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 Habits
Emily’s Podcast
Emily’s Instagram
The Authority Framework
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The 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.

And now, my interview with Emily Reagan…

Hey Emily, welcome to the podcast. And let’s, let’s just start out by saying this is a long time coming. The last time we saw each other, it’s like five years ago. And I don’t know why we haven’t had you on sooner than the now, but I’m glad you’re here now that you’re here. Yeah, tell us. Tell us your story. How did you become a copywriter?

Emily Reagan: Yeah, it’s been five years in the making. The last time you and I were together was right when the pandemic was happening in 2020, so it’s a completely different time. And my business has changed a lot since I showed up to your conference in real life. But you know how business owners, especially the online ones, are running around like crazy, trying to wear all the hats, do all the things, and keep all the marketing and all the gardens happy? I am the person who started training the marketing assistant to help within that marketing department. It started because I was a military wife for 20 years, had this hodgepodge of journalism and PR jobs, and was just lucky to find a job only to move a year or two later. And it kind of all came together beautifully in the online space, and then I just started teaching my friends how to do it.

So when I went to your conference, I wasn’t officially calling myself a copywriter, but I was still finding myself doing that work. Had I known about it back in 2007 when I was freelancing my first press releases, I would have just gone all into Copyright. Marketing, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So yeah, now I train virtual assistants to be in the marketing department, because marketing, it’s more fun, it’s creative, it’s flexible, it pays more. And that’s where I’m happy. I
love that, and I’m really glad we started here because so many copywriters in The Copywriter Club. People who listen to this podcast start out as VAs, and they come to that realization, wait a second, I’m doing way more here than just being an assistant.

And the cream always rises. I mean, “Assistant” never would have appealed to me, so I’ve really struggled with my own marketing. I’m like, do I use the title: virtual assistant? Because that’s the SEO word, but it’s so much more. And I think the term virtual assistant is just really getting kind of dumbed down. When I get into my Kia Carnival, and I see the little button for a virtual assistant, I’m thinking of AI. And so this job title has evolved since I even started, you know, training people four years ago, and that’s why I kind of went all in with the idea of a marketing assistant, because there’s just so many options online, and then you start adding different skills like copy or customer service or podcasting content marketing, and you’ve just created a whole different type of unique specialization for yourself. So it’s really fun to see how it all comes together online.

Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about being a marketing assistant. You just kind of listed off a bunch of the things that they might do. But let’s, let’s go a little bit deeper with this idea, because I really like it. I think that there’s space maybe for a lot of people who have been vas, but they feel like they’re doing more, but maybe they’re not ready yet to call themselves a copywriter or a designer or a CMO or whatever the next thing is, there’s kind of the space out there. So how do you define that marketing assistant?

Emily Reagan: Yeah, and especially getting confusing when you see AI can help. You’re seeing things being delegated and outsourced overseas for super cheap. So you know, all businesses have six main departments. We have operations, customer service, HR, finances, you know, accounting, product development, and then we have marketing and sales. And so this marketing, I think, where a lot of business owners get it wrong is they’re trying to find a virtual assistant to do everything and save their business by Thursday and launch and video edit, you know. And so, really drilling down into what department I am in and what kind of results I am going after? A lot of us hold ourselves back, thinking we need a four-year marketing degree, and those kinds of days are a little bit over.

Rob Marsh: So, if I wanted to maybe step into that newer role, do I need to know how to write copy and also use Canva and edit video for the person that I might be working with in order to get things onto reels or YouTube? What are the things that I need in my skill wheelhouse in order to be able to, you know, start calling myself a marketing assistant?

Emily Reagan: I think you need to combine, like, complimentary skills, for sure. And what’s interesting is, in my course, I am teaching, I say, I, you know, I’m teaching you how to grow an audience online and help your clients sell to that audience, right? And so we’re nurturing, and we’re selling, we’re converting. And so that’s kind of the role of the marketing assistant, is, which channels are we driving traffic? Like, how are we nurturing them? How are you getting them on the list? Which algorithms like, like, what? Right? So that’s a little bit of the game. But in my course, I teach the tech, I teach the strategy, and I’m always saying and complimenting you.

The next thing is copy. You have to learn how to sell with words. So I think anytime you can add copy to a specific or niche or even general marketing, you know, service, you are going to be sitting pretty. You’ll you’ll have, you know, more career flexibility. You know, easier retention with clients because clients really want that long-term help. I mean, I don’t know about you, but in the online space, I’m seeing a lot of teams simplifying, streamlining, and condensing. We don’t all want 20 employees in our business anymore. We’re looking more at profits. The online space is changing. So if we can find someone who can offer a little bit higher value, you know, they can also, you know, charge more too. So it’s figuring out, what is the right way to add copy in there. And I think copy is a must. That’s something I preach. And, like I said, when I was starting, I didn’t know it was a thing. I kind of fell into it, and it started with, like, Okay, well, I need to whip out this thank you page; my client gave me nothing, and it’s holding me back; I’ll just take care of it. So that’s kind of how it started with me. Or, like, blogging, or, you know, Pinterest. How do I get the click on these, you know, simple Pinterest pins I’m making?

Rob Marsh: You just said something that really like, rings a bell, and it’s that I’ll just take care of it. It’s as if they’re the person who is right for this kind of title or role is the person who cares about the business of the person they’re working for. Is that right?

Emily Reagan: Okay, so we’re finding how we can, like, fit our copy words into marketing systems. So like, if you’re already naturally doing that and thinking in terms of strategy or what comes next, and you’re enjoying it, and the client is asking you, that’s such an opportunity to, you know, level up into the next role. Like I said, assistants are leveling up to specialists to marketing managers and strategists. I don’t know about you, but I know a lot of copywriters do way more than just copy. They’re coming in and now advising on the strategy of the funnel or the launch or the webinar, and so those are opportunities to start wearing that you know are dubbing yourself like the higher title that you might not feel ready for because you’re already actually doing it you just you know might not recognize that. That makes
sense. So you were saying when we met each other at the conference in San Diego, you were kind of struggling with how to call yourself, or what to call yourself, how to make that shift. So what was the thing that, like, snapped for you, that that you know, like, changed everything you’re like, Oh, I see now what I really am or where I can make that contribution.

I’m going to tell this story in reverse and spoiler alert. It ends with you, but it starts with you. I actually went on to do a hodgepodge of skills and enjoyed it. I like variety. I have this crazy skill set, and one of the jobs I’ve worked with a lot of high-end copywriters and marketers, some of them, you will know that I will never mention their names on this podcast, and I found myself in this role as an ads manager, combining my unique skill set, I’m doing the tech the audience. I’m doing the copy, and I’m doing a little bit of the design. Am I going to do a perfectly produced Facebook ad? No, at some point, like, I will hire out the specialist. So let me just throw that out there. And I’m like, chuckling because the ads are going live, and everyone’s like, this guy is so great. His copy is so good. I’m studying it, and I’m like, It’s me, it’s me, it’s not him. And I’m, you know, it’s going great, and then all of a sudden, the funnel breaks, it doesn’t work, and who gets thrown under the bus? It’s me, the ads manager. There’s only so much in my control if the button’s not working, the landing page isn’t loading, and the tech isn’t delivering what it said I got I got hosed.

And so I found myself at this moment with a very high-end funnel expert who everyone would know if I said his name, just staring me down, and he looked at me and he said, Are you a copywriter? Because they’re doing like a funnel audit, and I’m just like fudge. I quivered. I went silent. And I regret that moment to my day, and I should have reflected back to the fact that if you’re doing copy, you are a copywriter, and just own it. And you and I had that conversation in the bar in San Diego where I told you, I don’t know why I’m here at this at this conference with all these copywriters. I look at you and your experience and everything you know with advertising and marketing, and you know your method for writing copy, and I don’t bring that to the table, but I bring something else, right? And at that bar, I told you, hey, I don’t feel like a copywriter, and you just like, anointed me one right then and there.

And so it’s permission to call yourself that. And, you know, take responsibility for what you do bring to the table and own that. And I’m just putting it out there for your listeners, like I buffed it, even after you annoyed at me, I got fired. Long, long story short, they needed to fire me. They had no right to run ads to a broken funnel, right? So I think about that moment that was really pivotal for me to own my experience and what I bring to the table that will never happen again. And I have since done ads for other people. Like, right now I’m doing, I’m actually working with an ads manager, but, like, I know enough about copy messaging and how it should work, where now I’m, like, managing it as a CMO, and we’re doing great. Like, it had nothing to do with that one-time client experience. I did ads for another client, like in January, and we did great there, too. So I don’t know, I don’t know if that made sense, but it was just like a fun story that kind of brings it all together. And it’s really about like positioning yourself as an expert, but really feeling it and believing it.

Rob Marsh: Thanks for sharing that. I forgot that conversation. I remember hanging out with you at the bar, but I totally spaced that, that that had even happened. I was in a fog, and that whole week was kind of crazy. But yeah, so I guess if anybody’s listening and they’re thinking, and wait a second, maybe I’m ready to step up, you and I together, we can knight them right now and say, look, if you’re writing copy, you’re a copywriter. If you’re writing copy for yourself… if you’re writing it for just one client… if you’re a VA or you’re doing something else, but you’re still helping them with that stuff, lean into that and grow that experience. And, you know, do the things that you need to do in order to really step into that role.
Emily Reagan: Yeah, I’ll go, don’t be shy. Offer that support to your clients. At some point it’s a fuzzy line, right? Like, when are you going out of scope? When are you doing too much? But I think it’s easy to flex it with the clients you have now. Build the confidence, build the competence. We know about that loop. You just have to insert yourself into that. And there’s so much to be said with just the job title. I mean, I coach a lot of my students with the job title, so it’s so funny that I got stuck on it too. You know, thinking about all of the talented copywriters we had there, I remember Justin Blackman staying on the stage, on the stage, saying he got this huge contract, and even he was scared. And I was like, wow, if Justin’s scared, I can be too. And I still add value to my clients. They need help. They have a hard time finding someone who can do marketing. It’s hard to find fractional good marketers right now, and so feeling good about what I bring to the table is really key, and being able to partner with them ongoing and long term, I’m fitting a void that a lot of freelancers don’t do.
Rob Marsh: So while we’re still talking about this, how, let’s say that there are skills that somebody’s thinking, Okay, I have been writing copy, but I don’t know enough about marketing or some of this other stuff. How would you recommend they go about adding these kinds of skills so that they’re actually practitioners of them, and they’re not just, you know, reading a book or taking a course?
Emily Reagan: Oh, that’s a good question. Obviously, we all feel good if we take a course or we learn from someone ahead of us, right? Like, that’s like the fastest track for doing anything. But I would just be really intentional with how you combine things like, you know, an obvious one for a skill stack for copywriters, learning funnels. You know, clients need help. They want somebody who understands marketing strategy, the automations, how we can be really strategic and personal right now, especially with these conversations that are happening. So if you can offer a combination of at least the strategy and the copy, it could be that we hire out the tech, but if you enjoy the tech, like sometimes my brain enjoys shutting down a little bit, and doing some of that can be very black and white. I think funnels are an obvious low-hanging fruit, like easy money on the table whenever you can get involved. How is the world adapting with launching? And how can you stay in the forefront? I don’t know about you. I’m seeing a lot of people doing more evergreen or less live, launching more ongoing containers. Like less pressure to launch. I think automation is a big one. Figuring out, like many chat funnels right now are huge or any kind of bot assistance, so like combining them in the right way, I like to use my current clients for practice. And you can always obviously practice on your own business. I think that’s the safest place to do it.
Rob Marsh: So another thing that occurs to me while we’re talking about this is obviously the copywriting world is changing as well, and a lot of copywriters are struggling to find work. Maybe it’s AI, maybe it’s the economy, but there’s this sneaking suspicion, and it may not be wrong that at least some of that lower-level copywriting work is gone and maybe gone forever. Thanks again to AI, and so there’s probably an opportunity here for even copywriters or content creators to expand their skill sets into maybe they wouldn’t call themselves a marketing assistant, but it’s more of a marketer CMO type thing by adding these other skill sets so you’re not just writing email and sending off a doc with copy in it, but you’re also loading that into an ESP, or setting up the welcome sequence, or the abandoned cart sequence, or helping the clients identify the missing pieces where money’s kind of leaking out of their business. And more of us need to be doing that in order to ensure that there’s work in the future.

Emily Reagan: Yeah, or taking it to the next step. I was thinking of a brand voice person I worked with—a client, and she gave us all of these amazing messaging points, and then what we need help taking it to the next step. And so I know that she has since pivoted and added, like, building the AI copywriter to go with it, with my brand voice, and so like making it that full package, just a higher value, we would have paid probably $10,000 for that instead of the five, because now I have something I can turn around and give to my team. Who I pay. I do pay for lower-level tasks for some of that. But here’s what’s never going away, like the data analysis, somebody to sit down and have the oversight. Copywriters are so good at being strategic with surveys. You know, before we hit record, I was talking about Brittany McBean, and I got a chance to see her brain working in a launch for my course. The way she analyzed the survey data just blew my mind. I’d never seen that. And that’s the kind of stuff that my little AI copywriter can’t do at her level. And what I we ultimately need is that final messaging right? And that’s what copywriters do so well, they do the market research. This is why I always get hesitant to call myself one, because I like to come in with, like, the final product and, like, make decisions, but that final messaging stamp is just getting noisier and harder to stand out. I mean, you have a lot of good podcasts here on the show talking about, like, how to write the hook, but we need the people to, like, oversee them and make sure it’s actually moving the business forward right like businesses are kind of struggling right now on the online space. So we got to stand out. We’ve got to convert even better than before.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so let’s talk about how your business changed. Then, you know, from where we were five years ago, and kind of in that struggle giving yourself permission today, your business is really different. Yeah, I have
always kind of had my like, mutually exclusive things, like, I do the client work. I’m still a practitioner. I enjoy it. It keeps me relevant. So I have some client work, I’ve just had to be very intentional and strategic about who I say yes to, which is always the freelance like boundary and like problem we get into, like, which clients do we say yes to? So I have kind of streamlined that. And I basically work like CMO projects over there, or ads, like something that can be like high level one time, on and off.

Emily Reagan: I found myself doing a lot of quiz funnels, you know, I worked with Chanti Zak, and I took her course, and I was able to do that. For a lot of the work, I partnered with a copywriter. I was actually doing a lot of the tech, and then the ads, and so that’s kind of where ads kind of fell into my lap, and it’s really fun to watch what copywriters turn in. And I’ve always learned that way back when my clients called me their VA, I can remember them hiring copywriters and me just eating it up because I was the one making the changes, like going into the landing page and like, oh, they that makes sense. So I never had actually taken a copywriting course, which is why I felt like an imposter back in 2019, so I kind of found a way to marry my knack for writing and copywriting and design and build these funnels. And then I started teaching people how to do the work, too, because it’s been so empowering for somebody like me. There are a lot of over-educated, underemployed military spouses or women who had a baby break, or people transitioning to staying at home or making a change in their careers. And I just realized, like, you don’t need a marketing degree in this day and age if I can teach you how the algorithms work and what business owners are trying to do so we can give you the whole picture. You can learn how to do this and start with a couple of services. So there’s like two parts of my business now, and it’s pretty wild to go from behind the scenes to the face of my business, which is slightly uncomfortable, but you know, when you know you’re helping other people, you’ll, you’ll do it and, yeah, what do you want to talk about in there? Because there’s, like, so many little side conversations.

Rob Marsh:  You’ve got a lot of different moving pieces as well. I think you’ve got a community. You’ve got a podcast of your own. Yeah? I mean, in addition to, you know, copywriting, you’re doing PR, and, you know, a lot of the moving pieces in the background for your clients. So there’s almost not even a title for all of the things that you’re doing.

Emily Reagan: When somebody was like, what do you do? Because I always lean into my PR experience. I knew how to write a press release and get it printed in a Podunk paper, word by word, like, that’s, that’s what I knew how to do. And that press release turned into media kits, which turned into me looking at Google Analytics, which turned into Pinterest, which turned into blogging, which turned into landing pages and funnels. So it was like, not a like, a linear thing at all. So I do, I have done some pitching and like, use the skill set over there. Ads are really easy. It’s like, you kind of want to go where, like, it’s easy and natural for you, and you almost feel kind of bad about it, because it comes so natural, you know?

Rob Marsh: But there’s, like, a trade-off with that too. Oftentimes, when something comes naturally to us, we don’t price it properly because we were like, Oh, this is easy. Like, this isn’t work, and so it must not be valuable. And so we end up staying in those lower roles even though we’re doing this higher level work.

Emily Reagan: Yeah, I think the more teams I work on, the more I see a what a hot mess. A lot of people are. They look very successful online. I mean, all of us are struggling. So even the most organized person who might look intimidating might not be creative and need your skill, and vice versa, if you’re one of those integrator organized, you know, EOS people like somebody needs the talent you have out there. And I agree it’s like really easy to undervalue your work, but isn’t that the goal to find what you’re most passionate about? What you’re good at? And what you love? What people are paying you for? I always struggled, what do I call myself? And I was kind of joking with my teammate, and I was like, I’m a unicorn. And it turns out there is such a thing as a full-stack unicorn marketer. I didn’t even know that. I was just kind of combining my PR with this, like, new world of online business, I discovered and dubbed myself a unicorn, and then it kind of became a thing, and that is part of my branding now, which is funny, because I’m very much Sporty Spice and not a sparkly unicorn girl, but it is the essence of what we’re all trying to do, like find that sweet spot for us. We all come from unique backgrounds and experiences. And I will never forget Chanti telling me that one of her first blogs she wrote was in podiatry like that was her passion? And you, you know, you’re like a health nut. You’re really into, like, a little plantar fasciitis protection like that could be like the dream business, writing content and copy for, I don’t know, that type of doctor, podiatrists.

Rob Marsh: It’s interesting… this kind of skill stacking, and how we all put it together. We’ve always called it finding your X-Factor when we’ve taught these workshops in our programs.It is the way there. We’ve said this a whole bunch of times, but like, there are over 750,000 copywriters on LinkedIn. There are over a million content writers on LinkedIn, if you add content strategists or social media strategists, there’s 2 million more of those, right? So standing out in that crowd is really hard. But when you start doing this kind of skill stacking where you’re matching this thing that you like and that thing you like, it’s pretty easy—once you have four or five things you’re combining in unique ways—to be the number one in that combination. So you don’t have to be the very best copywriter and compete with those millions, but you do have to be the very best copywriter who works in your niche, who brings to the table your three or four skills, and writes in the voice, or can mimic the voice, right? And you combine these four or five things together, that’s your X Factor, and that’s basically what you’re you’re helping your clients do as well.

Emily Reagan: And then you add in SEO, and you’re really golden.

Rob Marsh: Exactly, or AI, or whatever, yeah. The more you add in, the more unique you become.

Emily Reagan: I was reading, is it James clears book? I’m so bad at quoting people, but he talked about Atomic Habits, right? That’s James Clear, yeah? He talked about combining his masters and like, a way to stand out. Like, if you can’t compete with Michael Phelps in Olympic swimming, like, create your own create your own field. And he talked about how you combine his major in a unique way, which just made him special. Like, that’s exactly what we’re doing. You change the playing field that you’re on. When you do that, I will tell you that a lot of copywriters don’t, and because I’m implementing a lot of the work, they don’t understand design UX. How many times have I been like, if that headline doesn’t fit, or your Facebook headline doesn’t fit, because there are only so many characters, and then SEO is a big one, like, that’s never going to go away, and especially with AI like skimming everything? So right off the bat, those would be two things, but I’ll tell you this, I think I appreciate copy more as I run my team, I’m going to throw my team under the bus when I see their responses sometimes in emails and customer engagement, even if they’re just set or sending out an email as a reminder to attend an event, I see the lack of copy, knowledge and messaging in their writing, and that drives me crazy as a business owner, and I will never hire someone again who doesn’t know how to write. And I don’t I mean beyond grammar, like the copy of reminding people, why are we showing up to this happy hour for the work group? And it’s not because we are shooting the breeze and we just like to hang out and take it easy. No, like, there’s a deeper mission impact and like, reason, they’re in this community, and we’re meeting up, and all of that was lacking from these little I’m going to call them piddly, like, internal communication. And for me, that’s eye-opening. Some clients just won’t get it, but the clients who do, I mean, they’re keepers. They’re keepers.
Rob Marsh: Well, I think more and more the clients who don’t get it, they’re using content farms or AI or whatever like they never were looking for that higher level stuff. But the keeper clients need humans more than ever, and they value that, and they will keep you, and they will pay well for that. And that’s why that messaging, I think, is just so important to bring to the table. So you’re talking to copywriters, marketers, marketing assistants all the time. Where do you see the biggest opportunities in online marketing today?

Emily Reagan: Oh, definitely. AI and  finding a way to combine it and be more efficient. Even whether it’s in your own work, streamlining your own work so you’re not trading as much time or being able to do it in that deliverable, like we talked about with that other brand voice person I was working with, and then the AI can go into even more automations, like I was thinking about how I used to manually listen to my clients, Facebook, live, transcribe it. I’m that old, transcribe it, then create blogs from that. I mean, that was like a full day experience. I learned her business so deeply, but now I can do all of that so quickly and just deliver such a better quality. And I think, and I think AI is really where it’s going. And I don’t mean that in a way to scare people, because I do have people in my work group who are like, Oh, my God, AI is replacing me. And like, it’s really not, if you can just add it into what you’re doing. And honestly, if I have somebody I’m interviewing for my team and I know they’re using AI, I trust them more. You know, they’re not going to be like, just sending me this giant invoice of all these dumb man hours. There’s this, like something, when someone’s ahead of it and incorporating it, it shows that they’re, like, on the forefront, cutting edge, that they’re thinking about my business like, there’s a lot of trust that goes into that.

Rob Marsh: There’s also an opportunity here that I think a lot of us are missing, and that is, you know, even when a copywriter or a content writer gets feedback from the client that says, Oh, we’re using AI to create that now, well, somebody at their business still has to be using the ai, ai to do that, right? And so why them instead of you? And I think sometimes we’re afraid of having that conversation with the client saying, okay, I get it. We can use AI for that. Let me handle that. Obviously, it’s we’re not gonna be charging 20 hours for the project anymore. It’s only gonna take us an hour. But that also opens up the other hours we were working for them to do more, right, even if using AI or to bring more ideas to the table or things that they weren’t able to get to. And I just think sometimes we’re as as freelancers or contract workers, we’re afraid to have that conversation because, well, sometimes it actually is going to end up in less work for us.

Emily Reagan: Yeah, I think it’s also music to the client’s ears. And I know, you know, kind of thinking about that fractional role, what we’re missing is the oversight, the consistency and branding, and messaging like it can feel so disjointed you get all these other people doing it. So I think that when you pitch yourself to the client, you kind of show that, like quality will actually improve. And yeah, I think sometimes a lot of people are afraid, but I know from all the business owners I’ve worked with, the ones that I’ve coached, or they’ve turned around and hired, are unicorns. They all want somebody to just take the reins and get it out of their brain and, like, start, you know, spinning those plates. And so offer it. Don’t be afraid to offer it.

Rob Marsh: While we’re on that topic, let’s talk about finding clients because a lot of people are struggling with that right now for a variety of different reasons. You see a lot of clients, a lot of requests for copywriters, content writers come through your group. I know what are people looking for, and why does it feel so hard to connect with clients today? This would probably be a two-hour discussion.

Emily Reagan:  Oh, my goodness.  Okay, I want to start with we’ve had over 3,000 jobs that we’ve shared with my little work group, and I like to check the data. I was looking at the top. What are people asking? And granted, like, this isn’t like a clean data set, right? It’s people coming from marketing assistance, but the number one thing they want help with is email marketing. Like, that’s just not going away. So I think if you can offer services, or especially for somebody new, that people actually want and need, is just the best way to get your foot in the door. I feel like I see a lot of service providers who get really rigid about what they do and what they don’t do, and such a double-edged sword, you know, but when you’re getting started, it’s like, you gotta, like, fit the market demand. Like, what do people actually need? And maybe get really good at that and build off of that.

The other three, I didn’t have the data right in front of me, but social media came high up there. And I know that social from, I don’t know, a few years ago, you could just kind of post whatever and not really have any intention. But social media gets a bad rep. But you add an AI, and it’s not that hard to take a concept, sales, email, create tons of, you know, social posts off of that. So I think that would also be like a good starting service to go in there and again, meet where the demand is right. What are you seeing with the client work? I think that there is a lot of new people, if I’m in a rift for a second, starting businesses, who don’t have any right to start a business, who got sold into a dream that I just do this one digital revenue stream, and I’m going to. Be rich, and they’re not thinking about what it takes and cost to run a business, and it takes, it does take time. It takes human capital. And so they do this initial like, oh, start with very little, and then they’re not thinking about the long term, like, who they hire first, what they actually need. How do they actually sell? And so I think we are kind of recovering a little bit from that as service providers and seeing the aftermath. On the flip side, I’m just going to keep going, Rob, I was seeing a lot of this Freelancer culture, of people who didn’t make it in corporate, who didn’t really cut it, who thought it would be easy to just start this type of business over here, and they’re kind of doing us dirty too, because they’re not delivering, they’re ghosting, they’re turning in bad work or Yeah. And so it’s like we’re kind of getting, getting it from two sides. And I think it’s really hard for us right now. Just like to pick out the good clients and the good work and not let everything else, plus AI, get us down.
Rob Marsh: I think if somebody could invent the quality signal thing that is able to show clients that, yes, this copywriter is really good, and that one is one you maybe shouldn’t like, that person would be a billionaire overnight. You know, this is like to be able to communicate that you do good work, that you deliver on deadlines, that you do what you say, that you stick to, you stick to the proposal, or to the scope of the project, that you know you’re helping your client solve real problems. Like, I mean, I don’t want to call them a unicorn because there’s more than a handful of people who do that, but also, you’re probably in the top 20% of copywriters if you can do that stuff.

