to find your way into copywriting is pretty common. But the good news? Through the missteps and the struggles, most of us finally arrive at something resembling a successful copywriting career, and our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Angie Colee. Angie is a copywriter and a copy chief turned business and confidence coach who took a while to find her way into the copywriting role that she's the best fit for, and the advice that she shared in our interview is fantastic. We think you're definitely going to want to stick around to hear what she had to share.
Kira: But before we dive into this episode, TCCIRL is the sponsor of this episode. TCCIRL, our big event, our big annual event, is going back to in-person stage in 2022 and we couldn't be more excited. It's a two and a half day event where you get to connect and hear from other copywriters and marketers about the best tools and strategies you can use to grow your copywriting business and to enhance your own skills and mindset, and one of the best parts is connecting in real life with other copywriters that maybe you've bumped into online and you finally can connect in-person over lunch, over dinner, over coffee, over drinks. Tickets are limited and this is not like a faux scarcity thing. We actually have a venue that can only hold a certain amount of people so if you do want to attend this...
Daniel Throssell takes the mic on the 265th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Daniel is a copywriter who has created something he likes to call, “The Parallel Welcome Sequence.” He teaches his students how to look at storytelling from a different lens, and now he’s going to give you a glimpse into how he makes it happen.
Here’s how the conversation breaks down:
His grand escape from being an electrical engineer on a remote island. Winning a coaching call based on a story he wrote with no experience at all. How he was able to go from no experience to charging $200 an hour on Upwork. The Facebook message that would change the game for Daniel. How he managed to become the most-copied Upwork profile and how he gained 5 star reviews. Why he is so passionate about writing soap-opera-slash-personality-driven emails. The importance of partnership in copywriting. The difference between one off projects and growing with a business over time. The advantages of building your own list vs writing for a client list. How to get on more podcasts with this simple tip. The benefits of having a financial cushion when going after your dream business. How to test out your own launch ideas and analyze the results. How Daniel grew his list from 0-5000 in 18 months: what’s the secret? Why you should think about creating a welcome sequence from a different angle. The importance of staying consistent even when you think no one is listening. Why copywriters have an edge against other marketers and business owners. How to maximize and connect with your superfans. Shifting your business from client-focused to self-focused. Who should do a parallel welcome sequence?
Pop your earbuds in or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Daniel’s website Laura Belgray interview part 2 Brandi Mowles podcast interview Connect with Robbie King Full Transcript: Kira: If you've ever said to yourself, "I want to get paid to be me," this is the interview for you. Today's guest for the 265th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is Daniel Throssell. A copywriter who's not afraid to show his weird side and approach list growth and relationship building differently. But before we dive in, let me introduce you to my cohost for today, Robbie King. Robbie, welcome to the show. Thanks for doing this with me.
Robbie: Thanks very much for having me. It's lovely to be here.
Kira: I want you to just quickly introduce yourself, who are you, how do we even know each other?
Robbie: Yes. So, we met probably virtually about two and a half years ago, when I was just kind of scratching my head about copywriting. And remember, we had a bit of back and forth. And then pretty quickly I realized that signing up for The Underground, and then eventually The Think Tank was just going to be the best thing to get my business going and help stop me banging my head against the wall, I think.
Kira: And Robbie, what are you doing today?
Robbie: So today, I actually work in house for a tech marketing agency. That was after a good year and a bit of having my freelance business. I did that after a good few months of just learning the whole business side of running a copywriting business. I thought I'd balanced that out a bit by just, I guess learning on someone else's dime, there's a lot to be said for that. It's proven very useful. I've gone deeper into my skill set, into my niche, which is video and content consultancy. So, I've been doing a lot of that. And I'm still writing copy. So, it's been quite the journey.
Kira: I know you shared this with me earlier, but maybe you could just share that that idea came from Matt Hall at TCCIRL. Do you mind just sharing how you had that idea to go back in house?
Robbie: Yes. Shout out to Matt Hall. Great guy,
Ahfeeyah C. Thomas is our guest for the 264th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Ahfeeyah is a serial entrepreneur who teaches business owners how to grow their teams, so they can scale to 6 and 7 figure businesses. If you’ve been wondering how you can scale your business or become a better leader, tune into the episode.
How a resume writer became a successful CEO. How to navigate entrepreneurship with a love for the corporate sector. The better way to write your resume to land the job. Why you need to improve your job descriptions to attract the right candidates. Lessons from Harvard you can use in your own business. How to build team productivity and why you need an organizational chart. The core system Ahfeeyah uses to help her clients scale their businesses. Is it ever too soon to hire? How a virtual assistant or social media manager will help your business. Mistakes business owners are making and how to fix them. The scalable CEO model: How does it work? How we can become better leaders through learning about ourselves and the people we hire. How to know when you’re becoming a bottleneck in your own business. The different types of leadership and why it’s always a good idea to lead with empathy. How to shift your mindset and step into your CEO role. Steps to take to knock the fear of growing a team. Combining a quality client experience with quality deliverables. How to ask for feedback and why you need to take the emotions out of it. Navigating perfectionism and procrastination… How do we get out of the cycle? Do creatives experience the fastest burnout?
Debating about hiring your first contractor or want to implement better systems? Grab your headphones or check out the transcription below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Ahfeeyah’s website Hiring and Working with a VA with Hillary Weiss The Ins and Outs of Creating a Microagency with Jamie Jensen 21 laws of leadership by John C. Maxwell
Full Transcript: Kira: Running your own business is hard enough. There are countless tasks you need to carry out. And sometimes it can just feel like way too much. What needs my attention first? Should I hire someone to help? And if so, who should I hire? Well, if you're growing your business, you're not alone. Ahfeeyah C. Thomas joins us to talk about how to hire a team and become a scalable CEO on the 264th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: Before we dive into our interview with Ahfeeyah, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Accelerator. And if you're listening, you might be thinking, "Well, wait a second, The Accelerator's not even open, why are you even talking about this?" And it's because we're making a few changes to The Accelerator the next time we do open. And if you've been thinking about joining this program, there's never been a better time to join the waitlist. So, you make sure that you get notified when it opens up for new members early next year.
And when it comes to those changes, a couple of things that we're doing is going through all of the content. We're not necessarily saying that the old content was bad. We're just saying we're updating it with newer information. We're adding in better frameworks to make it more understandable and improving the blueprints that help you put all of the advice and ideas and strategies into action so that you come out of the other end of The Accelerator with a business that is just ready for rocket ship growth or whatever it is that your goal is for your copywriting business.
So, if you want to be on the waitlist that you can hear about those changes and be notified of the new Copywriter Accelerator program or what it becomes, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com and join the waitlist.
Rachel Ngom is our guest for the 263rd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Rachel is a Pinterest Strategist and Expert who teaches her clients how to utilize Pinterest to build their pipeline of leads. She plans to retire by 40 and has made investments and an action plan to make it happen.
Here’s how the conversation breaks down:
How Africa changed Rachel’s life for the better. How Rachel built a 6-figure business with -$400 and a new baby. The reality of selling on social media and the pivots that come along the way. Getting 1.8 million people to find your blog by utilizing Pinterest. Growing your list to 20k and having to pivot again and again. Living the digital nomad lifestyle while running multiple successful businesses. How to make investments from a profitable business. Why you absolutely need to put yourself in uncomfortable positions repeatedly. Building the courage to do the basic things in life when you’re in a different country and culture. How to visualize your success and take action. Taking your life lessons and translating them into your current business and lifestyle. Consistency. Is it really necessary? The secret to building up personal discipline and the perfect morning routine. How to do with what you have. Why everyone can and should be using Pinterest as a lead generation tool and SEO platform. Mistakes you could be making on Pinterest and how to fix them. The systems and processes needed to run a multiple 6-figure business. Why you need to start teaching duplication with your team. How to shift your mindset around failure. The right time to invest in other businesses, so you can set yourself up to retire young. How to know an idea is worth pursuing.
If you need inspiration around investments, retiring, or where your next lead is coming from, this is the episode to tune into.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Rachel’s website Ask by Ryan Levesque Pinterest Cheatsheet Annie's website Episode 87 Episode 21 Full Transcript: Kira: Build the business, scale the business, run the business on autopilot, and retire by 40. No biggie. That's a dream for many business owners. But how does it actually happen? What steps or events need to take place to make it a reality? Well, we'll dive into all the steps in today's 263rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast with Rachel Ngom. Rachel is a Pinterest marketer and serial entrepreneur. During this interview, we talk about how to use Pinterest for lead generation, how to pivot your business, and how to get really uncomfortable in your life and business.
I'm joined today by my co-host and Think Tank alumni member, Annie Bacher. Annie, thank you so much for co-hosting with me today. Can you just kick it off with just a quick intro, if anyone hasn't heard your interview on the podcast which is episode 218. So we can all check out, revisit your interview on the podcast. But can you just provide a quick intro? Who are you, Annie? Who are you?
Annie: Thanks, Kira. So I'm Annie. I am a B2B SaaS copywriter. And I am obsessed with using copy to help tech companies make the internet a friendlier and more human sounding place.
Kira: All right. Well, thanks for joining me today. And before we dive in, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by the Think Tank. Annie as a former member of the Think Tank, can you share just what type of impact the mastermind had on your business and your life?
Annie: Oh, where to start? Well, I didn't call myself a B2B SaaS copywriter before I joined the Think Tank. I didn't have a lot of focus, and I honestly didn't even know it was possible for me. So since being in the Think Tank for a year, I hit six figures in my business, I started building a team, and I've been working with clients I never would have dreamed I...
On the 262nd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’re joined by Jacob Suckow. Jacob is a Funnel and Launch Strategist who helps his clients sell their products on autopilot. From filling up your lead pipeline to creating products and services that sell, this episode is filled with useful advice you can implement into your business.
Here’s what we talk about:
How Jacob went from working with the Seattle Seahawks to working in cookie dough sales. The method Jacob used to grow cookie dough sales from 25k to 4 million in a matter of a few years. How a pivot landed him working with companies like McDonald's and Disney. The moment he realized he needed to be his own boss. Creating a pipeline to keep clients rolling in. Why building your network is your greatest funnel resource. Switching roles from freelancer to strategist. What’s the difference? How Jacob reverse-engineered how to make 100k a year without working 80 hours a week. Why letting go of clients will benefit your business and help it grow. The kind of clients that make for high-income months. Is there a mindset trick behind making six figures? How to fill your pipeline with ‘ready to go’ clients. What 15-minute connections can do for you and your business. The steps to building a solid network. Why you should build an audience even if you have nothing to sell. The key to being loud in your industry. How to create offers that people want to buy. What’s the method to the madness? Where do offers go wrong and how can they be fixed? The upside to being able to create your own offers.
Tune into the episode by hitting the play button below or check out the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Jacob’s website Kickass Copywriting by Jacob Carlton Skip the Line by James Altucher
Full Transcript: Kira: When you're still learning the ins and outs of your business, the last thing you want to worry about is where your next lead is coming from. We'd prefer a lengthy line, kind of like the line outside the Apple store when Apple released the new iPhone 13. That's the kind of line we want, filled with dream clients just waiting to work with you.
Our guests for the 262nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast gives us the lowdown on lead generation so we can create a demand for our copywriting services and hopefully never stress over finding clients again. Our guest, Think Tank member Jacob Suckow, is a copywriter and launch strategist who skyrocketed his business within months by creating a full pipeline of leads.
But before we jump in, I'd like to introduce my co-host for today's episode, TCCIRL speaker, "two-peat" speaker at TCCIRL and then a podcast guest from way back, Episode 13, long time ago, conversion copywriter, funnel optimizer and growth ecosystem designer, Sam Woods. Thanks for being here, Sam.
Sam: Thanks for having me, Kira. It's good to be speaking with you.
Kira: Yeah, I'm excited to co-host this with you. Before we jump in, though, can you just share a quick update of what you've been up to over the last few months in your business?
Sam: Yeah. It's a mixed bag of things. Over the past year or so, taking a step back and only worked on a handful of more in-depth projects. I think either you're a copywriter and you do a lot of smaller projects or you do a few big projects or maybe you have a mix. But for me, it's been only a few handful of deeper projects with various companies. It's still with copywriting, still optimizing different ways that they're acquiring customers and been working on some barge campaigns. So it's been nice. It's been a nice break from the smaller type projects, nice to set those aside and deep dive into a few things. I think I prefer the mix. It's nice to go back and forth.
Kira: Yeah.
Mentors. You look up to them and admire how they can help you, but have you ever wondered… “who are they in real life?” For the 260th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Rob Marsh is the interviewee, and he shares answers ranging from lessons in business to his go-to self-care routine.
Ready to check out the inner workings of Rob Marsh?
How to navigate when business moves slower. The skill of generating big ideas. Is it innate? Analyzing your time and productivity. Are you trying to do too much? Does Rob ever struggle with writing copy? – Or is he a copy magician? The inside scoop on Rob’s best and worst clients. Raising teens and knowing when to run. The lessons you can learn from your parents and how it applies to your business. Rob’s self-care routine. What Rob hopes to do better in the next year. What is Rob Marsh’s X-factor? Rob’s advice for the introverted copywriter. Why you need to send yourself a check for 1 million dollars. Money mindset and unlearning things from childhood. How did Rob become a reading fiend? Breaking news: Rob the romantic?! One of the best business books Rob has read.
Listen to the episode with your favorite earbuds or read the transcript with your favorite eyes.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground The Road Less Stupid Ready, Fire, Aim Full Transcript: Kira: Hi Rob.
Rob: This is uncomfortable, I have to admit, to have you interviewing me. Obviously, we've done, I don't know, 200 and almost 70 episodes of this podcast and got to admit, I don't love being interviewed on my own podcast for some reason.
Kira: Yeah, well, it's almost like you don't trust me.
Rob: Maybe that's what it is. That's probably what it is. Wow, 28 seconds in and we've nailed it. We know exactly what's the problem here.
Kira: I mean, we've had five years together in business and 270 episodes, but you still don't trust me. I don't know what else I have to do.
Rob: Yes, I'm going to have to think about that. That's a question I don't think I can answer right now.
Kira: All right, so today's going to be fun, fun for me, not fun for Rob. We decided to, well, we didn't decide, I think I decided that I was going to interview you.
Rob: No, you decided. This was not a mutual decision.
Kira: Yes, just like our underwater pool photoshoot a couple of years ago. So, today, we are going to get to know Rob better. And I'm asking questions based off what I would like to know about you, Rob. And so, you can share some of your wisdom with us, and also, just some personal tidbits here and there just so we can get to know the real Rob Marsh a little bit better.
Rob: And I think, if anybody's listening, they're like, "Wait a second, I think I'd rather get to know the real Kira Hug better 10 episodes," we'll be back and we're going to do this all the other way around.
Kira: I will be sick, sick that day. It'll be out sick.
Rob: Yeah.
Kira: No.
Rob: Trust who is the question now.
Kira: Let's kick it off with, okay, let's just start with some easy questions. We've been building TCC together over the last five years. So, I'm just curious, what are some of the big lessons you've learned from building this specific business?
Rob: Yeah, when you told me you're going to ask me this, I'm still kind of trying to figure out what are the biggest lessons. I think, I mean, there's so many. But I think number one is when you build a business like this, and The Copywriter Club is different from you building a copywriting business or me building my copywriting business. Obviously, we're doing a lot of things together. And we're doing a lot of things that we probably couldn't do on our own.
And so, number one lesson, I think, is just having a partner allows you to do more because you can focus on different areas of the ...
Chris Orzechowski is back on the show for the 259th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Chris has shifted his business into an agency and he’s become known as an expert E-Commerce Email Strategist. Chris breaks down what it looks like to run an agency without diluting the client experience. If an agency business model has been on your mind, tune into this episode.
Here’s how it all goes down:
How Chris launched an agency at the beginning of a pandemic. The ins and outs of running an agency and who should run an agency. Why building an agency can come with a lot of relearning. The different types of agencies and which could be right for you. Solving agency problems. Is there a difference? Assessing the goals and milestones when running an agency. Do you have to dilute your work or client experience in an agency model? What does profit look like inside an agency? The different types of lead generation. What will work for you? How to hire and manage a team. Finding your strengths and weaknesses and executing an action plan. The 4 tools you need to start running a business today. The importance of SOPs and how it will create clear processes in your business. What does it take to write a book? Is it as difficult as you may think? How to get the upper hand in blogs and speaking gigs. The power of shifting your business when something isn’t working. Building authority and becoming known as the expert. How does it actually happen? How to make big vision goals less overwhelming and actionable. How to look at the big picture when you start to spiral into the unknown. Copywriters and email lists: Do you need one? The strategy you need to implement for email marketing. Are lead magnets still relevant? Advice for anyone who feels comparisonitis. – Hint: Patience is essential.
Even if an agency isn’t on your radar, this episode will give you actionable tips on how to run and grow your business. Hit the play button or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Chris's website Full Transcript: Kira: Long time listeners will know this about us already, but occasionally we like to bring back quests who we've interviewed before to see what's been going on in their businesses since the last time we chatted. Often business moves in ways they didn't predict when we spoke a couple of years ago. And we're doing it again this week. Chris Orzechowski is our guest for this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast, and as you'll see Chris has a very different business than the one he talked about when we interviewed him before.
Rob: But before we jump into this interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank, that's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to think outside the box. Wow, we're using a cliché to talk about thinking outside the box, that's so inside the box. But, if you want to build new offers and revenue streams in your business, then the Copywriter Think Tank is the kind of place that might just be for you. So Kira, you asked me this last week, I'm going to ask you, why do you think the think tank helps copywriters experience real results?
Kira: Yeah. What comes to my mind first is that we help copywriters go from feeling like a business owner and acting like a business owner and thinking like a business owner to feeling, thinking, acting like an entrepreneur. And we've talked about this frequently with our accelerator program where you can shift from a freelancer mindset to a business owner mindset. But once we're in the think tank, and we're working very closely with the copywriters in that room and they're surrounded by 25 other copywriters who are ambitious and building businesses and restructuring models and figuring out how to do it in a way that works for them,
Liz Wilcox will blow your email marketing mind on the 258th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Liz is a blogger turned email marketing expert who helps other bloggers become business owners. If you’ve been letting your list sit in the dust or you haven’t taken the plunge in creating an email list, this might be the episode to give you the push.
Here’s how it all breaks down:
Have you ever googled: How to make money from home? The overwhelm that comes with all the ways you could start a business and make money online. Why it’s a good idea to start your email list. (even with no audience) What you should do when you begin to grow your email list. Writing a book about poop? How it became the beginning of everything for Liz. The secrets behind a 100% conversion rate. Do you really need to go to the experts? Van life. Is it for you and can you start a business while living in the woods? How to think outside the box of what you see online. Going from idea to done and executed in one hour. How to get to a 47% email open rate. Steps to take to become a digital course creator. (do you need to give up client work?) When is it a good time to start pitching to podcasts? Creating an inclusive digital product based model and following through. How long email newsletters should really be taking you. Is storytelling a thing of the past? The difference between stories and updates on your life. Is Liz going to take over our newsletter? How to keep it fresh and exciting when writing to your list. Everything you don’t want to do when it comes to email marketing. Making your business your number 1 client and not apologizing for it. What every copywriter and business owner needs to be for themselves. How Will Smith will help you build your business.
Need Will to help you build your business? Check out the episode below or read the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Liz’s website
Full Transcript: Rob: You know how when you meet some people, they just seem to be stuck. They're not able to move forward, they're just not able to do anything. If they're in business, maybe they're stuck following everybody else's formulas, doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. And then there's some people that you meet who seem full of energy. They're free. They're definitely not stuck. It's almost like anything is possible for them in business, in life. Well, today's guest for the Copywriter Club podcast, is the type of copywriter and entrepreneur who broke out of that box a long time ago. She's the type of creative who sees the worldwide web as the Wild Wild West, and as an opportunity to build and connect with companies, ideas and people. That's copywriter Liz Wilcox.
Kira: Before we jump into Liz's interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to think outside the box and build new offers and revenue streams in their businesses. Rob, I'm going to interview you. Why do you think the think tank helps copywriters and marketers experience real results? Why does it work?
Rob: I've thought about this a lot recently, and I think one of the things that's really different about the think tank is that we don't have a single formula that we're trying to get everybody to buy into or to follow. Some courses, some masterminds you're working with, an expert who's done it their way. And so they teach their way and they expect you to do everything the way that they did it. That's not our approach. We start out by asking each member about their goals, about what they want to achieve, about the challenges that they're facing, about the impact they want to have in the world, the authority they want to build. And based on those goals,
On the 257th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Kim Krause Schwalm is back on the show. Kim is an A-list copywriter and copy mentor who got her start in the marketing world. Since her first episode, she’s narrowed her focus on mentoring other copywriters on how to write better copy and attract high-level clients. If you’re looking for advice on becoming an A-list copywriter, this is for you.
Here’s what we talk about:
Going from time for money to value for money. What it looks like to begin mentoring by creating courses. The 5 key steps to writing good copy. Is there a set timeline for completing copy? Fact or myth: Can anyone be a copywriter? Why people devalue copy and how we can position ourselves for highest value. How grammar can make or break the sale of your product or service. The benefits of hiring a copywriter for your business. Why you need to stop working IN your business. Are the classic copywriting books still worth the read? (Kim needs a word with you.) Black and white thinking and how to overcome it. The importance of learning and relearning and how it will make you an A-list copywriter. Unlearning what you think you know about being a good writer. How to use your background to become a better copywriter. Do you have to do all the things to be well known in your industry? Podcasts, coaching, Youtube? The most common mistakes new and established copywriters keep on making. How to create stronger boundaries in order to create a sustainable business. Kim’s advice on how to work with head-honcho companies. What you need to do to increase the respect your clients give you. Getting paid for royalties: where do you begin? Outlining your agreements and contracts for greatest success. How to build your authority and accelerate your business. How does it actually start? Why watching reality TV and reading People magazine can be a good thing.
Listen to one of the best in the business by hitting the button below or by checking out the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Kim’s website Kim’s first episode Matt’s website Scientific Advertising
Full Transcript: Kira: Just about everyone you meet on the street, thinks they're a writer. You sit across from your cousin at the table and he talks about the novel he's working on. Maybe you bump into an old classmate and they tell you they're working on their body of work. Sure, anyone can publish their writing today. We should actually celebrate that, but not just anyone can write copy. If you want to be an A-lister and build a career as a copywriter, it takes more than just a pulse and a pencil to do this thing so many of us do daily. Today's guests for The Copywriter Club Podcast has built her reputation around her impressive resume of copywriting accomplishments. That's why she's an A-lister we can all agree is actually on this phantom A-list.
We're talking about Kim Krause Schwalm. You can catch our first podcast interview with Kim back in the day in episode 40, where we talk about how she went from successful marketing director to control beating copywriter in less than two years. But today, Kim's here to bust three copywriting myths. And before we jump into all of that, I want to introduce my co-host for this episode, Matt Hall. Matt Hall is a renaissance man. That's the best title for him because he can do all the things in the marketing space. Any time anyone has any type of problem, I send them to Matt Hall. But Matt, that is the worst possible title for you. What do you actually do? What do you call yourself?
Matt: What I really do is I solve problems. People come to me and they don't say, "Matt, I've got money for you. Just take it, do with it what you will." They come to me because there's something they want me to do and something they wa...
John Mulry (yes, you saw that right) joins us for the 256th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. John is a direct marketing expert who was trained by Dan Kennedy. He’s the creator of Email Academy Pro and Expert Authority Formula. Currently, John’s the Director of Marketing for Todd Brown Marketing*. If you want to be seen as an expert in your field, this is the episode for you.
Here’s how it goes down:
The process of writing a book at supersonic speed. Bringing direct response marketing to different countries. Going from fitness expert to marketing master. How helping people can look different for everyone. Bridging the gap to help business owners connect on a deeper level with their audience. The key to being seen as the expert. How unplanned events and experiences can change your life immensely. Should every copywriter write a book? Finding joy in finding your first clients. The acquisition of new skills and how to accelerate your business. Do you need to be great at sales to be great at marketing? What it’s like being the Director of Marketing for Todd Brown. How to acquire new customers in a crowded market. Best practices for building a 3 part acquisition funnel. How to engineer your offer to get repeated stripe notifications. What is AOV and why it’s important for your funnel. The real job of copywriters. (Hint: it isn’t to write words.)
Want to uplevel your marketing skills? Listen to the episode or read the transcript below.
*Since recording John has transitioned into taking over as COO of Todd Browns Sister Company E5 Agency
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground E5 Nation Facebook Group Full Transcript: Rob: One of the things we love about being copywriters is that we're not just hired to make our client's words sound good, we're hired to solve problems. But here's the thing, clients don't always understand that that's what they're asking us to do. They come to us with projects and ask things like, "Can you write my website or can you help with a case study or a sales page?" What they're really asking for is help solving a bigger problem, help me sound professional or help me prove that I can do what I say I can do, or help me sell more products and make more money. The more we sell ourselves as experts in solving complex marketing problems, the more we're able to work with great clients and earn more money.
Today's guest for The Copywriter Club Podcast is John Mulry. John is the Director of Marketing for MFA, that's Todd Brown's company, and he is focused on solving very complex marketing problems for Todd and for Todd's clients. And what he's shared in this interview may give you some ideas on how to do that for your own clients and in your own business. But before we get to our interview with John, good news, Kira is back. Hey, Kira.
Kira: Hi. Hey, Rob. Good to be back.
Rob: Yes. How have you been? It's been a while.
Kira: I've enjoyed the podcast interviews while I was away where every intro, I feel like you were like, "And Kira's still on maternity leave." I feel like towards the end it sounded like maybe there was a little bit more frustration in that over the last few episodes, but I'm back.
Rob: I don't think I was frustrated. If it sounded that way, I'm sorry then.
Kira: Maybe it was just to me. But yeah, I'm happy to be back on the podcast. I've had a fun time listening to other copywriters speak on the podcast and add their commentary and their thoughts. I think it's strengthened the podcast. So I feel like you don't really need me here. I'm just going to leave right now. I don't think you need me here at all.
Rob: We definitely had more than one person offer to take your place in the future should you decide to make maternity leave permanent? So who knows?
Kira: Tell me who they are,
Jennifer Duann Fultz disrupts the status quo on the 255th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Jennifer is the founder and CEO of Chief Executive Auntie, a business aimed to teach WOC business owners how to make more money online through course creation. Interested in creating a better course experience for your students? Tune into the episode to find out how.
It breaks down like this:
The importance of promoting alternative and diverse voices. Money mindset and how it can affect your life (and business). The stories that are deeply rooted in us from the way we grow up. Why you don’t need to attract every single person into your course. (It’s okay to repel people.) How using your background can propel your business forward. The better way to create a course and guide students to an outcome. How to be the guide your students need and understand where they are coming from. Why you need to prime your students before they reach the next level. Customer research and the effect it has on your course creation. Increasing course completion rates and being selective on who joins your program. Building a lead magnet that will actually help your ideal prospects. Figuring out your strengths and not being tempted to try and do everything. The reality of passive income. (Is it even a thing?) Shifting from employee mindset to CEO mindset and knowing when it’s okay to step away. Being multi-passionate and creating structure to get things done. When it’s time to hire help in your business in order to avoid burnout.
Become a better course creator by listening to the episode or checking out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Christy’s website Jennifer’s website
Full Transcript: Rob: A lot of copywriters buy courses, or write for course creators, or have created their own courses as part of their work. And lately, there seems to be a sense that courses may not be as easy to create and sell as they once were. Some course creators have been criticized for low completion rates. We've heard numbers as low as 4% of people buying courses that actually finish the course. Or they're criticized for signing up students who shouldn't be in a course in the first place.
Our guest for the 255th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Jennifer Duann Fultz. And she knows a thing or two about creating and selling courses because that's what she does in her business. So I asked her about these challenges and a lot more. But first, let me introduce my co-host for today, Christy Cegelski. Christy is a copywriter who specializes in copy that connects, captivates, and converts. She is a Think Tank member and host of her own podcast, The Captivate and Convert Podcast. I was lucky enough to be featured with Kira as a guest on that podcast. I think if I'm remembering right, it was Episode 29 right in there somewhere.
Christy: Somewhere around there, yeah.
Rob: Yeah, I think I'm like, one of two male guests that you've had in the runs of our site. I feel kind of lucky to be included amongst so many brilliant women.
Christy: Yeah.
Rob: But, yeah. Welcome, Christy. Thanks for joining.
Christy: Well, thanks for having me. This is exciting. I've never been a co-host.
Rob: Well, and now you are. So yeah, I mean, we can maybe make this permanent if it turns out well.
Christy: Check.
Rob: This is your audition.
Christy: Check.
Rob: I like it. If you want to know more about Christy, you can see her at christycegelski.com. Of course, subscribe to her podcast, The Captivate and Convert Podcast. She was actually a guest on our own podcast, Episode number 226. About what? That was probably five, six months ago now.
Christy: Yeah.
Rob: A really good interview about what you've done in your business and how your businesses has...
For the 254th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Amisha Shrimanker hops on to talk all about her journey from order taker to CEO. Amisha is the founder of The Copy Crew and their focus is copy for online business coaches. As business owners, we don’t always give ourselves the permission to get things wrong, but Amisha looks at this from a different perspective.
Here’s what we talk about:
Writing copy without knowing you’re writing copy. Finding the right community to propel your business and skillset forward. How to write pitches that land you the job. The reality of beginner pricing. Do you need to settle? Going from order taker to 20k months in 18 months. Sending people to junior copywriters when they want to haggle. The pros and cons of being the order taker. Note: Learn all you can. The better way to land big clients. Why you need to document your copywriting process. How to get extra validation from your clients. (even if it doesn’t pay.) The reality of hustle and the benefits it can bring you in the long run. Getting the best case studies to showcase your work and results. Hiring someone to ask your client questions about you. Win-Win? Being on the other side of the interview. The interviewer becomes the interviewee. Getting the most out of job boards and paying for connections. How to do more than just “done for you” work. Why you shouldn’t let inexperience hold you back. Shifting your mindset from scarcity to abundance. How surrounding yourself with high-achieving people will propel you 10 steps forward. Building trust with your clients and demonstrating your expertise. When is enough learning, enough? Is it time to say no to more courses? Leveling up from skillbuilding to strategy-building. Can audits be profitable in your business?
Hit the play button to listen to Amisha’s genius or read the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Amisha’s website Nicole’s website
Full Transcript: Rob: If you're a longtime listener to The Copywriter Club podcast, you've heard hundreds of copywriters share their stories over the last four years. And while we talk about the struggles that copywriters have from time to time, the big focus of our interviews is the success that so many copywriters are having in their businesses. Our guest today is Amisha Shrimanker. Amisha has a counter intuitive process for finding success. It's all about choosing lots of ways to fail each week or each month, and then going after those failures with serious intensity. But the result isn't failure, it's actually success. And we can't wait to share this interview with you in just a minute. But first, you're still on maternity leave, and I want to introduce my co host for today, Nicole Morton. Nicole, how are you?
Nicole: Good. Thank you so much for having me. This is such a treat.
Rob: Yeah, this is going to be fun. So Nicole, for those of you who don't know her, she's a copywriter, brand strategist, really a creative genius. I know she doesn't want to own that title. But it's true. She's a member of our think tank, and she's been a longtime member of the copywriter underground, and she is the CEO, chief writer at the creatively named Nicole Morton Agency, so you can check her out there. And before we get to our interview with Amisha, this is the last time that I'm going to mention this for a while. But the Copywriter accelerator is open for two more days. If you're listening as this episode drops, it will close tomorrow, midnight September 1st year 2021.
And if you are looking for a program that will help you set your business on the right foundation moving forward so that you're ready in 2022 for the success that you want to create in your business, if you need help with things like mindset and creating packages and the cli...
On the 253rd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Laura Briggs breaks down the foundational steps to catapulting your freelance business. Laura is a freelance writer and coach who helps aspiring and current entrepreneurs who are ready to live life on their own terms. Already have a successful business? You’ll hear concepts and ideas through a whole new lens. – Don’t miss this one.
Here’s what we talk about:
Humans biggest question: “What do I do with my life?” Balancing a full-time job and growing a side hustle business. The best way to use Upwork and break into the freelance writing world. Whether or not you need a website in the beginning. Pitching to clients on weekends through LinkedIn. Your first portfolio and what it needs to include. Landing a 50k ghostwriting book project through Upwork. The pros and cons of Upwork and using it to its fullest potential. Why you need to personalize your pitches. How to overcome the “new writer” syndrome. How retainer projects help you with income projections and how to position yourself to secure the deal. Building your dream work schedule. When you should raise your prices. (and when you shouldn’t.) Creating a writing process that works best for you and your creative genius. Setting boundaries and tuning into the red flags. How to make decisions as a CEO and become an empowered business owner. Sales calls and being okay with the silence. What most freelancers are doing wrong and how to fix it. When you know you’re ready to level up. Delegating to others and creating time and space in your business. Creating a nonprofit around your core values. Offering services that are in demand and match your personality.
Check out the transcript below or hit that play button to listen in.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Betterbizacademy.com
Full Transcript: Rob: Being a successful freelance copywriter is about a lot more than just writing the right words for our clients. There are so many things to think about to do beyond the writing, things like finding clients, or pricing yourself effectively, setting up the right packages, things that our clients actually want to buy, and raising our prices as needed, figuring out retainers, project scope, all of that kind of stuff. Our guest for this episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast is Laura Briggs. Laura is known as The Freelance Coach. And in her business, like we do, she helps freelancers deal with these kinds of challenges. In a moment, we're going to hear how she built her own successful business and then helping others to do the same thing. But first, let me introduce my co-host for today, since Kira is still on maternity leave, Jacob Suckow. Jacob is, I would call him an offer doctor. Jacob, I don't know if you've got a better title for that or not, but he helps his clients really figure out their offers.
Jacob: Awesome. Well, hey Rob, thanks for the introduction, I appreciate it. I don't know if I've ever called myself an offer doctor, but I might have to steal that after today. Excited to be here with you today, excited to hear what Laura has got to say.
Rob: Yeah. I'm looking forward to this conversation also. If you want to find out more about Jacob Suckow, you can find him at top-notchcopy.com, but don't forget the dash. And one of the things, Jacob, I'm going to mention this, even though it's not really live here, you're playing around with this idea of a paid newsletter that you're thinking about doing, talking about all the things about starting a successful solopreneur business. Maybe just give us like a one-liner for what that might turn into when it gets launched.
Jacob: Yeah, sure. So there's a big gap in content out there for people like us who are just building something on their own. And typically,
On the 252nd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we dive deep into courage with Heather Hubbard. After some unforeseen events and challenges, Heather shifted from powerful lawyer to powerful CEO of Simple Courage. Heather describes Simple Courage as more than a mantra but a mission and movement to both individual and collective change.
Here’s how it all goes down:
Why the drastic shift from lawyer to Simple Courage movement. What to do when we can’t get ideas out of our heads. Making major shifts and strides in the middle of a pandemic. Dealing with dysfunctional relationships and tragic life events and moving forward. Saving face and not being true to one’s self. The standards that are set by society and how to break them. Why being uncomfortable can be good and bad. How to choose or recreate your own stories. The 4 types of courage and changing between each. The difference between fearlessness and courage. Showing up brave because you have to rather than wanting to. How to figure out why we’re afraid of something in the first place. Why it’s important to stay curious and color your hair pink. Things we let slide because we think we’re being brave. Leaning into your values and taking a stand for what you believe. What we are actually afraid of happening when we have Simple Courage. How Simple Courage can work in your favor if you allow it to. The everyday effects of the different types of courage.
Listen to the episode or read the podcast for inspiration on stepping into your own power.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Tamara’s website Simple Courage website Simple Courage podcast Heather's program The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman
Full Transcript: Rob: What does being courageous mean to you? Is it being brave enough to run into a burning building to save someone? Is it standing up for what you believe in, or maybe standing up to protect others? Most of us grow up with the idea that courage is a good thing to have, but we're not always courageous in the things that we do. Our guests for the 252nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Heather Hubbard. She's the founder of Simple Courage of movement that is helping people embrace courage and change their lives, and we think that you're going to like what she has to share.
But first, before we get to that, Kira is still on maternity leave. This is starting to feel to me like the never ending maternity leave. So I have my special guest hosts to help with some of the comments on this episode, Tamara Glick. Tamara is a copywriter, brand stylist, brand voice specialist, and so many things. She helps us with some of the stuff that we do in the think tank. Tamara, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Tamara: Thank you so much, Rob. Man, oh man, I am so excited about this conversation. This is the deep meaty stuff that I love. Forget the small talk, tell me about your biggest fear and your deepest secret, I'm a vault. That's everything I want to know. So thank you so much for having me back for this one, Rob.
Rob: You're not getting my deepest secrets, but we'll be talking about some other things on the show.
Tamara: That's okay.
Rob: And also just as a reminder, Tamara has actually been on the show as a guest before, that's episode number 142 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you want to listen to what she shared there, all about like style, copy style, all of that stuff. It was really good interview, so check that out. Before we get into our interview with Heather though, I'm going to switch things up a little bit and instead of telling you about The Copywriter Think Tank, which of course is still available.
If you're interested, go to copywriterthinktank.com, but next week we are opening up The Copywriter Accelerator,
On the 251st episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’re joined by none other than Laura Belgray. Laura is the founder of Talking Shrimp and co-creator of The Copy Cure with Marie Forleo. It’s been a few years since she’s been on the show, and in which time she’s done everything she said she wasn’t going to do in her business. No matter where you are in your copywriting, you’ll hear countless insights you can apply to your own business.
Ready to take notes?
How to go from copywriter for clients to being a copywriter for yourself. What hiring team members can do for you and your business growth. (Hint: explode) The shift from being someone’s copywriter to stepping into your own voice and brand. Becoming the course creator and getting paid to write emails to your list. Igniting your brand so people know you exist. Why you need to start pitching yourself (yesterday). Envisioning what you truly want in your business and what it will take to get there. Laura’s website transformation and creating her own museum for people to take pictures with. (It’s the end of an era!) Hiring a coach to help with pivots and rebrands. Emailing your list 3x a week. Should you do it? How sharing your content and articles can prove to build your authority. — As long as it’s shareable. The fastest way to learn new information or processes. What you should be telling your list to create meaningful connections and to dig deeper into their wants and needs. The myths of managing a team. Why you need to be super clear and honest with your list about what your purpose is. How to boost your creativity when the wheels aren’t turning. The raw and real truth of writing a book. — You may need to quiet your ego. How many copywriters of today are becoming shadows and what you can do to ensure it doesn’t happen to you. The future of copywriting and what absolutely has got to go. What Laura does to make money by being herself (and while sitting on her couch.)
There are many ways to create a successful copywriting business, and Laura’s method is one worth listening to. Press play or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Laura’s first episode Laura’s website Laura’s subject line resource Full Transcript: Rob: A lot can change in three years. Heck, if the last year has taught us anything, it's that things can change quickly, and they change faster than we think. Our guest for this episode is Laura Belgray, and Laura was on our podcast a little over three years ago. That was episode 15, where she talked about the kind of business that she had, and she talked about a lot of things that she wasn't even interested in doing. Now, three years later, that's all changed. She's built the business that she said she didn't want, and she loves it. So we're going to get into the details of that change, and what Laura has done with her business. But first, let me introduce my co-host for today, copywriter and launch strategist, Brittany McBean. Welcome, Brittany.
Brittany: Thanks, thanks for having me. I've told you that my life goal is to be Kira when I grow up, so now I'm just one step closer.
Rob: Yeah, right, if Kira decides not to come back, you can just stay.
Brittany: I'm taking her spot, watch out.
Rob: Exactly. You've been warned Kira. I'm excited to have Brittany here to share her thoughts about what we chatted with Laura today. But before we get to that interview and to the things that we want to share, this is your weekly reminder that this episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind for copywriters and marketers who are doing some pretty big things in their business, becoming better copywriters, creating products, maybe creating things like video shows,
On the 250th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast (250 episodes?! Get out of here!), we’ve got a few things in store. Have you ever wondered what other copywriters are charging for their deliverables? Today, we’re giving you a breakdown. We’re also joined by a few special guests, so be sure to listen to what it’s all about.
250th episode breakdown:
What other copywriters are charging for sales pages at different levels in their businesses. The median and averages of copywriter yearly incomes. Why experience doesn't have to be the only factor when you’re ready to up your prices. Can you actually charge 45k for a sales page? Kira and baby Homer’s guest appearance. (Homer’s first podcast interview.) How new additions to the home can create a new dynamic in the household. (Even Kira’s cat has been needy as of late.) Creating new boundaries with a new baby and how having a team can be beneficial. Kira and Rob’s strengths when it comes to The Copywriter Club business. What the Accelerator is and who it’s good for. Gaining clarity and confidence in your business journey. Navigating how you should find your ideal clients and getting super clear on your systems and processes. Finding a community that is supportive and will lend a hand when you need one. Why Kira is the best at finding what makes you weird. (She loves to use questions.) How to begin focusing on what you really love to write. Accountability groups and why they’re vital to leveling up your business. When you should raise your prices and not feel like an imposter. Building your business at your own pace and your own way.
Ready to start charging your worth? Tune into the episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Think Tank The Copywriter Accelerator The Ultimate Copywriter Salary Guide
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
We interviewed Aly Goulet for the 249th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Aly is a SaaS copywriter and content strategist. She started her content writing business while still in college, and took it all the way when she graduated. By using her cold pitch method, she’s been able to book clients in her niche and she breaks down how she made it happen in this episode.
Here’s the rundown:
The scrappy method and when it may be time to start investing in your business and skill set growth. Skyrocketing and hitting goals in your business in 1 year. How many cold pitches you should send a day if you want to find clients fast. Why you should actually narrow in the type of clients you want to work with. What to include in your monthly retainers and how you should go about pricing them. When your cold pitches should be long or short and why. Perfecting your project management process, so you don’t get lost in all the moving pieces of retainer deliverables. How even copywriters need automations to keep up with their projects and save time. What you can start doing to get out of feast and famine mode. The science of connecting with people on LinkedIn. (Plus, your new cold pitch message.) The quickest, easiest way to become visible online. Why you shouldn’t put your own business on the backburner. (Hint: You won’t forget about your clients.) What happens after you start hitting your income goals. What’s next? Do’s and don’t of creating an epic portfolio. The newest WordPress plugin to make building out your portfolio easier. (You’re the best, Aly!) How the Think Tank has helped in reaching her goals in her business. How thinking of your business as an asset will propel you forward tenfold.
If you’re tired of the merry-go-round of gaining clients, tune into this episode or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Think Tank Brandon’s episode Brandon’s website Aly’s website Aly’s premium portfolio plugin
Full Transcript: Rob: If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you no doubt have noticed the many differences in how copywriters make their living. Most of us earn money from writing content or copy, but still structure our businesses differently. Some charge by project, others work on retainers, and still others offer day rates and VIP days. But that's just the beginning in the differences that we have as copywriters. Some copywriters consult on funnels and offers that audit websites and campaigns. Some structure their work so that they earn royalties, when a promotion does well. And still others create their own products to sell. Today's guest on the podcast is Aly Goulet. She's tried several of these approaches, very successfully, and recently launched a WordPress plugin to help copywriters show off their best work. We'll talk more about that in a minute. But first I need to introduce my guest host for this episode, Brandon Burton. Brandon is a copywriter and a brand voice strategist, and he is also the community manager for the Copywriter Club, Facebook groups. Brandon, welcome to this episode.
Brandon: Thanks for having me, Rob. I really appreciate it.
Rob: Yeah, of course. So, before we get to all of this other stuff, just really quickly, not only do you manage our communities on Facebook, but you have your own community. Just take a second to tell us a little bit about that.
Brandon: Yeah. I started a community called Our Children's World, quite recently. And yeah, it's just helping parents tackle the reality in the next few years and helping us raise children who can survive in it and thrive in it.
Rob: Awesome. And you have a couple of young kids yourself, so you're like a man deep in it.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, like yourself. Yeah. I've got free. Yeah,
Dayana Mayfield joins The Copywriter Club podcast for the 248th episode. Dayana is a SaaS copywriter who focuses on SEO and conversions. After deciding to pursue writing as a career to inspire her daughter to follow her passions, she found copywriting. If you want to learn how to grow your business through networking and online platforms, this episode is for you.
Here’s what we talk about:
How copywriting and editing are completely different skill sets. Becoming the sole provider in a foreign country. What it takes to learn SEO copywriting and what the difference is. The pros of Upwork and going from $16 hr to $175 hr in 2 years. What you should do when you don’t have a copywriting portfolio. The better way to cold pitch and land new clients. How Dayana was able to save for 4 months of maternity leave in 1 year. Why you shouldn’t lower your standards when you need money fast. The future of copywriting. Is it still worth it? The benefits of verifying who you could potentially be working with. Misconceptions of the SaaS industry and why it could be the right niche for you. The proper way to vet your prospects. Why SEO is important and could keep your lead list hot and ready. Navigating manic bipolar disorder and having a successful business. How PR and SEO go hand in hand and why you need both in your business. Being multi-passionate and starting a second business. The difference between a vertical and horizontal niche. How you can find leads via podcasts and backlinks. What actually happens when you begin to niche down and position yourself as the expert.
Whether you’re reading the transcript or listening in, you won’t want to miss this episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Tiffany’s website Dayana’s website
Full Transcript: Rob:
There's more than one approach to choosing a niche, and the most common of course is choosing an industry to specialize in, but there are other approaches too like choosing a particular deliverable or a kind of project that you work on. That's generally called horizontal niching. We've even seen copywriters niche by the customer that they work with. Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Dayana Mayfield, and she told us about how she's adding a second horizontal niche to her business. We're going to let her tell you all about it in just a minute, but first I want to introduce my guest host for this episode. That's Tiffany Ingle. Hey, Tiffany.
Tiffany:
Hi, Rob.
Rob:
How's it going?
Tiffany:
It's going pretty well. Thank you for having me here. I'm really happy to sit down and have this conversation with you today.
Rob:
Yeah, this is awesome. So Tiffany is a conversion copywriter. She's worked in the nonprofit sector I think for like seven years before starting her own business. She writes conversion copy and she has a newsletter called Authenticity is Addictive. If you want to be on that or receive that, go to Tiffany's website and sign up.
Before we talk with Dayana, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their business and their work. Maybe you have dreamed about creating a product or a podcast, or maybe you've thought about maybe starting an agency or a product company. Maybe you want to become the best-known copywriter in your niche, the person that high paying clients are always looking out for. That's the kind of thing that we help copywriters do in the Think Tank. Tiffany is actually a member of the Think Tank, a new member. To learn more, visit copywriterthinktank.com, and maybe you can join this extraordinary group of business owners too. So let's jump into our interview with Dayana and find out more about her b...
Nicole Piper is our guest for the 247th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Nicole is a copywriter and direct response marketer. She started her career as a global brand development strategist working for companies such as Nickelodeon, MTV, and Pokemon. Now she focuses on writing for the health and wellness space.
Here’s what we talk about:
Going through a divorce and losing your 6-figure job. Falling upon copy courses and becoming energized with everything you’re consuming. When you might be ready to go all in and give it your best shot. How following your gut can open up the doors to 100’s of possibilities. Feeling unsure about your copy and it falling into the hands of Kevin Rogers. Becoming Parris Lampropoulos’ cub and gaining an incredible and surreal experience. Manifesting two clients in one week by getting out of your own way. How to get comfortable with not seeing the entire path ahead of you. The secret to the fastest growth and success. Hint: It’s not by doing it alone. What you can learn from Nickelodeon’s marketing angle. How to find the best humans in the world who are collaborative rather than competitive. When it may be the right time to hire a content strategist. The 4 P’s and how it can bring your message to life. Where most copywriters mess up when making big promises. Why you should have someone read your copy out loud to you. The better way to break into the health and wellness space. The challenge of finding the right people for the job. The truth about being an expert to your client. The difference between prevalence and intensity is the solution to finding your ideal client.
Listen to the episode below or read it in the show notes.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Piper’s website Piper’s health coaching website Grace’s website
Full Transcript: Rob: There's this idea made popular by the movie, The Secret, that you can manifest things into your life simply by thinking about them. Actually, that's a bit of a simplification of the idea of manifesting, but I think you get the idea. By focusing on things like money or say a nice home or great clients, you actually attract those kinds of things into your life. Now, we're not so sure that it's that simple. In fact, I think I'm on record as saying that it doesn't actually work that way, but we do think that when you work hard and you focus on the right things, good stuff generally happens to you and your business.
Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is copywriter, Nicole Piper. Nicole is a great example of this manifesting process, attracting opportunity and clients by getting to work and focusing on what she really wanted to happen in a situation where many of us would probably do the opposite. We'll let Nicole share her story in a moment. But first, before we get to that, I want to just introduce the Copywriter Think Tank that's the sponsor for this episode, and that's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their business and their work.
Maybe you've dreamed of creating a product or a podcast or building an agency, or a product company, or anything else beyond just simply writing for clients, billing by the penny or by the hour. If you want to become the best known copywriter in your niche, that's the kind of thing that we do in the Copywriter Think Tank. And because Kira is still on maternity leave, my guest host for today is Grace Baldwin. Grace is a member of the Think Tank. Grace, you can share a line or two about your experience, and just tell us what you think about that.
Grace: Sure. Hi everybody. Yeah, my name is Grace Baldwin, I am a B2B SaaS copywriter currently working in-house in the company. But yeah, I'm part of the Think Tank and it's been a pretty pheno...
On the 246th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’re joined by one of our newest Think Tank members, Hira Usama. Hira is a social media manager and content strategist. Hira began her freelance journey on Upwork writing e-books and immensely undercharging. She now takes clients’ social media platforms from ghost town to binge-worthy.
Here’s what we talk about:
Going from a content creator for an agency to freelance work. Writing 4 e-books in one month while being pregnant and finding The Copywriter Club. How she got hired at 17 years old and was published in a magazine. How to effectively use online social platforms to expand your reach. The benefits of outbound engagement and using hashtags to connect with the right people. Social media strategy for the person who just doesn’t have the time or energy for engagement. Starting the process of working with a new client and what it’s like to work with Kira Hug. How to create effective content pillars and even mix in aspects of your life on social media. (Is there a method to the madness?) The beauty and the struggle of the hustle game. The truth about what leads to conversions. Why we need to be social on social media. (Shocking, huh?) How Hira uses Gary Vee in her approach to natural social media strategy. Copywriters who have got a killer approach to socials and what we can learn from observing. Why you absolutely need to be using swipe files. Realizing that no one is going to be as excited about your posts are you. The challenges of working on the other side of the world as your clients. Tips on working with business owners when there may be a language barrier. Creating a community for women who don’t have the means to work a standard 9-5. The struggles of building your own brand when you’re focused on so many others. (the life of a service provider.)
If you want to ramp up your social media strategy and build a stronger online presence, listen to the episode or check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Hira’s website Tamara’s website
Full Transcript: Rob: For most copywriters and content writers, writing comes pretty naturally to us, and that's the one big reason that we all seem to choose this profession in the first place. There are a few exceptions who learn copywriting as a means to do something else, but for most of us, we're pretty good writers and that's why we are writers as a profession. But it takes a lot more than the ability to write to start a successful copywriting business. To do that, you have to hustle and add the skills to help you solve problems for your clients. Today's guests on The Copywriter Club Podcast is Hira Usama.
That's exactly what she did from landing her first content gig at age 17, to doing work today as a social media strategist. She's always learning and trying new things, everything from SEO to social media. In this interview, Hira shares exactly what she did to grow a successful business while working from Asia as a new parent. But before we get to that, let me introduce my guest, I guess, kind of host. Since Kira asked some of the questions, she was here when we recorded. But Kira is on maternity leave spending some time with her new baby, and my guests interjector, commenter, whatever we want to call it, is Tamara Glick. Say hi, Tamara.
Tamara: Hello, Rob. How are you?
Rob: It's good. I'm thrilled to have you joining us. Those of you who maybe are longtime listeners to the podcast know that we interviewed Tamara on episode 142. Tamara is a fashion stylist and also a content and brand stylist. She also serves her clients as a fractional CMO, helping them figure out their customer journeys and how they can improve their offers and all kinds of different things.
Eman Ismail is our guest for the 245th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Eman is an email copywriter who has quickly become a go-to expert for all things email copy. Eman made the transition from feast or famine freelancer to CEO by implementing VIP days into her business. If you want to make the switch to VIP days and day rates, don’t miss this episode.
Here is what else we cover:
Going from charity worker to charity freelancer. The difficulties of being a mom and owning a business. How to let your network know what you do in a way that’s not uncomfortable. Shifting niches and how to attract your ideal customer. The fastest way to level up your freelance business. When being booked out doesn’t mean paying the bills. Hitting the first 5k month and shifting your mindset to get out of feast or famine mode. How niching down can be terrifying but bring in more clients than ever before. When to increase your prices and invest in yourself. The secret to making the most out of your investments. The number one way to maximize all of the coaching and courses you go through. How to shift from a project-based model to a VIP day model. The better way to structure VIP days to allow for maximum results. Why you should hire someone for the service you provide. Perfecting your systems and processes and learning from others. Finding your ideal work schedule and allowing enough time for research. Selecting an online platform where you can find your ideal clients. The importance of a marketing plan.
Whether your a new copywriter or you've been in the copywriting space for awhile, you'll get actionable advice on building your business.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Eman’s website Copywriting resource guide
Full Transcript: Rob: There's no doubt that you've heard the phrase overnight success, and usually when people talk about this you're saying that there's no such thing. Success takes time, and finding it overnight is incredibly rare, if it happens at all. Today's guest for The Copywriter Club Podcast is Eman Ismail, and Eman recently gave a talk at TCC(N)IRL, that's our event, about how she went from being completely unknown to being the name on everyone's lips in less than a year, and during a year when we had a pandemic. It wasn't overnight, but it happened incredibly fast, and she shared what she did to make that happen, partly in this interview and also in that presentation, available with the IRL recordings.
But before we talk to Eman, let's talk to you just a little bit about the Copywriter Think Tank, that's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their business and their work, whether you want to build a more robust copywriting business with better clients and better projects, and of course better way, whether you want to add on something like a podcast, or a course, or something like that, or even if you want to build a mini agency or some other kind of business model that you've been thinking about. Those are the kinds of things that the people in the Copywriter Think Tank are doing all the time. If you're ready to surround yourself with people who are thinking bigger about their business, then you should visit copywriterthinktank.com. Sign up for a quick information session. There's no hard pitch, I promise, and maybe you can join this group of extraordinary business owners too.
Now, before we jump into our conversation with Eman, you'll notice that Kira is not here, and that's because Kira is actually having a baby today. So, we unfortunately aren't going to have Kira for the next couple of weeks as we talk about the things on the podcast, but I am going to bring in other people on our team, other copywriters that we know and want to be able to share some of their th...
On the 244th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Sarah Greesonbach joins the show. After spending years in the classroom, she discovered the world of content marketing and e-commerce. Sarah is a prime example that you can be a highly paid and sought-after content writer when you position yourself as the expert and provide value time and time again.
Here’s what we talk about:
Writing an ebook all about life after teaching and jumping into the online business realm. Putting your all into your passion without boundaries. Creating an open door after getting laid off. Going from $20-30hr to $800 blog posts. How to make the shift in money and clientele. The reality of setting up your mindset for growth and success. Why you shouldn’t be shopping in your dream client’s wallet. The clear and cut process of writing white papers. What white papers are going for these days and how it can be your in with a potential client. How to showcase your authority right away and take the strategy lead. One simple skill that makes you more money. The shift from “perfect business” to realistic expectations of building a business. How to create buckets, so you can focus on the most important aspects of your business. Using LinkedIn to work with ongoing and steady clients. The difference between writing for B2B and B2C. The truth about being creative and understanding your capacity for scheduling it into your day.
Want to create a profitable content writing business? Tune into the episode to learn how to make it happen.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Sarah’s website
Full Transcript: Rob: Over the past three years, we've interviewed hundreds of copywriters about their approach to business, their writing processes, their stories, and their tips for writing better copy. The vast majority of them describe themselves as copywriters, but today's guest for the 244th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast Sarah Greesonbach calls herself a content writer. And I'll be honest, I don't see a lot of difference between copy and content. Both are designed to create and support a relationship between a company or brand and its customers. Both are part of the sales process, and both require a smart, strategic approach to make sure that they connect with the right people. We talked a lot about Sarah's approach to content in this episode. And if you write and sell content as part of your business, you're going to learn a lot from this interview.
Kira: Before we hear what Sarah has to say, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. The Think Tank is our private mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create multiple new revenue streams in their businesses, receive coaching from the two of us, and ultimately grow to six figures or more. Up until last year, we only opened the Think Tank once a year, but today we invite a few new members each month. If you've been looking for a mastermind to help you grow, visit copywriterthinktank.com to find out more.
Rob: Okay, let's jump into our interview with Sarah and find out more about her path to content writing.
Sarah: Through that is Craigslist, it was pretty amazing. And this was a bit more popular back in the early 2010s when Craigslist was more of a thing. But my story actually starts, I got a master's in arts and teaching, and I taught ninth grade English. And they basically chewed me up and spit me out in about two and a half years. I had reached ultimate burnout as a workaholic because the classroom will take everything you can give it, so I gave it everything. And I had to make my escape. And at that point, I hit that wall a lot of writers hit where it's like, what else could I possibly do? I did the teaching,
On the 243rd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Yara Golden (dare we say it) drops gems you need to take note of. Yara Golden fell into the world of copywriting unexpectedly and said goodbye to her relationship coaching days. Now, she runs an agency of copywriters on the basis of storytelling.
Here’s what we covered:
How our greatest strengths can become our biggest weaknesses. When things seem to be falling apart, how do you pick up the pieces? The art of not being able to screw up being yourself. Transitioning from relationship coach to email copywriting magician. 3 lessons to improve yourself and the relationships you have with others. Going against the grain and breaking the copy “rules.” The #1 thing business owners need. How to strategically take on multiple clients at a time while managing a team. Reaching the epiphany step in the story selling method. The secret to being the character that your ideal client or customer wants to be. The better way to be customer-centric and close sales. The truth about negative inspiration and why it works for entrepreneurs. The fine line of taking in knowledge and closing off what makes us unique. How to revive an inactive email list. - Hint: Don’t say sorry. Are copy blocks the new day rates? Mentorships and helping others sparkle as they grow their businesses. The mindset shift between self-employed and entrepreneur. How to step into the spotlight when you don’t feel you deserve it. Taking the feelings of discomfort and using them to your full advantage. Working through a bad relationship with money and coming up with a strategic plan. The merging of projects and companies: How can this be done? How to write copy without VOC.
This episode is a must-listen. If not, a must-read. Check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Yara’s website
Full Transcript: Kira: Maybe the best thing about having a podcast is the opportunity to talk to so many smart and accomplished copywriters and marketing experts. Even the writers we talked to who are just starting out have unique ideas and perspectives. I think we both can safely say we feel lucky to talk to such talented people and get to learn while we're doing it.
And today's guest for the 243rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Yara Golden. And she shared some of her early struggles in her business, the way she packages and sells her services, the lessons she's learned about boundaries and so much more. There are a ton of great takeaways in this episode.
Rob: Before we talk to Yara, let's talk to you, our listeners, about the Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their business in their work. Maybe you've dreamed about creating a product, podcast, and you want to build a mini agency, like the one that Yara built, that she's going to tell us about here in just a minute, or a product company.
Maybe you want to become just the best copywriter in your industry or in your niche, or the person that has the high-paying clients and have them know that you're the one that they should be calling. That's the kind of thing that we help copywriters in the Copywriter Think Tank do. To learn more, visit copywriterthinktank.com, and maybe you can join this group of extraordinary business owners too.
Kira: Before we get into the interview, we should note that after a couple of minutes, Rob's internet went down. So, if you're wondering why I hog the mic, and ask all the questions while Rob is quiet, while I didn't kick him off the show, it's just a little bit of trouble.
Rob: Not yet.
Kira: Not yet. So, let's jump into our conversation with Yara and find out about her path into copywriting.
Yara: Oh, my gosh,
Jared Macdonald is our guest for the 242nd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Jared is a copywriter whose focus is on user experience and customer research. It’s more than just the words we write, it’s about getting inside the heads of our ideal clients, so we can provide a product or service they truly need and want. Jared has proved his expertise in the area of serving his clients because he works with his clients for an average of 2.5 years.
Here’s what else we talked about:
Combining copy research with user experience and creating magic. Taking a life-threatening situation and turning it into a positive. Being okay with not having everything figured out in your business journey. There is no tiering to struggles and understanding we don’t know what someone is battling. How doing tasks in your business that don’t scale can end up leading to immense growth. Why over-delivering and building lasting client relationships go hand in hand. The steps to create points of excitement through every phase of a funnel. How to lengthen client relationships while respecting your own boundaries. The secret to being seen as the consultant from the beginning. Voice of customer research questions you need to include in your interview process. How to elevate your customer journey and provide the highest of experiences for your clients. Tools that can help you streamline and save you time. Getting to a place where YOU selectively choose your clients and make sure they’re worthy of a sales call. The benefits of working with retainer clients as a new copywriter. Best practices for networking when it can feel awkward and overwhelming.
Hit that play button below or read the transcript if you want to improve your client experience.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Jared’s website Jared’s workshop
Full Transcript: Rob: One of the big challenges of running a copywriting business is finding clients. And unless you have retainers, once you find a good client and do the work, you've got to go back out there and find another client and then another. But what if the great clients that you have could stick with you, offering project after project month after month so you don't have to spend your time prospecting and instead you can focus on problem solving. That's what Jared McDonald, our guest for the 242nd episode of the Copywriter Club podcast does. His average client relationship lasts almost two and a half years. And we asked him what he does that makes his clients so happy and he shared a few ideas that any copywriter can implement into their business.
Kira: Before we hear what Jared has to say, this podcast episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Think Tank mastermind, which Jared has participated in. The Think Tank is our private mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create new revenue streams in their businesses, receive coaching from the two of us and ultimately grow to six figures or more. Up until last year, we only opened the Think Tank once a year, but today we invite a few new members each month. If you've been looking for a mastermind group to help you grow, visit copywriterthinktank.com to find out more.
Rob: Okay. Let's jump into our interview with Jared with this question about how he became a copywriter, a marketing consultant, and a UX strategist.
Jared: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, from a story perspective, do you want the short version, long version? No.
Rob: I want a medium version. Sort of in the middle.
Jared: Medium, yeah? Medium details. Yeah. I mean, I started out in experiential marketing and doing sales as well. And then it really wasn't until I went to... Wanted to go to school to be a diplomat in foreign languages for some odd reason. And then,
On the 241st episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Daniel Lamb jumps on the show. Daniel Lamb is a copywriter who helps marketing agencies and B2B brands create conversions within their funnels. Throughout his time as a bartender and agency copywriter, he was able to take essential skills and blend them into his own agency.We also talked about:How to leverage opportunity when it’s sitting right in front of you.Connecting music and copywriting and how they both can evoke a response.The reality of creating your own luck. - Is it possible?What you gain when working with low-paying clients.Skills you gain while working for an agency.How to properly use data to get the best results for clients.Starting an agency “your way” after getting furloughed.The running cycle of looking for clients. - Feast and famine?Turning rubber bands and duck tape into smooth and clear systems.Tips on what to do when you’re fearful of diving into the stats.If you want to run an agency, then you need to be clear on one thing.How investing in relationships will propel you forward.Best practices for working with junior copywriters and the benefits of SOPs.The better way to manage a team and keep everything together.The simple practice that can really turn around procrastination.The secret to hacking your brain and mindset.The shift between taking care of your business and letting your business take care of you.The ins and out of hosting a podcast and surprises along the way.The first thing to consider when deciding on building a partnership.Thinking about starting an agency? Check out this episode or grab the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:Kira’s websiteRob’s websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook GroupThe Copywriter UndergroundThink TankLinchpin by Seth Godin Who not how by Dan Sullivan Daniel’s website Daniel Lamb podcast - Ritual Linda’s episode Full Transcript:Transcript is underway...
Kira and Rob join each other as guests on the 240th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. After hosting the show and being business partners for almost 5 years, they discuss tips and tools others can use to create more growth and avoid pitfalls along the way.
Here’s how it breaks down:
The 6 Mistakes Rob and Kira have made during their copywriting careers. Why being part of a community will skyrocket your career and build your skillset. How to be a problem solver for your clients, so they don’t have to guess and search for a solution. What Rob was doing before The Copywriter Club. Why this simple word will give you more power and create higher quality work. The value of testimonials and why they’ll grow your business. Being unaligned and the results it can bring. How to overcome comparisonitis when it keeps knocking at your door. Unveiling your unique mechanism and x-factor, so you can tap into your full-potential. How to successfully pull off a virtual event and create real community online. Building a team and focusing on the buckets that propel the business forward. Motivation and getting things done with a positive attitude. Why it’s vital to make time for things you love outside of your business. A better way to look at your business that will make all the difference in your sustainability and impact. Trends and patterns in the copywriting space that you should avoid. Books and podcasts
Listen in on the podcast below or check out the transcript and give it a read.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Books and things we're into right now:
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron Run to Win by Stephanie Schriock The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett You Get What You Pitch For by Anthony Sullivan The Catalyst by Jonah Berger A History of the World in 10 and a Half Chapters by Julian Barnes The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham Frank Morgan Radio The Smartless podcast The Tim Ferriss Show Full Transcript: Kira: Hi, Rob.
Rob: Hey, Kira. We were just saying that we should have written an intro for this episode, since we write those after we record. Now, our process is all changed and we're just recording now this interview to go live next week actually. So I don't know if we're going to have time to do an intro or not.
Kira: We don't. Yeah. We're anti shoulds, right? All the things you should do, let's just not do it. We don't... No more shoulds for us. So there is no intro. It's just us, the two of us today. This is episode 240, right?
Rob: Yeah. Episode 240 and every 10th episode or so we like to just jump on and just chat about different stuff, go guest free and this is all our stuff. If you don't like that, you can skip to the next episode or listen to last week's episode or stay tuned and you get a full dose of Kira and Rob.
Kira: Yes. This is just us wild and free. So we are going to ask each other questions and just kind of interview each other because even though we talk frequently, we don't always ask each other questions about business ideas, what else we're doing so I think Rob and I just need more quality time together. We have a lot of time together, maybe we need more quality time together.
Rob: There you go. Yeah. Finding out more. I mean, we've only been doing this for four years, right? So trying to understand who the other person is with I think-
Kira: Who are you? Who is this person? So let's kick it off with the first question. Rob, what are some mistakes that you've made in your copywriting business? I guess this could really be any mistake. It's all fair game. But I was just thinking, I think frequently about mistakes I've made with projects with clients previously. I don't know why they just kind of pop in to my mind at d...
On the 239th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’re joined by Kristina Shands, Copywriter and Launch Strategist. Kristina took her background in nonprofit and Public Relations and has been able to transform her clients’ businesses through the launch of their products and services. If you’re somebody who’s been dabbling in the launch world, and you want to increase the experience you provide your clients, this episode is a must-listen.
We also talked about:
How launching has changed and how the “what” has stayed the same. Giving people what they need to make an empowered decision by listening to what they have to say. How to hold space for your clients during a launch when launching can be high-energy and demanding. The strategy you can provide for your clients, so they don’t feel they have to do it all. The better way to have a killer launch and not get burned out. The easiest way to set reasonable standards and expectations for clients. The benefit to asking specific future pacing questions to prospects. How to implement love languages and human design into your business. The #1 component of being a better business owner and entrepreneur. Why it’s important to honor your energy management and the effects it has on your day. The secret to adding self-care into your launch strategy and why it needs to be a must. The right way to go down a rabbit hole and make it a beneficial use of your time. How learning something new can be self-sabotaging and impractical. Jumping ahead in your personal and business growth, so you can be “lucky.” The element you need to be part of the persuasion process. How to get off the “hustle” cycle and learn to trust the journey and opportunities that will come with time.
Launching can be exhausting, but it doesn’t have to be. Listen in on this episode or check out the transcript here.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Kristina’s website
Full Podcast Episode #239 Transcript
This week on The Copywriter Club podcast, Marietta Gentles Crawford drops the secrets to standing out on LinkedIn without changing who you are. Marietta is a Brand Strategist and LinkedIn expert whose focus is on growing a strong personal presence like a real human. Amp up your personal brand and LinkedIn profile by taking notes and following along.
We also covered:
The once upon a time of an about section. (Hint: It was called a summary section.) How to support the authority of your brand. Pulling quality traits from every experience you’ve had and why it’s highly-valuable to your clients. Why you should never have to chase your audience, and instead, keep them knocking at your door. What not to do on LinkedIn, so you can avoid being the pushy salesperson online. Why you shouldn’t change who you are from platform to platform. - Your voice should be the same everywhere you go. The secret to pitching to large businesses and landing the gig. LinkedIn for slackers 101 - Do more with less. How to turn your LinkedIn profile into a client lead magnet. Why LinkedIn is tried, tested, and true for growth and authority. The ins and outs of writing for yourself and why we tend to lose the clarity that we see in other people. The importance of visibility and becoming a highly sought-after copywriter. (People buy from who they know exists.) Why you shouldn’t chase squirrels and give yourself a break instead. How to structure your days for maximum productivity as a parent. The mistakes of underestimating how long a project will take and taking on projects just for the money. Defining what growth means for YOU, and why you need to run your business like a marathon. How to create more than just financial goals, plus the power of creating mistakes.
Hit the play button and soak up the brilliance that is Marietta. Prefer to read? Check out the transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Marietta’s Website Marietta’s LinkedIn guide Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Bree’s Episode Dave’s Episode Selena’s Episode
Full Transcript: Rob: Is running a business, feel like a race against your competition or a race against yourself. You find yourself setting bigger goals, or working harder, and doing more only to figure out that you need to slow down and choose, maybe, a different race. Sometimes we chase the wrong goals, stuff like 10K a month, or six figure years, maybe even wanting to be a million dollar copywriter and our guests for the 238 episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast is personal brand strategist, Marietta Gentles Crawford. She compared her own business to running a race as we talked to her and she shared a lot of, really, good ideas for using LinkedIn more effectively.
Kira: Before we hear what Marietta has to share with us, this podcast episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Think Tank. The Think Tank is a private mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create new revenue streams in their businesses, receive coaching from the two of us and ultimately grow to six figures or more.
Up until last year, we only opened a Think Tank once a year, but today we invite a few new members each quarter. If you've been looking for a mastermind to help you grow, go to copywriterthinktank.com to learn more.
Rob: Okay. So, let's jump into our interview with Marietta with a first question about how she became a brand strategist and a LinkedIn specialist.
Kira: Okay. So, Marietta, we'd love to start with your story. How did you end up as a personal brand strategist and LinkedIn expert?
Marietta Gentles Crawford: I really stumbled into it, to be honest. I was an entrepreneur as I call myself, I was working within different companies as a technical writer and trainer,
Dave Ruel joins us for the 237th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Dave is a serial entrepreneur and best-selling author of the book, “Done by Noon.” There’s an ongoing need to get more done in less time, and Dave paves the way to do just that. Whether it’s working fewer hours, finding a work-life balance, or you just need more direction when it comes to productivity, this episode is a must-listen. Here’s what we talked about: • The plus side to bodybuilding and fitness and how it can be applied to business. • How to manage discipline as a business owner, so you can achieve more in less time. • The Effic method. What is it and how can you apply this to your life? • Working hard leads to more success right? Not quite. It’s about working the right way. • The better way to plan out goals and reach them. • Why you need buckets in your business. • How to look at your tasks from a different perspective and minimize urgency. • The 4 types of tasks you need to implement into your life and business. • What energy management can do for you. • Narrowing down the most important things when everything seems top of the to do list. • Creating the fine line between urgent and important. • How small things compound over time to make the greatest success. • 5 elements to better habits and a better morning routine. • The quickest, easiest way to get more done. • Why you need to measure discipline over time and cut yourself some slack along the way.
Habits, discipline, and energy management are key components to a successful business. Hit the play button or check out the transcript to absorb it all.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Done By Noon by Dave Ruel Dave’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank
Full Transcript: Kira: How often do you get to the end of your day and think, "I was busy, but did I really get anything done?" Do you ever look back over the last month or even the last quarter and wonder why you don't have time for the big things you want to do in your business or your life? Maybe the problem isn't our calendar or our to-do list. Maybe the problem has to do with our approach to managing our time and our energy levels. Today's guest for the 237th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Dave Ruel. Dave is a former bodybuilder who realized that his approach to exercise might be a good way to approach all the projects he wanted to get done each week.
Rob: Before we get to the interview with Dave, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. That's our private mastermind that we've been telling you about for the last couple of weeks. It's for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other. They want to create new revenue streams in their business, create new products in their business, receive one-on-two coaching from Kira and myself, and ultimately grow your business to whatever your goal is.
Rob: We often say six figures or more. But if that's not your goal, we designed it to help you reach the goal that you have for your business. If you've been looking for a dynamic mastermind to help you grow as a copywriter and as a business owner, visit copywriterthinktank.com and set up a short information session with us to find out more.
Kira: Now, let's jump into our conversation with Dave.
Dave: I'm going to go back to my days as a fitness athlete. This is pretty much when it all started. So, in the early 2000s, I was an amateur competitive bodybuilder. So, I was very obsessed with everything fitness, bodybuilding, muscle building, you name it. In 2007, I met a guy named Lee Hayward. We were fellow competitors on the regional circuit. So, we've known of each other within the local circuit, but I've never met Lee in person. I was traveling to his hometown to compete that weekend. So,
Nicola Moors brought so much to the 236th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Nicola started her career as an investigative journalist who wrote about topics that are not easy for everyone to tell or to write. In her time as a journalist, she was able to gain essential skills that make her a great and sought-after copywriter today. Dive into this episode to uplevel your “interview” skills.