Emily Reagan: It’s the soft skills, 100% how you show up, how you make the client feel. What does that look like? How you communicate. It’s the soft skills that make the difference. I have a couple of people in my work group who want to niche into copywriting, and they’re a couple of them have been a little bit whiny. I hope they don’t listen to this episode, but I want to tell them, like, if you want to be hired for these services, like, you have to demonstrate that you’re good at this. And this doesn’t mean your portfolio has all the writing you’ve ever done, but it starts with your own business. And if you don’t look like a professional or somebody I can trust, like, why is anyone going to hire you to do like that sales page that you really want to charge $10,000 for. And so I think that is hard, is I don’t see people putting effort into their own business and their own marketing so that we do trust you with everything else going on.

Rob Marsh: This is such a weird ethic, like you. I mean, I think I saw, saw the start, you know, as the pandemic was going on, a lot of people had to stay home, like, hey, this stay-home thing is pretty sweet. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do a job that’s like that. And so immediately it’s like, oh, copywriter, you know, I can write. I learned how to write in second grade. You know, I can, I can do this thing. And they jumped, I mean, I’m kind of repeating what you’re saying earlier. They jumped in without the marketing knowledge without having gone through, you know, any of the formulas, or trying to teach themselves anything. They just put up the shingle and said, yeah, I can write. Obviously, a small percentage of them do and can, but writing is like any other skill, and you have to know the formulas and the frameworks. You have to know how to get somebody from where they are to where they need to go. You’ve got to be able to talk about transitions and transformation and results and all of those things. I’m preaching to you, hopefully people listening that this is helpful, but if you can do those things, then, yeah, you’re, you’re probably going to be okay. I hope somebody listening just feels good that, like, Okay, I am. I’m in the top 10% like, I’m doing well, and I can charge for that because I do that, I put that effort, and I do the research, and it’s not just like delivering fast copy. I think that’s really the difference maker.

Emily Reagan: Yeah, and then it’s just a matter of laddering up from the clients you have to clients that can afford to pay more, who have bigger problems to solve and leveraging, you know, one client to move on to the next. And, I mean, it is, it’s work that, I mean, that’s really what it you know, it’s like, it doesn’t happen by itself. People don’t find you when you’re at home, or even if you have a great website, like, you still have to put in the reps and do the work.

Referrals have always been huge for me. I was fortunate to start at a time when I didn’t need a website. There wasn’t enough of me to go around. I booked out really quickly. But I see a lot of people that think like, if I just turn on the light, I’m open for business. Clients will come. Or if I’m just good, the work will come to me, but there is this level of, I don’t want to say self-promotion, but like visibility, that you have to do. Yeah, never just start a freelance business and hide behind the keyboard, and clients land in your lap. I mean, if you’re transitioning from a career where you already have those connections, it will be more easy for you. But a lot of us are not. And so putting in the work after you do the course, or after you build your website and write beautiful copy, I think that’s really hard, is the client marketing acquisition system, like, how do you get those leads? And a lot of us, I know in my community, we don’t all want to be dancing on Tiktok to get clients. I’m never onna say never. But like, no, that’s not my style. So it’s like, it there is a level of content marketing, like building the right high authority, you know, assets that show you as an expert. It’s a little bit of the outreach, it’s the strategic partnerships, but it’s, it’s the stupid networking, right? People have to know who you are. And I know in the copywriter circle, all the business owners, and this happened with the VAs, they’re like, Who are you working with? Who do you love? And they’re just whispering and tossing names around in boxer, and that’s like, the goal is, like, how do you get your name in that conversation?
Rob Marsh: Okay, so how do you grow your list? What are you doing to attract subscribers? I’m asking this a little bit selfishly, because obviously I want to steal all of your ideas for list building, but I think you’ve done some pretty unique things.

Emily Reagan: Yeah, One of the first things I did starting my business, because I knew how important it was, right, like I got to grow the audience, was I did that quiz. I did Chanti’s quiz course (Note: there is a short workshop about creating quizzes inside The Copywriter Underground), and built a quiz. It does need refinement now, yeah, but what I loved about quizzes, and what I found with my client work, was the cost per lead was really low. And, you know, there have to be levels of you have to go back and fix the messaging and just refine it, because it can attract a lot of people by, like, really narrowing it down. The quiz is really great. At one point, I was running a quiz for a client. We were getting 25-cent leads, and her quiz, we just left that ad on, is doing so well. Now, on the flip side, she’s not selling well at the end, but like, that’s on her, right? Like, that’s not me. It’s gonna point that out. But yeah, that quiz is working well.

How do I grow my list? You know what? I feel like a black kettle saying this. I really like blogging. I really like SEO. I play a good SEO game. One of the first things I did when I started being visible in my business was blogging and like, trying to really, like, dominate my industry and be a key person of influence, not necessarily that influencer that you know, you know, self-promoting Instagram influencer, but just really trying to show that I’m a leader in this space and people can come to me. So blogging has been good ads. I will always stand by ads is like the fastest way to do it. I think it’s harder. After working with copywriters, it’s hard to attract people who are sophisticated and know there’s going to be an order bump, and an upsell, and a sales sequence. And so it’s trickier, I think, for you as a copywriter. But, yeah, I don’t know. I’m just gonna fizzle out on that question. What should I do?

Rob Marsh: Well, I wanna, I wanna, actually, to go back to the idea of blogging, because you’re not the first person I’ve heard from this, although I think blogging has changed in some ways that are pretty significant since, you know, 2008 when it, you know, was really maybe at the high point when conversations actually happened on blogs and comment sections and all that and that. That still isn’t really happening, but I’m seeing a lot of people blog less on their own home pages, which you should probably still be doing because of SEO and because AI reads all of that stuff and, you know, puts that into their engines, that’s still good. But a lot of those blog posts are showing up as Facebook posts or as LinkedIn posts. Everybody goes to LinkedIn, but I’m actually, I think the algorithm in Facebook is starting to serve more and more content to people in the feed over what they used to prioritize, groups, conversations and that kind of stuff. So are you just blogging on your site, or are you sharing those posts in other ways as well?

Emily Reagan: I try to share them, but definitely blogging on my site to increase my domain authority. Like, that’s working really well. Sometimes I get my friends to do guest blogs too. Like, I want to keep the content going there. I know with, like, AI and, you know, ChatGPT, it’s a little different. Now, things are changing. I’m not the best SEO person to talk about that, but, you know, I have a blog on niches for virtual assistants, and this is my top blog, and I get a couple of 1000 every month, people just looking for, like, where do I go? And I mean, I wrote that sucker a while ago. I’ve had to go back and fix it, optimize it, monetize it. But that’s doing really well. Another funny thing is, I think my CM client right now, because I asked him, how did he find me? And he said, Google. And that’s amazing. I’ve also had somebody find me through ChatGPT because it asked, like, who are the fractional marketers that I should hire? And my name popped in, that’s because I have a strong online presence, right? And dancing on Tik-Tok. No, just kidding, but yeah, I think that the SEO one is one, if I were telling any freelance business owner or service providers, like, got a couple of core Cornerstone articles up just to demonstrate your authority and, like, thought leadership on it, on a thing or two, like, related to your service?

Rob Marsh: This is another thing, everybody listening should go try this. They should go ask chat GPT or clot, or whichever LLM you use, and say, I want to hire a copywriter or a content writer in this niche. Who would you recommend? Don’t, don’t put in your name, but put in your niche, and it’ll be really interesting, what you see. I tested that and was really happy, you know, I said, Hey, if I want to learn about copywriting or creating a copywriting business, who should I go? And it gave me four people that it recommended, one of whom was me. And I was like, Oh, amazing, awesome. We did something right. Now obviously, AI is scanning the Internet all the time, and new content comes up, and in order to keep that current I’m gonna have to continue producing content. But like you’re saying, if somebody’s not doing that on their own blog or, you know, out in the world somewhere where it can get captured, and it may not be getting captured on Facebook or LinkedIn the way that it does on your blog or, you know, in other places. So even if you’re posting there, you should probably copy all of that into your own website as well.

Emily Reagan: Yeah, if I, if I had it more together, if I had my marketing assistant doing more, I would definitely rewrite everything for medium. I would do the LinkedIn article game. Like, oh, man, oh, wait, I have a business win. Let me pop over there. Yeah, but let me tell you how I got in Business Insider. So I was stalking out, using my PR skills, my news jacking skills, I was like, stalking out the articles. And I’m like, they’re really playing a heavy SEO game. So this, like, I want you to steal this. They’re playing a heavy SEO game. You know, they’re drowning in content. Like every newspaper editor, magazine editor, and online publication, they need content, right? That’s the name of the game. So I pitched myself based on keywords alone, and said, like, you’re already doing this. This is why this is the next step. This is why your audience needs this. Basically, there were some virtual assistant articles, and I could tell they were old, but I could tell by looking at the slug that it was a keyword game. So I pitched it, and they’re like, great. Can you write it? We’ll pay you $300. Great! I would have done it for free. And it was shameless self-promotion. I was telling my story. They paid me to do it, and I’m like, what good credibility, having my own byline. That made me hot and sweaty. I couldn’t wait to tell my journalism professor. All I did was promote myself. That was the dream there, but that was me just being savvy with, like, okay, PR SEO my own writing over here, and that has helped a lot, too. But obviously, you can play the whole PR game after that and, like, use your as-seen-in feature things. But that was my first big media get, and, yeah, and it was just understanding marketing
and then, and I mean, even if you didn’t go on to do more, like being able to leverage Business Insider should be open all kinds of other doors for additional PR, and they did ask me to do more. I was waiting for my divorce to be over, and they’re like, will you write this article? I was like, Sure, let me get a final degree first, and then we can take that to the next level. But yeah, I was paying attention to what kind of articles they are publishing right now. And they are into how people are making money online, like it was a good fit for me, and it can fit for other people too, but going to the right beat reporter, the right editor with the right pitch, it was key. And, you know, and if it didn’t work, I didn’t die. I wasn’t gonna die if I got rejected.
Rob Marsh: So okay, this is a really, another really important principle, because this goes across the board. When we’re pitching clients, or whatever it is, rejection is so difficult to deal with. And obviously, if you’ve got tons of clients coming in, you’re not really dealing with rejection, but a lot of copywriters are, and because of that were afraid to take that step forward.

Emily Reagan: Yeah, I’m thinking about the pitches I’m getting right now. I get pitched out the wazoo for copy help the cold ones, you know, usually people in Eastern Europe, but they always start their pitch with hope you’re doing well, and then they’re making that, like classic mistake of assuming I’m looking for help instead of just engaging, and they want to immediately offer me an audit, and they’re immediately like, you’re doing your LinkedIn all wrong, and your YouTube sucks, and your Instagram isn’t growing, and it just makes me feel like, S, H, I T, and I don’t want to read, I don’t want to watch, you know? And so I was just thinking that they should feel rejected like they did. They did do it poorly. But you know, if they were coming from a different place, and I was like, hey, like, not right now, I actually don’t need this help right now, maybe it wouldn’t sting so much, but I don’t. Obviously, I don’t even respond. But when I think it’s hard, when you do put a lot of effort into those but if you’re doing it well and you’re not doing making those mistakes like you can’t feel bad if somebody doesn’t need help at that time.

Rob Marsh: The other thing that kills me is the pitches without doing any research. So this, in the last week, this is a true story. I’ve had two different pitches from two different people at two different companies, saying, Hey, I love what you’re doing at the copywriter club, we would love to help you launch a podcast. Get your first four episodes up and live and create some social media content around that. And I’m just like, huh, how much do you love what I’m doing? If you don’t realize my number one way of showing up in the world is a podcast that’s been going on now for eight years. Do you even know who I am? Yeah. So my response back to both of them was, hey name, why don’t you Google The Copywriter Club and then get back to me? And of course, they don’t ever get back to me. If you’re going to pitch, at least know something about the company you’re pitching, the person you’re pitching. Like you said, don’t assume anything. Don’t assume they need help, that you like you’re trying to establish a relationship, a friendship, even, and that pays off six months from now or a year from now. And if you’re looking for it to pay off on Thursday, you just, you’re not going to hit right? There’s just no way it’s going to work. Or very, very often it’s not going to work. So every once in a while you’ll get lucky and that maybe that one is going to keep you going, you know, with this crazy pitch style, but most of the time it doesn’t work.

Emily Reagan: Oh my gosh, yeah, I have heard that. Like, the work we do now affects our freelance business three months from now. Think Brittany McBean told me that. But I’m like, Yeah, I see that. Like, I went into a little bit of a closet in July in my business, and then, like, I paid the price because I wasn’t doing X, Y, Z. I think about those pitches, I think what people do wrong is assume that I need the work. I get a lot, by the way, for people who are like, I’m a virtual assistant, I’ll come work for you. I’m like, if I am going to hire anyone, it’s going to be someone from my program, 100% but if we just looked at that person that were want to work with, like, as a friend, as a connection. I’m well connected. I would probably refer you, like, 10,000 times more than I actually need copywriting help her right now. And so I think, but they, I think they just get the big, like, saucer eyes and think, like, oh, you know, she’s just gonna hire me. And like, she’s, she’s my sucker. And they’re not really thinking about it as like a network expand, expansion moment.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, for sure. Networks are everything. Relationships are everything, and especially when you’re not showing up in the office or you don’t, you’re not connecting with people in real life, like you have to be doing this offline.

Emily Reagan: Yeah, for sure. I feel like we should talk about, I don’t know. I’m kind of bouncing backward, but something I am seeing in the online space is a lot of like launch agencies who offered the big ticket, 30k 50k projects, like not doing as well right now. And so I was just thinking about, well, if I were new and I was trying to get copy clients, I think, Oh, what am I trying to say here? I would just start with some of those projects that are smaller, that you can get a quick win and maybe impress them and kind of let go of the ego. Like, that’s got to be really hard if you’ve been in charge of these, you know, big website overhauls and sales pages and whatnot. But like, it can be really advantageous to go in in a different capacity and help somebody for that connection. And I see that all the time with, like, our email tech specialist, they’re like, I only do VIP days. And like, how many of us actually know? Like, I need a VIP day to fix my Active Campaign. So I have to have had to coach people in my group, like maybe for this well-connected client who just needs someone for three hours to do XYZ, you kind of acquiesce a little bit and offer a package that fits her knees. Guess who’s getting all the referrals. Now I’m thinking of Janelle in my workgroup. Janelle because she went in and helped somebody while connected, do something small. And so I’m thinking about those outreaches. Maybe they should be something a little smaller, a little more tangible, less daunting, so we can build that trust.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, getting the first win, and then being able to leverage that, I think, is is, especially if you’re starting out, you you have to do that. You have to get that first win. And yeah, leading with a big project or leading with big promises and nothing to back it up is a great way to get ignored.

Emily Reagan: What do you tell your copywriters when they’re working for big names and they’re not allowed to tell anybody? Because to me, the second I hear like, oh, Sally was in Jordan Gill’s business, and she. Helped her make millions. I’m like, I want to hire Sally, but like, how do we do that as copywriters?

Rob Marsh: So there are two things. One that I would say is, you can talk about any case study or any client anonymously. So you know, you can always say, Hey, there’s this expert in this space. Some people will get it who it is, but most people won’t, right? But also, when you’re talking to somebody one one-on-one, I think in that situation, it’s okay to say, hey, look, I will tell you who the client is, but I’m, you know, I’ve agreed not to talk about them publicly or whatever, so you can’t share that. So the clients know one on one, it’s like, oh, yeah, I did help someone at that level, you know, make that that big thing. It’s, it’s funny.

I think it was the second TCC IRL that we did. We were in Brooklyn, and Ramit Sethi came to the party. And I’m like, this is awesome. I’ve watched what he’s done for a long time. He wasn’t part of our event, and he certainly wasn’t there to endorse us, but he had friends there, and we’re just like, yeah, come and I asked him if I could get a picture with him, and he’s like, yeah, no problem. But you have to promise me you’re not going to use that, you know, like to say you’ve worked for me. Like, I’m like, I’m not going to, you know, I’m, this is totally ethical. I just want a picture with this guy that I’ve really admired or whatever. I’ve never used that picture anywhere. It’s still sitting on my hard drive. It’s that stuff. You have to honor your word to people. But there are times when you can talk about things that are, you know, maybe shouldn’t be disclosed, you know, publicly, or that kind of a thing. So I would just say, be, be super careful about it. Obviously, if you tell somebody that you’re not gonna, you know, publicize it, don’t. On the other hand, I would put in your contract and only take it out if they insist the right to talk about the project, work that you do in your own marketing. Like, that’s just should be part of all of our standard contracts. It’s like, Hey, you have all the rights of the work. Everything that I deliver is yours, entirely yours, but I reserve the right to talk about the creation process, you know, the thinking that I did, even the deliverables that I delivered. And if they say they want me to do that, and honestly, okay, I’ll do that, but that’s in that’s in my contract. And I because I want to be able to talk about how I help people, how I solve their problems.

Emily Reagan:  That makes me want to hire anyone. It’s that social proof that testimonial. I’ve done this work for so and so, and the selling is like 90% done for me. When I hear that from a copywriter.

Rob Marsh: We’re almost out of time. Emily, but where do you where do you see your business going in the future? This is what’s next for you, is really the question?

Emily Reagan:  You know, sometimes I’m like, Wait, am I just competing with Upwork? I’m like, no, no, I’m different, like having an existential crisis. There. I am really putting a lot of my effort into my membership, because that’s where I’m having the most fun and enjoyment and just trying to be more aligned. I think for the last eight years, I’ve really been just like grinding and hustling, like I kind of talked about my divorce. I could see it coming, and I knew I needed to get some ducks in a row to be able to feed my babies, and I knew I couldn’t count on the military paycheck. So I’ve been really hustling, and in that season of, probably burnout, just to be honest, like, I think I’m too, like, numb to like, admit I was probably in burnout, but I’m just trying to be really smart about that. I am trying not to do all of the things. And so I think, though, I think my membership is really what I’m focusing on this year, and just helping them up level and their own businesses. A lot of us service providers are introverts. We don’t sell well, we don’t put ourselves out there. We don’t do the visibility we need to. So I’ve been doing some things under the surface to help them with an assessment and what to focus on, and accountability, and pushing my $47 membership to be something more higher end. So I’m in that transition right now and then figuring out, how can I not live launch and still make money? Because that was exhausting last year, going through a divorce and trying to launch a course and pay for the operating expenses of my business. Now, I’m probably telling you too much right now, but I think it’s kind of insightful, because we all go through these evolutions of like, what, what’s our actual capacity? What do we love doing? And where is the money just kind of flowing, right? So I am about to rebrand my podcast. I think my new cover title will come out next week, and really leaning into the marketing freelancer, I have a top 1.5% podcast, which is crazy. That’s awesome. Yours probably is too. But it’s such like a niche audience, it feels really good, because sometimes we’re like, Oh, I’ll never be that or that. And it’s actually doing really well. So really like leaning boldly into. To this little area I’ve carved out. I mean, it started as a VA, and then I said unicorn VA, and then I said marketing assistant. And so now we’re in that next evolution of the marketing freelancer.

Rob Marsh: If somebody wants to connect to you, get on your list. Where should they go?

Emily Reagan: Yes, I have a couple of things. One, find my podcast, or you can connect with me on Instagram, and it’s Emily Reagan PR to that in the show notes, as always, thank you. I added PR because in the beginning, I started with PR services, and Emily Reagan was taken and I’ve just, like, left it and not cared about it. But honestly, if anyone’s listening to this and they’re interested in hiring a marketing assistant, referring a marketing assistant to their client. The best way to help me is to go to hireaunicorn.com. Share that. This a way for me to take a job and share it with my community and help a lot of email tech specialists, marketing assistants, and marketing managers get work, and that is really what lights me up. Like helping people make money online on their own terms, using their skills, getting paid.

Rob Marsh: Thanks, Emily for sharing so much about expanding our influence as copywriters into other marketing services. Be sure to check her out at Emily Reagan pr.com she’s Emily Reagan PR on Instagram as well, and I’ve included links in the show notes to her podcast, so that you can click through and hear my episode on her show, which should be available in the next couple of weeks.

At one point during the interview, we were talking about how to differentiate from the millions of other copywriters and content writers out there. Specifically, I mentioned that your unique combination of skills, experience, deliverables, industry, clients, pricing, and voice is a big part of how you stand out and how you become the number one person who does the thing that you do. I call this your X Factor. Putting all of that together can be a bit of a challenge, so I’ve put together a couple of resources to help you do it. If you go to the copywriter club.com, forward, slash authority, you’ll find a short workshop that steps through how you create your own authority so potential clients can trust you and hire you. That workshop is free.

When you visit the page, you’ll also have the opportunity to add on bonus bundle of additional workshops that will help you through the process of figuring out your X Factor and how to share it with the world. That bundle is just $17, and it will help you determine where to show up and the audience that wants to hear what you have to offer. Before today, these workshops were only available to members who paid $1,000 a month to join the copywriter think tank, but you get them for just $17 today, and because no one really needs another workshop to watch even at two times speed, 2x speed, I’ve created a playbook for the authority bonus bundle that walks you through the strategies in the workshop, step by step, so you can apply them in your business immediately. It may be the best value that we’ve ever offered. Be sure to check out thecopywriterclub.com/authority and then get the bonus bundle.

And, of course, all of those resources are also available inside The Copywriter Underground, along with templates, the legal contract, and more than 70 other workshops and playbooks, monthly coaching. You get all of that at 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 Website
Allison’s Podcast: Holy F
Allison’s Instagram
Get her freebie: Ghostwriter Gold
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The 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… or 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 at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu

And now, my interview with Allison Evelyn…

Rob Marsh: Ally, welcome back to the podcast. You were here Well, see, it’s been a long time—episode 172, and we were talking about launching, I think you were launching your first program, but a lot has happened since, not just like work-wise, personally, years have passed. Catch us up. What’s going on in your copywriting life?

Allison Evelyn: Yes, so dearest listener, we were just talking about how before, when we talked, and then I was a panelist at The Copywriter Club In Real Life, which was wild because it was early 2020. At the time. I was a New Yorker. I was living in New York. I was power walking in Adidas. I was launching programs and having memberships and doing day rates. And then. Since I have moved on in life, moved to Arizona. I am now in cowgirl boots all the time. I line dance. I met a man. We got married just at the time this airs, it’ll be about five months ago that we got married, and I am now, after being in the tech world for a while, gone back to my roots of ghost writing. And so that’s what we’re gonna dive into today, and I’m really excited about it. 

But I do think it’s almost apt that I’ve gone back to my roots of ghostwriting because now, at this point, on the day of our conversation, I have been a California-born native of the Bay Area. I have bicycled the beaches living in SoCal, I power walked in New York City. I road triped the country for eight months alone with my cat and all these other states. And now I’m living this Arizona country dancer life. I think all of our experiences channel into what we’re meant to do and what we’re meant to do, and how we show up as copywriters and ghostwriters. And part of mine has been being many different people, even as me, let alone ghostwriting for other people,

Rob Marsh: I don’t think this is an uncommon thing for copywriters. Obviously, we come from a wide range of backgrounds, and oftentimes we’ve lived two or three lives, or we’ve had two or three different careers or whatever, as we come to it. So it’s interesting that you mention that as an intro to ghostwriting because ghostwriting involves basically stepping into the boots of another person, another person’s life, and telling the story or talking as if you’re them. So, let’s talk about how you get started. We’ll talk about ghostwriting books in a minute, but, and that’s what most people think about, when they think of a ghostwriter, they’re thinking, oh, right, I’ll write a book. But there are so many ways to do this. I mentioned before we started recording. I used to ghostwrite blog posts for a CEO. So let’s talk about ghostwriting across the board. You know? What does it involve? And how do we get started? That’s a really big question. 

Allison Evelyn: Yes, absolutely. And I would guess there’s quite a number of people listening who are currently more identifying as copywriters or content creators. And this morning, I was rooting down. I really wanted to feel really prepared and just hunkered before this conversation. So I had this, like, coffee and I was like, coffee shop, and I was writing through, okay? What is the difference between copywriting and ghostwriting? And I think what it boils down to is, at least in my spirit, when I’m copywriting, or ghostwriting, copywriting is like, you’re helping create this brand. You’re capturing the essence, but you’re often helping to build it right? You’re helping determine if there’s an almond pancake batter company, like, are they a sassy one, or are they more organic based right? You’re helping create and determine the story. 

But a ghostwriter is like this real person or an organization or group, but most often, right, an individual who you’re already working with a voice like a real, living, breathing person who has an essence, and rather than creating it, you’re often helping to understand and extract who is that actual person? Because, as we know and we will talk about, a lot of people we know do not write how they talk like the real person they are is one way, and when we’re ghostwriting, some of the resistance we’re going to face and some of the pushback methods I’m going to talk about is helping people actually be who they are and tell like the real stories of who they are. But I think a lot of us were getting started, if we’ve been in copywriting, you know, we think of, okay, we’re, we’re creating a voice, we’re, we’re creating a persona. And then ghostwriting, you’re kind of shifting into a lot more question asking and going, Okay, who is this person? What am I pulling out? 

For me, my own journey, I’m going to be honest, I became a ghost writer and did not know it, because I didn’t know the term. And to your point, I thought ghostwriting was for books only. So when people asked, Hey, could you come and write this article for me? A magazine asked for me to put forward an article and do a layout. Can you write that? For me? I didn’t know that was ghostwriting. I still thought that was just content creation. 

So, just a shout-out. Some of you could be ghostwriters, and you don’t actually know it or haven’t realized it, and for getting into it, I think a lot of it is like naturally, when we’re working with people on copywriting projects, or we’re creating content. Some of it is just offering and putting it out there. Hey, do you have articles coming up? Have you done video scripts? Like, we start putting things out that are just more personal, that are from the person. Hey, I’ve been working on social media. Hey, I’ve been working on a landing page. Or I’ve been working on ABC. But what about emails in your voice? What about articles from you? What things are building your thought leadership that I could ghostwrite for you and capture your voice? Because I think we would be shocked. I mean, Rob, you won’t be shocked, but a lot of us might be shocked. How many people it terrifies them to write in their own voice. 