We also talked about:
How becoming a copywriter leads to more things you love. Creating a safe space for women to share stories that severely impacted their lives. The challenge of making stories unique and different from each other. Why you should never call an interview “an interview.” How to replicate someone’s voice without a brand guide and do it effectively. Mental and emotional stability when writing about mentally exhaustive topics. Why it’s vital to separate yourself from the story, so you can help people share their experiences in an impactful way. The best way to find captivating hooks that pique interest. The importance of letting people speak more than you do. The advantages of Facebook and finding your first few clients. Why backing yourself is the key to your own success. How to grow with a network of supportive copywriters in a lonely online world. How being cheeky and upfront will get you what you want and boost confidence. The truth about the stories you tell yourself and when it’s time to let them go. The back and forth of being both a procrastinator and a perfectionist. - Can they live in harmony? The better way to get testimonials and feedback. (Hint: It’s all about making it less work-like.) The plus side to being organized and putting together systems that streamline. Why it's important to celebrate your own wins as much as your clients. The secret to nailing Kira and Rob’s voice. Is it possible? The trick to making your previous clients feel special and remembered. Reversing into brick walls. - Ever done it?
Be sure not to miss this episode whether it be by listening or reading the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Nicola’s website Celeb Copywriter Brand Voice Buddy Think Tank
Full Transcript: Rob: This probably doesn't come as a surprise, but a lot of copywriters get their start in the world of journalism, whether they earn a degree or actually work writing news stories. As reporters, they learn how to find a story that readers are interested in, how to research and find important details and how to find a hook and tell a story, all skills that we need as copywriters. This week's guest for the 236th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is think tank member, Nicola Moors. And as you might expect from my intro, Nic was a reporter before she made the leap into copywriting. We asked her about what she learned from that experience and what she's done to grow her copywriting business so quickly since going full-time early last year.
Kira: Before we hear what Nic has to say, this podcast episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Think Tank. The think tank is our private mastermind group for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create new revenue streams in their businesses, receive coaching from the two of us and ultimately grow to six figures or more. Up until last year we only opened the think tank once a year, but today we invite a few new members each quarter. If you've been looking for a mastermind to help you grow, email help@thecopywriterclub.com to set up an interview.
Rob: Okay, so let's jump into our interview with Nic and find out why she left the world of journalism for life as a copywriter.
Nic: The truthful story is very on-brand for me. So I think you're going to like it. So basically I was working as a journalist and one of my colleag...
For the 235th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by Jill Wise. Jill is a brand and marketing strategist, conversion copywriter, and business coach. As much as she’s dedicated to her craft and her clients, she’s also driven to create an authentic online presence. Pushing through the noise and the “rules'' of what she’s supposed to do online, she’s been able to showcase who she truly is and attract clients who align with her same brand values. Don’t miss this episode all about being more YOU in a crowded space while serving your clients at the maximum level. In this episode, we dive deep into: • Going from a side-hustle to full-on copywriter. • How to break the rules the RIGHT way and feel great about it. • Creating a safe space for clients and allowing open communication right from the discovery call. • The step-by-step process of a white-glove experience and making sure your clients are supported every step of the way. • Why an automated system can be a great addition to your business and enhance your workflow and respect your boundaries. • 3 tips to enhance productivity and getting your ideal schedule defined. • How to shift mindset from freelancer to business owner and what it will do for your business. • The question: Should you give your client a to do list? • The truth about showing up online and finding your true voice • The secret to building discipline—no, it’s not a trait you're born with • The ins and out of solving problems and finding real solutions for clients • When something doesn’t work… how to reframe, reevaluate, and get back out there • Why you should add other skills to your repertoire • How to properly evaluate competitors—mimic or do better? • When you get the advice to “dumb yourself down…” run!
Whether you’re a new freelance copywriter or an established business owner, you’ll gain new insights and ideas on how to project your own business forward. Click the play button below to listen, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
The Copywriter Think Tank Jill’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: Does this ring a bell for you? You see what everyone else in the copywriting world is doing. You hear what clients expect and you even get advice from a coach that you need to act just like everyone else to get the thing you want. The game's got rules and if you don't play by them, you'll stay on the bench. That's what Jill Wise, Think Tank mastermind member and our guest for the 235th episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast was told. Play nice, dumb things down, don't rock the boat, or you won't attract the clients you want. But something was off and recently, Jill decided to ignore that advice and be more true to who she is. And in this interview, she revealed her new brand transformation with us.
Rob: Before we share what Jill told us, this podcast episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Think Tank. That's our private mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create new revenue streams in their business, receive one on two coaching from the two of us, and ultimately grow to six figures or more. If you've been looking for a dynamic mastermind to help you grow as a copywriter and as a business owner, visit copywriterthinktank.com to set up a short information session or email us at help@thecopywriterclub.com with questions.
Kira: The Copywriter Think Tank will help you figure out a lot of the same stuff we cover in this interview with Jill; things like client boundaries, creating better processes and figuring out what your brand stands for. Now, let's jump into our conversation with Jill Wise.
Jill: I graduated university and my husband is a few years older than me, we were dating at the time and he moved to Montreal and I did the thing,
For the 233rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Mariah Phillips shares the secret to building a copywriting business in the nonprofit sector. Mariah is a Digital Marketing Strategist and Copywriter based in Baltimore, Maryland. She teaches entrepreneurs how to market their businesses and tell their stories. If you’ve been looking for a way to make an impact in your copywriting career, give this episode a listen. (Or read.) Here's what we talked about in this interview: • Mariah’s journey through brand story development and the secret to long standing brands. • How to write for top nonprofits AND earn a living. • The right way to build a local community event with the power of words. • The brilliant way to pivot and share knowledge with others about your expertise. • A day in the life of an agency writer: sampling 10’s of voices?! • The truth about going down the rabbit whole. (Can it actually be a good thing?) • What you need to know about working in fundraising. - and storytelling. • The formula to learn when writing to people not directly receiving a benefit. • The better way to navigate a conversation with agencies and their strategy. • Why you should give more value than your client pays for. • How to go from scrappy freelance mindset to empowered CEO mindset. • The quickest, easiest way to NOT connect with your clients. • Why it’s vital to connect with people where they’re at. • 5 ways you should use the same metaphor. - or shouldn’t.
This is an interview you won't want to miss. To hear it, click the play button below. Or school down to read the full transcript below and while you’re reading… subscribe with your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: Time and time again, guests on our podcast have told us they started copywriting without actually knowing that what they were doing was writing copy. They were just figuring out how to market a product or service and copy was a natural part of the process. That's also true of today's guests for the 233rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Mariah Phillips. Mariah jumped from PR to fundraising to SEO before figuring out that the thing she did best in all of those roles was copywriting.
Rob: Before we share our interview with Mariah, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. The Think Tank is a private mastermind group for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create new revenue streams in their business, receive one on two coaching from the two of us and ultimately grow their businesses to six figures or more. If you've been looking for a mastermind to help you grow, email us at help@thecopywriterclub.com to set up an interview or go to copywriterthinktank.com.
Kira: Now let's jump into our conversation with Mariah.
Mariah: Somehow I've always been a copywriter and didn't know it. So as I worked... I started in corporate America, I worked in a boutique PR firm in then New York Metro area. And so while there, we had to do a lot of brand story development for clients. Some of our clients were global and longstanding brands, and since some of them were brand new and sold quirky things like monocles, like this was their first time ever stepping out. And so my responsibility was to write their brand story, write copy, and even write pitches which isn't necessarily copy, but pitches to the media are making a sale. So, I did that and then I transitioned to working for an ed tech company called 2U, Inc. And in the process there, I started off as a placement specialist for a clinical social work program. And if you don't know anything about 2U, Inc basically they power the biggest universities in the country, they power their online master's programs.
On the 232nd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’ve got Marcus McNeill. Marcus is the co-founder and CEO of Magic based in Boulder, Colorado. He works with purpose-driven companies who seek global impact and change around both the country and world. He’s helped leaders such as Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra spread their missions and messages across the globe. You may want to grab a notepad right away because this episode is full of insights you won’t want to miss. In this episode, we discussed: • How a conscious-based life can radically shift perspective. • Why learning from Deepak Chopra became the greatest catalyst to vulnerability and openness. • The secret to going from monkey mind to observing thoughts with confidence • How an agency helped in decriminalizing magic mushrooms. - and the key marketing components needed to make such an impact. • How to create multiple avatars for one campaign and nail their personal values to make an impact. • The ingredients behind asking people to change their buyer behavior and trust a new brand. Is it possible? • Where copywriters are getting their customer avatars wrong and why they should spend more time in the research. • How copywriters have the power to truly make an impact and difference around the world. • What you need to know before starting an agency and what should come first. • The reality of growing a business - why it’s okay to take a step back, so you can take two steps forward. • 3 ways you can gain clients and close sales like it’s nothin’. • How to maximize customer experience and become a partner with your client. • The client comes first, right? Think again, when your team is connected and nurtured, great work follows. • The truth about combining business and wellness. Can the two coexist? • Why small impact matters and how it can be the first magic step.
This episode might leave you thinking about impact and copywriting in a whole new light. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. And of course, you should subscribe with your favorite podcast app to ensure you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Our Event for Copywriters Marianne Williamson The E-myth Revisited by Michael Gerber Jonny Stellar Magic Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: If you're a longtime fan of this podcast, or I guess any other podcast, you've probably had the experience of listening to a guest share their story and what they learned, and then had to reach for a pen and paper to capture the ideas that they're sharing, so that they don't get lost, or so that you don't forget them. Maybe you've even had to pull off the road as you were driving, or tell your kids to be quiet so that you don't miss something that you could use in your business.
That's exactly how we felt more than a handful of times in this interview. Our guest for the 232nd episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast is Marcus McNeill, the founder of Magic. And as we spoke to Marcus, we found ourselves taking more notes than usual, trying to capture the wisdom that he shared about building his business. Fair warning, you might want to grab a pen and a notebook, or pull off to the side of the road, as you listen to this episode.
Kira: Before we share our interview with Marcus, this is the last week for a while that this podcast is brought to you by TCC, Not in Real Life, our event for copywriters and other smart marketers. And the reason for that? Well, it's just about the last week you can get a ticket for our event, which happens April 7th through the 9th. If you want to learn firsthand from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Eman Ishmael, and so many more. You need to get your ticket today. To do that, visit thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl-1.
On the 231st episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’re joined by Sara Vartanian. Sara is a launch strategist and copywriter, but before that, she was a teacher and e-commerce business owner. She’s really done it all. After obtaining vast knowledge of the copywriting world through her e-commerce business, Sara has been able to grow her presence and establish herself as an authority in the online space. If you’re ready to create an effective lead magnet and begin building your email list, then you’ve come to the right place. Some of what we cover, includes:
• how to carry over skills from teaching into copywriting, plus two tips on being a better mentor. • why giving less is more and how to charge for value rather than trying to give away your soul for pennies. • when it may be time to let go of clients who are no longer serving you and open up space for new opportunities. • how to create strong boundaries right from the sales call and how to stick with them. (No matter how hard it may be.) • the secret to putting yourself in front of the right communities in order to build genuine relationships and establish authority. • creating a lead magnet your ideal client wants AND needs • the right and wrong ways of building an email list - are pop ups the way to go? • why the “omg, you get me email” is crucial to building a relationship right away. • 4 emails that need to follow the first in your welcome sequence • the truth about launching...do you need to have all the bells and whistles? • 3 ways to manage your energy during a launch. • why it’s vital to set clear expectations about launch copy. • the single most important component of driving sales to a launch. • the sneaky way to get more people in the doors for your product. (or your client’s) • a better way to handle burnout and sustain productivity and creativity. • the secret to viewing comparisonitis in a positive light and where to find the best support in your copywriting business.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Best Copywriter Club event of the year! Sara's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
On the 230th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Rob and Kira are going guestless. They’re sitting back and answering some questions they get frequently among our community. They’re giving their best advice and tips for new and established copywriters who are looking to level up and sustain what they’re building. In this episode, we dive into:
• when you’ll get the chance to build the foundations of your business with us in just 3 months • the truth about working for free - should you do it? • how to hire a VA that will pay for themselves. • 9 books we’re reading right now - one genre? Never. • the #1 question we get asked every. single. day. • the 3 biggest levers when it comes to pricing your offers. • how to choose the most profitable niches in copywriting. • the good and the bad of Clubhouse. (Note: We will be on Clubhouse on Tuesdays at 5PM EST.) • if you don’t have copywriting samples for a particular project, here’s what you should do. • the secret to building trust with potential clients. • what Rob & Kira would do differently if they were beginners. • success as a copywriter - how we define success • how to maintain your business as you’re helping scale others.
Tune in and listen as we give candid advice on your most asked questions. Hit the play button below or check out the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
The Copywriter Club Annual Event - Early Bird Sale Ends March 22nd
Done by Noon by Dave Ruel Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson & Mark Ford Yes to Life by Viktor Frankl Man Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt Facing the Climate Emergency by Margaret Salamon Fair Play by Eve Rodsky The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday The Copywriter’s Ultimate Guide to Using Clubhouse Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: If you've been listening to the show for the last three plus years, you no doubt have heard us ask hundreds, maybe even thousands of questions to the amazing copywriters and experts who have been on the show. We've even asked a few people to join us and turn the tables to ask us questions. Today we're going guestless for the 230th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, and we're answering the questions that get asked the most often in our free Facebook group, as well as some questions that are asked in our paid programs, like The Copywriter Accelerator and The Copywriter Underground.
Kira Hug: When you say guestless, it makes it sound like we're naked.
Rob Marsh: Does it?
Kira Hug: Like we're missing something. Yeah, it sounds like we're shedding all the layers today and it's just us.
Rob Marsh: Nice. I would hate to think that people would think that we're not clothed here, but yeah, that's ... How embarrassing.
Kira Hug: It's just us today, naked and we're going to answer your questions. Before we do that, this podcast episode is brought to you by TCC(N)IRL, of course it's The Copywriter Club (Not) In Real Life, our event for copywriters and other smart marketers who want to learn from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Carline Anglade-Cole, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Eman Ismail and more than a dozen others. But this event is not just about great presentations, it's not just about sitting at your computer and staring at Zoom all day. It's really about connecting with other copywriters in intimate virtual spaces so you can build real relationships, even possibly friendships, partnerships, and also get a lot of work done while you're with us over the three days. So we're really focused on doing, not just learning, and we're focused on implementation through workshops. So you're not just sitting through a presentation and then going back to your work with nothing to show for it.
On the 229th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Selena Soo shares it all when it comes to publicity. During a difficult period, Selena began seeking information but found inspiration. Selena became a publicity strategist after stepping into the power of connecting others and helping people share their message with the world. If publicity isn’t something on your mind, it will be after listening in on this episode.
In this episode, we cover:
• how to get your ideal client to find you • why investing in yourself can change the game for your business and life • the impact of hustle culture and seeking a balance • when you include publicity, more eyes are on your core message • the secret to building a strong body of work • how to use being an introvert to your advantage • why you need to clear on what you want to be known for • what kind of media you should be in front of, plus how to decide on mainstream topics • two techniques you can use to pitch yourself • when and how to join the right mastermind programs • why your body of work matters no matter the size • the quickest, easiest way to amplify your message • 5 things you need to realize when it comes to mindset and pitching • the truth behind being vulnerable online • why sharing what’s important to you matters online • if you’re showing up in any form of media, Selena shares what you need to have prepared
New to publicity or maybe you never thought it was THAT important? Think again. You’re about to learn a thing or two from an expert connector. Hit play below!
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
TCC(N)IRL Event 2021 Free Video Series - Impacting Millions Program Selena's blog post about abuse Selena's free calendar Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat Pray Love Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: Getting noticed by the right people is a talent. And while we've talked a lot about pitching on this podcast lately, I think we can all agree that life is so much easier when your ideal client finds you rather than the other way around. To get to that place in your business, it sure helps to have publicity, AKA other people sharing your thoughts and ideas on their platforms. That's something we can all use more of, right? Our guest for the 229th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is publicity strategist, Selena Soo. She didn't waste any time helping us figure out what we should be doing to get more publicity for our business. And we think you'll get a ton out of this interview too.
Rob: We'll get back to our interview with Selena in a moment. But first, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club (Not) In Real Life, or TCC(N)IRL. That's our event for copywriters and other smart marketers who want to learn more from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Carline Anglade-Cole, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Eman Ismail, and more than a dozen others. But TCC(N)IRL is about more than just presentations, it's about connecting with other copywriters, helping you to form real relationships, true friendships, and maybe even a successful partnership with another copywriter.
To learn more, visit TheCopywriterClub.com/TCCNIRL-2021. And if you don't remember that link, you can find it in the show notes of this episode on The Copywriter Club website.
Kira: Now, let's jump into our conversation with Selena.
So why don't you kick off your story just, how did you end up as a publicity and marketing strategist?
Salena Soo: Absolutely. It actually started in my mid 20s when I had a quarter life crisis. I was clinically depressed, I was having trouble eating and getting out of that in the mornings. I reached such a low point that my mom flew from Vancouver, Canada to New York at the time, just to be by my side to help me get through life. And she would get on the subway and take me to wo...
On the 228th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by Eddie Biroun. Eddie is a conversion copywriter for e-comm and education brands and a forever learner of his craft. After fumbling into copywriting, he knew it was something he wanted to commit to for the long run. He became intrigued with understanding branding and what truly makes a brand stand the test of time. During our conversation, we talked about going from professional student to professional copywriter and how you can make the same leap.
We also talked about:
• why stages of awareness are important and why buzzwords don’t create a connection • failing and how you can (and should) make it work to your advantage • how expecting a perfect first draft is like looking for a unicorn • going from obtaining knowledge and skills in copywriting to putting it into action • Eddie’s process in downloading the voice of a new client and why it’s important to effective copy • how your creative artist and managerial side have to be separate when writing the first draft • why feedback (even negative feedback) is essential to becoming a better copywriter • choosing projects and people who empower you and respect your craft • how learning and improving will always be a part of copywriting and it doesn’t need to be something you learn in a day • how having a mentor speeds up the process because direct feedback is readily available • where to look for red flags and how using your gut can save you a lot of headaches • why building a better relationship with your mind will help you tackle imposter syndrome when it comes up (because it does for all of us) • why taking care of your life side of things is vital to take care of the work side of things • how copywriters have the power to make other people’s dreams come true (we are wizards after all) • copywriting isn’t just a flippant task, it’s the infrastructure for long-term success • why having a morning routine will keep you focused when in the copy cave (did we mention this includes reading?) • how to navigate through writer’s block when perfectionism or ideas need to be uncovered
Need a dose of motivation to stop going into information overload and start applying what you’re learning? This episode with Eddie might do just the trick. Hit the play button below (or read the transcript below!)
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Almanack of Naval How to Create Your Copywriter Website (written by Eddie) Eddie's Instagram Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: Getting better at copywriting, this thing that we all do, isn't easy. And sometimes we get stuck in a project, we get stuck getting started or we get stuck struggling to find clients. Our guest for the 228th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Eddie Biroun. Eddie is the kind of copywriter who hates getting stuck and he's figured out what it takes to get moving again when he has gotten stuck. In fact, he's made dramatic improvements over the past year or two in how fast he writes, in the quality of his writing and the kinds of clients that he's working with. We think that you're going to get quite a bit from the experiences that Eddie shares in this interview.
Kira: Before we share our interview with Eddie, this podcast episode is brought to you by TCC (Not) In Real Life, our event for copywriters and other smart marketers who want to learn from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Momo Price, and so many others like them. But it's not just about speakers and presentations and sitting through more Zoom calls because you don't need that. TCC IRL is really famous for connecting copywriters with each other and helping you to form real relationships, even friendships, potentially partnerships with other copywriters and marketers. To learn more,
On the 227th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by content writer Jacob McMillen, who as you'll see towards the end of the episode is an SEO master. Jacob shares his insights on writing great copy and running a content business. Through actively listening and really wanting to help others in his door-to-door sales job, he decided to take the world of copywriting for a spin. Having scaled to 6 figures, we talked about the stages of business as a freelancer and what it really takes to make it. What's more... he’s the #1 search result for “copywriter” on Google. We break down:
• how copywriting can be the good of sales without the ick • how Jacob went from accounting student (who didn't want to be an accountant) to copy expert • Jacob’s natural talent for connecting a solution to a problem • the perfect lucrative combination of marketing • how batting 5% is crushing the pitching game • how persistence is necessary in the beginning • how to get your ideal customer to agitate their own problems • the ropes of reeling in clients during the early stages • why putting your eggs in one basket can leave you scrambled • how Jacob went from 3k months to 20k • how pitches can be the bread and butter when in need • how flirting with SEO paid off & created 30+ monthly leads • how to stand out in 2021 as a new copywriter • why not to compare yourself to other copywriters • building a copywriting agency and how it’s not for everyone • if flipping websites could be the new real estate? • how new technology cannot replace copywriting geniuses
If you’re ready to go from side-hustle to business owner, this episode is worth checking out. Grab a cup of coffee, hit play & start taking notes.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Copywriter Think Tank Empire Flippers Jacob's Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This week we talked about the different stages of business as a freelancer with our guest, copywriter, and entrepreneur, Jacob McMillen. Jacob is currently the number one US search result for the search term copywriter, which means we should all team up and up our SEO game and challenge his number one spot.
Rob: We'll come back to Jacob's interview in just a moment, but first you should know that this interview is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. That's our incredibly valuable membership for copywriters who are done figuring out things by themselves and want to surround themselves with an awesome community of copywriters. It includes our perfect proposal training, our persuasion course, our new sales course, plus more than 20 templates and dozens of presentations all designed to help you make progress in your business. You can learn more about it at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: Now let's get to our conversation with Jacob. Jacob, we would love to just start with your story, a very detailed story of how you got into copywriting. Do not leave anything out.
Jacob McMillen: Okay. I think it's a relatively fun story. I think you have to start back when I got into sales and unlike a normal person, my start in sales was door to door sales in college. I got roped into doing it one summer. I needed a lot of money. It sounded a little ridiculous, but the numbers made sense to me. So I was like, I'm just going to do it. And I made enough to pay for three years of school in 16 weeks... Not 16 weeks, yes, 12 weeks. And I really enjoyed the sales process. I enjoyed sitting down with someone talking to them, hearing about their needs, connecting what they needed to the solutions I was selling. There were also a lot of things about direct sales that I hated.
So after college, I graduated with an accounting degree. Only thing I knew was I'm not going into accounting. So I was like, what's next?
Our guest for the 226th episode of The Copywriter Podcast is Christy Cegelski. Like many people who’ve become copywriters, Christy’s journey to becoming a copywriter was not a traditional one. She learned her marketing and copywriting skills after launching her own FOOD business. She gave us insights on how starting a business the “right” way isn’t the only way. Great results can be achieved by going off the beaten course and by following intuition. If you’re thinking about how your own background could prove useful in your copywriting career, make sure to give this episode a listen.
This is how it all breaks down, we talked about:
• how Christy went from mommy blogger to food creator • how margarita mix made Christy a copywriter • the stigma of not being paid well as a writer was proving painfully true in the beginning • her passion working behind the scenes with email funnels, website copy, social media • the end of the food creation business but the beginning of a new one • how she became the GO TO for all things websites & emails • how she was able to grow her email list + social media organically • how she proved email marketing was never “dead” • the knowledge she brought into copywriting from her previous business endeavors • when she knew copywriting was going to be a business • how she used “the google method” in the beginning to price her offers • why “figuring it out” in the beginning can be a positive and negative thing • using feminine strategies rather than masculine & following intuition to do what feels fulfilling • navigating burnout while learning a new skill • why she outsourced before she was ready + the results • how she’s scaled her prices overtime & works less • Christy’s writing process + flow of creativity • the struggles of going from storytelling to the point of the copy • having a launch plan prior to starting a podcast + who should start one • the benefits of having a podcast - reciprocal promotions • how learning about something and taking action towards it are two different things
Ready to elevate your mindset as a copywriter? Don’t miss this episode with Christy. Click the play button below, or subscribe using your favorite podcast app.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Christy's website Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: So many copywriters follow what we've called a winding path from one career or kind of experience to their role as a copywriter. And some even grow beyond that to help with things like branding or voice development and marketing strategy. Our guest for the 226th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Christy Cegelski. Christy started writing as a mommy blogger, but then she got really serious about selling when she and her husband launched a company to sell the margarita mix that they had created. What she learned from running that company came in handy when other business owners started reaching out and asking for help with their copy for their businesses.
Kira: Before we share our interview with Christy, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. That's the membership for copywriters who are ready to start investing in their business, improve their sales calls, proposals, and build a network that supports them with ideas, leads, and more. To learn more, visit thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: Christy's experience ranges from mommy blogger to food product creator, to copywriter, to digital product maker and podcaster. But we started our interview with a question about how she became a copywriter.
Christy Cegelski: It's funny because listening to so many of your podcasts, I realized that none of us have a typical story where we dreamed one day we were going to become a copywriter, and here we are. I guess I kind of,
One of the things we love about The Copywriter Club Facebook group is that we have members all over the world… in just the last 60 days, members from 99 different countries on every continent except Antartica—places like Bulgaria, Colombia, Lithuania, Nigeria, India, and of course the UK, US, Australia, and Canada—have stopped in to read posts, ask questions, comment or just learn from the advice and wisdom shared in the group. Our guest for the 225th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is SEO copywriter and content strategist, Chima Mmeje, who like so many others, joined the group and used the information she found there to hone her business as she started looking for clients. And now, she’s paying it all forward.
She talks about: • studying LinkedIn for lead generation (then landing her first client with her very first post!) • the reason we should focus on human content just as much as expert content • articulating her process in order to raise her prices • blogging to generate organic leads and answer frequently asked questions • her initial struggle of finding her value — and building her authority as an African copywriter...and so much more • Chima also spoke about The Freelance Coalition for Developing Countries — the initiative she started to pair experienced copywriters, marketers and creatives with their counterparts in developing countries.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. And if you haven't yet, subscribe with your favorite podcast app to make sure you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Chima's webpage Chima's LinkedIn Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: One of the things we love about The Copywriter Club Facebook group is that we have members all over the world. In just the last 60 days, members from 99 different countries on every continent except Antarctica... Places like Bulgaria, Columbia, Lithuania, Nigeria, India and of course, the UK, U.S., Australia and Canada, they've all stopped to repost, ask questions, show up in the group, comment or just learn from the advice and wisdom shared in the group. Our guest for the 225th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Chima Mmeje, who like so many others, joined the group and used the information she found there to hone her business as she started looking for clients. And now, she's paying it all forward.
Rob: We'll share Chima's story and how she's paying her experience forward in just a minute but first, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, that's the incredibly valuable membership for copywriters who are ready to start investing in their business, improving their sales skills, their proposals and building a network that supports them with ideas, leads and more. As a member of the Underground, you have access to a full sales training course, our proposal training course, the persuasion training course plus dozens of other trainings to improve your copywriting, your mindset and marketing your own business. To learn more, visit the thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: As we like to do, we started off by asking Chima how she ended up as an SEO copywriter and content strategist.
Chima Mmeje: I used to work for a company that are based in the UK. I worked with them remotely from 2017 until April 2019 and while I was working with them, most of the content we're creating was for these big SEO agents in the UK, they were the biggest SEO agents in the UK at the time. And I realized that I always had the most fun when I was writing content for them, as against writing content for clients in other industries. And my boss used to have a background working with Google, so he was always very helpful in answering questions and my interest kept growing. So by the time I left, I played around with several industries,
Today’s guest for the 224th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is Bree Weber. Bree has a somewhat different approach to cold pitching than some past guests we’ve had on the podcast. One that takes a lot more time, but also seems to get better results. We ask her not only to divulge all of the secrets to her process, but she also shares a pitch she used to land a big client. One we think will make you want to pause this episode and take note. Scroll down to have a listen.
A few other things we discussed were…
• how she became a copywriter through a process she calls business roulette • what pet photography, video game streamer and Super Meat Boy all have in common • what is ethical cold pitching and Bree’s process for making it effective • how Bree created credibility and authority in her pitches when she had “no portfolio, no fancy names to drop or real stats…” • how she reinvented herself after losing all of her retainer clients in 2020 • Bree’s fears and anxieties she’s worked through when it comes to sales • what she’s done to turn cold pitching on its head; taking it from stigmatized to impossible to ignore • why Bree is getting responses from prospective clients within minutes instead of days or never • how Bree creates space in her schedule for thinking intentionally about her business • what to avoid in your call to action, so you don’t turn prospective clients off • what advice she would give to herself 3 years ago to fast track her business growth • breaking down how she uses video to follow up with clients instead of just another email • tips for bypassing years of experience many need to work with major brands and dream clients • why Bree stays open in all aspects of her business • what persuasion techniques have worked for Bree in her pitches • how to make clients say “thank you” for your pitch instead of just deleting it • why Bree says to get comfortable with “trying on an identity” • what has surprised Bree most about her time in the Copywriter Think Tank • Kira and Rob’s advice on taking “imperfect action” and surrounding yourself with action takers
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Laura Lopuch Chris Collins Belinda Weaver Bree's Masterclass offer for our listeners Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
Copywriter and philosophy graduate, Chris Collins is our guest for the 223rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. He's a member of the Underground and the Copywriter Think Tank so we've seen first hand how cold pitching has transformed his copywriting career and helped him get the clients he wants. We knew this is something we wanted to hear more about directly from Chris, so we asked him about...
• how being a mommy blogger launched his career • how he saved himself hours of time streamlining his pitching process and scaling it • how he got past his fear of cold pitching • exactly how many emails should you send to your email list? • the importance of building relationships versus up leveling yourself • why just learning “stuff” isn’t enough • what to do if you don’t have money to invest in yourself or your business • why research is critical for a stand-out cold pitch • Chris's highest converting subject line – averaging over a 90% open rate • how he combines automating with personalization • his not-so-secret shortcut for how he built his copywriting business from 0-10K per month in the same year • his advice on pitching if you’ve never had a client • what his graduate studies in philosophy taught him about strengthening his copy • what he did right in the beginning of his business that you should too • Rob and Kira’s advice on getting started and dealing with rejection
To hear more of what Chris has to say, scroll down and hit the play button. Keep scrolling for a full transcript and, of course, you can subscribe with your favorite podcast app to make sure you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: reply.io The Copywriter Think Tank The Copywriter Accelerator Chris's LinkedIn christophercollins.co Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: There's an old cartoon that was published in the New Yorker Magazine of a dog in front of a computer, and the caption says, "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." That might ring true for a lot of copywriters who write for clients in voices that don't quite match their own, like our guest for the 223rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Chris Collins, whose first assignment was writing content for a mommy blogger. In real life, Chris is an academic, doesn't have kids and gravitates to philosophy, not family planning. We asked Chris how he transitioned from mommy blogger to SAS, and in the process, he revealed a ton of tips about the ins and outs of cold pitching.
Rob: But before we dive into Chris's story, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator. That's our program for copywriters who want to build a solid business foundation for everything that they do. Members of The Accelerator work through eight different modules together, and those modules cover topics like branding, pricing, client management, getting yourself in front of the right clients, and a lot more. If you've struggled to get transaction in your business, or you're making a change in the kinds of clients that you want to work with, the kind of work that you want to do, or any other thing in your business, you simply want to get better at your processes and the services that you sell, you owe it to yourself to learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Kira: Let's jump in with a question about how Chris got started as a copywriter/ mommy blogger.
Chris Collins: My first gig was being a mommy blogger, and that wasn't necessarily where I wanted to be as a writer or where I wanted to start out, but it was just honestly the first gig that I got. I had just been thinking, "Well, maybe I can try my hand at writing online. I'm a pretty good writer. Let's see how that'll go." And the first client I found, she ran a sleep consultancy to help new moms. And she was looking for a blog writer and I sent he...
What does it take to build a successful business from scratch? We're talking about going from nothing to 6 or even 7 figures as a freelancer. Well as you know, it's not one simple thing, but a combination of a lot of things from choosing a niche and building your network to encouraging referrals and building multiple streams of income. Our guest for the 222nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Brandi Mowles. We talk to her about her step-by-step approach for creating a successful business that can work for you. In this episode we discuss:
• why doing "what she's supposed to do" didn't work out for her • why Brandi went to law school with zero intention of working as a lawyer afterwards • why she chose to lean into network marketing and what that has to do with the "glass ceiling" • how she took a leap of faith and went all in with her online businesses • whether or not there is a grace period for niching down - her take on it • her journey from VA to Social Media Ads Manager to Coach and Business Strategist • what she did to stand out and market her services for free • the biggest personal lesson Brandi learned in direct sales and how it changed her perspective on work, family and her identity • what Brandi calls the GIF effect and why it’s so important to your business • why you should only choose ONE thing to change every launch • dealing with trolls • why the first 24 hours after the first contact is so important for delighting your clients and how Brandi does just that • creating your own referral program and getting leads from your best clients • building a win-win ecosystem with other freelancers • why she wants you to have 2-3 revenue streams and how she's done that for herself
This episode is filled with tips you won’t want to miss. Scroll down and hit the play button, or scroll a little farther to read a full transcript. Or download the episode to your podcast player. Better still, subscribe and never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
The Copywriter Accelerator Bonjoro Brandi’s website Beta to Biggie Accelerator Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
For a lot of us, being a copywriter is something we just stumble upon accidentally. And for most beginners, it’s getting harder and harder to know what to do when you’re starting out. Our guest for the 221st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Delesia Watson. If you’re a beginning copywriter, or you want a fresh approach on how to approach marketing and the world of copywriting, then this interview is for you. To hear everything that Delesia shared, scroll down and click the play button. Or download this episode to your favorite podcast app. You can also find a transcript below.
We also talked about:
• how Delesia’s went from social media writer to copywriter • Delesia’s start in Public Relations and how it helps her as a copywriter • Delesia’s interview process that puts prospects and clients at ease • A look into what her first year in business looked like • Power of storytelling: Why it’s important • Choosing the right words—what works and what doesn’t • The importance of story and voice • Underselling copy -- what makes the website fail • Pitching -- how to get the right clients • The kind of clients she works with • Delesia’s secret to leveraging yourself without opening your wallet • Her secret tip on how to market yourself • A pet peeve—the one thing she hates doing the most in her business • Can you succeed without knowing your niche yet? • What Delesia wishes she knew in the beginning and what she knows now • Rob and Kira’s advice to beginning (or struggling) copywriters
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
The Copywriter Accelerator Women Don't Ask by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever Ask For It by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever Bencivenga’s Bullets The Gary Halberd Letter Free and Inexpensive Resources for Copywriters Delesia’s Youtube Channel: Life is Deleesh Delesia’s Website The Copywriter Club Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: Who grows up thinking “I want to be a copywriter”? Somehow we all seem to arrive at this point in our careers after working as teachers, marketers, even professions like nurses and attorneys. Our guest for the 221st episode of The copywriter podcast is Delesia Watson, who like the rest of us, found her way into copywriting accidentally. But her background in communications, teaching, pageants and PR prepared her perfectly to make the jump.
Rob: But before we dive into Delesia's story, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator. That's our program for copywriters who want to build a solid business foundation for everything that they do. Members work through eight different modules all together, covering topics like branding, pricing, client management, getting yourself in front of the right clients.
If you've struggled to get traction in your business, or if you're making a change in the kinds of clients that you want to work with, or the kinds of work you want to do, or you simply want to get better at processes and services that you sell, you owe it to yourself to learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Kira: Let's jump in and find out how Delesia accidentally became a copywriter. All right, Delesia, we want to start off with your story as we always do. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Delesia Watson: That is hard to say, accidentally. I wasn't planning on becoming a copywriter or becoming a writer, I just knew that I was good at writing. And so my friends would ask for help writing papers and essays throughout my entire life. And then eventually I saw an opportunity to work with a smaller agency that was writing tweets. This is back in, I think 2015, they were writing tweets for thought influencers.
So I was writing these people's tweets about technology or about business. And so that was something that I could add to my resume.
How did last year affect your business? 2020 was hard on a lot of copywriters, but somewhere in all the chaos, many of them found a way to not just survive, but thrive. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we invited Claire Pelletreau to interview us about the past year, our own struggles, the changes we’ve made to our businesses and a lot more. We think the next year is full of potential and can’t wait to get started. Here’s what we talked about:
• how Claire set up her business to take maternity leave • the surprises that came as she took time away (and overcoming failure) • the mindset shifts Claire dealt with during her leave • the lessons we learned during 2020 (and Rob’s dream about COVID) • how we learned to like having a team to support our business • the pivots we had to make in our business this year • why we didn’t change our marketing sooner… waiting for pain • how the various programs at The Copywriter Club work together • the shift from live to virtual and how things got better • what we know about TCCIRL in 2021 so far… • how the past year has impacted us personally • our pep talk for what to expect in the next year • our predictions for 2021—what we think is going to happen • getting copywriters to use more Facebook ads
If you want a little more insight into our businesses and what we did over the past 12 months, this is the episode to listen to. Scroll down and click the play button. Or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. You’ll find a full transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Get Paid Podcast with Claire Pelletreau The Courage and Clarity Show with Steph Crowder The Copywriter Accelerator Todd Brown Charlie Gilkey Jereshia Hawk Brian Kurtz Claire’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
We’ve been lucky to be mentored by several copywriters and marketers over the past few years. We met one of our mentors—Brian Kurtz—when we interviewed him way back in the beginning days of The Copywriter Club. He’s our guest, for the second time, on the 219th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We asked Brian about his stroke, how he’s changed his business this past year and a lot more, including:
• using excuses to NOT do what needs to be done • how Brian predicted COVID with changes he made to his business • retiring from all the things you don’t like to do • Brian’s massive stroke and the impact it had on his business • the legacy Brian wants to leave to future generations • what he’s learned from the greatest copywriters ever • why copywriters need to own their own media • the different ways businesses have pivoted over the past year • the different “clicks” on the dial that solve your client’s problems • what he’s learned by starting a membership community • his strategy for getting his members to renew each year • what it would take to have a career like Brian’s today • why Brian—the strategic schmoozer—hates networking • the persuasive reminder that Brian keeps in his wallet • how he implements reciprocation into everything he does—and why • the “ask from nowhere” that doesn’t work and how to avoid it • his advice to anyone going through a serious challenge right now • givers and takers and where they land on the success ladder
It was great to take a few minutes to catch up with Brian. To hear the interview, scroll down and hit the play button. Keep scrolling for a full transcript and links to the things we mentioned. And, of course, you can subscribe with your favorite podcast app to make sure you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Brian’s book: Overdeliver overdeliverbook.com CoCo Dan Kennedy Gordon Grossman Robin Robins Stefan Georgi’s RMBC Influence by Robert Cialdini Give and Take by Adam Grant Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
One of the things that keeps waaaay too many copywriters from achieving their goals is fear. Which is a little odd because it’s not like our work puts us in dangerous or risky situations. We’re not fighting fires or facing down bad guys. And we’re not standing on a trapeze platform high above the ground, mustering the courage to jump. But that’s a very real situation that Annie Bacher, our guest for the 218th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast has experienced. She told us about it—and the lesson it holds for copywriters everywhere—in this interview. We also talked about:
• how she went from writing about Argentinian circus artists to writing for clients • the “fear-less” lesson Annie learned from her trapeze artist that changed her outlook • the importance of the early career feedback Annie got from her first boss • the “what not to do” lessons she learned in her first copywriting job • the catalyst for leaving her job and going out on her own • why doing your own thing doesn’t mean you’re working on your own • the different ways Annie has grown (and changed her biz) over the last year • how cutting down on what she does has made business more enjoyable • when Kira and Rob feel the “fear” in their work • lightning decision jams and how she’s made them part of her business • a framework for brainstorming solutions to sticky problems • how you can create a workshop offer for your own business • the “big promise” for the client when they participate in an LDJ • the kinds of clients who are best for a workshop like the LDJ • Annie’s experience in the Copywriter Think Tank—what she likes most • what she’s struggled with in her business • the advice she would give to Annie from a few years ago • what we thought about the LDJs that we experienced • why it’s okay that nobody has it all figured out
This is a great interview packed with ideas you can use in your business. To hear it, scroll down and click the play button. Keep scrolling for a transcript. Or download this episode to your favorite podcast player.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott Annie's website Miro The Copywriter Underground Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
When it comes to creating the belief that you can deliver what your clients need, or that the products and services you write about will deliver a real transformation, nothing works better than a good demonstration. Our guest for episode 217 of The Copywriter Club Podcast is film maker and story teller, Jude Charles, who loves to talk about his formula for demonstrating proof. We covered a lot of ground in this interview, including…
• how Jude became a brand strategist and story teller • why he wrote 11 “books" about his future life and whether he got it right • using 10 year blocks to figure out where he is going • the teacher who gave him a set of business cards and kicked off his career • how he struggled to earn a few thousand dollars and the moment he almost gave up • the difference between perspective and vision (and getting the right lens) • figuring out the marketing and sales process to land better clients • what copywriters should do to help clients understand what they can deliver • what we all wanted to be when we “grew up” • why sales and marketing doesn’t end when a client hires you • what Jude covers in his roadmapping sessions—the stories he’s looking for • how Jude uncovers the hidden stories his clients should be telling • the differences between telling stories in copy and video • coaching clients to understand that what they share is actually interesting • why strategy is such an important part of what copywriters do • why a film maker came to our event TCCIRL, then wore a cape the following year • what it takes to raise your prices from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars • the confidence folder—and how Jude uses it to boost his performance • the moments in his life that led to big leaps in mindset and success
As usual, this episode is definitely worth a listen. Scroll down to find the play button… and a little farther to find a full transcript of the interview. But what you really should do is subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Stefan Georgi Ramit Sethi Ben Settle The Promo Jude Made for Us TCCIRL Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: David Ogilvy once wrote that visual demonstrations are effective because they help visualize your promise. They save time since you don't have to talk about what your product does, you can simply show it, and they are also memorable. But too many copywriters miss the chance to demonstrate the impact of their products and services, or their client's products. Our guest for the 217th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Jude Charles. Jude is a brand strategist, storyteller, and filmmaker who's passionate about the power of demonstrations and visual proof.
Rob: But before we dive into the demonstrations and proof, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. That's the membership community designed to help you create a more successful copywriting business. As a member, you have access to more than 60 hours of insightful training, group coaching calls, copy teardowns and reviews, weekly creative exercises, and our exclusive print newsletter mailed directly to your home. Go to thecopywriterunderground.com to learn more.
Kira: This is actually our second interview with Jude, the first one was lost when we had a technical glitch. So, we're thankful that Jude came back at all to answer our questions all over again. And with that, let's jump in. All right, so, Jude, let's start with your story. How did you end up as a brand strategist, storyteller, and filmmaker?
Jude Charles: So, I have always been interested in storytelling. From a very young age, eight years old, I wasn't the kid that would be outside playing basketball or football, even inside the house,
Writing copy with personality is hard. So what does it take to do it? We invited copywriter and brand ventriloquist Justin Blackman to talk about how he does it for the 216th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast—and to give us an update on everything he’s done since our first interview with him way back in episode 59. If you’re looking for ways to write with more personality, this interview is for you. Here’s what we covered:
• a recap of what he’s done in his business for the past 4 years • how he doubled his salary a year after leaving his full-time gig • how important building his authority was—and the result • when it’s time to move on to the next thing in your career • recreating your job/career as new opportunities arise • what it takes to build the confidence to move forward • taking on big challenges as a way to grow your authority and business • the investments Justin has made in mindset • how Justin’s ego kept him from writing his best work • Justin’s advice to anyone who feels like they aren’t as far along as they should be • how to write with more personality—the formulas that work • how to figure out your own unique voice • why so many voice guides are useless and what to do instead • Justin’s WTF framework and how it captures the 3 parts of brand voice • the things we’ve done in our businesses to change our mindsets • Kira’s brand strategy guides and what they include • the program he’s created to help others write with personality • how he gets everything done—it starts with working on his own stuff first • how to have fun while working as a copywriter • his tattoo story—this goes back to what he said about ego getting in the way
As usual, this is a great episode you won’t want to miss. Scroll down and hit the play button, or scroll a little farther to read a full transcript. Or download the episode to your podcast player. Better still, subscribe and never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Episode 59 Never Lose a Customer Again The Go Giver TCCIRL Linda Perry Lianna Patch Abbey Woodcock The Codex Persona Ian Stanley Liz Painter Prerna Malik The Big Leap by Gay Hendrix Justin’s website The tattoo video Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: Writing is hard, but writing with personality or perfectly capturing the personality of your client is even harder, but that's what Justin Blackman does. Justin is our guest for the 216th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. He stopped by to share how his business has changed since the last time that we spoke in depth about the Headline Project way back on episode 59.
Kira: Before we do that, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the membership for copywriters of all experience levels who want to invest in their businesses and grow. As a member, you get more than 60 hours of video training courses on marketing your business, improving your copywriting skills and fixing your mindset so you're set up for success. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: Okay. So let's jump into our interview with Justin.
Kira: Let's kick this off. My first question I even wrote down was, dude, what have you been up to the last year? Question mark. Question mark. Question mark. Because I feel like you've taken off. And I don't think it's just me because we talk about you and we say good things in our circles, and I feel like you just have, I don't know, like you just are doing the right things and it's paying off and you've put in a lot of hard work too that is worth acknowledging. But it just seems like you're doing really well. And so I am really excited to hear about what you've been doing, the changes you've made, and how it starting to pay off for you too.
Justin: See, I think that's the fun part because the last couple of mont...
Building a successful business isn’t easy… but it should be simple. That is, you don’t need to do “all the things” in order to make a living. In fact, a minimal approach may help you grow in ways you don’t expect. Our guest for the 214th episode of The Copywriter Club is marketing minimalist Ellen Yin. She shared her formula for running a simple, but profitable business and a whole lot more. Here’s a bit of what we covered:
• how Ellen became a marketing minimalist • the basic systems you must have in order to succeed • the purpose behind your social media use • the problem with adopting someone else’s marketing strategy • her simple marketing system that keeps her sales system going • how she takes prospects through her sales process, step by step • how she maintains a 70% close rate on six month contracts • the differences between marketing services and products • the mistakes you might be making using hashtags on instagram • short term vs. long term marketing efforts and why you need both • having help to support your “lazy” marketing efforts • how to borrow someone else’s audience and connect authentically • when to build your own audience and when to borrow • the state of the union on Instagram—what’s working and not • the basics of marketing on instagram—you don’t have to do all the things • striking the right balance between products and services • the steps to take to reach a big monthly income number like $10K • the “hidden funnel” that takes less work for getting/retaining clients • why she shared her quarterly income with her audience • how she finds the gold in bad investments in courses and coaches • batching and the impact it has on her days • the options for investing… mindset, skillset or network • Rob and Kira’s “one thing” that has helped them in their businesses
This is a good one—especially if you look around at all the things other copywriters do and think, “how are they getting it all done?” To hear it, click the play button below. Or to read what Ellen shared, scroll down for a full transcript. And of course, you should subscribe and leave a review if you enjoy this interview.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Ellen’s Podcast Hashtag Hacks Hira Usama The One Thing by Gary Keller Linda Perry Ellen’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
Among the copywriters we’ve had the pleasure to meet, there are a lot of former teachers who have gone from helping students learn history, math, and English and now help teach customers about products and services that meet their needs. Our guest for the 213th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Francis Nayan, a former teacher, now conversion copywriter specializing in emails. Francis told us about how he made the switch and what he’s doing now. Here’s what we talked about:
• the first hit of dopamine that led him to believe he could make a living as a copywriter • what he did to grow his business after landing his first client • his wild-west approach to finding clients and why it didn’t work very well • the first big client that turned into an intense marketing training opportunity • why he looked forward 6 months to figure out what to do next • how he focused on better habits to build the business he wanted • the tangible benefits Francis has gotten from the investments in his biz • our first gigs—how we got started as copywriters • being intentional about the business you are building—and doing it early on • the habits Francis has adopted to get ahead—cold showers, 5 AM, lemon water • the kinds of email packages he works on and what he charges • what’s involved in creating email strategy • email deliverability—what you can do to make sure your emails make it to the inbox • dealing with the psychology of trimming your list • the best subject line for your emails <—this is great advice • whether you should do the tech and automation or just the copy • why he is anti-social media and what he does instead • podcasting and why it is a great way to get your ideas into the world
This is a great interview you won’t want to miss. To hear it, hit the play button below. Or read the transcript just under that. Best of all, subscribe so you never miss an episode (and leave a review on iTunes while you’re at it).
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Wim Hof The Alter Ego Effect Mai-kee Tsang Gary V Francis’ website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
Do you ever listen to what our podcast guests share and think, that’s not the kind of business I am building? Today’s guest for the 212th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Liz Painter. She has built a very “normal” copywriting business—one that probably looks a lot like your business. And there’s still a lot here that we can all learn from. Here’s what we asked her about:
• her path from journalist to email strategist and copywriter • how copywriting and journalism are different and how to write better • Liz’s writing process and formulas—and how it’s different from others we’ve seen • the #1 thing she tries to accomplish in the email she writes • 3 different formulas for writing email sequences • how Liz finds her clients and what she does to get referrals from clients • what her business looks like today and how it all works day to day • how Liz has networked herself into several agency relationships • how she changes boundaries and processes when working with agencies • her LinkedIn strategy and how it immediately to a new client and more connections • the “comment first” strategy for finding connections • going all in on one social media platform and not stretching yourself too thin • Liz’s sales process—step by step—and how she makes sure to get a “yes” • what Liz does differently from other clients—she definitely listens more • the #1 lesson she learned from working with Copyhacker’s agency • what Liz struggles with in her business—why it took so long to find success • what she would do differently if she had to start over • a list of books she recommends for personal improvement • what she’s doing to save the bees with every project she works with
This is a great interview with a copywriter who is doing a lot of things right. To hear it, click the button below. Or scroll down to read the transcript. Better still, subscribe with your favorite podcast app and never miss a show!
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Joanna Wiebe Amy Posner Better Proposals Philip Pullman novel Shinesty The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson Essentialism by Greg McKeon Personality Isn’t Permanent by Benjamin Hardy Life in Half a Second by Matthew Michalewicz The One Thing by Gary Keller The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks Liz's website & Instagram Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: You ever listen to the guests that we talk with on the podcast and think, "Their business is nothing like mine. What they're doing is so different from other copywriters and I'm not really sure that I can learn anything from they're saying."? Well, our guest for the 212th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Liz Painter. She has a business like most copywriters and yet there are plenty of things that she's doing that we can all learn from. Whether it's her approach to LinkedIn, how she's worked with agency clients, or her sales process, Liz is doing a lot of stuff very successfully. She stopped by to share all of the details in this excellent interview.
Kira: We'll share our discussion with Liz in a moment. But first this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank, our private mastermind group for copywriters and marketers who want to challenge each other, create new revenue streams in their business, receive one on two coaching from the two of us, and ultimately grow to 200K or more. The think tank is now open for a few select new members. If you're interested you can visit copywriterthinktank.com to learn more about this mastermind.
Rob: So let's get to our interview with Liz Painter.
Kira: Liz, before we hit record we were just remembering our time with you in San Diego way back in March when we got to stroll down the street leisurely with you and hang out with you in person and it just seems so long ago now.
Retainers or projects? That’s a question a lot of copywriters ask themselves when they determine what kind of business they want to build. But who says you have to choose? Our guest for the 211th episode of The Copywriter Club is Brian Speronello who’s “Barbell Strategy” takes advantage of both projects and retainers to make his business stronger and more resilient. We asked him about:
• how Brian used a course to specialize and launch his copywriting business • the “try it before you buy it” approach to buying a course • a random bar encounter and the importance of taking first steps toward success • what Brian would have done differently if he had to do it all again • the tripod framework for deciding to go full-time as a freelancer • how Brian was able to test-drive working for himself while holding down a FT job • what it takes to make the leap into freelancing • what Brian’s business looks like today—it’s half of his barbell strategy • the limits of retainers and how Brian makes them work in his business • the “Landlord Retainer” model that makes sure you always get paid • the big fail Brian had when he agreed to work for royalties • the legal clause he includes in all agreements to protect himself today • our thoughts on Brian’s business model • his process for getting clients to refer additional clients to him • the investments he’s made in his business to “fill the holes” in his skillset • the part we played in getting Brian to get his program ready to launch • why he treats his own project as his fourth business client • what the Lindy Effect means for the future of copywriting
This is a great interview, full of tips and lessons any copywriter can apply in their own business. To hear it, click the play button below. Or download this episode to your favorite podcast player. Better still, subscribe and never miss an episode. And if you prefer to read, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Ramit Sethi’s Earn 1K Upwork Kim Schwalm Justin Goff Stefan Georgi Alvaro Barrios Brian's website The Script Brian Talked about Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
For the 210th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob and Kira are guest-less, which means it’s just us, talking about what’s going on in our lives and in the club. Here’s what we covered this week:
what we’ve done to create a routine during the “shutdown” an update on the new podcast format—what we think about the extra work what else we’re working on as we update other parts of The Copywriter Club how we’re trying to make everything we do more helpful for copywriters what we’re doing differently with our email today trying to create a better separation between work and “life” how we spend our “CEO” time and what we’re doing differently what we’re reading right now why you should ask Kira to do something crazy right now how we’ve adjusted our mastermind to virtual—and the success we’ve seen
To hear what we shared on this episode, click the play button below or download the episode to your favorite podcast app. There’s a full transcript below as well.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kirsty Fanton Liz Green Rosie Theresa Brandon Fina Perry Marshall The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks Ian Stanley Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes Alchemy by Rory Sutherland Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: Never a clever way to start when it's just you and me.
Kira: On a rainy Monday. It's raining here. I feel like I just want to curl up in bed, but instead we're going to start this podcast. And so, Rob, how are you?
Rob: I am doing great. Before we get into how we're actually doing, we should say, this is the 210th episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast, and if you're wondering why there wasn't a funny or story based intro, it's because we don't have a guest today. It's just you and me. And we just want to give a little bit of an update and maybe a review of what's been going on over the last couple of weeks. So then to answer your question, I'm doing great. How are you?
Kira: I'm good. I was just thinking it would be fun to do our new commentary that we've added to the last 10 episodes. If you all haven't noticed and add that to this episode, so we can add commentary on top of our commentary and just go really meta with it.
Rob: It could get a little meta. It also might get annoying. This is where we break in to say that was actually totally wrong, what you just said, Rob.
Kira: But we're jumping in here. It's been a while, I think, since we've really shared what we've been up to in our worlds and in the Copywriter Club and our copywriting businesses. So when you reflect back over the last few months, Rob, how are you dealing with world craziness, recession, all this stuff, COVID? How is your family doing? How are you doing?
Rob: At this point end of summer, middle of the fall, we're doing pretty good. I think we've figured out a routine. I was one of the lucky ones who, very early on, got the virus and I spent a whole week being kind of sick and very tired.
Kira: I forgot about that.
Rob: In fact, I was watching a video that we recorded back in April and I saw myself. I was like, oh my gosh, I look half dead. I look horrible. But yeah, we've gone through the school cancellations and summer, and then my kids are actually back in school at school. At least they've had one short break because the number of infections rose to whatever the level is that it hits and then they cancel school for a week or so. They've actually gone back now the second time and things are pretty good.
Rob: We do better with routine at my house, especially when it goes around school. My kids are older. I have teenagers. And so there's not a lot of supervision that needs to happen other than just sort of getting kids out of bed, which is a teenage challenge. I was that way,
When it comes to building a copywriting business, there are lots of options. You can sell services. You can sell products. You can even create a platform. How about all three? Our guest for the 209th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is Eman Zabi and we asked her all about her unique approach to her business—one that includes all three of these approaches to earning money. We talked about…
• an update on what she’s been doing the past 2+ years • some of the “insane” ideas she’s pursued since our last interview • why she made so many changes to her business • the mistakes she made as she started building her team of 13 • how one of her employees faked her father’s death to not get fired • what it takes to manage a larger team (including how she pays her writers) • what Eman’s copywriting projects look like today • her advice to copywriters who are thinking about growing a team • balancing business growth with mindset growth • why Eman decided to create physical products (and the production process) • the products Eman may create and offer in the future • the “mom” test to prove the product would work • embracing the hustle culture and seeing it for what it is • the software platform she’s created and why she leaned into this • the different approach Eman is taking with Terrain to set it apart • what’s wrong with courses and why the industry is still growing • the ingredients for a great course (and how Terrain helps make it better) • how we’ve changed our own courses to help members finish them • making sacrifices to accomplish more now • feeling the pressure to do everything and how Eman dealt with it • the reason Eman is willing to explore ideas most copywriters don’t think about • why she wouldn’t change if she could do it all over again—except one thing
This is the second time we’ve interviewed Eman and if you heard the first episode, you’ll be amazed at how far Eman has come. To hear what she shared, click the play button below. Or scroll down for a full transcript. You can also subscribe anywhere great podcasts are found.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Eman’s First TCC Interview Jereshia Hawk Linda Perry Jordan Gill Eman’s Card Deck Terrain Eman's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
Mindset is a topic we touch on quite a bit—because a healthy mindset is the foundation for everything we do well as copywriters and in life… and an unhealthy mindset? We’ll that won’t take you anywhere good. Our guest for the 208th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Ian Stanley. Ian doesn’t call himself a copywriter any more (we talk about why) but he knows a lot about copy and getting people to respond to his offers. We asked Ian about:
• how he became a copywriter—a story of height supremacy, MLMs and Clickbank • what charging $5 an email taught him about templates and processes • some of the early investments he made and what he learned from them • hand copying sales letters—and what you might want to do instead • how to grow taller—Ian spills the “scientific” details of an offer he wrote for • what Ian’s done over the past couple of years to fix his broken mindset • his daily mindset practice, the two wolves he feeds and his tattoo • what you’re responsible for—and what you’re not • his ayahuasca experience—this one gets a little wild • Ian’s experience with the afterlife or whatever it was that he experienced • the gift of being human that the gods can’t experience • the program he created to uncover deeper mental and emotional blocks • building passive income and leveraging your work • the stupid stuff copywriters do to mess up projects and client relationships • the conversation that leads to agreements that pay royalties • Ian’s experiment with media and what he’s trying to accomplish • doing what 95% of competitors aren’t willing to do—to stand out
Another episode you won’t want to miss. To hear it, you can scroll down and press the play button or download this episode to your favorite podcast player. You’ll also find a full transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Clickbank CopyHour The Talent Code Brent Charlton The Surrender Experiment The Untethered Soul The Untethered Soul at Work Confessions of a Persuasion Hitman Ian's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
Getting things done—or getting MORE done—is a struggle for many copywriters including us. But systems and processes can help. Our guest for the 207th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast is systems expert, Jordan Gill. Jordan shared a ton of ideas for improving systems to help get things done and stop spending every minute on your business. It’s a message we definitely needed to hear—and maybe one you can relate to as well? Here’s what we talked about with Jordan…
• how she came to “love” systems even though she despised them • the “launch-mageddon” that forced her to change her business for the better • how systems give you more control and free you from anxiety • whether people are born loving systems or whether they develop the skill over time • how to use batching to get more done faster • the role of discipline and creating structures that support your effort • the “impossible” process of letting go and how to actually do it • knowing your strengths and going all in on them • how a team can help support your systems (and the systems you need before you hire) • how she spends her time during a typical day and what her processes look like • how her team spends their time to support Jordan each week • the 4 Quadrants tool for determining what you should systemize or delegate • our (Kira and Rob’s) own trust issues and how they impact getting stuff done • how Jordan structures her VIP days—how she makes them work • the importance of the right name for your VIP days—and other mistakes we make • what Jordan does to balance work with real life • the subscription boxes Kira—and maybe Rob—will be checking out
If you struggle at all with systems and processes or getting things done, you’ll want to get this episode into your earbuds as soon as possible. Scroll down and click the play button to listen, or download this episode to your favorite podcast player. There’s also a full transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
The Copywriter Think Tank Jordan's website Melanie Duncan Deep Work by Cal Newport The Social Dilemma Strengths Finder Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
Facebook ads are one of those copywriting deliverables that neither of us focus on in our business. But we want to know more. So we invited copywriter and Facebook Ad Specialist Sarah Sal to share what she knows about the dark arts of Facebook ads. Here’s what we talked about:
• how Sarah went from math and IT to writing Facebook ads • the connections between the disciplines of math and copywriting • the basics you need to know about the algorithm to write Facebook ads • what elements (tactics) you should include when writing an ad • the resources she looks for before Sarah starts to write an ad • why you might want to encourage comments on your FB ads • some of the changes that have some to FB ads in the last couple of years • how she looks for the different angles that might appeal to readers • changing ads versus changing strategy • what Sarah has seen is the most effective kind of ad on FB • the investments she’s made in herself to make her more effective • how she structures her packages and why she doesn’t sign on for the long term • the mistakes she’s made along the way • what she’s done to land big clients—and how you can do it too • Sarah’s experience in The Copywriter Underground • cats
To hear what Sarah shared—or the extra thoughts Kira and Rob added—click the button below. Or subscribe using your favorite podcast app. For a full transcript, just scroll down.
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The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Sarah’s TCC Blog Post Sarah's website The Copywriter Accelerator Laura Belgray Perry Marshall Hootesuite AdEspresso Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: Facebook ads are one of those copyrighting deliverables that neither Rob nor I do. We've run ads, but it's not our specialty. That's why we invited Sarah Sal to be our guest for the 206th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Sarah is one of our founding members of the Copywriter Underground, and one of the most active members in that group, which is why she was also our Mole of the Month, which is one of our most active and engaged members.
And we call her Mole of the Month because most of our members, not all of them, refer to themselves as moles, as in the rodent. Sarah's always entertaining in the group and talks frequently about her cats, and pizza, and entertains all of us, as you'll see in this episode. And this conversation with Sarah gave us plenty to think about when it comes to running our ads on Facebook.
Rob: We'll get to our interview in just a second, but first we want to tell you that this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. That's our mastermind group for copywriters, content writers, brand strategists, anyone who is ready for the training, coaching and support that they need to grow their business to, say, $200,000 or more. This is the only place where Kira and I provide one-on-two strategy sessions and coaching designed to help you achieve more than ever. If you're interested in learning more about the Think Tank, drop us an email at rob@thecopywriterclub.com or kira@thecopywriterclub.com, and we'll tell you a little more.
Kira: Let's jump right into our interview with Sarah. Hey, Sarah. Let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a Facebook ads strategist and copywriter?
Sarah Sal: Curiosity, like a cat that is looking for trouble. Facebook marketing, copywriting have absolutely nothing to do with my background. I studied computer science in university and then I studied applied mathematics. And I really enjoyed research in math. I actually, for my thesis, wrote nearly 200 pages of math theorem, formula, proof, and so on.
And at some point, I was. I'm going to do a PhD. I really enjoy math. It's really like meditation for me. But then, I realized once I started that I love math, I love research in math,
One of the “options” for copywriters who don’t want to limit themselves to solely writing for clients is creating and promoting their own products. And for many of the copywriters who take this path, it’s very lucrative. Our guest for the 205th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Justin Goff. Justin has created his own offers and in this interview he talks about how you can do the same thing. We also talked about:
• how a gambling debt he couldn’t pay led to his first online product • his over-the-top reaction to his first ever online sale of $149 • what he learned working in the gaming niche (as a student) that still helps him today • the one thing you need to do to be a better copywriter • how he landed his first few clients as he got into copywriting • the terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week that led to his first real success • how he came up with the Big Idea that launched a 23 million dollar business • reverse engineering a product to find your own Big Ideas • the ins and outs of partnerships and how to make one work • what he’s done to overcome his own money mindset issues • the only thing that matters when it comes to dialing in a successful offer • Justin’s advice for raising their prices—what he’s seen that almost always works • why he believes in masterminds and what he gets from them • the “have to apply” email trick that keeps his readers engaged and reading • what he learned about knowing your audience from Tinder dates during quarantine • how he guards his time to get more done • why he bothers to dress up whenever he’s around potential partners and clients • the future of copywriting and how to make sure you’re set up to take advantage
We say this a lot, but this is another don’t-miss episode. To hear it, click the button below. Or subscribe wherever podcasts are available. Scroll down for links and a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Patriot Greens Stefan Georgi No B.S. Wealth Attraction by Dan Kennedy Adam Bensman Sam Woods Justin's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: There's this thing that tends to happen for a lot of copywriters, not all of us, but many, where they ultimately decide that they don't want to work with clients anymore. And at that point, they create their own products instead of helping other people sell their products. It sounds easy, right? But if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Today's guest, on the 205th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, is Justin Goff. Just after the worst week of his life, Justin created his first product and earned a little over 100,000 dollars in three months, and then he did it again, earning millions. If that sounds like something that you'd like to do in your own business, then this episode is for you.
Kira: We'll share Justin's story in just a minute but first, this episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Underground, a private membership and community designed to help you hit your business growth goals faster, whether your goal is hitting 10K a month or launching a new service or product, or even just finding your first few clients, the resources in Underground can help with accountability, support, coaching, and a path to help you get out of your own way and build momentum in your business. Find out more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: There are a lot of ways to succeed as a copywriter, working directly with clients is one and creating your own products is another. Let's jump into our interview with Justin and hear how he has used copywriting to create his million-dollar business.
Justin Goff: I initially got into kind of making websites when I was in college, as the result of I had a $1,200 gambling debt when I was in college, I was probably 20 at the time.
Too many copywriters have a limiting belief around how much they can charge for their services, so our guest for the 204th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Jereshia Hawk, a high-ticket sales coach who shared how we can overcome that mindset issue. But that’s not all we talked about. We also covered…
• how she became known for helping clients increase high-ticket sales • how her “engineering” approach shifts her thinking about products, problems and failure • overcoming objections—after the sale • why she carves out an hour on Monday’s for “superthinking” • her thoughts on building a team (and our role as an “employee” of your company) • what a personal performance review should look like (questions you can ask) • the zero sum budget approach to goal setting • how copywriters can overcome the idea that they can’t make a lot of money • the first steps toward building a high-ticket offer (like as much as $40K or more) • the simplicity rule that can instantly help you sell more • the POP method that helps you synthesize your offer and audience • her “champagne closer method” that completely changes a sales call • rethinking the free content you provide and what it has to do • the one metric everyone with a business needs to know <— this is critical • how she leverages one piece of content to show up everywhere • a step-by-step breakdown of the Jereshia’s sales call process • the mid-call check-in/pattern interrupt and why you steal this idea • the “hidden” mindset shift that changed Jereshia’s path into the online world • why your success isn’t reflected in your latest success or failure
This is a great discussion you won’t want to miss. Be sure to do what Jereshia suggests at the end of the podcast and share your “one thing” on Instagram, Twitter, or elsewhere in social media. To listen, click the button below or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jereshia’s question list: • What expectations would I have of the CEO? • How would I measure the performance and success of the CEO? • Am I living up to those expectations now? How so? Why or why not? • Would I hire myself again? Why or why not? • What uncomfortable decision am I putting off right now that is preventing me from moving forward? Copywriter Think Tank Brook Castillo The Road Less Stupid Shape Up Perry Marshall’s Renaissance Time Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: Selling a product or service for $2,000 or even $10,000 takes a different approach, even a different skillset than selling something for $47 or maybe $500. Your high-end prospects have different needs, different problems, different beliefs, possibly even a different outlook on life. So naturally, reaching those prospects takes a very different approach.
Today, on the 204th of The Copywriter Club podcast, we're speaking with high ticket sales coach, Jereshia Hawk. Jereshia started her career as an engineer, not an online business coach, so her entire approach to systems and processes and sales is different from anyone else we've spoken with on the podcast.
Rob: We'll jump in to our interview with Jereshia in a moment, but first, we need to tell you that this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank, our high level mastermind for copywriters, content writers and brand strategists who want to grow their business to the $200,000 mark. This is also where Kira and I both provide our one-on-two strategy sessions and coaching. It is designed to help you achieve more than ever. If you're interested in learning more about The Copywriter Think Tank, drop us an email at rob@thecopywriterclub.com, or kira@thecopywriterclub.com.
Kira: Jereshia shared so many great ideas in this interview. Both Rob and I were texting each other during the entire interview with the different ideas that ...
How do you attract clients to your business? That’s one of the subjects we covered with Jenn Robbins, the guest for the 203rd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Jenn is an expert on funnel strategy and shared the three types of funnels every business owner should have—not right away, but eventually, if you’re going to grow. But that’s not all we covered, here’s a partial list of what we asked Jenn…
• going from 80 hour weeks in accounting to blogger to copywriter • why freelancers often fail before things work the second time around • feeling like a fraud and what they says about you • overcoming the imposter complex—a recurring theme on the podcast • how Jenn has mixed services with other offers in her business • making a retainer work—really work—for 9 years • Jenn’s process for making VIP days work—and her check in “trick" worth stealing • the 3 basic funnels every business needs • what she does to make sure her funnels engage her prospects • her rates—what she charges her clients for the work she does • the list building challenge she’s sharing with her audience • the stuff she struggles with in her business • the biggest changes she’s made to grow her business • how collaboration has changed Jenn’s mindset as her business has grown • what she does when things don’t get done as planned • what we’re really doing as copywriters—it’s not writing words • what to look for in a course or mastermind before you join
Jenn is doing so many things right in her business, you’ll definitely want to hear what she shared about how to do it. To listen, click the button below. Or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. And coming soon to Spotify (hopefully). Prefer to read? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Tanya Geisler Sage Polaris Joanna Wiebe TCCIRL Tarzan Kay JennRobbins.com WTFchallenge.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
What kind of a business are you building? The guest for episode 202 of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Amy Posner. Amy’s the first person to be interviewed on the podcast three times—and no wonder—she’s got a lot to share. Amy’s currently rethinking the programs and services she offers her clients and we thought it might be worth talking to her about the process. We talked about all of the following:
• the agonizing journey she’s been on as she’s changing her own business model • why the process has been so painful and pulling back on doing too much • the three questions she’s used to figure out what to do next • overcoming the desire to hide behind other brands • the new products and services she’s working on creating as she pivots • the missing career path for freelance copywriters (and how to find it) • what it takes to be a great copywriter—we all take a stab at answering this • the process of getting perspective on your own business • the questions to ask as you think about niching • what to add to your proposals so clients want to say “yes” • 3 questions to ask before you decide to raise your rates • why having someone copy chief your writing makes you better • how to up your client-finding game to land dream and anchor clients • a strategy for pricing your work to capture the value you create • some of the benefits that come from acting like a trusted partner • what keeps Amy engaged and growing • the third mind and how to get it in your business
This conversation with Amy is perfect if you’re thinking about a pivot or change in your business. To hear her advice, click the button below. Or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. And coming soon to Spotify (hopefully). Prefer to read? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Joanna Wiebe Kirsty Fanton Amy's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
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He’s one of the few copywriters who truly doesn’t need an introduction—Parris Lampropoulos is our guest for the 201st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Parris spoke at both of our TCCIRL events in New York City—and it was a discussion at our event that led to this interview. rather than interview Parris about his life, we talked to him about his mentors and what he learned from them. Here’s a sample of what we covered:
• his advice to “newbie” copywriters about who to learn from • how a fist through a window led to a job as a real estate sales manager • the “gun to the head” trick for making sure prospects want to get your marketing • why you need to make theater part of everything you write • Parris’ copywriting reading list—and why you should read each book 3X • what he looks for when he’s doing research—his I didn’t know that list • the mentor who was a former marine with a vulnerable side • the way most people listen—and how to do it right for better writing • taking notes on index cards to easily assemble and re-order your copy • looking for hidden benefits—hot buttons—to share in your copy • the best—most heartfelt—gifts we’ve ever received from anyone • the baptism by fire Parris got when he started writing for Mark Ford • the criticism sandwich that Mark Ford used to get Parris to write better • the copywriting lesson Parris learned from watching Joel Silver thrillers • why Parris prowls the stage like a predator when he speaks • the comparison technique Parris used reading Clayton Makepeace’s copy • the “you’re doing X anyway, why not get Y” technique that makes you tingle • the people he spends time with and those he runs “like hell” away from • how he uses the lessons he learned when he mentors is own copy cubs • the 3 things you need as a copywriter to make sure you succeed • the “Bruce Springsteen” process that guarantees you get a good idea
As we mentioned in the intro, Parris may be the best copywriter working today. You do not want to miss this episode—even though it’s quite a bit longer than usual. To hear it, click the button below. Or subscribe where better podcasts are shared. Or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
TCCIRL The Copywriter Underground Gary Halbert How to Make Maximum Money in Minimum Time The Amazing Direct Mail Secret from a Desperate Nerd in Ohio Influence by Robert Cialdini Gary Bencivenga Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins John Carlton Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath Ted Nicolas Agora Bill Bonner Mark Ford Gene Schwartz Joel Silver Bo Eason Clayton Makepeace How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab Dan Kennedy Jay Abraham Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Accelerator Intro Outro
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
This episode is completely different from anything we’ve done before. If you’re here for copywriting and business tips, you might want to skip this one. But, if you want to get a sense of the breadth of musical talent in The Copywriter Club, tune in, because this one is fun. When we announced we were updating the podcast for episode 200 (coming next week), we put out a call for the musicians in our group to let us know what they think the new intro should sound like. We’ve collected the submissions to share with you. What do you think? Did we make the right choice?