Rob Marsh: Yeah, for sure. As I’m thinking about this, there’s a really crucial distinction between creating content and creating content in another person’s voice. But also, there’s a thing that I and some clients certainly deal with—when I hire somebody to write in my voice, the few times that I’ve done it, even though what I get back is really good, it doesn’t always sound to me, like me. I know I have really frustrated a couple of copywriters who have written things for me and I’ll go in and I’ll change it to make it sound more like something I wrote. So maybe this is not a common thing, but possibly it is. I’m guessing that the questions or the way you get to know your clients helps you overcome that. So can we talk a little bit about that? Let’s say we’ve been hired to ghost some content. How do you ensure that you’re actually capturing their voice and not your voice? 

Allison Evelyn: Yes, this is hands down. I’ve been doing this for over a decade now, and the number one question you nailed it is this very tentative, cautious voice that says, hey, because they don’t want to offend you, or they’re trying to be careful, or they’ve been scarred, and they say, how are you going to sound like me? Though? Like, yeah, how are you going to get my voice? And so often, I’m sure, Rob, you’ve seen it. A lot of our listeners have experienced this in similar ways or other ways. This is the most personal thing, right? Our voice, our words. Hiring someone to do an accountant job or bookkeeping, there’s even a designer like designers, yes, there’s personal, but it’s another level of emotion that goes into these are my words. This is who I am. 

It’s a very identity-based thing that they’re hiring for. And there is a lot of fear. There’s so much there’s so much fear, for certain, because as humans, we care so much about perception, right and how people are perceiving us and understanding us. I once did well, ironically, ghostwriting for a public speaker, because she was amazed with public speaking, but she really questioned herself when it came to writing. And she said, The reason public speaking is the number one fear in the world is because, at a biological level, you are standing on a stage with all your organs exposed, which sounds so your aorta and your spleen there’s like all your organs are exposed. And based on how people perceive you, when they think of you, you’re all vulnerable. You can be killed. And I think a lot of us are that way with writing, of how I’m perceived, what are people going to think? And is a biological fear.
So when people ask this on repeat, I’m definitely not frustrated or offended or over the question. My heart just goes, oh, oh, this like, yeah, they’re just scared. So what I tell them is this, and then I’ll share some exact methods I use. Because, as we talked about, I just do some weird things and some funky things I don’t know. I don’t think they’re typical for a long time. I mean, before I was in The Copywriter Mastermind, I didn’t go to copywriter school, so I feel like I just did weird, scrappy things that ended up working. So what I always tell people is, I start with, “hey, I want you to know I’m not here to be me. I’m here to obsess on exactly who you are and how you sound when we talk about feedback. I cannot be offended. I want to know what’s you is you, the real, genuine you” and I share some of the things I do to help capture it, but I really emphasize to them, “I am not here to be offended.” And then I ask honestly, like, “Are there reasons you’re nervous? Are there concerns you want to share with me?” Because I cannot even put into a number count. How many people have shared, they hired someone and sounded nothing like them. They took their LinkedIn profile and, you know, tweaked it. They, you know, didn’t sound like them. And when they tried to give feedback, the person got mad at them. You know, all story after story of like, scarring. And so I just really encourage anyone who’s listening and you’re interested in being a ghostwriter or growing in your ghostwriting capacity, you are the consultant. You’re the authority here, and you get to ask questions and lead the conversation. And like, with like, a true, sincere, full heart of like, hear their fear, ask things back to them. Let’s find out what’s going on, like, dive into it. Because a lot of people have had experiences that were rough and it didn’t sound like them or the person was offended. 

For some things that I do to obsess and get into their mind. So one, I’m obsessed with tangents. I usually plan for the first call to be 90 minutes, because the first 45 minutes is usually the person telling their story, and it’s a story they’ve grown very comfortable with. They probably tell it all the time. It’s familiar. It might not even sound like them anymore. It could be them from a few years ago. I went into this, and then this is my journey, and here’s _____. So I let them get it out of their system. Honestly, I’m just we’re getting it out of the system. It’s like clockwork, about 40 to 45 minutes. Then I can start the real dive into their voice. 

Once we get that 45 minutes in, I’m like, “Oh my gosh. Hold up. You mentioned this,” and I often try to point to things that at first might be a bit of a quote tangent. So let’s say you were writing for someone who is a health practitioner and they work with women who are pregnant or that they’re a doula, something like that. I don’t first go into, I don’t want to go so deep only on their actual expertise, like for an article, I want to start asking them side questions, because what happens is, we are, if we’re being interviewed, we’re naturally going into this more formal way of speaking, like, I’m sure, the way each of us talk on a formal interview, especially if we were younger, and we’re being protective of our voice. It is not the way we talk to our friends and family. 

Rob Marsh: More than that, I think sometimes we hold back because we’re afraid to get vulnerable, or afraid to make ourselves look less than competent, or say something that might make people question our expertise. There’s all kinds of reasons, I think that somebody would hold back. 

Allison Evelyn: Yes, exactly. There are so many reasons. And as a ghostwriter, some of those things are going to start to come out, or naturally will come out, because you’re going to be tapping into things that are emotional, especially to get the stories and the thing that the person actually does want, right? The client wants to be real. They want to be themselves. But it’s often a little harder not what they expect to get there. Because if they’re used to, you know, being interviewed, or they want to put their story across, they’re not always seeing themselves and let’s, like, it’s still, it’s at the classic, you know, inside the jar or the peanut butter jar, you can’t see the label, right? If you’re the peanut butter, you’re tucked in the jar. You can’t see that you’re, like, the crunchy cinnamon. You just know your peanut butter. So we’re helping them see that they’re crunchy cinnamon. And so I love to put, like, go out in these tangents a little bit I need to, like, get them out of their typical elevator pitch, their typical story mind. So they mentioned, like, North Carolina, and they’re like, oh, you know when I was there, that’s when we transitioned, and we live by the beach. You’re like, Oh, one second, you live North Carolina by the beach. Tell me. Like, were you a surfer? Like I just throw in these questions. And they’re like, Oh my gosh. I actually always wanted to be like, and their real voice will start coming out, and you have a record, it’s great. So you’re getting in their real voice. 

We need to just break it up, because we’ll come back to their industry. We’re gonna come back to the article, back to the book, we’re gonna come back to the things we’re writing about. But we need to, we need to loosen up. We need to, like, get a break, to release their real voice. 

I’m almost seeing it like, you know, glow sticks. So I got married five months ago… we had glow sticks for all the kids, which, of course, the adults also ended up picking up and wearing naturally with 17 kids at our wedding. And so glow sticks everywhere. You have to break it to get it to light up, but it’s with love, right? You’re breaking it with love, so we need to break it up. So get them talking about different things. And that is so much of my favorite part of what gets used in the ghostwriting process because now you’re writing an article or the book, right? Or the email that is from that person, from that expert. And we get to drop in these nuggets that are really them, of like, you know, if you want to be healthy, the way I always wanted to be a surfer when I lived in North Carolina. And we only get those. We break them out of, like, their the usual spiel, which I sounds derogatory, but it just true. We really do tend to get comfortable in certain spiels in our stories. So one, I get them on tangents. 

I love to get voice memos or to talk to people while they are walking. This is so game-changing. There is so much power in walking. And you talk to this person, you get the interview. You go, Hey, I’m working a few things. I’m gonna follow up with some questions, and I want you to do something that’s gonna sound weird. I would like you to do a voice memo while you are walking. And I think when we are on a computer, or we’re in front of someone at a coffee shop, we’re in, we’re in this more formal interview mode. I think there are studies on this, but even just in personal experience, I think a lot of us can relate. Where do a lot of us have the best conversations, the most raw, honest ones? To me, it’s in the car, because you have two people who are looking forward. Relationship experts will say, especially for men, there is a freedom to be more open and vulnerable when we don’t have someone staring us in the face.

Rob Marsh: I hadn’t thought of that. That’s probably true. 

Allison Evelyn: Yeah, there’s something just… your eyes can wander. You’re looking at open space, if you’re collecting your thoughts or you need to pause, because a lot of us, if we’re telling stories, we need to pause for a moment, and we feel awkward if someone’s just staring at us in front of us, but if we’re walking, if we’re driving, there’s an openness. And I believe the environment dictates a lot of how we feel. So if we want to be open, what’s a great way to do that is an environment outside that’s open. So I love sending questions, a few core questions, like, tell me about a time when… and give some specific story examples and then tell them to go on a walk. I know it’ll be weird. I call it out, I acknowledge everything I believe in over communicating with my clients and for why I’m asking them to do things. Like, I want to get you out of the house. I want to get you off of your computer. I want to get you away from it and just share word vomit. Don’t overthink it, because the more someone is walking and talking and others staring at dogs, and then they run into their neighbor like you are going to get a more real and real version of who that person is. To capture their voice.

Rob Marsh: This is probably the wrong time to ask this question, maybe a little bit backward, or maybe I should have started here. But before we go too much farther in this whole process, it occurs to me that there are a lot of companies that buy content and they’re producing content, or they’re hiring copywriters to write content from their company perspective that really ought to be doing more ghostwriting from the founder perspective, or maybe from, you know, some other team member who’s you’re part of the face of the company. When you’re ghostwriting, or you’re working with clients. Do you wait for clients to realize that? Or is there some conversation that you have with a company that that you’re saying, hey, look, rather than looking at this blog post from the company perspective. I actually think this should be coming from the CEO. And if it’s, if it’s that discussion, what does that discussion sound like?

Allison Evelyn: Yes, absolutely. And the next kind of methods I can share about that I’ll go into are, if you don’t have that control, because there’s a lot of people, if it’s personal, right, you can ask them to take a walk. You can ask some people, as you to your point where sometimes it could be the CEO. You’re working with a big company. You don’t always have a certain level of access to someone to dive in and the time. So there are definitely things we can do to still capture their voice to sound like them. So just want to make that note, yes, that is a I have that conversation all the time, all the time I remember, like last year alone, I should have just started doing a little tally on my wall, like in chalk or something, of the amount of times I go, Hey, I and this is kind of my language for talking to people is I love that we’re going to talk about this piece I love, we’re going to channel this I love. This is your mission. Can I be really honest with you? I think that’s probably one of my go to phrases, because it’s probably surprising if people say no. I think most people want you to be honest with them, right?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, can I be honest with you? No, actually, I would like you to continue lying to me. Not. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that answer yet 

Allison Evelyn: Exactly. Or, like, No, I want to be in denial. Or, No, I don’t want to face insert, so can be honest with you? I’ve never had someone say no yet. So yes, I’m like, I’d like to share something, and it might be different. So I always do a little context. I do a little lead in, because there are certain things, if we just slap on someone, they might react. So I think it’s important if it’s something that maybe they’ve maybe they have written as the company for a long time. I mean, there was a company I talked to about this, and they had literally 30 years. They had written third person Wow as the company. So, you know, we also are mindful of, where we’re coming into, what’s the context. And so if it’s something new, something that could trigger defensiveness or fear our but, and I’ll, I mean, I almost always hear the same thing, so I will definitely share. What I the objection I always hear, and it’s funny, because we always end up ghostwriting as them after we, you know, go through a few more questions, and they sit with it usually is, is like, Hey, I, you know, give that context, I’m going to share something that might feel a little bit different. Am I feel uncomfortable, and I’m going to tell you why I think this is going to be a huge important thing for your business. Um, but I think it’s going to be something really amazing, even if it’s a little uncomfortable at first, and they’re like, okay, okay, you know, you’re you’re gearing up a little bit. I think uncomfortable is a good world word, because it’s not bad, it’s not terrible, it’s just uncomfortable for a lot of people to have a voice, or if it’s a marketing person going, I don’t know if the CEO will want that, you know, just uncomfortable. And then I want to, you know, third person is this general company. It’s a general mass. It’s not somewhere speaking to and I’ll be so direct if it’s the CEO who’s separate, or often, is the person on the call even going, you are the leader. People want to name. They want a face. They want someone they can talk to. And I’ll give examples of companies that I know they can relate to. I will give them hey, this person from this company. Think about email from this company. Like humans. We want a face. We want a name. We want someone to hear from. We want something personal—especially in this world of AI and mass numbers and volume. And oftentimes, when it’s the CEO or the founder, it is really them that a lot of people first found out about the company, or it’s why they’re drawn to the company. 

And so I call it out, and it almost always makes them uncomfortable. They usually are like, no, no, I don’t want to make it about me. So hey, like it’s you, like, your voice, your story, your perspective. It means something. It creates the human experience, the human touch. And that is the objection I get, is the number one objection I hear when you are pushing back and challenging. Let’s make this first-person ghostwriting, not this third-person ominous. I will say blob. That sounds like a sad, negative connotation, an ominous blob of a company right where you don’t know anybody. It’s like a massive thing. The thing is, they don’t usually want to make it about themselves. So many times I have heard CEOs founders say, no, no, I must be about the team. It’s about the heart. It’s about the mission. I don’t want to plaster my face on everything. I don’t want to make it about me. And often what I’ll tell them is whether or not they like it. It does come down to them. It is often about them, like whether they’re a known CEO or less known like the founder, their story like that is what people care about. I think about charity water. Anyone listening? Rob, if you know Charity Water?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s a great charity. I mean, if you’re looking for a charity to donate to, it’s at the top. It’s an amazing charity.

Allison Evelyn: Yes, it’s so good. The reason I think so many of us even know about charity water and have a heart for them is his name’s Scott Harrison. He is so open with his story. Like, when I think of Charity Water, I see his face. I think of Scott. I think of their YouTube ads. It was one of the few full-length, very long YouTube ads I have ever watched. Was Scott telling his story of being a club promoter and being in this nightlife and like living this wild, you know, light, he goes into all the details, and then his transformation, and then going around the world and seeing this need, and there, that story is what got my heart into charity water. But honestly, if they had just stayed corporate, yeah, that did good in the world, it would not hit the same it just wouldn’t. And so I think going back to you have ownership as a ghostwriter, as a copywriter, you know you’re an expert, you are being paid to lead someone like you are being paid not to be dominated by this person’s voice. You are being paid and invested in to host this voice and give your insights and to be honest with people even if they find it at first, even it’s uncomfortable, it’s like, if you were hiring a financial advisor and you were throwing money at something that they see, is going to like be a poor reason for insert a, b and c. You want them to be honest. You want them to tell you, hey, I really don’t think you should do this. Here’s why it’s a good thing to lead people. And so I have that conversation a lot of saying, Your voice matters, your story is what’s going to draw people in. Why you founded this company, who you are, your experience. I know it’s uncomfortable, but already it is actually about or from you a lot. And so can you let us try telling that story? Are you open to letting us try it this way? So I think there’s a lot of that kind of language I implement to soften it.

Rob Marsh: That makes sense. As you’re talking, I’m thinking about the companies with CEOs that really stand out, like they’re in the lead, you know, companies like, you know, Apple and Steve Jobs, right? Or Amazon, Jeff Bezos, for better or worse. You know, Elon Musk’s companies like people who are and and as I’m thinking through this idea of, should a company have ghosted content or plain content, it seems like those companies that don’t that are maybe more generic, the IBM’s and Hewlett Packard’s or whatever, their founders have moved on, and so it feels like it’s really natural, if we’re working with founders, people who are running their own companies, they’ve started it like it should be their voice. There’s probably an argument for those other companies where the founders moved on, that there should be another voice, you know, a leader that personalizes that brand. But I mean, this isn’t even really a question, is, I’m just kind of working through this in my brain, like, who should you know, who are the great clients for somebody who wants to go strike content? And again, if you’ve got a founder, it’s like a no-brainer,

Allison Evelyn: Absolutely, and especially, I mean, a founder is a great person because, as a founder, they have a lot else on their plate, even just if we go logistically, not even skill set wise, but logistically, a founder has a vision. They are hiring. They’re running the teams like we know that ghostwriting, good, impactful content and words, it takes a lot of time, whether that is an article, whether that’s an ebook, whether it’s a full-length book, a founder who’s running, even if it’s a tiny company or really large company, they don’t have that space and bandwidth, and oftentimes the skill set is different, right? A lot of my people who are founders, they’re visionaries, in the sense of, like, the big picture, they’re directing people. They’re directing teams and writing there is vision. And also we are detail-oriented. We are sitting there googling synonyms or using Cloud AI for, like, what is the perfect word for this one headline? Like, it’s a deep focus work. So I think it’s a great fit for ghostwriters for people who are founders of companies.

Rob Marsh: Another thing that occurs to me—the difference between copywriting and ghostwriting is the emphasis on stories, so regular content, you can say the thing or tell the thing. Obviously, that’s not the best practice with copywriting, but it happens a lot in the content world with ghostwriting. Really, the way to personalize is, I mean, the whole reason to even have a ghostwriter is to pull out these stories. So, you know, can we talk a little bit about what you do to get people’s stories out and tell their stories in unique ways? 

Allison Evelyn: Yes, I am such a story addict. I’m sure a lot of us are. Of us, we’re gathered here. You know, wherever you are in the world, and whether you’re doing dishes or you’re driving or walking, you’re probably nodding because, as writers, we are storytellers. I am the person who I’m with at coffee shops and in my work, and then sometimes I’ll pop up my headphones because there are great conversations going on around me. And I am, I’m taking it all in. I’m absorbing. I’m making notes. So I did a lot of my road trips, since I was road tripping alone for over six months, I would go to these random spots and sit outside and I just have, I have notes on notes in my phone of stories, right that we’re capturing. And I think there are different ways to capture stories, for ghostwriting, right for their content, whatever the format is, in different ways. 

So let’s say it’s someone you don’t have as much access to, or you have more limited time. I love going deep into just all of their presence on the Internet. And that doesn’t have to be new. In fact, I think there’s a lot of beauty of going farther back, so going deep back through someone’s social media channels, going way deep back in their Instagram, where they might have even been in another company or lived another life, that’s actually really great content, because you can see their background, get these stories, or all These things you can drop and pop into their content, and they will be mind blown. I’m telling you, they will go, how did you even know that about me? Oh, my gosh. Like, yes, this is actually about my life. Because they will be so shocked on how well you’ve gotten to know them in ways they didn’t, wouldn’t, they wouldn’t even think to tell you, because you go back five years and you see, oh, like they were a kickboxing instructor. And you’re like, going back to the classes they used to teach, and now you can reference in their ghostwriting, like, Oh, I’m going to blank. 

You know, it’s funny. I used to go to this boxing gym back in Detroit. And they’re like, how did you even know that? And. You, it’s all going back through. Also, if they’ve been on YouTube, if they’ve been on podcasts, you know, anything you can do to get their voice? I will literally just play my client’s YouTube videos while I’m writing as them, just because I hear their voices. So the more that I hear their voice and their words, it just fills my brain with them, and then I’ll make notes on phrases I notice tend to repeat, on words they tend to say. So, for example, there’s someone I was ghostwriting as, and she has a podcast, and I noticed that when she talks about memory, she always says whenever I was blank, so I would write that down. So then I read her email and go, you know, whenever I was blank and like those, like capturing the exact phrases people use that honestly, y’all they probably don’t even know that they use. Like they probably don’t even know they say certain things. I have a client who is from the north of Ireland, and it’s so fun to get to go straight as her because my family’s from Ireland. So I am half channeling, tapping into my own family and my aunts. And things I naturally notice from, you know, going back and forth to Ireland my whole life, certain very Irish phrases. So she will say certain things, like the way she says like, she will insert like, like, oh, like, Oh, my, oh, my blank or oh, this, like, she has these very certain phrases she uses. And I write them down, and then I put them through her copy, and I remember the voice memo I got from her one day when she said, this is, I did not know I said these things are unique. Oh, she has a very global audience. I go, Oh, yeah, they’re very you, and they’re very Irish. She goes, Are they really and, like, first of all, what you just said was very Irish, yes, like, it is. So I think any things you can do to take notes and really analyze the patterns of how people speak makes a big difference, plus they are very specific, tangible references to things in their life.

Rob Marsh: So as you’re working with these clients and ghost writing for them, are you bringing them ideas to write about, saying, Hey, I you know I noticed this about you, or notice this about the market? Everybody’s talking about this thing, I think we should address it. Or are you letting them dictate what you’re writing, and you’re just contextualizing it to their voice.

Allison Evelyn: What I would say tends to happen is people have a general idea of what they think they’re going to talk about, and there is sort of this co-creating that ends up happening because they might come in and say, Hi, I am launching this. I need emails, articles, you know, ghostwritten on this topic, and or, you know, with this book, I see talking about this. But then as you start talking to them, as you start really getting to the heart of what they want to say, what’s going on so very often, a different, at least a semi-different, story starts to come out. Like themes start to come forward, like there’s something they keep bringing up, like you start to see where it actually ends up going and going, okay, actually, I know you’re saying you want to talk about this, but it sounds like this is coming up a lot. Look at these questions. 

Because, let’s say it’s someone who has a community, like an app, and you go through that app and you see that these members are all talking about one thing. You’re like, hey, but this is a big question. So why don’t we address that? And we can kind of merge it with, you know, you’re launching this thing, but let’s like, speak to the real question going on. AI is a great example, right? Ai, like any major technology in the history of our world, flipped all these people in its head. So if I was taught doing a business launch, and I’m launching something on pricing my programs, and all of these people are fresh to AI coming out and are freaking out that what is going to happen to business are robots are taking over the world, because that was the number one phrase I heard when I was deep in with tech clients and apps, are robots taking over the world. And if we don’t mention that, it seems almost a little odd, and we can still talk about the launch. So like, Hey, we’re launching this program. You’re going to talk about articles and articles, you’re gonna talk about your business perspective. But like, I know you have thoughts in AI, I know you said this in your private, you know, consulting calls in your group membership, like, why don’t we tap into that? So I think there is, like, this element of kind of co-creating with the person, where you’re bringing ideas and you’re bringing things forward and, you know, kind of going off of like, what their intention is. Because, in my experience, people aren’t usually showing up with no vision, right? Especially like a founder or someone like that. They usually have some goal they’re working towards, like some intention. They’re not usually purely going, I have no idea what to say. I just need words in the world. Yeah.

 

Rob Marsh: I know you like tangents, so I’m going to tangent here on AI for a second. Since you mentioned, you mentioned both tangents and AI. So do you use AI at all in your process for ghosting? And I mean, the reason I ask is obviously like, if I hired you to write for me, you could take a bunch of podcast episodes or some of the trainings that I’ve done in the copywriter underground. You plug those transcripts into AI and have it identify, like a lot of those quirky things that I say, maybe it’s some of the things I hate that I say, you know, as I listen back to myself. But obviously, when you tell people sometimes things, they say, they go, Oh, I don’t like them, but it’s you. I see my transcripts, and I know how often I say dumb little phrases as fillers, and it drives me crazy. But do you use AI like that at all? Or are you all in on it’s you’re a human. I’m a human. We’re human created.

Allison Evelyn: I see I had this metaphor come out of my mouth recently. I don’t remember where, somewhere virtual coffee shop, not sure. But my sort of metaphor that came out for AI was, it’s like the mannequin in a shop. So you’re walking, you’re walking in the mall. It’s like, you know, it’s high school. You have an idea for, you know, like, oh, I want to wear something to insert event. And you see a mannequin, and someone took the mannequin and sort of said, Oh, you could wear it like this. Here’s an idea. But if you walk in and really just take the outfit one, it might not even fit you, like it might be. I mean, I could be for someone who’s six foot one and I am five foot five, like that is not going to work, um, or there might be elements that aren’t quite right, or like that, that that is I love the skirt, but like that’s not really my favorite color. I’d wear it in this color. And so I see AI as this great way to prompt suggestions. And I don’t use it as much. I know people who use it a lot more, more than me. I’m sure less I really use it at times… I just use it. My wording is, it gets my juices flowing. It’s kind of like the mannequin I see the mannequin I see the outfit. I’m like, Oh, I hadn’t thought about polka dots with stripes. Oh, maybe I could combine other patterns. And then I it gets my brain thinking, so with AI certain things, I mean, honestly, I use it so much for synonyms, or if there’s a phrase I keep somehow saying the same, like word strategies, like, Oh, what are other ways if I’m trying to talk about strategies that I you know, and like getting those sort of ideas. I think sometimes, if you’re trying to get a really basic framework, just to map out, like format. So for example, I remember one time I used it because I was mapping out a webinar for someone. I was writing everything out for them in their voice, and I’m like, Okay, I know I need to have a webinar. I also know I tend to go over on slides. I’m like, at 30 slides. Only give me 30 slides. 30 slides. We’re gonna break into a story at the beginning. We’re gonna talk about five things, and then we are gonna need to wrap it up with a call to action. And what AI did is it just mapped it out in terms of, like, literally, like, Okay, you probably want about five slides for the story, this many slides for this. And honestly, I just saved myself, you know, 30 to 40 minutes of mapping something out that’s really not when my brain needs to go like, the client has hired me because they want me to extract their voice and do that, and that’s not really, there’s nothing they’re gaining from it. If AI did that formatting, or if I did sort of like, I think about going to the doctor’s office, how long do you see the doctor in an appointment? 

Rob Marsh: Not actually that long.

Allison Evelyn: Unfortunately, only a couple of minutes, right?

It’s pretty sure, because they know the doctor has such an expertise that they just need them in the room for when they need them. Someone else checks you in, right? Someone else checks your insurance. Someone else takes your vitals, like, all these steps. So I think AI is like, my vitals, taker of like, okay, maybe it maps this out, gets my juices flowing with like, oh man. These headlines are sounding ratchet in my brain. Let me try some new things, or give me some synonyms, or, like, just some prompts. But then when I’m bringing out the stories and I’m getting their quirks, I’m going in, um, at this point, like, you know, I really instill most it’s me and my brain, because I feel like the way we are gonna pull it out and bring it in is, you know, AI, yes, is a tool, but we are like a human with insight. We’re talking to someone, we’re hearing their real voice. We have all these stories in our brain, right? I’ve spent hours listening to them on YouTube. I’ve been combing their Instagram, all these like facets that are. Coming together in my mind, of like, how to plug in the stories and use their voice, and then, like you said, I think that’s a great idea. Actually, I have not done that brilliant. Take the scram chip, the transcripts, what are the common phrases that get repeated, and then go in and plug some of those in? Perfect. That would be a great way to use it. But I think we can be a writer and really own being unique, and it doesn’t take away to use AI if it’s used as a tool, and we don’t have to be downcast and downtrodden of like, AI is taking over. It’s like, oh no. It’s like the internet. It’s like Google Docs. Like, I could use a typewriter and print it out and white it out, but I’m really doing it in vain, like, when I can just type it on Google Docs. I also do own a typewriter side note, but that’s for fun.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Well, now I got questions about typewriters, but I want to talk about ghost writing. So I know you have started to switch from writing smaller projects like blog posts or other things for your clients, and you are now moving into ghost writing books, which, again, is what most of us, before you know chatting today, usually think about ghost writing as. So can you talk a little bit about that switch from short form to long form? And you know what other things we ought to be thinking about as we reach out to this kind of a client?

Allison Evelyn: Yes, absolutely. I think what’s really interesting is we can get so used to the worlds we’re in that we aren’t thinking about other possibilities. Or if there’s certain walls we keep coming against, I have found in my journey in entrepreneurship and in career and honestly in life, like if there’s some wall I keep coming up against, there’s a time to sort of step back and go, Okay, is there some reason? Is there something that needs to change? And for me, and I will be so curious on, like, how many people listening feel this way? I realized one of my walls and one one factor that could be a sign you’re a fit to go into pursuing ghost writing books or like longer formats, is if it feels like you’re almost cutting your clients off. And what I mean by that is, I get so deep with my clients. I mean, I’m in their worlds. I know about their lives and their kids, and how their pets are doing? We’re holding up our cats to each other, like on Zoom and our cats are chatting. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a we’re so deep in it with each other. And, you know, doing a sales page, doing emails, doing these launches, right? We have a more limited time. And I think I reached this point of, I love writing as people, I love serving them, but I feel like it’s so short, and I keep almost cutting them off, you know, like a therapist where, you know, the person really started opening up, and they’re like, ah, we really got to cut this time, because this is a short session, and this is all, you know, this is the bandwidth I have. And so I think what started to hit me was, oh my gosh. It’s because I meant to write longer form. I love getting into people’s worlds. I love spending hours creeping on them. I always tell my clients this line, I will say, you cannot send me too much. So I’ll say, Send me your brand guides. Send me the past videos of you, send me articles you’ve written, send me your favorite emails. Send me the data on your emails and I perform like I am a high input person. I want to see it all. I want to take it all in. I want to observe it. And so it started to click. Oh my gosh, because of the book you have this opportunity, you’re actually supposed to go that deep. You’re supposed to know you can’t know too much about them, like you are capturing them and embodying them in this really deeper format. And so that was something that really started to hit me, like, Why do I feel like I’m constantly having to cut things and end things so short, and it’s not feeling right, and like something’s feeling off. So I think that was a big one. And then second, I always love to do these check ins of, what am I personally really passionate about? Like, what do I obsess on in my free time? Like, what are the things I’m going into? What are the things I’m looking at? And I started finding myself going, okay, you know, I spent a lot of years deep in so many memberships and courses, and I was like, really, like, in so many areas of my life, and it was amazing, but I kind of moved into this place of, I, I’m, I’m, at core, a book lover. I’m sure, as writers, almost all of us are right. I, I have always had such an obsession. There was, like, a rule at our dinner table that you can’t have books because it was that severe, like we’d be sneaking books under the table of like, like, just obsessed with books, writing books from a young age. All was, they’re always stories about, like, orphaned animals that were trying to find parents, or this is, this is so dark. But I just found this story I wrote in fourth grade, and it was called alone. In the forest of doom, and it was this girl who had been kidnapped and thrown in a force to die.

Rob Marsh: Yikes. And there’s your brain. Yeah, a young brain. You need therapy.

Allison Evelyn: Oh we love therapy. It’ll be my next session of like, hey, if there’s anyone else who wrote dark stories as a child, please, uh, my Instagram, and I’ll be in the show notes, hit me up. We can talk. Um, yes, yes. This character was thrown into the forest, and she used to survive and, like, fight her way out, like, make it back to her family. And at the end, like, the mom is saying all these words to her of love and how much they missed her, and they just want her to be safe. And it’s so wild, because an adult I can see now, oh, that was, that was definitely stuff. My mom said to me that I was, that’s what I was doing right, as a young writer, and a ghost writer was like taking cues from the world around me, but when you think about the things you love. Like, I’ve gone back into my love of reading all the time. I’m an English Lit degree. You know, that was like when I studied. And I think there was a period where I was a lot more deep in memberships and courses and learning in that way. But who am I actually? What do I actually? What am I currently drawn to? And in the last few years, it’s books like my I’m constantly referencing some book I’m highlighting. I’m sending copies to people I have, you know, like The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. And so I think sometimes, if we’re feeling this confusion on, what am I supposed to be pursuing, what are, what should I be doing? Part of it is like, what are, what are you naturally drawn to? And so when I think about how much books have changed my life, that is a big one of, oh, I think that’s actually when I want to pursue writing, because I believe in the power of books. Like, when I’m talking about ghost reading someone’s book, I’m not selling someone. I’m not selling someone trying to convince them of something to like, some way to use me, or like, pay me I legitimately am, like, with my whole heart, every ventricle and aorta is going your story would change lives, and if you do not tell it, there’s all these people that would be so impacted. So it’s really easy, I think, when you believe in the power of something to naturally, want to do it and pour into it, and that would be kind of my I guess, final tidbit on book ghost writing and something that really signaled to me that that was something I was meant to pivot into. And someone listening might feel this way. I have realized the level I analyze books is wild, like I’m highlighting and partially it’s for the information, right? Partially it’s for, oh, that’s a great thing, but partially I’m going, that’s a great phrase, Oh, I see they did a story, they started halfway through the story, then they did a flashback, like, I’m analyzing how they told the story, how they set up the book, like how they structure their books, how they how they structure their book covers, like, all of those are things I am constantly I naturally love. And so if you know someone listening, is the same that also could be a signal of something that could be a great fit because you’re already studying it. You don’t even know it.

Rob Marsh: As I think about the process of writing a book for someone else, there’s probably a couple of different kinds of books people are looking for, you know, memoirs, you know, telling their story. There’s probably educational books. It’s like, you know, the seven things about starting a SaaS business kind of a thing. Maybe there’s a combination between the two. So as you’re entering into this, how are you thinking about how you’re helping clients identify the book that they need to write? So again, somebody may say, I need to, you know, I want to have a book. I’ve got some great stories, but there’s got to be some kind of a goal for the book. You know, am I just telling these stories to entertain my kids and my grandkids, or am I telling these stories in order to bring customers into my business? Because those are two really different books with probably very different structures, and you need to be telling stories in different ways, right? So, how are you thinking about that kind of stuff as you approach these kinds of projects?

Allison Evelyn: Absolutely. Well, I mean, first is like, the call to action is always or what’s the heart, what’s the intent for? What the purpose is, is this a founder of a tech company who is going, Okay, I want to be established as a thought leader and be known for blank topic because I run a company where we do blank is it going to be their new sort of business card where they go to conference or speak at conferences, and they want to have this tangible, real life thing that people can hold and read and learn about them from and become the trusted expert? Right? And exactly, there’s a whole genre of book writing that is people who are older that want to have a memoir to pass on to their family and have that legacy. So I think that’s at the heart first, is absolutely going okay, what is the intention for the book and what’s the vision? Because that could change a lot. So for example, if it’s more educational and my I write my own, you know, fiction, I’m writing my own books that are fiction nonfiction, that is my voice, and that’s the way I get to have an outlet, and I get to be me, and I get to fully write someone else’s book. That’s also a joy, because I know there are people who go straight fiction. So for me, ghost writing, non fiction being my pivot. Ghost writing non fiction for study thought leaders, memoirs, and especially spaces in you know, tech, health and faith based Christian books, is okay? Is it to educate and show up as a thought leader? Because then it’s what one idea that immediately comes to me that you know, for my mindset and approaches, is this meant to be one book, or is this like a series you see doing so right from the get go, I want to know, is this more of a series, or is this more of a one off? Because if it’s a series, there might be, you know, like they, if they are teaching on something, we can go in with the mindset of, like, we’re going to talk about these three or four main audiences they have, and break it down so educational, I want to question first, if we’re going to do a series and then break it up that way, and also, how is it being used? So is this a book that has been especially for thought leaders and for education. Is this to be sold and to truly be an author and to have income, or is this something where you’re using it in part of a funnel and for credibility? Because it’s for a funnel and credibility, this is a lot more likely to be done as some sort of freebie, especially if it’s a could be a full size book, but probably like a shorter book, because there are more and more books coming out, right, that are more, you know, like 100 pages. It’s like a shorter version book, that’s top of funnel, something to bring to conferences. So really understanding how is it being used? Is it the end goal, just the book itself, or is it, just, as you said, is it a funnel into someone’s business, into someone’s, you know, expertise, credibility, that that sort of piece, I think when it comes to other sorts of like non fiction, I think my my heart, is definitely this sort of, you know, Inspiration and teaching something. And it might not be directly a memoir, but it’s like a sneaky memoir, because it’s going to be through storytelling. It’s going to be, you know, tapping into their own background, and I think a lot of it is helping them, the client, figure out what the topic is. Because a lot of times, just like mentioned before, people might come and say, Oh, I really want to write a book and I want to tell a story, or I want to share this part, but as you actually talk to them and work through them, like your new theme emerges. So I think if there’s education, if there’s a funnel, that’s easier to find the purpose sometimes, because naturally, if you, you know, lead a software business, and you run a certain type of software, you kind of know your call to action, you see your funnel. And then there’s more openness with a non fiction that’s more inspiring, or a memoir, like with a with a faith based book, or without a wellness book or, you know, so, you know, that is an experience where you’re kind of working with them a little bit more of like, what’s the story we want to tell? Why? And then helping them figure out what that story is, and then mapping it from there, as I think you can map a bit of the table of contents, but that’s really something that you’re gonna do in the process of ghost writing the book. As their stories come out, as the themes emerge, as they say that one line where you’re like, stop, stop. What did you just say? That’s a quote. That’s a quote. Hold up. Okay, we need that in there. So a lot of that ghost writing process is like extracting things from them figuring out their story, because that’s why someone hasbeen  hired to ghost write a book that’s a whole other beast to do that and create that.

Rob Marsh: Is there any last advice or big things that you want to share with people who might be thinking about ghost writing? 

Allison Evelyn: Yes, so there is a big one, and I shared it with this about Rob beforehand, because it was just so big on my heart. And what I want to say and make sure people know listening, is that whether you’re a copywriter or content creator, you’re a ghost writer, especially if you’re going into ghost writing as a writer, where we know we’re already behind screens, we’re in separate rooms. Times we’re not always seen, especially as a ghost writer, right, where someone else’s name is on it, unless you are co authoring, which can happen, right, where you can co author and your name is also in, you know, sort of the credits, or the, you know, the byline. But a lot of times, as a ghost writer, right, it is a true ghost writing is your name is not there. It is the other person. And what I want to highlight and make sure is known, because this is something I did not realize I struggled with. You know, 10 years ago, eight years ago, is that when you’re ghost ring for someone else, it’s not that their voice matters and yours does not. Your voice still matters. You as a person like you are created like so special, right? Each person, right, is created so wonderfully and uniquely, and all of our voices matter. And when we go through someone else, I have found, at least in my own experience, there was times where it was so easy for me to go, oh, they matter, and their story is this, and then I was like, I Shrunk myself because I thought I had to shrink my value as a person, for someone else to be lifted up. But that’s not what ghost writing is, right? Like ghost writing is Hold up. What a joy and a gift that I have, the joy, the excitement, the skill set to highlight someone else’s story, to draw it out of them, to tap into who they are, for even them to see more of who they are. I have people cry all the time when I read, when they’re like, reading the first thing I’ve written as them, because they go, Whoa, is that me? I’m like, yeah. And they’re like, did I say that? And like, Yes, you did. They’re like, what? Sometimes they need a day or two. Because they’re like, oh my gosh, I can’t say that. That’s too bold. I’m like, But you did say it, and they go, what? But it’s like the sweetest gift, right? You get to give someone, you get to showcase and highlight their story. And you have like that is a special place. Your place matters. It is not smaller. They are not bigger than you, even if they have more visibility in that way. And for example, I’m excited that I’m writing my own books, and then I’m also ghostwriting books, right? Like I get to have my voice. I don’t need to shrink or not say anything just because I’m a ghost writer. But even if you don’t write your own things publicly, I just really want to make sure, because I know we have so many writers that are so used to elevating other people, lifting them up, making sure they’re seeing that they love every word said that, then they feel smaller, and then they don’t push back, and they forget they have an authority and ownership role that really matters. And so you matter as a writer, as a ghost writer, you are not smaller than anybody else, and I really want you to know that.

Rob Marsh: Ally, if somebody wants to connect with you or even hop on your list, or listen to your relaunched podcast, which should be coming out any day now, if it’s not already out, where should they go? 

Allison Evelyn: Its so wild to say that I am relaunching my podcast, but by the time this airs, it will be launched. So dear listener you are. I’m just so excited, because obviously being on podcasts, I love podcasts, and it’s another way I use my voice and I highlight other people’s stories. Once a ghostwriter, always someone who highlights stories. So you can do a few things. One, you can go to my Instagram or my website, which are Allison Evelyn. So I go by Ally, but I’ve had my URL for so long, I’m sticking with it for now, the full allisonevelyn.com, and also on my Instagram, where you can DM me. It’s me. I don’t have someone else in there, robot assistant or otherwise, that is me and my DM so say hi. 

Tell me if you write dark stories, I have a freebie that we’re gonna list that’s gonna be in the show notes. It also be on my website, and it is I’m so excited to share this, because it’s something I wish I’d had many years ago when I was working as a ghost writer, even years in, this would have been great to have, and it’s my five like favorite ghost writing methods that truly will have clients just loving the work, like making it impactful, capturing the voice, just building on what we discussed today. And we’re gonna have a special script in there as well, and it’s a script for helping push back against clients when they read your words and they freak out, they’re too vulnerable. 

So I know that can feel scary to push back. So I wanted to give you a script because I have used it many times, and it has given such confidence that I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s not even scary. So I’ll have that script in there, and then my podcast, now relaunched, is called Holy f, and it’s the podcast that makes you say Holy f, and the F stands for father, freedom and faith, and it’s telling stories, personal, global, from history, from the Bible, all these places that are telling amazing, jaw dropping stories that are so God, you cannot make them up. So I’m really excited for that. It’s going to be a place to reignite faith, hope, belief, because a lot of us are, we’re facing a lot of doubt, and we face a lot of things that we don’t know are possible, and so many arenas of just different topics that we can feel really downtrodden on. And so I wanted to create a place to tell stories that gave hope. We need good news in the world and things that are exciting. So you can also check it out there. But Rob, it’s been so fun to talk. I love getting to discuss stories and telling people stories, and I am so appreciative to have been here.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s been amazing. Ali, thanks for coming back, and we’ll have all the links in the show notes, and who knows, maybe in three or four years, we’ll have you back again.

Thanks, to Allie for walking us through the ins and outs of ghost writing for clients, and especially for sharing the mental shifts that we need to make in order to move from the typical client to one that needs help with Thought Leadership and ghost writing. 

As a ghost writer, it’s less about creating the voice or story for a brand or business, and more about magnifying the voice of an already existing person and helping them show up in the world in a bigger way. So many business leaders need this kind of help, and if Ally’s story and advice resonated with you, you may want to consider ghost writing as a service in your own business. 

A couple of other resources that might help you as you step into the role of a ghost writer are workshops and playbooks that are inside the copywriter underground. These are workshops about creating your own intellectual property, finding your X Factor, that’s the thing that makes you different and better than other copywriters. And there’s a workshop about writing thought leadership. I know you probably don’t have a lot of time to watch workshops and add these skills to your skill set, which is why we are adding playbooks for each of the workshops inside The Underground. 

Of course, you can watch the workshops for the in depth training, or you can use the three to four page playbook that pulls the most important concepts out of each of the workshops and gives you a step by step plan for things like finding your X Factor, creating your own intellectual property and writing thought leadership. These are plans that you can use immediately to accomplish more in your business, starting today. And if you’re interested in that, check out thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. 

 

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’ Website
The Client Studio
How to Write Like a MoFo
10 Energizing Hook Frames
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

Full 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, create products and services your clients want to buy and more—The Underground is like a starter-kit for your business… or a complete business-in-a-box that you can almost plug and play. As questions come up, you also have access to 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 at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu

Ross, welcome to the podcast. It’s been a while since we talked in person. It was 2019, one of our live events. Catch me up on what’s going on and and how did you become—you’re so many things. I mean, copywriter, coach, mentor for so many. How did you get here?

Ross O’Lochlainn:  Yeah, it has been a while. We were just chatting about that before we hit record. um There was obviously a whole global disruption in between the live events that I haven’t really gone back to live events and since. Part of that is the last while here has been kind of building out my own little world of conversion engineering and just like growing our coaching program and helping folks, you know, want to grow their online, online businesses. That’s kind of the destination of kind of where we’re at. As you said, part of that is, you know, helping my clients who are in the education and coaching space.

And like I had them with, how would you describe it? Like it’s part creative director, part conversion consultant, part coach, it’s very much, hey, here’s a system that works. Obviously, you have to show up and be yourself for your marketing to resonate with the right people, right? Like you have to be your authentic self.

No system, I think, is perfectly like a paint inside the colors blueprint. So how do we take the principles of what we know is going to work, from all the data I’ve seen with my clients over the years being like a director of marketing and and CMO for people, like there’s clearly certain ways to offer coaching and programs and courses that work and other ways that don’t.

So how do we make that work for you? And with anyone that’s offering those sorts of services, there is kind of a, well, what’s the system and then how do I make it my own? and I think that’s really the magic that we kind of look to add for folks.

And how I ended up here is quite interestingly, I would say the exact process that I help people through right now. Right. Like you’ve all kind of got your own unique experience and strengths and skills and whatnot. And my story is—I used to be an engineer. I come from a long family of engineers and I kind of ended up in engineering because I have a math brain.

I enjoyed physics and chemistry. And when I was in secondary school—high school in the States—and you know the career counselors kind of just, oh, you’re good at that? Well, you should be an engineer because that’s the minimized risk option where you’ll definitely have career prospects.

And I kind of ended up in engineering just by default. Like my dad’s an engineer, of uncles and cousins. I then got a job at Intel and it was very obvious to me that I was not happy in a very corporate structured engineering environment, which with retrospect was very… um obvious because growing up I was also an artist. I was the guy who was hanging out with the the artists and the musicians and I used to draw and I loved like painting and but graphic design and and and all of the visual elements of that and and and writing for I would say writing sake like telling stories like the art side of things was always very meaningful to me and engineering had had none of that and and so i i was firmly in the world of not doing any business or marketing of any of that sort until i bumped into Ramit Sethi and Tim Ferris actually and they kind of back in and what was it 2010 2011 they were like running the game and everyone was talking about them and and whatnot. And they opened my eyes to the world of online marketing, digital marketing, what it could be.

Then because I was a writer, even though I didn’t identify as a writer, I had the ability, clearly, because when I was in engineering classes, I was not the guy that was showing up to do extra hours in the lab. I was the guy that would barely show up to the lab. But then when it was a crew project and it was time to write the report, I would see what the guys had written. was like, God, engineers of the worst. Let me rewrite that, guys. And I would contribute in that sense.

I knew I could write. And then I learned that copywriting was earning money online with words, it was such a rabbit hole. And then a massive, I would say, and negative limiting belief journey of well, can I be a marketer? I didn’t go to university to be a marketer and all that kind of career transition, mental junk you go through when you’re first getting into freelancing.

And then the wide world of copywriting opened up and I started to gradually see over time that my unique ability is partly the engineer’s brain, right? Like seeing the big picture and, and the systems and how it works, but also understanding like humans and psychology and how people feel and talking to them and then writing and and including like, you know, expression of what you think is resonant and meaningful to others in order to get them to take action. And that’s that’s kind of, you can see the picture clearly, right? Like when you look back, but you know, where we kind of ended up was finding the path between what I definitely didn’t want.

And then what I did want, and then bumbling into all manner of, I would say, obstacles and, you know, little moments that I also didn’t want, like getting into the launch game. Like everyone kind of fetishizes the launch game in the copywriting space until you’re in it. And then you’re like, screw this. This is exhausting. Right. And realizing that’s not what I want. yeah. so yeah so that’s kind of the the the shorthand version of my entire life story and how we ended up with like being the part creative director system designer and then helping people kind of implement it and and make it their own one as they figure out their own

Rob Marsh: I love that you mentioned the dealing with the head trash around, you know, as you’re getting started out, how do you how do you be credible? How do you even know that you’re capable? And, you know, working through that, that’s something I think a lot of us struggle, even beyond the first couple of clients, you know, or as we switch niches sometimes, or as we add products, or we move on from one thing to the next, like it it feels like there’s a whole new set of head trash that we’ve got to get through that. Talk to me a little bit about how that went for you and how do you overcome that? Or what’s that process for working through those negative feedback things that keep us from moving forward?

Ross O’Lochlainn: It’s a really good question. I’m a big fan of Dan Sullivan. and I will share one of his ideas, which I now use as like my default way to think through this, which I didn’t have for many years, but which I now use as a really good guide because I look at all the capabilities I’ve built over time and it all followed this pattern. And the idea is what he calls the four Cs.

What he describes is entrepreneurs or anyone who’s trying to grow and develop, like what they all want is confidence. Like I want to feel confident that I can go do that thing. And what that really means is risk has been minimized. I can go do that and not feel exposed that I’m going to be paying some massive consequence socially, financially, emotionally…. that if it goes wrong, I’m screwed, right? Like that’s like none of us wants to feel insecure and not confident when we do a thing, but you can’t start at confidence, unfortunately, right? You have to go through that. That’s the fourth C in a series because to be confident, you have to have a capability, right? But you can’t, you don’t start with a capability, right? 

That means you need to put yourself in a situation where you don’t have the capability and you’re trying to build it. And that requires courage, which is the third C. And then even then, courage is hard to muster because it’s easy to not do the scary thing.

And so it all starts with a commitment. So you have to start with the commitment that I will build this capability and then you can make that commitment to yourself or publicly. ah And then from that commitment, you’ll draw the courage, which will put yourself in situations in order to to say, I am going to suck at this.

There’s no two ways about it. There’s no way you can build a capability without being incapable. Like it is by definition what is required. And It’s only after you’ve got the capability that you can be confident and then do it repeatedly. And so what I now do is I push myself at least once a year to say, well, what is the capability that I don’t have that I’m going to make a commitment to myself and others that I am going to go and acquire? Because I feel like if you’re able to take yourself through that process, it builds a different type of confidence. and that confidence is in your general capability.

Now I have such a marketing capability and that’s not me like blowing smoke and trying to pump my own ego, but because I have developed such a core skillset, like if there’s something I can’t do in marketing, I’m very confident I would be able to figure it out because I have all these adjacent skills that I can just go,

So how do YouTube ads work? Why do I know about ads that I can just retool to find the principles of how the nuance over here works? Which would be very different to me building a capability in skiing where I have no reference experience.

Rob Marsh:  Great.

Ross O’Lochlainn: You know what I mean? But I think at the macro level, if you look at your history of how you have managed to build capabilities over time, like most of us have a very strong track record of taking something on and being able to figure it out and then go do the thing.

And I think it just comes back to what is the commitment you’re making to yourself and do you want it enough? Because if you want it enough, then working through the fear with some courage is not an option. You have to do it, right? When I made this wish to be freelancing, I lost my job and my employment. And I was like, okay, well, I guess I have to make it work now.

Right? Like there’s no going back. I was in Canada at the time and I lost my working visa and I was like, okay, well, I literally cannot get a job in this country. I can’t be employed by anyone here. So I guess I’m going to have to figure out a way to make money with freelancing and charge clients in the States or Ireland or whatever. Right?

And if Immigration Canada is listening, that’s totally a story for marketing reasons. But point being, once there’s a commitment made that there’s no going back, then it’s just about acknowledging that you are going to bump into beliefs and fears and all sorts of negative self-talk, which are useful from a risk management perspective, but not useful from a big picture winning perspective. You know what I mean? Risks are there to be aware of and to be managed.

I don’t think it’s useful to see risk and then not move forward. Like fear should be a signpost to act cautiously, not to turn around and go the other way. You know what I mean?

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So working through that, how did you find your first client? Very first client. Well, what did that look like?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Oh yeah. Yeah. So I got my first client through Ramit Sethi’s Earn 1K program. And I, at the time, had started to learn some marketing, some Google ads at my company that I was working for, convinced them to buy me at Perry Marshall’s course, Perry Marshall Google ads course.

And then I had a client, my cousin actually, here locally in Montreal. He was running a residential electrician company. And I knew he was running Google ads. And I was like, Hey man, I think I could, I learned some of these cool, like tactical strategic tips from this crazy dude, Perry Marshall. Like, can I apply them for you? I’ll only charge you $20 an hour.

And he’s like, sure. And I did like five hours of work for him and I got a hundred bucks. And that was just mind blowing to me that I was able to charge for money on the side while working a full-time job because I had never done any official freelancing like that. Thinking back, I had done odd jobs as a kid, like you know clearing gardens and newspaper deliveries, but I had never done something like, what is a skill that I have that I can identify and sell to someone else and package?

And that was my first client. And then very quickly, I found another two or three people because I did a good job with him. He says, you know anyone else that needs Google Ads? And got a few more jobs, but yeah, just remembering that, and that was the first freelance client I got for sure.

Rob Marsh:  And that’s a little different from where you’re at today. What does your business look like today? Obviously, you’re not doing Google ads. Well, maybe you are doing some Google ads for your own business, but you’re not doing it for clients anymore. What does it look like?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, we do have clients that run Google Ads. I’m not the one doing it for them. So yeah, I kind of moved from a done-for-you services um approach, and then I kind of evolved into copywriting, not just Google Ads, but then I copywrite and offer and USP design.