The copywriters/musicians mentioned in this episode:
Mario Bourzac / The Protected Left Jeff Herman / Mind Rock Robin Burke Neil Campbell Paul Hanna/Chad Reisliger Paola / Texxex Daniel Lamb Bill Kernodle Robin Burke Rachael Pilcher Alex Moon Steven Scott Jessica Marshall David Muntner Paul Conners Andre Johnson Addison Rice/The Love Sprockets
I’m not sure if we’ve smiled more during a podcast than we did as we put this episode together. Maybe we should do more like this? To hear what these amazing copywriters/musicians had to share, click the play button below. Or subscribe to the podcast on Stitcher or iTunes and never miss another episode.
Other stuff you should check out: The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Because this episode is mostly music, there is no transcript. Please listen by clicking the link above.
Copywriter Allea Grummert is our guest for episode 199 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Wait… are we really about to cross the 200 episode frontier? Yep, and Allea is the perfect guest to wrap up the last 100 episodes before we make a few changes to the format. We talked to Allea about her processes, her switch from blogging to copywriting, and how she’s made so much progress in the past year. Here’s the breakdown of what we covered:
• the long road from personal finance blogger to copywriter • her best personal finance ideas for copywriters • why she waited so long to call herself a copywriter • how she finds clients today (a lot of them come from conferences) • the take-aways from Allea’s work as an implementer • her process for working with clients—the whole thing—start to finish • what she charges for her audits (and what makes them valuable) • the differences between the packages she offers to clients • how she structures the email sequences she writes • how she segments lists for her clients to be most effective • the CEO check-in and how it helps her grow her business • the hard stuff she’s dealt with as she’s grown • the things and people she’s invested in to take her business to the next level • her advice to “writers” who aren’t yet ready to call themselves “copywriters” • the advice from a friend that caused a panic attack • the mindset shifts she’s made over the past year to move forward • getting paid in advance for work that doesn’t start for a month or more • working with a VA and how to do it so the relationship works • her advice for list building and creating content for your list • her experience at TCCIRL in 2019 and 2020
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Notion Val Geisler TCCIRL Allea's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Underground, the place to find more than 20 templates, dozens of presentations on topics like copywriting and marketing your business, a community of successful writers who share ideas and leads, and the Copywriter Club newsletter mailed directly to your home every month. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 199 as we chat with copywriter, Allea Grummert about email and why it's such a powerful platform, which email sequences are most important and what they need to accomplish, what she's done to invest in herself and grow her business, and her five-step framework for writing a welcome sequence.
Kira: Welcome, Allea.
Allea: Hello, thanks welcome to you.
Kira: Yeah.
Allea: Welcome to my living room.
Kira: Great to have you here, and let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Allea: So, I started as a blogger. I was a personal finance blogger, and that's what everyone does on a Memorial Day weekend. Yeah, it was just a hobby of mine, and I also have a degree in advertising and public relations so blogging came for me as like a, I called it my digital playground, so I could learn and play. And not just about copywriting. In fact, I didn't call myself a copywriter until this January, but I learned about SEO and content marketing and how online businesses work. So over time though, people would come to me with questions about email marketing, and it was one of those things where it came easy to me and it didn't for others and became a service to them for them to have me do it versus them doing it themselves.
Rob: Before we get into article writing,
Copywriter and Creative Director Sam Pollen is our guest for the 198th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Sam works in-house at an agency focused entirely on copy—there are no designers—which might be a dream for a lot of copywriters. We asked Sam about the differences between the freelance world and the work his team does. Here’s an idea of what we covered during the interview:
• how Sam went from zoology student to copywriter and creative director • why Sam prefers to work in-house and leaves the freelancing to others • how he works with other writers in his role as a CD • the creative process at agencies and how everyone works together • how they work with designers and hand off copy to the design team • this skills and training a copywriter might need to be a creative director • Sam’s writing process and how he generates ideas for each assignment • asking “stupid questions” to truly understand the products we sell • how asking the questions that aren’t in the brief leads to a big idea • what’s involved in the process of naming • how Sam and his agency present work to their clients • the challenges of working on brand voice and brand guides • writing luxury copy and the different approaches to a variety of products • why he wrote a book about a boy with anorexia
Sam’s story and advice are worth a listen. To hear what he told us, scroll down and click the play button. Or read a transcript a little farther down the page. And if you never want to miss an episode subscribe to the podcast with your podcast app, then leave a review.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Reed Words Sam's Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to connect with hundreds of smart copywriters who share ideas and strategies to help you master marketing, mindset, and copywriting in your business. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join The Club for episode 198 as we chat with copywriter and creative director Sam Pollen about working at an agency that's focused on great copy, what it takes to build a verbal identity, his biggest struggle as a creative and as a copywriter, and why he wrote a book about anorexia.
Kira: Welcome, Sam.
Rob: Hey, Sam.
Sam Pollen: Thanks very much for having me, guys.
Kira: Yeah, we're excited to have you today and let's just start this conversation with how you ended up as a creative director. What was that story?
Sam Pollen: I think the story for me is probably the story similar for a lot of people in that position in that I just worked my way up, basically. I did a degree in natural sciences, so zoology and psychology, of all things, so not really related to what I do now at all. Then I worked in photography for a little bit, and then I worked in marketing and sort of fell into copywriting. So copywriting was not a deliberate choice for me, but it was something that I did some of in a marketing job and found out I was good at or good enough at. And then honed my skills and developed and found that that was something I found interesting and had some talent for, and so went from there.
About five, six years ago, I had started working with my now boss, Mike Reed, who set up the agency I work for, it's called Reed Words. I was initially hired just to write a sort of, he was starting to build an agency and then we have grown from that point. We have a team of writers and I'm the deputy creative director.
Red hot copywriter Lorrie Morgan is our guest for the 197th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. As a stay-at-home mom she looked for a job that she could do from home. When a client asked for a 52-part auto responder, she knew she had to get serious about the craft. And she shared her decades of experience, as we asked about:
• her journey from actor to copywriter to direct response guru • what she learned from her mentors (and who they are) • what it takes to “write fearlessly” … Lorrie breaks down what she did • the “pain-in-the-butt” writing exercise that makes you into a better writer • what she did to attract clients when she was just starting out • what she learned from moving 16 times before she graduated from high school • how she uses an alter-ego to go beyond her limitations and write copy • self-care and how Lorrie makes sure she feels good enough to write well • the biggest mistakes her copywriter clients make • the differences between writing for men and women • the “tarket” trick for connecting on a deeper emotional level in copy • the process of writing her book and why she wrote it • what’s on Rob’s vision board (and why Kira might need one) • why Lorrie wears a cowboy hat to events • what is was like to work on Baywatch—the truth about David Hasslehoff
Lorrie shares some great advice to copywriters who want to grow. To hear what she said, scroll down and click the play button. Or scroll a bit farther for a transcript. And if you’re really serious about getting better as a copywriter, subscribe to the podcast (so you don’t miss an episode) and leave a review.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Baywatch Gary Halbert John Carlton Kevin Rogers Pauline Longdon Todd Herman Ignite Your Moxie Ali Brown Andre The Giant Lorrie’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to find more than 20 templates, dozens of presentations and topics like copywriting, marketing, mindset. A community of successful writers who share ideas and leads and a copywriter club newsletter which is mailed directly to your home every single month. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then instill an idea or two to inspire your own work, that's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for Episode 197 as we chat with Red Hot copywriter Lorrie Morgan about the differences between writing for men and women, why she wrote her book, Ignite Your Moxie and what it's about, what she's done to create a profitable copywriting business, and how she landed a job working on the set of Baywatch. Welcome, Lorrie.
Rob: Hey, Lorrie.
Lorrie Morgan: Hey, good to be here, you guys.
Kira: Great to have you here, Lorrie. So, let's start. As much as I want to ask you everything about Baywatch right away, I feel like we should wait to hear about that. But let's start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Lorrie Morgan: Oh yes, everyone has a story. Nobody wants to be a copywriter when they're a little girl, do they? So, I have a journalism degree. But I always wanted to be an actress. So, this is the rambling version, but I'll try to get to the point real quick. So, I moved to California, which is where I live now, to be an actress. We'll jump into the Baywatch a little bit later, too. But I'm a terrible actress, it turns out. I just really like the whole idea of it. So instead, I got married and I had children, which was wonderful.
And then, I ended up going getting divorced and had to get a job. Oh, no.
Copywriter and persuasion expert Adil Amarsi is the guest for the 196th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Adil is working on a book on Persuasion and recently changed the title he prefers from Copywriter to Creative Director because he does so much more than copy. We covered quite a bit of ground during our discussion, including:
• how writing daily stories as a kid led to a gig as a copywriter (before he knew what copywriting was) • his process for attracting his first clients • what he did to learn copywriting and who he learned it from • the “first week’s earnings” deal that netted him six figures • what not to do when you get a windfall • going from £300 to $30,000 + 4%—the secret of Adil’s success • mental health issues and the impact on his business • how much time he spends writing versus ideation • breaking down what a $30K project looks like • the clause that Adil adds to his contract that you’ll definitely want to borrow • walking the line between manipulation and persuasion • one of the words you should never use in your copy • what it means to be a creative director and why he doesn’t call himself a copywriter • what it takes to create a great offer • the practical joke he played on one of his friends
You won’t want to miss this one. Download it to your favorite podcast app or simple scroll down and press the play button. You’ll also find a full transcript and links below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
John Carlton Gary Halbert PsychoCybernetics Jay Abraham The Irresistible Offer Adil's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to connect with hundreds of smart copywriters who share ideas and strategies to help you master marketing, mindset and copywriting in your business. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 196 as we chat with copywriter, podcaster and alchemists of persuasion, Adil Amarsi, about telling better stories, what it takes to create a great offer, how to be more persuasive, and his approach to consulting with his clients on their marketing needs.
Kira: Welcome, Adil.
Adil: Hi. Thanks for having me, guys.
Kira: Yeah, and just shout out before we jump into Brennan Hopkins, who introduced us, so thank you, Brennan for making the introduction. And let's just kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter, consultant, podcaster, artists and we can go on and on, and on?
Adil: Yeah. So first of all, thank you, Brennan, because he did make this happen. So my story's kind of I used to think it was interesting until I actually sat down and wrote it out with a friend. So I moved from Africa, like East Africa to the UK when I was four years old. About a year into moving to the UK, in the mid-90s, my dad ended up having a herniated disk that affected his walking, so he was paralyzed from the waist down for about two years. And it's important to know that I have an older sister and the 90s were basically known as Nickelodeon versus Cartoon Network. You can pretty much guess which side I sided with and which side she went with. I was Cartoon Network, she was Nickelodeon.
I found that the best way I could watch cartoons was to sit down and watch whatever my dad was watching at the time. In the UK my dad really loved watching four shows, in particular. Two quite important. The other two, somewhat. So the first one was the news. My dad loved watching the news.
Growth marketer and event co-founder, Stef Grieser, is the guest for the 195th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira met Stef and Shine Bootcamp late last year and immediately knew that she had a lot to share with our audience. But we didn’t just talk about speaking. We covered a lot of ground—and went a little longer than usual. Here’s a taste of what we talked about:
• Stef’s career path and how she came to co-found two big events • how she used meet-ups to “test drive” CTA Conference • how the first CTA Conference line up led her to focus on diverse voices at conferences • the mix of speakers and why up-and-comers are just as important as stars • what she did to turn herself into a conference speaker • the difference between “growth” marketer and “regular” marketer • how Stef scaled her team and community as she built CTA Conf • what makes a good speaker pitch and how to get accepted as a speaker • the cues that let conference organizers know you are a fit for them • what she did to connect with sponsors and what makes a good sponsor • the importance of being a subject matter expert • the other skills you need on stage… in addition to content • when you should reach out for help from a speaking coach • Stef’s thoughts on the importance of copywriting as a business skill • what Stef would like copywriters to do differently • how she’s developed her leadership skills and built a team • the stuff that hasn’t gone very well and how she fixed things • her advice to anyone who wants to do what she’s done • product founder fit and the importance of finding it • Shine Bootcamp—what it is and how to find out more
If you’ve ever thought about getting on stage (or presenting workshops or webinars) as a way to build your authority, you won’t want to miss this episode. To hear it, click the play button below or scroll down for links and a full transcript. Or subscribe using your favorite podcast app.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Shine Bootcamp CTA Conf Oli Gardner Lianna Patch Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to find more than 20 templates, dozens of presentations on topics like copywriting and marketing your business, a community of successful writers who share ideas and leads, and the Copywriter Club Newsletter mailed directly to your home every month. Learn more at TheCopywriterUnderground.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 195 as we chat with marketing specialist and public speaker, Stef Grieser, about growth marketing and what copywriters need to know to help their clients grow, Shine Bootcamp and what you need to know to land a speaking gig, the lessons she's learned after co-founding two big events, how she looks at and solves business problems, and her biggest career struggle.
Kira: Welcome, Stef.
Rob: Hey, Stef.
Stef Grieser: Hi.
Kira: Hello. It's great to have you here. Last time I saw you was at Shine Bootcamp in Toronto last September, so it's such a pleasure to have you here so we can dig into everything that you're doing.
Stef Grieser: I am so excited to be here and excited to dig in.
Kira: All right. Why don't we start with your story? How did you end up as a growth marketer, founder of Call-to-Action Conference and co-founder of Shine Bootcamp? How did you get into all of it?
Stef Grieser: Yeah, that's a really, really great question. I'll go way back when I was graduating university,
Copywriter Christina Torres is our guest for the 194th guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast. Christina is a member of The Underground and The Copywriter Think Tank so we’ve seen some of the changes she’s made to her business recently. We talked to Christina about her business and the kinds of things she does as a pocket CMO. Here’s most what we covered…
• her story—how she became a copywriter by mistake • how she got permission to do the thing she really wanted to do • what she does in her role as a CMO in your pocket • how she’s worked with copywriters as a CMO to help them grow • some examples of her work and how she helps people get out of their own way • how she attracts and connects with her clients • why she took the time to figure out what she doesn’t like to do • how she found clients in the the programs she has joined • the importance of taking a stand in her business and making change • the idea of a culture and equity audit for the work she does • how she balances all the things competing for her time • the catalyst for the new program she’s launching • what an anti-copy course copy course would look like • launching even when there’s too much other stuff going on
This is a good interview you won’t want to miss. To hear it, click the play button below or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Or scroll down to read a full transcript and see links to what we talked about.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Marie Forleo Laura Belgray Samar Owais Matt Hall Rachel Rogers Christina’s website Christina’s insta Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to connect with hundreds of smart copywriters who share ideas and strategies to help you master marketing, mindset and copywriting in your business. Learn more at TheCopywriterUnderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 194 as we chat with copywriter and CMO in your pocket, Christina Torres, about how her business has evolved to include much more than copywriting, what she's done to juggle working a job while pursuing a side hustle, how copywriters can speak up and create change, and what she's done to figure out what comes next.
Kira: Welcome, Christina.
Christina Torres: Hey. I'm so excited. Ah, this is like the nerdiest, surreal thing that's ever happened and I'm just pinching myself. I'm so excited to be with my copy uncle and my copy cousin. That's what I call Kira. You're not my copy dad. I feel like Rob is so much cooler.
Rob: I'm a really cool dad, I got to say. I'm not cool at all, actually. Just ask my daughters. They remind me of that, seriously, every single day; how uncool I am.
Kira: That's their job. Their job is to remind you of that every day. I'm glad I'm the cousin and not the mom. I feel like I can barely mom.
Christina Torres: We're too close in age.
Kira: I can barely mom, parent my own children. So, I'm happy to be the cousin. Christina Torres, we have had the pleasure of hanging out with you and working with you in The Underground. And then also, more recently, in The Think Tank over the last month. But we want to really start with your story and how you became a copywriter. And then, more recently, a Pocket CMO.
Christina Torres: Yeah, sure. I think ... I was just listening to your most recent podcast and I feel like everyone says this, but of course I became a copywriter by mistake. I feel like that's so cliché but it's kind of true. Not really.
Copywriter Brittany McBean is our guest for the 193rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We wanted to talk to Brittany after we heard about the success she had when she completed the “Find a Client in 3 Weeks or Less” Challenge we offered in The Copywriter Underground this past April. In addition to that, Brittany shared her path to copywriting and the nuts-and-bolts of creating a paid workshop for your list. Here’s what we covered in this interview:
• going from acting in musical theater to network marketing to copywriter • the on-the-job training she gave herself when she landed her first project • what she learned as a signer, dancer and actor that makes her a better copywriter • how she approaches marketing for herself so it doesn’t feel spammy • her advice for people who are using Facebook to go live with video • Brittany’s experience with the Find a Client Challenge in The Copywriter Underground • the three different kinds of clients you need in your business • what surprised her most about the challenge… and why she did it anyway • how you can replicate the momentum Brittany built during the challenge • what it takes to create and run a masterclass and the supporting materials • the financial results she got by finishing the Challenge and how she used the money • what she’s going to do next with her workshops and business • her adoption journey and how she worked through the difficulties of the process • her struggle with anxiety and working and the results of dealing with it • her approach to talking about hard things and helping our clients do it too • what she’s excited about doing next in her business
This is a great discussion about how much you can create in a short time—and a lot more. To hear what Brittany had to share, scroll down and click the play button. Or scroll a little farther to read a full transcript. Better yet, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Brenda McGowan The Project Plan Trello Board Sara Heselin Woods Brittany's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to find more than 20 templates, dozens of presentations on topics like copywriting and marketing your business, a community of successful writers who share ideas and leads, and The Copywriter Club newsletter mailed directly to your home every month. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 193 as we chat with copywriter, Brittany McBean about why she became a copywriter, what her business looks like today, her experience with the find a client in three weeks challenge in The Copywriter Underground, and what she's done recently to think bigger about her business and clients. Welcome Brittany.
Rob: Hey Brittany.
Brittany McBean: Hi, thanks. I just had some free time and thought I'd help you guys out and just ... No, I'm just kidding. My palms are sweaty and I'm really honored and excited to be here.
Rob: This is really good.
Kira: Yeah. We're so excited to talk to you. And this initially started around a challenge that we offered in The Underground in April. And it was how to book a client in three weeks challenge, although it had like a snazzier name and it was the first challenge we ever did in the underground. And it was quite intense because I don't think I knew what I was doing when I was throwing out these challenges.
And you were one of the few people,
Business coach and copywriter Ashley Gartland is our guest for the 192nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. No surprise, when it comes to helping other writers build a solid business, she knows her stuff. So we asked Ashley about a whole range of things, including:
• how she ended up as a writer and business coach • what she does in her business today and the problems she helps solve • what a “better not bigger” business looks like and how to create one • a few of the business models that help copywriters grow a better business • what Ashley does to help free up more time for clients • her “marketing audit” and what it involves for her clients • what copywriters starting out can do to build a “better not bigger” biz • what happens when people hit their goals and what comes next • growing a team and what you should think about as you scale and grow • how to grow a business WITHOUT a team • how Ashley deals with overwhelm and getting things done • the tools that Ashley uses to get things done • what her team looks like and how she spends her time today • the packages she offers to her clients • what you should do if you want to do more copy coaching • the mistakes Ashley sees copywriters making and holding them back • what she’s done to take her business to the next level • the pitch that got Ashley on our podcast and why it worked • the difference confidence makes in so many of her client’s businesses
We also asked about the future of copywriting and what to do if you want a “bigger and better” business. This is a good one. To hear it all, the play button below. Or scroll down for a transcript. Better yet, subscribe and never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Ashley's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to connect with hundreds of smart copywriters who share your ideas and strategies to help you master marketing, mindset and copywriting in your business. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 192 as we chat with business coach Ashley Gartland about creating a business that is better not bigger, what business challenges copywriters struggle with the most, her advice on managing time projects and overwhelm and the pitch she sent us that made us want to have her on the show.
Kira: Welcome Ashley.
Rob: Hi Ashley.
Ashley: Hi guys. Thanks so much for having me.
Kira: Yeah. Great to have you and I am excited to talk about the pitch that you sent us because it did grab my attention at least, and you kind of played the long game too as far as building a relationship on Instagram first and I just felt like it was very an elegant approach to pitching podcast. So we'll talk about that, but first let's start with your story. How did you end up as a writer turned business coach?
Ashley: Yeah. So really I have to say that though the way I landed here and the way I got into business by myself in the first place, entrepreneurship, is because I had this really strong desire to have a career that served my life. And when I graduated from journalism school I didn't see a lot of options out there that matched what I envisioned for my life, which was a lot of autonomy, a lot of choice in terms of how my days looked and also where I wanted to live in the country and those things. And so I decided that I would just give it a go and I would see straight out of college how to be a freelance writer and it went really wel...
Copywriter Kaitlyn Parker is our guest for the 191st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We got to know Kaitlyn a bit better at this years IRL event where she took more than 35 pages of notes, recording the most important ideas and tactics that the speakers shared. We asked her why she did that as well as a lot of questions about how she's grown her business. Here's most of what we covered:
• how she turned a social media gig with LuluLemon into her current role as a copywriter • what she does to make social media effective for her business • how often she posts on instagram (and the size of her audience) • how to make “copy” posts work on visual media like Instagram or Pinterest • whether hiring a photographer for social images is worth it or not… ROI? • how Kaitlyn comes up with the images for her brand • her process for helping clients develop and dial in their brands • the packages and deliverables she offers to her clients • how her prices have evolved as her business has grown • what her client relationships look like—retainers versus one-time projects • how clients find her… it’s not all from social media • the #1 thing she’s gotten from attending live events • her biggest take away from TCCIRL and the speaker who made the most difference in her biz • how she manages her time and projects (and the tools she uses) • what she thinks the future of copywriting looks like
If you've ever struggled to effectively capture your brand on social media, you won't want to miss this episode. To hear it, click the button below, or download it to your favorite podcast app. Readers scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: TCCIRL Sage Polaris Mike Kim Kaitlyn's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. The place to find more than 20 templates, dozens of presentations on topics like copywriting, and marketing your business. A community of successful writers, who share ideas and leads, and The Copywriter Club newsletter, mailed directly to your home every month. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? Ask them about their success and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work, that's what Kira and I do every week, at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 191, as we chat with copywriter, Kaitlyn Parker about her career path, the importance of branding and social media in growing her business. Why she took 37 pages of notes at TCC in real life, and the process she uses to get crystal clear messaging for her clients.
Kira: Welcome Kaitlyn.
Rob: Hey Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn: Hey, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
Kira: Yeah, we're excited that you're here. We met you at TCC in real life in San Diego.
Kaitlyn: The timing of that was just wild. I don't think any of us knew that it was going to turn into all of this. And here we are, barely have left our houses since then.
Kira: Yeah. Who knew? Craziness. Okay, so Kaitlyn, let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Kaitlyn: Yeah, I feel like most copywriters, it was kind of accidental. I always loved writing and had a personal blog for years. And then after college I was an English major and then post-college, I had an outside sales job. Did that for a bit, but it was in recruiting and I just didn't love it. So I ended up actually working for Lululemon, and I was managing the social media, and marketing, and the community, divisions of the store as we were opening quite a few different stores in the area, and I really loved it.
And people would be like, "Oh, that caption was so clever,
Copywriter Per Andreasen interviews Rob and Kira for the 190th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Per kicks off the interview with the Intro in Danish... which will probably confuse a few listeners expecting to hear our regular intro... then we talked about what's up with us and how the podcast will be changing in the near future. Here's most of what we talked about:
• what the intro sounds like in Danish… thanks to Per Andreasen • how to thrive in a crisis—Rob’s advice for surviving a recession • what has happened to our business since the virus became a “thing” • the Copywriter Roundtable… and why we don’t promote it • how The Copywriter Club evolved into what it is today • how The Copywriter Club is a bit like a cult • how we deal with imposter complex ourselves • when the biggest leaps in our business have happened • why we haven’t offered certifications for the training we provide • our biggest program failure and what we did instead • the changes we are making to the podcast in the future • where we think copywriting is going in the future • why some copywriters are busier than ever during the COVID crisis • good example of advertising in response to the economic crisis • what we are doing in our own businesses this year • when to expect the very first Copywriter Club event in Europe • a bit about Per’s business too
If you're interested in what's going on in our businesses, and what's next for The Copywriter Club, you'll want to check out this episode. Scroll down to listen or for a full transcript. Or better yet, download it to your podcast player now.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank The tattoo video Gin Walker Elaine Wellman Brian Kurtz The intro/outro competition details FB post Kim Krause Schwalm Per’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Per Andreasen: [Speaking in Danish] Hvad nu hvis du kunne hænge ud med seriøst talentfulde copywritere og andre eksperter. Spørge dem om deres succeser og fiaskoer, deres processer og vaner for så at stjæle en idé eller to som kan inspirere dit eget arbejde? Det er hvad Rob og Kira gør hver eneste uge på…The Copywriter Club Podcast. Yes, this is still The Copywriter Club Podcast. You're invited to join them for Episode 190 as former journalist and now the world's strongest copywriter, Per Andreasen, lovingly grills them on this and that.
Rob: Our Danish audience is going to go through the roof with this episode. So, for this episode of the podcast, we've invited our friend and someone who has participated in The Copywriter Accelerator, The Copywriter Think Tank, has been to all three TCC IRLs, and is the only copywriter that we know in Denmark, I think, to interview us for the podcast and that is, Per Andreasen, the strongest copywriter in the world.
Kira: Yeah, 190, that's pretty crazy.
Per Andreasen: It's amazing. So, the last time I saw you two guys was at your amazing real life event in San Diego, and you've already gone through all your takeaways before, so I want to talk about the crisis that made everything about the event feel even more special than your previous events. Especially, Rob, your talk was about how to thrive in a crisis, can you repeat some of that advice and how that has stayed true?
Rob: I can definitely repeat a lot of the advice, it was kind of... I guess it was a timely talk. I wasn't assuming that it was going to be quite as timely as it was, as I was preparing it. I kind of thought we might be due for a recession in the next year or two, maybe in six months but wasn't thinking that it was going to come together the way that it quite did. And so, I just gave some tips for how to deal with working in a recession. And you can get all of those tips in the videos from the event that we have made available.
In the 189th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with A-lister Carline Anglade Cole on how supporting her firefighter husband led to a career as a copywriter, what she learned from her mentor Clayton Makepeace, how she connects with her prospects and more. Here's a bit of what we covered...
• her ballsy approach to scoring a 2-hour interview for a marketing position • how she learned the craft of copywriting without courses or books • how doing a great job on a promotion got her fired (and 6 months of severance) • the WWCD question that helped her write a promotion that got a 5% response • what she’s done to go deeper with copy than most copywriters • her life as a 50 year old white man • what she learned from working with Clayton Makepeace • her approach to testing a lot emotions so the market comes to her • how her income went up every time Clayton criticized her writing • what it takes to write kick-butt copy that resonates with her audience • the “mom test” she uses to make sure she believes in the product • how she reworks her copy to make sure it’s as strong as possible • her kids—three of four of whom have worked as copywriters
This episode should not be missed. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or add it to your podcast player now.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Clayton Makepeace Gary Bencivenga Kim Schwalm Marcella Allison Carline's Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. The place to find more than 20 templates, dozens of presentations on topics like copywriting, and marketing, and mindset. A community of successful writers, who share ideas and leads, and The Copywriter Club newsletter, which is mailed directly to your home every month. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: If you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their success and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work, that's what Kira and I do every week, at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 189, as we chat with A list health copywriter, Carline Anglade-Cole, about working with and learning from her mentor, Clayton Makepeace. Her life as a 50 year-old white man, hiring her kids to write copy for her, connecting emotionally with the buyers she writes for and what it takes to write kick butt copy. Welcome, Carline.
Rob: Hey, Carline.
Carline: Hey guys, how are you?
Rob: We're doing good.
Carline: I liked the intro, Kira.
Kira: That was all Rob, Rob wrote that one.
Carline: Oh, Rob, very nice, very nice.
Kira: So we're excited to have you back. We tried to record this, I don't know, was it a year ago, more than a year ago now and I had major tech issues and so we didn't know if this interview was ever going to happen, and I'm so glad that it will. So thanks, Carline for coming back.
Carline: Thanks for inviting me.
Kira: And let's kick it off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Carline: Definitely, it was not a life plan. I had no idea what copywriting was. I had gone to school and got my degree in communications and journalism, so I always knew I wanted to be in the writing field somehow, but didn't quite know how. I just sort of stumbled across the whole copywriting thing when I got a job working at Phillips Publishing. At the time, I had a two and a half year-old and a one-year-old and I was just looking for a job that would complement my husband's schedule. He was a firefighter and he worked shift work. So we had these kids and we wanted to be home with our kids ourselves. So I had to find some kind of a job that would allow me ...
In the 188th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Gin Walker on how her experience as a stage actor influences her writing process, her REACH framework, the misunderstanding that turned her into a copywriter, and what she does to manage the competing interests in her life. Here’s the outline of what we covered during this interview:
• the airplane discussion that “mistakenly” turned her into a copywriter • the podcast that helped her discover what copywriting is • the difference between copy editing and copywriting • how she landed her first few clients after she made her career switch • what she did to build on her initial success and grow her business • how attending TCCIRL changed her business • how being an actor has helped Gin as a copywriter • how she uses her R.E.A.C.H. framework as she works with clients • what she does to manage all the competing interests in her life • how her business has changed over the past year • what her business looks like today • the mindset issue she struggles with and how she deals with it • her experience as the closing speaker at TCCIRL
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank The Copywriter Club In Real Life Joanna Wiebe Ry Schwartz Joel Klettke Hillary Weiss Tarzan Kay Rob Braddock Gin’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to be if you want to master marketing mindset and copywriting in your business and hit 10K a month without losing your mind. Learn more at TheCopywriterUnderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 188 as we chat with copywriter and TCCIRL closing speaker Gin Walker about her journey to copywriting, the advantages that she gets from being a stage actor that apply to copywriting, her reach framework, what she's done to grow her business this year, and what she would do differently if she had to start over today.
Kira: Welcome, Gin.
Rob: Hey, Gin.
Gin: Hello, guys. How are you doing?
Kira: Good. Great to have you here. We have known you for a while. You were in the Copywriter Accelerator program, and then the Copywriter Think Tank Mastermind, and most recently, you spoke on stage at The Copywriter Club in real life in San Diego. So, we've seen firsthand how you've grown in your business, and I'll be fun today to share a little bit more about what's been happening behind the scenes. So, why don't we start with your story and how you ended up as a copywriter?
Gin: Right. Sure, absolutely. Well, it's been relatively recent that I transitioned into copywriting in fact. I started out in educational publishing. I was a copyeditor for the longest time. Decades, in fact. So, yeah, I've been altering minds with word power for a little while. I was a copyeditor, as I say, and a commissioning editor. I was also a kids' science author within that educational field.
I went into that basically straight from university, straight after I graduated way back, and I worked up from the bottom there. But then I went freelance, in fact. I worked in-house at a couple of large educational publishers in the UK, this was. But then went freelance way back in 1995.
Well, I continued to work with various publishers that I had worked for in-house for a little while, but then it branched out and I was working for various educational publishers.
Conversion designer and sales page specialist Melissa Burkheimer is the guest for the 187th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We talked a bit about why copywriters and designers don't always see eye-to-eye and what we all can do about it. We also asked Melissa about why she niched to conversion design and sales pages and her design process. Here's what we covered: • how Melissa became a “conversion designer” and started her own business • what she learned from investing in several programs and courses • how she connected with Amy Porterfield through a friend of a friend the “relationship” process she followed to keep adding clients to her roster • her thoughts about “pay to play” and what we think about it too • what she would do to get traction if she had to start over today • why she niched to working only on sales pages and the impact on her biz • how she prices her sales pages and the packages she offers • what it takes for copywriters to work closely with a designer • the difference between a regular designer and a conversion designer • her design process and how she works on a project • her thoughts on wireframes provided by copywriters • what to do when the designer wants to cut your copy • the things that copywriters do that bug designers • what Melissa is working on today and the future of conversion design
It's another great discussion that will give you plenty to think about. Ready to hear what Melissa has to say? Click the play button below. Or scroll down for a full transcript. Or subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Rick Mulready B-School Amy Porterfield Erica Lyremark Elizabeth Dialto Sage Polaris Gin Walker Melissa’s podcast Melissa’s website The Conversion Design School Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira Hug: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to be if you want to master marketing mindset and copywriting in your business and hit 10K a month in your business without losing your mind. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob Marsh: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira Hug: You're invited to join the club for episode 187 as we chat with conversion designer Melissa Burkheimer about what copywriters need to know about the design process, how good design makes your copy way more effective, why she only works with seven clients a year and why she created the Conversion Design School. Welcome Melissa.
Rob Marsh: Hey Melissa.
Melissa Burkheimer: Hi, Kira and Rob, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Kira Hug: We're excited to have you here. You and I met, I don't know, three or four years ago, maybe working on a sales page project for Rick Mulready, and that's when we first met. And it was such a positive experience to work with you on the design side because I know, we'll talk about this today, but oftentimes it feels like copywriters are battling designers and designers are battling copywriters on projects.
But when we worked together, it was just really collaborative and we became friends too, which it was a great surprise too. So a lot of what we're going to talk about today is how we can work together more effectively. But before we dig into that, why don't we just start with you and your story? How did you end up as a designer?
Melissa Burkheimer: So it's a funny story. So I actually had a business, I was a professional paid singer as a kid when I was eight and I quit when I was 11. And by the time I quit,
In the 186th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with two ambitious copywriters who recently launched the first of many Women Led Summits. Their first summit included 45 different speakers, helped them grow their email list and actually made money. We wanted to know how they did it, so we invited Great Cate and Betsy Muse to the studio to chat. Here's what we covered: • how Betsy and Greta became business partners • the paths they both took to becoming copywriters • the original vision for the women-led summit and how it came together • what does it take to create a summit today • all the moving pieces for producing a summit… time, editing, interviews, etc. • how Betsy and Greta made it all work • their favorite take aways from the 45 speakers who participated • the impact the summit had on their list and bottom line • the real goal of their summit (it wasn’t really about the money) • how they promoted their summit—the promotion plan • their advice to anyone considering creating their own summit • how they make their partnership work—the benefit of partners • what the future looks like for both Betsy and Greta • how they’ve dealt with mindset issues (like introversion) as they’ve grown
If you've ever considered creating a summit for your niche, you'll want to make sure to listen to this episode, which you can do when you click the play button below. Or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Joanna Wiebe App Sumo WomenLedSummits.com HeySummit The Copywriter Club In Real Life Betsy’s Website Greta’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator, 12-week program for copywriters who want to learn the business skills they need to succeed as copywriters. Learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 186 as we chat with two copywriters, Betsy Muse and Greta Cate, about forming a business partnership with another copywriter, running a summit and their advice for anyone who wants to do one, their biggest struggles in business and what comes next.
Kira: Betsy and Greta, welcome.
Rob: Hi guys.
Betsy Muse: Thank you. It's great being here. Thanks for having us.
Kira: We're excited to have both of you. It's a little party today with the four of us. We were both recently a part of your summit that you ran a couple months ago now, your first ever Women-Led Summit. So I know we're going to dig into that today and talk about summits which are quite popular right now in the COVID-19 landscape. Lots of summits are popping up. But why don't we start with your story. How did you two end up as business partners?
Betsy Muse: Well, it's a really a funny story. Greta and I met in Joanna Wiebe's 10x Freelance Copywriter and bonded over a shared love for AppSumo lifetime deals.
Greta Cate: Yeah.
Betsy Muse: Greta invited me for coffee. I thought, "Hey, great. She lives in North Carolina somewhere, and so we'll just meet halfway in between." Now, Greta lives in Corpus Christi, Texas. We weren't quite meeting in person. And then a week after our virtual coffee, we started an accountability group in 10x Freelance Copywriter. That group is still active today.
Greta Cate: Yeah. We had right off the bat realized that we had some shared values and were interested in making and having the same kind of impact. Back to AppSumo, they have this summit deal and we were talking about that and Betsy said,
Health copywriter, Darren Hanser, is our guest for the 185th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We recently met Darren at an event in Las Vegas, then again at The Copywriter Club In Real Life and after chatting, we knew we had to have him on the show. Darren has built a solid copy business and we got him to share how he did it. Here's what we talked about: • why he may have been destined to become a copywriter even as a child • the google search term that led him to a career as a copywriter • how he made more than $98,000 in a weekend… to prove he could write • how he learned to come up with lots of good ideas • the importance of the mechanism and how Darren uses it in his copy • his “double down” approach to finding more copy assignments • his “leap frog” approach to investing in the next thing • how he got a client to pay for his first copy coach • what his business looks like today and where his income comes from • his writing process from research to delivery • depression, darkness and overwhelm and having to ask for help • why he attends events and masterminds when his business is already doing well • his take aways from The Copywriter Club In Real Life • the three things you must do to succeed as a copywriter • how Darren structures his fees—a lesson he learned in the insurance industry • what it’s like to look like Seth Rogan • what’s next for Darren in his business this year
This is another good one. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. And consider subscribing on your favorite podcast app so you don't ever miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Ask by Ryan Levesque Dan Ferrari Justin Goff Stefan Georgi Dean Jackson's Naked Truth Letter Copy Chief Live Kim Krause Schwalm Kaitlyn Parker Darren's website darrenhanser.com 15minuteemails.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira Hug: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator, the 12-week program for copywriters who want to learn the business skills they need to succeed. Learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Rob Marsh: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira Hug: You're invited to join the club for Episode 185, as we chat with health supplement copywriter Darren Hanser about writing for wellness and info products, how he commands high fees for the work he does, what he's done to grow his business, and what it's like to be Seth Rogan's doppelganger. Welcome, Darren.
Rob Marsh: Hey, Darren.
Darren Hanser: Had to throw that in there, right?
Kira Hug: You gave that piece of information to me.
Darren Hanser: It's great to be here.
Rob Marsh: That's probably where we should start.
Kira Hug: Yeah, exactly. Darren, we met you in Las Vegas not too long ago. We were fast friends and then we saw you again a couple weeks later at TCC in real life before the world shut down. Today, I'm excited to just dig more into your story and what you've done to grow. Why don't we kick it off with how you became a copywriter? What's your story?
Darren Hanser: What's your story? It's funny, because that's the question I ask people and it gets them talking. But when people ask me that I stumble sometimes.
Kira Hug: It gets you talking, it's going to get you talking, yeah.
Darren Hanser: It's gets me talking. The earliest I remember I was always in a sales mentality, just in my own mind. Even as a young child, I was always trying to persuade my parents to do things and I would come up with these arguments, I would come up with these very logical and emotional appeals...
Copywriter Rachel Greiman is our guest for the 184th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rachel has worked almost exclusively with photographers since she launched her copywriting business a few years ago. We talked about how the niche found her, her unique process and more. Here's most of what we covered: • how she became a photographer and copywriter • her work as a photo-journalist and the work she did • the struggle she had in early days in her business as a copywriter • how she charged $200 for entire websites—and why it was so low • how clients found her as she launched her copywriting business • why she works with associate writers and how she trained them • what her business looks like today compared to those early days • how she works with and pays her team and what she expects from them • why she pays her team well and how it has helped her business • how she trains her team to make sure they can deliver • why she only takes one client at a time and her delivery schedule • how she thinks about her “competitors” • the “guide” she created to develop a second income stream • what she learned from the process of launching a product • the first time she ever met another copywriter and what happened after that • what she’s done to take her business to the next level • dealing with the virus and running a business in a time of disruption • the reason to be optimistic about the future right now
To hear all the great advice Rachel has to share, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or subscribe at iTunes or Stitcher so you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Rachel’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by the copywriter accelerator, the 12-week program for copywriters who want to learn the business skills they need to succeed as copywriters, learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com
Kira: What if you get to hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? Ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 184 as we chat with copywriter for photographers Rachel Greiman about the power of choosing a niche building and managing team, creating a completely different offer for her audience and what she's done to take the business to a new level this year.
Kira: Rachel, welcome.
Rachel: Hi. Thanks for having me. Thanks for dealing with the last 40 minutes of tech problems with us. I'm sure that 90% of it was my fault. So...
Rob: Everyone is working from home these days and so the internet does not want to cooperate.
Kira: The internet is full. That is true.
Rachel: It is full.
Kira: So Rachel, we have been working with you and been able to get to know you through the Think Tank over the last 12 months. And we're excited to share a bit more about your story and some of the wins and even some of the struggles. But why don't we start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Rachel: That is a really great question and probably one I should have mentally prepared for knowing this, coming here. I just feel like it's such a winding road and it always gets so long. I will try to condense it though.
Kira: Okay.
Rachel: So I studied photojournalism in college, so writing and photography always went hand in hand for me. Like I was always doing both. And then after college I worked in the nonprofit field for a long time, almost a decade actually. And I would always get hired for one skillset, either writing or photography. And then I always ended up doing both together because at nonprofits ...
SEO Consultant (and reformed web designer) Meg Casebolt is our guest for the 183rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Since this is an area that we don't have real deep knowledge in, we asked Meg all about what copywriters need to know about SEO and what they should be trying to rank for. And we spent a lot of time talking about the 3-week challenge she put together last year and how it helped grow her list. Here's a pretty good list of what we covered: • how she went from graphic design to SEO—it’s about grabbing opportunity • what she did to learn SEO in the first place • what she did to work through the pivot from design to SEO • Meg’s advice for anyone working through their own pivot (or choosing a niche) • how she ramped up her client acquisition after the first few referrals • the best thing she’s done to grow her authority since her pivot • the surprising thing that scared Meg as she was running her challenge • how she ran her challenge and how she engaged her affiliates • why her challenge took off (and why people joined in the middle) • how she structured her challenge from start to finish • the results that participants got as they went through the program • how Meg kept people engaged in the Challenge from start to finish • why adding a deadline helped people finish their Challenge assignments • why she no longer does PPC as part of her services • what a copywriter needs to know about SEO and getting online traffic • why you shouldn’t try to rank for a term like “copywriter” • the importance of putting great content on your own website • how she has dealt with mindset issues around working with clients • the end-product she provides clients after a consulting session • why she decided to rebrand her services as she grew her team • what her team looks like today and where Meg spends her time
We covered a lot of ground in this one. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don't miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator Tanya Geisler SEOctober MemberVault Meg’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator, the 12-week program for copywriters who want to learn the business skills they need to succeed. Learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for Episode 183 as we chat with SEO strategist, Meg Casebolt about planning and writing search friendly content, why SEO needs to be a part of your marketing mix, what it takes to run a month-long challenge as well as the results she got and why has she rebranded and refocused her business solely on SEO.
Welcome Meg.
Rob: Hey, Meg.
Meg: Hey, it's so nice to be here with you guys.
Kira: Yeah, it's great to have you here. I've been able to get to know you over the last nine months or so through Tanya Geisler and I'm excited to just dig into your business more and talk about a lot of the changes that you've made and challenges that you've taken on, so let's kick it off with your story. How did you get into SEO?
Meg: Okay, so my story is, I think a pretty common one, which is that I had been working in communications for many years. I worked in nonprofits. I worked at an architecture firm for a couple of years doing all of their marketing. I got married, I got pregnant, and I looked at the cost of childcare and I don't know if I can swear on this podcast, but I swore.
SaaS Copywriter Rachael Pilcher is our guest for the 182nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We've had a front row seat over the past year as Rachael has made dramatic changes to her business and stepped up as an expert in the SaaS space. So we wanted to ask her about: • how she went from travel blogging to SaaS copywriting • what she did to find her first clients—it started with job boards • what she learned running a “little shop” and why she sold it • why she niched into SaaS and the clients she works with today • the process she went through to choose her niche • what she did to transition from blogger to fully booked copywriter • her processes from start to finish on a project • what she looks for in clients she takes (and those she rejects) • her new website and the process she went through to get where she is • Rachael’s SNACKS framework and how she uses it • the resources she’s used to improve her skills and grow her business • value-based pricing and price anchoring • the biggest mistake she made in her business • why she hangs out where other copywriters DON’T hang out • how she works and avoids the temptation of site seeing while traveling • what Rachael is doing in 2020
This is a good one. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or subscribe with your favorite podcast app (don't forget to leave a review).
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Josh Garofalo Joel Klettke Joanna Wiebe Rachael's website Copywriter Think Tank Nigel Stevens Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator, the 12-week program for copywriters who want to learn the business skills they need to succeed. Learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 182 as we chat with SaaS copywriter Rachael Pilcher about working with software clients, the investments she's made in her business that have paid off, what she learned from her brick and mortar businesses, and what it's like to work and travel for months at a time.
Kira: Welcome, Rachael.
Rob: Hey, Rachael.
Rachael: Nice to be here. Thank you for having me on.
Kira: Great to have you here. It's great to have you in a time zone near me, selfishly. I just feel like you're near me finally because you're traveling all over the place, which I know we'll talk about. But yeah, we've just really enjoyed getting to know you through the Think Tank over the last year and I just feel like you're one of those people that is always, you're just cool. You're just always cool. When we're not around you at the Think Tank, we're all talking about just how you live a very cool life and you've done very well in your business and built this really interesting brand that stands out. I mean, you've done it in a short period of time.
Kira: We're going to talk about the cool factor today, but let's kick it off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Rachael: Well, it was kind of accidentally, actually. I had sold my business and I'd sold my classic car as well, so I had quite a bit of money saved up and I just wanted to travel because I hadn't really done that. So travel, travel, travel, and then obviously started running out of money. So it's like, what can I do to keep traveling and also have some money coming in? I think I just Googled and Googled and I came across... It was actually Nomadic Matt's traveling blog course, embarrassingly enough.
In the 181st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk about what happened at TCCIRL—the best event we've held yet. Several speakers stepped up at the last minute, others brought their A-game and shared ideas and stories that have changed the businesses of the 130+ copywriters who were there. We talk about: • the earthquake, the virus and the economic response to it • why we can’t afford to operate from a place of fear no matter what is going on • why TCCIRL felt “better” this year than in the past • the speakers who had less than 48 hours to get stage ready • a few of the speakers who really stood out to us • what Jasmine Star taught us about scaling a business • the hero’s journey and what marketers miss when they talk about it • some of the advice that came out of the panel discussions • how to think about branding from the standpoint of authenticity • the power of constraints to make us more creative • why its important to think about your role as a human asset, not just a copywriter • what you should do differently during a recession • why the Copywriter Think Tank is about and the transformation members see
If you can't get enough of what happened at TCCIRL or you want more information about The Copywriter Think Tank, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank TCCIRL Mike Kim Dana Malstaff Marcella Allison Ray Edwards Jasmine Star Jamie Jensen Tanya Geisler Linda Perry Lindsay Hotmire Justin Blackman Matt Hall Gin Walker Bond Halbert Stefan Georgi Sam Woods Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: So, we do not have an intro for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast because it's just me and Kira chatting about what went down over the last week or so at The Copywriter Club In Real Life. And so yeah, we just wanted to jump in and share some of our biggest takeaways, what happened and express our gratitude for some things that happened. And reflect a little bit on the magic that we got to experience last week.
Kira: Well it's not just me and you, it's me and you and the earthquake.
Rob: So, we did have an earthquake here this morning, so hopefully-
Kira: No biggy.
Rob: The power will stay on long enough to make sure that everything here is good. But yeah, it's been kind of a crazy morning Kira while it's been not just the morning, right? With the virus, with everything that's going on it's a crazy, a lot of things.
Kira: And Rob is kind of downplaying the earthquake like, ‘Oh, it's just a little earthquake.’ It was a big one and with several follow-up tremors. I don't speak earthquake language because I live on the East Coast, we don't have earthquakes here typically. But can you just share, I mean these are big earthquakes that you experienced today.
Rob: Yeah, the first big one that we felt this morning was like a 5.7 on the Richter scale, which is-
Kira: It's a big deal.
Rob: It's big enough to knock down walls and there's definitely been a little bit of damage. They closed the airport because of some water main breakage, they had to evacuate I think the tower. I'm not sure if there was any damage there, but I'm far enough away from the epicenter that I've walked around my house, there's no damage to our house and there are no fatalities reported, no injuries. So while it could have certainly been worse and maybe someday a worse earthquake will happen here. We survived this one. But it is freaky when the ground starts moving, when everything in your house starts to shake and it's happened seven or eight times this morning of the ones that we could feel. And yeah. So, who knows? Like if you hear a rumble in the background while we're chatting here, it could be another aftershock going on and on and I'll just dive under my desk...
Copywriter and former cookie maker, Helen Tremethick, is our guest for the 179th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Helen has an interesting approach to working with her clients, so we asked her all about it... and we asked her about these things too: • the path she followed from R&D director at a cookie company to copywriter • the common thread running through the jobs she had before she became a writer • her “complimentary relationship” tactic for finding clients • the “platypus model” for working with branding and copy clients • how to create, sell and deliver a workshop for clients (and the economics of it all) • the mistakes you’ll want to avoid if you want to hold workshops • what her Clarity Sessions include—getting the underlying brand values right • the questions she asks her clients in her consulting work • how she prices her introductory offers in order to attract clients • the tactics she uses to “do brand voice” better—this is an idea worth stealing • what she includes in her roadmapping sessions • where things go off the rails with style and brand voice guides • the other unique things she’s doing in her business that other copywriters aren’t • her experience as a blocker in roller derby • Helen’s and Kira’s copywriting lessons from roller derby • where she thinks copywriting is going in the future
To hear everything Helen shared, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or, even better, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The price survey Tanya Geisler Helen’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Accelerator, the 12 week program for copywriters who want to learn the business skills they need to succeed. Learn more at thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for Episode 179 as we chat with copywriter and brand voice strategist, Helen Tremethick about how to position of business so you attract the right clients, creating more than one revenue stream in her business, how she creates balance and ignores the hustle and her experience in roller derby.
Welcome, Helen.
Helen: Hi, thank you.
Kira: Kick this off and let us know how you ended up as a copywriter and brand voice strategist. What's your story?
Helen: Oh, yes, thanks. The short story is that I went to school for radio and television broadcasting. Then I went to school for International Development. Brand voice strategy is really about communicating who you are, and really understanding that deeper motivation. It's really hybrid of both of those educational channels that I took along the way in a very formal way. But the truth of the matter is, if you get a little bit deeper and uncover the story, there are a lot of hats that I wore along the way from being a research and development consultant for a cookie company, to being an executive director of a nonprofit, and even being a purple tea apprentice at a farm in central Ontario.
All these experiences allowed me to really see business owners as they are, what works, what doesn't work, and really start formulating a way of communicating that connects to the people that we want to connect to, but still maintains this really genuine and authentic, not authentic TM, but this really authentic way of communicating who you are.
Rob: Did you just say you were an R&D specialist in a cookie company?
Helen: Yes, vegan cookie company in Toronto,
Productivity Expert and Coach, Charlie Gilkey, is our guest for the 178th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We've admitted our struggles with getting things done on the podcast before—and neither one of us is a fan of traditional time management tactics like setting SMART goals... so it made sense to have Charlie on to talk through how we can start finishing and get more done. We asked Charlie about: • how he accidentally became a speaker, author and coach • exactly what he does as a coach and how he helps his clients • why coaches ask so many questions (and don’t always share the answers) • an example of how Charlie works with his clients to help them find the real issues • why so many people shy away from the work that could help them level up • why accountability helps anyone who wants achieve more • why time management isn’t the answer (but you still need it) • focus blocks and how to use them to get more done • how to stop what you’re doing that’s keeping you from getting what you want • how to figure out if you’re a lark, an owl, or an emu • his advice for figuring out what you really want • the hardest question Charlie asks people (and why) • why he doesn’t believe anyone is inherently a procrastinator • the tools we can use to create a better vision for our lives • the difference between those who make it and those who give up • what his book is about and what you’ll get out of it • what he does to grow his skills and be a better coach for his clients
If you struggle with getting things done, or finishing the thing you start... or you just want to quit and watch Netflix for a few weeks, you don't want to miss this episode. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Better still, subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Coaching Habit The Advice Trap Joanna Wiebe Val Geisler The Spice Girls Double Double Start Finishing (Charlie’s book) Deep Work by Cal Newport Finish by John Acuff Charlie’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego March 12th through 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Kira: What if you could hang with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 178 as we chat with author and business coach Charlie Gilkey about how to take an idea from start to finish, what it takes to level up your business, how to effectively use time to get more done, and what it takes to do your best work.
Kira: Charlie, welcome!
Rob: Hey, Charlie.
Charlie: Thanks so much for having me, guys. I'm pumped to be here.
Kira: Yeah. We're pumped! I have been looking forward to this for a while. So let's just start, Charlie, with your story. For anyone who doesn't know you as well, how did you end up as an executive coach, speaker, an author, and a philosopher?
Charlie: Well, when it comes to the executive coach, speaker, and author bit, all of that was super accidental. I fell into this backassward, in the sense where I had come back. So let's roll back to 2006, 2007. I had recently come back from being a deployed soldier for Operation Iraqi Freedom, and I still had my career as an Army officer. I was a logistics officer. And I was also pursuing my PhD in philosophy. So I'm a social philosopher and an ethicist.
And it seems so sophomoric now, looking back as a 40-year-old, looking back at my 26-year-old self. But my 26-year-old self was like,
Social Media strategist, Andrea Jones is our guest for the 177th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We were interested in this topic because we are so bad at using social media in our own businesses and for The Copywriter Club. If you've struggled to find a way to maximize social media to help you find clients you'll want to listen to this. We asked Andrea about: • how she became a social media strategist—she started doing posts for $5 • what she did to meet her husband (he was annoying her on Youtube) • what’s going on in social media today and the rise of video • how to understand your audience so you serve them • where you should start if you’re overwhelmed by social media • the importance—or non-importance—of design and “the grid” • the bare minimum you should be sharing on social media • how to build your audience and get the attention of your best prospects • how to turn social media into a lead generation tool for your biz • the mistakes people make on social media that you don’t want to make • the “right” approach to your brand voice on social media • when you should be working with a team and when you shouldn’t • what it costs to hire a social media consultant • the #1 thing she’s done to take her business to the next level • the future of social media… and how you can get ahead of it
This episode is available wherever great podcasts are found (like iTunes and Stitcher). Or you can simply click the play button below. There's also a transcript for anyone who scrolls down.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Life Coach School Andrea’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, March 12th through the 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 177 as we chat with social media strategist, Andrea Jones about creating impact and social media channels like Instagram and LinkedIn, creating sales funnels that start in social media, why copywriters need to spend more time in this important channel and the things she's done to up level her business.
Welcome, Andrea.
Rob: Hey Andrea.
Andrea: Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to chat with you guys today.
Kira: I know we're excited to talk about social media because we've done well in certain areas in media, but there are other areas where we are lacking in The Copywriter Club.
Rob: It's so bad.
Kira: Super bad, because we've talked about it before, Andrea. So why don't we start this off with your story and talk about how you ended up as a social media strategist.
Andrea: Yes. I love this question because, I met my husband on YouTube.
Rob: Social media is a game changer is what you're saying.
Andrea: It literally has changed my life. But I am an early adapter to social media. I actually happen to like it and I started a blog back in 2004. I was making YouTube videos in 2007 way before it was cool and my friends thought I was insane. And so social media for me is just a really fun way for an introvert like myself to show up in a way that's still doesn't drain my energy. I started out on social media as fun, but it wasn't until I actually moved to live with my YouTube husband in 2014 when I started the business. So with that move, I needed something to do. I moved to a completely different country from Atlanta, Georgia to Toronto, Canada.
And so that big move helped me launch my business.
We don't often have two guests join us in the studio, but this week is one of those exceptions. For this special "un-numbered' episode, we've invited Rob Braddock and Conor Lynch to share how they become copywriters, what they're doing differently in the financial niche, and how you can earn the opportunity for a paid gig ($7,500 plus royalties) to write a promo for WealthPress. You'll want to listen to get the details. We also talked about: • how Rob Braddock accomplished his meteoric rise from prisoner to successful copywriter • the resources he used to learn direct response copywriter • Rob’s daily meditation practice • how easy it is to get your foot in the door wherever you want to work • how Conor Lynch got his first taste of copywriting at age 13 • the boring narrative arc in the biz-op niche that drove him to finance • how WealthPress became the fastest growing Financial publisher • the writing and approval process that helped Conor get promotions done faster • the importance of spectacle when it comes to getting attention • the process of building a hot list (and how WealthPress does it differently) • whether spectacle and video promotions will work in niches beside finance • why WealthPress is sponsoring the cocktail party at TCCIRL • how you can “win” an opportunity for a paid promotion with WealthPress
Don't skip this one, especially if you've ever dreamed of writing in the financial niche. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or better yet, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: WealthPress The Gary Halbert Letters Jake Hoffberg Joe Schriefer Evaldo Albuequeque Dan Kennedy Yanik Silver Russell Brunson Raging Bull Angel Publishing Trade Winds Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets Joel Klettke Macallan M Contest Entries Go Here Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob M: This is a different kind of interview than we usually do. We usually only talk to one person at a time. Today we have both Rob Braddock and Conor Lynch as our guests today. For a couple different reasons we're doing this a little bit differently. One, because we've got a contest that we're going to talk about here in just a minute. Two, you guys worked together to create some pretty interesting financial promotions, and you do it in a different way. Before we get into all of that, maybe Rob Braddock, we can start with your story. Then maybe we can hear a little bit from Conor about his story and how he got into this business.
Rob B: Right. Well, yeah. I guess it is a pretty crazy thing to think. You could probably go back not too far just two years or so ago and find the first post I made in The Copywriter Club. I didn't know anything about copywriting two years ago really, but I'd just discovered it. So, before I got into copywriting, I was in political fundraising. Got in a little bit of trouble. Bribery this, bribery that, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. Three years in federal prison. That essentially ended that career and all of the contacts I had built up over time. It's not something I could get back into.
So, I had to start over again. After I stumbled around and bumbled around trying to figure out what I was going to do, I knew it was going to be something in the internet space or maybe I would SEO, sales or something. I wasn't really sure. I stumbled across copywriting, direct response copywriting and then financial direct response copywriting. Once I saw what it was, what it is and how much money can be made with it, I was like, ‘All right, I'm doing this, man. I'm going all in.’
So, I started studying and studying and studying relentlessly. It was essentially my primary focus of my life for six months at least. Then one thing led to another,
For the 175th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talked with copywriter Derek Hambrick about his path to freelance copywriter... including his first failed attempt and what made him successful the second time he gave it a go. We also talked about: • the path he followed from communications to copywriting • the surprising emotions Derek felt when he was laid off… panic and excitement • how he relies on relationships to find clients for his business • what he did to step up his copywriting game as he went out on his own • the importance of giving and altruism to Derek’s ROI • the process he follows as he works with his clients • why he chose his niche and the impact its had on his business growth • the pros and cons of working in the higher education niche • how he moves from one client to the next and gets referrals • the changes he’s made to his mindset in order to think bigger • his experience in The Copywriter Underground and what he gets from it • how to get the most from a course or community you belong to • the mistakes he’s made as he moved from full time to freelance • what comes next… how Derek keeps growing
To hear what else we talked about, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or better yet, subscribe with your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Ry Schwartz Joel Klettke The Copywriter Underground Cantilever Creative TCCIRL Copywriting Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, March 12th through the 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 175 as we chat with copywriter Derek Hambrick about moving from full time work to freelance, choosing his niche and what that did for his business, what he did to find his first clients and how he finds people to work with today, his experience in The Copywriter Underground and what he's doing differently in 2020. Welcome, Derek.
Derek: Hey guys, thanks for having me over.
Kira: Yeah, I feel like we have wanted to have this conversation with you for a while. We've been able to hang out with... Well, I was able to hang out with you in person not too long ago and chat with you then, but we really wanted to record this and find out more about you and your business and what you've done because it's worked well. So, why don't we kick it off with your story? How did you end up as a copywriter?
Derek: Yes. So, I always knew I wanted to work with words for a living, but didn't know exactly how. Long story really short, I found myself working at Delta Airlines, not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life, but I figured Delta was a big enough place that I'll probably find it there and get paid as well along the way as I figured that out. I remember working on the International Concourse, writing a few articles for newsletters, that kind of thing. Nothing big.
But one evening the last flight pushed out to Santiago, Chile. That was done. Went back to the break room, working on an article, looked at the clock and an hour had gone by. And at that point I realized, ‘My God, I must really enjoy this.’ And that's when I realized I've got to find some role, some place capacity for me to write for a living.
So I applied for a bunch of corp-comm jobs, marketing roles and that kind of thing. Nothing really panned out because I didn't have a degree is wha...
Copywriter, coach and expert marketer, Ray Edwards is our guest for the 174th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. In this wide ranging conversation, Kira and Rob asked Ray about his business, how he got started, the changes he's making in his business and life, and what he does to accomplish more than most other people... even things he thinks are impossible. Here are a few of the things we covered: • how Ray went from radio host to copywriter • the experiences he had working in radio that help him in his copywriting career • his tattoos… what they are and why had has them • what has happened in Ray’s life and business over the last few years • what can happen when you remove the fear from your life • why it’s important to let your hidden personal beliefs influence your work persona • the power of impossible goals to set off a quantum leap in your life and business • why worthy failures are critical for achieving your impossible goals • Ray’s two-word counsel you need to hear—especially if you’re not operating at your best • the unspoken part of the law of manifestation and how to manifest things into your life • the things that have made the biggest difference in Ray’s business • what he would do today if he had to start over with nothing • drag racing rental cars when he travels • what’s next for Ray and where you can reach out to him
If you want to accomplish more than you ever thought possible, you'll want to listen to this episode. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or download the episode to your favorite podcast player.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jack Canfield Frank Kern Tony Robbins Ray’s podcast Ray’s Instagram Ray’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, March 12th through the 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/TCCIRL.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 174 as we chat with master copywriter, coach and consultant, Ray Edwards about his rise from radio personality to A-list copywriter, the relationship between his struggles and his success, the business and mindset shifts he's made in the past year and how he creates so much content every single week.
Welcome Ray.
Rob: Hey Ray.
Ray: Hi, thank you.
Kira: It's great to have you here, Ray, because you are one of my mentors and I was lucky enough to be in your mastermind group last year and went through a lot of different .. my own mindset shifts just by joining that group and spending time with you. So I'm glad that we're able to dig in and ask you a bunch of questions today. I'm also surrounded by all the books you gave me because you gave me so many books from our time together. I'm still working my way through them, but they're all surrounding me right now. So I've got some Ray vibes in my office right now.
Ray: That's what happen with anybody who hangs around me, I'll actually have a book for you.
Kira: I loved it. So let's kick it off. Many of our listeners know who you are, but let's just share your story, how you ended up as a copywriter.
Ray: Well, I started in the radio business when I was 14 and I loved being on the radio. I loved storytelling. I hung out at my grandparents house a lot during those days and I used to read the National Enquirer and I was fascinated by the ads. I actually thought they were articles, I was a bit younger when this was going on. I thought they were articles,
Accountant and business consultant, Erik Solbakken, is the guest for episode 173 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you saw that Erik is an accountant and thought, "maybe I'll skip this one" don't. Because we didn't really talk with Erik about the typical accounting stuff. Instead, Erik shared how he changed the pricing model for his service business and how copywriters can do the same thing. Now instead of trading time for money, a signifiant portion of Erik's income is completely independent of the time he spends working with clients. Instead, he makes more when he creates more value. Kira and Rob asked Erik about: • how he went from tax accountant to strategic consultant • what he did to significantly change how he earns a living as an accountant • the realization that how long a thing takes isn’t connected to its value • the three lies business owners tell themselves about money • a breakdown of why value can’t be attached to the time spent to create it • why working with clients doesn’t have to suck • the 4 step solution to solving any problem—and the most important step • the 10-10-10 model for pricing coaching services • why he insists his clients “never sell” • the 3 Cs Erik covers on every sales call • the mistakes that are all too easy to make when selling on value • his total launch failures and the impact it had on his business
This is an episode you won't want to miss. To hear it, click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast player. And if you're rather read, you can scroll down for a full transcript and links to some of the people and things we talked about.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jeff Walker Erik’s website Accountant Success Formula Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
Allison Evelyn Gower is our guest for the 172nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We asked Allison about her experience creating her first program, what inspired her to move fast, and how she got scrappy to fill it. She offers plenty of learning and advice to anyone who is thinking of creating a program or course. Here's the outline of what we covered during this interview: • what inspired her transition from film production to copywriting • how she learned to be “scrappy” as a production assistant • how Allison landed her first few clients • what’s happened in her business since she launched—lots of changes • the process she went through to find her niche • the 3 things that have been the biggest game changers for her business • how she pulls brand personality out of her clients • the answers Rob and Kira gave to one of Allison’s on-boarding questions • how to get feedback from clients on the words that describe you • secrets for identifying the language that shows off your personality • how you project your personality into the world • what she did when she launched her day-rate package • why she decided to launch a group program—and how Kira lit a fire under her • how Allison mapped out her program and created her content • what she did to fill her first program—an idea she stole from Tarzan Kay • the things she’s doing differently as she relaunches the course • how to run a business while moving across the country
If your copywriting business could be scrappier or you're looking for some launch inspiration for your first product, you won't want to miss this interview. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Better still, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you never miss an episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Joe Nefziger Tarzan Kay Laura Belgray The Copywriter Think Tank Allison's Website The Brand with Bite Podcast Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, March 12th through the 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 172 as we chat with copywriter and product creator Allison Gower about how she became a copywriter, her first big solo product launch. How she's changed the work she does over time, launching a podcast and running a business while moving across the country. Welcome Allison.
Allison: Hey mates. How's it going?
Kira: Good. It's always good with you. It's always good. So we're so excited to have you here to talk more about your story. Let's kick it off with how you became a copywriter.
Allison: Oh my life, in a summary. Yes, let's go. So the long story short, I was always making up ads and writing as a kid and doing all these things that had no idea what actually does something later in life. Right? Like I think a lot of us, copywriters and people in brand, we look back as kids and are like, ‘Oh yeah.’
Rob: We don't normally interrupt you in the story. But ads as a kid, what were you writing ads of?
Allison: Me and my best friend, elementary school, we came up with this candy bar and we called it a nitwit bar and we created the packaging. We actually made a barn, created the design and then we created commercials for it. And then we had a school project where honestly, you didn't really have to do very much but we went real hard and then create a commercial and performed it.
It's a bit early to pick a best episode of 2020, but we predict this will be an early contender. Master copywriter, Stefan Georgi, joined us for the 171th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, to talk about how he became a copywriter who has helped his clients earn $700 million is sales. That is NOT a typo. Stefan is a terrific copywriter and this interview is practically a workshop on writing better sales letters. We talked about: • the lucky poker game that turned Stefan into a copywriter • how he landed his first two clients (and $300) 24 hours after calling himself a copywriter • growing into clients and selling almost $700 million worth of products • the crazy amount of work that earned Stefan $80K a month • how he ended up writing 8 out of 10 of the top performing pages on click bank • how he obsessed over the craft of copywriting (and what that involved) • his favorite copywriting resource—we’ve included a link so you can get it too • the RMBC method for writing a sales letters • the genius way he breaks the “mechanism” into two parts that increases sales • the different things you need to do with the lead of a sales page • Stefan’s point-by-point script for a sales page that you can use when you write • the most common mistakes copywriters make when writing a sales message • the ROI escalation method and how Stefan uses it to justify his rates • how his mindset has shifted as he’s grown in his business • how he got his clients to recommend him to future clients • how he balances his time writing for elite clients with time for his family
You won't want to miss this one. To get it, download it to your favorite podcast app (or better yet, subscribe so you never miss an episode), click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: TCCIRL Warrior Forum ClickBank Software Projects The Fascinations Doc Stefan and Justin’s Mastermind Stefanpaulgeorgi.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, this coming March 12th through 14th. You can get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the Club for Episode 171 as we chat with copywriter Stefan Georgi about his approach to writing long copy, the ROI escalation ladder and how we can use it in our businesses, what it takes to write copy that produces $700 million in revenue over six years, and how he gets his clients to sell his services for him.
Kira: Welcome Stefan.
Rob: Hey, Stefan.
Stefan: Hey, guys. Thank you. It's great to be here.
Kira: Yeah, we're excited to have you here. We met you through Brian Kurtz, through the Titans Masterclass, and so, glad we can hang out today. And also you're going to be speaking at our event in March, which is really exciting.
Stefan: Yeah, I'm thrilled for that. I really appreciate you guys inviting me to come speak, but I cannot wait for that.
Kira: All right, so why don't we start off with your story? How did you end up as a copywriter?
Stefan: Yeah, so it's definitely one of those sort of funny twists of fate or things that are, it's a bit unexpected, I suppose you'd say. In 2011, I was teaching at an outdoor school in Marble Falls, Texas, which is about an hour and a half outside of Austin. And I was at this place called The Outdoor School, which was like a summer camp during the summer and a outdoor Ed type facility during the spring and the fall,
For the 170th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob do something they haven't done in awhile and that's chat about what's going on in their lives and The Copywriter Club. Plus, they talk about the most popular episodes of the podcast this year—and of all time. Both of them listed a few of their favorites from the past 12 months... if you haven't listened to all the past year's episodes, this is a great way to find a few you don't want to miss. Here's what they covered: • what’s happening in our lives right now • the goals we have for the coming year • the amazing speaker line-up at The Copywriter Club In Real Life • what makes TCCIRL different from other conferences • what you’ll walk away with if you come to the event • another great resource for reaching your goals—The Copywriter Underground • the new Underground Case Studies • a few specifics about the print newsletter that goes out to all members • the top podcasts from 2019—these are the most listened to episodes • our favorite podcasts from the past year—and a few of our take aways
You won't want to miss this one. Click the play button below to hear it now, or download episode 170 to your podcast app. Want to read it? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event The Copywriter Underground Case Study Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life. our live event in San Diego this March 12th through the 14th. You can get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Kira: Hey, Rob.
Rob: Hey, Kira.
Kira: Happy 2020.
Rob: It's always a little awkward starting these when we don't write an intro for ourselves to read about ourselves. But this is an episode where we don't have a guest. We're just going to talk amongst ourselves. Yeah, let's do it. Happy 2020 to you, too.
Kira: Yeah, it's been a while since we've chatted and recorded it, even though we chat just about daily. So let's talk about some podcast episodes that were our favorites from 2019, some of the top most downloaded episodes, some of the ones that have resonated the most with us. But first, let's just catch up a bit. What's been new with you, Rob, since, I don't know, last time we recorded anything? I don't know what episode that was, but it's been a while.
Rob: It's definitely been a while since ... It's been even longer since just you and I talked. It's been a while since we had anything to talk-
Kira: It's been a year. Has it been a year?
Rob: Yeah, maybe. It's been a long time. So you would think that there would be some really big changes over the course of a year. I haven't done anything as exciting as, say, move, but this year is the first year that I am the only male person in my household. My oldest son is away to college and my youngest son is living in Phoenix on a mission. So the dynamic in my house has changed dramatically without any boys around. It's a lot quieter.
Kira: You're the only dude.
Rob: That's true.
Kira: How has it changed? How is it different at home?
Rob: It is a lot quieter. I miss my sons when they're not here. Obviously, my oldest son comes home from college quite a bit. And so, he's around. It's great having older children, but I definitely miss the rowdiness. I didn't ever think that I would, but I do. I miss the noise and the rowdiness. On the other hand, it's a lot quieter around here, and so I'm able to get more work done during the day. That is awesome.
Kira: Yeah, I'll send Henry. Henry can spend some time at your house if you need some extra rowdiness. He'll bring that.
Rob: I will take him any day. We can hang out and do Lego and whatever. So what big changes happened for you?
Kira: So the biggest change for me over the la...
Messaging expert Michelle Mazur joins Rob and Kira in the studio for the 169th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Michelle started her career as a speech consultant, then pivoted to talking about the 3 Word Rebellion and how a rallying cry can make your business more resilient. We talked about: • how Michelle became a messaging coach and strategist • what a “messaging strategist” actually does on a day-to-day basis • how she lost her “why” and completely changed her business • what a three-word rebellion is and why you need to start one • a real world example how a “three-word rebellion” changes a business • the process for creating your own rallying cry or • the two things a good three-word rebellion (or positioning statement) does • how to make a pivot in your business (and how to message it) • how a three-word rebellion acts as a frame for speaking to your audience • what Michelle has done to overcome the imposter complex • her messaging advice to someone without her credentials • what she would change about the marketing world • how she met the perfect partner with a six minute discussion • what’s next for Michelle in 2020
To hear Michelle's take on positioning your business in a way that attracts customers to your flag, click the play button below, or subscribe using your favorite podcast app. Or you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Three Word Rebellion Jennie Nash Profit Without Worry Podcast Tanya Geisler Michelle’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
NPR Podcaster and story teller, Glynn Washington, was generous enough with his time to visit our studio and share his thoughts about podcasting, storytelling and the hustle required to make something great for the 168th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We love this interview. Here's a few of the things we talked about with Glynn: • how (and why) he built a career as a podcaster and radio producer • the reaction he got when he announced his intention to be a podcaster • what he did to help his podcasts gain traction—it took a lot of hustle • the very “untechnical” process he used to create his first podcast • how he came to understand the power of a good story • what makes a great story that you can’t help but stop and listen to • how to introduce an unbelievable story and get listeners to lean in • the question every storyteller needs to ask before sharing their story • the important reason Glynn never tells you what the story means • the magician’s trick he uses to get people to talk about the supernatural • the real impact of the stories/experiences shared on his podcasts • the impossibility of choosing the one story he was born to tell • the thing Glynn wishes more podcasters would do today • 3+ things to do if you want to create your own great podcast • the power of a podcast to move markets and create best-selling products • what’s coming next year from Snap Judgment
If you want to improve your story-telling prowess, you'll want to get this episode ASAP. Click the play button below to listen online or download this episode to your podcast app. Even better subscribe so you never miss an episode. Readers can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Snap Judgment Spooked Podcast Heaven’s Gate Podcast GarageBand Mark Twain Have You Heard George’s Podcast Scott Sigler Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club In Real Life, our live event in San Diego March 12th through 14th, 2020. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/TCCIRL.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 168 as we chat with media personality and radio podcast producer, Glynn Washington, about what it takes to tell a great story, the power of podcasting to connect with an audience, what most podcasters including us should be doing differently, and what it means to be a fist-shaker, mountain hollerer, and foot stomper.