And then I did a full-on done-for-you service for a number of clients who are just paid on results. And that was awesome. But that was very much an agency model that I really didn’t like.

But I did figure out a system that I found to be very effective with how to sell online courses and coaching programs without the launch model. And then I started my own coaching program, which is very much a done-with-you service. It’s not a… Hey, here’s the course and go do it. And it’s not like a mastermind where it’s a bunch of talking. It’s more, come on in. Ross would be your creative strategic director. Help you figure out what your growth project is. Give you the strategy. And then you’re going to collaborate on the messaging, the execution, like campaign design, the ad funnels, like all that stuff. And it’s very much done in a and a group format with calls and a community kind of forum access.

And then some hybrid kind of one-to-one where I meet with clients like every six to eight weeks and we figure out what the next project is. And then they go and ship that and we kind of do the execution in a group format where other people in the group can also kind of peer over their shoulder and give them input and they can do the same.

And yeah, folks come in and they work like for a year, a year or year or more. We have clients that are worth it now for like three or four years and they’re continuing. But it is very much, here’s a job, go and do it. And then we’ll interpret the data, see what the next marketing growth project is. And we just like to repeat that cycle over and over so they can hit the growth goals that they’re looking for.

Rob Marsh:  And you’re obviously charging more than $100 for the project.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, the fees we charge for the year, like and it ranges on the level of program and the type of client. and But like it’s anywhere from in our low-level program, people will pay like five grand a year up to a higher-level program, which is like 18, 20 grand for the year. And then there’s private clients who want a little more access, and then they’re obviously going to pay more than that is again.

But it is very much in that kind of ballpark of… Yeah, working with us for a year and it being around 18, 20 grand for the most part.

Rob Marsh:  So you do some pretty interesting things, I think, to get people into your wheelhouse. Before we started recording, I was telling you how much I admired the Black Friday special that you ran this last year where you were offering like five different programs for $200. And I was hovering over the buy button about 10 different times, messing with your page analytics as I kept pulling it up and reading through it. But you know obviously you’re doing you’ve got these kinds of programs as well at that entry level. I think some of them, How to Write Like a Mofo, Creative Studio, tell us about some of these programs.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah. So I, I run a model that I’ve kind of developed for myself and and looked, like I’ve been in a lot of coaching programs, other people’s coaching programs. I’d been in like strategic coaches. I mentioned with Dan Sullivan, I found a way that I like to do things. and I call it the creative mofo model. Creative mofo being a creative motherf***er. Motherf***er not in the crude sense, but in the formidable, remarkable, like he’s a bad mofo, right? He is. He makes some creative stuff.

Like that’s the kind of aspirational outcome that I want for myself, but also from other people, right? Like it’s very much like he’s got something to say and like he’s got a way of doing things. And I find you can do that when you overlap your, I would say, artistic expression with your commercial production, right? like you It’s not just about slinging products. It’s about like, what is your, what have you got to say about this? I don’t mean art in the sense of, like pretty pictures. It’s more in the sense of like what’s real and meaningful and resonant about your profession and how you do things and what is the emotional reality and think if you can tie that into your work, it just instantly gives it a unique selling proposition. And most of the clients I work with, they don’t have that. And that’s often the reason why their stuff isn’t and is it working as well as they would like.

All of the products you mentioned are all born in what I call the client studio, where I am the creator for my own business. I look at my clients almost as a studio. They are the environment in which I’m going to create and they’re giving me the raw materials like their obstacles and their problems through which I create. These are my paints and my canvas. So I’m very much looking at like, well, what do they need? And then how do I use that as inspiration to create things the way I want to create them?

And so, how to write like a mofo was born out of the observation that a lot of my clients had big email lists, but they were not mailing regularly. And for me, like, the more you mail, the more you make, right? Like it’s an irrefutable law of marketing that the higher the email frequency, there’s just all sorts of downstream revenue and profile and branding benefits, but they were avoiding it because of reasons.

And so I was like, I’m going to solve this problem, right? And it was less about like, how do you write and I don’t know how to write an email. How do you write a good copy email? like It was far more about their relationship with the creative process. right like They were judging themselves or they didn’t have a good enough ideas to write about they’re writing about stuff that they’re not energized by.

And like I have a process and a system for the creative process through a lot of my experience with music production and also free writing and my time at Intel, actually, funnily enough. And I was like, I’m going to teach this system. And I created it for them. But the success of it, it also then led to a very obviously successful front end product where I could just sell that training. Now, it was created for the people in my coaching program.

And so I’m creating it as a training internally. But when you package things correctly, it’s very easy to then turn those individual trainings that are born out of the content curriculum in your coaching program and turn them into front-end products that you can advertise or that you can use to create customers. Like someone like yourself, you’re on my email list, right? You may purchase one thing here or there, and then that starts the cycle of, oh, that was really good.

I’ll check out another thing. And then you know six months later, you’re like, you know maybe Ross can help me with this problem I’ve got. I should look at his coaching program, right? And so I don’t sell the courses or the courses you see me sell. I’m less offering those as a means to generate revenue, if that makes sense. like I’m not selling courses to make money. like I’m not going to shake my fist or turn my nose up at the revenue they generate, but they’re very much a means to like… bring people in my audience closer into my world and center so that they want to step into my studio itself, right? And actually work with me and collaborate with me in there because that’s the place that all the solutions and the strategies and the products that you’re seeing are born from.

It’s me co-creating that stuff by working in the trenches with my people like week after week and seeing, oh, wow, like they were really interested in how I use workshop tickets to create customers and turn those into products. I should turn that into a training and then sell that externally. Does that make sense?

Rob Marsh:  That makes total sense. Yeah. And as you’re talking about it, ah obviously you’ve done a lot around offer development, but this is one part of creating a killer offer. It’s not enough to have a webinar or a workshop. Obviously there’s a lot of other stuff that goes into an offer. So how do you think about offers as you sit down, think ah either this thing that I have would make a good offer or part of a good offer, or I need to create a new offer. What’s your process that you go through for that?

Ross O’Lochlainn: This is a really good question. The word offer—so I’m going to dissect what we mean by offer so my answer will make sense.

Because you hear a lot like, you have to have one offer. And I’m like, you can’t grow a business with one offer. You can certainly have one primary product and you want to have a good offer for your primary product and you don’t want to have like a gazillion primary products because then you just confuse yourself.

But like a lead magnet is an offer. A webinar is an offer. Those are free offers. Or you can do a paid workshop, which is an offer. And so you want to have many offers. But what you don’t want to have is overhead around managing all of these things and not being clear about how you use these how you promote these things in order to achieve your big objectives like my big objective is i’ve got one primary product which is called the chamber and i just want 43 people in it that’s it so everything i’m doing is intended to bring people into the chamber and that’s like when it’s full it’s it’s full we’re at like 30 right now right so the the way I think about it is an offer is a combination of a promise, a product, and a proposition. The promise being like, what do I get out of this? The product being like, well, what is it and how does it work?

And then the proposition is like the terms. What’s the deal? Is it free? Is there a guarantee? Do I have to pay? How long is it going to take? the terms of the exchange. And so for most people, what they don’t have is one primary product within the compelling expression of the offer for why they would want to join that.

And that’s usually down to the fact that the promise isn’t clear, right? Like, what do I get out of joining your program? and that’s one of the main things I help a lot of people with. And that’s usually about making it concrete and specific. Like if I join this thing, what outcome will I get in what timeframe and in what sense? Like what will and will not happen when I’m in that future state? Like, am I going to have to sell on the phone?

Am I going to have to use launches or do I not want that? Will you help me get to 20K a month without using a sales call funnel? Like that’s a clear promise. That’s a clear promise And so once you’ve got the main thing defined, then I’m always looking for, well, what are the smaller offers I can make that are like small things along the way? Like, for example, maybe you want to be more consistent with your writing because you know, if I just wrote more, I would make more money, right? And so what you’re looking for and what you’re thinking about is, man, if I could just get three emails a day, sorry, three emails a week out, like things would be so much better. like that’s ah That’s a great observation for someone who’s helping that type of client to see and say, I can create a mini training on that or a product on that that might be part of my larger program, but where I solve one discrete problem that is part of the overall problem set.

Like if you’re If you’re helping a group of clients, it’s often going to be a problem set that you’re solving across time, not just one individual problem. And so I’m always looking for what are my people needing help with? Where are they falling down? And how are they thinking about the problem? And then if I can create a product to solve that, does it generate interest with the other people in my group? Because if I’m solving a problem with you, Rob, for example, and I mentioned it to everyone else in the group and no one is interested in it, like if it’s not even interesting in passing the people in my studio, the chances of it going to be competing to people who are like that outside the studio low.

But if there’s interest in it, then I’ll offer it externally to my email list and… If it does a good job of creating customers and then those customers turn into clients, then I know I’ve got a promotional tool in order to generate more interest from my email list or I’ve got something I can advertise, right? Like the big lead magnet that’s been very successful for me is like a template for an offer doc that I help people use to sell without like sales calls and launches.

That worked very well on paid traffic, not because I’m some sort of genius who’s like, I’m going to knock this paid traffic funnel out of the park, but because the people in my studio, it’s what I help them with day in and day out. And when I gave this training on how to create these offer docs on my email list, people lapped it up and then a large and large number, well, a large percentage, relatively speaking, and of them came in and wanted to become a client in the program.

So that gave me tons of insight to be like, this is an offer I should advertise externally. Like if it’s working to convert people in my audience into customers and clients, the chances of it working to code traffic is much higher. But I think where people fall down is that it’s too much guessing and not enough like observation of what people are already asking for that you can then promote, if that makes sense.

Rob Marsh:  Makes total sense. I imagine there may be some people listening thinking, oh, I’d like to do this. I’m going to create my first offer, but I don’t have a group to test it with. Where would you recommend they start sharing that offer to get the feedback that says yes or no, this is a great product?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, totally. So how like the client studio model is one that I’ve mentioned. And there’s kind of two parts to it. The first is like a studio is like a space, right? Like it’s the group where you have people and they can hang out.

But it’s also a more of an abstract concept where you use your clients as a studio? And so you don’t need a group to start applying the principle of observing a client that you would like to work with or have more of and asking what is the problem that is frustrating them that they would like a solution to, or what is a problem that they would like be excited to solve or a pain they’d be excited to turn into again?

And how can I have that one person solve that one thing? I think people in the, when they’re trying to get their first offer out, they kind of look at the, after picture of people who’ve been in the game for a long time and think they need to replicate that.

Like, for example, you could look at me and go, oh, he has all these courses and trainings. That’s what I need to create. But they don’t see that all those started with me, even though I have a group, getting on a call with one person and going, so Rob, like you should be writing more emails. Why are you not writing more emails? What’s the obstacles you’re experiencing? And then like co-creating that with one person and getting the process, like working with just simple Google Docs and some instructions.

And then taking those Google Docs and going to someone else and say, you have the same problem. Do you want to solve this? So try this. I have this process. Does this work for you? Because all of these offers and whatnot, they’re just productized processes. And then they may be packaged as a course or a video training to get leverage.

But at the end of the day, it’s a solution. It’s a solution that someone who wants to solve the problem will find compelling. And you got to just start with ah who’s the person?

What’s the problem? Can I solve the problem? And do I have a documented, repeatable process that I could share with someone else so that they could also solve the problem with or without me?

And I think that’s the easiest place to start is… asking which clients would I like to replicate or which clients would I like in a group and and starting that process by just engaging with an individual.

Rob Marsh:  And then as we do that, we’ve got our offer where you know we know that it’s been tested. We’re putting it out there. We’re even writing the authentic emails that we touched base on. Is that enough to get conversions on autopilot? Or do I need to be thinking through other things, other pieces of marketing or places that I need to be showing up or doing in order for this to become you know the stream of leads that then allows me to make additional offers or move people up funnel, all all of that.

Ross O’Lochlainn: How I tend to think about it is I want to know why personally, and for anyone that I think wants to shortcut the route to success, you want to work from the market and offer back, right? So a lot of people want to generate the leads first and then figure out the offer. and that can work, but I think what’s more useful is if you’re figuring out the individual and the offer and just getting that validated and then looking to build the audience around that.

If you want what we call automatic conversions, like you, you need to be definitely getting a stream of new leads coming in that you can make the offer to. Now, most of my sales don’t come from my new leads. like we had 18 people join one of our programs like last week. like When you look at when those people joined my email list, like I just sent five emails to my list. I sent them a doc and we had 18 people join.

And some of those people were in my world for like a week. They had just opted into an email funnel like seven to 10 days ago. um Some people were on my list for two years, right? And so when they came on my list, I don’t really care. I’m more interested in how many of them buy and are they going to continue to pay me. Like my automatic revenue isn’t coming from new core sales. It’s coming from a recurring revenue within the programs that I’m getting people coming coming into So, if you want people to be buying like ah a training automatically, like yeah you can run a cold traffic funnel and that’s great. But my perception is the big asset is, are you getting emails? Are you getting email addresses that you can nurture over time and make offers to over time so they can buy whenever you’re ready or whenever they’re ready, I should say. And i that comes down to Who are you looking for and what are they interested in so that they are going to have a level of intent to solve the problem that your main offer solves?

Right. So if the offer is, for example, I had people write more frequently so they can make more money, like maybe the lead magnet then needs to be, you know, appealing to that psychology of like, how do I sit down and actually build a writing habit?

If that’s your primary offer. Oftentimes, people will generate leads, but they don’t because the lead magnet they’re using doesn’t signal intent to solve the problem that you solve in your main program. So having the offer is definitely not going to be enough for automatic conversions.

But when I’m thinking about automatic conversions, it’s more, how can I get some sales for my new leads to pay for all the lead gen that I want to do so that I’ve actually got an audience that I can make offers to over time, right? Like that, that’s really the win is having two groups, like your internal client group and a group of people that are kind of in your email following and because then you’ve got the ability to make offers and collect more data. But the mistake I think a lot of people make is generating leads without an intent, if that makes sense.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, totally makes sense. That also has me thinking about then the nurturing process. You know, as you you get all these people on your list, are you thinking about the program the next program that you’re going to be selling? Are you thinking about the things that brought them to the list in the first place? Or are you just waking up thinking, I’ve got to get out an email today and these are the three ideas that I have?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, so like the way I think about nurturing, I think about even misinterpreting the concept of nurturing, right? like they think when it comes to nurturing, it’s about getting people who are small fish into your world and then making small offers to them, hoping that they’ll be ready for the big offer. Like I’m not, I think that’s a flawed mistake.

I think what you want to be doing is getting perfect fit people for your main program to come into your email list. And then the purpose of what you’re doing with your emails and offers is demonstrating your capability and character so that they see you as someone who can help them now. right like i’m I’m looking for advanced… people who have already in the game of, you know, having a program and whatnot, and they have some emails and an asset, and they’re just looking for a way that works better for them.

I’m not looking to get someone who hasn’t got a course or coaching program ever, and then show them how to launch a course and coaching program so that they can then use my main system. It’s too many, it’s too many steps.

So that’s the first thing when it comes to it is making sure that the people you’re putting in are the sort your list or the sort of people that will hire you and can hire you or your program or course like today, not they need to transform in order to be buyers. Then once I have that, I’m assuming those people are in my audience, right? And so, of course, my audience is not going to 100% be full of those people.

But the reality is 80% of my email list is never going to give me a penny. I’m not trying to speak to everyone on my email list. What I’m doing is I’m looking at the people who are in my studio And I’m looking at what they’re dealing with.

And I’m talking about what I’m doing with them. And what I’m offering to my email list are the solutions I’m creating for them, right? Because if I am constantly talking about the context that they’re in and creating solutions for the context that they’re in by definition, it’s going to appeal to the contexts of people who are in that same context outside the paid space, if that makes sense, right? Like if someone is at a million dollars and they’re sick of selling on the phone, as an example, and they’re looking for a way to solve that, and I solve that solution, and then I say, here’s how to get off the phone without dropping your revenue before me below a million dollars,

Anyone that’s in my email audience that wants that same thing, like will go, oh my God, that’s perfect. Right. And so like when you were saying like, oh, I saw Ross’s offer, it was so compelling.

Like the reason for that is because it’s been created in the forge of working along people like you and it’s addressing the problems that someone like you who’s running a business like you do, face, right? It just seems so tight and relevant that the desire is quite high. But if someone’s like a brand noob, like they’re to look at my stuff and go, ah, this doesn’t really seem what I’m looking for. And that’s and that’s by design. So what I am talking about today is just directly informed by talking about what’s happening inside the studio and the solutions I’m creating for those people.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, definitely makes sense. I want to change the conversation just a little bit. You mentioned the names of several mentors. Dan Sullivan was one, a few of the people you worked with early on, Ramit Sethi and ah others. How do you look at mentorship for yourself? Now, I mean, you’re already, you’re a mentor for other business owners, for copywriters, for offer owners, but how do you sharpen your own skills and choose who to work with next?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I think paying for access and help from the people who are already asked where you want to be is just one of the biggest life hacks ever and like Kevin Rogers was a guy I worked with for years. He’s awesome. Through Kevin Rogers, I found Dean Jackson. ah Kevin gave me the advice many years ago. Very relevant for copywriters, right? Would you get into the copywriting game? You’re surrounded by people who are able to make ideas compelling and feel like you’ve got massive FOMO, that you’re not engaging with this idea, right?

The issue is that it’s actually quite distracting. And there’s so many different ways of making it work that like if you try to do them all, you kind of end up Frankensteining it. And so he gave me the advice. He’s like, pick one person and make that person your guy. And for Kevin, he chose John Carlton. And if you look at Kevin’s copy and how he speaks and whatnot, very influenced by John and like he doesn’t hide that.

He’s obviously got his own very distinct and amazing voice. And so for me, I picked Dean Jackson. Dean Jackson’s my guy. He’s the master at which I am eternally and looking to refine my ideas against. I’ve been to, I don’t know how many of these breakthrough blueprints in Toronto, in Florida—for people who don’t know Dean, he does like a three-day come and I’ll strategize with you across his core philosophy, which is called the A-Profit Activators—and he does like amazing small three-day small room events with like eight to 12 people.

And I’ve been to 10 of those in Florida, Toronto, London, and Australia… Where else? There’s probably more, but… I will never stop learning from Dean and Dean will always be like a mentor to me. And I then dimensionalize my understanding of Dean. So another guy that you, if you look at him and and you compare his work to Dean, you can see Dean’s fingerprints all over it is a guy called Taki Moore, who’s huge in the coaching space.

And she he’s like 10 years ahead of me. And then Dean is like 10 years ahead of Taki. And as soon as I kind of discovered Tacky’s world and I was moving into the coaching space, I was like, I got to get a guy in this guy’s world.

How do I understand Dean’s stuff better through how Taki applies it? And Taki’s got a superpower of being able to take ideas and and and clarify them and simplify them and then make them actionable. And once I got into his world and saw how he did that with Dean’s stuff, it gave me a whole understanding and appreciation of Dean’s philosophies and then how I can modify and take those principles and and and do the same.

And so I think going deep on someone that you know is really able to steer you towards the future that you want to go to. I think that Dean calls it the buy and hold strategy, right? Like I will always be in Dean’s world.

And similarly, like I’ve been in Strategic Coach for many, many years. Similarly, because Dan Sullivan’s world has had a huge influence on Dean. Dan is Dean’s mentor. And I’m like, well, it’s good enough for Dean, it’s good enough for me. So I spent four years there. I’ll go back. I still use their concepts to this day. And so like, this is very much stuff that you have to feel.

I feel like if you’re trying to pick your person, like whose stuff just feels right to you. And that like, you get a sense of like, this is the person who’s clearly a master that i can understand I can spend time with and go deep with because I feel like the breath is important, I would say in developing your skill, but it’s not as important as as depth for my my personal experience and and finding the few people that you can go deep with and then finding different dimensions for that ah is super important. And then looking for other people who resonate with that, like my current coach, I did not discover him through Dean.

But looking at how he shows up and the strategies he teaches, they’re very complementary with all the stuff I’ve learned through Dean. And so I’m like, yes, this guy’s exactly where I want to be in five years. i want to spend more time learning what he does and how he makes it work from him so I can absorb and make it my own as well, but also get his guidance and help on on that front.

Rob Marsh:  Two things I’m taking away from what you’re saying here. One is this is a very deliberate process and it’s not the kind of thing where you just hop on somebody’s list and you’re all in. Like you’re really thinking about, you’re starting to apply, you’re testing things out as you move into somebody’s world. But the second piece that is really obvious as you start talking about the different ah people that you’ve connected with is the relationships that open up when you get into somebody’s world, whether it’s in their programs or whether it’s other people who are participating or even just, you know, talking about them. Those relationships are pretty critical when it comes to building skills and new things in your business.

Ross O’Lochlainn: For sure. Like you could say it’s deliberate. It’s also like the decision to choose Dean was deliberate. I don’t want to say Ross has this perfectly defined mentorship strategy. I’ve never even thought of it right from the perspective until you asked me the question.

Buy and hold would be how I articulate it and seeing what I’ve seen. But I think the, the, the, and the Yes, finding the right people is huge. And once you find the right people and you’re clear about what you want, then it becomes more obvious what is and is not the right decision and which person is and is not the right person to engage with. Right.

I think that. There’s a difference between this is a good idea and pursuing this is going to get me where I want to go. And I would say the part that I was clear on is like where am I trying to get to and what kind of marketing do I want to do and what beliefs do I have about what it should and should not be done, that I’m very clear on.

And then when you’re kind of operating from that frame, then the choices kind of become… more obvious where it’s not like a deliberate map out, but looking back, you can see, oh yeah, that’s why I went through those things. Those were the obvious steps because I was clear later on what I was trying to create, if that makes sense.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Another topic shift, AI. Obviously changing marketing and copywriting in really big ways. I actually had a call with somebody this morning who was ah talking about how scared she was about the future with AI and and even you know recent things that have been happening. How are you looking at AI and using it in your business?

Ross O’Lochlainn: I’ve been using AI, and A little before the curve, like obviously you blew up with ChatGPT, right? I had kind of experimented with it. Prior to the explosion of ChatGPT, I was actually using AI much more for like images, like tools like mid-journey. like I was just fascinated that it could create these two like these images.

So now it’s just like so standard. So it’s funny how quickly people’s expectations of what’s normal change. But… but the use of AI is something that I have strong opinions about. I think it’s going to only be a massive benefit for most humans.

I think there are a lot of negative consequences. from a societal tyrannical AI detection and censorship level. But also I will say, and again, I don’t want to get into a politics discussion. Like what I, what I didn’t have on my bingo card was like AI being used by the Doge crew to go in and analyze massive data sets to reveal whole bunch of like, corruption right like i think the narrative was very much going to be ai would be used to oppress people and then the first major societal shift is looking at to like read through these massive omnibus bills so politicians can’t hide stuff in there like all this hide stuff in volumes of information problem and that was used to hide corruption it’s kind of gone now and so i i have no idea how it’s going to play out in the macro, but I think there’s a lot of fear mongering around it.

And what I’ve observed is there’s so many benefits also, right? And so it’s certainly going to be transformational, but like, is it all going to be roses? Like, I don’t think so.

Now, my overarching perception on this is that what’s happening now in like thought work and copywriting and and and and creative work is the same thing that happened to automobile manufacturing in the seventies and the sixties, when they started bringing in these robots, right? Like humans have not been replaced from the manufacturing process, but what was clearly illustrated was like the value of a human is not like picking something up and putting it over here and pressing a button. Like a robot can do that way better and way faster and way more efficiently.

And I think what people are starting to see in the creative space is that the typing of the words is not actually the value and the creation of the pixels is not actually the value, right?

And I think what we’re going to start seeing is very much but what does it mean to be human? And how do you need to use these tools for your own benefit?

Personally speaking, I don’t use AI to do my writing, but I use it in my writing. I’m not trying to get AI to write the ad or the page, although occasionally I can, you just write me a paragraph description here for this low value thing I’m giving to my wife backstage in a project plan or whatever. But personally for our marketing, I’ve put a 100% human guarantee on everything that we do. Meaning if you ever see a digital video of me or an image that looks photo realistic, or if you see words from me, that is always going to be me. I’m never going to use AI to create a sock puppet image of myself or a video of myself where it wasn’t actually me there.

And if you see the words in an email, like a human wrote those words or at least… Like, you know, there might be a couple of sentences in there that were generated by AI, but the whole thing wasn’t like, write me an email and boom, I send it. Because I feel like we’re going to enter, and we’ve already started to enter a world where people are just not going to be able to trust digital media anymore.

And the two principles of all marketing is trustability, right? Like just like your email copy doesn’t matter if your deliverability sucks, your videos and all this other stuff doesn’t matter what the content of it is. If the person doesn’t trust, this is actually a real human trying to communicate with me. And so that’s why I put the 100% human guarantee on it because I’m like, if people start to feel like this is just some robo churned out thing and I’m not stepping into the real world, like they’re going to tune it out. So that’s why I kind of went in that direction. But at the same time, I just started using OpenAZI, the ChatGBT Pro, $200 month version that a new thing called deep research where it spends 20 minutes researching a topic. That thing is incredible. Like I don’t think thought workers can go back to the way it was. What has happened is a thought calculator, like a calculator to help you do thought work has been invented.

And just like engineers can never go back to the back chair to calculators, a life without calculators and spreadsheets, like you’re just not going to be able to operate without it at a certain level, but  having worked with a lot of clients, right? I’m also very clear that clients do not want to do the work themselves. They don’t even know what they want.

So to think that this is going to be like, the client is not going to have someone to take responsibility of outcomes who can then run the robot is just like, that’s just devoid from the reality of what clients want and operate. So I feel like it’s on everyone to integrate it into your process,

But I am emphasizing that you should treat it as a creativity and quality enhancer, not as a cost reduction technology. Like I think I’m in the video game industry, you’re seeing a lot of software companies trying to use AI and generative AI as cost reduction. And it’s just a lot of pushback on it because it’s just leading to shittier quality products.

And I think I think what will… Who will succeed will be the individuals who enhance their output and creativity for the benefit of the audience, not the benefit of their pocket, if that makes sense.

Rob Marsh: I love your idea of the 100% human created. going to borrow that. I think that one of the real opportunities, i already think it’s emerging now, but ah one of the real opportunities in the world of AI is going to be that humanness and the trust that you’re actually talking to a real person and not to a machine.

There’s going to be, I think, additional value added to those kinds of relationships that we haven’t had in the past because, you know, the poor quality discussions, you know, with say a ah call center or whatever, they were still human to human, maybe backed up by scripts or whatever else. That’s no longer the case. And I think that the future is going to be ah ah a big chunk of the future will be written around how we actually have real relationships with real people.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Totally. Totally. My human guarantee was born out of the fact that there was a guy that I was following and he was at the bleeding edge of all this stuff. And and and he was expressing and showing how the AI tools work. And he had these videos on his Twitter. And they were like small little one, two minute talking head videos. And I would watch them regularly. And I quite enjoyed them.

And then he revealed that for the last six months, that actually hasn’t been me. That’s been ah that’s been an AI. I kind of trained the bot. And then it’s just been doing it And I felt i said like such an idiot.

I felt duped.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, snookered, right?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah, and then I haven’t watched one of his videos since. And I was like, holy shit, like that’s how people are going to feel. And then I incorrectly predicted that AI was going to be a huge controversy in the recent political election.

And it wasn’t quite used as deceptive as it was because I don’t think it was currently at the quality where it is, it’s not totally indistinguishable. But it was used, there were a couple of political ads where it was like parody and they were using the other person’s voice. But what I also observed was how many people on both sides were making false claims that the other side had generated images. Like you were seeing the Trump crowd going, look, the Kamala crowds are fake. And then you looked into it and they were real.

They wanted to project their reality onto it. And when they wanted to discount it as not real, like, and probably a scam, they were very easy to do that. And I think that’s why, like, if I think about what can I trust, like, I will always trust people the the Joe Rogan podcast being published on the verified Joe Rogan podcast channel on Spotify or the or the and the, like if something is published on CNN’s official channel, like I trust that they are putting live reporters on there. So like verified sources, you’re going to be able to assume and trust, yeah, that’s that’s that’s a real world a real world human. But all these cold sources, untrusted sources, like you’re just not going to be able to believe anything. Or do it with a massive grain of salt.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, we already see both sides of so many issues have their own set of facts and it’s so hard to verify what’s real, what’s not. So I think that that’s going to be a huge opportunity.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Totally. A hundred percent. And I think what you will also see is you are going to see an emergent technology of AI where, where you will be able to verify that it is not influenced by either political side. And then, you’d be able to like get it to go, hey, can you actually genuinely fact check this for me? Right. Like not one of the political style fact checking, but can you spend 10 minutes just researching multiple sources and come back and report on the biases of this piece? And like, I would never spend the time to do that. Like part of the reason marketers as well get away with like, propaganda and whatnot is because they rely on the sensational headline, but they’ve kind of like tweaked it. And then like the detail is in below, but people don’t spend the time digging through the information because they just, they don’t, they don’t care enough.

But when you have a tool like this, that will do the digging and you don’t have to invest the time, I think it will start to reveal the truth of things much more. And I think you’re going to see that play out in politics, but also in marketing, right? I don’t want to be staring too much into politics. I see a big overlap in marketing and politics all the time. 

Rob Marsh:  I think there’s a huge opportunity for identifying the truth or the falsity in claims and marketing with AI.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Sure. A hundred percent. And so I think what you’ll start to see as we see the second order of this play out, like you’re ah you’re already seeing it now, right? Where like Google ads are slowly going away because we’re all searching in chat GPT, right? And so now how do you get your product found in that environment should you be relying on Google searches? Like I even find myself now asking, GPT, can you find me good, well-reviewed products now that I’ve kind of done my research with you and I kind of know what I’m looking for? like Can you go find products?

And so I think what you’re going to start seeing is total transparency from a business perspective. like If you want to be found and… and and Like if people are going to have the robot saying, could you like research Rob’s mastermind for me? Like it’s now upon you to not only have an amazing product, but to make sure that should someone want to research it, that they are deployed their bot in this case, that it’s out there.

Rob Marsh: It’s out there.

Ross O’Lochlainn: Right. And I think that’s, I think that’s good in some ways. I think privacy and whatnot will take a further hit. But I think for sure you know, the people who are worth working with would be, it’d be much more obvious for sure.

Rob Marsh:  Fingers crossed and that it’s that and not the total opposite. where we may still be at a crossroads here.

Ross O’Lochlainn:  Yes.

Rob Marsh:  Ross, this has been awesome. Just getting a look inside your business and the way that you look at marketing and doing this for your clients. If somebody has been listening and they’re like, okay, I’ve got to know more about Ross. I’ve got to get into his world. I know you’ve got a couple of different things that might appeal to our listeners. right ah yeah the How to write like a mofo, lead refinery, you know a couple of things. Where should people go to get into your world?

Ross O’Lochlainn: Yeah. So I’ll send a link through. There’s one tool I think because I know there’s a lot of writers listening to this. If you’re interested—How to Write like a MoFo—I have a tool. A big part of that is like, how do you engage your writing with high energy? Because I find that most of the time people don’t do the writing because it’s a very emotionally painful experience because they’re not energized by the idea that they’re writing about.

So I have a tool called 10 Energizing and Entertaining Hook Frames, which is a technique I’ve got for how do you come up with base ideas from your life and then turn those into things that are energizing for you to talk about.

I’ll send that link through to you. You can check the show notes for it and Apart from that, if you’re interested in the idea of the client studio, ah you could go to conversionengineering.co/client-studio. And that’ll give you a look there. If you’re looking for opt-in to download and watch a video about it. I will send through a link for that as well.

And that will kind of give you a guide about how the model works and a kind of a walkthrough video of it. But those would be the best places to check it out. ah The website is conversionengineering.co, but if you want to, check out how to write like a mofo, check out the hook frame tool, and if you want to check out the client studio, I’ll give a link for that to download the guide and the walkthrough.

Rob Marsh:  We’ll have both of them linked in the show notes. I’ve watched that video and it’s a great walkthrough. Like it’s one of the things that’s kind of said, yep, I’ve got to pay more attention to what Ross is doing. So yeah, check that out. If what we’ve been talking about today appeals to you. Thanks again, Ross, for your time. I really appreciate it. I’m looking forward to sharing this with our audience.

Ross O’Lochlainn: My pleasure, Rob. Yeah, it was a pleasure. It was a jam. Thank you.

Rob Marsh:  Thanks to Ross for explaining how his business works. It’s a model that I think a lot of copywriters could use to work on bigger problems with the clients in their niche—though the kinds of clients you need to attract have to be able to do the work you strategize with them or pay you a high amount to get it done for them.

I want to point out that what Ross shared about how he got his first client is a process that still works today… and even if you have worked with a client or two, is worth trying out if you’re struggling to land your own clients right now. He bought a course and learned a skill then looked for a prospect in his warm network—a friend who needed the help of someone with the skill he was learning. After offering to help his friend, he leveraged that project win into several more clients. Each new client was an opportunity for another win and a new case study or testimonial or referral to leverage to land yet another client. There’s no magic here, just learning, applying skills to solve a problem, then using that to find the next opportunity. If you’ve struggled to find clients recently, this process will almost certainly work for you. You could do this with social media ads, email sequences, webinar creation, and so many other skills that clients need help with. All of these are copy problems, but clients aren’t always looking for copywriters to fix them. They’re looking for ad specialists, or webinar specialists or email specialists. If you position yourself as fixing a problem, it will help you connect with the clients you can help the most.

What Ross shared about his mentors rings true with me. Finding a coach or mentor who you resonates with is important. Have they built what you want to build? Have they done the thing you want to do? Have they helped others do what they say they can do? If you answer those questions with a yes and you resonate with the person, then find a way into their world. At first it may be enough to join their email list or listen to their podcast or watch their Youtube channel, but ultimately you should join one of their paid programs—like a membership—so you can interface directly with the mentor you’ve chosen. Show up. Do the work. Finish the course. Ask questions about the content. And let the mentor get to know you as you learn from them. As Ross said, you do this by feel, but in order to feel who you can go deep with, requires showing up and opting in.

Of course you can do that with Ross or with dozens of the other experts we’ve had on the podcast. And of course, if you resonate with what you hear on this podcast, you should check out our membership, The Copywriter Underground, where you can build relationships with the other members and me. I’d love to see you inside. Check out thecopywriterclub.com/tcu for more information.

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 LinkedIn
Esai’s Instagram
The Business of Expertise
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

Full 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/tcu

And 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. I was still learning. I was still building all of the systems as we were discussing. And it was I was going through a huge period of change. And I’m really excited today to share the systems I’ve built, the marketing strategies that I’ve tried, what’s working for me, what’s working for my clients, what’s working in social and in marketing right now. And most importantly, as you and I discussed, I’m going to talk about all of this within the framework of Traffic Nurture Conversion. And figuring out where you need to focus, or you can guess the best results where I focus personally. And just and if anybody is interested in, after they listen to the podcast, they want to know where they should focus on. A simple way that they can do that is sending me a DM called audit and take my quiz right in their DMS, which will tell them what is their easy win easy money book in your focus right there.

Rob Marsh: Perfect, okay, so that’s a nice teaser for everything that we’re gonna get to. So last time we talked, you’re building your agency, you have a couple of people who are working with you, helping, and you were knee deep or maybe even shoulders deep in social media and posting content and doing this for a lot of clients on a very regular basis. And I know your thinking has shifted a little bit on that. Tell us about your agency and how that shift has happened over time.

Esai Arasi: Since we have talked now, I have grown to about a six-member team. We still do social media, we still do content, but as you and I were talking about earlier, social media is one piece of an entire strategy. When I think back, I used to think, oh, I have this groundbreaking new hosting framework, which is fantastic and was getting results for clients. And I realized that was just the tip of the iceberg of what was working on what I was implementing for my clients. It was still ahead of its time when we were implementing it, but it took even me Implementing the same framework for multiple clients to really understand why it was working what was happening and again understand that in the context of what was happening in our industry as well so i’m really excited to dive into that.

Rob Marsh: So before we jump into the framework though, the basic understanding for social media, and I’m mostly thinking of Instagram, but this is also true of LinkedIn, probably Twitter, even TikTok, is that you need to be posting content. And if you’re not posting content at least three times a week, you’re not getting seen by the algorithm, you’re not building your audience, all of this stuff. Last time we talked, like that was constant. In fact, we were even saying, you know, she’d be in there every day. And sometimes some people are even saying two or three times a day. And so like this whole idea of producing content is, well, first of all, I think it’s scared off a lot of people who are just like, there’s no way I can produce all of that content. Some people were up for the challenge, and they’re like, okay, I’m all in, and they quickly burn out just because, again, finding new things or new ways to say old things is so hard. And maybe a few people have done it and done it well, and we all look at them and think, wow, I wish I had the stamina. I wish I could do the thing that they do, but I don’t. So I’m just, I quit. I quit social media. I’m not going to do it. And if, and this is very true of me, you know, if people look at The Copywriter Club social media, we don’t post all that often, not on LinkedIn, not on Instagram because yeah, either I’ve burned out or, or it’s just, it feels like such a huge ball to push up the mountain. Obviously that’s become a problem. And so I think the framework and what you’re doing is addressing that kind of a problem, right?

Esai Arasi: Exactly. That’s exactly what it’s addressing because what happens often is when we are faced with a problem or a challenge or somebody tells us that this is the next thing that you need to do for your business, we copywriters and service providers, we have the tendency to immediately go into this implementation.

Rob Marsh: Right.

Esai Arasi: What can I learn? What can I do? Just tell me, just give me a plan, teach me something, and I’m going to go right into it. And we’re built for that. We’re really, really good at that. And that’s why we think anybody tells us you need to create more content, it makes sense for us. We are writers, so we do understand the power of content to scale relationships, to scale visibility, to scale our knowledge and strategy and bring us credibility and authority. We do understand that. But the thing is, So creating content is the second level of strategy. We need to first foundationally understand that what we need is not content. What we need is relationships. And that’s why I tell every single client whether they are selling courses, they’re selling one-on-one offers, they’re selling coaching, or they’re selling down for you. We need to first understand what is it that you need from marketing, and then we can layer whatever platform or strategy fits best, layer that on top of it. Now, the biggest reason everybody says you need to post content and you need to be on social is we need leads. And that’s the thing, right? I need leads. I need more. I need more visibility. So I’m going to get on. I’m going to post on social, right? And you and I talked about this. The last thing social media wants to give you is free reach. Now, every single platform, it’s a death march towards throttling your visibility and throttling your reach. It doesn’t matter what the platform is. All of them are moving that way. And anything you can do, somebody else can do better. I love that song. I tell people that you can’t compete on that because as service providers, we’re not in the business of multimedia. We’re not video photographer video and there are people who can do it really well it props to them but most of us are like you and I we don’t use social media in our personal life we don’t be for the life of us I cannot take a good picture of myself it’s just I have one photo that I use everywhere because by some miracle I look good in it I’m like yep that’s the one I look fine when I’m talking to people but I just look weird when I take photos of myself so just some of us aren’t like that and just we don’t prefer it so The thing that we need to understand is our goal is not content. Our goal is if we want leads, we need to understand what do I need to get more leads. And I tell people, you need to look at your marketing through the lens of traffic. How am I going to get in front of more people who want to buy my stuff? There is a fantastic book that Joanna Wiebe recommended called The Business of Expertise. When I read it, it blew my mind and it just completely flipped the script for me that the more you charge, The market, it now becomes the seller’s market because at the higher level, people need their problems solved a lot more than you need to make money. Now think about it, you are rewrapping, you’re writing somebody’s launch sequence, you’re writing somebody’s sales pitch. They need that sales pitch to be fantastic. And they need that sales pitch to convert like crazy a lot more than you need $5,000. You can make $5,000 doing anything, but their problem is extremely pressing.

So the better you are, the more people are going to want to give you more money. simply because your expertise is now in demand and more valuable. And the more you learn, the more you scale up, the power balance is going to shift more and more and more towards you. Now that’s something as copywriters is very difficult for us to walk. I know it was for me. Like when I started out, I was like happily taking on any clients, anybody who said yes to working with me, I was like, yes, I’ll take on as a client. even whether it’s a good fit, bad fit, I would try to work within them and if anything went wrong, I would take complete responsibility and say, yes, it was my fault, it didn’t work, whatever, and I’ll lower prices and do everything you taught me not to do. So I did that.

Once I started looking at it through the lens of, okay, what do I need? What is my service and what is the problem it’s solving? It then told me where I need to go, right? So the first thing is social media is not the solution to your traffic problem. As service providers, you need to look at where are people already going? to solve the problem that my service solves for them. And if you can be in that case, then you don’t need to be on social media. In 2021, I posted 40 times on LinkedIn. In 2023 I posted maybe 20 times. In 2024 I posted maybe twice or thrice. I didn’t need to because I was already in all of those places where people were recommending me. So you need to layer this strategy. Where is my traffic? Where am I going to get visibility to get in front of people who are already looking to hire? number one. And for us, it looks like either it’s masterminds, it’s maybe it’s strategic referral partners. That’s what I did. I had two or three referral partners that I kept in touch with, who sent me leads. Ry Schwartz recommended me after I went through his program to a few people. I worked with Brenna McGowan in Behind the Launch. So she recommended a few people to me.

Emily Reagan referred a few clients to me. And the second source, biggest source of clients for me are clients I’ve already worked with. They recommended more and more people to me, so I didn’t need to be on social. So this is the one thing, and I’m not saying don’t post on social. Social is important. We’re going to look at all of the pieces of the strategy, but I want everybody to fundamentally move away from thinking in terms of what do i need to do and then think about what is my strategy for getting clients and last time you and i talked rob my strategy was working with copywriters who will then connect me with other clients Then I refer me to clients and that’s how I will grow. That was my traffic. I had zero nurture and my conversion mechanism was a sales call. And now as I grow, I’m slowly moving away towards more organized systems, which is what I’m here to talk about today.

Rob Marsh: Awesome. So I just want to be crystal clear on this because it’s really easy for us to wrap our heads around content because that’s what we do. We’re really good at creating content. We’re really good at writing scripts. We’re really good at captions or stories or all of that stuff. And so that’s the frame that we have taken to social media. Every time we think, Oh, I need to be on social media. Okay, we’ll create content. And what you’re saying is, Yeah, content, but it’s not the purpose isn’t just to be posting content. It’s not to show off your expertise. It’s not to be out there saying stuff. It’s there for the sole purpose of creating a relationship with either a reader or a prospect or a customer or partner of some kind. And if you can do that with three pieces of content instead of 30, all the more power to you.

Esai Arasi: Yes. Write up and you can get away by doing this. Write up almost until you get $100,000 of income, whatever that looks like. When you’re starting out, that’s more than enough. A lot of people who have sent me clients, a lot of them have never actually seen my work. Emily Reagan said that. Her email just landed in my inbox today. She had sent an email saying, skills won’t get you high paying clients. And it’s true. They don’t hire you just for skills. There’s so many other things that you need to build. That’s what content is going to do for you. And we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. At first, you don’t need that. You just need to be strategically known in the right places. So you can be the person who gets clients.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, let’s jump into how we do that because again, it’s really easy to write, you know, the post, the article or whatever, but the place where I know so many copywriters struggle is how do we forge that relationship? How do we, you know, even start the conversation so that, you know, three or four chats later or a few months later or whatever, we are the trusted source. So obviously it starts with that one or two pieces of content or, you know, whatever the initial thing is, but how do we make that switch?

Esai Arasi: Oh, I’m so glad you asked. First of all, I have done a very, detailed training about this inside The Copywriter Underground. As Rob, you know, we broke down the six types of posts every copywriter needs to write. So you can, if you’re an underground member, you can go in there, you can find my older training and you can break that up. You can go through that for in detail, but to answer your question right now for everybody, If you want clients, the most important pieces of content, I tell people there are three types of content that you need to post. Number one, a piece of content that tells your, and I call it your origin story. Like how you became the person and it doesn’t, it’s not your origin story of where you were born and it’s not that like nobody cares about that. It’s an origin story. Like when we watch Superman’s movie, we don’t care about everything else. Like how he was put in. No, we care about how he became Superman. That’s the only story we care about. So clients need to see how did you become the person who can solve my problem. And that’s critically important because that tells me what kind of a problem solver you are right now. And the high-paying clients care about that very, very deeply, because they care not just in that fact that my problem is solved, but what that experience of having my problem solved is. Because I will be more than happy to pay more money for that experience to be better for me. Money is not a problem for me, the problem is. having working with a person was a great thing. That’s post number one.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So, and just to make this absolutely clear for me, what I’m doing with that post isn’t stuff like, you know, I’ve been writing since the second grade. I went door to door selling my poems to the neighbors. Uh, and you know, I took all of the college courses or whatever. It’s not that it’s basically my personal story about how I, uh, you know, either solve that problem for the client or for myself. You know, I found myself in this problem, so I had to figure out how to, so let’s, let’s take, you know, this example we’re talking about. I needed clients And so I had to create a new lead magnet that was a little bit different from the typical PDF download. And because it was different, it stood out. I got some clients to show you how to solve that problem for yourself, right? That’s the kind of thing. Now, obviously, people listening are going to have a different a different problem that they’re going to solve for their customers or whoever. But it’s not about I’ve been writing for 30 years or whatever. And it’s all about the

Esai Arasi: Yes. And writing about 30 years, they’re only going to care about at the second level. First, they’re going to emotionally decide whether or not they want to work with you. And then they’re going to look for logical reasons of whether you’re good fit. That’s when they’ll need your background and your experience and expertise and all that. To give you an example, like you said, I could either tell my story as, hey, I’m somebody who’s been writing since I was eight. That’s the first time I remember putting pen to paper and writing a story. I’ve been writing since then. I’ve been writing and reading since then. That’s why I love it. And I have a background in marketing and psychology. I was a behavioral change trainer for twice. I can go into all of that, but nobody cares. Or I can tell my story about, hey, when I started a business, I had no connections in this industry and I didn’t know anybody over here. And I was an introvert who did not want to be on social. But unfortunately, social was literally the only way I could keep in touch with everybody who were living multiple thousands of miles away from where I was. So I had to find a way to make social work for me instead of doing what was popular advice. Now, that’s a story my audience deeply cares about because it resonates with them. It resonates with the story of their current struggles as well. So they feel like it’s exactly as you said. And for you, how you started and run The Copywriter Club for your audience in terms of from the perspective of right selling offers is that you want to talk about how in a time where there were already a lot of people teaching copywriting, but there were more direct response and SAS focused and all of it and you realize that like you, you wanted to learn from somebody who had a more relationship focused approach to copy, who spoke to a more nuanced version of copy rather than the brute force direct response version of it. And you wanted to teach systems. You realize that just knowing copy is not enough. A lot of copywriters, really good copywriters, were struggling like I was struggling for this. So then that’s where you started. you created these offers in The Copywriter Club. Again, it’s the most interesting part of your life for me because it relates to me.

Rob Marsh: Okay, good. So that’s the origin story.

Esai Arasi: That’s post number one. Post number two, and you can write multiple, multiple variations of this, it’s called, I call this, for example, content. Now this is where, and I tell people, the biggest mistake you can make as a copywriter is talking about copywriting. Clients don’t care about copywriting. If you go to my social, you would rarely see me talk. Very few hosts of mine will talk specifically about social. I talk about trust, I talk about relationships, I talk about working with clients, about all those things, but that’s the problem I’m solving for your clients. So the second post, it could either be, I call it, what’s your problem, or I call it, for example, content. So this is where you share your expertise, where you share the expertise in terms of specifically the problem your clients are facing. So instead of saying that, hey, a website copyright copy should be based on voice of customer, Nobody cares. Website copy, voice of customer, these are not words your clients are using in their everyday life. Rather, you want to talk about when a potential client lands on your website, when you send them a link or when somebody is referring them and sending them a link, you want them to read your website and feel like, yeah, this is the solution I’ve been looking for all my life. It’s like it’s custom made for me. They need to feel like you are the only person who understands them and their problems. And therefore, it doesn’t matter what you charge. You’re the only person I want to work with. That’s the difference between talking about copywriting with the same thing. I’m still talking about voice of customer, but I’m not talking about it from my perspective. I’m talking about it from client’s perspective. So I call this, for example, content, because you have to give an example that they understand.

Rob Marsh: So ironically, you’re talking about voice of customer using your actual voice of customer, which we’re pretty good at doing for our clients, but we’re really bad at doing for ourselves.

Esai Arasi: Oh my God.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So yeah, I see this all the time. Copywriters want to talk about copywriting because we love it so much. And it’s great in a group of copywriters, but if your clients are not copywriters, it makes zero sense. And we’ve got to figure out how to talk about these things in the words that our customers use in order to break through.

Esai Arasi: Yes, exactly. And the third type of post, and I tell people these are three posts that should be pinned on your Instagram. These are three posts you should over and over cycle. There are more nuances to it that we go into, but you need to repeat. The third type of post, and again this is something most copywriters like I do it, and I’m sure you don’t do it in email, but you definitely do it on social as well. We don’t tell as the right way on social. Either we go over CLC, because we feel like, OK, fine, this is the promotional post. I have two spots open. Work with me here. Or we pull back and almost passive-aggressively, we just write a random post. But you know what? You can also work with me. Here it is. as like a throwaway right instead of intentionally selling and most of us shy away from selling because we feel like it’s an intrusion it’s a disservice and i and i’ll tell you it’s not you’re supposed to sell i tell people like it’s incredible because shopping is like it’s actually called therapy it’s actually retail therapy people like shopping because it makes them see a better version of who they could be. It helps them see potential solutions to their problems. It helps them see a better future for themselves. And that’s what your sales content should be.

So I call this like a dressing room. Clients should be able, like people love trying on whether or not they buy it, they love it. That’s why women love tying on wedding dresses. They love going shopping. They go with their friends and they all try on whether or not they’re going to buy it because people love it. That’s what your sales post should be. So your sales post shouldn’t just be like, hey, this is what my package is. Yes, you should have that so they can have that information. But it should feel more like they’re trying on your service. There are multiple variations of this. You should talk about, hey, when you hire me for writing your website copy, You are not just a website copy. Here’s what your life will look like. I’m going to take care of this project step by step, every single way, and keep you posted so you don’t have to worry about what’s happening. You’ll get consistent updates. This is a timeline. These are the updates you will get. I will work with your design. Also, this is the end product that I will give you, this wireframe, so you don’t have to fight 10 rounds with the designer. You don’t have to play free between us. I will directly communicate with the designer and I’ll give them a wireframe. that they can use and if you like I can get in touch with the designer ahead of time so I can make sure that what we’re creating is going to come out beautifully and then I work with them and communicate with them directly so it’s all off your plate and it is done while you’re continuously in the loop. Now when you present it like that, now that’s not you selling but that’s showing me what my future, a potential future for me and now that future is irresistible because as somebody who’s currently struggling to write her own website Even as I’m saying it, I’ll be like, oh, I love it. I want that for me. That’s your third.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So, I mean, that is basically, you know, another copywriting technique. It’s feature pasting, but we’re actually showing the customer what the new version of whatever the thing is, is going to look like. And so we’re painting that future. We’re making it easy for them, helping them see the actual result or the transformation, as opposed to saying, you get a website or you get website copy, or, you know, I’ll, I’ll write your blog post.