Kira: So, Glynn, welcome.
Glynn: Thank you for having me.
Kira: All right. So, Glynn knows, because I've already e-mailed him and said, ‘I'm a super fan.’ So I have listened to every episode of Spooked, all three seasons of Spooked. So this is just a delight, to be able to talk to you about what happens behind the scenes and get to know more about you.
Rob: And I want to add, I listened to all of the episodes of the Heaven’s Gate podcast, as well as several of the Spooked episodes. So-
Kira: So we're both super fans.
Rob: We're big fans of what you've done, Glynn.
Glynn: Well, I'm so glad you dug it. And I appreciate you having me on the show today. And I hope, I'm sorry, we had a bit of a flood, here, so I'm in a weird setting. So I'm hoping the sounds works for you right now.
Rob: Yeah, it's working great. It sounds really good.
Kira: All right, Glynn. So let's start with your story. How did you end up as a storyteller, podcaster, executive producer, and host of Snap Judgment and my favorite podcast, Spooked?
Glynn: Well,
Copywriter Andrea Littell is the guest for the 167th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. As we've gotten to know Andrea over the past year and learned more about her accomplishments and struggles, it was obvious we needed to have her join us to talk about her business. This discussion covers a lot of ground, including: • her experience as the “go to” person for marketing and copywriting • why she started a blog—Townies—and what it did for her business • how she attracted attention without a plan or a press kit • why she put her blog on pause and what she’s doing now • how to prepare for personal difficulties when you’re the provider • the place budgeting and knowing your numbers has in your business • how Andrea manages the money in her business • the power of consistency to earn grace from clients when you need it • how to keep the right mindset when everything falls apart • why more money isn’t always the goal for Andrea’s business • working with an agency as a freelancer and the works she does • the thing that matters more than talent when freelancing • her advice to other freelancers who are starting out • what her business looks like today and the kinds of projects she takes on now • boundaries and how she makes space for her family and personal time • the thing that has made the biggest difference in her success so far • how to prepare your biz for a maternity (or paternity) leave
To hear the wisdom that Andrea shared, click the play button below, or download this episode to your podcast app. And you can always scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Townies The Copywriter Think Tank Andrea’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Transcript is underway...
Online Business Manager, Ashlee Berghoff, is our guest for the 166th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Ashlee has helped a bunch of copywriters we know and like figure out how to make their businesses more profitable... and just as importantly, helped them focus on the work they are best at (while shifting other work to a VA or OBM). That sounded like something we needed to hear more about. So we asked Ashee about ..... • how she became an independent business manager/COO for copywriters • the 10 months she spent working to prevent human trafficking at IJM • when you should get help in your copywriting business • the different kinds of VAs and other help you might consider hiring • some examples of how she works with copywriters to grow • the systems she helps her clients develop as they start working together • the importance of discipline as you set up processes in your biz • what it really costs to work with an integrator versus a VA (and what you get) • the easiest systems to build that almost everyone needs right now • the return on investment when you spend money on a VA or OBM • the true cost of doing the work that others could be doing for less • how to keep your VA relationship from falling apart • some of the problems you should anticipate to keep the relationship working • where to find the best VAs… the answer may surprise you • what you need to put into a contract versus email • how to deal with problems when thing inevitably go wrong • the tools Ashlee uses in her business
If you have a sneaky suspicion that your business could be doing better and that you need help to make that happen, you'll want to listen to this episode now. Click the play button below or subscribe using your favorite podcast app. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: International Justice Mission Global Fund to End Modern Slavery Rocketfuel Angie Colie April Dykman Asana Jira Asquaredonline.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you're going to hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the Club for Episode 166 as we chat with business integrator Ashlee Berghoff about how to know when you're ready to bring in help for your business, the systems and processes copywriters need to grow, practical ways copywriters can expand their capacity and exactly what a VA or OBM can help you do in your business.
Kira: Welcome, Ashlee.
Rob: Hey Ashlee.
Ashlee: Thank you so much for inviting me. It's wonderful to be here.
Kira: Yes, we're excited to have you here because you worked with, I don't know-
Rob: Everybody.
Kira: ...six to eight, maybe even more copywriters. You don't have to name drop all the copywriters, but you've worked with a lot of well-known, successful copywriters that we've hung out with and we know really well too. So, we'll get a behind the scenes look at the type of work that you're doing with them. But before we dig into that, let's start with your story. How did you end up as an integrator, OBM? I know there are multiple titles for it. Yes, how did this all happen?
Ashlee: Yes, so I think as is the case for so many people, it was not a straight line at all. I actually graduated with an English degree and no idea what to do with my life. And in my first major job, I ended up in the Philippines actually working as kind of a de facto recruiter for an anti-trafficking field office there, did that for about 10 months, built out their recruiting program from scratch, which was really fun for me, but I didn't know why,
This one is wild. We invited Drayton Bird (who knew and worked with some of the original mad men) to join us for the 165th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Drayton has been around the world of advertising and direct marketing since the 1960s and he has the stories to prove it. As we talked, it occurred to us that if Drayton wasn't the inspiration for The Most Interesting Man in the World, he probably should have been. We asked Drayton about: • what happened to him the last time he went to San Diego • how he became a successful copywriter—it’s not about creativity • how he spent his teen-age years and why he carried 2 library cards • Why he couldn’t choose a niche when he started writing • the one thing Drayton says you need to be a good copywriter • the intriguing letter he sent to David Ogilvy that got an immediate reply • the 7 big lessons he learned from David Ogilvy • whether being interesting is something we are or something we become • some of the questions he asks to get better creative work • the legacy he has built and the story he shares in his latest book • the bizarre thing his mother saw his father doing in their living room • the time a stripper nearly killed him hitting him in the face with a plate • the Maori princess who broke his heart when she ran off with a Swedish lawyer • his parents’ crazy, loving and destructive relationship • the advice he got from a Polish Count that saved Drayton’s life • what you need to think about constantly if you really want to be really good at copy
Like we said, this one is different from any other interview we've done. You won't want to miss it. Click the play button below to listen (or download the episode to your favorite podcast player), or scroll down to read a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The VW Snowplow Ad David Ogilvy Ogilvy on Advertising Drayton’s Biography (read this page) Drayton's Book Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club, In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, March 12th through 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 165 as we chat with one of the original Mad Men, copywriter Drayton Bird about his place among the original Mad Men of advertising, what all copywriters need to master to make their writing better, getting stabbed three times and surviving, and the good advice he got from a Polish count many years ago.
Rob: Hey Drayton.
Kira: Welcome Drayton.
Drayton: Nice to talk to you. And I'll tell you something. I got involved in my most sad most expensive marriage to one of the ladies who did have a go at sticking a knife in me. Well, she didn't ever go, she didn't stick a knife in me, because I was in San Diego. It was all your fault. I'd been doing a speech in Los Angeles and afterward, I went with some friends and we made our way down the coast staying somewhere terribly expensive. I can't remember.
And then we went to San Diego Zoo and had one or two drinks and my friends said, ‘Let's go down to Mexico.’ And so we went down to the Mexican border to a dangerous town. I think, I believe one of the most dangerous places in Mexico. And that's where I got married as a result of being intoxicated.
Kira: That's a romantic, romantic story.
Rob: So are you telling us you're not going to come to San Diego for our event? Is that what you're saying here? Too dangerous?
Drayton: Can't afford to come twice. Tijuana,
Want to get better at copy? Copywriter and author, Glenn Fisher, joined us for the 164th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about how he became a copywriter and how he rapidly improved his skills. Today, Glenn teaches other how to start and get better at copywriting on his podcast, in speeches, and in his book. We asked Glenn about: • how copywriting overtook his dream of becoming a bank manager • pitching everyone in London before finding his first job • what he learned from his early mentors that helped him most • Glenn’s process for finding (and testing out) a great idea • the difference between the UK and the USA when it comes to ideas • the lessons he took away from his Tony Robbins experience • whether or not copy and advertising can change a person’s beliefs • the no-secret, “secrets” Glenn has used to grow his skill set • what his business looks like and how he spends his time • the catalyst for writing his book and the process he followed • what he would do differently if he were rewriting his book again • what the book has done to build his credibility and why that’s NOT enough • what he struggles with in his business today • what he would do if he lost everything and had to start over from scratch • why other copywriters aren’t your competition
We also asked Glenn about the future of copywriting and where marketing is headed right now. To hear this interview, click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast app. Or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Agora Tony Robbins The End of America Alex Mandossian AWAI Proust The Art of the Click Mary Ellen Tribby Kate Toon All Good Copy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club, In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, March 12th through 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the Club for episode 164 as we chat with copywriter and podcaster Glenn Fisher about becoming a direct-response copywriter and writing a book about it, what it takes to write good copy, his writing processes, mistakes he's made, and what he thinks the future of copywriting looks like.
Kira: Welcome, Glenn.
Rob: Hi, Glenn.
Glenn: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Kira: So, let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter/author/speaker? Let's hear your story.
Glenn: Cool. So, yeah, we'll break it down into parts. As is the case with most copywriters, I got into it completely by mistake. I think I've spoken to you about one out of a thousand copywriters who went, ‘I'm going to be a copywriter.’ I started out as an accountant, which was an obvious mistake, but I did that for a few years and so I wanted to be a bank manager. I've never met anyone else who, as a 15-year-old kid, wanted to be a bank manager, but that's what I wanted to do. And I was going along on that path for a while until something snapped in my brain and went wrong, or maybe right, depending on which way you look at it, and I figured I wanted to do writing in some form.
So, I ended up... I knew I couldn't just walk into a job and go, ‘Hey, I'm a writer now. Hope you might employ me,’ so I went back to uni. I was probably 22-ish, something around that mark. Went back to uni and did a creative writing course, a degree, here in England. I did that and then I come from a very small town in the Northeast of England where they barely can read, let alone write,
Email copywriter Sarah Henson is our guest for the 163rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We first met Sarah a couple of years ago (at a copywriter conference) and have seen her make big changes in her business in the past year as a member of The Copywriter Think Tank. We asked Sarah about her successes, her struggles and how she's pushed herself to accomplish more—even as she's faced some big challenges in her life and business. We talked about: • Sarah's career path from actress to coach to email tech to copywriter • her experience as an actress and how it helps her as a writer • the “method actor” approach to understanding customers • owning the title of copywriter and how she made the switch • how she chose her niche (or how it chose her) • some of the hurdles Sarah’s overcome on her way to the next level • the big goals she’s set and what she wants to accomplish next • what keeps her going especially when she struggles to make things work • the mindset shift she’s experienced over the past 10 months • a breakdown of the work she did to hit $11K in a single month • comparison-itis and how Sarah has made sure it won’t hold her back • struggles with balance and how to fit it all in • the difference a community or mastermind can make in business • what she’s building in her business right now
To get this one in your ear holes, click the play button below. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on your favorite podcast app. And to read a full transcript, scroll down the page a bit.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts and ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 163 as we chat with email strategist and e-commerce copywriter, Sarah Henson, about the struggle of freelancing and having her biggest revenue month ever, building an effective email strategy, what she's done to take her business to the next level, and how her past life as an actor has made her a better copywriter. Welcome, Sarah.
Sarah: Hey.
Rob: Hi, Sarah.
Sarah: Hey there.
Kira: Great to have you here. Sarah. Let's just kick this off with your story. How did you end up in e-commerce and as an email strategist and a copywriter?
Sarah: Well, it's kind of a convoluted story, which I think pretty much everybody who's been on your podcast says it's been a bit of a weaving tale, but to me, yeah, you touched on it, that I was an actress for about 12 years. And when I say actress, it's not like I was super famous or anything like that. I was in the trenches, doing all of the auditions here, there and everywhere, getting gigs every now and again, but for 12 years, I was constantly going towards my goal and always getting little jobs here and there that just kept me going and kept me fueled all the time.
But then, as I got into my 30s, things started to change, and my priorities changed. I met someone and we ended up getting married and having children and the life of an actor going for auditions all the time and being available for tours and gigs and things like that is not really conducive to life as a mother, so I decided that it was high time that I had to kind of switch gears. And I actually ended up starting my own actors’ agency, because I knew a lot of what goes on in the industry and how it works and everything. And I thought I could be really helpful to help other actors to get work.
So, I started an agency. I ran that for about three years.
Leadership coach, Tanya Geisler, is our guest for the 162nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. It's been more than 2 years since we spoke to Tanya last (all about the Imposter Complex) and we thought it was time to check back in and see what other issues she could help us deal with. And we're glad we did. We asked Tanya about: • what’s changed since we talked to her 2 years ago • the behaviors that hold us back from accomplishing our mission • the difference between anxiety, criticism and imposter complex—and why it matters • how our deeply held values sometimes hold us back (and real world examples of how that works) • the unshakeable confidence framework • how to take ownership of what is holding us back so we can make progress • overcoming the lies of the imposter complex (it’s not a linear process) • how to find our own brand(s) of joy • Tanya workshopped this a bit for Rob a bit while we talked • what happens when we have the wrong perception of our brand of joy • Tanya and Kira talked through her “word” and why Kira didn’t like it at first • what you can do to figure this stuff out for yourself • how to choose a coach who will help you become a better version of yourself • how copywriters can take on the role of a leader
We also asked Tanya about how someone can work with her and her thoughts about the future of copywriting and online marketing. To hear what she said about all of the above, click the play button below or download this episode to your favorite podcast player. Rather read what she said? Then scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Our first interview with Tanya (47) TanyaGeisler.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 162, as we chat for a second time with leadership coach Tanya Geisler, about what she's been doing since our last interview more than two years ago, the importance of embracing joy, building unshakable confidence, what to look for when you're hiring a coach and the thing that separates those who reach their full potential from those who don't.
Kira: Welcome, Tanya.
Rob: Hey Tanya.
Tanya: Hey. I'm so happy to be here, and honored. Thank you both so much.
Kira: Yeah, we're very excited to have you back for a second time. Your interview, number 47, is one of my favorite interviews on this entire show and I think just surprised both of us just with the impact it's had in the copywriter community after we talked about the impostor complex and dug into that. So we'll definitely link to that conversation, but we want to know really like what you've been up to since then over the last two years. So we can talk about a lot of what you're teaching and talking about today.
Tanya: Oh, what I've been doing in the last two years? I can tell you what I've been doing today, but the last two years, Oh my goodness. I've been doing a lot of speaking. I've been doing a lot of deepening into this body of work that I've been called to really understand. I've created a framework from which I'm really understanding the impostor complex, and I launched my own podcast called Ready Enough, which is really looking at all of the places perfectionism and gets up in our grill and insists that we do things perfectly right. But really it's also about taking the conversation about the impostor complex and getting under when it might not be the impostor complex, because I've spent so much time, I think I might've even said this in our interview two years ago,
Speaking coach and consultant, Lanie Presswood, is our guest for the 161st episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Lanie coached both of us (Kira and Rob) as we scripted and delivered our presentations at our copywriting event, The Copywriter Club In Real Life. We asked Lanie to join us to talk about public speaking, what to do (and not do) on stage and this long list of other topics we covered: • her journey to becoming a public speaker and speaking consultant • some of Lanie's early successes • the time Rob ruined Hillary Weiss’ presentation at TCCIRL • how to deal with stage fright when getting up to speak • the best ways to prepare a presentation that an audience wants to see • how to “lay out” a presentation to get attention and persuade • the 5 parts of a speech: definitions, scope, explanation, description, illustration • the biggest mistake presenters make when giving a speech • what a speaker can expect from the audience • physicality—what to do with your hands and body as you speak • things you should never do as a speaker • whether you should play a “role” on stage (you don’t have to be Gary V) • developing the “skill” of public speaking… no one is born an expert • Lanie’s advice to anyone who thinks they don’t have anything to talk about • whether or not you should write out your speech ahead of time • the difference between video presentations and live presentations
We also asked Lanie about the future of public speaking (a little twist on the question we usually end with). To learn more about how you can use public speaking to grow your authority, click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast player. Readers scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Hillary Weiss Presswood Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 161 as we chat with professor, communications expert, and public speaking consultant Lanie Presswood about speaking from the stage, what makes a good presentation, the simple things we can do to communicate more clearly, and how to avoid the worst mistakes speakers make.
Welcome, Lanie.
Lanie: Hello. Thank you so much for having me here.
Kira: I feel like this was a long time coming. Especially considering you helped both of us with our presentations at TCC In Real Life this past year. So, we're excited to dig into that and talk more about you and your story. Let's kick it off with your story. How did you end up as a public speaking consultant and professor?
Lanie: So, I got into competitive speech and debate as a high schooler. And I was very bent on being a journalist at this point in time. I'm about 15, very, very opinionated, have lots of thoughts, and I think I'm going to storm down the doors of a newsroom somewhere in the nebulous future and right away they're going to hire me to just take on big names and bash in some skulls and change the world. This was my vision for myself. So, I knew that to do that I needed to get into a good college and therefore I needed a lot of extracurriculars. But unfortunately, I was really not particularly physically gifted and therefore I was really looking for a lot of things to do that didn't involve me having to go outside and run. I also wanted to get away from the legacy of my older brothers. Two years older than me, and he was very talented and very smart and extremely popular. So, I was really trying to find something to do at that point in my high school career that would just belong ...
Brand expert and one-woman SNL skit, Rachael Kay Albers is our guest for the 160th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Fitting all the characters Rachael plays on her YouTube channel into the TCC studio wasn't easy, but we managed. In addition to meeting several of the characters from her show (hey, Rachael's mom and Brad!), we also talked about: • how she went from law school to business comedian and content writer • how Rachael found her first clients (it has to do with cam shafts and pepper spray) • going from small clients to internet sensation (wigs played a part) • what she did to grow her authority and get attention • how her internet show has helped her grow her business • the time required to produce a high-quality video show • the simplicity of her earlier shows and how she evolved as she got better • the different characters who show up on Rachael’s show • the truth about how comfortable Rachael is on every show • how to use comparison, exaggeration and specifics to be funny • brand strategy and what Rachael does for her clients • how she helps clients discover a brand that reflects who they really are • the questions to think through as you develop your own brand • the tools she uses to help her clients develop really good content • how she collaborates with the different people on her team • the other tactics she’s used to grow her business (besides the web show) • the mistakes copywriters are making when it comes to marketing
We also talked about speaking on stage, the change she’s making to her business moving forward, and the future of copywriting. Want to hear it? Click the play button below or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. Prefer to read? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Upwork Awkward Marketing Laura Belgray Justin Blackman Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Basecamp Dubsado Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 160 as we chat with content strategist and business comedian, Rachael Kay Albers about how she became the One-Woman Saturday Night live of business comedy, what it takes to build an unforgettable brand, the different kinds of humor that copywriters can tap into for themselves and their clients and creating content that people want to see.
Kira: Hey Rachael.
Rob: Hey Rachael.
Rachael: Well, hey there. How are you doing?
Kira: Welcome. I feel like I ever wrote the same for recorded that. I feel like I'm in the room with the celebrity, like an SNL celebrity.
Rob: Or 10 celebrities. 10 different celebrities.
Rachael: It's so mutual. Yeah, there's about 30 of us here. I got wigs and for every voice I do I'm putting on in different wigs. So just imagine that.
Kira: You've got great wigs and great costumes, which I definitely want to talk about. But let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a creative director / digital strategist / business comedian?
Rachael: Well, I kind of came at it backwards. Because, the whole thing these days is... The dream is to quit your day job and go live in a beautiful place and drink Margaritas in a hammock. But I actually did kind of the opposite way. I was in law school, 10 years ago and it wasn't working out. It was a bad move. It was the wrong choice. And I had done an internship in Southern Mexico, where I kind of learned about this type of theater that was being used as a tool for social change.
Copywriter Matt Hall joins us in the studio for the 159th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Matt is a member of The Copywriter Think Tank and has a ton of experience as a copywriter and agency owner. He's worked in-house, as an agency employee, and has started his own agency—twice. Here's what we talked about: • the high school experience that made him want to know everything • how he decides what he needs to learn next—without the stress of keeping up • getting permission to be different and not live up to other’s expectations • the system he uses to stay up-to-date on his favorite topics • why he made the shift from eternal student to content writer and strategist • working with a variety of clients • why he likes to do a lot of different kinds of work • the different roles a copywriter can choose (and why to do each one) • his biggest struggle as a business owner • his $30K month and the work he had to deliver • the challenge and benefit of working with a spouse • his system for managing all the house-hold stuff so work gets done • the practice that keeps him from having a scarcity mindset • how he attracts clients to his freelance business • his thoughts about the trends in conversion copy and design
This is a good discussion you definitely don't want to miss. To hear it, click the play button below or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. You'll find a full transcript below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kajabi Rob Braddock The Dunning Krueger Effect Prerna Malik Linda Perry Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for Episode 159 as we chat with copywriter and all-around renaissance man, Matt Hall, about how he became a copywriter, different roles copywriters can take on and how they all compare, conversion design, what it is and how copywriters should think about conversion, and what Matt has done to bring business in the door for his agency.
Welcome, Matt.
Matt: Hi. Really happy to be here.
Kira: Yeah. Great to have you. I have this huge smile on my face and I don't know if it's the cold Chinese food I'm eating or if it's just ... I'm so excited to hang out with you. So let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a renaissance man/conversion, optimization socialist/copywriter/many other things?
Matt: All of the things. I'm hoping more of a jack of all trades rather than a master of none. But it started back in high school and I overheard a conversation when I was like, 14. And some of my classmates were talking about one of our friends saying, ‘She is so interesting. She can talk about literally anything, like your car's dashboard and she knows about it.’
And something about the idea of being able to engage with somebody over literally any topic at any given time and actually know what you're talking about really connected with me. And that stuck with me, even when I was an undergrad, I did a master's in English with the focus on professional writing, but I got ... I built my own minor.
It was a combination of graph design and PR and building documents with tech and just combining a whole bunch of things. I ended up having something like 200 credits when they finally kicked me out school and said, ‘You got to graduate, dude. It's time to go.’ And then I went and got a Master's in American studies which is another field that's like combining a few different fields. American studies lives on the edge of English but also history and a little bit of psychology or whatever you want to do.
Samar Owais, content expert and email copywriter is our guest for the 158th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. This one has been a long time coming... this is our fourth attempt to make this interview happen and it is worth the wait. Kira and Rob ask Samar about a lot of stuff from email to being the only person at TCCIRL with a hijab. Here's the list of what we asked: • how Samar built her content business and charged $1000 per blog post • what content writers should be doing to build their business • why she “transitioned” from content to conversion-oriented email copy • what she does to find clients for her business right now • what email sequences should use in their business • the 4 phases of her process and what she accomplishes in each phase • the things she struggles within her business • how she storyboards emails to make sure the sequence does what it should • how she tracks her success—and gets access to all of her client’s numbers • why she offers to help implement the emails she writes • how she packages her services and what she charges for an engagement • her writing process and how she applies her strategy to each project • the impact of the pivot—from content to email—on her business • her experience attending TCCIRL last year (and why you should go this year) • what she experienced as the only hijab-wearing Muslim woman at the event and why we need more people from all backgrounds at all copywriting events • how she deals with self-sabotage and how we can stop doing that to ourselves • who she relies on to help her get things done • her advice for anyone who wants to specialize in email copy • what’s next for Samar in her business
Like we wrote above, this one is worth the wait. To hear all the advice Samar had to share, Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or download the episode to your favorite podcast app (and don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss future episodes).
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Paul Jarvis Copyblogger Copyhackers Val Geisler Prerna Malik Eman Zabi TCCIRL The Copywriter Underground Chanti Zak Samar's website Samar’s Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the Club for episode 158 as we chat with copywriter, Samar Owais about going from $5 blog posts to assignments that pay more than 50 times that much today. How she finds good clients, willing to pay her rates. What she did to write for clients like Copyblogger, Men with Pens, and Mercy, and how she stays productive while raising a young family.
Hey, Samar.
Kira: Samar, welcome.
Samar: Hi, guys, how are you?
Kira: So good, so good to talk to you. This has been a long time in the making. I think this is our fourth attempt to make this interview happen, but I'm feeling, I think we're all feeling good. This is going to happen and we're really excited to talk to you today. So, let's just kick off with your story. How did you end up as an email copywriter?
Samar: Mostly through trial and error. So, before I was an email copywriter, I was a content writer. I spent about eight years building my business and authority. Wrote for clients like Paul Jarvis, and big brands like Marriott and Intercontinental. Got published in places like Copyblogger and Founder. My business as a content writer was at a pretty sweet spot, to be honest. But then, three things happened.
One, I got more interested in pursuing the ROI of the content that I was writing, but my clients weren't. Two,
Copywriter and expert cold emailer, Laura Lopuch, is our guest for the 157th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. In this interview, Kira, Rob and Laura covered a lot of ground when it comes to what to say when you're cold pitching new prospects. Here's a pretty good list of what we covered: • the path Laura took from paralegal to copywriter • what made her decide it was time for a job change • how she attracted her first clients when she went out on her own • how to cold pitch effectively • the difference between personalization and relevance and why it matters • the thing that no one talks about when it comes to cold emails • what Laura does BEFORE she starts to write a cold pitch • why you might need to indulge your inner stalker when you cold pitch • how to tell if a potential client is ready to invest in what you can offer • the best way to phrase the call to action so you get results • the subject lines that work well—Laura’s “backslash secret” • the ways a cold pitch email differs from a regular email to your list • how she figured out the niche to focus on in her business • the basics of a good presentation and how it all comes together • why she doesn’t focus her mentorship on learning • how she became a travel hacker so she could travel for free • where Laura thinks copywriting will go in the future • the templates she used to land +$20K in business
If that seems like a lot, it is. And it's good stuff. To hear this interview, click the play button below or subscribe to The Copywriter Club Podcast using your favorite podcast app. And if you prefer to read, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Crystalknows Copyhackers Shine Bootcamp MicroConf Hayley Hopson Tarzan Kay thepointsguy.com Laura's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 157 as we chat with email copywriter, Laura Lopuch about why she loves writing emails, the worst mistakes we make when writing emails, the relevancy method and how to structure a cold pitch so potential clients become actual clients, and how she became a travel hacker.
Kira: Welcome Laura.
Rob: Hey Laura.
Laura: Thanks guys for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Kira: Yeah, we're excited to chat and we want to kick this off with your story. So how did you end up as a copywriter?
Laura: I took a long detour through the legal field. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. You can blame Jerry Maguire and all those awesome John Grisham novels and all that kind of stuff for it. I just thought, yeah, this would be cool. I like arguing. I could be a lawyer. So I did something smart and actually took a job at a law firm to see real world experience if A, I wanted to be a lawyer, before I spent B, all that money to get a fancy dancy law degree. Fast forward a couple of years and I figured out no, I didn't want to be a lawyer. But it was a really good job and I was learning a lot. I really liked the stories. We were a civil defense law firm. For example, if you get in a car accident, we were usually the insurance for the law firm that your insurance company would hire to defend you against the plaintiff, the person who's suing you.
So I got to see some really interesting cases and stories. People do some crazy, crazy stuff, let me tell you. But I got seduced by a steady paycheck and a good job, until I just couldn't take it anymore and I quit. And so at that point I was like,
Sometimes we like to try a little something different with the podcast and today's interview is a bit different than our standard. Preacher, coach and copywriter Les Hughes is our guest for the 156th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We talked to Les about ..... • how awesome, giving and kind Kira is • the path from preacher to business coach • what he did to build his platform as he pivoted his “business” • having the right mindset before you make a shift • trusting the process (and mentors and a higher power) • what he would have done differently—and faster—if he did it again • the tactics that helped him move forward quickly • what he does today and the success he has found • what copywriters can do to build their own authority to serve their own clients • why you need to create a success path for your clients • how to get your clients to help you serve them more effectively • the importance of humility • how he helps his own clients thing more strategically • Les’ writing process and what helps him improve his writing • how to prepare for adversity (but hope for the best) • the place service to others plays in a successful business
To hear it all, download this episode to your favorite podcast player or click the play button below. If you're a reader, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Ray Edwards Mel Abraham Stu McLaren Tribe Jim Rohn Zig Ziglar Joni Eareckson Tada (athlete, painter) Les' website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for Episode 156 as we chat with preacher, business coach and strategist Les Hughes about his surprising career path, how we can think more strategically about our own businesses, what he does to help his clients transform their businesses and the power of volunteer work to change lives.
Kira: Welcome, Les.
Rob: Hey, Les.
Les: Thank you all both. Kira, great to talk with you again. Rob, great to talk with you as well. I really look forward to our conversation today.
Kira: It's so great to hear your voice. We met in Ray Edward's Mastermind last year and it was so great to meet you. I'm just happy to hang out with you for the next hour because it's been a while since we've chatted. Let's kick this off with your story, Les. How did you end up as a preacher, a pastor to pastors, a coach, a strategist to business leaders, a copywriter and many other things?
Les: I will do that and thank you for asking. Before I do, I'd like to share if I could take a point of peripheral privilege, so I'm going to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, okay? Kira, the people that know you are going to know what I'm going to say, but maybe new listeners or those that only listen to your podcast.
Kira: You're making me nervous.
Les: Well, don't be. It's going to be good. Listen, it's going to be a little uncomfortable for you, but that's all right. I want your audience to know what a giving and servant-hearted person you are genuinely. I think that doesn't come always across on your podcast because you're also very professional and objective and friendly and all of that. You're a very organized person, but I want the people that are listening this to know that you are one of the most giving, kind, empathetic people in this space that I've met. I just wanted to say that. I don't know if I've ever told you that, but I wanted you to know that.
Les: When we began our relationship in the mastermind group together, you were certainly further ahead than many of ...
Marketing OG, Nigel Stevens, is our guest for the 155th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Nigel is in the middle of a move from Asia to Spain and we caught him as he was packing his bags to talk about the business he's built, his experience in content marketing and SEO, and maybe most interesting... how to raise your prices and up level the clients you work with. Here's what we covered... • how he turned an English degree into a position as the marketing OG • why he left a cushy job in San Francisco to create his best job • what it takes to build an agency from the ground up • the early days… how he started finding clients and growing his leverage • how he grew his confidence charging more money • value based pricing and getting better referrals • his discovery and proposal process and what he wants to learn • how to build your portfolio of clients (most copywriters won’t do this) • what’s working (and not working) right now in content marketing • how he figures out what kind of content to create for clients • what copywriters need to know about SEO (Nigel’s answer surprised us) • how he helps clients understand the right approach to SEO content • how he’s built his authority to engender trust with his clients • the future of content marketing
It's a good discussion that will get you thinking about the kind of business you're building and the next steps. To hear it, click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast player. Readers can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Nigel’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, the work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 155 as we chat with marketing specialist, Nigel Stevens, about what it takes to build a marketing agency, what copywriters need to know about SEO, building authority, attracting, and working with really big clients, and what it's like to live and work in Barcelona.
Kira: Welcome, Nigel.
Nigel: Thanks, great to be here.
Kira: Yeah, great to have you here, and we're going to see you in just a couple weeks in Barcelona because you will be presenting at our Think Tank retreat, so excited to meet you in person. Until then, we can get to hear all about your story today. So why don't you share your story and how you ended up as the marketing OG?
Nigel: Yeah, so it's a little bit of a winding story as it tends to go. So, I got an English degree, got out of school, realized I had no idea what I wanted to do, somehow found my way into a job doing copywriting for this weird mattress startup that no longer exists anymore. And then, I got a job offer to be a SEO analyst, which I was exactly zero percent qualified to do. But I somehow got the job, and I went from being more of a kind of writer and qualitative marketer to then having to also pick up some quantitative skills, and then I had a couple more jobs, worked at BigCommerce for a while, e-commerce platform doing kind of a combination of SEO and content marketing.
And then, after a little while there, I decided I kind of wanted to blow up my life. So, I left my job, moved to Thailand and then started taking on work. And it escalated quickly, one thing led to another. And now, I have a team, and we work with various SaaS clients and other companies. So that's the summary.
Rob: Yes, quick summary, but can we talk a little bit about at least this last section of your career, building an agency and what has taken to do that? I'm sure we can ask other questions about some of the stuff you've done earli...
Copywriter and expert researcher, Hannah Shamji, joins us in the ultra-plush Copywriter Club studio for our 154th episode. Hannah has been making a name for her self doing research for Copyhackers Agency and we wanted to learn more about how she does it. We asked Hannah about: • how she went from boring public policy to copywriter and research specialist • The catalyst for making her career change • how her previous experience helped her make the jump more quickly • the first steps she took as a new copywriter (and started looking for clients) • what it feels like to find clients when you don’t know everything yet • Hannah’s research process… goals, questions, hypothesis • how to define the goals for research so you know what’s most important • the kinds of data she looks for as she does her research • the one thing she always does when asking questions • two things you can do immediately that will help you do research better • the mistakes most copywriters make when conducting research • the bad questions you probably shouldn’t ask • how to get clients excited about research • what you don’t know (that you should know) about interviews
Want to improve your research chops. Then add this one to your favorite podcast app. Or click the play button below. If you prefer reading, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The copywriter therapist post Hannah’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 154 as we chat with conversion copywriter Hannah Shamji about how she became a copywriter, the best way to get good voice of customer data, how to conduct a great interview, her role at Copy Hackers, and how psychology makes her a better copywriter.
Kira: Hey, Hannah. Welcome.
Rob: Hey, Hannah.
Hannah: Thank you. Hey, guys.
Kira: All right, Hannah. This conversation has been a long time coming. We've had to reschedule a couple times, but we're really excited to chat with you and really dig into some of your processes around research and experiences. But before we do that, let's kick it off with your story, how did you become a copywriter and researcher?
Hannah: Yeah, for sure. Well, I'm super excited to be here thanks for having me on. My story is kind of meandering as I feel a lot of folks are. I have a bachelor's in psychology, a master's in public health and jumped into public health policy and research. So pretty heavy in the academic side of research, and kind of government policy development, pretty boring words to most folks, myself included.
And I think it was about like five-ish years ago that I... Maybe four years ago, and I just kind of pump the brakes, looked up the clock. It was 10:08, I remember the time exactly and decided I was just going to quit. So I handed in my resignation the next day and had zero idea of what I was going to do, and I didn't even really think about clearly planning that before. So it was a few hops before I found copywriting. I had my own jewelry business, I did affiliate marketing, a t-shirt business, and kind of just hopped around.
And I started a counseling training program which was a three year program. I just graduated from that last year. And it was on that path that I've always liked writing, enjoyed writing, and came across one of Copy Hackers' blogs. I think it's written by Sam Woods, and it's talking about the theory of copywriters towards therapists, and that blend which was exactly the line I wa...
Conversion content writer, Doug Paton, is the guest for the 153rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We've known Doug since the beginning days of The Copywriter Club, so it's about time we had him on the show to talk about his approach to content writing. We asked Doug all about: • his favorite place to fly fish (in British Columbia) • how “not wanting to talk to people” led to his career choices • why he chose content as his focus as a copywriter • his stint writing books for kids—and how he landed it • how he applies his experience writing for kids to his work today • his process for writing content and how he grabs attention • how he pitches new clients on content projects • what he done to build his network and the result on his work load • what Doug would do if he had to start all over • his definition of “conversion content” and how its different from other content • what he’s done to land amazing clients like National Geographic • what he still struggles with in spite of his recent success • how he balances work with being a dad and the other demands on his time • what’s next in his business and what the future holds for copywriting
To hear what Doug had to share, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. You can also subscribe and download this episode to your favorite podcast player (recommended). Don't miss this one.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Justin Blackman Shanelle Mullins Jessica Mehring Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Transcript delayed but on its way soon...
Continuing what’s been a bit of a theme on the show lately, we invited copywriter Mai-kee Tsang to talk about how to pitch podcasts for the 152nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Mai-kee recently set a goal to pitch 101 podcasts in 30 days, and she joined Kira and Rob to talk about how she did it, what she learned, and the impact the project had on her business. During our discussion, we asked her: • how Mai-kee finally listened to her heart and became a copywriter • how she applies ideas from psychology and coaching to her copy • overcoming fears and how she overcame her fear of acceptance • developing a habit of trying things regardless of the expected result • the importance of sales—and why copywriters can’t afford not to sell • what she did to find her first clients • how she announced her copywriting business to the world • why hiding until you’re ready is the wrong approach to launching • why she took on a “101 podcast pitches” project • the biggest lessons she learned while pitching podcasts • the terrible first pitch she sent and what she learned • the elements of a successful pitch and how Mai-kee personalized each pitch • how she finds elements to personalize her pitches • the group program she launching to help others get on more podcasts • overcoming the idea that you don’t have something to share • the impact podcasts have had on Mai-kee’s own business
If you’ve ever listened to a podcast and though you could do better than the person you heard on the show, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Combine it with our interview two weeks ago with Brigitte Lyons for best results. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or download the episode to your favorite podcast app and listen wherever you are.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank The Podcast Pitching Masterclass Mai-kee’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Transcript to come...
Marketing strategist and event planner, Patsy Kenney, is our guest for the 151st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Patsy is wrapping up a couple of transitions in her business, including combining her event planning business into an agency with two of her best friends. We asked Patsy about all the changes in her life and... • how Patsy became a brand and event specialist • all the things someone needs to know to be an event planner • how to think about the purpose of your event to magnify your ripple effect • Patsy’s 4P process for event planning • the power of being intentional about everything at an event • how to foster more connection at an event (what we try to do at TCCIRL) • the part that branding and marketing play in your event • when copywriters should consider holding their own events • why retreats and personal gatherings are such a great opportunity • the mistakes she’s seen others make with their events • why she decided to fold her business into an agency with friends • navigating business and growing when life throws you a setback • what comes next for Patsy and her business(es)
To hear the brilliant things Patsy shared about events and dealing with change, click the play button below, or download this episode to your favorite podcast app. Or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Nikki Groom The Good Life Project Seth Godin Vidyard AndCelebrate.com TheBrandingEdit.com Patsy's Instagram Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 151 as we chat with branding and events strategist, Patsy Kenney, about celebrating something every day, what it's like to start an agency with your best friends, how to know if you should have your own event, and what it takes to make an event successful.
Welcome, Patsy.
Rob: Hey, Patsy.
Patsy: Hey, thank you both so much for having me. I'm really excited about this conversation.
Kira: Yes, we are excited, and we met ... I was trying to trace it back, but we met via Nikki Groom, who is also on our show, and we met at the Good Life Project, which is such a nice place to meet you.
Patsy: We did. It was a lovely space, and I just adore that community because it is full of amazing people like yourself who are looking to really get the most out of this human experience that we're a part of.
Kira: All right, so, Patsy, let's kick us off with your story. I know you've gone through a lot of changes in your business and your life. Let's just start with how you ended up becoming a brand and event strategist.
Patsy: Awesome. Yeah, so my path has not been a linear one by any means. When I first graduated from high school, I grew up in a small town in Maine, and I knew I wanted to leave the state, at least for those four years of college. I found myself in Rhode Island. When I first started that college pathway, I really didn't know what I wanted to focus on, and I didn't really have a great sense of self.
I knew that I loved learning about people, and I was a decent writer. Those two things as my filter, I eventually found myself pursuing a public relations degree, and quickly, after graduation, found myself in a corporate setting in a marketing department for very well-known brands, but in an industry and space that wasn't exactly what I would call interesting to me. While it was a great foundational place for me to land in terms of learning about how a business works and what it's like to be out in this sort of corporat...
For the 150th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we asked public relations and podcast expert, Brigitte Lyons, to talk about the best ways to build authority. Brigitte has presented to our Think Tank and The Underground, but we felt like what she has to share is too good to keep secret. In this interview, we asked her about: • her early experiences as a PR specialist • how she shifted her business from PR to specializing in Podcasts • why podcasting is a powerful medium for building authority (and finding clients) • how to get started pitching podcasts—what to think about before you pitch • her advice to beginners and those who have “nothing” to say • the elements of your podcast pitch—what you need to include • what not to do when you pitch (the bad pitches she’s seen) • what to do after the podcast goes live to maximize the impact • how to make the interview successful—how to prep • why you need a clear call to action to direct people to your website
If you've thought of using podcasts to build your authority as a copywriter, you'll want to listen to this episode. To do that, just click the play button below or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. Readers can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Creative Live Entrepreneur on Fire Lacy Boggs Zencastr Sims CatQuest Brigitte’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits? Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 150 as we chat with media strategist and podcast expert Brigitte Lyons about building a reputation, tactics copywriters can use to build authority and recognition, what to include in your podcast pitch so the host will say yes and a few details about her new business Podcast Ally.
Kira: Welcome Brigitte.
Brigitte: Hi. Thank you so much. Episode 150. I heard you saying in the intro. I feel like that's a milestone episode.
Kira: This is a big deal episode. Yes.
Rob: Definitely a big deal episode. And I probably just said the business name wrong too, it's Ally, right? Not Alley.
Brigitte: Yeah, it's Ally. The naming of the business, that mistake right there was actually my biggest kind of fear. And there's another company that has a pop-up ally and for years I thought it was Ali, so I'm like, it'll just, it'll be what it is.
Rob: Yeah. My apologies. Everybody check out Podcast Alli and yeah and learn more.
Kira: So we are so excited to have you here, Brigitte, because you have been in our community, you've already run a couple of workshops for our mastermind group and for our membership. And every time you run a workshop you teach, there's so much you bring to the table and you teach us about podcasting and PR. So we knew we had to bring you on the podcast and I'm personally working with you too. So I'm clearly a big fan. So let's just kick this off with your story. How did you end up in PR?
Brigitte: Yeah, well I got into PR really early in my career. When I was in college, I was a creative writing major and of course, like all creative writing majors, I thought I'm going to leave school. I want to do something really creative. I want to write. Of course, I want to write the great American novel, which I haven't done, but there's still time. And I stumbled into PR by accident, while I was still in school, I did an internship for actually a local sheriff's department. It's this crazy story where the sheriff ended up in the hospital. My mom was an ER nurse and they got to talking and she's like, ‘Hey,
This episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, is all about The Copywriter Accelerator—the 16-week program designed to help "newish" copywriters build the foundations of a healthy business. Kira and Rob talk about what it includes and who it's for in this short, informational episode. The Copywriter Accelerator opens up for new members on August 27 and launches for good the first week of September.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Since this is just a short discussion of The Copywriter Accelerator, there is no transcript for this episode.
Copywriter Lindsay Hotmire is our guest for the 149th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve gotten to know Lindsay over the past six months as she’s made some big changes to her business—including dialing in her niche and reaching out to a new kind of client. She told us all about the process she has followed as she’s made these changes (funny enough it’s the same process she walks her clients through). We asked Lindsay a bunch of stuff including: • how Lindsay went from high school English teacher to anti-hog activist to copywriter • how she found her first few clients so she could quit her full-time gig • the resources she used to gain traction and reach six figures • the “unbranding” transition she’s been going through over the last few months • why she applied her three-part client framework to her own business • her interest in phenomenology and how that affects her work • how developing a framework has changed the way so works with clients • the 5 steps of her framework and the questions she asks • why pivots are good for your business and why you should trust the journey • what she’s done to show up more for her audience—and where she does it • what to do if you don’t have anything interesting to share • the changes she’s making as she moves her business forward • how she gets so much done as a busy mom of four teens • what she would do differently if she had to start over
Lindsay offers a calm, collected look at what it means to be a six-figure copywriter—including the struggles and successes. To hear this episode, click the play button below or subscribe and download it to your favorite podcast app. Rather read? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Start with Why by Simon Sinek Researching The Lived Experience by Max Van Manan To Kill a Mockingbird Lindsay’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 149 as we chat with copywriter, Lindsay Hotmire about her framework that helps clients understand how she helps them brand their businesses, her interest in phenomenology, and how that impacts her business, changing niches and focusing on the clients she loves, and the number one thing that's helped her push her business forward.
Welcome, Lindsay.
Lindsay: Hey, I'm so excited to be here.
Kira: I know. We're excited too, and we're really grateful that we've been able to get to know you better through the Think Tank, and just chatting with you recently about all the changes you've made in your business and some of the frameworks you're developing. We've got to talk to you about this, and of course, hit record as we're chatting through some of this. Why don't we start with your story? How did you end up as a copywriter?
Lindsay: Yes, so my story. I always tell people I hate telling my own story. I like to collect people's stories better, but my story really starts, I guess professionally back in 1999. I graduated from college. That was a time where I guess the internet existed, but fairly.
Napster was still a thing. Facebook and LinkedIn, they didn't even exist, and so I knew I loved to write, but I graduated from college with an education degree. I was going to teach high school English. I thought that that's what I wanted to do because I understood even then the power of language to kind of change lives, and I thought, ‘What better place to do that than in a classroom.’ I realized pretty quickly that that wasn't really the place for me. I just ...
Author, copywriter and member retention specialist, Robert Skrob, is our guest n the 148th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We recently invited Robert to present his unique business model to the members of The Copywriter Think Tank and wanted to share his unique approach to marketing his business with everyone who listens to the podcast. We asked Robert about: • how he went from working as a book keeper to writing copy for subscription businesses and the advantages his accounting background give him • how copywriters make our business more complex than it needs to be • why your marketing should be all about the problem you solve • Robert’s advice to copywriters choosing a niche • how he promotes his business today • the unique approach he used to attract his first big clients (this is worth stealing) • how he uses his book to attract and qualify clients today • the kinds of clients copywriters should be trying to attract (sail fish, not brim) • how Robert pitches long-term projects to his clients • the mindset issues that keep us from getting the paychecks we want • what he learned from Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazier • the ideas you can safely ignore when it comes to “the next new thing” • positioning yourself as the wizard with the knowledge • why there is no future in copywriting and what you need to be instead
Here we go again, saying this is a great interview. But if you want to attract multiple, high-paying clients to your business, you could do a lot worse than follow the blue print that Robert lays out in this episode. To hear it, click the play button below, or subscribe with your favorite podcast app. Or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy David Deutsch Parris Lampropoulos Retention Point by Robert Skrob Bill Glazier Perry Marshall Adam Witty Travis Miller The Bonanza King Robert’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits? Then, steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for Episode 148 as we chat with author and copywriter, Robert Skrob, about adopting a unique copywriting niche and positioning himself as the industry expert in memberships and subscriptions, the sales formula to outline his recent book, Retention Point, why people join memberships and why they leave, and what it's like to write a book with Dan Kennedy.
Hey Robert.
Robert: It's my honor to be here. It took, I guess I'm 148 on the list of the most interesting copywriters to talk to.
Rob: You're way above that. But, we just haven't been able to get with you. You're so busy.
Kira: That's true.
Rob: With a such a great business. It's amazing to have you here though. Thank you so much for being here.
Robert: I'm honored. I don't hang out at copywriting events or speak at those things, but I certainly see copywriters struggle and become very frustrated. So hopefully, we can share some ideas that can help simplify this whole business for everybody.
Kira: Sounds great. Well, let's start with your story first. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Robert: Actually, back in 1993, I was an accountant at a public accounting firm and hated it. I was there three months and left, took a job as a bookkeeper for a company that did consulting with non-profit associations, and I ended up buying that company about five years later.
So, I had 20 associations that I was responsible for doing membership marketing, event marketing, sponsorship sales,
Copywriter Adam Bensman is our guest for the 147th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We've gotten to know Adam over the past few months and are very impressed with the business he's built. While so many copywriters struggle to find decent paying clients, Adam has built a great business working with a few, high-paying clients—and still has plenty of time at the end of the day for recreation and fun. We asked Adam about: • how he went from door to door sales to copywriter (with a few stops in between) • how he compensates for the “missing advantages” of face to face sales when you’re writing email (or sales pages) • why you need to couple empathy with pain when you “agitate the pain” • how to join the conversation in your prospect’s head • the template he uses when he sits down to write for clients • establishing boundaries and how it can change your business • how Adam defines his niche (it’s not the regular way) • the connection secret he used to find clients that fit in his niche • the value he creates for his clients (and how he presents it) • pricing… what Adam used to do and what he does today • what a typical project looks like (and what Adam does to complete it) • success fees and how it makes it work for his clients • how to think bigger about your business
We say this a lot, but this is a good one. To hear everything Adam has to share, click the play button below or download this episode to your favorite podcast player. Rather read? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Joseph Sugarman Sales Email Formula Adam’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 147 as we chat with copywriter Adam Bensman about his approach to finding high-paying clients and building a business to support his lifestyle, making the time to value switch, how he finds the right clients and prices his projects, and what all copywriters can do to think bigger about their businesses.
Kira: Welcome, Adam.
Adam: Hey. Thank you, Kira and Rob. It's great to be here.
Rob: Yeah, it's good to have you here.
Kira: All right, Adam. So let's start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Adam: My original background was in psychology and natural medicine, and when I moved to Madison, Wisconsin to pursue that venture, I was making no money in that field. And I set out to put food on the table, literally. I mean, I was that broke.
So, I fell into door-to-door sales selling roofing, and from there worked my way up to be the COO of a multi-state roofing and storm restoration company. And when I left that space from burnout, I started in the consulting world. And I was writing all of our direct mail at that company when I was COO, and then when I was doing consulting, I was providing some of those service for clients, not really even understanding that there was a copywriting profession in existence.
And I went on to co-found kind of an email marketing-type SaaS for the niche that I came from. And we went six months with zero sales. It was me and one partner. And I was sending emails out to our list that I had built, to past clients. I was posting on LinkedIn, posting on Facebook and engaging all the Facebook groups. We literally went six months with zero sales.
And when I kind of reached this breaking point, it was like, we needed to turn the ship around. So, I found an opportunity to joint venture with someone in our space,
A-list Copywriter and best-selling author, Richard Armstrong, is our guest for the 146th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Richard has been writing winning direct response copy for more than 30 years. And he just released his latest book, The Don Con. Kira and Rob invited Richard into the studio to talk about the book and a whole lot more. Stuff like... • how Richard went from office boy to agency creative director • the lessons he learned early on working on “junk” mail • what’s changed in the world of direct response in 30 years—and what hasn’t • his award-winning letter for Sea Turtle Rescue • the go-to books he refers to again and again • his favorite clients and the work he’s most proud of • why he took long 3 martini lunches in his “Mad Men” days • the one good copywriting habit he has • the #1 thing that makes copywriters good at what they do • what Richard learned while writing about con men • the important difference between copywriters and confidence men • his experience at Comic Con and FanCon • what happened when he met Captain Kirk and The Fonz
Don't miss your opportunity to get the free copywriting samples and download that Richard mentioned during the interview. And check out a few of the many resources he mentioned. This is a good one. To hear it all, click the play button below, or download this episode to your favorite podcast app. And if you prefer reading, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: FreeSampleBook.com Claude Hopkins David Ogilvy Eugene Schwartz The Sea Turtle Letter The Responsive Chord by Tony Schwartz The Solid Gold Mailbox by Walter Wentz Being Direct by Lester Wunderman Boardroom Parris Lampropoulos Richard Viguerie Agora AWAI David Deutsch Clayton Makepeace Carline Anglade Cole Jim Rutz The Don Con Jonathan Frakes Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 146, as we chat with author and direct response copywriter Richard Armstrong about the persuasion techniques used by con artists that copywriters use as well, what he's learned from 40 years of writing junk mail and what he writes today, his new book The Don Con, and a very useful free bonus he's sharing with copywriters. Richard, welcome.
Richard: Thank you very much. It's great to be here. I am a big fan of the emails you guys send everyday. A lot of tremendous personality and voice in those emails and I read them avidly.
Kira: Thank you.
Rob: That's nice of you to say. I think all of the personality is Kira. I'm kind of the boring side, so she deserves the credit for that.
Kira: That is not true, but thank you for saying that. That's very nice and I was just saying before we started recording, Richard and I are officially neighbors because I just moved to Washington, D.C. So we're going to hang out all the time, right Richard?
Richard: Absolutely. The only problem with being a citizen of Washington is that the rest of the country hates you. So when you go anywhere else on vacation, tell them you're from Brooklyn, you'll get a much better response.
Kira: Okay, these are things I need to know that you need to teach me,
Copywriter Jeff Kimes is our guest for the 144th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jeff is a former scientist and musician (or rather, he's currently a musician making his living writing copy for clients). We asked Jeff about his path into copywriting and a bunch of other topics including... • Jeff’s journey from scientist to copywriter • the “copywriting” lessons he learned as a musician • how he creates connection with his readers • the importance of setting the stage to create a better experience • what he’s doing today as a copywriter (and where he is living) • the challenges of writing for a single client and learning their voice • the benefits of working with a single client • how we can optimize for learning throughout our careers • what Jeff is doing to build his authority today
Jeff also shared a few thoughts about the ethics of copywriting and why thinking about how your copy serves your customers matters. Click the play button below, find it on your favorite podcast app, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jeff's music Joshua Bell in the Subway Video Brian Clark (Copyblogger) Brian Kurtz Scott Adams Jeff’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For information or to sign up go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode number 144 as we chat with copywriter Jeff Kimes about how science, music and travel combined to make him a more effective copywriter. His research and writing process, seeking out experiences that grow his career. And we might even talk a little bit about the ethics of copy.
Kira: All right, welcome Jeff.
Rob: Hey Jeff.
Jeff: Hello.
Kira: I want to say welcome back because we already did interview months ago, but we just lost the file. It just didn't work out. So welcome back. We never got to publish that conversation, but I know this one will be even more insightful. So Jeff why don't we start this off just with the basics of how you got into copywriting and then we'll go from there.
Jeff: So as far as my own journey into copywriting, I've lived a couple different phases of life, which I think is pretty normal at this point in society. I started out in science. I was working in a psychoneuroimmunology lab. After school I was doing, working in vaccine development. I worked in neuroscience labs and stuff like that. And after a while I got really sick of the lab life and was really hungering for more. And I always had a real big travel bug inside of me. And so went on a, found jobs that facilitated that lifestyle. I worked at sea a lot in marine biology and used that to fund eight years of world travel that was very musically inspired. I'm also a musician and I'd go to a lot of countries where I was really inspired by their musical traditions and learned to teach over there. And then I would take what I learned and incorporate it into music that I was making back here in the U.S. and used that to launch a music project that I played with for several years. It was really fun, enormously fun. Not terribly profitable, but just a really, really beautiful life experience.
And in that process of growing a band and trying to make music my life and make that my living started to really come into contact with the necessity of marketing.
Copywriter Lauren Hazel is our guest for the 143rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Lauren is a hustler who has done a lot in her years as a copywriter. She thinks and writes about brand stories, marketing and email. Once we got her in the studio, we asked about... • how Lauren accidentally became a copywriter • how she stumbled onto copywriting when she tried to improve a flyer • the programs she used to learn her skill set • what she learned about pricing from her first freelance project • her cold call pitch that failed and what she learned from the failure • what she did to grow beyond her first couple of clients • how changing her title brought her more copywriting and marketing work • how she splits her time between her marketing agency, training and writing • what she does in her workshops and how much she charges • how she packages her strategy work • the things she has done that have made the biggest difference in her business • the kinds of clients she works with in her business today • the mistakes she’s made that she won’t make again • what it was like to work with 50Cent
We also asked Lauren about her program for introverts. To hear what she had to share, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: CopyHour Lauren’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 143 as we chat with copywriter and brand strategist Lauren Hazel about building her business, what it means to hustle and how copywriters can do it better, why every copywriter should have an email list and what to send them, and what it's like to write for a celebrity like 50 Cent.
Hey, Lauren, welcome.
Lauren: Hey, how are you all doing? What's up?
Kira: Great. Great to have you here and we want to kick this off, I feel like we should kick it off with 50 Cent and just give that away, but we're going to make people wait for that story.
Lauren: Ah…
Kira: So let's start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Lauren: By accident. Not intentional. It's like, ‘No, duh duh duh.’ No. So what happened ... Oh God, I'm thinking about my birthday is coming up in a couple of days by the time we're doing this, so.
Kira: Oh, happy birthday.
Lauren: Thank you. So it's nine years probably. Yeah, damn near nine year, almost 10 years here. So, what I, I live in New York City and I had a tutoring business. So, I was trying to find a way to get more tutoring clients. An at that point, I was using either referral system, so I would go to places that I had worked or knew where there were schools that I had volunteered at and asked for, ‘If anyone needs math tutoring, I'm available.’ And then I was doing fliers, because fliers actually still work for those who don't know. Fliers do work.
And I was trying to make the flier better, so I was in a group and I was like, ‘Hey, here's my flier. I'm trying to, I'm planning on posting this out in Soho or whatever and see if I can get some clients.’ And folks were like, ‘Give me a hint.’ And then someone said, ‘Hey, why don't you, you should really look into copywriting because you'll then learn how to write a better fli...
What’s the big deal about style in copy anyway? We invited Style Consultant and copywriter Tamara Glick to join us for the 142nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to get to the bottom of that question. We covered a lot of ground in this one, but unfortunately we forgot to ask Tamara about joining a biker gang—even though we teased it in the intro. However, we think this episode makes up for that mistake because it’s our first interview to include the word, “huge-mungous.” Here's what we covered with Tamara: • how she went from working as a fashion consultant to writing copy • what it means to be a style consultant • the importance of a personal brand and showing that to the world • what she learned working closely with other creative in an ad agency • what it took to transition full time to copywriting • what she did once she decided to quit a full time job and make a living writing copy • what she did to line up projects and find clients • the changes she made when she went through the Copywriter Accelerator • the packages, prices and other things she offers in her business today • how she’s investing in her business today • mindset and how she gets out of her own way • her advice to others who aren’t as outgoing and energetic as she is
To hear this episode, you’ve got to click the play button below or download it to your favorite podcast app. Prefer to read? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Soho House Agnes Kowalski Tamara’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 142 as we chat with copywriter Tamara Glick about leaving the safety of a job and going freelance full-time, the role that fashion and style play in her business today, what she's doing today to invest in her business, and whether it's true that she's a member of a biker gang.
Kira: Biker gang, what?
Rob: Hey, Tamara.
Kira: I feel like we're teasing that, but I want to know right now. So welcome. I know you and I have chatted about this for a while and getting you on the show, because definitely you have been through a lot of transitions in your own business that we want to talk about. But before we do, let's just dig into how you ended up as a copywriter.
Tamara: Sure, hi guys. This is so exciting for me. How I ended up as a copywriter is kind of a twisted, checkered story. I actually started my career in advertising, but on the business side. Originally I would be the person who was going between the clients and the creative teams and briefing a creative team from what I'd been given from a client, and then allowing the creative team to do their magical work, and then coming back and working through that again with the client, and back and forth and back and forth.
I would be that person who would sit with the creatives right beside them kind of hanging over their cubicles and saying, ‘What you doing? Can I help? What can I do?’ So I really learned a ton from hanging out with my creative teams and appreciating the processes that they would go through, but I was working more on the business side.
Simultaneously,
Writing quizzes is pretty hot right now. So we asked entrepreneur and Quiz expert, Josh Haynam to join us to share everything he knows about quizzes for the 141st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. In this episode Kira and Rob asked all their questions about what copywriters need to know before creating great quizzes. Here’s what we covered: • the story of how Josh and his partner built a business on quizzes • some of the struggles he faced in starting his own company • the moment Josh and others knew things were going to work • why quizzes are such powerful tools for engaging your audience • how quizzes can change the person who is taking it • what the best quizzes have in common and why they work • examples of people and companies that are doing quizzes right • best practices for following up your quiz to engage your audience • the tools Interact has created to help writers create a quiz • the mistakes people make when creating quizzes • what his ridiculous daily schedule looks like • what he does to meditate for an hour and a half really
We also asked Josh about how Interact got traction—the content strategy they followed as they grew, how he listens to customers to figure out what’s next, and what the future holds for Interact. To hear it all, click the play button below, download the episode to your podcast player, or scroll down read a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Interact <-- sign up here Marie Forleo Jenna Kutcher The Copywriter Club Quiz Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Note: we’ve talked about quizzes before. Click here to hear our interview with Chanti Zak about how she’s built her business around quizzes. Also, that link to Interact is an affiliate link. If you sign up for a paid account, we will earn a dollar or two (at no cost to you).
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You are invited to join the club for Episode 141 as we chat with entrepreneur and quiz expert, Josh Haynam, about co-founding Interact, how copywriters are using quiz funnels for their clients and in their own businesses, why quizzes are such powerful marketing tools, and what separates a great quiz from the merely good quizzes. Welcome, Josh.
Rob: Hey, Josh.
Josh: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Kira: Yeah, great to have you here. And as a sponsor at our conference for copywriters in Brooklyn this past March, which already feels like a long time ago, was not that long ago, but great to have you and meet you at the event. So, just to start, can you tell us a little bit about your story and how you ended up building Interact?
Josh: Yeah, yeah. It's a long story. Interact itself is a long story. It's been in business for almost eight years, which is, like, an eternity in the software world. We're basically, like, grandparents at this point. Yeah, I got my start as an entrepreneur when I was 15, so I've been running companies for 11 years now. And Interact was born out of an agency that myself and my co-founder Matt used to run. We would build websites for people and run all of their digital marketing. And we'd charge them a lot of money, and the end of the day, really all they had any interest in was the size of their email list, so how many contacts were coming in,
Thinking about joining a membership community for copywriters? This episode may help you make the decision to jump. For the 140th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk about The Copywriter Underground—what it includes and what you can expect when you join. And so it just isn’t us talking about a thing we made, we asked six members to join us and share their experience. The result is an episode that is a bit longer than what we usually share, but it was interesting to hear some of the things Underground members shared about their experience. Here’s what we covered: • what has surprised us the most since launching The Underground • what The Copywriter Underground includes (there’s a lot) • how The Underground is going to change this July 1st—important if you’ve been thinking of trying it out • how The Underground has helped members like Amy Jones, Derek Hambrick, Mladden Stojanović, Renae Rockwell, Emily Zoscak, and Natalie Smithson
Like we said, this one is different. It's not a full-on sales pitch, but it is all about this community that we love. To hear more about it, click the play button below, or download the episode to your podcast player. Or to read the transcript, simply scroll down.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: David Garfinkel Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership, designed for you, to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month, consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: Hey Rob.
Rob: Hey Kira, how's it going?
Kira: It's great. It's great.
Rob: We do not have an intro prepared for this episode, because we don't have a guest today. Well, we actually have six guests today, but not, this is a different kind of episode. We've never really done this before, and I think we were talking the other day about The Underground and we thought, you know, a lot of people ask us about what's going on in The Underground or what it is and they have questions. And so we thought, let's just go really deep on what's in The Underground, what we do there, and ask some of our members of The Underground what their experience is like, just so that people have a really good idea of what it is and how it can help somebody in their copywriting journey.
Kira: Yeah. So this is fun, because you'll actually hear the voices of the members. And we lovingly call them our moles. I don't know who started that, we think it was Justin Blackman, who coined the term. But our members seem to be very happy being called moles. So we will hear their voices as they talk through their experience in The Underground, which we haven't really shared before. And then Rob and I will just talk through what we've learned from running The Underground since September, right? Is that when we launched it?
Rob: Yeah, we launched it in September and it's been going now for seven or eight months. It's grown to almost 200 people. And we're actually going to close the doors to new members here in the near future, we've got a few weeks before that happens. But we'll talk a little bit about that as well, and the change behind that. So Kira, you know, let's, what's your experience been in The Underground so far? Like what has surprised you, what were you expecting and how has it turned out maybe differently or even better than what you expected?
Kira: Yeah. So I think so far what has surprised me the most is that the community aspect is more important than anything else. Then the trainings we create, live trainings in there, there's a ton of great templates and resources and scripts. Especially like, we add stuff from our own businesses that we use, and that's all been great, and the members use that.
Thinking about writing a book? Author and book coach Jennie Nash is our guest for the 139th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Although we’ve talked about writing a book on the podcast before, Rob and Kira wanted to go even deeper on the topic, as well as learn what it means to be a book coach. We learned a lot from the discussion. Here’s what we covered: • how she became a book coach and landed book deals for her first 3 clients • the embarrassingly easy process of writing her own first book • where creativity and book ideas come from • when someone should consider working with a book coach • where writers go wrong in the book writing process • the three critical motivations that drive people to write books • the she turned book coaching into a thriving business • whether copywriters should have a book to support their businesses • the place ego plays in writing a book • how she prices her coaching packages and what they include • the importance of structure and where you can find them
If you've even considered writing a book, you should listen to what Jennie has to share. Click the play button below, download the episode to your favorite podcast app, or scroll down to read a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Creative Habit by Twila Tharp Jenny’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you, to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month, consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two, to inspire your own work. That's what Kira and I do, every week, at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 139, as we chat with book coach, Jennie Nash, about writing and publishing a book, working in the publishing industry, what her writing process looks like, and how we can avoid the mistakes authors usually make when sitting down to write a book. Welcome Jennie.
Rob: Hey, Jennie.
Jennie: Hey, thanks for having me.
Kira: Yeah, great to have you here. So, let's kick this off with your story, how did you end up as a book coach?
Jennie: Well, I guess we should start out by saying what a book coach is, because a lot of people have never heard that term.
Rob: That's the question, what is a book coach?
Jennie: And I may have made it up, I don't know. I mean, I'm not claiming to have started the internet kind of thing. But, lots of people have been using this term, but the way I distinguish it, is that, an editor usually works on a piece of writing after that piece of writing is finished, in order to move it forward and make it better. And a book coach helps a writer while they're writing. So, the way I describe it is, it's like a personal trainer for your writing life. And a book coach is focused on book writing. So, that's what a book coach is. And I stumbled into this career after a career as an author. I had published seven books in two genres, mostly with big five publishers. And I was teaching at the UCLA writers program, which is actually the largest adult focused writing program in the country. And what I realized when I began teaching, I taught there for 12 years, and I realized that I was teaching systems. And that, nobody else around me was teaching systems.
And it began to be quite obvious that I was doing something different. And I didn't know I was doing that, it just was a thing that I naturally did. And as a result of that practice, I guess, I would call it,
Do you need better packages to offer your clients? Prerna and Mayank Malik join us for the 138th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to share what they know about packages. This is something a lot of copywriters struggle with, so Kira and Rob asked Prerna and Mayank about the best ways to think about and structure packages. Here’s what we covered: • what has changed in their business over the past two years • their failure to reach a lofty revenue goal (and why it was still a success) • the key team players they lean on for support • how they create and refine the packages they offer their clients • the IMAGE framework they use when they come up with a new product • an example of how the use the framework to create packages • why they’re so passionate about packages (and passion is definitely the right word) • the mistakes copywriters make when creating a package • why knowing your audience is the key to creating a good package • how the packages fit together in their business • how to get started creating a package for your business • how to make your existing package more profitable • their approach to launches and how they make sure the launch goes well • the niches and businesses that packages won’t work for • how they manage their days to finish work by 3:00 each day • what to do before you decide to work with your spouse
As usual, this is a good one. Click the play button below or download this episode to your podcast app. If you’d rather read, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Prerna’s First TCC Interview The Copywriter Think Tank Profits on Tap Fully Loaded Launch Bushra Azhar Prerna’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Transcript to come...
Copywriter and entrepreneur, Austin Mullins, is our guest for the 137th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve known Austin for quite a while now and the more we heard him talk about his sales process, the more we knew we needed to have him share his process with the club. We covered a lot of ground—especially about sales processes—in this one, here’s a good list of most of what we talked about: • how Austin became a copywriter in high school • why he thinks it was a mistake (for him) to attend college • what he did to find good clients beyond Upwork • the #1 thing he did to grow his business—it has to do with sales • why he chose the niche he is in and how it changed his business • how he split his time between three “jobs” at the same time • his “ideal” client acquisition process and selling on the phone • what to do to encourage referrals or testimonials • the mistakes copywriters make on sales calls (and how to fix them) • what it means to be a growth strategist—and how to “do” strategy • what his process for working with content clients looks like • an in-depth review of what the sales process should look like • how to teach yourself to “sell”
To hear this one—and if you struggle with sales you definitely want to hear this one, click the play button below or download the episode to your podcast app. Readers scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Danny Marguiles Joel Klettke SPIN Selling Austin’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 137 as we chat with copywriter Austin Mullins about what he does as a growth strategist for B2B SaaS companies, how he attracts and closes leads, what it's like to build an agency, and the challenges of investing his time in more than one business at once. Welcome, Austin.
Rob: Hey, Austin.
Austin: Thanks for having me, guys. Longtime fan of the podcast, so excited to be here.
Kira: Great to have you here, Austin. As one of our former Accelerator members and now a Think Tank member. It's about time we had you on the show, so let's start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter and growth strategist?
Austin: Yeah. I started a bit early, so I first started doing a little bit of copywriting work in high school, actually. Stumbled across Upwork, which I know is often a dirty word around these parts but stumbled upon there and was interested in this freelancing thing. I had always been good at academic writing but didn't particularly enjoy it, but stumbled across this term, copywriting and started to do some really low-level work like helping people write reviews and such at first, and then gradually worked my way up to being a generalist copywriter, who would write blog content for all sorts of businesses, brochures, a little bit of web copy in there but not web copy done the right way with lots of customer research.
Then did that for a while. Made the mistake of letting my family convince me I should go to college, and so, business dropped off. Then when I tried to get back into it, things didn't pick up quite as quickly as I thought they would,
Nikita Morell is our guest for the 136th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve known Nikita for a while now and given the success she’s had, it's a shame we haven’t had her on the podcast before now. Nikita has found a lot of success by niching her business and delivering exactly what her ideal clients need. We talked to her about: • how she went from selling bread to selling ads to writing copy • her accidental sales pitch that saved her sales job • how a job in marketing taught her skills that she uses as a copywriter • why she chose her niche—working only with architects and the impact on her biz • how she changed her business to accommodate having a baby • what she does to find clients—she’s a “prospecting nerd” • what she did to raise her rates adding thousands of dollars to every project • how she thinks about her brand and why she takes her brand seriously • the marketing pieces she is using in her prospecting process • how she makes her cold emails feel like warm emails • this mistakes she’s made along the way—it hasn’t all been smooth sailing • what she does to get a lot of “busy work” done and still avoid burnout • the things she has done that have made the biggest difference in her business
We also asked Nikita about working with subcontractors, creating a “pretty” framework to show how her process works and why she spends a lot of time with a Japanese floor loom. Nikita shares a lot of advice worth listening to in this episode. To hear it, click the play button below or find it on your favorite podcast app. Readers can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Seth Godin The Copywriter Think Tank Mel Abraham Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership, designed for you, to help you attract more clients, and hit 10k a month, consistently.
Rob: For more information, or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 136, as we chat with copywriter Nikita Morell about helping architects with copy and marketing strategy, her approach to choosing a niche and then narrowing it even further, why she created a framework for her process, and the role weaving plays in her life and business.
Kira: Welcome Nikita.
Rob: Hey Nikita.
Nikita: Thank you, hi.
Kira: Yeah, we're excited to have you here. You are one of our members of our Think Tank, so we've been able to witness your business growth, and we're really excited to share what's working, because so much is working for you in your business. So let's just kick this off with your story.
Kira: How did you end up as a copywriter?
Nikita: So, I started in corporate marketing for L'Oreal and George Weston Foods, which is Australia's biggest bread brand, and I quite quickly realized this corporate life just wasn't for me. I think it was just all the layers and I just wasn't that great at taking direction. And it was round about this time I was earning a full time salary, so I was frequenting lots of bars and different restaurants, and after a night out, my friends would come back and comment on the food, or the music, or the cute boy sitting on the bar stool, and I would be looking at the copper lights, or the timber joinery; and I think it was about this time I just became obsessed with everything design related. I signed up to an interior design diploma,
Copywriter Andrey Adison is our guest for the 135th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We recorded this one on Valentine’s Day and are just now getting it in your podcast feed—hopefully it is worth the wait. We asked Dre about his background, what he helps his clients do today, and what he thinks writers will be doing in the future. Here’s what we covered: • how he went from affiliate marketer to copywriter • what he learned from affiliate marketing that he applies to his work today • why he feels like he has a duty to get serious about mindset • how Dre helps his clients find the core truth they want to share • his framework for helping his clients build their message and audience • how he finds his clients and what he charges for his services • what he’s done to take his business to the next level • why specialization is important and how it has helped Dre in his business • what’s not working in his business today • where he thinks copywriting is headed in the future
This is a good one. To hear what Dre has to share, click the play button below or download the episode to your podcast player. And if you like reading, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Rob’s book The Copywriter Accelerator Andrey’s site Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? Ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea, or two, to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You are invited to join the club for episode 135 as we chat with copywriter Dre Adison about growing his business. The one thing he has done to take his business to the next level, finding and working with clients and the deep dive question he asks his clients to help them get clear on their brand messaging.
Kira: This is a very special episode because it's Valentine's Day, even though when you listen to this, it might be more like Easter-time, but there's going to be a lot of love in this episode.
Rob: Tons of love.
Kira: So welcome Dre.
Rob: Welcome Dre.
Dre: Well thanks for having me. I feel the love already.
Kira: Before we start recording we basically shared our Valentine's Day experience thus far and Rob gives books to his children on Valentine's Day. Which is so ...
Rob: And my wife, not just my kids-
Kira: And your wife.
Rob: My wife and we give to each other. Love for everyone.
Kira: It's so on brand with who you are. I just give my kids a lot of sugar and cavities.
Rob: Which is also on brand.