Esai Arasi: Exactly. And here’s the thing, Rob. Most people think if I post all of this, I should automatically get clients. But the mistake is that is not going to happen. Social media, at best, is either your nurture or your conversion platform. Social media is not your traffic platform. Social media is not going to take your post and show it to a bunch of ideal clients who are looking to hire. That is not what they want. They would rather people keep posting saying I’m looking for somebody. They’d rather people stay on the platform and keep posting like that because it’s not Upwork. It’s not a marketplace. It’s just a social platform where they want to keep people on. You need to figure out what your underlying strategy is and figure out that where you’re going to get leads, how you’re going to convert them and on what platform. And that’s why I think social is fantastic, even if you don’t post a lot, because social gives you public credibility. If the thing I’m telling you privately in an email matches with the thing that I’m saying publicly on my social, I gain a lot of credibility as a person saying that, yeah, this is what she’s been saying. Like whenever I pitch an SEO project, I link back to a post I made in 2020 about what SEO is. That tells them, even though it’s a very old post, it doesn’t have, it has like maybe 20 likes, it still tells them that she’s been talking about this since 2020. That’s how you create the longevity for your posts as well.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so those are the three, the three kinds of content that we should be posting. How often? I mean, I know you said last year, you only posted a few times on your social media, but you also have, you know, some relationships, you know, a lot of copywriters would be saying, okay, well, I don’t have those relationships that can send me leads, or I don’t have the system already built. So if I’m just starting out with this, or if I’m coming to this and thinking, this is a great idea, maybe I should do a little bit more of this or just what I’ve been doing in the past. How often should I be posting in order to get the momentum going?

Esai Arasi: So if you’re just starting out, I would say, again, social is not where you’re going to get leads. Social is where you need to build credibility because you might not have a portfolio. You might not have results that you can speak to. Like you say, you don’t have people who can vouch for you. Like I didn’t post because I had people pulling for me. I had built enough relationships and credibility. People invited set me messages in my DMs asking me to come speak because they’d heard me speak on The Copywriter Club and a bunch of other places and I didn’t need to, but then I spent three years building that. So if you’re new, I would still say once a week on Instagram or LinkedIn is plenty. Where you need to spend most of your time is, like I said, by building relationships. And if you don’t have any, here’s how you can get started. Number one, and we did an in-depth training about this very recently in the underground as well, the four types of people who can get you clients. Again, if you’re in the underground, go back and watch that training. pull back the curtain and share everything that I’m doing for me and my clients. So that’s working.

And I also shared an actionable guide, which is there for the underground waiting for you. If you’re a member, go check it out. But to those of you, to give you a little bit of a teaser, number one, you start by creating the three types of posts that I said. These are called bottom of the funnel, like bottom of the funnel content. And you speak to people who are directly ready to buy and already looking to solve that problem. You’re not speaking to somebody who doesn’t know what conversion copywriting is. they are not somebody who’s willing to pay $2,000 to write a welcome sequence. You want to speak to somebody who already knows the worth of conversion copywriting, somebody who’s already willing to hire, but then if they’re willing to hire, why haven’t they? Because they haven’t found somebody who matches their values, who matches exactly what is it that they are looking for. Somebody who either understands their industry, understands their need, is a good fit for them, whatever that looks like. So one, you create content like that the three types of post cycle between them. Post once a week, that’s plenty. Post more if you can, definitely. But do that, number one. Number two, you want to look at, find these marketplaces. The person who’s trying to solve this problem, where are they going? The easiest way to find it is, again, where they’re already congregating in big numbers, masterminds, other courses where these people go to learn from their mentors. Those are great places to find them.

But if that’s not the way you can find them, the second place is, who else is solving a similar problem, but not the same problem as you, a similar problem. Again, we go into more detail in this technique in the underground. And a good example is, let’s say you have, one of my clients is a psychiatrist who teaches mothers with postpartum depression and anxiety. So if she wants to reach those mothers, we thought, okay, so how do we reach them? She has a brand new Instagram and it’s not gonna grow on its own. Okay, so if mothers, they have postpartum depression, what are they already doing? Before they go to a psychiatrist, who are they going to go to? Easy answer, they’re going to go to therapists. Now therapists are business owners. They are posting content. They are going to in-person networking events. They have business profiles online in directories and everywhere. Proactively build relationships with them. Therapists who are actively also supporting mothers with postpartum depression or mothers with postpartum or also new moms. So they probably have a lot of new mom stuff. So they are probably consuming new mom content. So there are influencers who post a lot of new mom content. That’s another place where you can post, support those people, build relationships. You don’t have to go after the big creators. Find somebody who has 10,000 followers or 5,000 followers, build them, reply to the emails. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to build relationships because most people don’t do it. just by the simple fact of posting comments, replying to emails, and being a genuine person, you’ll be surprised at how many relationships you can build.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s like a couple of interesting ways to do this too. You’re talking about, you know, groups where people are congregating and that’s a little bit like fishing with a net, right? Because there’s so many people there and you just kind of scoop out. But there’s also an approach, and maybe there’s a way to do this with social media, where we’re going directly to the businesses. And there are so many businesses out there that are not online in the ways that or that we think about, you know, when we’re talking about, oh, working with coaches or working with SaaS companies, whatever. And I’m talking about the businesses, at least for me, they’re always out by the airport. You know, it’s the small business that makes awnings for people’s backyards. And you don’t see that showing up anywhere. Or it’s, you know, somebody who’s maybe, you know, they’re some kind of industrial something or construction companies or, you know, like there’s all of these companies out there that actually need help doing the stuff that you’re even talking about, right? And so, but those guys, we’re probably not going to find them in a Facebook group or, you know, in a LinkedIn group, right? So some of those, we’re basically fishing with a hook and line, right? We’ve got to go to them directly and approach them and say, Hey, look, here’s the problem that I solved. Now you’re still doing the same approach. You’re still, you know, build it and you can still refer them to your, you know, three posts on Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever that you’re putting this stuff. But Obviously, your approach here is going to depend on the niche that you want to work with. And so you’ve got to be really cognizant of where your customers are, what is it that they’re looking for, and how can you reach out to them.

Esai Arasi: Exactly. And there are lots of people who are not online, even within your industry. Even if your industry is online, sometimes your potential clients are not online.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, your best clients need help doing that stuff, right?

Esai Arasi: Exactly. Like one of my clients, he is a fractional growth executive and he works with VCs and CEOs. who are not online because they are very busy running their own business. But the thing is, instead of trying to brute force into finding these people on social media, an easy way to do it is to build relationships with people around them. So instead of VCs, we started going after people within the VC organization. There are people who are online. who do go to in-person events. The middle management people who go to in-person events, they post on LinkedIn, they comment on each other’s stuff. So we built relationships with them. So while the VC is not on LinkedIn, but when the VC, so the VC is not going to go headhunting. They’re not going to see a LinkedIn post and say, I want to work with you. They’re going to turn to the people they trust and say, okay, who do you know? Right.

Rob Marsh: They’re going to ask their peers and they’re going to ask the team. Yeah, they’re depending on their team to do a lot of that work.

Esai Arasi: Exactly. The CEO is going to turn to the manager, HR, and marketing manager and say, OK, who do you know who does this? Who would be a good fit for us? The key being, who would be a good fit for us? And you need to show up as the person who is a good fit for us. And it’s a fantastic point you brought up. So that is what the traffic portion of this is. You need to find the right traffic source for you. Sometimes, like you said, it’s fishing with the net. You find a good You find a good pool and you sort of throw in a net and reel it. Sometimes it’s about throwing in a fishing rod and just waiting patiently and hook it if you’re looking for the big fish. Sometimes it is going after specific people. It is like driving door to door. You send out cold email, whatever that looks like. So the traffic can be whatever. But the thing is, if you don’t do the nurture pieces, if you don’t have a strong social media and i tell people strong social even more than strong website because you know that i still don’t have a website i built a multiple six figure business and i’ve grown an agency and i worked with some of the best some of the biggest names in the industry despite not having a website, because clients don’t care about that. A website is credibility and trust. And I had another way of earning that, so I didn’t focus on the website. So we need to be clear on these three pieces. Always ask yourself, what am I trying to achieve by building that? And if that is going to serve any of these three pieces. Anything that doesn’t serve to build your traffic, get, nurture your traffic and convert them into clients. We’re going to talk about the conversion piece in a little bit. If it doesn’t fit into these three, it’s not a thing that you need to be doing. And then you also need to look at, is this the best way to get traffic? Is Instagram the best way for me to get traffic? If you said, if the person I’m trying to reach runs a garage door company.

Rob Marsh: So you need a home base where they can double check. They can see that you’ve got the authority, the expertise, but that’s not where you’re going to be building that relationship.

Esai Arasi: No, it’s not. And social, again, one aspect of social is content. Another aspect is relationship. And again, we go into this in detail, but you need to build both professional and personal relationships. And I don’t mean personal as an intimate, but I mean personal as a friendly relationship with your clients as well. So when the professional relationship ends, you can still keep the personal going until they become ready to become a client. Again, so you can pitch to them next because you have a line of communication open.

Rob Marsh: OK, so we’ve been going really deep on traffic. We’ve kind of touched on nurture. Is there some other stuff we should be doing with nurture before we get to the last part of the framework?

Esai Arasi: So for Nurture, it’s about continuously showing like, that’s what I said, that’s where the social piece comes in. Like for Nurture, in the early stages, you just need to show up, people need to know who you are and what you do, and that’ll be enough to get you those data clients. But when you start going after those big clients, Nurture becomes a lot more crucial for you now, because now you need to have those bigger pieces that not only tells clients who you are, but also builds your credibility. That’s when you need to start building case studies. That’s when you need, I’m writing my website now because now I am starting to go after the bigger names in the industry by my own strength. So I need, I’m writing case studies, I’m building websites. So nurture becomes more important. But again, you need to look at what is my strength. You don’t need to do reels. I did one reel, I hated it, and I never did another one again.

Rob Marsh: Reels kill me.

Esai Arasi: Yeah.Talking head reels, sharing clips of things, sure. But dancing. Add mad libs, no, not my thing. I don’t want to do it, not because it doesn’t work, it works, not for me. So you need to be clear on what is it that fits you well, and that’s sustainable, and you need to do that. But the most important thing is find a way that’s sustainable for you, or you will burn out, you will stop, and you won’t do it again, and then it will constantly feel like you’re starting from zero every single time because you haven’t built a sustainable practice field.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so then the last step really is how do we convert these people, you know, relationships into customers?

Esai Arasi: A lot of this, Rob, and I have to give this to you, a lot of this is stuff that I learned from you as we worked together, because until then, I hadn’t really understood what systems and processes inside a business could look like. And I didn’t realize why they were that important either, because the way that I was doing it was whatever it was working. Because again, at that point, I was working with two clients, and that was it. As soon as I started growing, I realized how critical those pieces were. And a lot of this is stuff that I learned inside The Copywriter Club.

The communication systems that we need to build, the proposal and the follow-up sequence and all of those things that we want to build. Those are those become more and more crucial as you as you look to grow and as you especially as you look to work with better and better clients your conversion mechanism. It has to match. what it feels like for the clients to work with you. Your conversion mechanism, the higher you, the higher and the more you charge, your conversion mechanism has to be more reliant on your skills, your credibility and your past results. For me, for, and for a large, large part of, for a lot of the copywriters, our conversion mechanisms are sales calls. And we think, yes, DM me, get on a sales call with me, and we leave it at that.

But which is fine when we’re getting started because the clients we’re working with are smaller level clients as well. So they were happy to get on a call because they wanted to negotiate, write the price down, and they were happy to spend 40 minutes talking to you if it means they could get like a $200 discount on the service that they want to pay for. But the higher clients that you want to work with, that’s not going to cut it any. Then you need, you need, the one resource that I really love is that business in a box, which has all of the pieces that you could implement, like your proposals, your email sequences, your onboarding forms, your offboarding, all of it. These pieces become extremely critical. I’ve had clients tell me that multiple times that your onboarding is like chef’s kiss. Like multiple times I hear that from my clients and I always think back to my time at The Copywriters Club when I was, when you were mentoring me that that’s like four years, five years later, it is still having a huge impact in the way that clients work with me.

So your conversion mechanism, you need to say, even if it is a sales call, you need to understand that not everybody will want to jump on a 40 minute sales call with you. So you need to have those pieces built. We talked about case studies as a nurture mechanism a little bit as well. But now you need to intentionally think about what your bottom of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, funnel conversion content looks like. You don’t need to write a weekly blog post, but you do need to write content that tells your best that speaks. It’s like a dog whistle to your ideal client that this is this person gets my problem and this is their way of solving the problem is perfect fit for me. That’s extremely crucial. Now, that’s another thing you recently talked about that as well. The USB unique selling point is no longer enough to have, it’s no longer enough to have your framework, you need to have this, you need to have your way, your point of view, your of looking at a problem and your point of view of why it’s a problem and your point of view of how you solve it, that’s critical as well. So the more money you want to charge, the more you want to look at those, you want to build, invest in and build those pieces.

So you’re starting to convert more clients. And the worst thing in all of this is Rob, as I see my clients and I talk to people and sometimes I like a lot of times I do it as well, is that when we don’t intentionally build these pieces, we feel like we’re not getting leads. But often in so many rooms, especially if you’ve been a part of any of the accelerator programs, I know Rob you’re so intentional about building a community and making sure people have a solid relationship within people as well. I know that people have come to me and said, so and so said so many amazing things about you. And I wasn’t even in the room. But that person said that because how intentionally you make sure, whether it’s the accelerator or the think tank, how intentionally you made sure we all knew each other, knew how to support each other, knew what we did, and you built a referral network for us without even really meaning to do that. So there are so many times we have leads, there are people talking about what we do and how we solve a problem in the rooms, but because we don’t have these pieces in place, often leads drop off and we feel like We feel like we’re burning out because we’re doing the wrong things instead of doing the easy things to get clients.

Rob Marsh: So these conversion pieces don’t live on social media. They’re either in your funnel or on your website or part of your onboarding process or your vetting slash discovery call process, however that’s structured. This stuff lives outside of it. the relationships that we built on social media or in the DMs or wherever that starts to happen, because people find the one or two pieces of content that we’ve posted, that leads to these areas where we can now get them into, some people would call them like indoctrination sequences. Really, it’s just a way for people to get to know you better and how you solve the exact problem that they have. That’s happening, not on Facebook, not on social media. somewhere else.

Esai Arasi: Exactly. And we touched on this a little bit, Rob, like right now we’re in the third phase of social media. We talked about social 1.0 was when social media needed more users. So it asked everybody to sign up and refer your friends and import your contacts.

Rob Marsh: And it showed everything that your friends were posting, right? Like, yeah, it was amazing because you could actually see what everybody was up to.

Esai Arasi: felt like you were in touch like it felt it was it was like a cat being in camp and was so amazing and then came social 2.0 where now the platforms needed more content to keep all of the users happy and satisfied and keep using the app so anybody who created content there’s so many users you would have seen that they grew so quickly and now they’ve completely stalled out because they were riding the algorithm wave where it gave them a lot of free content.

Rob Marsh: We saw that with The Copywriter Club groups, which were immensely popular because there was content going in there. Obviously, Facebook has changed the algorithm. If I post something in a group of thousands of people, only a couple hundred people will see it now. It wasn’t that way four or five years ago.

Esai Arasi: No, it was not. And now Facebook recently announced that Facebook lives will be deleted after 30 days. And you’ll have up to 90 days to download the video. Because they don’t want to store the video. They have tons of content now. They don’t want to keep your content. Now these lives, your Facebook groups were a way for you to save all of this valuable training that people can visit and revisit and learn from you. Now it’s no longer an option. So platforms no longer care about you. That being said, another interesting way that people are now, like I said, this is social 3.0 where people social, they don’t care about users. They don’t even show you in your Facebook feed, 90% of the content feed is either ads or from random accounts that you don’t even follow, which they think you would like. And they keep showing it in your, in your feed. That’s going to starting to happen more and more, but. how users are now behaving more and more.

And not a lot of people are doing it. Very few people are doing it right now. And you can be ahead of the curve by implementing it right away. A lot of content now needs to be native first. I used to say that, yes, case studies should live off of social. You should get people to download your case study, download the PDF, and forward the PDF to each other and all of that. Now, the last case study project that we did, we also converted that into a case study carousel that can live on their social. Because now people don’t want to click and go to a page and download it. They don’t want to do that because most people now use the internet on their phones. So they would prefer to have the content natively in the app so I can click it, I can tag somebody that I know, I can quickly share it with them. Because again, platforms have made it super easy to do all of those things. So it’s much easier for me to do it that way than for me to enter my name and email and all of that stuff. That was why the quiz that I told you, now my quiz that I’ve built, I’ve built it inside Instagram. It doesn’t even have a webpage. at all. It only lives inside Instagram natively because one, it’s super easy for me to collect name and email and do the whole quiz in there. It’s also very, very easy for the users from somebody coming to my profile to take that natively because sending DMs on Instagram is easy, whereas clicking it, opening it, scrolling and typing, that’s a little bit harder.

So we need to be more savvy in the way that we leverage these platforms. So we don’t become slaves to them, but we understand what’s working and what’s not. And we use the best parts of social and the best part of all of these platforms and make it work for us. and fit our lifestyle and our requirement and then make that a more sustainable practice than try to put everything. So for new copywriters, that is good news for you. You don’t need to create like, and I am a perfect example, you don’t need to create even, you don’t even probably need a website right at the start. If you can build those intentional relationship, a website is good. I might be the exception. I don’t tell people that website brings a lot of credibility to how that you should have it. But again, Don’t let that stop you. Put everything on your social and start with what you have because the key thing here is to build relationships and build that trust. That is the asset and I tell people like funnels decay, social media posts lose their visibility and reach, even SEO blog posts, Pinterest pins, they lose traffic over time. The one thing that doesn’t ever lose its potency and continues to grow and grow over time is relationships.

Rob Marsh: As long as you’re contributing to it or interacting, keeping them up. I don’t want to minimize this at all because there’s definitely work involved in maintaining a relationship. Obviously, relationships come and go and sometimes you go through a period where you may not talk to or share anything with somebody for a few months. things right back up. But if you are looking at relationships to develop work for your business, you do need to put some work into nurturing those. And that’s not, you know, by posting content. It’s not even, you know, the stuff that we’ve talked about through this framework. It’s not about the traffic nurture conversion. It’s really just about, like, how do I keep showing up as the friend, as this trusted resource? When I see something that’s helpful, do I keep sharing, you know, and doing that over and over, and that’s what produces results.

Esai Arasi: Exactly. And if you post the right type of content, you can continue to be friendly and be like a human being in the DMs, while your content will tell them, hey, this is what I do, here’s how you can refer me, here’s how you can work with me, here are my best fit clients, and you can keep educating your referral partners. A lot of us get bad reference from the people we like, and we can’t say no because it was sent to us by somebody we really like and respect. So we work with bad fit clients for keynotes. I’ve done that. Every copywriter has done that. But the way to circumvent that, like you said, Rob, is to keep the relationship alive and to educate your partners. And again, an easier way to do that, these relationships at scale, is again, creating more content. but nurture resonant content, rather than going for reach. Make sure your pieces of content are built for the right people, for the right reasons, rather than for the algorithm, and keep the relationships alive. Keep lines of communication open, and the content will do its magic of nurture and conversion, and tell people, hey, this is what she writes about, and here’s our best fit client, and as soon as I submit it, Somebody asked me for a client I know who to refer to because his content has been educating me all this while. Well, you’ve been keeping in touch with me maybe once a week or once a month.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so this is all really helpful. So as we were talking, you mentioned a few mentors that you’ve had over time, you know, by name, people that you’ve worked with and created relationships with. And I also know that you’ve invested a lot in, you know, courses and improving your skill set and even for your team, the people that are working with you to make sure that they’re up to date in the skills. Will you just share your thoughts about courses and mentors and where the value has been for you in your business?

Esai Arasi: Thank you for asking this, Rob, because I think this investment has been the single biggest needle mover in my business that has made the biggest difference. And I’ll tell you, your different seasons in life, you have different needs. When I was absolutely starting out, what I needed was courses. The very first course that I remember investing in was a YouTube for Bosses by Sunny Lenarduzzi. She was fantastic. I mean, I was watching YouTube videos by a bunch of other people. Again, it goes to resonance, I was also watching a bunch of men, Sean Cannell and a lot of other people, but I never felt the pull to buy any of their courses, even though they’re selling heavily. But as soon as I saw Sunny Lenarduzzi’s courses, she really spoke to me, the way she approached it.

Rob Marsh: Sunny’s really approachable. She’s a great personality.

Esai Arasi: She’s fantastic. And I loved her approach. I loved her reasons for why she’s the same thing as me. She didn’t want to burn out and that’s how she built her YouTube as a sales engine. So it was easy for me to invest in her stuff. And I have been very lucky in the mentors and people that I’ve invested my money in because Sunny has literally sent her a DM and she’s asking about a course that she was an affiliate for and she’s literally told me, no, that’s not the right fit for your own life. I’ve been very lucky in mentors like that. So that was the first one. So when you are absolutely starting out, invest in courses that build your skill. You need to be first good at what you are doing. That’s absolutely fundamental. And I tell service providers this all the time. The easiest way to build your business and just get more clients is to be ridiculously good at what you do. That’s the first thing I invested in. Be so good that people can’t help but talk about you wherever you are. And you know, we’ve done that as well. Good movies, good books, good people that we have, good doctors. We go out of our way to tell people about them, good hairdressers. People go out of the way to recommend them because it gives them social currency. So be ridiculously good and invest in courses and skills that do that.

Again, more importantly, the courses that you do invest in, implement. show up for calls, show up for courses. A lot of my needs early came through by me showing up and like implementing. And I couldn’t tell you like I was in a, there are so many times I’ve had one on one coaching from Rye Schwartz and Phil Povis for like every week for like an hour because nobody would show up for that call. And i was like i can’t believe i’m getting this is like such a steal but because i was showing up week after week and i was doing the work of demonstrating my skill i got a lot of leads from right. Because he’s he saw that i understood what he was teaching i was implementing that so when anybody said can somebody do this for me i was a no brainer answer because i learned from him. But once you have done that, the second place I highly recommend investing in mentors. I invested, as you know, Rob, like I invested in the think tank.

One call with you was an easy yes. for me, even though at that time, and I’ve told you this before, like at that time, I didn’t have the money for this. I had just taken a huge hit in the business and I had just hired two people, but I intentionally made the decision to join the think tank and continue to say no to bad fit clients because I believed in the first call where I got on a call with you. I still believe this conversation because you listened to everything that I had to say. And you said that you could easily see me ask me what my goal was. I was very hesitant here. I said $100,000. You could say, you said that I was lowballing it and you could easily see me getting $200,000 to $50,000 easily just based on everything that I had shared. To me, that was like mind boggling. $100,000 at that time was like my, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m earning this much kind of money. You’ve made me believe in bigger things. A lot of times when you’re trying to grow, yes, you need systems. And I tell people this also.

In the masterminds, no matter what level you’re implementing, the conversations are all the same. How do I get more traffic? How do I nurture this traffic? How do I get my offers to convert? How do I get more people to buy? How do I get this client to sign this proposal? They have ghosted me. The conversations are all the same. It’s just the scale at which they happen are different. And I tell them that courses can give you a framework thing, do this, which are great for learning skill. But when you want to learn business, you don’t want a course saying, do this. You want a mentor who can listen to you and say, okay, here, okay, this is who you are. So for you, I would personally recommend this, which is why I love the fact that every year, every time you launch, you run the accelerator as a live call program. Even though the content is more or less the same, you could easily just sell it as prepackaged lessons. I love that you run it as like courses because every time you customize it for each person and you make sure that every single person gets that individual attention to them and their business and you do it so so well, so efficiently, it like boggles my mind every time I hear that. So I would recommend working with mentors at that point. For me, that has been huge because there’s no way I could have learned from courses what I learned from the individual attention that I got.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, thanks for sharing that. I found something very similar, you know, as I’ve worked with the various mentors who I still refer to and think of as mentors and can reach out to for help. There’s so many generous people in the marketing world and the copywriting world who are willing to help. Uh, the best way to get in front of them, of course, is to, you know, join the program or, you know, buy a course, but those are relationships also worth, you know, uh, nurturing and building and maintaining for all of the reasons you just said. So, so thanks for that. Okay. Uh, sorry, we’re out of time, but, um, share one more time where we can find the quiz in order to go through and figure out, you know, what is the stage that we’re at, what we should be looking at, uh, and how we get in touch with you.

Esai Arasi: Absolutely. So my most favorite place to hang out is LinkedIn. You’ll find the link, I’ll give you the link, that’ll be at the show notes. But to take my quiz, find me on Instagram at socialcatalyst, that’s catalyst with a K, and DM me, for the audit. It’ll be there in my profile as well. It’ll be easy to find. I only have one picture that I use across all social, so you’ll be able to find me easily. And again, my name is not that common. So either search for SI or search for socialcatalyst. That’s where you’ll find me and send me a DM. So you can take the quiz right at the DMs.

Rob Marsh: And we’ll link to it in the show notes just in case somebody doesn’t know how to spell your name or can’t find you on that initial search so the people will know exactly where to go. Thanks, Esai, for everything that you’ve shared and reframing for me how I think about social media and what it’s for and how often I have to do it. And yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing how this all builds business for myself and for those who are listening. So thanks again.

Esai Arasi: Thank you for having me, Rob.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Esai for the update on what’s working on social media and how we can be more effective in using this tool to connect with our audience.

Esai mentioned a couple of workshops in The Copywriter Underground about the six types of content you should post on social media when you’re ready to post and the kinds of clients you should be writing for. To get those workshops and everything else The Underground includes, visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu

I want to go back to something we were talking about early on in this episode and that’s your origin story. We were talking about this in the context of your social media. But it’s often the thing you include on your About Page. There is a popular idea out there that your About Page isn’t about you, but it’s really about your client. Of course, that’s true… mostly. Yes, the content on your About Page needs to resonate with your prospects. They need to see themselves in your story there. But that doesn’t mean it’s not also about you. You do need to tell your story there because people want to work with the people they like and know. So yes, write that story about them, but also include enough about you so they can get to know and like you.