Kira: Which is also on brand.
Dre: You gift them your own book? Your Brand Story book?
Kira: His autograph.
Rob: I don't think they would read it. I should do that. I should give everyone my own book.
Kira: It's a good way to get it out there.
Rob: Dre, what's your Valentine's tradition?
Dre: I usually go out the next day, my girlfriend she doesn't, she feels like Valentine's Day is so populated, all the restaurants and stuff like that. So normally the day after we go out to eat or we just spend time together.
Rob: So smart.
Kira: You can tell you live in New York City when ... I feel like all New Yorkers say that. It's like yeah we don't actually go out on Valentine’s Day. There's just no space for all these people.
Dre: Too many people.
Kira: Alright, so let's kick this off with your story Dre.
Grumpy Grammarian, Autumn Tompkins, is our guest for the 134th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Autumn has been a member of the club almost from the beginning. And she’s shared her editing and proofreading advice with anyone who asked. Now we took the chance to ask a few questions about her business. Here’s most of what we talked about: • how she went from ink slinger to grumpy grammarian • her business rules that keep her from being miserable • the difference between copyediting (art) and copywriting (science) • the impact of spending 7 months in the hospital and how she dealt with it • how she uses music to inspire what she does—and her copywriting mix tape • the resources—her personal master class—she’s used to learn copywriting • living with muscular dystrophy and what she’s learned from it • the fine line between grumpy and bitchy and the need for lightheartedness • her editing process and tips for doing your own copy editing • the 5 mistakes she sees copywriters make over and over • a few tips for improving transitions in your copy • her 3 favorite rhetorical devices and why they work in copy • how she finds clients and what her packages and pricing look like
We also asked Autumn about her copy edit school and the 5 components she teaches her students. To get hear everything that Autumn has to say, click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast app. Prefer reading? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Erika Lyremark Copy Edit School The Grumpy Grammarian's Guide to Copy Editing Autumn’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 134 as we chat with author, copy editor, and grumpy grammarian, Autumn Tompkins, about the ins and outs of copy editing, how it's different from copywriting, what she's done to find success in spite of serious life changes, and we'll ask, ‘Why is she so grumpy?’
Kira: Autumn, welcome.
Rob: Hey, Autumn.
Autumn: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Kira: It's great to have you here, Autumn, because we've worked closely on many different projects. You've cleaned up my copy many, many times. You've worked with The Copywriter Club on our newsletter as well, cleaning that up and making Rob and I look a little bit smarter than we actually are. So, it's so wonderful to finally bring you onto the show.
Autumn: Well, I'm so happy to be here. It's a total honor.
Kira: Well, let's start with your story. So, how did you end up as The Grumpy Grammarian?
Autumn: So, I used to be a copywriter for hire. I would sling ink for the right price. I had good intentions, write copy for business owners, so their prospects would buy from them. As soon as I landed my first client, I put my head down, never came up for air. And fast forward five years later, and I burned out. Back then, my marketing plan was simple. Find clients, write copy, get money, but part of the reason why I burned out was because that I didn't put my business first, and the other part of that reason was because I didn't know what I stood for. Who was I as a business owner and copywriter, and what did I believe in? Right around that time,
Copywriter Doug Pew is our guest for the 133rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob talked to Doug about his transition from composer of melodies to composer of sales email sequences and a whole lot more. Although he’s only been at his copywriting business for about a year, he’s found traction by connecting with the right mentors and bringing his past experience into his approach towards marketing. We talked to Doug about: • how he went from university professor to copywriter • what Kira needs to do to become a music professor—it’s not easy • the impact of losing the only job he ever wanted and the mindset adjustments he’s made • the importance of mentors when you take on copywriting as a career • how what he learned as a composer that apply to copywriting • his MAESTRO framework for copywriting • the importance of stories and what it takes to find them • the challenges of getting started as a new copywriter • why you should aspire to be in a category of one • his favorite composer story and how it applies to what you’re doing today
If you want to know how to make your copy more musical, get this episode in your earbuds. To do that, click the play button below, or download it to your favorite podcast app. Or you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Note: since we recorded this episode, Doug has changed his website from SymphoicCopywriting to RockStarCopywriting. Links have been updated but the audio file has not. David Garfinkel Ray Edwards Presence by Amy Cuddy Brian Kurtz MAESTRO formula Toscanini Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port Jason Resnick Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula Free chapters of doug’s book Doug’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Transcript and graphic coming soon...
Former copywriter and Ad Contrarian, Bob Hoffman, is our guest for the 132nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you know anything about Bob and his special brand of commentary, you already know that you’re in for a treat. He’s been an outspoken critic of what’s wrong in the advertising world and he had a lot to say about privacy, ageism, and social media. Here’s what we talked about: • Bob’s path from bad school teacher to contrarian copywriter • the most important personal quality if you want to be a copywriter • how to write in a way that attracts interest from your audience • why he started his own ad agency—more than once! • the dark side of running an agency and the difference when working alone • the things about advertising that drive Bob crazy • why privacy should be your #1 concern as a marketer and consumer • what it will take to fix the privacy problem • what ad agencies are doing well right now (spoiler: it’s not much) • Bob’s complex love-hate relationship with social media • the limits of brand building with social media • the ultimate goal of the work that you do • Bob’s process for selling better ideas to his clients • the problem of ageism in advertising today—and why it matters
We also asked Bob about what he’s focused on today, his book recommendations, and what’s next for him—no surprise, it’s another book—and his reluctance to tell us his predictions for the future. To hear this one, click the play button below or download it to your favorite podcast app. Or you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Hoffman Lewis Bad Men by Bob Hoffman 10 Influencers Under 10 The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton Dave Trott Where Did It All Go Wrong? by Eaon Pritchard Eat Your Greens by Weimer Snijders Laughing at Advertising by Bob Hoffman Bob’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for Episode 132 as we chat with author, Ad Contrarian and chief aggravation officer, Bob Hoffman, about what's wrong and what's right in advertising today, what it's like to found two successful ad agencies, what copywriters need to know about marketing and copy right now and what it means to be a true contrarian in an industry where group think is rampant.
Kira: Welcome, Bob.
Rob: Hey, Bob.
Bob: Thank you, thank you. It's great to be here.
Kira: Bob, how did you end up as a contrarian copywriter?
Bob: I started as a contrarian person and then it led to me being a contrarian copywriter. Well, I started as a copywriter, I didn't really start as a copywriter. I started as a science teacher, believe it or not.
Kira: Oh, wow!
Bob: I was a science teacher for a couple of years in middle school and then I ran into a friend of mine who I hadn't seen since college, this was about three or four years after college and I asked him what he was doing and he said, ‘I'm a copywriter,’ and I said, ‘What's that?’ and he said, ‘I write ads,’ and he said, ‘And you would be really good at it.’ He said that to me because we had written some stuff together in college. He said, ‘You'd be really good at that,’ and at that time, I was fed up. I was a terrible teacher, and I always wanted to do writing,
Direct response designer, Lori Haller, talks all about design and how copywriters can work more effectively with designers in the 131st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Lori was also one of the speakers at our recent copywriting event in Brooklyn, TCCIRL (videos available soon). Kira and Rob asked Lori about her processes, how she built her design agency, and all of the following: • how she got started as a designer • where her first jobs came from—and how she chose direct response as her niche • how branding design differs from direct response • her 3-step read-through process before she designs anything • how copywriters can improve their working relationships with designers • what separates the best copywriters from the rest • how she landed the big name clients she works with • how copywriters can learn basic design principles • how she makes sure she has the ideas an attitude she needs to do her best work • her advice to anyone growing a team • where she sees copywriting going in the future • what she does to keep learning and growing
If you’ve ever wanted to get more out of your relationship with your designer, this is a good one to add to your podcast play list. To hear it, click the play button below. Or if you like reading more than listening, scroll down for a full transcript.
Most of the people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jim Rutz Gary Bencivenga Doug D’anna David Deutsch Clayton Makepeace Carline Cole Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte Latrice Eiseman Bonus link to an interview of Lori by John Carlton Lori’s list of design references 3 Step Copy Review and Checklist Lori's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for Episode 131 as we chat with direct response Art Director Lori Haller about working with copywriters, the relationship that design and copy share and why they need each other, why she chose direct response as her niche, and how knowing design basics will make you a better copywriter.
Welcome, Lori.
Rob: Hey Lori.
Lori: Hey guys. How's it going?
Kira: It's great.
Rob: So good.
Kira: Yeah. Great to have you here, especially to have a designer in the house. Let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a designer?
Lori: I knew at an early age that I was in love with visualness, design, fonts. And so I went to training program for a couple years in high school where you had to be picked, it was like some type of tie in with the community college. Then I went to many years of a variety of trainings and college, at different colleges and sites in order to gain access to typography, communications, marketing, design, all that jazz. Then I went right from there into top agencies in Washington, DC. I tried to follow some of the lead art directors of that time and train under their wings for several years. The whole time I wanted my own agency at some point. And finally, about 20, 21 years ago, I decided to leave being a full-time employee and jumping in and starting my own agency. I had already ... I don't know, we might have talked about this Kira, but I'd already done nighttime work and weekend work on the side, all the whole while that I was employed, ramping up for hopefully one day building my client list and being able to go full-time just having my own agency. So luckily, it worked out.
Rob: Yeah, and it has worked out. When you were just starting to do the side projects, where did those projects come from?
We’ve flipped the microphones again and invited copywriter Kirsty Fanton back into the studio to interview us for the 130th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. This is the episode where we answer important questions like... What’s a furfie? What’s a ripsnorter? And has Rob ever cried in a movie? And what disgusting work habits does Kira have? Plus we talk about what the Copywriter Think Tank is like—it’s only open for new members once a year and we’re taking applications right now. Here are a few of the topics we covered: • our favorite moments from TCCIRL and why this year was even better than last • the speakers who stood out—the people you definitely want to watch when the videos are ready • a short description of the “lost” panel discussion • the new round of The Copywriter Think Tank • the importance of balancing financial success with a personal life • Kira’s favorite post from her blog about being tall in New York • Rob reveals that he has cried in a movie and that he can’t even remember the right breed of dog in the movie • the thing that Rob did that still bothers Kira • what Rob and Kira’s childhood hobbies were
We think this one is kind of fun. Make sure you stick around for the “lightning round” at the end to really get to know your hosts. It’s easy to listen, just click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast app. Readers can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Club In Real Life Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kirsty: What if you could have a yarn with ridgy-didge copywriters and other experts, ask them about their ripsnorters and furphies, their work processes and habit-a-roos, then pitch an idea or two to inspire your own hard yakka. That's what Rob and Kira do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. And if you haven't already guessed, today's episode is coming to you from the land down under, where we drive on the left, celebrate Christmas in the sweaty peak of summer, and wear thongs on our feet.
Given everything is upside down and inside out over here, it's only fair that I'm flipping the tables, and getting Robira to spill the beans on all things TCC. We'll get the down low on last months In Real Life event, a sneak peak at the new and improved Copywriter Think Tank, and the inside scoop on Rob's most woo woo moment, and Kira's grossest working from home habit.
Hey guys.
Kira: That was the best intro ever.
Rob: I might have to leave. I'm a little weirded out right now. That was English, right? You were speaking English?
Kirsty: I was speaking English, Rob.
Kira: Yeah, but what is a furphie?
Kirsty: A furphie's like an error or a mistake.
Kira: Wow. Okay. Definitely using that one.
Rob: Nice.
Kirsty: It’s a good word. You can drop it in when you're over here next month, Rob. You'll sound like a local.
Rob: Yeah. I can't wait. I'm going to like just memorize this, ripsnorters and furphies. Got it. Ready to go.
Kirsty: You'll fit right in. Well, guys, it's so nice to be chatting with you again so soon. I feel like I'm getting maximum in Robira time this month because I was over with you guys in Brooklyn like what, two weeks ago? For the final-
Kira: Yeah.
Kirsty: ... Think Tank workshop and also for of course TCC IRL version 2.0. So, how are you both after what I imagine has been a huge month at your end?
Kira: How are you, Rob?
Rob: I am great. I am-
Kira: You're always great.
Rob: ... we've had some time to rest and start picking up the pieces. It felt like it was a success. You're right though, it was a hard work. It was tiring.
Copywriter Pete Michaels of Rock and Roll Copy fame is back for a second guest appearance—exactly 100 episodes after his first visit to our studio. A lot has changed in Pete’s business since we last talked, so we asked him about: • what’s happened since we last talked • why he moved from London to Berlin • Pete’s questioning process for making the decision to move • how moving away from your comfort zone leads to progress • the role expectations play in what we do (and do well) • how working with a mentor shines a light on his processes • how Pete pulls his personality into his work and what that looks like • the importance of professionalism—why it matters • why (and how) he’s having more fun these days • the “real” role a copywriter should play in their clients’ businesses • his “selling unique” process and what it involves • the spiritual journey that Pete has been on for the past 2 years • Pete’s take on the future of copywriting
Worth a listen? Then click the play button below, or download the episode to your podcast player. Or if you prefer to read, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jason Leister Company of One Eric Bakey Pete’s website A book Pete didn't mention but wanted to Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Transcript coming soon...
Copywriter Keli Chevalier was the final speaker at TCCIRL19 and she brought down the house with her chant about booty call brands (get the videos to see what we’re talking about). Now she’s our guest for the 128th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We had hoped to get this out last week before the event, so you could have a taste of what she was going to speak about, but it works as a follow up too. Here’s what we covered: • how she unknowingly started writing copy while selling weapons for the Army • what she did as an Army Major (she was a pretty big deal) • how she developed her writing process—the BOMB method—while under fire in Iraq • the “Sitcom Principles” that apply to sales pages and kick starter campaigns • why she likes to work with frameworks and the impact on her business • her thoughts on leadership and how it applies to copywriting • what she did to attract her first clients and get traction • what else she knows beyond copywriting • how to rock a conference (even before you get there) • what she’s done to uplevel her business over the past few years • the people she has on her team—there are a few you might not expect • the process she stole from the Army to get everyone on the same page • the thing she’s done that has had the biggest impact on her business • how harsh feedback changed her approach to everything she does
We also talked about the imposter complex and her big goal for the coming year (it’s a good one). Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or if you prefer, download this episode to your favorite podcast app.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Text: "LaunchMe" to 39492 TCCIRL 2020 Videos (link coming soon) Keli’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: On it's way....
Direct response copywriter Pauline Longdon shares her thoughts about showing up in a bigger way in the 127th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. What does she mean by that? It’s not enough any more to just show up. You need to be strategic about how, where, when and with whom you show up. And that’s just one of the many things we discussed with Pauline, Here’s a short list of some of the other topics we covered... • how she went from army nurse to up-and-coming copywriter • the impact that depression had on her—and how she dealt with it • how her experience as a nurse helped her develop the copywriter’s secret weapon • why she writes “emotional” direct response copy • why we should forget copy tricks and what to do instead to write more emotionally • what she did to accelerate her copywriting business • the worst thing a prospect can say to you (and why it doesn’t matter) • how she makes time for her own business • what she’s learned from her time in the world’s most exclusive copy training program • the must read book that copywriter should read • not just showing up but showing up strategically • how she optimizes—not manages—her time to get so much done • her unique—longer—take on the pomodoro technique • why Pauline invests in more than one copywriting group at the same time • what she’s focused on in the coming year
Ready to listen? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. And if you prefer to listen while doing other things, you can download this episode to your favorite podcast app. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss another episode.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Gary Bencivenga Think and Grow Rich Mal Emery Parris Lampropolous How to Win Friends and Influence People Victor Schwab Scientific Advertising Tested Advertising Methods 4thEdition Breakthrough Advertising Titans of Direct Response AWAI Carline Anglade Cole Pauline’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Copywriter Zafira Rajan is our guest for this un-numbered episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Zafira’s business has really taken off over the past year as she’s focused in on a niche and gotten herself in front of the right clients. We talked about that as well as how she has used events to connect with people in person. Here’s what we covered: • her journey from Nairobi to Vancouver and journalist to copywriter • the skills she learned as a journalist that make her a better copywriter • the surprising interview question that often leads to a new idea • why she doesn’t have a standard list of questions for interviews • the little things she did to start her business the right way • the systems she uses to make projects go more smoothly • the changes she made to her business in the last year—and the impact it’s had • how niching has surprisehelped her business grow • the packages she has created and what they include • how she uses events to connect with clients • her tips for doing well on instagram (and who to follow) • how to think about brand messaging as a copywriter • a few of the mistakes she’s made over the past year or two • a few details about her women of color project • why she’s excited for The Copywriter Club In Real Life
Like we say, this is a good one. To hear it, click the play button below, or simply scroll down for a full transcript. If you prefer to listen while you work out or run errands, download it to your favorite podcast app.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Laura Belgray Zafira's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join The Club as we chat with copywriter Zafira Rajan about how her background as a designer has made her a better copywriter, what’s she done to gain traction in her business, building relationships, and her secret for networking, and what she’s doing to support other women of color.
Kira: Welcome, Zafira.
Rob: Hey, Zafira.
Zafira: Hi.
Kira: It’s great to have you here. We met you a year and a half ago in the Accelerator Program, and then you moved into the Think Tank Mastermind Group. And then you and I have worked on several projects now, so I feel like we know you really well, and the more we chat with you about your business and how you’ve grown over the last year or so. Rob and I are both like, “We need to bring you onto the show and share what you’re doing, what you’re learning, because it’s working, so we should share with the other copywriters as well.” So excited that you’re here, and let’s kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Zafira: Yeah, well it’s not a long journey. I realized pretty early on that I wanted to have a business of my own. I’m originally from Nairobi, Kenya, and I moved here to Vancouver about nine years ago, when I started university. My path probably started just even by doing an English Literature degree, writing every day, and I really thought at the time I would be going down the path towards journalism. And I was writing for the student paper, I started a platform for college women to share their voices that’s still alive today, and then I started managing a lot of social media accounts during that time and when I graduated I was doing marketing for the university. But I was also penning columns for publications here about global news and word just started getting out that I could write and I could manage social media and I could do a bunch of d...
Okay, this one is more than a little different. We talked with bio-energetics therapist and self mastery coach, Ron Baker for the 126th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Let’s just say this upfront, this interview is way outside our experience as copywriters. But as human beings, maybe there’s something here that we can all learn from. Here’s what we covered with Ron: • how he become a “bio-energetics therapist” and self mastery coach • how to be present in the moment and get in touch with your “inner self” • the place that breath plays in inspiration, intuition and passion • an exercise or two to get in touch with your inner self • how breath work and sound has changed Ron’s client’s life • Ron’s experiences visiting sacred sites around the world • what is possible for deeper personal potential and consciousness • the one thing everyone should do when it comes to woo • how woo applies to online marketing
Want to hear it all? Click the play button below or download this episode to your favorite podcast app. Or, if you prefer, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Ron’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 126 as we chat with self-mastery coach, Ron Baker about self-mastery and what we can do to get better at it. The levels of consciousness, creating a better life, and what it all has to do with copywriting.
Kira: Welcome, Ron.
Ron: Thank you for having me here. I have been enjoying your podcast a lot. I was actually just laughing my ass off at the interview that Ry did with the two of you.
Kira: Oh, you listened to that one.
Ron: I love ... Well, I listened to many, but I love the humanity and-
Kira: Oh boy.
Ron: Putting yourselves in the hot seat. I thought it was very courageous. I'm really-
Rob: Let's not do that again, shall we?
Kira: No I think we should do that more often. That was fun. So thanks for jumping in here with us. We were just saying before we started recording that this conversation is a little bit different than our normal copywriting focus conversations but I feel like this would be really helpful for us to branch out and stretch and for other copywriters to stretch, as well. So let's kick it off with your story, Ron. How did you end up as a bio-energetics therapist and self-mastery coach?
Ron: Well, the simple version of that is how did I end up as a nurturer and a guide for people to get to know themselves more fully? Because as I share just a brief version of my story, it will end up with how I went through 20 years of school as well as home and nobody taught me anything about myself, about my inner self, about how to truly trust myself and be fulfilled as a self. So, all of that started out way back when in North Carolina, and I grew up in a home that had some very typical challenges and some difficult challenges, and basically we were five separate people on five separate islands who didn't know how to communicate and nurture. Though everybody was inherently a really good person, nobody had the skills to create connection, intimacy and communication. We ended up with alcoholism and divorce and all kinds of things to navigate.
Conversion copywriter, Lisa Pierson, joins us for the 125th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve known Lisa for a couple of years and have witnessed as she’s built a growing freelance business in a short time—creating demand for her copywriting and her presence on stage to talk about increasing conversions. This was a great conversation that covered: • how Lisa went from journalism and PR to copywriter • why she joined a mastermind when she wasn’t sure what a mastermind was • how she landed her first clients • how she managed to start a business in the middle of massive life changes • why putting your self matters (and how it helps) • when things started to “click” and how Lisa’s business has changed • how joining Match.com and online dating led to her first speaking gig • the impact that speaking has had on her business • what else Lisa’s done to build her authority as a copywriter • what it takes to be more competitive as a copywriter today • what she’s done to make her retainer agreements work • what it means to be a “conversion” copywriter—it’s all about process • how she started “copy training” for companies
This is a good one. You know the drill. To hear it, click the play button below or download the episode to your podcast app. And, as always, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Copyhackers Inbound theconversioncopywriter.com Lisa’s Twitter Lisa on YouTube Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Full transcript coming soon...
Launch manager, Shannon McCaffery, is our guest for the 124th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve known Shannon for a little over a year and after talking with her about TCCIRL and several other launches she’s helped manage, we thought she’d be a great guest for the show. Here’s a sample of what we talked about:
• how she went from a corporate job to independent business owner • the biggest lessons she learned from working with Dan Kennedy • why she doesn’t ever take phone calls on the weekend • how she earned the nickname, “the product launch chick” • the three different ways Shannon helps her clients — an idea you can steal • how she conducts her initial consulting call so she closes more business • the 5 questions she asks of every potential clients • what she does during her $8K strategic planning days • the 3 Ms—message, market, media—and why you need to get all three right • knowing which events are the right ones to attend • why you should always take the VIP option (if there is one) at an event • what’s working in launches today (and what isn’t) and how copywriters fall short when working on them • how spirituality has impacted her life and business • what the future of online marketing looks like
To hear it all, just click the play button below. Or download the episode to your favorite podcast app. And, if reading is your thing, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
After we were done with the recording, we asked Shannon a couple of questions about what copywriters need to do to really stand out in their marketplace... we've shared her answer to that a one or two other copy-related questions in the Podcast Extras in The Copywriter Underground.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: No BS Insider Circle Ryan Deiss Perry Belcher Yanik Silver Jeff Walker No B.S. Time Management Don’t Make Me Think Brenden Burchard Frank Kern Rob Berkley Secret Prayer by Joe Vatale Wishes Fulfilled by Wayne Dyer The Obstacle is The Way by Ryan Holiday SoulfulVisionMarketer Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 124 as we chat with product launch manager and direct marketer, Shannon McCaffery, about becoming an online marketer, running launches with experts like Jeff Walker and Lisa Sasevich, the role spirituality plays in her life and business, and what's not working in online marketing today.
Kira: Hey, Shannon. Welcome.
Rob: Great to have you here.
Shannon: Hey guys, awesome to be here. Thrilled. This is going to be fun.
Kira: Alright. So, we met you in a Titans master class. We're all members in there with Brian Kurtz, and you and I are actually in an accountability group, so we get to connect on a regular basis, but I don't think I know your entire story, so let's start with how you ended up as an online marketer.
Shannon: Yeah, sure. I actually was in corporate America for a good bit. After that stint, I got to say, I think it was in there 15, 16 years, I don't know, it all rolls together, I lost my job, or they laid me off in a layoff. And basically my mentor came to me, his name is Rob Berkeley, an amazing coach, and he said, ‘Hey, don't go back to corporate America.
For the 123rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob change things up a little bit and go “guest-less”. After a short discussion about what’s going on in our own copywriting businesses, we talk about we’re working on and what we’re most excited about—with special attention paid to our in-person event coming up next month. Here’s what we covered in our discussion: • the pain of juggling two businesses • getting back into things after taking a step back from client work • what we might be testing on LinkedIn this year • taking a Quantum Leap • the genesis of The Copywriter Club In Real Life • when it doesn’t make sense to make a Quantum Leap • the people we’re seeing make Quantum Leaps right now • why we’re “all in” on The Copywriter Club • a few tips for making your own Quantum Leap • why you have to join us at TCCIRL this year
To listen to this entire episode, click the play button below. You can also add it to your favorite podcast app. And if you’re a reader, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Michal Eisikowitz Kirsty Fanton Linda Perry Derek Hambrick Raven Douglas Robert Lucas Justin Blackman Sorcha MacKenzie TCCIRL19 Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership, designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
We do not have an intro for this episode. I guess we're just going to wing it.
Kira: Is that your intro?
Rob: I think that's our intro. Yeah, why not? Hey, everybody. Hey, Kira. It is Episode 123 of The Copywriter Club Podcast, and it's just you and me today.
Kira: Yeah, it's just us, just more quality time together. I love it.
Rob: That's right.
Kira: I just want more time with Rob, all the time.
Rob: Which is hard to do, because we live far away, and we both have separate families. Yeah, we squeeze in what we can. But I have a question for you, Kira. It's been a long time since it was just you and I on a podcast episode, last summer. What has been going on? What's changed in your business over the last few months?
Kira: That's such a big question. A lot. I think in that last episode I was talking about how painful it was at the time, and I think the pain is still kind of there. It's just changed. I've made a lot of improvements to my business, but I'm still juggling two businesses, so I think if you're juggling two businesses and a family, it's just going to be a bit painful.
But I am transitioning towards The Copywriter Club and focusing more time and energy on The Copywriter Club. I'm just not fully there yet. My time is still very much split. I probably had the busiest fall ever with my copywriting business, which was probably silly, just taking on a lot, building out a team, doing all the things I kind of told myself I wasn't going to do, and then I just did it all and took on a lot.
Now I'm trying to trim that and just focus on building this business and this community that we're both so excited about, but making that transition is very messy for me. That's it.
Rob: One of the things I love about you and your businesses is that you're just a doer. I mean, a lot of times you'll say you're not going to do stuff, and then you just go ahead and do it, but you have this vision of what you want to accomplish and the people that you want to work with, and you go out and you make it happen. I think that's really admirable, even though sometimes it squeezes you for time, and it's hard to accomplish everything sometimes.
Kira: Yeah. Well, that's a very positive way of looking at it, thank you. But no,
Copywriter and book strategist, Bryna Haynes is our guest for the 122nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Bryna helps “change makers” make their change with books that start movements. And she would know. She’s the author of The Art of Inspiration, a best-selling book about writing inspirational books. Here’s a look at we talk about in this interview: • how she went from hair stylist to freelance copywriter • how she found out that being a good writer isn’t enough to keep a business afloat • her writing process and how she finished her book • how to connect to influencers who can help boost your business • how to know what ideas to pursue (and how guiding values help) • what you need before you make a pivot • all the different kinds of copy she worked on and how finding clarity helped her find a new niche • what pivoting has looked like in her business and where she’s headed • how we make quantum leaps in our businesses (and what that really means) • using your “reticular activating system” to change your behavior • the importance of “big” dreams and how to achieve them
Ready to get this episode in your earbuds? Click the play button below or download it to your favorite podcast app. And, as always, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Linda Joy Lisa Tener Bryna’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Club Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you, to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 122 as we chat with author and book strategist Bryna Haynes about writing books that start movements, making a big pivot in your career, what quantum physics has to do with goal achievement, and putting yourself out there.
Kira: Bryna, welcome.
Rob: Hey Bryna.
Bryna: So happy to be here. Hi Kira. Hi Rob.
Kira: Bryna and I are working together currently, and as we've sat down and talked through Bryna's past and what she's working on and events she's planning this spring, I was just like, ‘We have to get you on the show.’ Because everything that you're teaching and talking about and thinking would really help the copywriter community. I'm really excited to dive deeper into what you teach today. Let's start with your story. How did you end up where you're sitting today, and what are you focused on today?
Bryna: Well I'll give you the short version. When I was about 26 I was working as a hairdresser, master stylist, color expert in Providence. I loved that career because it taught me how to talk to people. Prior to that I was really, really shy, and not a very good communicator. I really learned a lot about relationships in that job. But I was also very bored. I felt like it was time to return to my dream of writing as a career.
With no prior experience, I don't have an English degree, I didn't have any idea what I was doing, I quit my lucrative salon job and dove into the world of freelance writing. I quickly found that just being a good writer is not enough to keep a writing business afloat. I had to really do a lot of learning in a very short period of time. It was really the best move I could have made, because it was totally sink or swim. I didn't have any way to go back. I didn't have any way to make excuses for not doing the work and learning what I needed to...
Copywriter and entrepreneur Nikki Groom joins Rob and Kira for the 121st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Nikki is a high achiever who isn’t afraid of trying new things (like moving to America to start a business) so we asked her about her life as a copywriter and the new things she’s doing in her business. Here’s a look at what we covered in this fantastic interview: • how she became an advisor, coach and marketing specialist • why she moved to America to further her career • what she does to prove her haters wrong • what it took to get traction when she first started out on her own • how she “forced” herself to quit by booking so much work she had to • when she knew she had to double her rates (and how she did it) • what she did to book herself out for three months at a time • the mistake she made with her one-day package • how Nikki has expanded her business beyond copywriting • when you know you need to say “no” to an opportunity • what she did to make a bigger impact (and get paid more) • how we as copywriters can make a bigger impact with our brands • why numbers are the wrong thing to focus on as you start to grow • what she’s done to grow her own influence • the difference between being a freelancer and a business owner • what she does to develop great relationships • what the future of copywriting looks like to her
Bonus... we asked Nikki a couple of questions about her podcast and what works when potential guests pitch her. These questions aren't included in this podcast, but you can find Nikki's answers in The Copywriter Underground.
To hear all of this and more, click the play button below, or download it to your favorite podcast app (we like Overcast). You can also scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Marie Poulin Nikki's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you, to help you attract more clients, and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information, or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for Episode 121, as we chat with brand strategist, copywriter, and storytelling expert, Nikki Groom, about creating personal brands that create a big impact; how storytelling humanizes our business; what it means to lead with empathy; and how copywriters can increase their income and impact without sacrificing their relationships and lifestyle.
Kira: So, welcome Nikki, it's great to have you here.
Nikki: Thank you! I am so excited and happy to be here.
Rob: We're glad to have you.
Kira: We met in your mastermind that we'll talk about. So let's kick this off with just this story about how you ended up as a brand messaging storytelling strategist, creative coach, leadership consultant, all the things. How did you get there?
Nikki: Yes. Well first, I think it's worth mentioning that there have been many, many iterations when it comes to the many job titles that I could attach to my work. And that's chiefly because, over the course of several years now, I've just learned so much. And actually it's kind of been this ongoing battle like, am I this? Am I that? And I'm kind of ... even though I do have all of those labels on my website, I am kind of allergic to labels, cause I'm like, ‘Well, it doesn't quite fit in this box. It's like this thing, and a bit of this thing.’
Copywriter and Copy Coach, Amy Posner, returns to chat with Kira and Rob for the 120th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. (Yeah, it’s #120 even though the intro says “special un-numbered episode.”) Despite our numbering flub, this episode is loaded with great advice from an expert copywriter with serious coaching chops. We talked with Amy about all of the following and more: • how her business has changed from big projects to coaching this year • the differences between copywriting and copy coaching • the mindset shifts she’s had to make as her business has changed • what happens in copy clinic and how it makes copy better • the value of getting a second set of eyes on a project • the biggest mistakes Amy sees from the copywriters she coaches • the problem with too many CTAs she reviews • what’s changing in sales and landing pages from the desktop to mobile • how to establish authority with a client and conduct the conversation • what she does to attract clients to her business • what happens in The Copy Clinic (everything members do)
As usual, it's a good one. And if you've heard Amy talk before (like at TCCIRL last year), you know she always brings her A-game. To get this one in your ear buds, simply download it to your favorite podcast app. Or click the play button below. For a full transcript, scroll down.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copy Clinic Copyhackers Natalie Smithson Val Geisler Kevin Rogers Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join a club for a special unnumbered episode (UPDATE: episode #120) as we chat with direct response copywriter and copy coach, Amy Posner about her coaching program The Copy Clinic, how her business has changed since we spoke with her more than 100 episodes ago, how to build authority and what it takes to write great copy today.
Kira: Welcome back, Amy.
Amy: Hey, thanks for having me.
Kira: Yeah. It's great to have you back. It's about time. Why don't we start with what you've been up to since you were last on the show over a year ago?
Amy: It's sort of shocking that it was that long ago. Well, I think that's a lot. My copy business has morphed considerably. I stopped taking on super big projects. I guess the beginning of this year, the beginning of 2018, I still love these really big complex projects that were 20, $30,000, lots of moving parts, a long time to complete them, but I'd usually do a couple of them overlapping. It just got to be too involved for me. It was too complex and it was too long, and I wanted to do things that were a little bit shorter and a little bit more repeatable because all those kinds of things are usually custom one-off projects.
I started doing streamlining, what I was doing in terms of client projects and in the meantime what happened last year I ended up coaching The Copy Hackers Mastermind, Copy Hackers Mastermind 3, over the summer when Joanna was away and that morphed into me coming on as the co-coach for her 10X freelancer course and then that morphed into me being the co-coach in The Copy Hackers Mastermind 4 which is, I guess, we're three months into it. It's a six-month program or four months, whatever, that ends at the end of this year.
From all of that coaching has come … We're private...
Expert copywriter Clayton Makepeace is our guest for this special episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If there were a list of the world’s most successful (and highly paid) copywriters, Clayton would have a place near or at the top. He’s the kind of expert worth listening to if you want to succeed as a copywriter (and especially if you want to write financial copy). Here’s what we covered in our discussion: • how Clayton went from running a folding machine to his first copy assignment • what he learned working in the film industry that applies to copywriting • how he went from employee to starting his own copy agency • the raw truth about why he became a copywriter • what he did to improve his skills early on (and the mentors he found) • how he went from unknown to the copywriter everyone wanted to work with • what he did to succeed that copywriters can model today • the storytelling secret he learned from an old coin • where you get the best criticism for your copy (it’s not a copy chief) • Clayton’s thoughts on how you get a prospect to read past page one • the process he uses with his team today to create a package • why you need a stick as well as a carrot in your copy • why leading with a big benefit might not be the best option • the two ways to overcome objections • specifics versus abstractions and why one works better in copy • when you should present the expert’s bio on a sales page • the “bars on the beach” reason he starts working at 4 am • the financial copywriting training he’s working on right now
We knew this interview would be great the minute we booked it, but the advice Clayton shared was even better than we expected. To hear it, download it to your favorite podcast app. Or click the play button below. You can also scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jim Rutz Gary Bencivenga Carline Anglade Cole Parris Lampropolous Dan Rosenthal Agora Paul Martinez The End of America Mike Ward MoneyMap Clayton’s Financial Intensive Jedd Canty Henry Bingaman Terry Weiss Marcella Allison Makepeace Total Package Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to the copywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? Ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for a special unnumbered episode as we chat with copywriter and direct marketing consultant Clayton Makepeace about writing copy in the most competitive niches, his checklists for writing more powerful copy, what he's learned mentoring other copywriters, and how you can learn to write copy for the financial niche.
Kira: Welcome Clayton.
Clayton: Hey, thank you for having me.
Kira: It's great to have you here. It's an honor. You've been on our list. As I mentioned before we recorded, for a long time, so we were lucky to finally get you on the show. To kick this off, let's start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Clayton: Okay, well, let's see. I was running a folding machine in 1968 or 9 at a print shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the print shop printed appeal letters for a nonprofit organization. One day this guy came through, his name was Richard Viguerie. He was in his forties, and it was like the second coming of Christ, and we had to clean up the warehouse for this guy. It was like a real VIP.
Copywriter and brand specialist, Sorcha MacKenzie, is our guest for the 118th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We've admired Sorcha for quite awhile now, and have followed along as she's launched her own brand and website. We asked Sorcha about that process and this stuff too: • her path from acting to branding to copywriting • what her business looks like today • what it’s like to work for big brands like Marvel and Disney • how research impacts the creative process and brand development • working with chronic pain so that clients still get what they need • how Sorcha pads her timelines to give her extra time to get work done • how she conducts the research for a brand audits and branding work • the pitfalls of doing group research and focus groups • how she applies the branding process to her own business • what she’s done to develop her own brand as a branding expert • her experience starting her own business • how she came up with the products she offers for her clients • her biggest struggles as a freelancer
Want to hear what it's like to go from working on an Ant Man promotion to the daily grind of freelance life? Then click the play button below. You can also scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sorcha’s website The Copywriter Accelerator Copyhackers The Brand Gap The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding The Copywriter Club In Real Life Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you, to help you attract more clients and hit $10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 118 as we chat with copywriter and brand specialist Sorcha MacKenzie about working for big clients like Disney and Marvel, understanding brand strategy, the struggles she's had leaving the agency world for freelance, and why puppies make the best and worst office mates.
Kira: Welcome, Sorcha.
Rob: Hey, Sorcha.
Sorcha: Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Kira: Yeah, we're excited to have you here. We know you well through both The Accelerator and The Think Tank program that you're participating in. But I feel like we're going to get to know you even better today, so let's start with your story and how you got started in copywriting and branding.
Sorcha: Sure, so I'm an accidental copywriter, probably like a lot of people. I was actually trained as an actress until I was about 20 years old. I was going to be a theater actress, and then I kind of bored of the stage world and went to film school. I got an MA in Film Studies. I wrote my dissertation on Grey's Anatomy like all good people do.
I ended up interning for Disney afterwards. I did a year's internship and I just never left. I got a really good grounding there. I got to do the creative stuff and learn lots more about the marketing side and all that. So that's really how I got into things, just absolutely stumbled into it.
Rob: Okay, so I've got to know more about the dissertation on Grey's Anatomy. What was the topic? What did you do? What did you write?
Sorcha: So, it was the representations of gender and sexuality within the first season of Grey's Anatomy. So there was lots of like stuff about the gays, the female gays, and all of the kind of representations of different people and all that. It was kind of a groundbreaking show back in the day.
Copywriter Hannah Mang is our guest for the 117th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We both love to travel, so we naturally wanted to talk with Hannah about how she makes her business work while traveling to interesting places around the world. But that’s not all, we also asked Hannah about: • the accidental path she took from lawyer to copywriter • what she did to connect with her first clients (and how that led to more) • how she avoids the mistakes that other copywriters are making • how she pulls the personality out of her clients • the structure she uses for About pages and why she sometimes ignores it • why you have to be interesting before you do anything else • why you might want to think twice about agitating pain with your copy • making shifts in your business and how mindset contributes • Hanna’s tips for journaling (Rob really needed this) • How she makes work “work” while she’s traveling • Why speaking more than one language can help with copywriting • The best places around the world to live and work
To listen to this episode, click the play button below, or if you prefer to read, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: B school A-Fest Mindvalley Kirsty Fanton Hannah on Instagram Hannah on Facebook The Copywriter Underground Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for Episode 117 as we chat with copywriter Hannah Mang about how she became a copywriter, the importance of creating packages for clients to choose from, her career change from copywriter to business coach and mentor, and how speaking seven-and-a-half languages influences her copy.
Welcome, Hannah.
Hannah: Hi, guys.
Kira: Great to have you here. I was telling you before we hit record that I wanted to get you on the show for a while because I watched you from afar and all your travels and stories through Instagram, so it's nice to finally have you here.
Let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Hannah: Oh. Yeah, that's actually quite a funny story.
Kira: That thing.
Hannah: I know, I know. Well, it was kind of random, looking back, but I feel it was really guided. In 2013, I joined B-School and for most people who know what that is, it's Marie Forleo's course on, basically, how to run an online business and I did that without even having a business idea. Back at that time, I was a law student. I was working part-time at a law firm and I just have this urge or feeling to start my own business. I wanted to be location-independent. I wanted to do my own thing, but I had no clue what I had to offer, so I joined B-School completely clueless.
Actually, what happened was that I just felt, like, ‘Okay, I need to put myself out there and just offer something.’ I had gone through coach training when I was 19 and so when I did B-School I was about 24 at the time. I figured, ‘Okay, I'm just going to offer, basically, coaching sessions for people who are just starting out and don't know what to do.’ So, it was like we teach what we most need to learn, that type of thing.
I had just put out a post in the B-School group in the community on Facebook and I'd gotten a few responses. The first person I ever talked to,
Our guest for the 116th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Nabeel Azeez. Kira and Rob talked with Nabeel about getting put in time out in the Facebook club, cultivating controversy as part of your branding strategy, being a “troll” and a lot more. Here are the specifics: • how Nabeel became a copywriter and what he does today • becoming “Dubai’s most expensive” copywriter • why he was put on a “time out” from The Copywriter Club • how copywriters can stop selling themselves short • niching—should you do it or not? • the “Troll Framework” and how it works • why you might consider being more controversial and why you might not • attraction versus repulsion marketing and which works better • what you need to do as a newer copywriter (it’s not set up a website) • the three reasons he’s writing a book • what he’s struggling with most in his business • selling on the phone (and why more copywriters should do it) • the biggest opportunities for copywriters today
Want to hear it? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Or you can download it to your favorite podcast app.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Ramit Sethi Alpha Muslim The Think Tank Mel Abraham Alaura Weaver Agora DragonEnergy.me Chanti Zak Paige Poutiainen Myrna Begnel Zero to Launch Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 116 as we chat with copywriter and entrepreneur Nabeel Azeez about his claim to be Dubai's most expensive copywriter, his Troll Framework, investing in himself and his business, what it feels like to get kicked out of The Copywriter Club Facebook group, and what it means to be an alpha Muslim.
Welcome, Nabeel.
Rob: Hey, Nabeel.
Nabeel: Hello. What up? What up? What's up, Rob and Kira? This is a long time coming. Second time's a charm. We tried this one time earlier in the year, but I totally sucked, so obviously it wasn't published.
Rob: I think maybe it had more to do with a bad Internet connection to where you are, which isn't always easy to get a connection.
Kira: Yeah. Well, we're glad you're back, anyway.
Nabeel: Yeah. I'm coming at you from a cave in Dubai somewhere.
Kira: All right, Nabeel. Let's kick this off with your story. How did you get into copywriting?
Nabeel: Right. I fell into copywriting by accident. I used to volunteer at this community center, and out of the group I had the best command of written English, so generally it fell to me to write the email blasts and marketing collaterals. At the time, I didn't know that you called this copywriting. Along the way I got exposed, or introduced to Ramit Sethi, and he introduced me to this world of personal development and online business I never knew existed.
And then I ended up getting my first paid gig, also by accident. The community center was organizing a conference. And my friend, who was also a volunteer, he had his own marketing agency, and they commissioned him to brand the event and create all of the marketing. Obviously, he needed a writer, so he sub-contracted that out to me. I ended up writing the entire website, all of the marketing collaterals, a bespoke invitation for VIPs, and even a script for a marketing video.
Luke Sullivan, author of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This! is our guest for the 115th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob were thrilled when Luke agreed to share his advice on the show—Rob is a proud owner of the first edition of Luke’s book purchased 20 years ago and headed for an expanded 6th edition soon—because he comes from the advertising agency world and has a slightly different perspective on copywriting than most of our other guests. We asked Luke about: • how he got started in the advertising business • the elements required to create “magic” at an advertising agency • why you absolutely must work with people who are better than you • how to surround yourself with geniuses when you work alone • the power of curiosity and why copywriters need it • Luke’s favorite campaign—surprisingly it’s radio • the moment he knew he had made it • how loving mentors can have an oversized impact on your success • how you learn to write a decent headline and other skills • what it takes to get hired at a big ad agency • the “Alien” moment you need to build into your portfolio • the things copywriters do wrong and why “idea guy” is dead • How Luke recommends you come up with your own big ideas • how to structure your day for maximum creativity • how to get creative briefs that help you do your best work • the advice he would give young Luke if he could go back in time
As expected Luke dished out some amazing advice that you’re going to want to hear as soon as you can. So click the play button below or scroll down for a full transcript. You can also download it to your favorite podcast app.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Hey Whipple, Squeeze This! Tom McElligott (lots of great ads at this link) Ron Anderson Martin Agency Fallon GSD&M SCAD HeyWhipple.com Goodby DDB Lynda Edward Boches Mullen Thirty Rooms to Hide In Luke on Facebook Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information, or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, and then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 115 as we chat with award-winning copywriter, author and professor of advertising, Luke Sullivan, about his bestselling book, Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This!, what it takes to make great advertising, what copywriters can do to get better creative briefs, and what it takes to get hired by an elite advertising agency.
Rob: Hey, Luke.
Luke: Hey, guys.
Kira: Welcome, Luke.
Luke: Hello, thanks for having me.
Rob: We are thrilled to have you here because, for a lot of different reasons, but a lot of our guests in the past have focused on freelance copywriting and a lot of direct response copywriting, and you come from a different branch of advertising. Maybe, the more familiar one to most people. But we're thrilled to have you here and really interested in your story. How did you become a copywriter?
Luke: Well, let's see. Number one, I'm older than both you guys, probably older than all your listeners put together. But old school is fun because of all kinds of reasons. I got into the business in the year of 1979, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, a long time ago. And back then it was all just, you know, print, outdoor, radio and TV. That was it, 1979, I was lucky enough to be hired by two Minneapolis greats, Tom McElligott, who's a hall of fame copywriter at the One Show,
Creative Director and copywriter, Daniel Harmon is one of the brains behind the popular ads for PooPouri, Purple mattresses, Chatbooks and more. In the 113th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Daniel about The Harmon Bros. approach to creating advertising that’s calibrated to go viral, demonstrate the product, and sell enough to make a lot of money. Here’s what we covered: • how growing up on a potato farm led to a career in advertising • using YouTube to sell a tongue brush, air freshener and mattresses • how a Huffington Post article gave the Harmon Bros. their name • the creative process that led to working with Golidlocks • why they hold “writing retreats” as part of the creative process • how he (and the HB team) knows when something is truly funny • how they cast talent for their videos and look for the “comedic X-factor” • the two levels of hell and how to stay out of both (when it comes to casting) • what ads need to do at the end of the day—even the funny ones • how the HB formula works for both humor and serious ads • what it takes to get hired by an agency like Harmon Brothers • what it takes to turn “gross” into “gold” • the course they built to share all of their how-to secrets
There’s a ton of great advice, stories and ideas that anyone serious about creating compelling ads (especially those that work in environments like YouTube and Facebook). To hear it all, click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast app. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Orabrush Devin Supertramp Austin Craig Poopouri Harmon Bros. The Goldilocks Ad Studio C The Abe Lincoln Ad Hey Whipple Squeeze This How to write ads that sell (The HB Course) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com. What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? Ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habit, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 113 as we chat with the Chief Creative Officer at Harmon Brothers, Daniel Harmon, about storytelling and humor, what it takes to create viral videos that also sell products, building an agency, and what we need to do to create amazing work like the Harmon Brothers.
Welcome, Daniel.
Daniel: Thank you. Thanks for having me on, guys.
Kira: All right. Well, why don't we start this off with your story, Daniel, about how you ended up as the Creative Director at Harmon Brothers.
Daniel: My story actually goes back to when I was born. No. Not exactly. I was born in Idaho, Burley, Idaho specifically, and grew up working on the potato farm. This seems tangential, but it's not. I learned to do sales face-to-face before I ever got into selling anything through video or through social media. What I mean by that is in order to earn money, my brothers and I, we would grab a truck that my uncle had and we would fill it full of 50-pound boxes of fresh Idaho potatoes and illegally, I'm sure, drive it down across the Utah border and go door-to-door or street side and sell boxes of potatoes. We would sell a 50-pound box for $20.
Utah was a really good market because it wasn't Idaho where everyone already has potatoes and because there's a lot of families there. We figured out that we could make more money selling potatoes door-to-door and face-to-face than we could if we worked minimum wage job...
Copywriter Chris Orzechowski is our guest for the 112th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We met Chris through our friend Kim Schwalm after they got in a bit of a fight over the best kind of clients. Needless to say, we're all friends now, but it was touch and go there for a little while : ). Rob and Kira sat down with Chris to talk about: • Chris’s path from school teacher and wrestling coach to copywriter • how he “embraced the suck” to make things work as a marketer • how his teaching and coaching skills make him a better copywriter • landing his first “real” clients—what worked and what didn’t work • the moment he knew things were going to work out • why you need to treat copywriting like a business and outwork everyone • the #1 thing copywriters need to do in order to truly succeed • how to find good retainer clients—exactly what to look for • how to manage the back and forth with a retainer client • what Chris charges for retainers and how it’s changed <-- this is good to know • why retainers are better than going from project to project • how he started (and why he ended) a fight with Kim Schwalm • his approach to writing emails <-- Kira calls this “sexy” advice
This is a good one. As always, to listen simply click the play button below or download the episode to your favorite podcast app. If you’d rather read, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Zach Evenesh Kim Schwalm Brian Kurtz theemailcopywriter.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? Ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 112 as we chat with launch specialist and email copywriter, Chris Orzechowski about what it takes to land a retainer client, his closely held secrets for writing email that customers want to read, the lessons he's learned from creating high performing funnels and how copywriting is a bit like high school wrestling.
Kira: Hey Chris, welcome.
Chris: Hey Kira, Rob. Thanks so much for having me.
Kira: We’re excited to have you here. So Chris, let's kick this off with your story. How did you get into copywriting?
Chris: So I got into copywriting a little over five years ago. I went to college to become a teacher because I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was a wrestler, so I figured I guess I'll go teach or coach wrestling and that'll be my life. And then I got done with my first day of school, my first day of work and I went home and I said, man, I had made a huge mistake. I do not want to do this at all, let alone for the rest of my life. So I started looking around. I said, you know, there's always people who use the internet and they make money. And I was like, I wonder how that works. And I wonder if I could figure out how to do the same thing too. And one of my mentors, this strength coach, his name was Zack Evenesh, he was one of the early strength conditioning publishers back from like 2003 is when he first started online.
He was always like selling e-books and programs and doing all this online marketing stuff. I was always following along with what he did. And I was like, man, this is really cool, maybe I can do the same kind of thing. So I started going down that rabbit hole and studying everything. I started to see blogs and websites.
Erika Lyremark, known as the “business whipstress,” is our guest for the latest episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Like a few of our other guest experts, Erika doesn’t call herself a copywriter, but she has written her own copy (it’s good) in the past and knows a bit about the business struggle copywriters go through. So Kira and Rob asked her about: • how she became the “business whipstress” • her red carpet dream and how to find yours • how to get clarity around “your thing” in your space • the importance of clearing clutter (real and imaginary) • the types of clients she works with and the problems she helps them solve • the three things to focus on when developing products • Erika’s creation process and how she goes from idea to glamorous products • why it’s important to get outside of your bubble when creating your brand • the biggest takeaways from each step of her career path • how discipline and structure contribute to her success • why she doesn’t call herself a copywriter even though she writes a lot of copy • two things you need to do to establish your authority • how to get better at selling (and why you should) • boundaries and how to get comfortable with them
Sounds pretty good, right? We think you’ll like this one. To hear it, click the play button below, or download it to your favorite podcast app. Readers scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Think Like a Stripper (Erika’s book) Mark’d Mastery (Erika’s business program) Autumn Thompkins Laura Belgray Sam Horn Cashvertising Hypnotic Writing Tony Robbins Paul Jarvis Erika on Instagram Srini Rao DailyWhip.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership, designed for you, to help you attract more clients and hit 10K a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two, to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You are invited to join the club for episode 111, as we chat with author and business coach, Erika Lyremark about how she became a business whipstress, what it takes to truly stand out, writing great copy, even though she doesn't call herself a copywriter and what she has done to up level her business.
Kira: Welcome Erika.
Rob: Hey Erika.
Erika: Hello.
Kira: I'm so happy to have you here. You have been a mentor to me for years before I even started my copywriting business so I feel like this is just such a great place to be with you right now.
Erika: Well I am very thrilled to be here as well.
Kira: All right. Let's start with your story. How did you end up as a business whipstress?
Erika: I don't think that was on my list of occupations when I was a young lady. I wanted to be a race car driver, I wanted to be a doctor, I wanted to be a fashion designer, but I always knew that I wanted to be in charge. Like no matter what I was doing, it's like if I'm not in charge, I actually don't do well. I'm a terrible employee, but if I know that I'm in charge, I actually excel at that. So, I mean, long story short, I'm super nerdy, I love learning. I'm hardcore Type A, I'm super driven. I've always been really really motivated in my life. I'm also highly creative. I've always been really creative. I'm very much left brain, right brain split, so there's one side or the other. It's constantly arguing with the other side.
In the 1990s I was a stripper for nine years out in Seattle, Washington, where I live now and in 2001,
There’s a lot of talk lately about money mindset and “blocks” that keep you from achieving the success you want. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with the Queen of Passive Income, Colleen Arneil, about money mindset and how to discover the mind trash that is holding us back. We talked about:
• her path from psychology to money mindset coach • why we don’t finish the majority of training programs we start • why money mindset is important even if you think it’s woo-woo • a few of the most common “money blocks” and why we get stuck in them • some of the questions to ask to figure out your money blocks • how to move past negative feelings from pressing financial needs • how Colleen became the passive income queen • how to build passive income into our businesses • what she would say to people who think passive income is “easy” • selling the transformation that a client gets • how to you earn your authority (it helps to have a niche) • the importance of “self care” and how Colleen approaches it
Some pretty good advice in this one. To listen, click the play button below or download it to your favorite podcast app. Want to read it instead? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Colleen’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work process, and their habits? Then, steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 110 as we chat with course creation expert and money mindset coach, Colleen Arneil about how she became the passive income queen, why money mindset is so important, even if you think that it's a little woo-woo, building passive income into our businesses, and how copywriters can build their authority and expertise.
Kira: Colleen, welcome.
Colleen: Thank you so much for having me.
Kira: We’re glad you're here. It's a pleasure to have you here. We've worked together in the past. I know so many copywriters really are working on their money mindset. Even if they don't know they need it, we know that they need it based on the questions they're asking us on a regular basis. Let's just jump into your story. How did you end up as a money mindset coach?
Colleen: It's actually a roundabout way. When I was younger, I always thought I was going to be a psychologist, so I went to university, I did my undergrad, went onto grad school, did my Master’s in clinical. As I was almost done with my PhD, I had this awakening, at least in the traditional sense of being a psychologist, it wasn't the right path for me. I'd come so far, I just finished out my degree. Then, I launched an e-commerce program online and love customer service, passionate about it. That's where I started in the online field.
What I noticed as I was taking courses to learn how to market and grow my e-commerce business was there was some people who could teach programs in an amazing way and other people who had so much knowledge, but they just didn't know how to share that information to actually get people results and help get them transformation. I had spent a lot of years at the university level lecturing and teaching. I just got really inspired to be like, ‘Okay, I need to help people better understand how they can create their curriculums and develop their programs and share their information so that it's a really positive experience and people get results.’
I transitioned out of my e-com business and that's how I first came online and was teaching a strategy part. What I noticed was happening was a lot of my students weren't getting to the end result.
Comedy writer Eric Cunningham talks about what it takes to be funny with Kira and Rob for the 109th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. A lot of writers dream of working for comedy shows like Saturday Night Live or one of the late night shows. But there’s a lot of competition and success isn’t guaranteed. What does that have to do with copywriting? It turns out, quite a lot. We talked to Eric about:
• the career path to become a comedy writer and what it takes to succeed • how to deal with the up and down of project work • what a day in the life of a comedy writer looks like • how to stand out in a competitive space • why you can’t wait to be chosen and what to do instead • what sets the successful comedy writers apart from those who fail • what does it take to be funny (and what we can do to be funnier) • why he says “Yes” to lots of things (including condo board meetings) • why copywriters should use more humor in their copy • the one thing he has done to up-level his career • where comedy is headed in the future
We had some technical difficulties half way through the show but it doesn’t affect the excellent advice Eric shares about what it takes to succeed in the world of comedy—and copy. Listen by clicking the play button below. Or subscribe on your favorite podcast app (we like Overcast). Prefer to read? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Streaks Eric’s Twitter Upright Citizen Brigade Theater Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You are invited to join our club for Episode 109 as we chat with comedy writer Eric Cunningham about writing for TV outlets like Comedy Central and TruTV. What it takes to stay sharp as a comedy writer, his writing process and what we might borrow from it, and what it all has to do with copywriting.
Welcome Eric.
Rob: Hey Eric.
Eric: Hello! Thanks for having me.
Kira: I'm so excited to have you here. I was just telling Rob, Eric is a good friend. He's close to home. He's a fellow New Yorker, and I've known him for a while and he's married to one of my best friends. So, this is a very special interview. I'm really excited that you're here.
Rob: Don't blow it Eric.
Kira: Yeah. No pressure!
Eric: What if this ruins a friendship? A long lasting ..
Kira: Right! Yeah, just to have you here as a comedy writer and someone's who's really outside of our space as copywriters and what we're doing, I feel like there's a lot we can learn from what you do day to day and just your experience so far.
So, let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a comedy writer?
Eric: Sure, so I was not a funny child at all. I was like a big nerd and, you know, liked politics and all that stuff. And then, in college, I was kind of like looking for my thing and I couldn't find it because my whole thing growing up was being smart and then when you go to college, you're surrounded by all smart people, and then I was like oh, I don't have a thing anymore. So, I was just desperately looking for something that would differentiate myself a little bit, or just like find a home.
And, they were taking columnists at the school newspaper and I was like, I don't have the attention span to write a full column, so I'll just write ... essentially this is ... I mean this is how old I am. It was basically Twitter before Twitter was there. It was just like short little one liner observational jokes that were not associated with anything else and just like here’s joke, here's a joke, here’s a joke. And,
Copywriter, coach and former defense attorney, Linda Perry is our guest for the 108th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Linda’s career hasn’t followed the typical marketing to copywriting track. She’s spent time in prisons and courtrooms around the country, honing her skills for empathy and persuasion. Add in serious training as a coach and she’s got plenty of copywriting advice to share. We talked with Linda about:
• how she went from defense attorney to copywriter • how her legal background makes her a more persuasive copywriter • her experiment with life coaching and the impact it had on her writing • the “suitcase” exercise that helps with the next evolutionary leap • the “one thing” that has helped her uplevel her career • the run-down on the StoryBrand framework and how it’s 4x-ed her business • what keeps her focused and on-message • a deeper look at her on-boarding process • what her kick-off calls look like and the information she gets there • how she’s using Instagram and video to get in front of her clients • the behind-the-scenes with her video creation process • the questions she’s asking about where her business will go this year • what’s working for Linda in social media • the mindset mistakes copywriters are making today • the “what-if” beliefs that are real and those that aren’t • what she’s most excited about in her own business
This is not an exhaustive list of all the stuff we covered, so you’re going to want to download this to your podcast player to hear it all. Or just click the play button below. If you prefer reading, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Debbie Ford Marie Forleo Amy Porterfield StoryBrand Zoom The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson Tony Robbins Soul Genius Branding Linda on Instagram Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out was seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, the work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for Episode 108, as we chat with copywriter, brand strategist, and coach, Linda Perry, about why she made the jump from prosecutor to copywriter, the processes she uses to clarify her client's messaging as well as the importance of getting the right mindset and how hidden beliefs can sabotage your success.
Kira: Linda, welcome.
Rob: Hey, Linda.
Linda: Hey guys, thank you for having me.
Kira: I feel like, prosecutor to copywriter that sounds like a podcast. I feel like you should get that started.
Rob: That does sound like a podcast, more than just an interview.
Linda: Right. I hate to burst your bubble guys but I was defense attorney.
Rob: Oh no! We've ruined the intro.
Linda: It doesn't have the same ring to it, too.
Kira: Linda, let's start with your story and how you ended up as a copywriter.
Linda: I definitely don't have traditional path, but I feel like even though I was a defense attorney, the seeds of being a copywriter literally started when I was like six years old. I think I gave every stuffed animal, every Barbie, every car, a story. I was always really wrapped up in the storytelling part of life. I always wanted to be a copywriter but with immigrant parents that we're like, ‘No, no. You need a profession’, I went and became a lawyer.
Part of what I loved about being a lawyer was really my paper walk through the door before I did. It was always about telling someone's stories. After 17 years of being a criminal defense attorney, you get tired, you get a little worn out. I really started to think about who is it that I want to be. With a little life coaching background,
Just a short introduction to The Copywriter Underground and an invitation to join our first-ever hot seat call for members of The Copywriter Club. To learn more, go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
Click the play button below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Underground Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Because this episode is simply an introduction to The Copywriter Underground and the special hot set webinar next Tuesday, there is no transcript for this one.
Copywriter Joel Klettke shares his thoughts with Kira and Rob about how copywriters like to show off only the best parts of their business and how that affects other writers struggling to make things work. It’s a great discussion, but we covered a lot more than that. Here’s a look at what you'll hear in this 107th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast:
• what he’s doing and how his business (and life) has changed in the past year • how audits and research have impacted his business • what Joel does in an audit and how he prices them for his clients • how he sells the audit and then hands it off to the client or another writer • why he’s taking on fewer projects and the season of “no” • the instagram-ification of some copywriter’s businesses—and why it hurts • why we end up chasing the wrong goals (and maybe what to do instead) • what to do if you aren’t performing as well as you think you should • what is “enough” • a few ideas for building confidence and the impact on your business • the biggest mistakes copywriters make that ruin your conversion rates • his advice to new dads and why you might need “guilt cancelling headphones”
To get the low-down on how Joel’s business has changed since the first time we talked to him more than a year ago, click the play button below. Or if you’re the reading type (and lots of copywriters are) scroll down for a full transcript. And you should be able to find it on your favorite podcast app as well.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Joel’s first interview Joanna Wiebe Case Study Buddy Chantelle Zakarisian Val Geisler Laura Belgray Joels’ Conversion Killers Presentation Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join a club for Episode 107 as we chat for a second time with freelance copywriter and case study specialist Joel Klettke about what he's accomplished in the year since we last talked. What it really takes to grown and run a six figure business, balancing copywriting with building a second business and being a new dad, and the biggest conversion killing mistakes copywriters make.
Kira: Welcome Joel.
Rob: Hey Joel.
Joel: Hey guys, thanks so much for having me.
Kira: Yeah it's great to have you back. All right, so let's kick this off Joel with what you've been working on over the last year. What's changed for you? We know quite a bit has changed for you, but what's changed since the last time that we had you on the show?
Joel: I kind of started off the year, I made the promise to myself I said, ‘I'm going to step back from the copy projects, and I'm going to press into the case study business, and focus on growing that.’ And so, that was kind of my mental goal. I thought, ‘Yeah I need to see what I've got in that.’ And that went well for all of like 10 minutes, and then projects cross your desk, and it's difficult to say no. But, I have kind of stepped back a little bit from writing. I'm taking on fewer but bigger projects now, which was a big goal of mine. But I think obviously the most significant change is now I'm a dad, so I've got a little guy in the house, and learning to work, and live, and adjust my sleep schedules and life in general around this little person, which is pretty interesting.
And then the other side of it on a totally different side of things, I looked up kind of midway through the year and realized outside of case studies, and outside of my writing projects I've actually made more money, and had more work on the audits and review side of things,
Copywriter Kirsty Fanton joins Kira and Rob to talk about psychology in copy in this episode off The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kirsty’s experience includes a degree in psychology and work as a counselor and what she learned in those roles has had a big impact on her work for her clients. She shares how you can use psychology to forge a better connection with your clients. We talked about:
• How a travel blog helped Kirsty discover copywriting and land her first clients • The things she did to get started the right way • How her work as a counselor makes her a better business owner • The importance of reflective practice and her 3-pronged approach that she uses to improve • How she conducts a debrief call • The different lenses her psychology background gives her to find the “meaty” parts in her research • How she uses “naming” to discover what prospects are really feeling • How she builds rapport quickly with prospects when she’s interviewing • Narrative therapy and how copywriters can use it effectively • The one question everyone asks—knowing it will make your copy better • The two kinds of persuasion techniques • How she keeps it all together and gets things done • The mistakes she sees other copywriters making (that she’s avoided)
There are a lot of great ideas and “psychological tricks” you can borrow to improve your own interviewing and copywriting. And, if you haven’t read her post about indirect hints in copy, you should click here. To hear the interview, click the play button below, or visit iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app. And if you’re the type that likes to read, scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator Kirsty's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 106 as we chat with copywriter Kirsty Fenton about how her background in psychology helps her write great copy for her clients, the narrative therapy techniques she uses to get prospects to take action, and the one question people regularly ask and how you can use it to your advantage in just about everything you write.
Hey, Kirsty.
Kira: Kirsty, welcome.
Kirsty: Thanks guys. Great to be here.
Kira: Before we jumped in with Kirsty and started recording, we were telling her how we haven't interviewed someone in at least two months because we both had been on vacation, so I'm sweating over here like I feel really anxious, Kirsty. A good place to start is with our basic question. Let's start with your story and how did you end up as a copywriter?
Kirsty: Yeah, sure. So I got into copywriting and quite a roundabout way. As you said, I have a background in psychology, so when I finished high school I went to Uni, did an undergrad in psych and a post grad in counseling and then worked as a counselor for five years, and also lectured a couple of psych subjects at university here in Sydney. Anyway, all was going well and then in 2014 my partner and I decided we wanted to take a belated gap year. We packed up our lives and moved over to France for 12 months, which was amazing.
While we were over there I kept a blog of our adventures just as a way of keeping our friends and family in the loop on what we were actually getting up to. Anyway, by the time we got back to Australia at the end of 2015, a couple of my friends had started their own business and they liked the way I'd written about our travels on my blog and asked if I'd like to write their copy, so I said yes.
Copywriter Sarah Grear is back for a second appearance on The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob wanted to learn more about how she is shifting to offer more consulting in addition to copywriting, the tools she uses to land clients and how she structures her business so she gets paid even while on vacation. It this episode (#105 for those who are keeping score) we talked all about: • how she made six figures last year (and took four months off) • what Sarah’s accomplished since we last talked with her • what she does to help her clients have massively successful launches • the “gift” she gives her clients that closes the deal • what it takes to create a launch map and feel confident about sharing with her clients • the five phases of a launch plan • the ins and outs of a successful “launch debrief” and how she sells the next project • how she continues to get herself on stage (and what she teaches) • why she publicly celebrates every win today • the strategies Sarah uses to create more freedom in her personal life • how you can leverage your strengths to add consulting to your copy business • her “mindset” advice for copywriters who want to up-level to consultant
There’s lots to love in this episode. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. You can also find it at iTunes, Stitcher and on your favorite podcast app.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The first Sarah episode (#32) MindMup for G Suite Abbey Woodcock Tarzan Val Geisler SarahGrear.com/copy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the Club for Episode 105 as we chat for a second time with freelance copywriter, Sarah Grier, about what it takes to grow a copywriting business past six figures, her recipe for launch success, why she books two projects at a time and spreads payments over six months, and how to add consulting to the services you offer your clients.
Hey, Sarah. Welcome back.
Rob: Hey Sarah.
Sarah: Hey, thanks for having me. It's so fun. I can't believe you guys have done 106 interviews. And you're still standing.
Rob: Barely. We're actually ... I think we're both sitting right now.
Kira: Sitting all day long. Which we need to work on. So why don't you just give us a quick update. What have you been working on and what's happened since last time you were on our show?
Rob: And that was Episode 32, for anybody who wants to check that out, because it was a really good one. So, yeah, check that out.
Sarah: I know. I became the take four months off in your business woman since then. But, yeah, I've done that. I took four months off last year, intermittently. If you listen to the old episode you can hear how. So, I'll leave that as a tease. Since then, in 2017, I worked on 52 projects for 19 clients, and still managed to take all that time off.
Kira: What?
Rob: Wow.
Sarah: I know.
Rob: It's crazy.
Kira: That is crazy.
Sarah: When you have systems in place it makes a huge difference. But also I had this astronomical launch that stood out from all the other ones. We did seven figures in a single launch.
Sarah: And it was the first time we had worked together. Basically, that changed the way that I was showing up with my clients, because I realized when my clients grow to that level or grow that quickly, they don't always need a copywriter at that point because they usually hire an in-house production team. And so I started doing small percentage of consultant work alongside the copywriting work t...
Copywriter Colin Theriot joins Rob and Kira for the 104th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Colin is well known as the leader of the Cult of Copy (as well as four or five other related Facebook groups). He often jumps into the club to answer questions or comment on something, and we thought it was about time to talk shop with him. In our discussion, we covered: • how Colin became a copywriter • why he started The Cult of Copy • the short cut to getting people to know who you are • how beginning copywriters can create a copy learning experience • the most important thing for beginners to learn (this skill is portable) • his philosophy for running more than one Facebook group • why he offers a “jobs” group and why you probably shouldn’t use it • the five Vs of the Viking Velociraptor Formula <-- this is gold • the “artist vs. cabinet maker” mistake copywriters tend to make • the scalability secret for earning more by doing less • why you need to treat your business like a business • why he tells copywriters to read books that aren’t copywriting books
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Cult of Copy Understanding Comics by Scott McLoud Books by Elmore Leonard Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 104, as we chat with Copywriter and cult leader Colin Theriot about starting a cult and running a Facebook group with nearly 25,000 members. The 5 Vs of the Viking Velociraptor Formula, what most copywriters are doing wrong today and why, when asked about his favorite books about copywriting, he doesn't recommend books about copywriting.
Kira: Welcome Colin.
Rob: Hey Colin.
Colin: Hi guys. Thanks for having me.
Kira: Yeah, great to have you here.
Colin: Sweet.
Kira: So Colin, let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Colin: I was working at an internet marketing company. It was an eCommerce company. I was working there as a graphic designer/SEO analyst/content writer. One of the owners of that eCommerce site and his other marketing partner in other ventures, they decided to launch this thing called StomperNet and I was working there making their web pages at the time, so I helped them, stayed up on launch night, making some HTML for that. And they launched it and it was a big record breaking launch. I think was like $24 million at the time. And so I got called over from the eCommerce site to go work on that. And then while we were wiring, my boss at the time, Andy Jenkins, his house for Wi-Fi so we could work there legally, while I was doing that, the writer we had on staff at the time, I can't remember to this day if she was sick or if we were just busy and had too much stuff going on, but it was sort of like a voluntary basis, ‘Hey, we need this sales letter rewritten, because we're about to relaunch with all these new features we've added.’ So I took a shot at it and Andy was like, ‘This is pretty good. Do you like doing it?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah. It's easier than wiring your house for Wi-Fi.’ And he's like, ‘Well cool, because you're the chief marketing copywriter, so get good at it.’
Over the next, I think it was a little under two years, I worked with all the high end marketing faculty they had there that were all copywriters in their own ...
Copywriter, course creator, and coach, Belinda Weaver joins Kira and Rob for the 103rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Belinda's also the co-host of the popular Hot Copy podcast. We talked with Belinda about the variety of ways she's created income streams for her business.
Note: links and a full list of what we discussed is coming soon.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 103 as we chat with freelance copywriter and coach Belinda Weaver about building an information business as a copywriter, what she's learned coaching other writers, creating courses, and running one of the most popular copywriting podcasts, and how tap dancing makes her a better copywriter. Welcome, Belinda.
Rob: Hey, Belinda.
Belinda: Hi, guys. It's really great to be here. Tap dancing, flashback. Oh my gosh.
Rob: Should we jump into tap dancing immediately, or do we want to save that to the end?
Belinda: It's completely up to you. I think it's a lovely hook we can leave people with.
Kira: Let’s save that for the end. Let's start with your story, Belinda, and how you got into copywriting.
Belinda: Well, like most people, had a day job I didn't really like, was looking for an opportunity to do something else. I was working in marketing in Melbourne. We lived just over an hour out of the city, so two plus hours of commuting every day, plus a job I didn't really like. My husband and I started talking about a family, and I started thinking, ‘Well, how is this going to work?’ So I was open to new opportunities, and then I got taken to this kind of sales day with the job. It's a lot of people standing up, giving presentations, doing their pitches. One of them was about copywriting.
Now, I did copywriting every day, but I didn't know it was a thing you could actually do as a job on its own. So when, at the end of the presentation, this copywriter started talking about running your own business as a freelance copywriter, I didn't listen to the rest of the day, because that was the idea that I'd been waiting for. As soon as we got back to work, I quietly registered my business. Maybe not that day. I took a day or two to brainstorm a name, but I registered my business. Then, while I was pretending to work, I started marketing and figuring out how to run a business and developing service packages, and then being on social media, and I started getting work.
So I did that for about six months. I did my day job. I worked, did copywriting at night and on the weekends. Then after about six months, I was confident enough in my marketing abilities to know that I could get more work. So I was getting regular leads coming in, and I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ Then on my last day, rather than walking through the office going, ‘Screw you all,’ I put together a presentation for the MD, and I said, ‘I can save you $20,000 on your marketing if you keep me on at my new freelance rate,’ and I just stopped doing all the time-wasting activities. I divided my job into value tasks and low-value tasks, and I had this whole little spiel, and he actually agreed before the presentation had finished. So I had my first client before the end of the day.
Rob: Wow. I mean, that's so smart. Love it.
Community manager Harmony Eichsteadt is the guest for the 102nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We chatted with Harmony about a wide range of topics related to connecting with clients to building communities for both customers and peers. Harmony knows a thing or two about building healthy communities—she’s done it with groups like The Good Life Project and NationBuilder. We asked Harmony about: • how she became a community manager (with stops as a dating coach and cancer survivor along the way) • the first steps to take to build a community around ourselves • who is better for community building: introverts or extroverts • the biggest misconceptions around building a community • where you can build a community and how (it’s not just online) • some of the benefits of building and belonging to a community of copywriters • how to connect with others within communities you don’t own • whether there’s a growing hunger for new communities today • why everyone is already a community leader and how to get better • the differences between online and offline community interaction • how to connect with people in the real world • how copywriters can build deeper connections with other writers
We also asked Harmony for her advice about when you run an event (we’re starting to think about round two for TCC IRL) and what it takes to win a poetry slam. She let’s us in on the fact that we probably won’t win one. Maybe we’ll have Harmony to our next event to perform a bit of her award-winning poetry—yeah? To hear this one, simply click the play button below, or download it to your favorite podcast app. Want to read it instead? Scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Inward 2019 Event Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 102 as we chat with professional community builder, Harmony Eichsteadt about what it takes to create strong communities, how to work a room online and off, what she does to land and rock a speaking gig, and writing poetry good enough to win a poetry slam.
Kira: Welcome Harmony.
Rob: Hey Harmony.
Harmony: Thanks so much for having me.
Kira: We’re excited that you're here so we can talk about something that we really haven't covered on this podcast. All about community development, community engagement and relationships. So, why don't we kick it off with your story. How did you end up as a relationship and community expert?
Harmony: It's such a good question and I think for many of us we can start the story at a lot of different places. So, the more deeply I get into my work, the more I can see tendrils from even my childhood of like, ‘I've always been very fascinated about connecting people.’ So, I think there's some thread that was maybe there from a young age, but how it crystallized for me was actually I started out as a dating coach, which I think is, now I think is very funny. I spent a few years working with people on writing dating profiles, on how to flirt, and think about developing relationships. That morphed into this current career for a few different reasons.
One is that I got diagnosed with thyroid cancer when I was 29 and that was not what I was planning to do with my 29th year on the planet. I had other items on my agenda, but it threw a monkey wrench in things.
We’re kicking off our second century of podcasts by flipping the tables and answering your questions for the 101st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Justin Blackman (of 100-Headline-Project fame) grabs the microphone to ask Kira and Rob all about:
• who Rob and Kira really are • how Rob and Kira met and decided to start The Copywriter Club together • where the idea for The Copywriter Accelerator came from • the story behind the creation of the first Copywriter Club event • why we shut down our second program and what we learned • some of the other mistakes we’ve made over the past year or so • how The Copywriter Club has changed our own businesses • the progress we’ve made on the goals we shared in episode 50 • how the podcast (and our guests) have helped us improve our writing and processes • what we’ve learned going through The Copywriter Accelerator for the third time • when we plan on taking a break from learning • what’s coming up for The Copywriter Club in the coming months
Plus Justin asked a long list of “lightning round” questions that we do our best to answer—but let’s face it, we’re not very good at the whole quick answer, lightning fast thing. So, if you want to know more about Rob and Kira and a bit of what’s going on behind the scenes at the club, download this one to your favorite podcast player. You can also hit the play button below or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Justin Blackman The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Club IRL Event (link coming soon) Brian Kurtz Kim Krause Schwalm Amy Posner The Copy Clinic Tarzan Kay Sam Woods Joe Schriefer Sarah Grear Sean D'Souza Bond Halbert Tanya Geisler The Copywriter Club book lists Dan Kennedy Wikipedia’s List of Lists Seth Godin Eman Zabi Mel Abraham Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript:
Justin: What if you could hang out with two moderately talented copywriters, who spend all day asking seriously talented copywriters, about their successes and failures, they're work processes and their habits, and steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what I'm going to do with Kira and Rob this week, at The Copywriter Club Podcast. You're invited to join the club for episode 101 as I turn the microphone on Rob Marsh and Kira Hug and dive into what it's like to run a gigantic Facebook group, interview copywriting royalty, develop a training program, and create a think tank, on top of managing their own work.
Rob, Kira, welcome to your show.
Rob: Moderately talented, might give us more credit than what we deserve. Might be overstating things a little.
Kira: That's true, I'm flattered. Thank you.
Justin: Exactly.
Rob: Let's do this Justin, let's do it.
Justin: Let's do it. So, I'm going to turn the tables a little bit. We're going to get into what it's like to run The Copywriter Club and Facebook group, your Accelerator, The Think Tank, your own client work. So we're going to get into it a little bit about who are Rob and Kira? I know you guys, you're a bit of an unlikely pair. Rob you're a little more formal, a little buttoned up and corporate. Kira, a little wild child, dressing up like a pirate, you got your hair colored like a troll. But somehow you guys, you make it work. So I want to hear a little bit of rundown about how you guys met, and what's the history of the TCC.
Kira: Rob, I'll let you tell our Tinder story.
Rob: I think you tell it better than I do actually though. So, yeah, the short story is that, yeah, we met on Tinder and we both swiped right, and it just was meant to be. And then the longer version is that it had nothing to do with Tinder and we met in a mastermind group run by Copy Hackers. And it took us about maybe a year, but over that year we sort of got to know each other a little bit,
Former copywriter and current business advisor, Jay Abraham is the guest for the 100th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast with Kira Hug and Rob Marsh. Jay is the perfect guest for this milestone episode because Jay teaches the importance of pre-eminence—and what is more pre-eminent than appearing as the expert on the 100th episode of this podcast? And Jay delivered. Here’s a look at some of what we covered:
• how he went from copywriter to business advisor to thousands of companies • the expert authors he learned from when he started out • how he accidentally got into the seminar business • the business ideas (USP, LTV, Risk Reversal, Allowable Cost) you should know • how to deliver continuous breakthroughs for our clients • copy versus concept and which one matters most • why you shouldn’t offer stuff for free (and what you should do instead) • the biggest challenge you have to overcome with your audiences • why achieving pre-eminence is so important (and how you do it) • the shortcuts to engineering a continuous stream of breakthroughs • how to get mindshare for the clients you’re working for • a few of the places copywriters should do research in order to be great • what it takes to be an “original synthesizer” (versus a plagiarist). • who the client you’re really working for is (it might not be your client) • the thing that bugs Jay the most about list building
Jay also shared a ton of bonuses for listeners to the podcast. Check out the links to those resources below. Then, click the play button to listen to the interview, or scroll down for a full transcript. And of course, you can find this episode on iTunes, Stitcher or in your favorite podcast app. Go get it!
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Dan Rosenthal Claude Hopkins George Hotchkiss Victor Schwab Robert Collier Entrepreneur Magazine International Living Scientific Advertising My Life in Advertising Albert Lasker Tony Robbins Steven Covey Brian Tracy Mary Lou Tyler The Deming Institute A Technique for Producing Ideas The Three Bonuses (The 100 Greatest Headlines, 37 Million Dollar Headlines, and Copywriting Formulas) 50 Shades of Jay Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits and steal an idea to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 100 as we chat with Jay Abraham, the founder and CEO of the Abraham Group about how he solved business problems for clients in more than 7,000 industries, thinking strategically about copywriting and what we offer our clients, the importance of preeminence and what we can do to find new breakthroughs in our own businesses.
Hey, Jay.
Kira: Welcome, Jay.
Jay: Thank you very much. It's a distinction and an honor to be podcast number 100.
Rob: It is. In fact, we were talking to Sonny, who's on your team and she's in our group. She suggested, ‘Hey, you know, I don't know if you're doing anything interesting for your hundredth episode, but maybe we could connect with you.’ We thought, actually would make perfect sense to have you come on for number 100 because of how you talk about preeminence and to have a super special guest like you on episode 100. We're thrilled to have you here, so thank you so much.
Jay: It's my pleasure. As I told you, at a certain point in one's career, you become very focused on being privileged to impact people's thinking lives and the impact they can make on multitudes of others. It goes both ways.
I am taking the gloves off. You guys have access to whatever you want. I don't know where you're going to take it but I like surprises.
Rob: Cool.
Copywriter Michal Eisikowitz joined Kira and Rob for the 97th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and we go deep into her business. Michal has made some amazing changes to her business in the last year (including creating one of the best copywriter websites we’ve ever seen). You’re going to want to listen to this one. Here’s what we covered:
• how she turned a degree in speech pathology into a career as a copywriter • the “experiment” that led solidified her career choice • what she learned from her other jobs that made her a better copywriter • how what she accomplished in the Accelerator helped her walk away from her previous job • the evolution of her business, the kinds of work she does and what she charges today • how long the exploratory phase should last before you choose your niche • the work she does today and how she plans to evolve her business • what her process looks like from start to finish • why she has branded herself as a “perfectionist” • how she balances her work with everything else in her life • what she did to upgrade her website and how to know if you should upgrade yours • what she has her VA do at the end of every project • the packages she offers to her clients and how she came up with them • how she uses LinkedIn to generate leads for her business (and the tool she uses) • what she did to triple her income this year • the mistakes she’s made along the way
Finally, we asked Michal where she plans to take her business in the next year or two. Note: we lost Kira’s sound for the last few minutes, but it doesn’t detract from this fantastic episode. To hear this one, visit iTunes, Stitcher or use your favorite podcast app to download it. Or scroll down and click the play button or read the full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank 30 Day Social Michal’s website LinkedIn Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for episode 97, as we chat with freelance copywriter Michal Eisikowitz about how she became a copywriter, how she's transformed her business over the past year and her amazing new website, how she uses LinkedIn to connect with potential clients and what she's learned as she started mentoring other writers.
Kira: Welcome Michal.
Rob: Hi Michal.
Michal: Thank you. Great to be here, you know how much I love you guys, so the chance to spend another hour with the two of you.
Rob: The feeling is mutual, so this should be fun.
Kira: All right, let's kick this off with your story and how you got into copywriting.
Michal: I have a really winding path to copywriting. I actually am a licensed Speech Language Pathologist. I trained in Communication Sciences, I have a Masters. My mother is also a Speech Language Pathologist, I have a background in education, so I thought special education was going to be a great fit. Then while I was earning my Masters I wanted a job, side job and I interned at a publishing company as the marketing assistant.
I interned there for about three months and then was hired full-time and I ended up working there for two and a half years. I just loved every minute. I did everything to do with book publicity, marketing and copywriting, book titles, press releases, back flaps, book descriptions, catalog descriptions. All kinds of as ad copy, you name it, I was doing their marketing work. This kind of work really gave me this broad foundation in marketing and copywriting and I realized, wow,
For the 96th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter Ridge Abraham. Ridge recently left full time employment with The Agora and now works freelance for financial clients and is taking on clients in other fields as well. You’ll want to listen to this one if only to get all of the books Ridge recommends as we talked. In this wide ranging interview we talked about:
• how Ridge went from Los Angeles DJ to financial copywriter • how his very first mailed promotion pulled $7 million • how he uses swipe copy without stealing ideas • his writing process • the projects he works on today—since he left Agora full time • how he structures his compensation for the projects he takes • what he does to connect to potential clients • how he keeps his skills sharp today • his thoughts about mentorship and why it is so important • what he’s learned from his famous dad—Jay Abraham • the “unbelievable” mistake he sees a lot of other copywriters make • the failures he’s experienced and how to know when to give up • several ideas to try if you want to write in the financial niche
We also asked Ridge about what he thinks will happen to copywriting in the future and he turned the question back on us, so we shared our thoughts as well. To hear this one, visit iTunes, Stitcher, or download it on your favorite podcast app. Or you can simply click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Agora Financial Great Leads Influence Made to Stick Money Map Stansbury Research The Oxford Club Cremes and Lotions Steal Like an Artist A Technique for Producing Ideas Joe Schriefer Abbey Woodcock Ian Stanley Gary Bencivenga Jay Abraham The Dip Chanti Zak Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript:
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode 96 as we chat with copywriter Ridge Abraham about his path into financial copywriting, what he did to generate seven million dollars with the first campaign he ever wrote, why he's so hard to find online, and the most important lessons he learned from his famous dad.
Kira: Ridge, welcome.
Ridge: Thank you guys. Thanks for having me.
Rob: It's really good to have you.
Kira: We were joking before we started recording about how Ridge is the hardest person to find online. We had to scour the internet to find you.
Ridge: That way you guys can't ask me those trick questions.
Kira: I know.
Ridge: It's even been easier to find Paris Lampropolous online, than it is to find me, which is saying something because he hides. I think he's got a bigger body of work than me, I don't know.
Kira: So let's kick this off with your story and how you ended up as a financial copywriter.
Ridge: Okay. So it's actually a pretty funny story. So, like I was telling you guys, I went to school for music. I was really into music production, songwriting. I was DJing. I was living in LA, and I really want to play shows. I wanted to travel and do stuff like that, and it is tough right out of college. If you want to be like an entrepreneur in the music business, it's very difficult to make it and you're often times broke. So I was working this internship at ... It was like a subsidiary of Hans Zimmer Music for Film studio, and I hated it. I was the intern that every day I would just go and get people lunch. I was just like the gopher. Worst job ever, miserable. I was really like, okay, I need to figure something else out.
So I was listening to a lot of entrepreneurial podcast an...
Copywriter Julia Reinisch is in the house for the 95th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Julia chatted with Kira and Rob about a variety of topics from how she came to join The Copywriter Think Tank to her favorite dive spots in Roatán. Long time listeners know that we like to talk with copywriters at all stages in their business, and while Julia is not a beginner, many listeners will relate to the effort Julia is going through to build a thriving freelance business. Here’s what we covered:
• how curiosity and a suggestion from her family led her from social work to copywriting • where she found her very first client and the kind of work resonated with her • how her background in social work makes her a better writer • the kind of work she does as an in-house copywriter at a University • how she learned to talk to customers and thicken her skin with a job in retail • the unique steps she took to start her own copywriting business • why Julia thinks every copywriter needs a great website • what she’s done to take her business to the next level • her thoughts about connecting with other writers in the Copywriter Think Tank • what she’s done to pitch her employer on hiring her as a copywriter • the advice she has for copywriters just starting out • her thoughts about working with other writers • what she’s doing with her business in the future • her favorite dive spots in Roatán
To get this episode in your earbuds, visit iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app. Or simply click the play button below. And if you don’t like listening, you can scroll down for a full transcript (there’s even an option to download it and read it later).
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Yeti MooseJaw REI Jax Asana The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Mary’s Crack The Blue Cave Julia on Twitter MomentumCopy.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You're invited to join the club for Episode 95, as we chat with in-house and freelance copywriter, Julia Reinish, about her move from social work to copywriting, what she did to pitch herself to a big client, the struggles of a full time writing job and the place adventure plays in her life.
Welcome Julia.
Julia: Hey, Rob, Kira, thank you so much for having me.
Kira: Yeah, great to have you here as one of the members of our think tank, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit more. But, Julia, can you just start with your story? How did you end up as a copywriter?
Julia: Yeah. Personally, I've always been a really creative person. Growing up I guess, I was the child that probably kept my parents super entertained all the time because I was always finding something new to explore and something to really learn a lot about. I know at one point I got really interested in everything about Atlantis and Lost City type things and codes at one point. I thought that I was totally going to grow up and be a spy. So just all kinds of creative things like that. But one thing that's remained constant, I guess, is that I've always been really interested in writing.
I won my first writing contest at nine years old I think. From there, did a lot of writing in school and everything as everyone else does, but I was always getting recognized for it. So you would think that when I'd get to college and everything, I'd want to actually pursue that as a career, but I didn't. I guess a part of me just really wanted to reach more of the sensitive part of myself. I would say I'm a very sensitive person and I'm always really keepin...
Email expert and sometime copywriter, Val Geisler, is our guest for the 94th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. In this episode, we go deep on the ins and outs of emails—especially on-boarding sequences which can make a huge difference to your client acquisition processes (and the one you create for your clients). We cover:
• how Val went from stage manager to copywriter and email marketing genius • what she did to learn business skills then start her own business • how managing stage productions has made her a better writer • Val’s processes for designing and mapping email sequences • why she added strategy to the services she provides (in addition to copy) • Val’s secret for getting clients (that we’ve mentioned on the podcast before) • the backdoor Val uses to get results from her clients • the writing and testing tools Val uses as an email copywriter • how she presents then delivers final copy to her clients • how she sets up projects and charges for them • her advice on welcome sequences to onboard new customers • the mistakes everyone makes with their email marketing • her favorite tips for working with VAs • the new book she is writing about her experience as a woman in the tech industry • how marketing is like a dinner party • how to get her regular email tear-downs
Val also shared how you can get her regular email tear-downs if you want to keep learning about email marketing. To get this excellent episode in your earbuds, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. It’s also available on iTunes, Stitcher and your favorite podcast app.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Lululemon LucidChart Litmus Intercom ActiveCampaign Drip Drift Airstory ValGeisler.com @lovevalgeisler Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 94 as we chat with copywriter and email strategist Val Geisler about email copywriting strategy and what it takes to convert casual visitors into happy customers, writing a book, and how thinking about your marketing is a lot like hosting a dinner party.
Kira: Welcome, Val.
Rob: Hey, Val.
Val: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Episode 94, that’s so huge.
Kira: It’s exciting. I realized before you jumped on here that you are the only guest we’ve had on this podcast that I have also interviewed on my previous podcast from a previous lifetime, the Bridal Rebellion Podcast in 2015. I was lucky enough to interview you about your wedding, and planning, and systems, so I feel like this is just coming full circle.
Val: Wow. Yeah. That’s like a blast from the past. It just kind of proves my theory that the journey you go on in your career is one that’s pretty unpredictable, and that if you would have told me in 2015 that I would be sitting here talking to you about copywriting and email marketing, I probably would have laughed at you, but here we are. I didn’t have this plan, but this is where the life has taken me as I’ve let plans unfold.
Kira: All right, so let’s start with your story. You didn’t expect to end up as a copywriter, so how did you end up as a copywriter?
Val: Sure. Well, I have a degree in theater, so I went to school for theater production. I was a stage manager and worked in theater for several years. Stage managers are the people behind the scenes who make everything happen. They tell everybody where to be and what they should be wearing, and props to be carrying, and when the lights go on, and all those things.
Copywriter Erica Strauss joins Kira and Rob for the 93rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Erica is doing something a little different in her business than what most copywriters are doing... working with a direct sales company to add another revenue stream to her personal business. So far it's working, and we wanted to know more. We also talked about:
• how Erica started her copywriting career at age 10 • what she learned about copywriting from working as a gossip columnist • why she decided NOT to finish her master’s degree • how Erica makes retainers work for her andher clients • what she typically charges for one of her projects • how she started copy coaching • the challenges of growing a copywriting business quickly • what she did to overcome the burnout that comes with so much work • how her business is shifting to include other income streams • what to consider if you’re interested in network marketing • how Erica connects with clients and gets to know their voice and stories • what she’s doing on Facebook Live and her tips for doing it well • why relationships are so important as copywriters • where her business is going from here • why she loves rap and EDM—and how it makes her a better write
We also talked about her processes and tips for writing taglines and naming products—and why she offers this service to her clients. And as we often do, we asked her about the future of copywriting. To hear what Erica had to share, click the play button below or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Lisa Vanderpump Marie Forleo EricaLeeXO.com Erica on Facebook Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kira: The Copywriter Club Podcastis sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 93 as we chat with copywriter and communications strategists Erica Lee Strauss about her stint as a gossip columnist. Helping entrepreneurs communicate their stories, burning out and finding a purpose, copy coaching and her love of EDM. Welcome Erica.
Rob: Hey Erica.
Erica:Hi guys. Thanks for having me.
Rob: We’re stocked to have you.
Kira: Yeah, so Erica, let’s start with your story, how did you end up as a copywriter?
Erica:Oh my gosh you guys. Okay, so honestly I was one of those annoying little kids who always knew what they wanted to do. I was sending out manuscripts and God knows what they were like. I was sending out manuscripts at age 10. Actually started an online magazine back in the days of like AOL and CompuServe, and kind of had my first mailing list back then. Had a little mailing list of like, I guess it wasn’t so little, it was 2000 people.
I had a little online magazine and just always knew that I wanted to write or like wanted to do something. I thought it would be with editorial basically, I thought I would do something in magazines. I actually wrote my first article for a magazine at age 10, because somebody at Girls Life Magazine got wind of the fact that I was this 10 year old having this, writing this online magazine. They contacted me to write an article for their reader’s issue, and as soon as I saw my name in print, I was completely hooked. I just knew that that was going to be the thing, like I definitely was going to go down the magazine journalism path.
I did. I went to college for that, and it was kind of during that weird time where everyone wasn’t sure really w...
Copywriter and Marketing Consultant, Eric Bakey, steps into the studio with Kira and Rob for the 92nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We met Eric a few months ago and got to talking about his approach to his business. It’s different than a lot of other copywriters’, so we thought it would be interesting to talk about how he works with his clients. In this interview, we cover:
• how Eric went from the army to construction to writing a book to copywriting • why he doesn’t call himself a copywriter (even though he writes copy) • Eric’s onboarding process and the “found money” blueprint • the “15 minutes -> hour -> day -> long term contract” roadmap • how he connected with Dan Kennedy (and the results for his business) • what you need to know about packaging your services like Eric • how he uses sketches in his customer interactions • what he does when clients buy the “found money” blueprint • how to set up a retainer model so you don’t get burned • why Eric treats his copy the same way an artist treats her work • how he turned $80 of Facebook ads into $30,000 in sales • Eric’s book recommendation for building a steady stream of sales • why it’s important to create a list of your best 100 clients • what Eric’s regular work day looks like
And if that weren’t enough, we asked Eric how he uses cartoons in his business and why there are so many opportunities for copywriters today. We also sneaked in a question about his favorite tattoo (he has quite a few to choose from). Ready to hear it? Visit iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app. Or scroll down and click the play button below, where you’ll also find lots of links and a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Strength from Within by Eric Bakey Jocko Willink Dan Kennedy Renegade Millionaire Business Model Canvas Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes 93 Extraordinary Referral Systems by Jay Abraham Sean D’Souza Joe Schriefer Ray Edwards Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 92 as we chat with author, copywriter, and combat vet, Eric Bakey, about his long and winding road to copywriting the “Found Money” Blueprint, cartooning, writing for his niche vet-preneurs, and which of his one or two tattoos is his favorite.
Kira: Welcome, Eric.
Rob: Welcome, Eric.
Eric: Thanks for having me.
Rob: Yeah, we’re thrilled.
Kira: Yeah, great to have you. So we met you through Brian Kurtz’s Titans Masterclass. We’re both excited to hear more about your story, which is a great place to start. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Eric: Well, I joined the Army after high school, and I learned how to blow stuff up and mop floors. Neither of them are very lucrative, so I had to start all over again into construction when I got out. I was sick of working and building someone else’s empire, so I decided to write a book as an escape from the corporate world. And then I learned that the publisher, after they make the initial push for your book, they do not care about whether you sell anymore. So I had to start writing copy if I wanted to sell any books, and you have to sell a lot of books if you want to make any money. That’s how I kind of how I got started in copywriting.
Rob: So tell us a little bit about your book. If that’s the doorway to get into copywriting, why did you decide to write it? What does it cover and when you started to promote it, what are some of the things that you learned in order to make that happen?
Wow, ninety episodes. That was fast, right? For the 90th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk about some of the challenges of running a growing Facebook group and managing competing cultures, expectations, and conversations that cross the line. Some of the topics we covered in this rare guest-less episode include:
• what Rob has been doing with his business for the last two months • a little bit about Kira’s experiment with a “mini micro agency” • the program experiment that “failed” • why we created the Facebook group and why we sometimes let things go farther than some people feel appropriate • balancing trust and intent with censorship • the place for scarcity in copywriting • how scarcity impacts us as copywriters • what Kira does when she finds herself in a scarcity mindset • how to create scarcity the right way
Plus we talked a bit about what’s coming up next for us and the club. We’ve got some great new (and returning) guests joining us in the next few weeks that we’re very excited about. To hear it all, visit iTunes, Stitcher or click the play button below. And as always you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank The Hidden Brain Scarcity Episode Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript:
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 90, as Kira and I talk about what’s been going on in the Copywriter Club lately, and in our own businesses; how we hope to monitor Facebook discussions moving forward; and why scarcity is such a powerful motivator for your clients, and something you need to watch out for in your own business.
Rob: Hey, Kira.
Kira: Hey Rob. How’s it going?
Rob: It is going awesome. Before we started recording, we were just talking about how we’re both so happy that Spring is here, and spending some time outside. You were going for a run; I’m hoping to get out on my bike and...yeah, things are going good.
Kira: Yeah, definitely. Getting outside has helped with the warm weather; I feel like I haven’t done much of that over the last two months, so yeah. This was a first job in a long time. Very slow; very slow pace!
Rob: Yeah, I totally get that. So, my bike has been sitting in my garage for way too long, because the handlebar tape broke on my bike, and I fixed it with some packing tape, and that just bugged the heck out of me. So I had this tape sitting, ready to make a repair, and I finally got it done on Saturday, and got out for a ride, and oh my gosh. You know, like ten minutes in, I’m like, why haven’t I been doing this everyday? You know, I miss being on my bike. So, yeah; thank you Spring for getting here, and getting my out of my desk chair, and out into the world.
Kira: Yeah. Well I feel like you and I have been hibernating a bit the past....year, maybe?
Rob: Laugh. Yeah, a little bit.
Kira: And just chugging along on the copywriter club, and putting it together. So what’s been happening in your business? Because we haven’t really talked about your business since episode 80 which was about two months ago, right?
Rob: Yeah. So I think we talked right after the live even that we did.
Kira: Right. Yeah.
Rob: And you know, after the live event, I took on a lot of work, and so for the last two months, have been working really hard on balancing a couple of really large projects, along with what we were doing in The Copywriter Club, and i have to admit, for the last two months, while the work has been steady and the income has been good,
Frameworks specialist, Mel Abraham is our guest for the 89th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Mel’s got an interesting background that launched him as an expert is building expertise (kind of meta, right?), which means he is the perfect person to talk about client relationships and how to establish your expertise before you work with a client. We talked about:
• how he learned to leverage his experience to build a real business • how to stop exchanging hours for dollars and sell your true value • the risks and rewards of project pricing • what you have to do to get clients past the “yellow light” • how you can help clients see the value of what you do before they hire you • what to cover in your first call with a potential client • how to know if you’re an expert or a thought leader • the “prolific power of positioning” and how to use it for your business • all about frameworks and why you need one • the steps to follow for creating a framework for your business • how copywriters can build their own credibility
As usual, there’s a lot of good stuff in this episode. To hear it, visit iTunes, Stitcher or open up your favorite podcast app and search for The Copywriter Club. Or just scroll down and click the play button below. Keep scrolling for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Thoughtpreneur Academy The Entrepreneur’s Solution by Mel Abraham Stephen Covey James Wedmore Mel’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 89, as we talk with entrepreneur and business advisor Mel Abraham about building a successful business from nothing, what you need to do to become an influencer and make a real impact, the importance of frameworks, and how to write a national bestseller.
Kira: Welcome, Mel.
Mel: How are you doing?
Rob: Mel, it’s great to have you here. We’re thrilled to be talking to you.
Mel: Yeah, it’s fun.
Kira: All right Mel, so let’s just start with your story; how did you end up building your online building empire?
Mel: Wow. I guess, you know, it’s a non-traditional thing. It wasn’t like I grew up with the internet; I grew up well before the internet, and I was the traditional CPA. I’m a CPA by education, but I was building an expert business before I knew what an expert business was. And it was pre-internet; I needed to build a practice. I needed to get clients; I needed to get known; I needed to get myself out there, and the only way to do it back then was direct mail, you know; networking; speaking; and writing articles. And that’s what I did to do this.
And as time went on, I started to realize that the game that I was sold—swapping hours for dollars—is the absolute worst business model I that could ever be sold to someone, and should be burned at the stake! And I tried to figure out, how do I leverage my expertise, and how do I leverage that stuff? And you know, we may get more into it, but what I was building at the time was as an expert witness, strategic consultant, or businesses. I was helping them build businesses, but I was doing a lot of testimony at trial in litigation, which was such a negative environment, that I got tired of it. And I said, well, where can my skills work and where can I leverage those skills better, and that’s when I started to look at the online space.
Our guest for the 88th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Facebook Ads Expert Rick Mulready. Kira and Rob sat down with Rick to ask him about his story and how he became the go-to-guy for everything related to Facebook marketing. Here are a few of the things they talked about:
• the mistake he made when he started his business that held him back • how he structures his days to get more done • how he’s grown his team to handle the parts of the business he can’t handle • the programs and products he’s built to sustain his business • the Insta-story opportunity that’s open for the taking • how to get started with Facebook (the first step will sound familiar) • the kinds of ads that are working today • what you can do with FB ads to increase engagement and make connections • the images you should be using in your Facebook ads • how we can use FB ads to market our own (copywriting) businesses and stand out • what has changed with launches and how Rick is thinking differently about them • how you can get started with FB ads even if you have no experience • where you should do Facebook Lives (on the page or in a group) • how Rick connects with authority figures (and how we can do the same thing)
There’s a ton of great information here for anyone who wants to start advertising on Facebook as well as for any copywriter who works with clients who use Facebook to promote their products and services. You won’t want to miss it. To hear the entire interview, click the play button below, or for a full transcript, scroll down.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: RickMulready.com The Art of Paid Traffic The FB Ads Diagnosis Check List (mention troubleshoot) Ashlyn Carter Amy Porterfield Chanti Zak Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript:
Kira:What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob:You’re invited to join the club for episode 88, as we chat with paid traffic expert Rick Mulready, about Facebook advertising and what copywriters need to learn about making it work; how he’s built his own business empire; what’s working and what’s not working in launches today; and the importance of teaming up with the right people to move your business forward.
Kira:Welcome, Rick.
Rob: Hey, Rick!
Rick:I am so honored to be here; thanks for having me on!
Rob:We’re excited.
Kira:Yeah!
Rick:You guys just said ‘episode number 88’; is that what you guys said?
Rob:Yeah.
Kira: Yeah!Laughs.
Rob:88. Can you believe it?
Rick: Laughs. No! I was like, I feel like you guys just started this, like it’s...I mean, I know it’s been going amazingly well, but are you doing like four a day or something like that?
Rob:Laughs.
Kira:Laughs. We’re pulling one everyday; yeah...
Rick:Laughs. Congratulations! Amazing.
Kira: Yeah! Thank you! And I know, Rick, we’ve worked together in the past, and we’ve talking about bringing you on the show for a while, so now it’s finally happening, and a good place to start is with your story, especially for people who aren’t familiar with you yet. How did you end up running your empire?
Rick:Laughs. You use that word; I just laugh at that word.
Kira:It’s an awful word! Laughs.
Rick:And just for everybody listening, before we got going here, Kira said, ‘Is there anything that you don’t want to talk about,’ and I said, ‘Nah, I’m an open book,’ and the thing of it is, is Kira knows a lotabout me, because we’ve worked together with writing copy. And so I said that, and I’m like, ‘Ooh, wait; Kira knows a lotabout me’, and I’m saying nothing’s off the table here.
So yeah. It’s been a very cool journey.
Our guest for the 87th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is none other than A-list copywriter Paul Martinez. We covered a lot of ground in this one, including how Paul landed a place as Parris Lampropolous’ copy cub (for seven years) and his process for finding ideas that hook the reader so they’ll see his offers. The resources he shares are excellent. Here’s most of what we cover in this episode:
• how an English degree and a job in real estate helped him find copywriting • what he did to recover from losing almost everything and how that still impacts how he spends his time today • what he learned from real estate sales and how that’s made him a better writer • what he did to find clients as a new copywriter and the #1 thing that reallymade a difference • how you get yourself in the right room with the right people • what he learned as a copy cub for one of the world’s best copywriters • what you can do right now to be a better copywriter (you may not want to do this) • how he keeps his copywriting skills sharp today • how Paul finds big ideas playing around on the internet all day long • how he structures his projects today (and his advice about retainers) • how he deals with failures
That’s a lot of hows and whats—and every one of them is worth the listen. There are also a whole lot of links. To hear this episode in its entirety, click the play button below. Or for a full transcript and links to the stuff Paul mentions, scroll down.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Google Adwords Parris Lampropolous Brian Kurtz Dan Kennedy John Carlton Barnaby Kaelin Alexi Neocleous Jim Rutz Raymond Carver Joe Sugarman Todd Brown Atlas Obscura How We Got to Now At Home by Bill Bryson History of the World in 100 Objects Now I Know More This is Your Brain on Parasites Clayton Makepeace Clayton’s Sales Page Template Agora NatureCity Soundview Weiss Research Mike Ward Money Map Press Jed Canty Paul on Facebook PaulMartinezCopywriting.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob:What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 87, as we talk with copywriter and business owner Paul Martinez about digging deep to turn things around after losing it all, the importance of sales skills in copywriting, emotional hot buttons and what really makes people buy, and what it takes to create successful promotions for companies like Motley Fool, Soundview, and Nature City.
Kira:Welcome Paul.
Rob: Hey, Paul.
Paul:Hi; hi guys.
Kira: How’s it going?
Paul: It’s going great; great to be here.
Rob:Yeah, we’re stoked to have you here.
Kira:So Paul, a great place to start is with how you ended up as a copywriter.
Paul:Yeah, sure, sure. So I began my journey actually in the real estate world. Well, going a little further back, my background is actually I went to school for fiction writing and ending up getting an English degree. I pretty quickly realized that, you know, that really wasn’t going to pay the bills. So I ended up in real estate, and actually discovered that I really liked sales. And I was pretty good at it, I studied it a lot. I got better and better but, there was a problem: that I didn’t know how to generate leads.
And, you know, this was 2000, 2001. Real estate marketing at that point was, believe it or not, still really based around cold calling. Like, literally going through this thing called a “colds directory”, which was like a phone book, but it has a little diamond next to the people who owned a house. And my broken told me, just like,
Health and Fitness copywriter, Misty Mozejko joins Kira and Rob for the 85th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We asked her all kinds of questions about her fitness and copywriting business—and got a lot of great advice to apply to our own businesses. We even talked about nipple tassels, which is new ground for us (though not for Misty). Here’s what else we talked about:
• how she got started running her own businesses and how that led to copywriting • how she found a mentor and why she continues to look for them • what she did to lose 120 pounds (and how long it took) • the business lessons she learned running her own fitness club • her diet recommendations for copywriters who need to feed their brains • the system she has developed in her business to help her succeed • the moment she realized she was good at copywriting • what she’s done to improve her own writing (this is a great tip) • her advice on how to choose clients • why she emails her list every day (and the impact it has) • where the ideas for her emails come from • how she captures the voice of her clients • how she manages two businesses, being a mom, and staying healthy • the mistakes she’s made (and why she tries to stay in her lane) • what she’s learned about hiring people to help her • how she communicates with her team (and the tool she uses) • what she does to improve her writing and business skills • the words she uses to push back on her clients
Finally, Misty pulled out her crystal ball to tell us where she sees copywriting going in the future. She’s probably not wrong. To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Think Tank
Brian Kurtz Paul Mort Ben Settle Email Players James Friel Autopilot Entrepreneur Evernote Trello Basecamp Bond Halbert Russell Brunson Sell Health Nipple Tassels The Go Giver Misty’s Facebook Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 85 as we talk with copywriter and business owner Misty Mozejko about succeeding as a copywriter while running a whole other business; how she stays sane balancing two businesses while being a mom; her best fitness and nutrition advice; and what she does to stand out as a copywriter in a crowded field.
Rob: Hey Misty.
Kira: Welcome, Misty.
Misty: Well, thank you very much for having me; this is an honor!
Kira: It’s great to have you hear. I think a great place to start is with your story, and how you ended up running multiple businesses.
Misty: Uhhhm, yeah; you said ‘sane’? You mentioned something about my sanity in the intro, and I think we should address that, because there’s definitely none of that happened in the past. I’m not sane at all, so let’s just clear that up right now. But yeah, I think that, you know, I started out as an entrepreneur just after my son was born and he’s almost twelve, so it’s been over a decade now doing my own thing. And the fitness business arose because of my own personal... Well, I lost 120 pounds after my son was born, and I figured if I could do it, then everyone could do it; like seriously, everyone can do it. So, I grew a fitness business from that, and the copywriting kind of came out of the fitness business, because I was writing to my clients, and writing to my list everyday, unbeknownst to me what even copywriting was or even email marketing was. I had no idea. I was just doing it. And then, after a few years of thinking, “Huh,
In the direct response world everyone knows the name, Gary Halbert. He’s often called the best copywriter who ever lived. And if we could, we’d ask Gary to be on the show, but alas, that’s not possible, so we’ve done the next best thing. Bond Halbert is the guest for episode 83 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob sat down with Bond to talk about his famous dad and the lessons he’s learned from a lifetime (literally) learning copy. We talked about:
• his path into the world of copywriting (it all starts with his dad) • the story behind The Boron Letters and why Gary wrote them to Bond • why Gary Halbert went to prison for a crime he didn’t commit (really) • the 2-3 most important lessons he learned from Gary Halbert • how he divides his work into thirds • the four kinds of readers you’ll attract to your copy • why copywriters are good at headlines but bad at closes • what he does to nail the close • the importance being persuasive in person (not just in copy) • where good copy really comes from • what Bond’s research process involves • his hack for finding the problems your customers want to solve • why expertise is relative (the differing levels of expertise) • the formula he leans toward when he writes for his clients • why you need to create a compelling sense of urgency in every sales message (and how to do it) • why he wrote Part III of The Halbert Copywriting Method first • how he talks differently about positive and negative ideas in his copy (we hadn’t heard this anywhere else before) • how (and why) Bond’s relationship with money is different from his father’s
This interview was so good that it went a little long, but we think you'll learn a lot from the extra time we spent talking about copywriting. To get this one, visit iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app. Or simply click the play button below. And of course, you can scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Boron Letters Parris Lampropolous How to Make Maximum Money in Minimal Time Glenn Gary Glen Ross Big Jason Henderson Sam Markowitz The Halbert Copywriting Writing Method, Part III BondHalbert.com TheGaryHalbertLetter.com Halbertising.com Email: bond@thegaryhalbertletter.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 83 as we talk with copywriter and marketer Bond Halbert about the most important lessons he learned from his father, the man many called the greatest copywriter ever lived; the story behind The Boron Letters; the formulas, tactics, and strategies he uses to make effective copy; and what he’s doing to carry on Gary’s legacy.
Rob: Hey Bond!
Kira: Welcome, Bond!
Bond: Hi! Thank you for having me here!
Rob: Yeah we’re thrilled to have you; when we made a list of all of the guests that we wanted to interview eventually on the podcast, your name was one of the first ones that we added, and so it’s taken us a little while to get to you, but we are glad that you’re finally here.
Bond: Oh! I didn’t know that, I would have come sooner! Laughs.
Kira: Laughs. This is perfect; perfect timing. Episode 83 is a good episode. So Bond, let’s start with your story, especially for people who are less familiar with you, you know; how—how did you get into this wonderful world of copywriting and marketing?
Bond: I’m going to try to make this really short, because I know I’ve given this to people who’ve heard me on other podcasts, and I like to give people as much, like, new stuff as I can,
For the 81st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter and marketing specialist, Mike Saul, about copywriting, sales, marketing, and a lot more. Kira first met Mike at a lunch-time gathering of copywriters in New York City and after talking for a little while, realized Mike had a lot of great advice to share with our listeners. In this podcast we talked about:
• how a 13-year-old’s newspaper route led to a career in sales and copywriting • the book that he used to help a client go from a $500K monthly loss in $1 million in monthly revenue • how his sales experience informs what he does today • what he learned from selling burglar alarms—price is not the most important thing • the relationship between sales and marketing in what copywriters do • how to write an “air tight” argument for your solution • how to overcome objections on your sales page • the checklist he uses when he writes sales pages for his clients • why sales people in California have to leave the house after • the list of people he has learned sales and copywriting skills from • credibility versus believability and which one really matters
Lots of good stuff in this episode. To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Staton Island Advance Mandolin Brothers NAM Show Todd Brown The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy Brian Tracy Zig Ziglar Gibson SG Fender Telecaster Glen Garry Glen Ross Chris Haddad Clayton Makepeace’s Checklist Joe Schriefer Bob Bly John Carlton Dr. Robert LaPenna Better Call Saul Email: tinymjs.gmail.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 81 as we talk with marketing strategist and copywriter Mike Saul about how a newspaper route launched his copywriting career, how preconceived notions affect your success, credibility vs. believability, what baby bottles, Santa Clause, and getting a first date have in common, and the learning resources he likes most.
Kira: Hey Mike, welcome to the show!
Rob: Mike, we’re glad to have you!
Mike: Thank you for having me, guys.
Kira: So, we want to start with your story, Mike. How did you end up in marketing and direct response copywriting?
Mike: It probably goes back to when I was 12 or 13 years old. I grew up on Staten Island, which is one of the five boroughs of New York City, so about 13 I started playing guitar. And my parents decided that they weren’t going to buy me a really nice guitar so I had to get a job at thirteen and we perish the thought these days, with all these entitled children, including my three. So anyway, I started delivering the newspaper, The Staten Island Advance. And I actually split a route with two brothers. The two brothers each had a route each but they were too big, so the mother split each of their routes and made a third route. It was kind a rent deed route, it wasn’t officially recognized by the Staten Island Advance. So that route got cycled through the neighborhood kids; most of the kids couldn’t do it so I said alright, I’m going to give it a shot. I had twenty one stops on my route. And I started delivering the paper and anybody I wasn’t delivering to on my route, I would knock on the door, ask if they wanted it, and I started selling.
So, I built the route up to 41 people from 21. Now, why 41? Because I was warned by my friend’s mom, that, if you add one more house, we’re going to split the route again, so I said okay, well, that’s great...
Copywriter James Turner is our guest for the 79th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve known James for a few years now, so we’ve been saving up questions to ask him for a while. Here’s just a sample of what we covered...
• how James went from an English teacher in Japan to copywriter in Canada • the jobs he took on as he started out in his career and what’s changed since • his thoughts about retainers—the good and the bad • his book ghostwriting experiment and what that involves • why undercharging for work doesn’t serve you or your clients well • how James gets more done with Pomodoros (and other tricks) • “The power of asking” and how it got James a new business • how automation can change your copywriting business • why he started a podcast and the impact on his business • how he networks (and his advice to copywriters who need to do more of it)
James is the kind of copywriter we can all learn something from. Make sure you download this one to your favorite podcast app, or click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Hillary Weiss Laura Hanly Pomodoro Technique SNAP Copy Lianna Patch The Copy & Design Brew Podcast Oli Gardner (Unbounce) TCC IRL Business of Software ConversionXL CTAConf Turner Creative The other James Turner Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 79, as we talk with freelance copywriter James Turner about ghostwriting a book, running a micro-agency like SNAP Copy, why he started a podcast, and what’s he’s learned from it, and what he’s done to manage his done and get everything done.
Rob: Hey James!
Kira: Welcome!
James: Hello! Thanks for having me.
Rob: Yeah, we’re glad that you’re here, finally! I mean again, another person that we should’ve talked to months ago; you’ve been on our radar, been in our circle of friends forever, and it’s about time you got here. So, thanks.
James: Yeah. It’s a pleasure. I’m glad we waited; I have more things to say.
Kira: Laughs.
James: If you asked me a week ago, it would’ve been a mistake.
Kira: Laughs.
Rob: Laughs.
James: Life moves fast!
Kira: James, let’s start with your story. How’d you end up as a copywriter?
James: So, I’ve been thinking about how to tell that story quickly. Long story short, I went from having an English degree to teaching English in Japan to working in HR at an English school in Japan, to being instructional designer in Fredericton, New Brunswick—little Fredericton, New Brunswick—to becoming a copywriter. That’s the story arc. The reason I specifically want to talk about the HR thing is because that was the first time I really, truly used words to their full power, I suppose, like in a persuasive way. If I may go a little bit into the story of that...?
Rob: Please do.
James: So we worked for this big school in Japan, this sort of conversational English school. My wife and I, we moved there; we lived in Japan for three and a half years. And, I was brought into the, sort of, the personal coordinator role in my last year there. They were sort of shaking up the top level foreign part of the company. Everyone above us was Japanese, so it was like a big Japanese company with all kinds of different arms of business, and the English school we were sort of at the top of...our column, if you will, our business arm. And, the morale was really crappy because the people before us had not done a good job internal communications, essentially. Like,
Inhouse copywriter Jon Lamphier joins Kira and Rob for the 78th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve known Jon for a few years now and really admire his ability to get readers to care about his writing. And he’s a lot of fun to hang out with. We talked with Jon about:
• how socializing at a trivia game led to a job as a copywriter • what it’s like to work as at an agency and his terrifying first days • when he first realized that copywriting was what he wanted to do (and that he was good at it) • the kinds of work he took on as an agency copywriter • how he developed the ability to throw out funny one-liners • how he breaks down the creative process to get to the right idea • what the day-to-day work looks like at an agency • the dark side of agency life (the knife someone on the first day analogy) • how he balances freelance and a regular copywriting day job • how he gets himself into the mindset for coming up with good ideas • the big career mistake he made on the way to an important pitch • how a mastermind made him a better writer and agency employee • what Jon is doing today as an in-house copywriter • what he learned from moving his family to a new city for a new job • his two-word advice to writers going through the job search process
We also talked about why he doesn’t limit himself to a single niche, where he sees himself working in sixty years (okay, maybe not sixty years), the books and other resources he loves as a copywriter, and the #1 mistake he sees copywriters making (and the opportunity it presents to those who are ready for it). To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: McDonald’s George Clooney Joanna Wiebe Copyhackers David Ogilvy Aaron Sorkin JRR Tolkien Neil Gaiman Lianna Patch Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 78, as we talk with in-house copywriter Jon Lamphier about how he became a copywriter; the ends and outs of agency life; what he does to stay creative; and how he got so good at writing great headlines.
Kira: Jon, welcome!
Jon: Hey guys.
Rob: Jon.
Kira: I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to get you on the show.
Rob: Yeah, seriously.
Jon: What? Why? You guys have had so many famous copywriters on the show, I am the opposite of that!
Kira: Laughs.
Rob: Maybe not famous, but every bit as talented, and certainly a better friend than most of them are to us.
Jon: All right, I’ll take....I’ll take that. I’ll take that; I appreciate it.
Kira: Laughs. So why don’t we start with your story, Jon? How did you end up as a copywriter?
Jon: All right. Well, I had a past life in another career, but, when I went to a trivia night one night after my wife and I had moved to Greensboro, North Carolina... Showed up at that trivia night, and made a friend who was actually the host. Told him I thought he did a great job, and we got to talking over a couple of adult beverages, and you know, he started talking about how he was overloaded at work. One thing led to another, and I picked up a freelance gig working for the agency that he was working for; I knocked it out of the park, and sort of fell in and realized that this is what I should’ve been doing all along, so...
Rob: So you’re not the kind of guy that grew up wishing to be a copywriter? You weren’t watching Darren Stevens on Bewitched, or you know, any....
Jon: No....
Rob: ....Thinking “copy’s for me”?
Jon: No, I wasn’t. I mean,
For episode 77 of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter and marketing specialist Christine Laureano about her business, what it’s like to work with different niches that are completely different (makers and engineers), and a whole lot more. Here’s what we covered in our time together:
• how she went from the corporate world to maker to marketer to copywriter • what she did to deal with a devastating personal tragedy • the importance of carving focused creative time out of your day • how she created systems to support her work and produce results • the difference between working with big clients and small clients • how she conducts her discovery process to uncover additional work (she gives a specific example) • the process she went through to land a recent engineering client • how she deals with working in more than one niche • what she does to find clients who can pay within her niche • why she is involved in more than one master mind group • how she stays upbeat all the time (this is great advice)
She also explains why e-commerce is such a rich opportunity for writers today—the growth in this sector makes it hard to ignore. To listen, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Copyblogger Angels by Silver Ravenwolf The Copywriter Accelerator Danny Iny Teach and Grow Rich The Copywriter Think Tank Joanna Wiebe The J Peterman Company Seinfeld Ba6marketing.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 77 as we chat with copywriter Christine Laureano about her path from business owner to copywriter, writing for engineers and other technical clients, how she uses her coaching experience as a copywriter, and how she stays so positive through the ups and downs of business.
Kira: Welcome, Christine.
Rob: Hey, Christine.
Christine: Hey, guys! Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kira: Yeah, welcome!
Rob: It’s great to have you here.
Kira: All right, Christine, I know you have a really interesting path and story and we’d love to share it with our listeners.
Christine: Oh, yeah, the winding path. Okay. Well, I am probably one of the oldest copywriters in The Copywriter Club. My path started back in the 80’s, way before the internet, when marketing was still done with maybe a computer, but pen and paper; rock and chisel. But I graduated college with a marketing degree and a minor in computer science. So not only was I into the marketing end of it, but I love the tech stuff.
So I ended up getting a job at Xerox, and I did the corporate thing for several years. From there, I go down to a very, very technical job as a marketing exec, managing executive for accounts for an electronics distributor. I worked really closely with engineers, I worked with purchasing, I worked with production and manufacturing, and I did that for a really long time and that satisfied my technical need. And of course, the writing that I did for that was really that boring, dry copy. It was proposals, it was the stuff that I hate to think about when I look back on it. And then from there, I ended up having a family.
And this is where everything kind of turned and the reason I talk about it like this is, I know everybody has life lessons and things and tragedies and things that happened in their life that forced them to pivot, and I had one of those. Our first daughter ended up passing in daycare. So my life completely, completely changed. I spent a month on the couch, literally,
Back by popular demand, Tepsii is in the house for the 76th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you’ve been following along at home you know that she was our guest once before (on our 27th episode), but Kira and Rob wanted to follow up and see how her business has changed in the past year. Here's what we talked about:
• how she got started as a copywriter, business coach, and entrepreneur • how she makes money in her business today • why she started working with her husband in her business and what he’s doing • why she wouldn’t recommend that others follow her path and what she thinks you should do instead • the systems (and tools) she uses to keep her business running smoothly • why she uses a checklist to move her clients through all the processes in her business • what she does with her membership community (and the mistakes she made) • why you shouldn’t launch “cheap” products just because your clients ask for them • the impact that depression had on her personally and in her business • the first steps to take to build a compelling personal brand • why she thinks the future of copywriting is offline, not online • why she talks about money with the entrepreneurs she coaches
Plus don’t miss the moment when Rob accidentally calls Tepsii out on her personal brand and how reframing her beliefs around “rights” helped her share her political beliefs with her clients in an authentic way. If you want to hear this one, you’ve got to click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Tepsii’s first TCC Podcast H&M’s tone-deaf ad DIY The Law Selena Soo Trello Streak CMS Born to Convert Ramit Sethi Jeff Bezos Fabiola Giodani Tepsii.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 76 as we talk for a second time with a copywriter who only needs one name—Tepsii, about what’s happened in her business over the past year; the importance of business systems; why she created a paid community for heart-centered entrepreneurs; and her no-brainer tips for creating a premium brand.
Kira: Tepsii, welcome! Welcome back!
Rob: Hey, Tepsii.
Tepsii: Thank you so much for having me; I can’t believe it’s seventy-six episodes. Congratulations! I feel so honored to be number seventy-six!
Kira: Laughs.
Rob: Seventy-six and twenty-seven! You were one of the first people who dared to join us when we first started out to talking with copywriters, so we’re excited to hear what’s happened since we last talked. But I think we want to start maybe with just a brief introduction to your story, for those who maybe haven’t heard episode number twenty-seven yet.
Tepsii: So my story—when I came here, we talked a lot about how I started my business largely by accident, and how for me, you know, starting this business, I knew I wanted to “freedom lifestyle”. I knew I wanted a sense of connection with, you know, people around me who were like-minded, and I didn’t know exactly what that was going to look like, so I had some stumbles and some hiccups on the way to starting this online business. I was able to start by really saying “yes” to someone who saw talent in me, that I did not see myself. So, they just has this sense, this feeling, that I could be a good writer, a good copywriter, and they took a chance on me and, based on that chance, I have grown a business that has sustained me and my family for the past almost three years in March.
And, it’s kind of come full circle with so many different things and skills that I’ve ...
We’re sneaking in an episode between 75 and 76 this week, because copywriter Allison Comotto is speaking at the The Copywriter Club In Real Life event this week and we wanted to introduce her before she takes the stage. She’s given us a sneak preview of her presentation and let’s just say we’re really looking forward to it. In this interview, Rob and Kira ask her about:
• how she got hired as an in-house copywriter right out of college • the rigorous interview process she went through • what the day-to-day work is like as a new copywriter at Stansberry • her advice about how to “get the gig” and what not to do • the importance of having a mentor as you start your copy career • the difference between the various Agora companies • the biggest surprise she’s had since starting her job at Stansberry • how she’s taken on new responsibilities over the past 8 months • what her copywriting process looks like • the place that formulas and frameworks play in the Stansberry writing process • the big lesson about failure that she learned early on • how she finds the “big ideas” for her copy • the size of the opportunity for copywriters at Agora • what compensation looks like at Stansberry (she shares the numbers)
As we were wrapping up our interview, Allison “went off script” and told us what she really thinks about living and working in Baltimore. And she shared an assignment for any listeners who might want work for Stansberry Research. Ready for this one? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Stansberry Copy Bootcamp Stansberry Research Mike Palmer End of America Patrick Bove Agora Joe Schriefer Agora’s Recruiter Email: talent@14west.us Allison’s LinkedIn Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for a special unnumbered episode, as we talk with in-house copywriter Allison Comotto about how she ended up working as a copywriter, landing a job at Stansberry Research, what she does on a daily basis, and whether the Agora companies really are the mecca of copywriting.
Kira: Welcome Allison.
Rob: Hey Allison!
Allison: Hey, thanks for having me!
Kira: It’s great to have you, Allison. So, let’s start with your story, and how you ended up as a copywriter.
Allison: I mean, I know that a lot of people say that they kind of fall into a career, especially in something like copywriting, but I mean, there is really no other way to describe the way I kind of fell; it’s a very short, steep hill in me becoming a copywriter. I was a senior at Hopkins last spring, and I was in the thick of the senior-year job hunt, and I was a writing major. So my whole focus was in poetry, and professional writing, which definitely had more of a corporate feel. So I was writing everything from marketing plans to persuasive papers, that kind of thing. And then I did a minor in marketing communication, because I really like the creativity of marketing, how it is constantly evolving...it was really nice foil to all the liberal arts classes I was taking along with them.
And as for general work experience, obviously it was limited because I was still in college, but it was all mostly in PR and communications, so I was a PR intern at a local ad agency. That was a very traditional PR, like, cold-calling small-newspapers across the country and getting hung up on. That kind of thing. And then I was a global communications intern for UnderArmor, which was kind of a fancy description of someone who packed up and sent dozens of pairs...
Copywriter Brit McGinnis steps out of the club's Facebook group to join Rob and Kira for the 75th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. (Don’t look now but we’re three quarters of the way to 100.) We cover a lot of ground in this wide ranging interview, including:
• how Brit went from journalism to virtual assistant to social media and copywriter • what her business looks like today (typical clients, typical projects) • why you might want to work as a virtual assistant • what you need to know BEFORE you start working with a virtual assistant • her thoughts on starting and growing a great online community • how to get the most out of our Facebook group • the rules of Facebook etiquette that she wishes everyone knew • what copywriters should do to step up their social media game • why we should be thinking about Pinterest more than we probably do • what’s going on with Facebook ads (the ad glut) • how her business has changed since joining The Copywriter Accelerator • what copywriters who are struggling with boundaries could be doing differently • why she stepped into her role as “the horror copywriter” • her advice to copywriters who are thinking about their personal brands • what we need to know about the cannabis market
We also asked Brit about the mistakes she’s seen copywriters make in their careers—stuff you definitely don’t want to be doing. We say this a lot, but it’s yet another good one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: BlackBow Communications Madmen The Copywriter Accelerator Twitter Kat Wells Brene Brown League of Legends Night Mind The ABCs of Cannibis Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 75 as we chat with copywriter Brit McGuiness about leaving journalism and embracing the strange; what she does for her social media clients; how to not suck at Pinterest; and why she owns two Texas Chainsaw Massacre t-shirts!
Kira: Welcome Brit!
Rob: Hey Brit!
Brit: Hello; good morning. Welcome.
Kira: Great to have you here as one of our team members, and the “face” in the Facebook community: the community manager! So we’re really excited, about to learn more about your strange life and Texas Chainsaw Massacre t-shirts! To start, Brit, can you just share your story? How did you end up creating Black Bow Communications?
Brit: Absolutely, and first let me say I’m sorry for saying ‘welcome’ just now; I’m very excited to be here, so that just stumbled out!
Kira: (Laughs). It’s okay!
Rob: We’re so glad to be here on your podcast too, Brit.
Kira: (Laughs.)
Rob: That’s kind of awesome.
Brit: (Laughs.) Well, I love working with podcasts and it’s always fun to see and hear the millions of different intros. In fact—segue—I ended up listening to podcasts all throughout college, and I actually started wanting to work in public radio. So, I took up a great internship there in my college, all the while working in journalism, and just wanting to learn and absorb everything I could about different kinds of media. The first copywriting-based thing I really took on was when I lived in Ireland for a little while in junior year of college. I worked with a media company that managed the content and social media for the Irish government, of all places. And I had this underlying conflict of, “Wow, I love creating content; I love being a journalist, but, I was also the person who would stay up late and play with HootSuite in my dorm room, so,
Copywriter and founder of The Content Bistro, Prerna Malik joins Kira and Rob for the 74th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And we cover quite a bit of ground as we talk about...
• how she became a freelance content writer (thanks to a family illness) • how she has grown her business despite living thousands of miles from her best clients • why she’s only invests in training that delivers a real ROI • the activities she spent time on to get her first several clients • how she went from $21,000 in 2011 to $200,000+ this year • how she thinks about the packages she offers (and how she prices them) • how she splits duties with her business partner (and husband) • what copywriters should be doing differently with social media • how she schedules her week to get things done (the hacks and systems she uses) • what she’ll be doing differently in 2018 • the advice she would offer to a “just-starting-out” copywriter, and • where she thinks copywriting will go in the future
Note: Because Prerna lives in India, we weren’t able to use our usual recording software, so the sound has a few hiccups… we’re really sorry about that.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Content Bistro Art of Simple Launch Grow Joy Fearless Launching Mogul Mom AWAIhttp://www.awaionline.com/copywriting/p/ Mass Persuasion Method Copyhackers books 4-Hour Work Week Fully Loaded Launch Miers Briggs 7 Entrepreneurial Lessons Learned in Our 7th Year of Business Biz Bistro Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 74 as we talk with content specialist and copywriter Prerna Malik about creating high-performing content for clients like Amy Porterfield and Katrina Springer; what we need to know about social media copy; what she did to earn $200,000 in a single year; and what’s it like to work with your spouse every single day.
Kira: Welcome, Prerna.
Rob: Welcome, Prerna!
Prerna: Hi! Thanks so much for having me here!
Kira: It’s great to have you on the show, and a great place to start is with your story, and how did you end up running Content Bistro with your husband?
Prerna: So, I blog; like a regular “mom” blog, it’s called The Mom Writes. And I started it in November of 2008 because I was a new mom. My daughter was nine months old, and while I love being with her, I also wanted something that was creatively stimulating and, you know, I used to read a lot of blogs when—you know—between feeding her and, you know, being with her and all that. So it just kind of started to so make sense to my sleep-deprived brain to, you know, start one! That blog...it started growing, and it led to me getting noticed by small businesses who then started reaching out and saying, you know, “Would you write for us?” That then led to things like social media gigs because, at that time I was super-active on Twitter. Now, I’m not so active, but yeah. I was super-active on Twitter, and then clients starting asking, “Okay, would you manage our social media for us”, you know? Especially Twitter.
So I took a couple of courses to be sure that I knew what I was doing, and I started doing very part-time social media management and blogging for small businesses. And things were going okay, and I was you know, having a lot of fun; I was being able to stay at home with my daughter, and I had some creative work. And this was very part-time thing for me because my husband, Mayank, his full-time job was what was supporting us financially.
Wellness copywriter and online branding strategist Blair Badenhop recently made her way to our studio for episode 73 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We were excited to talk to Blair because we’ve had a ring-side seat as she’s launched her new podcast and built her soon-to-launch course. In this interview, we asked her:
• how Blair went from ad sales to non-profits to health coaching to copywriting • whether writing in the health and wellness space is really different from writing for other niches • how she helps her clients get clear on their positioning and branding with her discovery process • why Blair takes three hours to get to know her clients BEFORE she starts to work • what she did to create a steady flow of clients from the very start of her business • how she got herself to the top of Google for her main key word • the difference between “getting clients” and “making friends” • her thoughts about what copywriters should do to stand out online • the place red lipstick plays in her personal brand • her experiments with Pinterest and Instagram to grow her list • how other copywriters can use Instagram more effectively • how she gets it all done—social media, client work, her own course, a podcast and more • why she launched a podcast and the effect it’s had on her business
We also asked, as we often do, about where she sees copywriting going in the coming months and why more people will start investing in it. It’s another info-packed episode. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times... and have fun! Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: TCCinNYC
Dress for Success Harper’s Bazaar Parsley Health Nitika Chopra Wellness Copywriter Blair on Instagram Blair on Pinterest Your Wellness Brand (coming soon) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 73 as we chat with freelance copywriter Blair Badenhop about her path into copywriting, writing for clients in the health and wellness niche, creating a podcast and a course to reach her audience, and developing a brand that stands out from other copywriters.
Kira: Welcome, Blair!
Rob: Hey Blair.
Blair: Hey, thank you guys so much for having me!
Kira: It’s great to have you here. So, Blair, let’s start with your story: how did you end up running your own business?
Blair: Oh man. It has been such a crazy, winding road to this point. It’s kind of funny to look back on. So, the reason I started was kind of by accident. I wound up losing my last full-time job and I got a severance package that kind of tided me over for four months and so I was like, okay! What do I want to do with my life? And I’d been working in the marketing department over at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition for three years and before that I worked for a non-profit called Dress for Success managing partnerships, and before that, I worked in magazines, most well-known would be Harper’s Bazaar as a sales assistant, learning all about sales and marketing.
So I had this kind of like, marketing background and I had a lot of knowledge to leverage but I was really interested in utilizing my health coaching certification because I had gotten it from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition a few years before, so I was kind of like, you know, torn between these two things that I loved, so I started consulting as a way to make money and then I started to build my health coaching practice. And you know,
Got legal questions? We do! So we invited attorney and online legal expert Danielle Liss to join us for the 72nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve had this episode penciled in on our list for a long time—partly because we know so many copywriters have big questions about legal issues (and often don’t have the cash to ask an attorney for help). Hopefully this podcast answers a few of those questions. We talked to Danielle about:
• how she went from working in construction law to helping online entrepreneurs with legal needs • the legal documents all copywriters need to have in place (her checklist) • what you need to know about choosing a business entity (in the U.S.) • the critical reason you want to choose an entity besides sole proprietor • what you need to know about contracts and why you should ALWAYS use them • what every contract you sign MUST have • should you include your contract with your proposal or keep them separate? • what could happen if you work without a contract (the nightmare scenario) • what you should do contract-wise on a second or third project with a client (think MSA) • why you probably don’t need to worry about changes to your contract • the three things you need to include in your website terms and conditions
We also talked about what you should expect to pay for legal help and Danielle gave us the lowdown on copyrights—yes, copyright, not copywrite ; ) . She also gives a bit of counsel about when you can use ™, ®, or a service mark, and how to handle conflicts and breaches of contracts. This episode is loaded with need-to-know information that will help you protect your copywriting business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: TCC IRL
Dubsado FitFluencial LegalZoom USPTO website Hashtag-legal.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript:
Kira:What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 72 as we chat with attorney, marketing expert, and co-founder of Hashtag Legal, Danielle Liss, about what copywriters need to know when it comes to the law, choosing the right business entity, documents we need to protect ourselves, and avoiding the common mistakes online business owners make again and again.
Kira: Welcome, Danielle!
Rob: Hey Danielle.
Danielle: Thank you so much for having me, I’m really excited to be here.
Kira: Yeah, we’re excited to have you, and, we—we just need this conversation desperately! Even as I’m listening to the intro, I’m like, I need to know all of this! So, I’m really looking forward to it.
Rob: It’s funny that it’s taken this long to get here too…
Kira: I know!
Rob: …because when we first started the podcast, we made a list of everybody we wanted to talk to, and one of the line items was an attorney. We wanted to talk to an attorney, and yeah. Now we’re seventy-two episodes in...
Kira: Right!
Rob: So it’s about time.
Danielle: Well I am very glad to be the one to talk with everybody.
Kira: Yes, great. So why don’t we start with your story, and I’m really curious how you ended up working in influencer marketing and ultimately creating Hashtag Legal.
Danielle: Absolutely. When I graduated from law school, I went into litigation. And I live in Las Vegas, and I did a lot of construction law. Let’s just say that’s not exactly how my brain works. So, it was never a great fit because I just didn’t have the passion that I needed to spend all day fighting about drywall. And...
Kira: Laughs.
Danielle: And there are people who do; I love them for it,...
Copywriter and hypnotist Jesse Gernigin joins The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk with Kira and Rob about his freelance business, creating an online summit, and how knowing how to hypnotize people helps him know how to attract customers and sell more products. In this interview, we talk about:
• how Jesse went from magician to hypnotist to copywriter • what it takes to bee a hypnotist • the #1 thing he did that made him a successful hypnotist • what he sent potential clients when he was cold contacting • how often he succeeded (and failed) when he was cold emailing and how he increased his chances of success • how Jesse works with clients to get them what they need (not just what they want) • what he did on Upwork to succeed • acting as a strategist in addition to working as a copywriter • what it takes to assemble an online summit and what has surprised him the most from putting on a summit
And while talking about his summit, Jesse let us in on the tools he used to get his summit online and we asked him about the two best speakers he included in his summit. Finally Jesse told us what he thinks will happen to copywriting in the future. To get this one... click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Club In Real Life
Geoff Ronning The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy Vander Meide Ramit Sethi Chase Jarvis Paige Poutiainen Danny Marguiles Joanna Wiebe Thrive Architect Rainmaker Wordpress ConvertKit Teachable Vimeo Natalie McGuire Lianna Patch Hillary Weiss Entrepreneur on Fire Live Gold Rich Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 71 as we chat with copywriter, marketing consultant, and hypnotist Jesse Gernigin about trading his magic act for high paying copywriting gigs, how he finds and lands freelance clients, what goes on behind the scenes of an online summit, and how hypnotism helps him become a better copywriter!
Kira: Welcome, Jesse!
Jesse: Thank you guys so much for having me! It’s great to be here.
Rob: It’s great to have you.
Jesse: Yeah, it’s cool to talk with you guys on this end after having you both on my summit, so this is great!
Kira: Yeah! So we’re going to talk about your summit in a bit; you’re a first hypnotist on the show!
Jesse: Okay! Yeah.
Rob: Yeah, we’re waiting for you to say something like “look into my eyes”—follow the watch...
Kira: (laughs)
Jesse: (laughs)
Kira: I’m actually a little nervous now! I feel like you might hypnotize us and make us say something ridiculous. I don’t know.
Jesse: No, no, no. (laughs)
Kira: All right, Jesse, a good place to start is just with your story. You know, who are you? How did you get into copywriting? Especially with the magic background? Tell us a little more about your story.
Jesse: Oh, this is funny. So we’re going to go back to the days of copywriting books—Dan Kennedy’s, I think 1993 book—The Ultimate Sales Letter. So, I graduated college in 2007, so I came out right at the heart of the recession, and nobody was hiring for anything I had a degree in. And I’d been a magician and a hypnotist, and I’d work, you know, shows and make five or six thousand dollars a year just doing it on the side. And my buddy told me, you should just do this full time until a job opens up! So I went out, found an agent, and I was a really great performer.
I don’t like to toot my own horn, because I wasn’t necessarily more talented than anybody else,
Agora Financial Copy Chief (and copywriter) Joe Schriefer is our guest for the 70th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob ask him all about what it’s like to work for Agora, how he landed his job there, how Agora’s writers are paid and a lot more. Specifically we cover:
• how he “lucked” into a job he didn’t want with Agora • the best advice anyone ever gave him at Agora (and why he became a copywriter) • his process for finding ideas for promotions • how he knows when an idea is “big enough” to go with • how much time he spends researching versus writing • why he doesn’t ask his customers for ideas for his copy • his 7 step-by-step system for creating a brilliant sales letter • the most important question a copywriter should ask (but they never do) • how Agora Financial compensates their copywriters (they can make millions) • the three things he looks for when he hires a writer to work for Agora • how often Agora’s best copywriters write a successful package—it’s less than 50% • what his team does when a promotion underperforms • how quickly Agora is growing and why Joe needs more copywriters
There’s a lot of solid advice in this one. Do. Not. Miss. It. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Club IRL
Agora Financial Name Bank Bill Bonner Addison Wiggin Byron King Wayne Gretzky Block Chain Win Bigly by Scott Adams Top Gun Joe’s email: jschriefer@agorafinancial.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: Hey everybody. Before we get into today’s podcast, we just want to tell you about our event that’s being held in New York City on February 15th and 16th, and we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to join us for this awesome, fun party. Kira, let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on at TCC In Real Life.
Kira: So, we’re basically taking the podcast, and a lot of people that we interviewed on the podcast, and then we’re putting them all in a room—seventy-five people—and an amazing of line-up of top copywriters like Kim Krause Schwalm, Joanna Wiebe, Ry Schwartz, Laura Belgray, Brian Kurtz, Kevin Rogers, I can go on and on and on. You can find their names and the list of speakers on the event page, which Rob will give you. But I’ve never been in a room with all of these copywriters, online marketers before. And, beyond that, we’re covering these three pillars of copywriters: what it really takes from going from a copywriter who takes orders from clients, to going to a really great consultant who knows how to run a business. So the topics are diverse, but they’re covering basically the three pillars: the offer, the list, and the marketing strategy.
Rob: Yeah, this is a copywriting conference, but it’s not the typical stuff that you read about copywriting, you know: “ten new ideas for headlines that pull”, those kinds of things. The people who are speaking have incredible information to share so, Kim Krause Schwalm, for instance is going to be talking about the way that she’s beat the controls that she’s run for companies like Agora and Boardroom; real-life lessons that going to be immediately applicable to the type of writing that we all do everyday. And Jason Henderson, who’s an expert at marketing acquisition and email, the topic of his speech is, three email copywriting secrets I discovered helping porn stars get tan in 1994. Like, you’re not going to find that kind of stuff anywhere else at any marketing conference, but the takeaways are real, it’s the stuff that we can use in our businesses everyday. And really, for me, it’s a huge part of why I’m excited to be there.
Kira: And beyond the content, right—like new content our presenters are bringing in, new presentations they’ve never shared before—beyond that piece,
Copywriter, marketing strategist, and CMO-for-Hire, Myrna Begnel joins us for our second episode of the week (our 69th overall) to talk about her copywriting business and how she became known as “the client whisperer” among the members of The Copywriter Think Tank. In this episode we cover:
• how Myrna went from selling elevators to agency strategist to writing copy • what she learned from her career in sales that applies to copywriting • how you create a relationship with a client so your projects succeed • how to recreate the “sales conversation” on your sales page • the questions she asks to understand her client’s customer needs • what a discovery call with her looks like • how her processes help her repeat and scale her business • the “grandma’s house” approach to setting boundaries with clients • how to get started with processes, then how to improve them • the lessons she has taken from working with agencies inside and out • what it’s like to completely start over in business • why it’s important to focus on mindset and not just skillset
We also asked Myrna about what her projects look like as a “CMO for hire” and how she packages her services, and charges a high price for them. Say this next line in your best stadium music voice: “Are you ready for this?” Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Club IRL
Doberman Dan Amy Porterfield Artessa Marketing Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 69 as we chat with copywriter and marketing consultant Myrna Begnel managing clients so they want to keep working with you, what we can learn from the agency world, how she has structured her business and her time to get more done, and what it’s like to start over after building a business with others.
Kira: Welcome, Myrna!
Rob: Hey, Myrna!
Myrna: Hey, guys! Thanks for having me!
Kira: Or should we call you Kitty?
Myrna: Kitty! Yes. You can always call me Kitty.
Rob: I'm not sure why I can't get over that. It's like, to me, you're Myrna, and to Kira, you're Kitty! I guess we're just going to have to live with that.
Kira: You know what, though? It fell apart, so Myrna joined our think-tank and I was trying to stick with Kitty and now you have become Myrna and I can't go back to Kitty, so... I'm sticking with Myrna.
Myrna: I know. You know, my high school friends all call me Myrna B. My maiden name was actually Beals, but... as if there are other Myrna's, you know... Myrna A, Myrna Z...
Rob: (laughs) Yeah, we have to make sure we don't get you confused with Myrna D and Myrna J.
Myrna: Yeah, exactly. When you have a unique name like mine, you know, you kind of got to overcome it.
Rob: I love it.
Kira: So, Myrna, let's start with your story! How did you end up here, and I'm pointing at the spot where you're sitting right now.
Myrna: (laughs) Well, it's kind of a convoluted story because I come into copywriting, a lot of the people that I know, they've always known they wanted to be a copywriter, they've had a very direct path into owning their own business and being a copywriter, and I think I come from a very convoluted path just based on my history.
Probably my third career. So I started off selling elevators and escalators right out of college and I did that for 6 years. I was the first female sales manager in the company's 150-year history. One of the things that—you know, I'm starting to date myself—we didn't have digital back then...
Copywriter and calligrapher Ashlyn Carter joins Kira and Rob for the In 68th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and wow, does she deliver. In just a couple of years, she's built a six-figure business that is growing like crazy. In this interview, she shares:
• how she went from agency consultant to PR publicist to freelance writer • what she learned from working with companies like Delta Airlines and Chick-Fil-A • the difference between working with corporate brands and personal brands • her struggle to do everything right, the repercussions, and how it led to the work she does today • the process she used to break away from the negative behaviors that tied her down • what happened when she chose a niche and had to fire some of her clients • how she had to adapt new processes as a business owner (as opposed to being a freelancer) • when she knew it was time to create a digital product • the questions she asks to keep her team focused on getting things done • how she organizes her time to get more done • her onboarding “magazine” that sets boundaries and outlines processes
And as we often do, we also asked about a couple of her non-copywriting hobbies. She sold us why she does calligraphy in addition to working as a copywriter, and the lessons she learned from dancing that have made her a better copywriter. To hear Ashlyn tell it, click the play button below. Or scroll down to read the transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Toggl PowerSheets Strengths Finder Rest by Alex Pang Jenna Kutcher James Wedmore Todd Herman's 90 Day Year HoneyBook Amy Porterfield Anne Lamott Chuck Close Malcolm Gladwell AshlynWrites.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join us episode 68 as we chat with copywriter Ashlyn Carter about what she learned managing crisis communications for brands like Delta and Chick-Fil-A, how choosing a niche has affected her business, the process she used to break her own negative behaviors, and how dancing has made her a better copywriter.
Rob: Ashlyn, welcome!
Ashlyn: Thank you so much! So excited to get to talk to y’all today.
Rob: We’re excited to have you!
Kira: I know, I know! All right, so, Ashlyn, I think a good place to start is with your story, of course, and how you ended up getting into copywriting!
Ashlyn: Yes, so it turns out that if you chronologically file magazines under your bed growing up, you’re a shoe-in for a journalism major, so I went into college, like, no doubt what I wanted to be. I wanted to work in magazines. I wanted to do editorial stuff. So I was a print major in the journalism school in 2009, which, I’m sure all of us who work in this industry—that was a tough year for publications. So I promptly went back from my senior year, switched to the publications track, and knew that that’s what I wanted to do. Right out of college, I worked as a traveling consultant for a women’s organization. I worked the ultimate dream of working in—I grew up in Alabama so the big city of Atlanta is where I wanted to be—I wanted to work an agency life in Atlanta, so I did that! And was in agency for about four years all together and worked as a publicist as well for a chef and his slew of restaurants and then I moved on to working on my own! There are a lot of ups and downs and valleys but that, in a nutshell, is what happened.
Copy Chief (and copywriter) Henry Bingaman is in the studio for the 66th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And he showed up with plenty to share—including his formula for writing great sales copy. Kira and Rob took the opportunity to ask Henry about: • his path from fiction writer and flight attendant to copywriter and copy chief • not wanting to write for clients and creating his own product (and the lessons he learned) • how he landed his first client (and learned to write his first proposal) • the critical copywriting skill he learned as a flight attendant • what he does to connect with people at conferences • when you should feel like you’ve “made it” (hint: you’re probably not there yet) • what he teaches the copywriters he works with (and his role as copy chief) • how he writes leads that catch attention and shift a customer’s paradigm • the various copy blocks he includes in his sales pages • what he learned from breaking down Jedd Canty’s sales pages • what it takes to create a winning control • the collaboration process he goes through on every sales promotion • what separates the great copywriters from the good • learning from failure (and some of his biggest failures)
Plus we talked about where Henry thinks copywriting is going in the future (it doesn’t look good for some freelancers), how his Cross Fit habit is related to copywriting, and what he is doing to improve his own writing. You won’t want to miss this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: AWAI Six Figure Copywriter Creative Writer’s Desk Wealthy Web Writer Rebecca Matter John Carlton Marcella Allison Boardroom Agora Parris Lampropolous David Deutch Mark Stockman Metabolic Living Jake Hoffberg Copy Chief Jedd Canty Clayton Makepeace Metabolic Renewal Scrivener Money Map Press Brian Kurtz Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript:
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 66 as we chat with creative director and copy chief Henry Bingaman on working and writing in direct response, how much effort it takes to get a winning control, persuasion architecture, and applying systems thinking to the feedback process and how Crossfit makes him a better writer.
Kira: Welcome, Henry!
Henry: Hey! Nice to be here.
Rob: Hey, we’re glad to have you.
Kira: Yeah, so Henry, a great place to start is with your path. I know you have a squiggly path, so where did you start? And where are you today?
Henry: My kind of life path is just following the next interesting thing in front of me. (laughs) So, when I graduated in 2007 with a degree in fiction writing, which isn’t really a good degree for a job (laughs)... When I graduated, I went online and there was a job opening for flight attendants at United Airline. So I applied and started flying professionally for about a year. I was an international flight attendant, which was a lot of fun but it paid about $20,000 a year, and I was working up in First Class serving people that paid $20,000 for their seat, so I was a little jealous maybe? (laughs) But I had this writing ability. I’d been writing since I was early high school, just stories and whatnot. My dad actually owned a supplement company when I was growing up. He’d bought the AWAI six figure program at one point and he just gave it to me, he never really did anything with it, so he gave it to me and said, “Here, here’s a way you might be able to make money.” So that’s how I kind of discovered copywriting,
In this jam-packed 65th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with author and ghostwriter Laura Hanly about book writing and publishing. We met Laura a few months ago and after grilling her over breakfast, knew she’d be a great addition to the show. In this discussion we cover:
• how she became a book writer and publishing consultant • what you need to think about before you write your book • Laura’s thoughts on who exactly needs to have a book—if you are in a commodified service business, the answer is “yes” • who needs to be on your book writing team and who should be your early readers • what a realistic timeline for writing a book looks like • price ranges and what she does to charge $40,000 per book project • what you need to do to promote your book • common mistakes writers make when they write their book • the differences between self publishing and traditional publishing • how to publish with Amazon Create Space and KDP • the design options to consider when you’re ready to publish your book • how to find clients as a ghost writer of books • whether you should get a byline with the books you ghost write • the mistakes she sees over and over on book projects
We also asked about the rates she charged when she first started out (they were way too low), the mistakes businesses make when they “do” content marketing, who is doing content well today, and what to keep in mind when promoting your content. Ready for this? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Telling Your Brand Story (Rob’s book) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson’s rudely titled book) The Martian (Andy Weir’s book) Gary V Ramit Sethi Digital Marketer CreateSpace 99designs Laurahanly.com Content that Converts Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 65 as we chat with author and book consultant Laura Hanly about the process of writing a good book, how to choose between self-publishing and a formal publisher, what it takes to write a bestseller, and the tactics, strategies, and systems for promoting your content.
Kira: Welcome, Laura!
Rob: Welcome!
Laura: Thank you so much! Very exciting to chat with you guys.
Rob: I want to jump in and just say that we met at a mastermind event, and you and I, I think, had the opportunity to sit down at breakfast and for about 45 minutes or so, you sort of walked me through a lot of the process of writing a book and as we were chatting, it was one of those things where like, “Laura, we got to have you on the podcast!” Because there are a lot of people who listen to us that need to know the things that you know! So we are really excited to have you here.
Laura: Yeah, I think it’s a big opportunity for a lot of people at the moment so I’m excited to talk about it.
Rob: Cool! Well, why don’t we start with your story? Where did you come from; how did you start doing what you’re doing?
Laura: So, I grew up in Sydney in Australia. I studied writing and publishing at university and worked at a big publishing house there in Australia for a few years. And I think about 2011, the industry really started downsizing and they weren’t kind of learning the lessons that we had all seen go down in the music industry in terms of, you know, adapting to the new technologies that were becoming available, and I thought, mmmm, I really need to get myself organized and become a bit more independent.
So I moved online,
For the 64th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob bring copywriter Paige Poutiainen into the studio to talk about how she’s grown her business from Upwork to online funnel specialist. It’s a great conversation in which, Paige talks about:
• becoming a copywriter because she doesn’t speak Finnish well • how she has succeeded working with clients found on Upwork • why she shifted from content to conversion copy to funnel strategist • what she’s doing to avoid funnel fatigue for her clients • why creating a funnel is a bit like dating • her basic process for creating a funnel for her clients • what she does to make sure her funnels are set up to succeed from the beginning • what had made the biggest difference in her business this year • why she is using video more and more in her business
And as we often do, we asked Paige what she thinks other copywriters are missing out on (her answer covers stuff like owning a niche). Plus we asked what she’s learned living in Finland for the past five years (while working with clients in the USA). It’s a great way to kick off your new year. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Danny Marguiles Freelance to Win Joanna Wiebe Hillary Wiess Funnel Fatigue article The Copywriter Club newsletter No BS Pricing Strategy by Dan Kennedy TheImpactCopywriter.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 64, as we chat with copywriter and funnel specialist Paige Poutiainen about finding success on Upwork, building effective marketing funnels using video to build a reputation, and what she’s done to accelerate her business over the past year.
Kira: Paige, welcome!
Paige: Hi, thanks for having me.
Rob: Hey Paige!
Kira: We’re so excited to have you! So we met Paige in the first beta round of our Accelerator program and now you’re in the think tank, so we get extra, extra time to get to know you, and also to see how you’ve grown your business over the last year. I think a good place is just with your story and how did you end up as a copywriter?
Paige: Yeah, that’s a good question! I think I was writing copy or content you know, starting at age twelve. I started blogging. That’s what I would do—I was a nerdy child. And you know, other kids are outside playing or doing whatever and I was upstairs, like, blogging about boys that I liked and all this kind of stuff teenagers go through. And I’ve had several blogs over the years, just kind of as a hobbyist kind of thing. And then, when I was in grad school, I got a job as a content marketer, but my official title was CMO. I was NOT qualified to be a CMO, but you know how startups do those fancy titles and stuff. So I was doing like, blogs, general content there, and I actually had to do like landing pages and opt-in pages, so that’s where I first dipped my toes in copywriting.
Then, you know, for several reasons, I didn’t enjoy that kind of working setup, it didn’t work for me, and because I was living in Finland—and I do not speak Finnish well—it is sometimes difficult to get a job, so that pressure to find work kind of pushed me into the freelancing. I had heard of Upwork, I had done some research, and you know, it was the meeting points—or, that was the catalyst.
This one is a bit of a holiday gift for you all... so many good ideas and a fantastic guest! For the 63rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Margo Aaron, a copywriter and psychological researcher with an impressive range of experience and know-how. During our conversation, Margo shared: • how she went from academic researcher to copywriter • the importance of psychology in copywriting (and life) • why you need to listen to people don’t say in addition to what they do say • what to ask for to get good feedback • how copywriters can use the skill of listening and use it to their advantage • how she built a business that she hated—and stopped taking clients • Product Founder Fit—what it is and why it’s important • how to learn the stuff that isn’t written down • why we are all so scarred of breaking the copywriting rules • what copywriters do that drive her crazy • where the money is in marketing (the answer isn’t your list)
We also asked her about what goes on in the altMBA, but while most of the content and assignments are secret, she shares just enough to whet our appetites. She also talks a bit about how to write an email that people actually want to read, the future of copywriting—it will become more important than ever—and a few strategies for communicating more clearly with your clients. Want to hear it (or read it)? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Margo’s website Honest Selling Secrets for a Dishonest Man The Arena Work Week Lunch Jeff Walker altMBA Hillary’s Post on What’s Not Working @margoarron Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode sixty three as we chat with psychological researcher, strategic planner and copywriter Margo Aaron, about changing the world and making a profit, what copywriter’s absolutely must know about psychology, what it’s like to hang out with Seth Godin in his altMBA program and how to learn the stuff that isn’t written down.
Kira: Welcome, Margo!
Rob: Welcome.
Margo: Thanks you guys, happy to be here.
Kira: Great to have you here!
Rob: We are so excited!
Kira: I secretly want to be friends with you, so by the end of this need to be friends.
Margo: I’m in. I’m in.
Kira: When are we getting coffee? Or tequila?
Rob: Margo, you came to our attention because somebody posted your website in The Copywriter Club Facebook group and immediately there were like forty comments about how great your website was. And literally within a couple minutes people were saying we’ve got to have Margo on the podcast! Got to have Margo on the podcast! So we reached out and made it happen. Tell us how you got to the point where everybody wants to know about you! Where did you come from?
Margo: (laughs) Honestly, when you find that out let me know. I have you all deceived! The short version is I sort of fell into marketing and copywriting by accident. I started my career as you said as a psychological researcher: I was working in a lab for depression-anxiety patients and you guys, had I known then what I know now the amount of people we could have helped—you can’t even imagine. I didn’t know it at the time but it was kind of my first introduction to funnels because I was the person on the phone... like, I was in charge of what’s called recruitment and screening so it’s effectively tofu and mofu, like I have to get people in the door and then I had to qualify them for different studies and around that time I realised how there ...
For the 62nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob brought former screenwriter, movie producer and copywriter Jamie Jensen into the studio to talk all about her copy business. She shares the good and the bad and why she decided to shut down her agency just as it was really taking off. We also talked about: • how her dad unknowingly put her on the path to copywriting as a kid • why she left Hollywood to make her own movie, then jumped to copywriting • what she did early on to attract clients to her business (her no-strategy strategy) • how she developed a unique brand voice (Hollywood helped) • the systems and processes she used to connect with her customers • the place honesty and enthusiasm plays in attracting clients to her • why she decided to grow a micro-agency instead of staying a sole proprietor • the challenges the come with running an agency—she shares the dark side
We also asked Jamie about what she’s doing today, the course she just created and launched, and her one word tip for course creators. Lots of laughter in this one and some painful lessons. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Hannah Has a Ho Phase Uncage Your Business Heather Dominick Story School Your Hot Copy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 62 as we chat with copywriter, filmmaker, and storyteller Jamie Jensen, about going from Hollywood to hot copy, the importance of storytelling when it comes to writing copy with personality, working with a team of writers, the ins and outs of creating courses, and how making a movie made her a better copywriter.
Kira: Jamie, welcome!
Jamie: Thank you! Thank you so much for having me!
Rob: It’s great to have you, yes!
Kira: Yeah! You were on our list early on as someone that we wanted on the show and it’s nice to have a fellow New Yorker on the show, as well! So a great place to start is, you know, you went from Hollywood to hot copy. So we want to know, how did you even get into copywriting?
Jamie: Sure! Well, what’s interesting is for me, for my story, is that my dad was an entrepreneur, so I actually grew up with a lot of like, copywriting things around me already, meaning, not just like, from the sales perspective of reading books about sales and marketing and all of that stuff, like, they were always around the house because my dad was marketing his own business, and doing things like buying domain names up and coming up with catchy things that he wanted to trademark for his business. And even like, direct mail was still a big thing then, so I would even help him like, review mailers that he was sending out to his physical mailing list, because that was a thing, you know?
And so I actually grew up exposed to a lot of that to begin with, and the way that I made the transition from Hollywood to hot copy was I had made a film. So you know, I left Hollywood, I’d kind of had enough, came back to New York City where I’m from, and my producing partner and I decided at the time that we were going to just make our own film. So I had already written the script and she had been working on it as a producer and we decided like, you know what? Forget guys, by the way, because at this point we had both had a lot of negative experiences with men in the entertainmen...
Welcome to episode 61 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Today Kira Hug and Rob Marsh talk with freelance copywriter Alaura Weaver about how she’s grown her business, often working at night to get things done. During our discussion, we covered: • how she went from acting to sales to copywriting • how theater and acting has made her a better copywriter • what she did early on to get her first clients and her advice to new copywriters • how she saw herself as a business owner, not a freelancer • her thoughts about seeing customers as humans, not consumers and living your message • how copywriters can live their own message and values • how to develop buyer personas and why you should use them • how she gets to know the customers she is profiling • the trap of writing for everybody and reaching nobody • how she sells her clients on creating Avatars as part of her projects
Plus we also asked Alaura about how often you should create new customer profile, what she’s doing to share how you can define your own customer personas and how she juggles family, course creation, and business and makes it all work. Want this one in your ear buds? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Textbroker Neil Patel Joanna Wiebe The storytelling post on CH Hillary’s coaching post Xtensio Alaura’s website @wordweaverfree Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 61 as we chat with freelance copywriter and storyteller, Alaura Weaver, about how she became a copywriter, creating customer personas, and her course about them, juggling work and family, and various other products, and making business personal.
Welcome Alaura.
Rob: Welcome Alaura!
Alaura: Hi! Thank you!
Kira: Great to have you here, so I think a great place to start is with your story. As a storyteller, can you tell us your story?
Alaura: So, it’s really ironic is that my verbal, like, speaking storytelling skills are a little bit off, which is why I like writing. But, I’ll tell you how I started. I’ve actually started in the theater. I was a child actress and, that’s what I thought I was going to do my entire life. I was on the stage, I literally grew up on the stage.
Kira: Wow.
Alaura: And I went to the Baltimore School for the Arts for high school. I majored in theater in undergrad and got my graduate degree in acting. So, it was kind of like, that was my path; I was going to be a professional actress. I focused on the creation of original works, so I did have that writing element in there. But, life is a lot harder—laugh—than your dreams, right? You know, the reality is most actors are unemployed for the majority of their careers, and I had to find a way to pay back those student loans and pay bills and be an adult. And so I got into sales. I got into business-to-business sales. One of my first jobs was actually on inside sales for a start-up, and I liked that environment a lot, of that small team, that kind of feisty, scrappy team, building and growing that business, and it felt like a good place to be. But then I got an offer to start selling, advertising for the Yellow Book.—Laughs—If you remember...do you remember the Yellow Book?
Rob: Let your fingers do the walking, absolutely.
Alaura: So you can guess how,
For the 60th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob opted not to invite a guest on the show and instead take your questions and give our off-the-cuff, no-preparation answers. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we did our best with what we have. We talked about: • where we got our first clients (and where we get some of our clients today) • why relationships are so critical especially for freelancers who never leave the house • how copywriting has changed since we both got started and what that means to you • what we expected The Copywriter Club to become when we first started out • how we keep all the plates spinning (Rob has dropped a couple) • what comes first the club or clients (don’t let our clients see this)
Plus we also talked about where we find the most satisfaction in our work and our thoughts on LinkedIn and Medium and which one is best for sharing your work. We don’t have a guest to carry us on this one, but to hear everything we shared, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Hillary Weiss Laura Belgray The 50th episode Ry Schwartz The Copywriter Accelerator Joanna Wiebe Michal Eisikowitz Luke Traser Momo Price Serial CrimeTown Tim Ferriss Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 60 as we answer your questions about copywriting, fitting it all in, choosing a niche, our processes and what we find most rewarding in our businesses.
Hey, Kira.
Kira: Hey, Rob. How’s it going?
Rob: It is going awesome. Mostly awesome, how about yourself?
Kira: Is it really awesome, Rob? Is it really? You just told me you woke up at 5 a.m. to workout and so…
Rob: That’s correct.
Kira: You’re feeling good?
Rob: I am feeling good. I was up a little late doing client work where I think we’re going to talk about that here in a second when we ask, answer a couple of questions and you were doing the same.
Kira: Yeah, we were both emailing each other at midnight while working in client work so that’s how I spin, but yeah.
Rob: Exactly.
Kira: I’m excited to answer some questions. For this special 60th episode, we asked the club members in the Facebook Group, what questions you have for us and we have a nice range of questions we can tackle here, but I feel like we should say that normally, we like to prep. We are preppers and think through our responses and even type them out. Today, we are not doing that. We are going to wing it.
Rob: That’s right.
Kira: I don’t wing things well so this will be interesting.
Rob: It’s all of the cuffs so it’s not sugarcoated. We’re going to tell you the truth, but it may not be quite as well thought out as it might have been otherwise so.
Kira: Right, this will not be poetic today. Okay, so why don’t we jump into the first question. Rob, you can choose.
Rob: Yeah, so I’m actually going to choose Heath asked a couple questions and I think these area good questions that a lot of people in the club are thinking about. This is the first one. How did you get your first clients when you’re starting out?
Kira: Okay, well, first I want to say shout out to Heath. I love Heath. He always makes me smile in the group. My first few clients, I was at Ace working at a startup, actionablebooks.
For the 59th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, in-house copywriter and creator of The Headline Project, Justin Blackman, is in the house to share how writing 100 headlines a day for 100 days changed his writing and his business. (We recorded this one a couple of months ago and are just getting around to publishing it now—apologies Justin.) In this episode Justin shares: • his path from sports and field marketer to copywriter • what his job as an in-house copywriter involves from one day to the next • why he started a side gig as an outlet for his creativity • how Shel Silverstein helped launch his first side gig—try, fly or walk away • why more copywriters should consider in-house gigs instead of freelancing • what in-house copywriters can expect to make (yep, we asked this question) • what made Justin decide to write 100 headlines in 100 days • some of the “tricks” he used for brainstorming to stay prolific • how his “creativity muscle” grew as he did the work every day • how he found motivation from the people he said he couldn’t do it • how the Headline Project has helped him grow his business and list
Plus we asked Justin how in the world he balances his work along with his side projects with his family duties, and we asked his advice on what copywriters should do to move their own businesses forward. To hear his answers, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator PT Barnum Bill Veeck Lianna Patch Copyhackers Shel Silverstein Hippo’s Hope The Headline Project Laura Belgray Tackle Your Tagline cheatsheet Joel Klettke PrettyFlyCopy.com Justin’s Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 59, as we talk with copywriter Justin Blackman about his journey from marketing manager for companies like Red Bull and Five Hour Energy to copywriter and content manager, what it’s like as an in-house copywriter, balancing in-house work with freelance work and a family, and what he’s learned from his 100 day headline project.
Kira: Justin, welcome!
Justin: Hi!
Kira: Thanks for being here. We’ve had a chance to get to know you better in The Copywriter Club and The Copywriter Accelerator and I think it’d be really fun to just start with your story and maybe parts of your story that we don’t know, specifically how you went from sports marketing to content creator to copywriter. So, can you share that path with us?
Justin: Yeah! It’s kinda one of these paths that seemed obvious to everyone but me. I went to U Mass for sports marketing, mostly because I wanted to work for the New York Rangers, which was pretty “high school” of me but I had a good time there and learned a lot. The biggest change was that I had one professor there that talked about P.T. Barnum and Bill Veeck, who was a baseball promoter—he owned the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Indians—and really, focused more on big-time promotion and making the game fun. And these guys didn’t sit in the skybox, they were down in the cheap seats with the bleacher creatures and just having fun and talking to the people.
So, I realized pretty quickly that as much as I love sports marketing, it was more the marketing side that I liked, and that branched me into field marketing. And field marketing is essentially a fancy way of saying “consumer sampling”. So, anytime you go somewhere and they’re handing out different promotional items—could be drinks, or Chapstick,
For the 58th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira Hug and Rob Marsh sit down to talk with financial copywriter, Jake Hoffberg about all kinds of things related to writing copy in the financial niche, including: • his first exposure to direct response and how he got into internet marketing • how he was rejected by every division of Agora but one before he landed his first project • the terrible cold email pitch template he used (we share it, don’t use it) • his contrarian “I want to make money” path to copywriting • the kinds of projects he willingly took on just to get started • how he leveraged his new relationships into more jobs and more clients • the real value that copywriters provide their clients (it’s not writing copy) • the process for pitching new ideas and getting the next project, and • how to double your income in 6 months
Plus we also asked for his thoughts about getting royalties, which clients will pay them, and how to structure royalties the right way and he shared the advice he give other writers about how to get into financial copywriting... hint: don’t think you should start at the top. All that and more is in this money-packed episode (not literally). To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Eban Pagan Jeff Walker Agora Financial Motley Fool Dent Research Sale of a Lifetime Freelance Financial Copywriter Group JakeHoffberg.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 58, as we chat with financial copywriter Jake Hoffberg about his path to becoming a copywriter and choosing the financial niche, writing long-form sales pages and VSLs, what a new writer should do today to break into financial copywriting, and advertising to the affluent.
--
Rob: Welcome, Jake!
Jake: Thank you for having me!
Kira: Yeah, it’s great to have you here.
Rob: We’re excited to learn a little bit more about you and your niche and how it all came about, which is probably a good place to start. Let’s talk about your story and how you became a copywriter.
Jake: Sure. So, I guess the story probably actually starts in 2008... 2009... and I had a copy of Eban Pagan’s Get Altitude Training—I forget how I got it, but I did—and that was really my first exposure to direct response. This whole world of people that were making money on the internet and running these virtual businesses and putting boards together and getting paid and I just—I thought that was fascinating. I was in direct sales at the time and I was knocking on doors and doing it the hard way and man, it was just so awesome sounding. So I probably spent the next five, six, seven years on and off trying to get into internet marketing and figure out how to run an info-product business and kinda went down that rabbit hole for a long time and tried a lot of things that did not work over the years.
This is all while I was doing sales, and switched sales jobs a couple times, and think it was two years ago—something like that—it was July of 2015—I was running a consulting business and I had that moment that everyone has at some point in their life where they’re just like, F it! I’m done with this! I’m tired of this crap! And I had a not so friendly conversation with my boss,
In the 57th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Heather Dominick who coined the term, highly sensitive entrepreneur—a name for business owners who are more sensitive to the demands of start-up and freelance work. During our conversation, we asked her: • what a “highly sensitive entrepreneur is” and whether it’s a weakness we need to overcome • how to know if you were born highly sensitive—20% of us are • whether there’s something wrong with Rob who is highly insensitive • what being highly sensitive means (and the superpowers HSEs have) • a few questions you can ask yourself to find out if you’re an HSE • how to work (or live) with someone who is highly sensitive • how to approach work (and life) as a highly sensitive entrepreneur • the importance of processes and systems to support your work as a HSE, and • how to network as an HSE.
We also asked Heather about the similarities between HSEs and introverts (they’re not the same thing) and how her business has changed since she started approaching things as an HSE. This discussion is a little different from our typical episode but shines a light on a personality type that many copywriters deal with regularly. To listen, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Ali Brown’s Glambition Radio Quiet by Susan Cane HSE Quiz Heather’s Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 57, as we chat with business coach and founder of the highly sensitive entrepreneur movement, Heather Dominick, about how personality traits affect business success, what it means to be highly sensitive, how to deal with the sensitive people in our lives, and what this all means for copywriters.
Kira: Heather, welcome!
Rob: Welcome Heather.
Heather: Thank you so much. So happy to be here. So happy to be here with both of you!
Kira: Well, when I first heard of you, it was on Ali Brown’s Glambition Radio interview with you. I was on vacation and somehow randomly stumbled upon that particular interview and I remember being like, oh my goodness! This is me! I had no idea that this was a thing and it was kind of like finding out from Susan Cane that I was an introvert a couple of years back when I was like, oh this makes sense! This all makes sense! And then I forced my husband to listen to the interview again so that he would understand why I am the way I am and so ever since then, I knew that we needed you on this show to really help communicate what this is all about to highly sensitive copywriters and copywriters that maybe aren’t as highly sensitive as well.
Heather: Fantastic! I love that so much. Did your husband listen to the interview that I did with Ali Brown? Did that help?
Kira: It did help. I feel like this is already a couple of months ago, I feel like it’s something that maybe we need to revisit every once in awhile just to be like okay, remember why - this is why I’m doing this this way? So it doesn’t fade away. And I think a great place to start is with your story - just, how you discovered that you’re a highly sensitive person and entrepreneur?
Heather: Sure! Absolutely. I’m so happy to share. Well, I would say first that I’m in my 14th year of being self-employed and in the first half of my self-employment career,
Personal branding expert and talented designer, Sarah Ancalmo Ashman is the guest for the 56th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She shared with Kira and Rob (and you) how she became a brand expert—she started out as an ad agency designer working with personalities like Madonna, Jimmy Fallon and the rock group, RadioHead. In the podcast she talks about:
• how she developed her unique design style and why she chose branding as her discipline • the first steps she took when she started her own agency • what branding is and why it is so important to have a strong brand • some of the more important elements that make up your brand • how to identify what make you (and your brand) unique • what you need to know or work on before you engage a designer • why copywriters shouldn’t shape their brand around their clients • her contrarian advice on which formulas you should use for your brand • how to create a brand for yourself when you don’t have the budget to work with a designer (hint: don’t use fiverr)
Rob and Kira also ask Sarah about the things that smart copywriters are starting to do with their brands, where copywriters who want to work in branding can get started and the the text books she recommends you should read if you want to learn branding. To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Sarah Ashman, Public Persona Sarah’s Pinterest MirrorBrand B School Bluffworks Lacy Boggs Ash Ambirge Building a Story Brand The Brand Gap Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 56, as we chat with branding expert and designer Sarah Ancalmo Ashman about working with entrepreneurs and creatives to create jaw-dropping brands, developing a brand strategy, how copywriters should approach their own brand development, and whether having a nice logo is enough.
Kira: Hi Sarah!
Rob: Hey Sarah.
Sarah: Hello, thanks for having me!
Kira: Thanks for being here. I think - I have such a big crush on you because you’ve worked with me on my website and my brand and that’s been one of the best investments I’ve made in my business so I’m glad we can finally have you on the show you can share your knowledge and expertise with everyone at large. I think a great place to start though, is with your story! How did you end up running your creative studio?
Sarah: As always, a meandering path, right? My background is actually in, you know, big brand advertising and you know, design studios in New York. And I worked doing that for about ten years and realized that the projects that resonated with me actually the most, were the ones that involved an individual. Clients that were sort of an individual that we were centering a brand around. I found that there were a lot of opportunities to bring out stories and you know, just really focus on their personality and what differentiates them as an individual. And so what I ended up doing was starting to kind of put my feelers out... and started to work with individuals, primarily entrepreneurs, who were either starting their business or wanting to uplevel, and applying some of the same techniques that I used to develop brands for the Fortune 500 for these private clients. And that ended up being viable enough for me to be able to kind of jump ship from the corp...
Paid search expert (and copywriter club member) Amy Hebdon joins Kira and Rob for the 55th episode of the podcast to talk about search marketing, the tools and skills you need to do it right, best practices for testing and messaging, and whether copywriters can drive quality leads for their own businesses with paid search. Here’s what we cover: • how Amy went from inexperienced copywriter to web designer to paid search consultant • what paid search is and the various places you can participate in it • why copywriters need to know about paid search, keywords, ads and landing pages • how writing for search is different from typical ad writing • when you should write for Google and when you should write for people (you can do both) • why you should work backwards from your landing page before writing your ads • why traffic and clicks are a terrible metric in paid search • best practices for testing ads so you get better insights, and • the tools Amy uses to monitor her accounts and ads
We also talked about what copywriters can do to attract clients who understand search (and want to work with a paid search specialist), how copywriters might use paid search to drive traffic to their own sites, and where the opportunities are for paid search today. Don’t miss Amy’s straight-forward perspective on the future of paid search and why there needs to be more collaboration than ever in this area in 2018. To hear hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Amy Hebdon, Paid Search Magic Find Amy on Twitter AdWords Adsense Joanna Wiebe Unbounce Leadpages Supermetrics DuckDuckGo Indeed Upwork Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the Club for episode 55 as we talk with paid search expert Amy Hebdon about search marketing, the tools and skills you need to do it right, best practices for testing and messaging, and whether copywriters can drive quality leads for their own businesses with paid search.
Kira: Amy, welcome.
Amy: Hi! Good to be on here.
Kira: Yeah, thanks for hanging out with us today. I think a great place for us to start is with your story and how you got into paid search.
Amy: Sure! So, I am one of those people who always wanted to work in advertising. It’s been my dream career, basically, since I was seven, and I majored in marketing communications in school and I spent the next several years temping, trying to find jobs.
At the time, I was living in the Bay area and it was right around the time of the dot com bust, so I wasn’t able to find anyone who wanted to hire a brand new copywriter with no experience. I ended up a few years later... I got a job in New York as a web designer, so I was going to work every day basically hoping that wasn’t the day that I got fired because really, my web design skills were not that great.
I was not that good at coding and I had all these design challenges that I had no idea how to solve. Looking back, I don’t think they actually would’ve fired me, like I think it was fine for what their clients needed, but it was really stressful for me to not know what I was doing and not really know how to do a good job with that. Working in this little design agency... it was a really cramped office space and the woman who sat behind me - there was no space between o...
Copywriter Chanti Zak (aka Chantelle Zakariasen aka the Queen of Quiz Funnels) joins us for the 54th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Chanti started her career as a food blogger, racking up more than 50,000 regular visitors and a big email list before transitioning to copywriting for coaches and other wellness-based businesses. During our interview, she tells us about: • how she went from moderately successful food blogger to in-demand copywriter • the biggest differences between blogging and copywriting • quiz funnels—what they are and what they do • how a quiz can segment an audience—and they don’t even realize it’s happening • how she’s packaged her services to be appealing to different kinds of clients • how she pitches and cold emails clients successfully • what she does to make her emails stand out and get a response • how she batches her pitches to use her time more effectively • website shame and what she did to overcome it, and • the three things she invested in to upgrade her web presence
We also asked her what she would do differently if she had to start over and where she thinks copywriting is headed (hint: interactivity seems to be a big thing these days). Plus we wanted to hear more about her stay in India before she started writing and how that experience has impacted the way she approaches her business today. To hear what she told us, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: The Copywriter Accelerator
Chanti’s food blog Cosmopolitan Buzzfeed Pinterest Ryan LeVesque ChantelleZakariasen.com Wordpress ChantiZak.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Accelerator a three-month program with six core business components designed to help new copywriters lay their foundation for a successful business.
Rob: Participants receive in-depth training, coaching, and feedback from us, which means you get access to us in a private community. Registration is now open and the early bird rate ends on October 27th. Learn more at TheCopywriterAccelerator.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 54 as we talk with copywriter and quiz funnel expert, Chanti Zak, about creating quizzes that hook potential customers, and to make them want to share going from in-house writer to freelance and finding clients fast, pitching podcasts, and how studying yoga in India has made her a better copywriter.
Kira: Chanti, welcome.
Chanti: Thank you for having me. I feel so honored.
Rob: It’s awesome to have you here.
Kira: Yes-yes, so I think a great place to start is with your story. How did you end up becoming a copywriter?
Chanti: Well, I started a food blog randomly enough. I had this paleo food blog when my son was a newborn baby, and I really quickly grew it to like 50,000 unique visitors per month, and I was getting featured on like Cosmopolitan and BuzzFeed and all of these really big publications, so from there this whole online world opened up to me and I started getting writing work as a direct result of my food blog, so what I did is I used it as a portfolio of sorts, and that’s sort of how I started freelance writing and copywriting.
Rob: I’m really curious you started a blog and grew to like 50,000 people.
Kira: That’s a big deal.
Rob: Yeah, that’s a dream that a lot of bloggers have been working for years to do. How did you do that? What did you do to grow?
Chanti: Well, I think it’s easier with food than it is with a l...
Ryan Johnson, Head Copywriter at IWT (short for I Will Teach, Ramit Sethi’s company) steps up to the microphone with Kira and Rob for the 53rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. This interview covers a lot of ground, including: • how after a grueling interview in his car, Ryan failed to get a job with IWT only to get hired a few months later (never give up) • how to get inside the head of your client so you can speak with his or her voice • his process for laying out all the moving pieces of a launch, and • how he maps emotions to his launch plans so customers can’t wait to respond • the 7 deadly email funnel sins • two reasons to use long-form sales pages • the “leap stacking” technique he uses to help his writers uplevel their skill (and what doesn’t work when trying to improve)
Plus Ryan shares the “copy levers” that Gary Bencivenga used to get better at his craft, how he avoids writer’s block, and the one thing he would do if he had to start his career all over. Lots of good stuff packed into this episode. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Ramit Sethi The Briefcase Technique Jay Abraham IWT AIDA Gary Bencivenga Abbey Woodcock Justin Blackman The Headline Project Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, and then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 53 as we chat with in house copywriter, Ryan Johnson, about he became a copywriter and landed a job writing for Ramit Sethi, how he tackles a massive launch, capturing the voice of your client, and how long it takes him to write a 50 plus page sales letter.
Ryan, welcome.
Rob: Yes, welcome Ryan.
Ryan: Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Kira: Yeah, it’s great to have your here, and I think a great place to start is just with your story of how did you end up becoming a copywriter?
Ryan: It was kind of a circular process to copywriting. I didn’t even know what copywriting was at the very beginning. My original interests were in film and creative writing, which led me into a delightful career waiting tables. After a few years of that, my first real job was in instructional design, and I was editing textbooks, and building training programs. I actually ended up designing an associates degree in business. I packaged and edited textbooks on business, and economics, and entrepreneurship before I realized that doing that was with no experience was totally crazy. But it was a good baseline.
But while I was doing this, I can still remember. I was in the middle of editing this 500 page textbook on economics, which is about as exciting as it sounds, and my wife was working as a creative copywriter, and she was getting paid much, much more than me to edit this glossy one page ad. It looked like so much fun and so much easier than what I was doing. I’m like, “I’m doing something wrong, ‘cause there’s clearly a cap on where I am, and there’s no clap over here.” So shortly after I figured out how I could transition into marketing, into copywriting. It’s been a race every since.
Rob: You’re working as an in house copywriter, but what does that look like today? What is the day to day ... How do you spend your time? What are you working on? Those kinds of things.
Ryan: Yeah, so with Ramit at IWT / Growth Lab, I am the head of the sales team and the editorial tea...
When we launched The Copywriter Club Podcast, we made a list of copywriters we wanted to interview and the guest for episode 51, David Garfinkel, was at the top. Known as the World's Greatest Copywriting Coach, David is a world-class copywriter who regularly consults with clients like Agora Financial and GKIC along with several high-level copywriters to help improve the performance of their copy. During our interview, David talked about: • how he got his start as a copywriter • a “this will only work for me” method for finding your first project • the story behind his $40 million dollar sales letter • the mistakes he made as he was just starting his business • how he made the shift to coaching and what he does as a coach • the three things to look for in a copy coach • how to overcome objections with your copy • what mistakes he sees over and over again that you will want to avoid • the importance of “relevant credentials” when making any sale • when you should start coaching other writers • the two or three things to go from good to great as a writer
Plus David talked about what his business looks like today and he shared details about the breakout hit song he wrote for the urology department at the University of California’s Centennial celebration. (This is stuff he hasn't even shared on his own podcast.) To hear it, you need to click the play button below, or scroll down to read a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
McGraw Hill World News Gary Halbert’s Newsletter Aaron Sorkin Barbara (Bloch) Stanny Jay Conrad Levinson Jim Camp KOLBE Copy Chief Breakthrough Copywriting Garfinkelcoaching.com Kevin Rogers Scientific Advertising The Billion Dollar Copywriter Peak by Anders Erickson Agora Financial Fast, Effective Copy Homespun.com David’s Facebook Page The Copywriters Podcast Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 52 as we chat with the man who has been called the world’s greatest copywriting coach, David Garfinkel, about the lessons he’s learned coaching and working with so many copywriters, what it takes to be truly great as a copywriter, how his life away from copywriting makes him a better writer, and how to do an effective copy critique.
Kira: David, welcome.
David: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Rob: Yeah, we’re excited to have you.
Kira: It’s an honor to have you. Yeah, this is the highlight of my day.
David: I know I’ve been looking forward to this for a while now.
Kira: I feel like every time I think of you, David, I think of the beach because I listen to episode 13, Why Customers Buy, while I was running on the beach on vacation last month. I’m just happy anytime I hear your voice because it takes me back.
David: Yeah. I think you mentioned that in an email to me. Which beach? Because I’m about six blocks from the Pacific Beach in San Francisco.
Kira: Oh, this was Myrtle Beach.
David: Oh. Yeah, I went there when I was in high school. I grew up in Maryland. We went there in the spring break or something. It was a very nice beach.
Kira: Yeah, it was great.
Rob: A great place to do some running, some copywriting learning.
Kira: Exactly, yeah.
David: Well, everyone has their own use for the beach. I think that’s a good one, frankly.
Rob: Yeah, exactly. David,
For our 50th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re doing things a little differently. Actually, quite a bit differently. We’ve flipped the microphone and invited Ry Schwartz back for another visit—but this time to ask questions of copywriters Kira Hug and Rob Marsh (your humble hosts for all the other episodes). Ry does his best to get the goods from us. In the process we cover... • Rob’s advice on how to have a happy marriage (obviously he hasn’t had to give it a lot of thought) • how copywriting applies to marriage • the nicest thing anyone has ever said to Kira • what Rob and Kira would look for if they were hiring a “copy cub” • what they do to learn new things every day • the music they listen to (or don’t) when they write—you may be surprised • what Kira and Rob would do right now if they had to rebuild their businesses from scratch • what they’ve learned as they created a coaching program • what they would do if they couldn’t be copywriters any more
Plus what they think is the most important thing for copywriters to do today, Ry’s better-than-expected-but-still-bad Irish accent, a few music clips and more. If you like 80s hip hop, Disney mermaids and great copywriting advice, you’ll want to click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Narcos Chuck Taylors James Wedmore The Voice Hillary Weiss It’s Tricky (Run DMC) I Love You (Climax Blue’s Band) The Things You Never Remember (Dave Brubeck ) Genie in a Bottle (Christina Aguilera) Hips Don’t Lie (Shakira) Ry’s announcement episode Rob’s book The Copywriter Think Tank Tanya Geisler on the Imposter Complex The Copywriter Accelerator Rick Steeves Under Pressure (David Bowie and Queen) The Little Mermaid Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Ry: Hi, all right. I’m interviewing you guys today, that’s fun.
Kira: I’m a little nervous.
Ry: A little nervous? I have some good questions here, I watched Narcos all weekend, so I have a lot of drug-related questions.
Kira: Oh, my god.
Ry: Yeah, it’s just where my brain is going. This almost blends perfectly well with my first question, but we haven’t done the actual intro yet. I’m going to do it in a British accent.
What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then stealing an idea or two to inspire your own work, that’s what I get to do today at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
I also get to put on a terrible Irish accent and I’m doing it because we are flipping the microphone, that’s an awkward thing to say; but we’re turning the microphone on the other side of the virtual table. I get to ask Rob and Kira the awkward questions about life, business, copywriting, and all the amazing things in between. Thanks for letting me do this and thanks for being on your own show, guys.
Rob: Yeah, you haven’t even told us who you are yet.
Kira: We’re just supposed to know after that brilliant accent.
Ry: I’m a ghost, I think we should only reveal it at the end, to see if people could guess who this has been the entire team.
Kira: That’s a good taste.
Ry: Hint, it is Rob’s younger self coming back.
Rob: Much better looking, much smarter, younger self. Yes.
Ry: Yes, who initially turned older Rob on to wearing Chuck Taylors, so it’s is not old Rob, yet.
Yes, thanks for being here. That’s an awkward transition.
I don’t know how you guys do segues so much better than I just did. But, we will start off by talking about Kira’s wedding anniversary because that is currently happening. So,
For the 49th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Sean D'Souza is here to talk about about the psychological tactics that get people to respond to your sales message. Kira and Rob go deep with Sean asking about how he started his business and what he wants from it today. Sean talks about: • how he got into copywriting, then out, then back in. • how a short presentation inspired by Jay Abraham inspired The Brain Audit • the seven “red bags” of The Brain Audit and how they work together • the questions he asks when creating a sales page • the “x-ray vision” problem that books and courses suffer from • why teaching is the best kind of selling • how to establish yourself as an expert • what kind of testimonials you should have on your sales pages (would you believe they should be 1500 words?) • and more...
Perhaps most importantly for overworked copywriters, we asked Sean how he manages to take three months of vacation every year and how his morning routine helps him maintain his energy and effectiveness. These are ideas we need to try. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Leo Burnett Psychotactics Good to Great by Jim Collins Jay Abraham The Brain Audit 5000 BC Superman Article Writing Course Six questions for testimonials Mixergy interview Michael Phelps Bob Bowman The Three Month Vacation Podcast Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hangout with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 49 as we chat with author, speaker, cartoonist, and copywriter Sean D’Souza about psychological triggers that get customers to say yes, creating brand fanatics, how to become an expert in any field, and why he takes so much time off to recharge.
Welcome, Sean. Thanks for joining us.
Rob: Hey, Sean.
Sean: It’s a pleasure to speak to both of you.
Kira: Well, we’ve love to start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter and a business owner?
Sean: I always wanted to be a copywriter. When I was in university, that’s what I wanted to do. I had this goal, when I was going to be 30, I was going to be in this agency. I was going to be creative director of that agency. So it was very clear to me, which is why in university when I was studying accounting and stuff, my grades started to go down for the first time in my life. As soon as I left university, I went to Leo Burnett, which is the … I lived in Mumbai, India, and the kind of branch of Leo Burnett that was there. I went and spoke to the creative director, and she said, “You know you’re just a cartoonist. You’re not a copywriter.”
I said, “Yes, I know that, but here’s what I’ll do. I’ll work with you a month and at the end of the month, you decide whether you want me to stay, and then you pay me. Or you know if I don’t like you after a month, then I’ll leave.”
So it was pretty brash, but they took me on and that was the start of working with several advertising agencies. We’re going back now to 1995, I think, so it’s a long time ago. So I worked in a couple of agencies, and then, at some point, I started thinking, “Well, this is not what I want to do,” and I went back to cartooning. At that point, I was drawing cartoons for these magazines, but also for these organizations. What I found was their copy was really bad, and that my cartoons were getting kind of mutilated or defaced or ...
Copywriter Marcella Allison is the only person who has “cubbed” for the biggest names in copywriting including Parris Lampropolous, Clayton Makepeace, David Deutch and Mark Ford. And she’s learned a lot along the way. Marcella stopped by our virtual studio to chat with Rob and Kira about: • how she got started as a copywriter (twice) • whether copywriters can develop a talent for writing about complex things • how an unexpected kiss from Marty Edelston transformed her career • the importance of mentorship in building your career in copywriting • the top lessons she learned from two of her mentors • how to effectively use the feedback you get from a mentor, and • the lesson David Deutch accidentally taught her about ego.
Plus, Marcella shares the “beginning painter” learning trick she recommends if you want to break into a copywriting niche. This episode is another good one you won’t want to miss. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Most of the people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Ry Schwartz Brian Kurtz F&W Publications Schaeffer’s Investment Research Money Map Press David Deutch Parris Lampropolous Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain AWAI Agora Financial Kevin Addington Bottomline Lori Haller Marty Edelston Mark Ford Clayton Makepeace Stansbury Research Chris Alsop Advanced Bionutritionals John Carlton’s Simple Copywriting System Kevin Rogers Ask Method Product Launch Formula Early to Rise Hay House Natural Health Sherpa Titanides.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 48 as we chat with freelance copywriter Marcella Allison about how she became a copywriter working with A list mentors like Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch and her secret for landing a steady stream of clients without a website.
Kira: Marcella, welcome.
Marcella: Hi, guys. I’m going to be notorious for that now. Like everyone’s going to be like, “I can’t believe she doesn’t have her own website.” You guys are going to hear about that.
Rob: You’re actually not our first guest that didn’t have a website.
Marcella: Oh good.
Rob: At least until they got on the podcast. Ry Schwartz is a copywriter in the internet space, didn’t have a website last year when we talked to him. He does now finally so maybe this will be the spark that gets you a website, Marcella.
Kira: Or maybe you just don’t need it because you’re that good.
Marcella: I don’t know about that.
Kira: Marcella, I think a good place to start is we had met at our titans masterclass, Brian Kurtz’s group and you were my advocate during the hot seat session and I think you were the best. I forget if we called it an advocate. Basically, you were representing my needs and you were the best one there. So I oh you big time and I’m excited to dig more into how you got into copywriting and hear more about your experiences so far. So I think a good place to start is with just your story. How did you end getting into copywriting?
Marcella: Well, one thing, I have to I’ve a big shout out to Brian Kurtz because I have to say the reason I was a good advocate was I had trial by fire at his titans event being an advocate for 30 people that day.
Kira: That makes sense.
Marcella: I did have a bit of practice. I did have a bit of practice.
Kira: I did not know that.
For the 46th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, our friend, copywriter and comedian, Lianna Patch stops by to tell her story (she starts at the very beginning) about making copywriting her career. During the next 40ish minutes share also shares: • Why she chose humor as her “hook” for copywriting clients • her snarky answer to the dumbest question Rob has ever asked • the enormously helpful life hack that would freak out AA • how the rules of comedy can improve your copywriting • how to be funny without being nasty • what she did to land her first (and second and third) speaking engagements • how she deals with projects that scare her
And we cover a whole lot of other ground too. Like what brands are doing a good job with humorous copy and the advice she has for new copywriters. Plus, Lianna is the first guest to tell a joke on the podcast. As you’ve come to expect, this is another solid episode packed with ideas you can put to use in your business. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
The Copywriter Mastermind Boxed Wine CTA Conference Lianna’s Sustainable E-Commerce Post Aaron Orendorf Unbounce New Orleans Entrepreneur Week Conversion World DeepDyve Amy Harrison Boomerang for Gmail Snapcopy.co James Turner Foot Cardigan Jennifer Havice Wistia Dropps PunchlineCopy 5 Ways to Be Funnier in Your Copy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failure, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 46, as we chat with freelance copywriter, Lianna Patch about the challenges of leaving an agency job to strike out on her own, getting attention at conferences, her copy optimization service called Snap, and whether there’s a place for rubber chickens and whoopee cushions in copywriting.
Kira: Hi, Liana. Hi, Rob.
Rob: Hey, guys.
Lianna: Hey.
Kira: How’s it going?
Lianna: Good. Thanks for having me.
Kira: You’re welcome. I think a good place to start is just finding out if you were funny as a kid, and what you wanted to be when you grew up. I feel like that’s the question I want to know.
Lianna: Oh, okay.
Rob: Did you always have a buzzer in your hand for handshakes? And rattlesnake eggs to hand the kids at school?
Lianna: I think I was the unintentionally funny kid. I still have this expression, like I still have serious resting bitch face. My parents used to call me Little Miss Thundercloud because my resting face. I would say things that I thought were very serious and they would laugh at me, and then I would go, “Don’t laugh.” So, it’s kind of like a 180 from there.
Rob: Tell us your story.
Lianna: My story? Well, my dad loved my mom very much and so after they had my brother they were like, “This one’s a dud. We should probably try again,” and then I was born. Fast forwarding to now, I’ve worked in a couple agency settings, it didn’t seem to stick. I was doing my own stuff on the side throughout, and then everything kind of gelled when I took the first Copywriter Mastermind with Joanna Wiebe and I started to figure out that I should pinpoint humor, and that I should focus just on copywriting because I had noticed that I was getting way too deep into editing, especially publications editing, and I hated it so much. But, then I looked at my work schedule and it was like,
Copywriter Abbey Woodcock stops by The Copywriter Club Podcast studio to share how she went from being a single mom and journalist struggling to make ends meet to a highly paid copywriter specializing in complex launch sequences. And she shares a few of the hard-won lessons along the way. Things like: • when you should absolutely NOT buy that course or coaching program • the #1 thing she learned working for Ramit Sethi • how she writes sales pages that make customers think she is reading their minds • the “table stakes” principle for delivering solid copy • what she does to make sure she’s not the smartest person in the room (even if she is) • the surprising thought Abbey has on every single project she works on • why and how she set up systems for her business • how you can get to the point where you can work on large launch projects, and • the worst things she sees going on in the copywriting world today
As we were wrapping up the interview, Abbey saved the best for last, sharing the story of how Ramit Sethi was willing to test her ideas—even though his gut said she was wrong and it would cost him thousands of dollars. You’ll want to hear this, and the rest of the interview. To do it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Brian Kurtz Ramit Sethi Narnia The controversial article PLF InfusionSoft Thebusinessofcopy.com Onlifeandwriting.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could you hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 44, as we chat with copywriter Abbey Woodcock about her journey from struggling single mom to her place on the A-List. Creating systems for your copywriting business, finding the right voice for your clients, and what she thinks of the gurus who say you should sacrifice everything to invest in your business.
Kira: Hi, Abbey. Hey, Rob. How’s it going?
Abbey: Awesome.
Rob: Hey, guys.
Abbey: Super excited to be here.
Kira: Welcome. Well, before we start recording, I think Rob mentioned that he’s been stalking you and aware of you for the past year. I really started paying attention to you when I met you in March at Bryan Kurtz’s Titans Master Class. You gave a presentation to the group about helping creatives build systems.
Abbey: Right.
Kira: Which was spoke to me as a creative who just sucks at systems. With your business partner, you’ve figured out how to make it work. I know we’re going to dive into that and a lot of other things, our topics today. To start, Abbey, let’s start with your story. I know you mentioned that it’s not a rags to riches story. But let’s dive into how you got into copywriting.
Abbey: Yeah. Sure. I always say that my copywriting journey started in seventh grade because I wrote a 30-page letter to a boy in seventh grade to ask him to the school dance. That was my first long-form fields letter.
Rob: Did it convert?
Abbey: No. No, zero convert on that one.
Kira: 30 pages?
Abbey: Yeah, 30 pages.
Kira: 30 pages were necessary, okay. Got it.
Rob: That gives a little bit of context for what we’re going to ask about Ramit and what you’ve done for him, because 30 pages is short for some of the stuff he does.
Abbey: Yeah. Absolutely, I was prepping many years ago for that job. Then I graduated high school, which was exciting.
Former professional basketball player and current email copywriter, Big Jason Henderson, joins Rob and Kira for the 43rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jason shares how he went from Australian basketball star to highly paid email copywriter and in the process talks about: • the too-easy-to-believe advice for writing great emails • how he keeps his emails personal by writing to “one” person • the recommended number of links that should go in every email (jk) • the tools he uses to track clicks and revenue • his go-to writing formula for emails • what it means to sell the click vs. sell the product • which is the better motivator—the carrot or the stick • why there’s no such thing as an email expert, and • how he manages stress and overwork (when he doesn’t sleep for two days)
Another eye-opening episode packed with lots of lessons, tactics and strategies you can use in your own copywriting business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
MECLabs Marketing Sherpa Email Summit Gary Halbert Caleb O Dowd Scott Haines Revolution Golf Clicky Email Response Warrior Course Clayton Makepeace Dr. Flint McGlaughlin Tepsii Arman Morin Seminar GKIC (Dan Kennedy’s events) Ryan Deiss Russel Brunson Tony Flores John Carlton’s Simple Writing System Samuel Markowitz Amit Suneja UFC Parris Lampropolous David Deutsch Shortcutcopywritingsecrets.com Tim Ferris Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copy writers and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work, that’s what Kira and I do every week and The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 43 as we chat with email copywriter big Jason Henderson about what he has learned about sending more than a billion emails, creating high performance email funnels, the things you should do with email that the experts tell you not to do, and why your value proposition is the most important element for increasing conversation.
Rob: Hi Kira. Hi Jason.
Jason: Hi, good to be here.
Kira: Great to have you Jason.
Jason: Thanks for having me.
Rob: Jason, I think we really want to start with your story, but before we get into that, I got to know how big are you?
Jason: I’m only about 6'11".
Rob: Okay, so not that big then.
Kira: Not that big. That’s nothing.
Rob: Yeah, why don’t we start with your story. You’re famous for email, tell us how you got started as an email copywriter?
Jason: In 1996, I was playing professional basketball in Australia, and it was really laid back so I had plenty of free time and the local universities let me go into their computer labs, so I was just going around and I started with Acl and local businesses, and I started doing email and e-commerce back then. Little did I know, that e-commerce was going to be huge, I should have stuck with it.
Yeah, I just started with that and I became ... Have you heard of the about.com brand?
Rob: Yes.
Jason: So back then, they were the mining company and I was the exercise guy. So they basically worked with us to drive as much traffic as possible, so they were teaching us about building email lists, writing articles, attracting free traffic, and for email all they said was, “You know it’s like having a one on one conversation, so if you can do that, then you can write an email.” And that’s basically all I knew. I was like, “Yeah, I can do that.”
I think that’s an advantage for me starting way back then ...
Copywriter and cold emailing specialist, Jorden Roper, joins Kira and Rob in The Copywriter Club Podcast studio for the 39th episode. Jorden is a three time college dropout who lost her job (the same day her husband lost his job at the same company) and managed to find several freelance clients within a month. She shares how she did it, and how she used cold emailing to find clients plus: • How you can do cold emailing that lands clients on day one • The cold emailing formula she used to grow her business • How she used Pinterest to brainstorm her brand • How to be fearless as you “put yourself out there” • How she uses Youtube to attract a different audience to her blog • How much work she put into creating and launching her course • The biggest mistake she sees new writers making today
This one is packed with useful information and ideas any writer, beginner or expert, can use to grow and improve their business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Craig’s List Problogger Job Board Limeleads Pinterest Jorden’s video about haters on Youtube Writing Revolt Blog Cold Emailing Course Mariah Coz’s Launch Your Signature Course Maggie Patterson Jorden’s FB Community Jorden on Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters, and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 39 as we chat with copywriter Jorden Roper about getting fired from bad jobs, and finding copywriting to pay the bills, using YouTube for brand building and outreach, what she has done differently from other copywriters to get an edge, and how copywriters can find great clients with cold emailing.
Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Jorden.
Jorden: Hey, guys.
Kira: Hello. Welcome, Jorden.
Jorden: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Rob: Yeah. It’s about time. We’ve been trying to get you on the podcast for a little while. It’s time you got here.
Jorden: Yes, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much.
Rob: Jorden, I think maybe we should start with your story. I know you’ve shared this a lot with your list, but a lot of our listeners probably haven’t heard it. You went through a time in your life when you were going through different jobs and landed where you are. Tell us about that.
Jorden: Well, before I started my freelance writing business, pretty much right before, I had been working at this full-time job at a marketing agency. I was doing some writing there. It was very stressful. It was a super toxic work environment. I know a lot of people who are probably trying to break into freelance writing can relate to that, like just going to work every day, sitting in your car in the morning, and just wanting to scream or cry or whatever before you walk up to the office.
That’s kind of the situation that I was in. I ended up getting fired from that job. Just a few months before that actually, my husband started working at the same job. When his contract ended, they decided to just let me go, too.
Kira: What?
Jorden: Yeah, we’re both out of work on the same day.
Kira: Oh, no.
Jorden: We walk out of the office together like, “Oh my God. What are we going to do? This is insane.” It was very stressful. Actually, I had some other stuff going on at the time, too, just within ... I think within the same week before this happened,
Copywriter Jessica Manuszak joins Kira and Rob to talk all things copy for the 38th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Jessica specializes in capturing the unique voice of her clients. In this interview, Jessica opens up and shares the details of how she’s grown her business over the past couple of years, including... (we added the ellipsis for her benefit—you’ll see why).
• How she became the top-performing salesperson with absurd scripts • The “mixtape” secret for writing in her client’s voice • Her process for naming products and services • How she “justifies her copy” cuts down on edits by using Google Docs • A step-by-step rundown of her process working with clients • How she really landed several “big name” clients—she says it was luck : ( • The thing she hates most that other copywriters keep doing
Lots of good ideas and information from a successful copywriter who hasn’t been in the game for decades, but is doing well nonetheless. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Ash Ambirge The Middle Finger Project The Little Mermaid Spotify Scrabble Dictionary Saved by the Bell Acuity Typeform World’s Best Boss Mug Neil Gaiman AAA Dove The Copywriter Club Email Lianna Patch Marian Schembari VerveandVigour.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 38, as we chat with copywriter Jessica Manuszak about her career journey, from working in government to growing her own agency, landing and working with big name clients, finding confidence, and what she sees as the biggest opportunities for copywriters today.
Kira: Hi, Jess. Hi, Rob. How’s it going?
Rob: Hey guys.
Jessica: Oh, hi. I’m good, thanks.
Kira: Welcome to the show, Jess. We’ve been waiting. We’ve been waiting for you.
Jessica: Oh man. I’m so ready.
Kira: So, I think a good place to start, Jess, is just how you ended up in copywriting, especially from government finance.
Jessica: It’s funny because it was a completely natural and completely unnatural transition. Right out of college, I went into telemarketing, selling like skeezy online degrees to people who didn’t need them. I was talking to like 74-year-old women, being like, “No, but engineering would really help you with your goals.” It was not good news. But that was the first time …
Rob: I can think of a couple of degrees I might want to get, actually.
Kira: I know.
Jessica: Right, I think we can do that.
Kira: Are you still selling?
Jessica: Yeah, I’ll hook you up … underwater basket weaving. But that was actually the first time I ever realized how powerful personality can be when you’re selling something. Because everyone else was like, “Oh hello, Jane. Would you like to purchase this degree program?” I was leaving them voicemails, it was like, “Jane, this is Jane from the future and I’m so glad you got that degree,” just like …
Kira: Did you really?
Jessica: Well, yeah.
Kira: Did you really leave those messages?
Jessica: Mm-hmm (affirmative), 100 percent.
Kira: Wow.
Jessica: I actually was the top performing salesperson on my floor while I worked there because of those like just off-the-wall, absurd scripts. So I left that, went to work for a school district, where I was managing a multi-million dollar bond project.
Ken McCarthy, also known as the “World’s Most Secretive Copywriter” and “Mr. Internet,” is the guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, jammed full of great advice for any copywriter who wants to grow beyond simply writing for clients. Ken may be the only guy who can talk about speed reading, the origins of the internet, Johnny Rotten, making soup, Tested Advertising Methods, and of course, copywriting—and have it all make sense in the end. Listen and learn: • how Ken become the “world’s most secretive copywriter” • what you have to do to “get good” at copywriting • Ken's recommendation about how to grow your business beyond copy • the “stone soup” method for creating a product • how to avoid the “me too” trap—perhaps the biggest mistake people make online today • the marketing secret Ken learned from a punk rock drummer • the books he recommends to give you an unfair advantage over the other copywriters
Told you it was jam packed with good stuff. It's all here in episode 36. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Ben Settle Eugene Schwartz Tim Ferriss AIDA Mark Graham Mark Andreessen Jim Clark Ted Nicholas The link to Ken’s interviews (updated) System Secrets Martin Atkins Nine Inch Nails Johnny Rotten Scientific Advertising Tested Advertising Methods The Robert Collier Letter Book Gary Halbert Ken’s Copy Clinic My Life in Advertising Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 36 as we chat with Ken McCarthy, who’s been called the world’s most secretive seven-figure copywriter, about how he has built his business from internet pioneer to where he is today, the most common mistakes writers and other business owners are making online, the books and courses he says will give our listeners a competitive advantage over other writers, and whatever else comes up as we talk.
Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Ken, how’s it going?
Ken: Hey, good.
Rob: Ken, welcome to the podcast.
Ken: Thank you very much, glad to be here.
Rob: We’re excited to talk with you. You’ve got a wide range of experience, and I think we could probably go on for hours and hours, but since our time’s a little bit limited, let’s start with your story, where you came from and how you became the most secretive copywriter in the world.
Ken: That’s a really interesting headline or tagline. That was written actually by Ben Settle. He wrote it for me, and he’s a great copywriter, and it was written to actually promote a copywriting info marketing course that I have. He wrote it based on having taken the course. Rather than me write the letter, one of my students wrote the sales letter based on what he learned from me. Now that being said, Ben was already a really good copywriter when I met him. I didn’t teach him everything he knows. He was already really good, but the letter that he wrote was based on the learnings that he got from the course. Anyway, that’s how I became the most secretive seven-figure copywriter.
It’s fairly accurate. In fact, it’s exactly accurate. Very few people think of me as a copywriter, which shows how good my copy is. They just think I’m this guy who does things, but it’s all driven by copy. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything without my ability to write copy, I mean, nothing.
Copywriter (and photographer) Misha Hettie is in the Copywriter Club studio to talk copy and Facebook Live this week. Kira and Rob asked Misha about her business and she shared a ton of great advice, including her thoughts on: • the importance of branding yourself as a copywriter (and not looking like everyone else) • how she became a “brand story evangelist” • what beginners should do to get started on Facebook Live • what is the biggest mistake people make on Facebook Live • her “big rock method” for creating content for Facebook • her “don’t-miss-it” advice to everyone seeking balance in their lives
As usual, there’s a ton of great information in this episode. If you’ve ever thought about using video in your business, this is don’t miss advice. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Misha’s website Misha’s about page Silicone Valley Title Generator Joanna Wiebe Todd Herman 13 Reasons Why Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about the successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s was Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for Episode 35, as we chat with copywriter Misha Heady about using social media in her copywriting business, and what other writers could be doing better there. Juggling her time as a parent, writer, photographer and coach, how Facebook Live has impacted her business and spending an afternoon taking photos of Rob and me in San Antonio.
Rob: Hey Misha.
Kira: Hello Misha.
Misha: Hey guys, how are you?
Rob: We’re great, how are you?
Kira: Thanks.
Misha: Yeah, I’m okay. I’m having a bit of a morning here, and I don’t know if you can her my dog in the background, but I apologize if you could.
Rob: We did hear a little bit but I think was might be able with cut most of that out.
Misha: Okay, I’m sorry. I swear to God. She’s like, “Oh, you’re on a call, let me go freak out about something.
Kira: It’s okay. I think it’s been one of those days for all three of us, which means this is going to be a great conversation.
Rob: Exactly.
Misha: Yeah.
Kira: So, Misha, let’s start with, you know, where you come from. Because you are this multi-talented, creative, big personality, you’ve played a really big role in the copywriter club, so where did you come from. What were you doing before you were in the club as a copywriter?
Misha: Well, Kira, when a man and a woman love each other very, very much ... okay, JK, terrible, terrible joke. So, where do I come from? I used to be a nine-to-fiver, like most people, and one day I lost my job, and I was like, I got to figure this out. It’s actually a longer story than that, but that’s, you know, the gist of it. And in that last position, I had been using a lot of social media tools to kind of grow people’s knowledge of our gallery. It was a tile gallery. This is like way back in the day when Flicker was like the hottest thing around.
To grow people’s knowledge of our gallery, and at the same time I was studying photography more, so that is basically the short story of how I became and entrepreneur, because it’s not a very poetic story, but it’s the truth.
Rob: Walk us this step-by-step. So, you lost your job, and then suddenly you weren’t a writer/photographer, whatever. As for as setting up your business, tell us more about that process.
Misha: Oh, no. It was literally that next day. No, just kidding.
LA copywriter, actor, rapper, and comedian, Jason Pickar, is in the club for the 34th episode of the podcast. This episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast comes with a warning label (for mentions of a controlled substances that are still illegal in most states). Jason's an energetic writer with a portfolio full of engaging (and award-winning) work for his clients. In addition to his career path, Rob and Kira asked him about: • How to get on the stage at The Price is Right (and meet Drew Carey) • How Jason landed his first job (then another and another) in the ad agency world • His creative process—an idea he stole from improv • His “machine gun approach” to making sure his ideas get picked by the client • Writing 100 headlines in an hour • Why companies do “branding” • How he stays creative, and • How comedy and improv strengthen his copywriting
Jason’s agency experience is different from most of the copywriters we've interviewed for the show. So load up your iPod (or other listening device) and pull out your notebook. This one's a good one. You can also click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
The Price is Right Jason on the Price is Right Deutch Drew Carey McCann Erickson MRM TribalDDB ShaveEverywhere.com BodyGroom Monologues Break Media (now Defy Media) Weber Shandwick BrandCenter The Creative Circus Miami Ad School Bookshop LA AdHouse AgencySpy Gilmore Girls Jason’s Twitter Jason’s Instagram Jason’s Facebook Freewordsfree.com Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 34, as a chat with copywriter Jason Pickar about writing for television, working on brands like Dr. Pepper with Madison Avenue ad agencies, how acting and comedy inform his writing, and how to get on the game show The Price Is Right.
Kira: Hey Rob, hey Jason, how’s it going?
Rob: Hey guys.
Jason: Hey. It’s going great. Good intro. I’m down with that intro.
Rob: Yeah, let’s get to it.
Jason: Yeah.
Kira: Okay. All right. So I think, Jason, a great place to start is with The Price Is Right. First of all, everyone needs to watch the video of you on that show. I just watched it before jumping on here. It’s ridiculous, and Jason’s ridiculous, and it’s hilarious. How did you get on the show, and what was the catalyst for even jumping into that arena?
Jason: You know what? That is a very appropriate question, because I appeared on The Price Is Right on the same day that I picked up my severance check from an old agency I worked at, Deutsch. The catalyst was, quite literally, that whole thing had kind of fallen apart. The creative directors, I’d gone through four of them. Finally, we landed on one. My art director had left. It wasn’t the right fit, so we parted ways after two and a half, three years or so. Then I was at home, just watching TV. I was like, “Oh, man, I’ve always loved The Price Is Right. I’m living in Los Angeles, there’s no reason I can’t go on The Price Is Right.”
So I went online, I got a ticket. You go to the studio at, like, 5:00 a.m. Hours and hours and hours before you’re even supposed to be there. I was, like, the second one in line. The key is to just have extremely high energy, be extremely friendly. In the line, they put a couple ringers in there. They’re like,
This is a special "in-between-isode" with details about our new program for new(ish) copywriters called The Copywriter Accelerator. It's all here: who it's for (and who it's not for), what we're going to cover, the bonuses you'll get, how much it costs and details about the 90-day money-back guarantee. For more details, check out www.thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
Click the play button below.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
Sorry, no transcript for this show.
Copywriter Sarah Grear stops by the clubhouse to share how she’s built a successful copywriting business over the past five years. Sarah’s clients include course creators and entrepreneurs about to launch their products. As usual, Rob and Kira ask questions to pull back the curtain and reveal the tactics and ideas that have made her successful, including: • The two-year process she used to identify her niche • How she slowly priced herself out of doing websites (and what she charges now) • Why she does “live edits” with her clients • How she creates a copywriting experience for the people she works with • What she did to land a speaking gig at Rick Mulready’s event and Social Media Week • How she used networking to get 80% of her clients when she was just getting started • Why she created a $1000 course and lowered the price since it launched • How she takes four months off a year (and doesn't lose clients or revenue).
We say this a lot, but this is another must-listen episode for anyone who wants to grow a successful writing business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
The Copywriter Accelerator The Well-fed Writer The Law of Attraction Rick Mulready Pat Flynn Amy Porterfield James Wedmore Social Media Week Copy Camp Maggie Patterson Streak Sarah’s Giving Page 826LA Sarah’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob:Before we get to this week’s interview, we want to tell you about The Copywriter Accelerator, a new 12-week program designed to help newish copywriters get serious about their business. This isn’t a copywriting clinic. Instead, we’ll work with you to improve the business side of your business, things like your onboarding process, choosing a niche, building a brand, and being a smarter business owner. This isn’t a video course. It’s hands-on training with personal access to both Kira and me.
To learn more, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com. Now, on to the show.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 32 as we chat with freelance copywriter, Sarah Grear about writing for healers and creative souls, how she landed a speaking gig at Social Media Week, working with her coach and a team, and taking branding vacations.
Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Sarah.
Sarah: Hey, guys. I love it.
Rob: Hey, Sarah.
Sarah: I’m so excited.
Rob: We’re excited to have you.
Kira: I think Sarah, a great place to start, and this what I’m actually really curious to know, where did you come from? What were you doing before you started your copywriting venture?
Sarah: Cool. Yeah. I totally want to share my story with you. Before I do that, I just really quickly want to acknowledge both you and Rob for putting together this amazing podcasting group. I just want to say when I first started getting my copywriting business going, I actually, the number one referral source for my business was other copywriters, and I don’t think that gets talked about enough, so part of the way I build my business is what you guys are creating, so I’m just so grateful for communities like this, and I just wanted to say thank you for that.
Rob: Thank you. That’s nice of you to say.
Sarah: Yeah. Totally. The way I got started in copywriting and where I came from, I actually went to art school.
Kate Toon joins The Copywriter Club Podcast for episode 31—all the way from Australia. She co-hosts Hot Copy, which we’ve jokingly referred to as “the second best copywriter” podcast. She casually throws out words like “scuppered” and “rubbish” and “bloomin’” as she talks with Rob and Kira about: • the backdoor she opened to land a copywriter job at Ogilvy • the “agency” skills she learned that she applies in her freelance work every day • why freelancing is so much harder than working at an agency • why creating products isn’t the path to easy street you might think it is • how she created products and courses—all while working for her clients • why she’s taking a year off from reading blog posts and articles
And there’s much more in this episode to tickle your ears. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Ogilvy Mad Men The Clever Copywriting School Kate’s SEO Course Rand Fishkin Mustache wax Hootsuite Zencastr Moz Neil Patel QuickSprout Oprah Winfrey Netflix Crazy Ex-Girlfriend This American Life Ira Glass The Sydney Morning Herald The Misfit Entrepreneur (Kate’s Book) Kate’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the Club for Episode 31 as we chat with copywriter SEO expert and misfit entrepreneur, Kate Tune about creating three successful businesses without a plan, SEO copywriting, running a podcast and writing conference and how to rock a hula hoop.
Rob: Hey Kira, hey Kate.
Kate: Hello.
Kira: Hey Rob, hey Kate, thanks for being here.
Kate: Thank you for that lovely intro.
Rob: We try to change it up with every guest and you’ve called yourself the misfit entrepreneur so we thought, yeah it was appropriate.
Kate: Thanks, yeah. And you managed to drop the hula hooping in, as well which is awesome.
Rob: Exactly.
Kira: Well Kate, I think a great place to start is with how you became an SEO copywriter consultant and then we can talk about your job as a chatline operator later.
Kate: Yeah, so I probably went a fairly traditional route. I’m not sure everybody’s route to copywriting is so different, isn’t it? So, I went to university and did an utterly pointless degree in history, Roman history or something like, can’t remember. And then I left and I desperately wanted to be a magazine journalist but I had racked up so much debt at university that I had to get a real job as a, pretty much a secretary. Then I worked in various jobs, in events, in publishing and eventually got hired by this weird agency that was building something called websites, way back. I’m showing my age, now. I worked there for a few years and then I moved over to Australia and managed to get a job at Ogilvy, which is a big advertising agency in America and also it’s over here in Australia, as well.
From there I transitioned into being a copywriter and worked on lots of big brands, global brands and kind of hated it, kind of didn’t like the agency life and as I got older, it got harder. Then eventually I got with child and could no longer be an agency copywriter because you have to work like 70 hours a day.
So I gave it all up and became a freelance copywriter. Whoo hoo! That was a potted history.
Rob: Let’s unpack that jus a little bit. We talk quite a bit with copywriters who are doing freelance stuff but...
Kira Hug and Rob Marsh are back with another “guestless” episode where they talk about what they’re doing right in their own businesses and what challenges they are struggling with. Plus they recap a few of the things they’ve learned from the previous 10 episodes—like the importance of process, being willing to share and teach others without expecting to get something in return, taking time for yourself, balance and much more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Rob’s book Rob’s newsletter The Copywriter Club Marian Schembari Pete Michaels Joel Klettke Case Study Buddy Roy Furr Tepsii Brian Kurtz Mariano Rivera James Wedmore The Copywriter Accelerator (link coming) Ry Schwartz Kate Toon The Hot Copy Podcast Sarah Grear Misha Hettie Ken McCarthy Leave a review on iTunes Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 30, as Kira and I talk about our favorite advice from the last 10 episodes of the podcast, plus what we’re doing right now in our own businesses, what we’re struggling with, and what’s next for The Copywriter Club. Hey, Kira.
Kira: Hey, Rob. How are you doing?
Rob: I’m good. How are you? That’s kind of a loaded question knowing what you’ve just been through that last day or so.
Kira: But how are you doing?
Rob: Yeah. I’m doing great. Things are good, and I’m actually excited to chat a little bit about what we’re doing here today.
Kira: Yeah. Before we jumped into this conversation and started recording I shared with Rob that I’ve been freaking out over the last 24 hours because my MacBook died on me unexpectedly. I guess you never really expect it to die.
Rob: It is the nightmare scenario for ... I just can’t even believe it how bad that is.
Kira: Yeah, because you do realize it’s your everything. It is your business. It’s like your brick and mortar. I was thinking, I was like, “This is almost as if my brick and mortar was just broken into and I had to shut down the business for a day.” I think just timing is never good for something like that, but especially this week. It’s two of my clients’ big launches and I’m working on another sales page, so I was like, “It definitely is not the vest week,” but that’s just how it happens, right?
Rob: There’s never a good week for that kind of stuff, but yeah, this is a good reminder to everybody to back up your hard drives right now. Push pause on the podcast and go back everything up, because you will lose it if you don’t eventually.
Kira: Yeah. This is really just a public service announcement instead of an episode. Back up your stuff now.
Rob: Yeah, sponsored by all of the backup software out there.
Kira: Seriously, all of the laptop rental companies must make out pretty well, but anyway here we are. I am excited to talk to you about what’s been happening in your business and also what we have brewing.
Rob: Yeah, this is going to be I think a little bit different from most of the other podcasts that we do. We did something similar in episode 20 when we reviewed a lot of our favorite episodes from the first 20 episodes. I think we want to do some of the same today, but we wanted to start out just talking about what’s going on in our business, and what we’re doing right and maybe what we’re not doing so well. Maybe we should start with you, Kira, with what’s going right in your business.
Kira: Okay. Lots of things are actually going right, although you wouldn’t know it if you talked to me.
Rock and roll copywriter Pete Michaels joins Rob and Kira in The Copywriter Club Podcast studio to talk about his personal journey into direct response writing. He shares his thoughts about: • how to conduct “deep dive” surveys and asking the MSIQ • how he learned from mentors early in his writing career (and who his mentors are) • adding consulting to his copywriting business (and how he packages it) • the “Snap Shot” he stole from Stephen King
Plus Pete mentions the book that convinced him that he didn’t have time for Facebook. But you’ll have to listen to learn what it is. There’s a ton of good advice packed into this episode. So click the play button below, check out the transcript, or download it to your mobile device and get it in your ear buds now.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Vin Montello Joanna Wiebe Kevin Rogers John Carlton Jason Leister Ben Settle Ryan Leveque Ask Method Book Dan Kennedy Copy Chief Stephen King’s It Stephen King’s On Writing Essentialism Rock and Roll Copy One Good Idea (Rob’s newsletter) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 29 as we chat with direct response copywriter Pete Michaels about his journey to becoming a copywriter, conducting deep dive surveys, adding consulting to a writer’s tool kit and what he calls snapshot copy.
Rob: Hey Kira and Pete.
Kira: Hey Rob. Hey Pete. How’s it going?
Pete: Hey, great. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kira: Yeah, well thanks. Thanks for joining us and I think Pete a good place to start is your road into copywriting because I feel like you’re kind of behind the scenes. You’re not on Facebook so we don’t get to see you in the club, but you’re doing these really cool things that we’re going to dive into today. So let’s start with how you got into copywriting.
Pete: Yeah, it’s a weird road. I wouldn’t even call it a road. If it was on Google Maps, if you could trace it, it’ll look like your drunkest uncle weaving around all over the place. It was a strange road into copywriting and I didn’t really get into it until I guess reasonably late. In my 30’s. Before, like immediately prior to that I was working in marketing for arts organizations and non-profits here in London where I’ve lived for a while.
I’ve always written. I’ve never had a problem writing. I’ve always loved writing since I was a kid, but I think for a while I was always looking for a way to make that a craft, you know. Find a craft that could involve writing and actually, you know, giving something. Doing something of value that you could actually do rather than, you know, when you’re a kid everybody dreams of being a writer of some kind, and you’re not quite sure what that’s going to involve. I kind of almost stumbled into copywriting through a friend of mine who’s a very good direct response copywriter who was doing it a few years before me and I was kind of looking for a new change in career. Another one.
I used to do photography. I used to do a lot of music photography, and events photography, and a little bit of kind of like local news and stuff like that. I was kind of combining that with a part time job working in marketing with this kind of arts organization. Yeah, I was looking for a new way to involve writing in my day-to-day and to work with people.
Obviously I kind of started to learn a little about how that might work with involving copywriting through, you know, working in a marketing environment. Then kind of got talking to this, you know,
Copywriter Marian Schembari joins Rob and Kira on The Copywriter Club Podcast to share her thoughts on a long list of topics, including: • How she landed a job using social media (and why she doesn’t like SM now) • How she convinces clients to focus on the “one” reader • Her process for creating awesome About Pages • Why all copywriters should work with an editor • Dealing with depression when you work alone • How she raised her rates, an • Why storytelling is so important in copywriting
This is a good one! To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Unmistakable Creative Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters CouchSurfing 10X Emails Copyhackers Book Passage Where Stellar Messages Come From XO Jane The Great Value Proposition Test X-Files Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Marian Schembari on how to create an awesome about page, dealing with depression and much more...
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their success and failures, their work process, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 28 as we chat with freelance copywriter Marian Schembari about landing her first job using social media, and why she doesn’t like it very much, the secret writers need to know to create compelling about pages, running a business when you have depression, and how stories are the only reason customers buy anything.
Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Marian. How are you?
Marian: Hi.
Rob: Hey, Kira. Welcome, Marian.
Marian: It’s super weird to hear you talking about me like that. Your voices have been in my ears like every morning as I walk my dogs, so it’s really weird to hear you responding to me as I talk.
Rob: Imagine how weird it’s going to be when you’re listening to yourself as you walk your dog.
Marian: Here’s the thing, though. I love listening to myself. Is that weird? I’ve been on podcasts, and I definitely listen to them, and my husband will come home and be like, “Why are you listening to an interview with yourself?” Like, “Because I sound really smart, okay?”
Rob: I love it.
Kira: And you’re probably learning from yourself, as well.
Marian: Totally.
Kira: I feel like even with this podcast, I told Rob for awhile, I was not listening, because I did not want to hear my voice. I do like listening to Rob, but I don’t like listening to myself. Recently, I did listen to episode 20, and I was like, “You know what? I’m actually learning something.” In the interview, I miss a lot of details that I catch listening the second time around, I think just because I’m trying to get ahead. It does help.
That’s a great segue into the conversation with you, because I originally heard you on a different podcast. It was an interview on The Unmistakable Creative. It was around the time when your name kept popping into my world, into my feed over and over again, until I think I finally reached out to you, and was just like, “Hey, we should be friends, right?”
Marian: “We should be friends. Let’s hang out.” I was like, “Yes, please.”
Kira: Yes. Now you’re here, I think a great place to start would be how you got into copywriting, especially if you could speak to just landing those first few gigs or getting that first bout of confidence. I know that’s what new copywriters are really interested in.
Marian: It’s a weird roundabout story, but many years ago, I guess a decade ago, when I had just graduated from college, it was really, really hard for me to find a job. I was convinced I wanted to work in publishing, and I applied to every job under the sun, and nobody was getting back to me.
In the 27th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with a copywriter known by one name—yep, just like Cher, Prince, and Madonna—Tepsii. She shares her secret for getting referrals before she starts working with her clients, how she landed 10 clients at a conference by asking a few questions and how she organizes her projects and communicates with clients using Trello. And that’s just the first 20 minues. Don’t miss this great interview.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jen Scalia Man Bun Ry Schwartz Hattie Brazely Trello Google Drive Sold Out and Booked Solid Psycho-Cybernetics Melanie Duncan Marie Forleo Danielle Laporte Hillary Weiss Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Tepsii dishes on how she went from a nobody to a superstar copywriter in a single month...
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for Episode 27 as we chat with a copywriter and business coach known by her first name only, Tepsii, about quitting her job and earning enough within four months to retire her husband, getting the right mindset, as well as getting rid of limiting beliefs, and writing with personality.
Rob: Hey, Kira. Hey, Tepsii.
Tepsii: Hey. How’s it going?
Kira: Hello. Tepsii, we’re excited to have you here today.
Tepsii: I’m super excited to be here because if I was a brand-new copywriter, this would’ve helped me so much. I’m really always excited to help the next generation of people.
Rob: We hope that we’re helping out a few experienced copywriters as well, and maybe you can help us with that in sharing some seriously great wisdom today.
Kira: Tepsii, I was just going to share, I first heard about at a ... This is going to sound so posh, which is not my life ... but at a rooftop party in Manhattan, with a pool nearby. I was at Jen Scalia's membership party. I just randomly got an email from her. I like Jen, so I showed up just to mingle. I remember at this party chatting with different women and everyone was talking about you. Here I am, a copywriter. I’m like not pitching myself, but I’m chatting and trying to network. Everyone was like, “Yeah, there’s this other copywriter, Tepsii. She’s going to be here tonight.” Everyone was so excited to meet you. That was the first time I heard about you. I was like, “Who is this woman? I need to meet her. I need to know who she is.”
Ever since then, I’ve kind of just like kept you on my radar and just knew that we wanted to chat with you about your almost like overnight success in copywriting. I know there’s a lot more to it that we can unpack in this show. We can start with just how did you become Tepsii, no last name, like Tepsii the copywriter?
Tepsii: I’m all about just one name to make it easier. My domain name is super easy. I just introduce myself. We don’t have to confuse me with any other Tepsii’s out there. My business anniversary was two years ago. I was a digital nobody. Nobody knew my name. I never got any shout outs. It still feels weird to hear you say you went somewhere and people were talking about me. I think that’s kind of rude that you’re introducing yourself and somebody wants to talk about a whole different person. Like, who they heck are you-
Kira: I know. I was like, “What about me? I’m a copywriter, too.” No, no, no. They didn’t care. They didn’t care.
Tepsii: I apologize on their behalf for that. I care about who you are. My story is that I started out Digital Nobody. I was really interested in life coaching and how to go about making my life more...
Freelance copywriter Josh Garofalo joins Rob and Kira for the 26th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about the importance of choosing a niche (and to go deep into it), what resources he uses to stay sharp, how to get noticed at conferences and working with other copywriters on big projects. He also shares the story of how he got into copywriting and his process for working with customers (this episode is worth listening to just for the way Josh talks about process). Check it out...
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Inbound The Pit Joanna Wiebe Copyhackers MicroConf Josh’s Site HubSpot Joel Klettke Gary V Momoko Price ConversionXL Tested Advertising Methods Scientific Advertising Influence You Should Test That Gene Schwartz David Ogilvy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 26 as we chat with conversion copywriter, Josh Garofalo about finding a niche and breaking into the SaaS market, the mistakes he’s made as he’s built his business, how he networks with potential clients at conferences and what it’s like to partner with other writers on big projects.
Kira: Hey, Josh. Hey, Rob.
Rob: Hey, Josh.
Josh: Hey, thanks for having me. I was actually shocked that you do that intro every single time because it sounds the same every time you do that every single of the episode. That’s pretty incredible.
Rob: I think if you go back and listen, you’ll hear us actually flub a couple of the words here and there.
Kira: Yeah.
Josh: Okay.
Rob: It’s not always perfect.
Kira: That’s funny. As we were reading that, I feel like we got to switch it up, Rob. I feel like we have to just change the copy …
Rob: Should we do something different?
Kira: … or read it differently. I don’t know. This is the first time I’m feeling that push to just like surprise people a bit.
Rob: Maybe we need to hire a writer, see what they can come up with.
Josh: Yeah, I think it’s a good idea.
Kira: Yeah. Josh, what are you doing for the next hour?
Josh: Talking to you.
Kira: I think a really good place to start is you kind of did our job for us and you posted in the Facebook group and asked the group what they want to know and what questions they’d like to ask you, so thank you for kind of giving us a head start but what I was really interested in is the way that you positioned the post in that group. You said that you’re still newish but somehow, you’ve managed to have as much success, perhaps more than some oldish copywriters despite doing a lot of things wrong (or differently). Let’s start … I mean there’s a lot packed into that. I want to hear about, let’s just start with what you’ve done wrong and differently.
Josh: Yeah. I think if you were to sort of take a look at my website especially when I first started, and it probably lasted for the first six months, it was a $100 template from Genesis that looked absolutely horrible. I had, I think, two blog posts on there. I think I’m only up to like three or four blog posts now. I think most people would say that’s not the way to start a business and yet, through that terrible website and two blog posts, I landed two clients and had them on retainer for a year plus. One ended maybe six months ago and the other one, I’m still working with today. Thousands of dollars generated from two blog posts in a Genesis website.
I don’t think that really tells the whole story because I think what I was doing differently is I was hanging out in co...
Business guru and YouTube expert James Wedmore stops by the podcast to share his thoughts about creating a tiered business that brings in income at various levels and price points, how copywriters could be using YouTube to grow their audiences, what he would do if he were a copywriter wanting to create a course, and using the formula “Be, Do, Have” to build a life around the things that matter most. If you struggle to balance work with the rest of your life, this is a must listen episode. Check it out:
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Think and Grow Rich James’ Podcast Stu McLaren Tribe Wishlist Member Inner Circle Mastermind Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 25 as we chat we online marketing strategist, James Wedmore, about the power of creating courses, the value of masterminding with your peers, scaling up, and his ascension model.
Rob: Kira, James.
Kira: How’s it going?
James: Hello.
Kira: James, thanks for being here.
James: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. As soon as I found out about your podcast, I was like, “Please have me on.” I feel like I have to impose, like, “Please have me over for dinner.”
Kira: That was the only time I actually posted a promotion on Instagram for our show because I’ve been such a poor promoter on Instagram and I was so happy that you commented and wanted to be on the show. Here we are and I’ve worked with you. I’ve learned about how incredible you are and how you also attract this really amazing group of entrepreneurs and I know I’ve been able to think larger and think bigger about what I’m doing as a business owner through you and what you’re creating in the online marketing space. I think this episode particularly will help copywriters think a little bit differently about how they’re running their business or the direction it could go.
James: Yeah and thank you. I do feel like, to be a little braggadocious for a second, that I do attract really great people into my life, which is how I found you. I mean by the way, I do have a love hate relationship with Kira Hug.
Kira: What?
James: We’ll get to that in a minute. We’ll start with the love, we’ll end with the hate. I mean, we were like, “Hey, we need a copywriter.” It was first try and it was a home-run. Normally, when you’re looking for people to attract on your team and people to work with, you know, it’s a little trial and error but it was just a home-run and it’s been such a great experience to get to know you as a human being, as a copywriter, and man, I hope we can get into this episode just what my experience inside of has been working with you. Here’s the hate side ...
Rob: There’s wait ... I’m taking notes.
James: Yeah, get your pens ready. I’m going into my 10th year of an online business. When I started, I was the stubborn, cocky, I can do it all myself, I got this kind of person. Copywriting was the last thing to really outsource, delegate, and let go of. I’d been doing it for myself for nine years. I think that was the first thing that you even commented on like, “Wow, you’ve been doing your own copy for this long?” The reason I did my own copy was because I thought I was good at it and I think your first draft of what you put together for us made me see just how much I suck at writing copy.
Now, I secretly resent you for that. I really ... I was like, “Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. My own stuff, my own stories, and someone else can come in,
Direct response copywriter, Roy Furr, stops by The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about writing control-beating direct mail and how he raised his rates from just $2000 per project to $20,000 plus royalties on everything he writes. We also talk about how he writes and sends an email with over 1,000 words to his list every day, what his typical day looks like, and a whole lot more. One word of caution, as we were getting started, a fire alarm went off in Roy’s office. Everyone is okay, but the sudden shriek of the alarm is a bit jolting. If you listen to the podcast while trying to fall asleep, you may want to fast forward a bit.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: Want to sponsor the podcast? Drop us a line.
The Well-fed Writer Perry Marshall Ken McCarthy’s System Seminar AWAI FoamWingCutting.com Clayton Makepeace Workflowy Clayton’s 20 Point Outline Great Leads by Michael Masterson Milton Erikson Story Selling Master Class Breakthrough Marketing Secrets The Copywriter’s Guide to Getting Paid Trello Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 24 as we chat with direct response copywriter Roy Furr about his process for writing control beating sales pages, writing for royalties, sending long emails to his list every weekday, and other breakthrough marketing secrets.
Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Roy. Welcome to the show.
Roy: Hello, hello.
Rob: Hey, guys. It’s great to have you with us, Roy.
Roy: Absolutely. It’s great to be here. I love doing interviews like this, and as soon as I heard about everything that’s happened on your podcast up until now, it was clearly a place that I wanted to find myself too.
Rob: Great. We’re especially glad to have you because you do a different kind of writing than most of our guests have done so far and you’re sort of in a different industry, and so we’re excited to hear a little bit about that and to understand how you got there. But before we get into all of that, I think it’s probably appropriate that we back up just a little bit and start with your story. Did you want to grow up to become a control beating financial copywriter? Is that the kind of thing you dreamed about while the rest of us wanted to be firemen?
Kira: Of course.
Rob: How did it happen?
Roy: Absolutely. I discovered copywriting when I was two and ... No, I was in college and when I was enrolling in college my mom said, “Oh, I think you’d really like advertising and marketing.” At the time I knew that like Superbowl commercials were advertising. I didn’t think it was a great idea, but she really encouraged me to get a major, so I enrolled as a marketing major. Then when they were trying to teach me Microsoft Word, which I had been using for four or five years at the time, I quit my marketing major and said psychology was way more interesting. I didn’t think about marketing much until about five years later. I had a degree in psychology with a minor in English, and my biggest financial success as a copywriter was when my grandma bought my self-published poetry book for herself and nine of her 10 kids, because my dad already had a copy. I don’t think I ever actually made my initial publish-
Kira: Oh my gosh. Is there a fire?
Roy: No.
Kira: I thought it was in my apartment.
Roy: Sorry. I have a super sensitive... We should just leave this in, you know?
Kira: No, we should leave it in.
Roy: Yeah, we’ll say we can edit it out, but we won’t do that actually.
Shanelle Mullin, copywriter and content curator for ConversionXL joins The Copywriter Club Podcast with Kira and Rob talk to talk about what copywriters really need to know about testing, how she picked her career path at the age of 15, what writers can do to network more effectively at conferences like CXL Live (where Shanelle plays a big role) and how she has connected with so many “big names” online. After the last marathon episode, this one is a more reasonable length. Lots to learn here...
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Life Lessons Learned from 10 Years of Marketing Habbo Hotel Rene Warren OnBoardly Klout Joanna Wiebe Gary V Tim Ferris Peep Laja Talia Wolf ConversionXL Live ConversionXL Institute A/B Testing Mastery Psychological Backfiring Buying Modalities Oli Gardner Sean Ellis Jared Spool Krista Seiden Joel Klettke Shanelle’s twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with the seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 23 as we chat with copywriter and content creator Shanelle Mullin about choosing a career at the ripe old age of 15, taking risks, conversion optimization, analytics, and curating content for fast-growing startups like Onboardly and ConversionXL.
Rob: Hey, Kira, Shanelle.
Shanelle: Hey guys.
Kira: Hi. Thanks for joining us, Shanelle.
Shanelle: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Kira: Great place for us to start is with an article you recently published, I believe you recently published it, on Medium entitled Life Lessons Learned from 10 Years of Marketing. It was a great read and I know you mention that you really got into marketing at the age of 15. I would love to start there and find out what compelled you to jump into this world of marketing at such a young age?
Rob: Yeah, what kind of a kid thinks, “Hey, I know what I’m ready to do already”?
Shanelle: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of a weird story. I was probably 13 at the time and I was playing a game called Habbo Hotel, which if you’re not familiar ...
Kira: What is that game?
Shanelle: You create like a little pixel avatar of yourself and then you walk around this hotel and you can chat with people from around the world and you can collect furniture and play games and it was really fun when I was 13 and I was obsessed with it.
Kira: Wait, it sounds fun right now. I kind of want to play.
Rob: Check into that.
Shanelle: Yeah. I decided to look into other people who were making these mini-Habbo Hotels and they were basically just teenagers like me and they were all hanging out on this forum. I joined this forum and I just ended up talking to them and getting to know some of the marketing people and I had no idea what marketing was of course because I was 13. They just explained it to me like simple price, product, placement, and promotion terms and I was like, “That sounds amazing,” for some reason. I started reading about it and by the time I was 15 I had gotten my first marketing gig, which was exciting.
Rob: Where do you go to from there? You know, you’re 15, you’ve basically started your career. Tell us the rest of the story. What happens? How does it unfold over the next few years?
Shanelle: Yeah, so I actually started working for the guy who ran this forum that I was part of.
Direct response guru Brian Kurtz joins The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk copy. But interviewing Brian isn't like interviewing most people. He's a bit like a jazz musician who takes your question and riffs on it—sharing all kinds of great stories and advice in the process. You just let him go. In this episode, Kira and Rob asked Brian about his article, The Next Million Dollar Copywriter, in addition to questions about mastermind groups and what baseball can teach us about copywriting (listen to the end of this admittedly long interview for his fantastic answer). This is one of our favorites and once you listen, you'll understand why. Special bonus: Brian broke our record for the most people and stuff mentioned in a single episode. Check them all out.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Mel Martin Gene Schwartz Parris Lamprolous How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab Breakthrough Advertising Bencivenga Bullets Boardroom Marty Edelston Jim Rutz David Deutch Clayton Makepeace Jim Punkre Judy Weiss Joan Throkmorton Kim Krause Schwalm Carline Cole Bill Jayme Dick Benson Gordon Grossman Titans of Direct Response Dan Kennedy Eric Beteul Arthur Johnson Ken McCarthy Perry Marshall Jay Abraham Joe Sugarman Greg Renker Fred Catona The Advertising Solution Jeff Walker The next million dollar copywriter John Carlton’s course You may not know it when you see it Genius Network National Enquirer Dan Sullivan’s Strategic Coach Mariano Rivera TheLegendsBook.com BrianKurtz.me Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 22, as we chat with marketing titan and direct response expert, Brian Kurtz, about working with A-list copywriters like Gary Bencivenga and Gene Schwartz, what the next million dollar copywriter will be doing, what copywriters need to know today about lists and direct mail, and what baseball can teach us about marketing.
Kira: Hey, Brian. Hey, Rob. How are you?
Rob: Kira, Brian, we’re thrilled to have you.
Brian: I like those fascinations, you know? Gene Schwarz and Mel Martin and a host of other copywriters would be proud of your teaser bullets.
Rob: It might not be quite the level of something Parris would write but we sure try.
Brian: At Boardroom, we call those fascinations and it’s something that ... and you mention Parris Lampropoulos, who’s one of my close friends and a copywriter who we made millions together at Boardroom and he has copy cubs that he works with and I believe he still ... One of the first things he does, he makes them read Victor Schwab’s book and makes them copy the first three chapters of Breakthrough Advertising by Gene Schwartz, hand write copy. One of the things Parris does, I think for the first big chunk of time that he trains his copywriters is teaching them how to write bullets, teaching them how to write fascinations.
Kira: Interesting.
Brian: Don’t worry about the body copy. Don’t worry about the narrative. Don’t worry about the storytelling. Get the copy, get the bullets down. Gary Bencivenga called his newsletter Bencivenga Bullets.
It’s sort of like getting the technique down in a way so that you start really thinking like your prospect, what’s going to get under their skin,
In the 20th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk about the ideas and advice from the first 19 episodes that they've found most helpful in their own businesses. This episode is a bit like a Cliff Notes version of the podcast and a great way to catch up on the show if you've missed any of the previous discussions. But more than just a review, Rob and Kira talk about how the ideas their guests have shared have changed the way they do business. This is a great episode, don't miss it.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Reviews in iTunes and Stitcher Facebook Group Joanna Wiebe Ben Settle The Ultimate Sales Letter The Advertising Solution Breakthrough Advertising Claude Hopkins The Dark Arts of Long Form Sales Pages Amy Posner Lianna Patch Jennifer Havice Tarzan Kay Kira’s Email List Lacy Boggs Rob’s Email List Finding the Right Message (Jen’s book) Ry Schwartz Amy Porterfield Jessica Mehring Kaleigh Moore CrazyEgg AppSumo Entrepreneur Jasmine Star Sam Woods Hillary Weiss Danny Marguiles Upwork Laura Belgray Joel Klettke Roy Furr Brian Kurtz Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 20 as Kira and I talk about our favorite advice from several episodes of the podcast and how we’re applying it in our businesses.
Kira: Hi, Rob.
Rob: Hi, Kira. How’s it going?
Kira: It’s fantastic.
Rob: Yeah, today’s a really good day.
Kira: Today is a great day. We’re pumped up from our previous interview and conversation that was just really ... Gosh, it just gets me so excited about what we’re doing.
Rob: I’m the same way. It’s like every time we talk to another expert, another copywriter who’s doing really smart things with their business, I just get so excited. I get off the interview. It makes me more excited about the work that I’m doing, the clients that I’m working for, that stuff that we’re doing in the Facebook group, and all that stuff. This has been an awesome fun project that we’ve been working on.
Kira: Totally. Today’s episode is really discussing some of the major highlights from the past 20 shows. I think we’ll jump around a bit. We’ll probably going to miss some of them. Also, talking about the way that we’ve already integrated some of these changes or some of these lessons into our own businesses. Some of them we have not, but they’re mostly ones that I or still my list of things to do. I have implemented a couple and I know you have as well.
Rob: Before we do that though, we want to cover two things. That first is that for everybody who’s listening, if you haven’t already taken the opportunity to leave a rating or a review in iTunes, if you would please ... We know you might be driving. Pull over, park the car, go to iTunes, leave us a review. We’d love it if it’s five stars, but even if it’s not, we really want that feedback for two reasons. One, it tells us that you’re listening and that you enjoy what we’re doing. Two, it really does help other people find the podcasts. When there are a lot of reviews, Apple moves it to the top of the list. There are a couple of good podcasts for other writers and we just want to be ranked among those. If you take a minute to rate us in iTunes or if you’re on Stitcher, that would be fantastic.
Kira: Also,
Hillary Weiss is in the house for the 18th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob, Kira and Hillary chat about finding confidence, hiring and working with a VA, Hillary’s love for Andre3000 and hip hop, the lessons she’s learned from building a course and where she’s taking her business in 2017. We tried to find links to her Star Wars Romance Fan Fiction, but so far Google has failed us. If you know where she’s hiding these nuggets, add the link in the comments. Don’t miss this fantastic episode with freelance copywriter Hillary Weiss.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Don’t write words. Write Music. Andre3000 Michael Bolton and Tupac Crew.co Blog The NextWeb Buffer Blog Art of becoming indispensible (Business Insider) Hillary’s old site Are you the icing or the cake? Copyblogger Problogger Alexandra Franzen Danielle Laporte Amy Harrison Hillary’s Website Hillary’s Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal and idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 18 as we chat with copywriter Hillary Weiss about how she got started as a writer writing for publications like Business Insider and the New York Observer, teaching what she knows, and the art of being indispensable.
Kira: Hey Rob. Hey Hillary. How’s it going?
Rob: Hey Hillary.
Hillary: It’s going awesome. Thank you so much for having me guys. I’m so excited to be here.
Kira: We’re excited to have you. Hillary is a friend, and I was just trying to go back to when I first heard about you and our first meeting, and so, to reflect a little bit, I think I heard about you originally on the Unemployable Woman podcast.
Hillary: Oh, yeah.
Kira: A couple of years ago.
Hillary: Yeah, I remember that.
Kira: I had seen you online before that, but I remember listening to that show, and I’m pretty sure on that show you talk about how you got your start as a copywriter and that you had originally reached out to Alexandra Franzen about being her apprentice, or just getting into the industry, and how that really helped you. And I remember listening to the podcast, and I was like, “Ooh, that’s a good idea,” and I’m going to do that to you Hillary. I was like, “I’m going to get you.” I immediately reached out to you, and somehow we set up a meeting, and I remember meeting you in New York City, and I was super pregnant at the time, and just liking you, liking you very much.
Hillary: Yeah, I remember that. You organized that whole lunch, I think, and gosh, it was awesome. Memories. Yeah, and I believe the word I used for Alex was not apprentice. I believe it was actually minion.
Kira: Oh, right, right.
Hillary: She was generous to let me in, so yeah, that’s one of my favorite stories, actually, in terms of how I got started in the sphere. It’s just reaching out and asking.
Kira: Yes. I think a good place to start is with confidence, because I know that’s what we talked about recently when we met up, and I want to hear about the course that you’ve been creating and how you’re helping copywriters cultivate their confidence, which is a challenge for all of us, including myself.
Hillary: Yeah, absolutely. For me, it’s not just to copywriters. The course I’m working on is for entrepreneurs and online creatives, and generally anyone who wants to not just learn to write be...
Copywriter and analytics expert, Momoko Price, joins Rob and Kira for this 17th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about how she has created a unique niche business that combines copywriting with analytics, how she helps clients understand the importance of analytics, the course she created for ConversionXL and much more. Data geeks won't want to miss this episode—neither will any writer who works with clients that need more conversions.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Joanna Wiebe Conversion Optimization FB Group Peep and ConversionXL Momo’s Facebook page Kantan.io (Momo’s website) Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I try to do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 17, as we chat with conversion copywriter and analytics expert Momoko Price about conversion optimization, the role analytics plays in her process, running a live copywriting course and how she’s attracted high-caliber clients like Intuit, Scotiabank, and AT&T. Hey Rob. Hey Momo!
Rob: Kira. Momo.
Momo: Hi.
Kira: How’s it going? Thanks for being here, Momo. I think a good place to start with you, is kind of the story before this story. How did you end up as a conversion copywriter?
Momo: Oh my god. Well, I started out ... okay, so I originally started out in Science. Can you hear me still?
Rob: Yes.
Momo: I started out in Science. I specialized in Evolutionary Biology. Went to grad school for that. Realized that, despite liking science and all that stuff, that lab work was not my lifestyle. I did not want to do that.
And then I had always straddled between Science and also doing Journalism and Writing. It was kind of like a dual strength. So, I hopped over into Journalism right around the time of the financial crisis, and I worked as a copy editor for one of the larger newspapers in Canada, and did some freelance writing and stuff like that. And then as I started to do that ... I was living in Toronto and there’s a pretty healthy tech scene there.
One of the things that really frustrated me when I was working in the news room, at a newspaper, was just you can kind of feel the luddite-ism in the newsroom. It was just the sheer feeling of apprehension when dealing with the internet and technology, and everything that was happening with publishing. I was like this is not where I want to be in my ... I don’t think it’s a good idea to be heading down, despite how much I like writing, I don’t necessarily see this being the best place to be. Like I want to actually be in a field of work that embraces technological innovation, as opposed to running screaming from it.
Rob: Yeah.
Momo: So then I can’t even remember how it happened but I met some people who were working at a couple of start-ups in Toronto, and then there was a guy who was founding one. He was like “I like the cut of your jib. I’m going to hire you.” I worked for him, and then the more I did that, I just started hanging out with more people in tech and eventually, that went from writing for tech and doing some freelance work and then I ... I can’t even remember how I started getting into conversion copywriting. Probably because I stumbled across Joanna Wiebe’s stuff and then when I started realizing that oh, there’s this whole world of writing,
Lacy Boggs joins Kira and Rob to talk about creating a distinctive brand voice for her own business as well as her clients, what kinds of projects she takes on (and how she prices them), the impact creating courses and other content has had on her business and the advice she would give to just-starting-out Lacy about copywriting and building a business. Lacy is an expert content creator. This episode is jammed full of great advice and helpful tips that other writers should pay close attention to.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory
Sarah Ancalmo Tara Gentile Beth Hayden Sally Hogshead and How to Fascinate Lacy’s About Page Lacy’s Website Lacy's Facebook page Lacy’s Library Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I try to do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 16 as we chat with copywriter and secret agency, Lacy Boggs, about telling a good story, creating a unique brand voice for her business, being an authority and her secrets for improving her own writing skills.
Hey, Kira, Lacy.
Kira: Hey.
Lacy: Hey!
Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Lacy. Thanks for being here, Lacy.
Lacy: Yeah, I do love being introduced as a secret agent. That’s pretty fun.
Rob: You are a secret agent, or at least that’s what we’d be lead to believe on your own website.
Lacy: That’s right. That’s right.
Rob: In fact, that’s sort of my first question for you. You’ve got such a unique brand voice. It comes out so clearly on your website. Tell us a little bit about that.
Lacy: Sure, yeah. That was an interesting process I went through about two years ago now. I worked with Sarah Ancalmo of Public Persona for that and she was a client of mine first and then I told her, “Yeah, I need you.” Then I worked with her to get my branding down. It was a really interesting process. I have so much respect for her because she is ... She goes really in depth, you know?
It’s a really interesting process to go through, but while we were going through what she calls privé which is the first part of her process, this idea kept coming up that I was going undercover or that I was pretending to be other people. I have a degree in film. I love film noir. I love fiction and reading mysteries and stuff. It evolved from there that ... I remember asking her, “Is this weird? Can I do this? Is this too over the top?” We didn’t want to be kitschy with it, but at the same time it was so much fun. It felt so good. It felt real. It felt like where I was supposed to be.
Anyway, it was an interesting process to get there.
Kira: How has your brand changed your business and even your life? I know we chatted about this a bit and I’ve worked with Sarah as well and just the impact that a new brand can make. Even on the way that you style your hair, right?
Lacy: Yeah.
Kira: It just changes everything. Can you share any numbers, business numbers, or just any changes in your person life?
Lacy: Yeah. One thing that Sarah says during the process is that you’re branding yourself for the business you want to have in five years, not the business you have right now. It’s very forward-looking. Part of the process was for me to define who would be my ideal customer if I were thinking bigger. This was two years ago, but five years out, who do I want to be working with? What do I want to be doing?
Laura Belgray joins Kira and Rob to talk about everything from her work processes (she writes and brainstorms realtime with her clients watching via Skype) and finding confidence to what she would tell herself if she could go back in time to when she was just staring out and why she hasn't chosen a niche for her work. It's an in-depth discussion with the only copywriter Marie Forleo chose to create a copy course with. You don't want to miss this one.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Laura Roeder The Copy Cure Marie Forleo B-School Laura’s gross out blog post Laura’s newsletter (and website) Amy Porterfield Michelle Martello Awesome Screenshot Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at airstory.co/club.
Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Kira: You are invited to join the club for episode 15 as we chat with copywriter Laura Belgray, about her quirky brand, how she works with clients, her copywriting course, and where she finds the clients she loves to work with the most.
Rob: Hey Kira and Laura.
Kira: Hello. Hey. How’s it going?
Laura: Oh it’s going great. You’re asking me?
Kira: I’m asking both of you.
Rob: You’re the guest Laura so …
Kira: We only care about you. We don’t really care about each other.
Laura: Okay, if you don’t care about Rob, it’s going great for me. Thank you.
Rob: Laura, I am curious about your brand. It seems like a pretty good place to start. You have this sort of quirky humorous brand. We’re always told that we should niche down and yet it doesn’t feel like you’ve niched your brand at all. Would you tell us a little bit about the thinking behind how you present yourself to the world?
Laura: Sure. I mean I got to say I’m so glad that nobody told me that. I didn’t really look into how to set up my brand because it’s sort of evolved almost by accident, back when I was a promo writer for TV and started dabbling with private clients. It was never my intention to build the business of private clients. In fact somebody, my friend Laura Roeder, who you might know, told me, gave me advice way back when. She was like, “Don’t work with entrepreneurs. Stick with TV because entrepreneurs are so cheap.” It turned out to be not so true. They might have been back then, but entrepreneurs now, I think the common wisdom is invest in yourself, invest in your business, invest in the best and they will pay good money for great copywriting. They know how important it is.
It’s become my business, and I never knew to niche down or niche down or however you pronounce it, and I’m really glad I didn’t know that because I think that I would go nuts writing for one kind of client. I’ve written a lot for say life coaches, and health coaches, and nutritionists, and people like that. The more I serve those clients, the more they come to me, the more I feel like, “Oh, everybody’s doing the same thing, everybody wants to say the same thing, everybody serves the same kind of client with the same kind of needs.” How many different ways can you say level up your game? You’ll step into your brilliance or … light a fire under your butt, or spark your creativity. It becomes very hard when you’ve written for so many of the same kind of client to come up with new ways of saying something, even though there are a million ways to say the same thing. You just burn out.
The one and only Joanna Wiebe, who invented the title, conversion copywriter, joins Rob and Kira for the 14th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. They talk about Joanna's ambition to be a dermatologist (she's never talked about this publicly before), dropping out of law school on the first day, being a creative writer (and how that was a mistake), what she would do if she had to build her business from scratch today, where Joanna finds inspiration and a bunch of other copy-related questions. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Copyhackers Intuit The copywriter mastermind Fresh Skin Care Products Neil Patel Rob's Newsletter (which Joanna says is “really good”) Brain Clark Copyblogger Tim Grahl Jen Havice Deep Dyve Joanna’s post on time management Todd Herman Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Sales Letter Breakthrough Advertising Joel Klettke Sam Woods Dan Martell AirStory Laura Weaver Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 14 as we chat with the original conversion copywriter, Joanna Wiebe, about how copywriters can build a platform to get noticed, how she built her list, and what she would do differently if she had to start over today, how writers can command bigger paychecks, and what she’s learned working one-on-one with writers in her mastermind group.
Kira: Hey Rob. Hey Joanna. How’s it going?
Rob: Hey Joanna.
Joanna: Hey guys. Nice intro. I love it. Your voices are both very radio friendly. It’s amazing.
Rob: Maybe we need a radio show instead of a podcast.
Joanna: NPR will pick this up, so don’t worry.
Kira: That’s the goal.
Rob: Joanna, we are really thrilled that you’re willing to chat with us. Maybe we could start with you just telling us a little bit about your story. I noticed on your, on the Copy Hackers site in your bio you mentioned that if you weren’t a writer you’d be a dermatologist, which kind of makes me laugh because I cannot even think of myself doing that sort of thing. But tell us a little bit about just your history and your story and how you became a writer.
Joanna: It’s so long. I fell like it’s, like I have to get much better at editing myself when I speak, so apologies. Or that’s a terrible way to set it up actually. This is going to be a very exciting story. Are you ready?
Rob: There you go. We’re ready.
Joanna: I fell into copywriting. I had been a law student and I graduated.
Kira: Oh wow.
Joanna: Yeah.
Kira: Didn’t know that.
Joanna: No, for two whole days. I love the idea, like I love the LSAT. I finished my English degree. I went lived in Japan. Of course in Japan I was like isolated in the middle of Hokkaido which is the northernmost island and I was in the very middle of it. It’s snowing constantly for like nine months of the year. I was very isolated and I got some LSAT books and I just started practicing the LSAT. I went through thousand LSAT practice books and I really loved it. I loved the game side of it so I was like, “Well, maybe I’ll just like go and see if I can like, what if I just like become a lawyer. Okay, I could do that.”
I took the LSAT and I got into law school. It was actually the night before, the night before my first day of law school my dad died, the night before. You’re like, “Oh crap.
Jennifer Havice talks about how to do customer research, how writing a book has changed her business, the #1 thing she's done to move her copywriting business forward in the past year, what she's learned from horses and a ton of other great advice on the twelfth episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Don't miss it.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Jen and horses Peep Laja Copyhackers/Joanna Wiebe Jen’s book: Finding the Right Message Breakthrough Advertising Joe Sugarman’s book: Advertising Secrets Rob’s Book: Telling Your Brand Story James Turner Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Rob: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club.
Kira: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about your successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I try to do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for episode twelve, as we chat with freelance copywriter and marketing expert, Jennifer Havice, about conversion copywriting, how to do customer research and the impact of publishing a book on her business.
Kira: Hello. Hello, Rob. Hello, Jen.
Rob: Jen, Kira.
Jen: How are you guys doing?
Rob: We're good.
Kira: I'm pumped.
Rob: Yeah, excited.
Kira: Jen, to start, I would love to hear about your work with horses because I know that's a passion of yours and I want to tie it to what we're talking about. If you could tie and connect your work with horses and about hobby and interest into business, what have you learned from your work with horses that has helped you in business?
Rob: That's maybe a question you haven't had a lot on ...
Jen: I haven't but it's actually a very good question because ... and it may still happen. At one point, I was working with my trainer to put together some resources for women riders and to help them have better relationships with their horses. There's just so many actually interesting life lessons that you can take from working with horses and there are things that are not only just life lessons but I've applied to my work and writing. Things like, clarity of the message, making sure that you're being very direct in your communication.
Especially with animals, they need very clear communication, they need to know what you're talking about. They get very frustrated when you're giving them lots of different cues and mixed signals, which is something that happens on websites, as we know, and other forms of communication that we work with. Yeah, it's interesting working with animals and that relationship and really needing to be honest and transparent and direct because they can totally see right through you.
Rob: Jen, I am curious, sort of stepping away from the horse training thing, how did you get started as a copywriter? You've got a lot of big clients and people who depend on you for the copy that you do and a lot of people saying good things about you, people like Peep Laja and others? How did you get started and how did you get to where you are today?
Jen: That's very kind of you. Well, it's funny, I started writing online, gosh, probably about almost eight years ago and really got into blogging, of all things, and was writing some social commentary online for myself and for some other sites. As I was trying to promote that and get some of my writing seen more, I was learning everything I could about social media and how do you promote yourself and get yourself out there and everything to do with online marketing. What ended up happening is people started to come to ...
In the 11th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with direct response copywriter Amy Posner running an agency and her move to freelancing, her lead magnet and what she includes with it to close more projects, her sales process and how she closed a $27,000 project, and the advice she would give to a copywriter who is just starting out. Great advice here. Don’t miss it.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory The Copywriter Mastermind Kolbe Profile Amy's Info Kit Ramit Sethi Amy's Website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: KH: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at airstory.co/club.
RM: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work process and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I try to do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
KH: You’re invited to join the club for episode 11 as we chat with freelance copywriter Amy Posner about her client proposal process, cold prospecting, being a direct response copywriter, and her thoughts about certifications for copywriters.
Thanks for coming back, Amy. I feel like we should share that we already have a interview due, and had a conversation with you, and it erased by accident and it was gold. It was pure gold.
RM: We lost it, and we are sorry, but we are grateful to have you back.
AP: Yeah. I hope I can do whatever magic it was last time. I can’t remember.
KH: The good thing is, it’s been a couple of weeks, so I have actually forgotten most everything we talked about, so this all feels fresh and new to me. We’ll just start from scratch here.
AP: Sounds good.
KH: To start, Amy, I know that you’ve had a really evolved last year. You changed a lot in your business, and you joined The Copywriters Mastermind. Could you just share just kind of an overview of how your business has changed over the past year?
AP: Wow. That’s a big question. I’ll preface it by saying, I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time and I seem to thrive on change, so that’s kind of like my MO. I’m not sure that that’s the best thing, but what’s happened this year has been really good. I have resisted choosing a niche for many years. I kind of niched in copy as opposed to like in a, in an industry sector.
One of the things that I realized, at some point last year, was that I wanted to streamline my business. I started this ... What is this? 2016? The end of 2014, I developed this little mantra, which was “work less, earn more.” I set about trying to figure out, “How do I do that?” What I realized was I get bored easily, so I’ve always really enjoyed diversity. Doing different things. Working for different clients. I did a lot of jobs that were involved and complicated and many of them were one-offs.
Sometimes clients would come back after a year or two but I didn’t have a lot of regular, repetitive business. That meant two things. One is that I was learning. I was taking a big learning curve all the time, and I was enjoying that for a long time.
The other thing was it meant I was always on the hunt. I decided that that wasn’t the most efficient way to run my business, so I looked for ways to streamline my efforts, and fulfill this “earn more, work less” kind of thing that I set up for myself. I don’t know if I answered your question exactly, but those are some of the broad strokes.
RM: Amy, I’m really curious. You mentioned that you haven’t really niched yourself except to say that you’re a copywriter, but in a lot of ways you’ve, over the last few years, sold yourself as a direct response copywriter.
In the 10th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with “don't-call-him-an-A-list copywriter” Ben Settle about whether he really works 10 minutes a day, his process for writing the Email Players newsletter, his approach to learning (and a great list of books and courses he recommends) and a whole bunch of other subjects that copywriters can learn from. The audio is a touch fuzzy in parts, but what you’ll take away from this episode more than makes up for it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: elBenbo’s Lair The Copywriter Club Facebook Page Persuasion Secrets of the World's Most Charismatic and Influential Villains CopySlacker Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Sales Letter John Carlton’s Kick Ass Secrets of a Marketing Rebel Start with No by Jim Camp Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz Ken McCarthy’s Copywriting Clinic Gary Halbert’s Newsletter Scott Haines Gray Bencivenga's 7 Master Secrets for Copywriters Matt Furey’s Email Course Jim Kamp and Michael Senoff Interview The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert Paul Hartunian’s Million Dollar Publicity Course Email Players Newsletter Parris Lampropolous Product Launch Formula Eugene Schwartz talk to Philips Publishing Bob Bly Bob Bly Interview with Michael Sennoff Brian Kurtz Victoria LaBalme Rock the Room Ray Edwards Agora Financial David Deutch Beverly Hills 90210 Ben’s Podcast Jonathan Rivera Ryan Lee Ben’s Old Podcast BenSettle.com Dan Meredith Ben’s Zombie books Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: KH: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
RM: You’re invited to join the club for episode 10 as we chat with A-list copywriter Ben Settle about mailing his list every day (or more), pulling in six figures by working ten minutes a day (or less), zombie fiction, and stirring up controversy.
KH: Hey Rob, hey Ben. How’s it going?
RM: Ben.
BS: It is going good. I do have to say one thing, because I gotta keep the record clear on this. I can’t let you guys get away with this.
RM: You’re gonna say you’re not an A-list copywriter.
BS: That’s exactly what I was gonna- I’m not even close to that. Not only am I not in the same league, I’m not even in the same sport as- And I know several of them and I can just tell you, I don’t work as hard as they do. I don’t have their talent either. Anyway, I just wanted to clear that.
RM: For the record, I put that in on purpose knowing that you were going to say that exact thing, because I’ve been on your list long enough to know you don’t talk about yourself that way.
BS: And I gotta give you guys some props on something.
KH: Ooh, all right.
BS: Now, Kira, when you first contacted me and you kind of self-deprecated, you’re like, “Well, the name of our podcast isn’t ... that cool.” Something.
KH: Did I say that? Oh no.
BS: But here’s what I think. I think it’s a perfect name because it’s so clear. There is no question what this is about. Like, you’re not trying to get fancy. I actually prefer that, so I wanted to give you guys some-
KH: Sorry Rob. Rob came up with it, so that’s all him.
RM: It’s not nearly as cool as having a lair.
BS: It’s not a lair. A lair is- Are you guys both in there? Are you both in El Benbo’s lair?
RM: We are.
KH: Yeah! I just joined recently.
BS: God. You know, that’s a whole other podcast in and of itself. It’s so crazy.
RM: Exactly. Hopefully after we’re done talking, we’ll still be part of the lair, we won’t be kicked out. But we’ve got some questions. We really want to dig into the real Ben Settle and wha...
In the ninth episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter Tarzan Kay about her very unique name, how she seemingly came from nowhere and now is everywhere, money and rates, how she handles email and so much more. And before anyone leaves a comment or emails in anger, yes, Rob knows it’s "Cloud City" not "Sky City." But under the hot lights of our sophisticated sound studio, he simply misspoke. Sorry about that Star Wars fans.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Tarzan’s Website Copyhacker’s Email Challenge Kate Northrup Money a Love Story Barbra Staney - Overcoming Underearning Money Boot Camp Copyhackers Tarzan's end of year blog post Danielle LaPorte Teamwork Asana Copyhackers for Hire Rob’s How to Set Up Your Home Office Article Tarzan’s Newsletter (bottom of the page) B-School Amy Porterfield Product Launch Formula Sales Page Swipe File Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: RM: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts; ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits; then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I try to do every week on The Copywriter Club Podcast.
KH: You’re invited to join the club for episode nine as we chat with freelance copywriter, Tarzan Kay about her very unique name, money issues, going pro, and how she completely dominated Rob in the Copy Hackers’ email challenge.
RM: Hey Kira and Tarzan.
KH: Hello.
TK: Hey guys. I like that intro.
RM: We try to change it up a little bit. Tarzan, to start out, I think we have to ask about your name. You have the most unique name of any writer that I’ve talked to. Will you tell us the story about how you’re descended from the Greystoke family on one side and the administrators of Cloud City on the other side?
TK: Yes. It happened in two separate times of my life. About five years ago I was about to publish a book and my old name, which I’m going to leave in the mystery, my old name someone had it and someone was very successful at promoting these Christian family planners, and so not my brand, and I didn’t want the competition on Google. In any case, I was ready for a new name. I thought my old name was too soft. I wanted something more powerful. Then K is in my family name so Kay, I just went with that. Tarzan, it just was the name that came to me and I didn’t understand it at the time but I knew it was my name so I changed it. Over the last few years it’s been really interesting to understand it backwards. I didn’t understand it at the time but now when I show up in a room I have to show up really powerfully and that includes on the internet, on my blog, in my newsletters, everywhere I go. You can’t not walk into a room and say, “I’m Tarzan,” and hang your head down, and think that no one’s going to ... people are going to just accept that, because they won’t.
RM: Do you ever walk into a room and do the whole [makes Tarzan yell] kind of a thing?
TK: No. Initially I was really wanting to distance myself from the Tarzan that everybody knows and now I make jokes about it. My husband’s name is Jay so you can imagine how many jokes we get about Tarzan and Jay. I just laugh about it and now I don’t make it a thing anymore. I just, “Hey, I’m Tarzan and I’d like to buy these groceries,” or whatever. I guess you don’t introduce yourself at the grocery store but you see what I’m saying. I just blow past it and go on to the next thing, but I have to embody Tarzan. Initially I had contractors that I worked with and they would hire me to work with their clients and they’d be like, “Oh, I can’t call you Tarzan to my clients. It’s not gonna look professional. I’m just gonna continue referring to you by your old name,
In the eighth episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with content creator Dan Foley, one of the co-founders of Tailored Ink. Dan talks about the best sandwiches in New York City as well as the challenges of building a writing agency and what he thinks makes a great writer. This is one of our shorter episode (partly due to an audio malfunction) so it's an easy one to check out...
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Tailored Ink The New York Sandwich Project Minetta Tavern LinkedIn BNI Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: KH: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I try to do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
RM: You’re invited to join the club for episode eight as we chat with Dan Foley, founder of Tailored Ink, about starting a writing agency, landing big name clients like Uber, Google, and Salesforce, and perhaps a thought or two about the best sandwiches in New York City.
KH: Hey, Rob. Hey, Dan. How’s it going?
RM: Hey, Dan.
DF: Hi, Kira. Hi, Rob. How you guys doing? Thanks for having me on.
RM: We’re glad to have you.
KH: Yeah. I feel like we should start with the best sandwiches in New York City. That’s clearly the most important part of this entire conversation.
RM: That’s right. Dan, you used to keep a blog. I think you called it “The Sandwich Project.” I don’t know if you’ve updated it recently, but I looked through … I’m a big fan of sandwiches and looked through it. I’m jealous that I don’t live in New York City where I can try all of these places that you’ve recommended. Tell us about your favorite sandwiches.
DF: Oh, man. It’s like picking a favorite child, right? You have so many … The reason why I started this project was I just moved here from South Korea, and I wanted to do something to put me on the New York writing map, but something that was benign, and relaxed, and fun. When I lived in Korea, there were no good sandwiches. They had great food, but sandwiches weren’t one of them, so what I did was I started exploring the city, and what I found was finding the best sandwich was impossible, but maybe finding the best type of a sandwich was great.
Like for instance, my favorite burger was at this restaurant called “Minetta Tavern” that’s over in like West Village, Greenwich Village area, and it was just this knockout burger. The cool thing was the restaurant was a place where Hemingway and writers like that used to like hang out, and drink, and eat burgers, so it had that very writerly feel to it as well.
RM: That’s cool.
DF: Yeah.
KH: Is this website or blog still going? Do you still venture out and find the best sandwiches?
DF: Because I’ve been so busy running the company, I haven’t had as much time, but I did … So, I do actually have two or three posts that will be pending and will be coming out in early 2017, so yeah. Be looking for those for sure.
KH: That’s great. Yeah.
RM: Can we get a big list of places to check out the next time that I am in the city so I can check them out?
DF: Oh, absolutely.
KH: Yeah, so now, Rob you have to visit this winter. We’ll hang.
RM: That’s right. Yeah, we’ll be there. We’ll be there soon. Dan, you mentioned you started this as a benign writing project, but you’re obviously doing something a lot bigger now. Tell us a little bit about Tailored Ink and just maybe the genesis of that idea.
DF: I’ve been working as a freelance writer part-time, but I wanted to … I want to try to get back to my roots, and one of the reasons why became … why I was an English major in college was because I wanted to teach,
In the 7th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with freelance copywriter Jessica Mehring about her experience leaving Hewlett-Packard for the world of freelance. Jessica also shares her experience niching down her business and writing the book on white papers—as well as the effect that book had on her business. Be sure to listen to the end when Jessica talks about the difference between content and copy.
Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Jessica’s book on White Papers Jessica’s Copyhackers Post The Content Lab Content Chemistry ConvertKit The Ry Schwartz Episode Fascination Advantage Fascinate by Sally Hogshead Content Lab Twitter Horizon Peak Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity
BONUS: Jessica has created a free 4-part email course on how to build a copywriter portfolio that impresses prospective clients. Register here to get the first lesson right away. Full Transcript: RM: So what if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work. That's what Kira and I try to do every week on The Copywriter Club podcast.
KH: You're invited to join the club for episode seven as we chat with freelance copywriter Jessica Mehring about writing for technology companies, moving from a full-time position to freelance, building a course and the power of choosing a niche.
RM: Kira, Jessica, how's it going?
JM: Great! I'm so happy to be here with you guys.
KH: I'm happy too.
RM: Yeah, we're stoked. This is going to be, I think, a fun conversation.
JM: Absolutely.
KH: I feel like it could be a beast of a conversation. I know we only requested a certain amount of time from you but after doing some research, I feel like we could talk to you for a couple of hours.
JM: Research? Oooh! Okay. Let's start, what did you find out? What juicy details do you have about me?
KH: I think, you know what I learned is that you can do just about everything that even ... we'll get into that. Even though you specialize in white papers, reports, blog posts, long form content that sells, you can write a killer email and you can write a killer sales page, it makes me jealous to be honest.
RM: Yeah, woman of all trades.
JM: Thank you, thank you.
KH: I think a good place to start is to start with how you transitioned to the freelance world from your career at a top creative agency.
JM: Yeah. I actually had a couple of careers, if you call them careers, a couple of different roles before I went full-time with my main business, Horizon Peak Consulting. I did work for a top creative agency for years as a consultant who also did project management and copywriting and all that fun stuff. I also worked for a large computer corporation, again, as a communication specialist, copywriter, online merchandising specialist, all that fun stuff.
The last real full-time role that I had was at, the computer corporation was Hewlett-Packard actually. I've worked with Hewlett-Packard in various capacities for many, many years. I was a full-time employee for them at that time. I had a good team, it was good work, but I was just ready to get control over my time and get control over the projects that I worked on. I got tired of being told what to write. Really, that's what it boiled down to for me, in addition to wanting more control over my time and being able to take a vacation without clearing it with my boss first. The real big motivator for me was just being able to pick and choose the writing projects that I was doing.
I had been building my freelance portfolio and building Horizon Peak Consulting on the side of my full-time job for a few years. This is not like a big leap for me.
In the sixth episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Luke Trayser, Senior Copywriter at midwestern advertising agency Ivor Andrew. Luke shares his thoughts about writing on Medium, using humor in his copy, and what copywriters might expect to earn while working at an agency. Listen to the episode, then check out Luke's writing advice on Medium. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Ivor Andrew Luke’s Articles on Medium Simple Truth How to be a Copywriter A place to interact with other copywriters HyperInk Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull Ogilvy on Advertising Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins Luke’s Twitter Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: KH: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I try to do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
RM: You're invited to join the club for episode six as we chat with Luke Trayser, copywriter at Ivor Andrew, about writing for an ad agency, publishing on Medium, ghosting e-books, and his thoughts on how to be a copywriter.
KH: Hey, Rob and Luke. How are you guys doing?
LT: Hey there, Kira. Yeah. I'm doing good.
KH: Good. I think a good place to start, Rob, you originally found Luke when we were thinking of people that would be a great addition to this podcast, and you mentioned Luke, so I want to hear from you. What really stood out to you about him when you found him on the web?
RM: I was looking around for writers to follow on Twitter, and I stumbled across Luke's profile somewhere, I don't remember, and clicked through to some stuff that he had been writing on Medium, I think, in particular the article How To Be A Copywriter, or How To Be A Writer, and it covered, I don't know, 12 things that you want to do. I thought, as I was reading through this, Luke might be fun to talk about, or talk to.
Luke, my first question for you is why Medium? Why not your own website or place where you own the real estate?
LT: Well, I've done WordPress sites in the past, and they're pretty satisfying to actually work out in the back end, but it's also really time consuming. Something I really liked about Medium was how easy it was to just get in there, write, and publish. While you don't have total control over it, it does look pretty nice. It has a really nice built-in audience too. Yeah. It was just really easy for me to have an idea, crank it out in a hurry, without anything tripping me up like any light HTML or CSS or anything like that. Yeah. I found it really appealing, the way it was connected.
RM: Do you see most of your readers are coming from other people on Medium? How does that audience work in generating readership for what you do?
LT: Yeah, using the tags for every article that goes up there, I stumble into new people. Yeah. It's a great way that I've made new friends without even meeting them face to face, like you two, a couple of good examples of that. Yeah. It's always really mind-blowing to me that people can just find something by someone they don't know and have it really resonate with them, and then a relationship can build from there. It's pretty cool.
KH: Luke, did you start writing on Medium to find clients for your current agency work, or did you start this before that? Could you just connect the dots to your background in writing?
LT: Sure. Yeah. I first heard about Medium when I started my job in Chicago with an agency called Simple Truth. It was a great place, and one of my bosses told me about it and said I should give it a shot. We published a bunch of weird things, namely a fellow copywriter and I had some free time one day,
In the fifth episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob interview each other about work processes, research, working with customers and the two things that have made the biggest difference in their careers. This one is a bit long, but still worth a listen. Check it out by clicking the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Actionable Books Kira’s sales pages (coming soon) Fast and Furious Movies Case Study Buddy Femgineer Talia Wolf Jen Havice ConversionXL Agency James Wedmore The Ry Schwartz Episode Jessica Mehring Proposify Balsamiq Adobe Illustrator Breakthrough Advertising Ash Abirge Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: RM: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I try to do every week at the Copywriter Club podcast.
KH: You're invited to join the club for Episode 5, as Rob and I interview each other about our businesses, how we got where we are, clients, the projects we're working on now, probably have some rants in there, or I might at some point.
RM: Yeah, we'll see how that goes.
KH: Hey, Rob. How's it going?
RM: Good, Kira. How's it going with you?
KH: Well, before we started recording, actually I think we did start recording, I was just telling Rob that it's been an interesting morning. I feel like it's just that time of year where there are lots of projects. Every client I have is launching something, and so it's just been a bit crazy, little crazy.
RM: Some of those clients are difficult and hard to deal with, right?
KH: Yes.
RM: There's all kinds of things that we could talk about with that.
KH: Yes, and it's funny because most of them are not difficult, and most of them are awesome, but when you have that one difficult one, it overshadows everything. I have to really maintain perspective and step back at times.
RM: Before we start talking about difficult clients, I have a question for you, Kira. Other than how did you get your start and all that sort of stuff, I'm really curious. Why did you leave such a great job in marketing for the rough and tumble of freelancing and dealing with clients on your own, and all of the issues that come up with it?
KH: That's a good question. I think for me, I knew at my second big girl job, I was working at Estee Lauder in 2008. I'd recently started my career, was recently out of college, and I remember working there. It was like this big glamorous company, before they cut everybody in 2008, and I remember sitting at my desk and just imagining a company, running my own business. I was thinking about different ideas. I think at the time I was thinking about creating this t-shirt company with different designs focused on endangered animals, and how I wanted to sell them online. Anyway, lots of ideas as I was sitting there. Maybe I wasn't busy enough.
RM: Right.
KH: At the time I was volunteering at a zoo, so there was this strong tie to animals. I think it's just been in me for a long time. I'm rebellious and contrarian enough that I don't like people telling me what to do. That way was just in me, and then I knew I wasn't ready, so I took other jobs after that that led me down the marketing path because I was naturally good at the marketing thing. I had worked at different non-profits and then eventually a startup, Actionable Books, where I was the marketing director.
Yeah, your question was, "Why would you leave a good job," right? I think for me, there's got to be some pain usually. I think it's actually harder to leave when it's really cushy and things are really good. I think it's easy to leave when things are bad and you hate your boss,
In Episode 4 of The Copywriter Club podcast, Kira and Rob interview former HotJar copywriter, Brian Lenney. Since we recorded the show, Brian has left HotJar for the world of freelancing. And though he didn't know he would be leaving when we spoke, you can hear Brian almost talking himself into the decision during our discussion. Take a listen by clicking the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Inbound.org HotJar Ry Schwartz Winsome Writing Joel Klettke Bob Hoffman | The Ad Contrarian Brian’s Controversial Inbound Discussion Google Docs The Cult of Copy Copyhackers Mastermind The Copywriter Club Facebook Group David Darmanin Gary V—How We Make the Sausage The Brothers Karizmozov Brian Dean Copyhackers Cormack McCarthy’s The Road C.S. Lewis David McCullough Kira’s Horror Podcasts Brian’s Twitter Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
Full Transcript: RM: Hey this is Rob. When Kira and I recorded this episode our guest Brian Lenney was working as a copywriter at Hotjar, but a few days after we rapped Brian left his cushy cooperate job and went back to freelancing. We didn't know he would be quitting when we spoke with him. You can tell Brian is wrestling with his decision as you listen to him talk about his career. It's probably not best copywriter practice to close the loop before we've even opened it, but now you know the rest of the story, so let's get on with the show.
KH: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I try to do every week at the Copywriter Club podcast.
RM: You're invited to join the club for episode four as we chat with Hotjar copywriter Brian Lenney about the pros and cons of writing for a startup, why copywriters should consider using a product like Hotjar, and his thoughts about freelancing before he went in-house.
BL: Hey Kira, you ready?
KH: Hey guys.
BL: Howdy, happy to be here.
RM: We're excited to have you Brian.
KH: Yeah, thanks for being here. We should probably start with some context. We met Brian through the CopyHacker Mastermind. I feel like that's how we've met everyone here so far. We got to hang out with him in Sonoma in September, and really get to know Brian.
RM: It was funny, because once we got to Sonoma even after being in the Mastermind for several months with Brian it dawned on me that Brian had done writing at Inbound, because I had seen so much of the stuff that he had done at Inbound.org. Suddenly I'm like wait a second, Brian is Winsome Writing. Then maybe there was a controversial post or two there, and I was like okay that's the guy. It all kind of came together.
BL: I had the same thing Rob, because when we started ... I don't go on there as much as I use to, but I'm like oh yeah we've actually like, yeah, I had the same kind of ah ha moment. I'm like that's the Rob, I know Rob from Inbound. Cool.
RM: It's kind of funny we all sort of know each other, but we don't really know each other.
BL: Yeah, but we got to hang out, and drink wine [Rob drank Coke Zero], and talk about business, and copywriting in Sonoma wine country, so it was fun.
RM: It was a good time.
KH: I think to start Brian, you have background. You've spent years freelancing as a copywriter, and you're currently at a startup, Hotjar like we mentioned, and then you've worked with Inbound. Can you just kind of give us a brief background on the worlds that you've been hanging out in?
BL: Yeah, because it's kind of unique. I think it's one of those things like banking for instance, I look at banking like if you're a banker I'm like who wants to be a banker. Banking is just something you kind of fall into,
In Episode 2 of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob interview "Copywriter to the Stars" Ry Schwartz about becoming a copywriter (a funny story that shows how long he's come), how he landed gigs writing for people like Amy Porterfield, his process for working with clients and understanding customers and much more. Ry even drops his phone number on the show, so listen to the end if you want to chat with him in person. British accent required (you have to listen).
Ry is a genuinely nice guy and easy to talk to—which is why this show runs a little long. But the advice he drops is worth the extra time. Check it out by clicking the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz Shawshank Benjamin Button Copyhackers Danny Iny (Mirasee, formerly Firepole Marketing) Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel Clip-on Man Buns Amy Porterfield Jeff Walker's Product Launch Intensive Ryan Levesque's Ask Method Masterclass Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: KH: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I try to do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
RM: You're invited to join the club for episode two as we chat with copywriter to the stars Ry Schwartz about writing for big-name clients, being un-Googlelable and his process for putting himself in the shoes of the people he writes to and for.
KH: Hey, Rob and Ry.
RM: Hey, Kira, Ry.
RS: Copywriter to the stars, like how much do I owe you for that new branding slogan?
RM: I wondered what you would think about that, Ry.
KH: That was incredible.
RS: It's so good.
RM: So true. Hey Ry, maybe other than the introduction that I've given, you're sort of this hidden-away copywriter nobody can find. Maybe talk about that in a minute, but I would love to hear the Ry story. How you became a copywriter? Because I'm imagining that when you're seven years old you weren't thinking, "I am going to be a copywriter. I'm going to write emails for a living." Right? What's the story?
RS: Yeah. I had it coming. No, I am not related to Gene Schwartz. Sometimes I referred to him as my uncle just for fun. I actually got started pretty late-ish, I guess. I do have a business-ish background. I did my undergrad in marketing for whatever that was worth which turned out to be pretty much nothing. Right out of college got a corporate job, the typical cubicle hell kind of thing and for those two years it was all about us keeping that. Literally, I used to refer to that as 'Shawshank," I was digging my way out with the plastic spoon every day. This right around 2007-2008 which was a perfect time to jump ship, if you weren't being forced off the ship.
RS: I remember I wasn't being forced off the ship which is really alarming and people are getting laid off every day and people are disappearing. I remember like, "This is my perfect opportunity to try to get laid off and try to at least make an exit with a bit of a severance package."
RS: Ultimately I didn't get laid off, but I ended up having to quit and then from there, I actually pursued screenwriting full-time for about the three years and really flirted with success right out of the gates, which is both an amazing thing and a bit of a curse. Because it just strung me along long enough for literally three years, thinking that that break is coming. I had projects that got attraction and picked up and various people attached. It was promising and promising enough to make me remain in there without being deluded or at least thinking that I was being deluded. That's an interesting process but meanwhile, money wasn't coming in.
In this first episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Kira and Rob interview Kaleigh Moore about her business, choosing a niche, switching from a "brand" name to using her own name, and her newsletter.
One idea that really stands out is Kaleigh's method for reaching out to people she wants to write for—which has landed her gigs with several big publications. Check it out by clicking the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Paul Jarvis’ Creative Class KaleighMoore.com Kaleigh’s articles at Inc, Entrepreneur, SumoMe, and Copyhackers Kaleigh on Twitter Cup of Copy Newsletter Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Full Transcript: RM: What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I try to do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast.
KH: You're invited to join the club for episode one as we chat with copywriter, Kaleigh Moore, about personal branding, growing her list and writing for popular websites like Copy Hackers, SumoMe and Inc Magazine.
RM: Hey Kira and Kaleigh.
KH: Hey.
KM: Hey, good morning.
RM: It's great to have you here.
KM: Thanks for having me.
KH: Thanks for being here Kaleigh, and we appreciate your time. I think always a good place to start is with how you make your money as a copywriter, because so many of us do so many different things and have different niches, and they think it will help give some context to the questions that will follow.
KM: That sounds great with me.
KH: How do you make your money Kaleigh? What type of work do you focus on as a copywriter?
KM: My niche is kind of in the world of SaaS and eCommerce. It didn't always start that way. When I got started as a freelance writer about three years ago I was doing the typically thing and taking any job that came my way. Over the past year and a half especially, I've really focused on only taking jobs and working with clients that fall within those two pretty similar worlds of sass and eCommerce. It's been really, really wonderful. I think it's helped my business grow quite a bit to really have that focus and really weed out the jobs that I enjoy doing and [resist 00:01:50] the ones that I don't enjoy doing so much.
KM: It's really allowed me to grow my business too. Just kind of committing to working with a very specific set of clients has been a really wise choice. While it was difficult many times to say, "No" to ... Well, and it still is, to say, "No" to opportunities that come my way, it just really helps me not be burnt out like I was in the past when I was taking any job. It also helps me become a better subject matter expert and not have to do as much research if I was learning something for the very first time.
RM: Kaleigh, lately you've written on your blog and I think in your newsletter a lot about your journey from working with a brand name, like a company brand name to working only under your own name now. Would you tell us a little bit about that, and the transition and your thinking behind the shift that you've made over the last little while?
KM: Absolutely. When I started I was using a brand name called Lumen, and I was offering a lot of different services. I was offering writing, social media management and consulting, and then my husband was doing the graphic design site of the business. It was all kind of under this umbrella of the Lumen brand name. With that I didn't really have a focus on the type of client that I was targeting either, it was really just, "Hey, this is me, these are all the services I offer. If you wanna work with me let's talk."
KM: I did that for about a year, and what I found was that it was kind of the master of none thing b...
What if you could hang out with really talented copywriters and other experts; ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits; then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work?
That’s what Kira Hug and Rob Marsh do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
In this short "pre" episode, Kira and Rob talk briefly about the idea behind The Copywriter Club podcast and what we'll try to accomplish as we talk with copywriters from around the world. Click the play button below to listen, or scroll down for a full transcript.
The stuff we mentioned in the show: The Copywriter Mastermind Actionablebooks.com Joanna Wiebe | Copyhackers Dan Foley | Tailored Ink Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Club Home Page Episode 0 Transcript: K: Hey Rob, how's it going?
R: Hey, Kira. Things are good.
K: Why did we start this? Why are we making this?
R: Well, you know, it's funny. I think both of us had sort of a similar experience, where about a year ago I thought it was probably time to do something different with my copywriting business, that I needed to have something else happen to take it to the next level, and found the Copywriter Mastermind and connected with an awesome group of writers, and you were one of them. Just had this immediate connection and an opportunity to change different things about my business, how I was conducting my business, all those kinds of things, and it made such a huge difference that I started thinking about, "You know, it's too bad that there aren't more writers that can have that kind of and experience and to create a community around that. What about you? What are your thoughts behind the show?
K: Well, I was just thinking this is fun. I want to interview you now. That's what I want to do. I just want to ask you questions.
R: Not going to happen.
K: Well, I do want to ask you where you were in your business because you said that you were at a pivotal point where you wanted change or you knew you wanted to hit a growth spurt or whatever. In your own words, where were you in your business when you knew that that was something that you wanted?
R: I have several different clients that I really liked working for, but I also had a few clients that were sort of the ones that you have to pay the bills. Working with the agencies doing one sheets and things that were not really the kind of work that I wanted to do, but I was taking those clients because I had the time and being able to bill for that was obviously a good thing, trading time for money, but I also wanted to start focusing on different kinds of work. You know, moving from those projects that are really client-driven and you know where you're basically throwing out a first draft and then you're sort of rewriting based on client feedback over and over and over and it's just sort of that ... It's good work and it pays the bills, but it's sort of soul crushing in a way. I wanted to really focus my business on a different kind of work, and chose a niche around landing pages and sales pages that I've started to focus on, but there were also other things that I wanted to do too. You know, write a book, connecting with other writers because copywriting is so lonely sometimes. Lonely is the wrong work, but you're in your own office or you're sitting at your kitchen table and it's just you working with the paper.
R: I needed something different and when I found Joanna's Mastermind it seemed like a really good idea. There's one other thing that happened to me before that. I had found a training program on eBay that I wanted to buy. The training program's like $2,000 and that felt like so much money even though it wouldn't have necessarily bankrupted me or anything, but I found it on eBay for a few hundred dollars, and I thought, "Oh, I'm totally going to buy it.