What Esai shared about selling—this is one of the kinds of social posts you should be sharing—the approach where you are solving a problem for a client and taking that concern off their plate and showing them what their future looks like is worth repeating. I’ve said this dozens of times on this podcast, but your #1 role as a copywriter or content writer isn’t writing. It’s problem solving. Often that problem requires copy or content, but not always. And a professional looks for the big problems to solve, not just for a copy assignment. This is a big part of how copywriters need to be selling themselves in the future. A.I. can write content. But it doesn’t always have the context to solve a problem like you do.

Hopefully you found what Esai shared valuable and helpful as you look for a better way to engage prospects and clients on social media.

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 newsletter
Matt’s LinkedIn
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The 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. So we should have probably had you before, but I’m glad that we’ve waited because what we’re going to talk about today kind of came out of a lot of things that have happened since the last time you and I were even on a call together. So this should be pretty good. But let’s start with your story. How did you even become a copywriter?

Matt Snyder: Um, great question. Uh, I feel like I’ve lived many lives, so it’s kind of hard to turn it down. But, um, I, I always like to say my love affair with writing online or publishing anything online started with a Zynga account, like way back.

Rob Marsh: That’s a long time ago.

Matt Snyder: Yeah. Way back in like 2003. So, Um, like right when I got into college, I was like, I’m real. I, I kind of was dabbling into journaling and I thought that this online medium was going to be kind of cool. Um, so that was like, I think blog spot was maybe starting. And so I just started publishing stuff on Zynga and it was ridiculous. I don’t even bother looking cause I don’t even remember what my account was or anything. Um, it was, it was ridiculous, but I just, I feel like a lot of trial and error started there, but that’s kind of when I realized that like, I was, I kind of had a knack for writing. And then, um, a lot of my professors in school were like, Hey, you’re pretty good at writing. And I was like, great, but I didn’t want to go that route. Uh, I was like, I’m gonna go into ministry. That’s why I went to school for undergrad, um, left. And, uh, decided that, you know, I wanted to do mission work, didn’t know where I want to go. So I kind of did this, this, uh, year long mission trip adventure thing. And they gave everybody a blog, uh, posts or like a blog to, to document their journey on or whatever, and their thoughts. And so I did that and, uh, it kind of took off. And even the, the organization was like, Hey, you’re, you’re pretty good at this. So when you come back, do you want to work for us? and kind of help us market the programs. And I was like, sure. So that’s what I did. When I got back, I mean, it was great because when I was away, that’s when the market collapsed in 2008. And so I got back and I kind of had a weird job. But I’m a self-taught marketer and that’s kind of what I did. I just read every book, talked to everybody I could, and it was just trial and error. And so I kind of fell in love with marketing that way. Did a lot of blog writing, content writing. Um, and yeah, just learning in and out of, uh, stuff for nonprofits, but then on the side, I started freelancing and I was like, I think I’m going to help other people do the same thing. And so I did content writing, uh, SEO development stuff, started writing for websites, mostly nonprofits, um, dabbled in and out over the years. I’ve been traveling a lot. And then, uh, lived a life, got married, had, you know, a lot of stuff. And then I got a job at a church, this was after grad school, got a job at a church as a communications director. And all that was great. I thought I wanted to go back into church ministry. I’d been out for a while. I ended up being like, I got to get out of this. It just wasn’t, it wasn’t for me. Um, nothing against that environment or that world for anybody, but, uh, I started freelancing on the side full-time and then, uh, or mostly full-time and kind of pivoted into the freelance email marketing. Got into that world. I got connected with y’all at The Copywriter Club. Um, I joined The Accelerator program. Because I was like, I’m going to take my business seriously. And it really helped me take off, which is great. So yeah, I really pivoted hard into copyright. I can tell you the, not the date exactly, but I can tell you exactly where I was when I was like, I’m going to go hard into copyrighting full time. Uh, my wife and I took a trip to Tulum. I think this was like in 2006, 2016, 2017, something like that. And I was sitting on a rooftop of this place we were staying in Tulum overlooking the jungle. And I was journaling. I was like, I really want to pursue copywriting full time and talk to my wife about it. And she was just like, sounds great. Go for it. So. No, we didn’t have kids. We had a dog. We didn’t have a mortgage at that time. So it wasn’t a big deal. And so there was just a lot of freedom to take risks. And I did it. And I mean, I’ve done well myself. So yeah, freelance. Y’all really helped me set me up for success with my freelance business, which I kind of stopped viewing as a freelance business and just as a business. Which is a great mental shift, by the way, for anybody listening. And then I ended up, an agency slid into my DMs one day. Grace Baldwin, who’s an alum of my Accelerator program and Copywriter Club stuff, she connected this person with me and said, Matt might be interested in this job. And so my DMs got on call with them. It was the end of 2021, I think. And it’s that time of year, it’s Q4, business slows down and it’s like, you kind of get bored. And I was kind of stressed about, you know, will my retainer clients renew for another year kind of thing.

Rob Marsh: Right.

Matt Snyder: And, uh, I was like, you know what, I’ll give it six months and see, I had, I had to like, what’s supposed to be a 15 minute call with this agency Homestead, uh, studios actually where I work now. And, uh, I was like, that 15 minute call turned into, um, an hour. And then I just really jived with the partners that I was on the call with and I was like, I’ll give it six months. And so we’re over three years later, I’m still there. So it worked out well, I went from being just an email copywriter, writing on you know, six, seven, eight accounts to now I’m the director of copy and oversee the entire copy department across the whole agency. So, uh, it’s, it’s a lot of fun to have a whole team, um, get to really help people grow, not just their craft and their skill, but grow as professionals with people. And it’s, it’s just so much fun. We work with a lot of cool brands and, uh, yeah, I like a lot, but anyway, that’s, that’s kind of how I became a copywriter and how I got to where I am.

Rob Marsh: Uh, So we’re definitely going to jump into the agency stuff. But I’d like to go back to, you know, when you went all in on copywriting is about the same time that, you know, you were taking your business more seriously and really figuring stuff out. How did you connect with your first clients? What did that look like? And what were you doing? Because you did okay. Like, I know there was, there was a, it took a little time to get moving. But once it started, like you seem to have some pretty good success.

Matt Snyder: Yeah, I think I’m trying to figure out how I got my first clients. My first client client when I was freelancing, like full time was an old college friend. He had he had a cybersecurity business and he needed a content writer. And so at that time, I’ll just say yes to everything. That was kind of like my ethos. Just say yes to everything. I really wanted to do email marketing exclusively, but I was like, I’ll just take anything that comes my way. And so I did. And he connected me with other people. It kind of snowballed from there. I realized that If you do really good work and you’re just dedicated to it and you communicate well, referrals just come in naturally. And so he referred some people to me and then I just headhunted a few others through connections. I was really involved with the nonprofit world, especially here in Atlanta. And so I had some connections there that got me involved. And I got a referral from another, it was just really like my pipeline at first was just word of mouth. Um, I didn’t do much cold pitching. In fact, I had really poor success with cold pitching. Um, and my best, my best, uh, MO was, was word of mouth. And so I ended up, uh, turning one of my former employers into a retainer client, which was a fantastic, uh, face. I highly recommend that Avenue if you can, if you can get away with it. Um, but yeah, I’d say word of mouth is kind of how I really got my pipeline filled up at first and just saying yes to everything. And then it was through that, that I realized email marketing was pretty much my shit life. That was what I was really good at. Um, I could go into accounts, audit them. It was just like second nature to me, figure out what people needed to do, um, to, to be profitable or successful or fundraise, whatever they need to do. Yeah. So. That’s kind of, I don’t know if that answers your question, but yeah.

Rob Marsh: No, that answers it perfectly. And then when you got to the agency, to Homestead Studios, you were introduced by a friend. So, you know, again, relationships networking helped facilitate that. But what did you do on that call with the partners? You said you really vibed with them. Like, what’s the secret of that?

Matt Snyder: Be yourself. I think this was what was interesting to me about that conversation is. He asked me in the dm. It was just on twitter when it was still twitter, I’m not active on that platform anymore, but it was Jacob. You can go online and figure out who he is. He’s awesome. He DMed me and was like, hey, are you interested in a full-time job with our agency? He said, you’ve been recommended to us by Grace. I can’t remember what it was exactly. And I just said, no, I’m not interested. But because I’m playing hard to get. Yeah, no, I was like, I’m not really that interested. But I said, I will always take a call and make a new connection. I was like, I’m happy to meet with you. And so he’s like, great, let’s do it. And so he’s like, just a 15-minute call. We’ll just take your break. And I was like, great. And so it was supposed to be just me and Jacob. It ended up being me, Jacob, and Kelly, who’s also a partner at the agency. And I didn’t know who she was from Adam. But it ended up just being… I had nothing to lose in that conversation. They came to me And that kind of really put the ball in my court, more than anything, and in my favor. And so I asked them questions about the agency. They asked me questions about my experience. I hadn’t sent them a portfolio or anything. I didn’t apply for anything. So he’s like, do you have any copy that we can just look at? And I was like, well, I know I did this website for this nonprofit agency. And so let me pull it up. So I pulled it up in Google and showed him everything. And I went to the website. I was like, this is what this looks like. And he’s like, they sat there on the call and read through some of the stuff. He’s like, great. And I said, you know, I just did this sales sequence for this client. And so I pulled it up, they read through it. I just did the sales page for this coach. So I pulled that up and I was like, it’s just copy. It’s not even been designed yet because it was an active client. And they read through it and he’s like, that’s great. You seem to know, you know, what you’re doing. I’m like, yeah, thanks. And then, um, he said, you know, we’ll get back in touch with you, you know, that kind of thing. And so they emailed me within the hour, uh, an offer letter and I was like, God, I don’t even know if I want to do this. And so that’s when I really had to think about it. But I think that the secret to that whole thing was not that I was playing hard to get, it was just that. I approached that whole thing as just like a networking call and I don’t know, I wasn’t desperate. There was that and I felt the freedom to just be 100% me and be really honest about my shortcomings and my mistakes and how I could add value maybe, but I was just like, this is kind of it. I feel like that helped stand on the call. It was also an interesting era for the agency. Homestead at that point had just started within the previous four months. Their retention side of the agency, they were mainly just acquisition-focused on unpaid social. And so they were trying to build out their email team. And so when I came on, it was me, one other copywriter, and two designers, and Jacob and Kelly. That was it. And so we were lean, and we were taking on clients left and right. It just, yeah, it was ripe for explosion. So it was just a good time. I don’t know. Dudos to Grace, always. I always thank her so much because it was such a good connection.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, Grace is an amazing human being, a great copywriter as well. Before we go any farther, though, let’s talk about the agency because people think different things when they think agency. You know, some people will have in mind, you know, Mad Men, you know, Ogilvy, you know, these big creative boards, presentations, you know, that kind of thing. You guys are a little different from that. Tell us, you know, what’s the work you do and what does working at your agency look like all day long?

Matt Snyder: Oh yeah, it’s a good question and yeah, a good distinction to make. I like to tell people, when friends ask about where I work and I say I work for a marketing agency, they think Mad Men and I think they think a big branding house or something where it’s like, Yeah. Madden NS. Yeah. You’re, you’re standing in a boardroom.

Rob Marsh: You look just like Jon Hamm. You’ve got the square jaw.

Matt Snyder: Yeah, exactly. And for us, it’s nothing like that. Like, you know, we’re, we’re a gross marketing agency. Like we specialize in acquisition and retention services for mostly D to C brands, like direct consumer brands. Um, some, some B to B stuff we’ve dabbled in, but D to C is our wheelhouse. And mostly it’s like brands that are doing anywhere from like one to a hundred million dollars in revenue a year. So it’s like, Uh, it’s kind of I mean, you know, there’s a big difference between a 1 million dollar brand and even a 10 million dollar brand or 20 million dollar brand so when you hit that 100 million rev mark, it’s What you’re doing for them is very different than what you would do for a 1 million dollar brand But anyway, it’s like brands like hexclad we work. These are on our website. So i’m not like giving up but like Thanks Cloud is one of our biggest accounts in the past. T-Rex, Grubly Farms, Veggie Casely, The Woobles, Dose, Pink Friday, Mail, which is a Mickey Minaj’s brand. We worked with a lot of really cool ones, a lot of good small brands too that deserve mentions. But we mainly just Do again, acquisition and retention. So paid social. So ads, landing pages, UGC type stuff, and then retention services. So mostly email and SMX. And we do a lot of content strategy across all those areas. A lot of consulting with brands. They might have… We add value to like, you should change this on your website. You should do that. We don’t do websites, but we give a lot of good pointers. I’m sorry, when I came on, I think we were maybe towing like 30, 40 people across the whole agency. We’re 100% remote, spread out across the US, North America. We have people in Europe, we have people in Asia, Southeast Asia. I mean, it’s like, we have people that travel all the time. So it’s like, Japan’s the hotspot this year. Everyone’s going to Japan this year for some reason.

Rob Marsh: I’m jealous. Japan is on my list. I’d love to go.

Matt Snyder: Same. I’m like, why, why would I not? But yeah, we’re, we’re over 70 employees now. Um, last year we went on a big growth spurt, um, which was challenging in its own right. But like, it’s, it’s been really good. We’ve built out some solid teams. Um, so pretty, pretty enjoyable, but like our goal, um, is not to be the biggest agency. It’s to be the best agency. And we had rather go a lot deeper, uh, with fewer clients and do higher quality work than just, you know, make a buck and do a bunch of rush jobs. Um, and I think that, that kind of focus and that goal, you know, it translates into our commitment to development, like really like hiring top notch employees, but like nurturing those people, nurturing their growth, um, and figuring out like, you know, what do you want to do? Where do you want to be in five, 10 years? Um, and I always, I always tell people, you know, when I’m hiring for my team, for the copy team, like I’m under no impression. that people are going to be at this agency for their entire career. Most people don’t go to an agency and be like, I want to work at an agency my whole life. Unless you’re at Ogilvy or one of those big places. But it’s like, what do you want to do after this? I want to make sure that when you come in here, you’re getting equipped for what you’re going to do after. So when you come into Homestead and you spend time here, you’re like, I really love who I worked with. I love the clients, like just had a wonderful experience. They prepare me for what came next and they were supportive the entire way. Um, that’s what I want to hear. So, um, anyway, we’re, yeah, we’re, we’re, we’re a strange agency in some ways, but like, I honestly, it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Um, it’s the best agency I’ve ever worked out cause it’s the only one I’ve ever worked out, but like, it’s, it definitely flies in the face of, uh, those agency rumors, people are like, they’re horrible, you know, and you’re overworked and underpaid and underappreciated and homes, we, but no, that’s not our MO at all. And I think a lot of our, our employees would attest to that. So.

Rob Marsh: That’s good. So you went from being a copywriter to now you’re the copy chief or you’re managing other copywriters. How did you do that?

Matt Snyder: I don’t know. No, I think, um, showing that I could do work number one. Um, you know, when I, so yeah, when I started, I was one of two copywriters that was just doing emails and I think I was on like six accounts and then, uh, we hit a rough spell. We had to, uh, let people go. And so then I was the only copywriter and I was writing for, I remember one, one month I was writing for 18 accounts. By the way, that’s not sustainable. Yeah, that’s nuts. That’s crazy. Yeah, everybody knew it. And so there was a lot of grace. Our CEO was writing copy and sending it to me for review. Everybody was pulling their weight. We had to do what we had to do. And then we finally were able to hire more people and grow. And so I think the longevity of my time being there and showing that I could crank out the copy went a long way. And it was a good copy. It wasn’t half-assed. But then that helped. And then as our team grew, I kind of became, I don’t want to say a shepherd of sorts. A mentor? A mentor, yeah. Our next copycat, she was solid. She is solid. And I will sing her praises all day long. But I didn’t really feel like… I felt like a co-worker to her, a lot of our senior team, because we’re all in the trenches at the same time. But then it got to the point where we needed to hire, we needed to have a lead copywriter to kind of manage, be the bridge between the leadership team and the copy team and just kind of managing their day-to-day. And so I think the reason I got promoted into that role was just because of my leadership background from previous life experiences and just my natural, not candor with the team, that’s the wrong word, rapport with the team, maybe. Um, that’s the word poppy right here. Um, yeah, my national report as a team, I think it really helped. And so that kind of evolved. And then over time, like our, as our team kept growing, like I got, uh, taps to help with recruiting and hiring, um, mainly just getting to sit on our interviews and have a say. Um, cause our, again, like our, our head of staff now she’s phenomenal and she could pick a diamond out of the rough. And so yeah, then last year, they’re like, hey, we’re growing and we need your help on the paid side of the agency. Because my focus was purely on the retention side. And so they promoted me up into the director role. And so they’re like, yeah, now everything that is copy related agency, it’s yours. Um, so that’s pretty crazy. Um, so that’s how I kind of got into that role. But again, I think it goes back to, um, that leadership experience. No, it’s more than just copy. Like, I think there’s a tendency in a lot of workplaces where it’s like, just because your best employee does the best job and can do X, Y, Z, um, doesn’t mean they’re actually going to be the best manager or leader for a team. And so I, in a lot of ways, like, My senior copywriters, uh, that I get to work with, uh, I think they’re better writers than I am, um, by a long shot. Um, and I, I mean, Joe Bailey, you know, I’ll name them like they’re fantastically talented, um, writers in. Can write me right circles around me. Um, but like, I do bring a certain leadership ability to the table that I think helps with the whole of the team. And so. Yeah, it’s just showing up every day, doing the work, being committed, not being a prude about it. I think a lot of it’s just added to that value of growing there.

Rob Marsh: So this interview is happening because I sent out an email a month and a half or two ago talking about a workshop that we were doing in the underground. And it was about how copywriters can find full-time or even part-time jobs working with in-house type clients. So, you know, businesses that might have a creative team, or maybe they don’t have a creative team, but they’re working with freelancers on a part-time or full-time basis. Agencies like the one that you’re in. And you responded back basically saying, I got a lot to say about this. We’re hiring a couple of copywriters right now, and I gotta tell you some stuff. And unfortunately, we weren’t able to get you on that same training that we did in the underground, but we’ve got you here now, and I can share some of the stuff that Jessica, my friend who did that interview, what she shared, but you’ve got thoughts about how you get hired as a copywriter in I mean, your agency specifically, but would also be applicable to all kinds of different businesses. So let’s talk about some of that. What are you seeing? What are you seeing that people are doing wrong? And maybe let’s start with wrong so we can end on a positive, you know, what should be doing it right. But what are you seeing that’s just you’re pulling your hair out over?

Matt Snyder: Oh man, um, that’s, that’s a great question.

Rob Marsh: And I know, I know we could, we can be kind of brutal here. Uh, I know you’re not picking on any one person, but there’s some stuff that’s going on that, that we really ought to call out.

Matt Snyder: Yeah. I mean, I knew we were going to talk about this, so I kind of wrote down some ideas, things to touch on. And I think before this call we were talking, I’m like, I mean, I, I could sound really mean, like, but there are, there are, There are people who apply for copywriting roles that have no business applying for a copywriting role. And it’s kind of maddening. To give some context, We just, we opened up a role on a Friday morning. I think it was, uh, our most recent one, which we’re about to put out an offer for, I believe. Um, so don’t apply, but put it on a Friday morning. By the end of the day, I had 98 applications, uh, in my queue. And then I was like, great, I’m going to go over those on, on Monday. Well, it was an okay weekend. So Tuesday I logged in, I like 170 some. And then by the end of the day, we had over 200. I think we ended up with like 206. Um, and I, I dm’d our HR guy. I was like, please take it down. Um, there’s no way I can keep up. I was like going through these applications left and right. And I’m like, I’ve just seen my queue get longer. I was like, there’s. Yeah, this is crazy. So know that when you apply for a job, especially in today’s market, that’s what I’m seeing as the hiring manager. And it’s like, I have a lot to go through. And so to stand out and say 206, a stack of 206 applications, I feel like I have something to say.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Well, and it’s not just your agency. I see this anytime I see a copywriter job on LinkedIn and you click through to see, you know, what are they looking for? Whatever. Almost always it’s like 180 people applied, you know, see where you stand or how you compare or whatever. So this isn’t just you guys. This is literally every copywriting job in the world right now.

Matt Snyder: Yeah, no, I have, I have a family member who’s appointed for jobs and she’s like, look, like the job market is awful right now. I’m like, no, it really is. I said, and I told her, I explained what just happened now. Like we just got tutored some applications. She goes, I, I believe it. She said, I feel like I’m just throwing my name out and saying a prayer. I’m like, I mean, that’s basically what you’re doing. Um, but so some context, like what I’m looking for when I hire a copywriter, um, at Homestead, um, you know, it’s, it’s not just somebody that can do the job and then clock out at the end of the day. Like I’m looking for a member of my team. Like if I wanted somebody to just write an email or an ad, I would hire a freelancer, but we kind of, we don’t try to hire freelancers. We try to hire full-time employees. Um, so we’re, and we’re not looking for somebody who just wants to work here for six months and then leave. We’re looking for somebody who wants to help build and help grow. And so I’m, I’m looking for, for someone with long-term potential because I know how things operate once they get into the agency. And it’s like, we really do focus on development. Um, not just hard skills, but soft skills and then life skills, um, and a lot of different ways. So it’s like, we’re, we’re 70 some people, but we’re really tight knit and we have a very unique culture or it’s just specific. I mean, it’s just good to us. And so when I’m hiring a new copywriter, I’m looking for someone that’s honestly self-aware and empathetic, that checks their ego at the door. One of the most important things is that they need to be teachable, curious folks, eager to grow, and that eagerness has to come through, like that desire to learn.

Rob Marsh: So let me stop you there, because as we go through this list, how do you know if somebody is eager to grow? It’s one thing to show up on a call and act humble, but then show up with an ego. So what are the filters that you’re using to even, and especially because you’re looking at resumes and cover letters, you’re not even talking to people at this point, right? So how do you filter that?

Matt Snyder: One of the biggest helps for me, and this is this is awful, and you’re listening and you do this. If it works for you, great, but it doesn’t work for getting my attention, that’s for sure. But people who send cold emails to blanket agency lists. um that’s a surefire way to get on my do not hire list um and it sounds awful but like number one those emails usually go to my spam but also when you’re spamming my team and they’re like hey why am i getting a message from this guy i might just ignore it like and they’re offensive because they’re trying to get your attention And so they just say really stupid things like, I’m going to throw a brick at your window. Okay, well, that no, like fired before you’re hired. Like it’s stuff like that. Like, um, I, I don’t want to categorize the type of person that typically sends those emails, but they’re usually male and they usually like to flaunt their successes. Um, and there, there’s no air of, uh, humility about what they write or how they present themselves. So that does come across in their copy pretty well. And I think we all know the brands that are really good about, um, you know, executing on that ethos and mentality. So to me, it really comes through in your copy, um, in the way you answer your application questions, especially, um, maybe in the way, like you answer some of the questions, like every single question I have in our application, I have for a reason, like they’re intentional. um, and there to reveal something. I think one of the most, the most telling ones for me is like we have, um, I think I wrote it down somewhere so I wouldn’t forget, but like, uh, why do you think you’d be a good fit for Homestead and for this role? Um, it says a lot about somebody if they can answer that well, just because it’s like, if you know enough about our agency and how we operate and how we function and the clients we serve, like you will answer that question with like a phenomenal, like finesse. Um, but if you just are applying for a job and you just hope that you’re going to get like an interview that comes through to, um, we just interviewed somebody who, uh, she was so hungry to like her, her application questions were very short and brief. We’re talking like one sentence answers to all of them, which doesn’t sound like an easy way to stand out, but they were. Oh, good. And I was like, this is exactly what I’m looking for. But one of the things she mentioned was. how eager she was to learn from our team specifically. And she mentioned people. And I’m like, that shows somebody who’s aware of what of our team and what’s happening. And they clearly follow us like, and I knew they followed us online. And so that that kind of stops it out. So it’s like, if if you can get yourself out of the way enough, the way you present yourself to like, show that, hey, I’m interested in helping you become the best version of you or whatever it is. It’s like copyrighted one on one, like, make sure you’re talking to your audience. And say what you know they want to hear or need to hear. And I don’t feel like enough copywriters approach job applications with that mentality. It’s like you’re writing a pitch, you’re writing a sales letter to me for you. use those same tactics that you would for a sales letter in your application. We had a girl, we also interviewed her. She was awesome. Her cover letter was written like an email. It was awesome because she knows how we write emails and that’s what we’re hiring for, that email copywriter position. And she gave us different concepts and different ideas with it. It was very creative and it stood out amongst the staff and I was like, this is awesome. I don’t know if I answered any of your question. I kind of went off on a rabbit trail, but, um, yeah, I think it comes, it comes off in your copy. If you’re, if you’re humble and you don’t have an ego and if you’re curious, like it, it’s just evident, um, across the pool of your portfolio and application.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, so obviously breaking through is huge here because, you know, if you’re one of 207 people and you’re just sending a resume in the typical, you know, I’m a match for the job because of X, Y, and Z, you know, I’ve looked forward to talking, whatever. You may be the greatest copywriter in the world, but it’s so easy to get lost in there. In some ways, that’s making you, as the copy chief, or the hiring manager, whoever, do the work of trying to figure out, is this person really as good as they say? Hearing it is, you know, the cover letter written as an email that your agency would send out. So they’re clearly aware of the work that you do. That stuff stands out. What if, uh, what if somebody sent you a box with a shoe in it that said, uh, I just want to get a shoe in the door or foot in the door, you know, that, which, which is, I think Luke Sullivan writes about this in, uh, Hey Whipple, that he had a closet full of shoes, uh, because of that. But does that stuff stand out too? Or like, what do you, when it comes to big ideas, what are you looking for?

Matt Snyder: I would, I would, that would be alarming to me because I want to know how they got my address. Uh, you know, we don’t, we don’t have a, like a headquarters, so it’s not, I’m never going to get a package that you send to me. Like when clients want to send us stuff, we give them a spreadsheet with our address on it, but they ask. But I think, yeah, stuff like that goes a long way. The people who stood out the most with this last round were people who had engaged with me regularly on LinkedIn. or via email previously, like had a bit of an interest in the role. We had people who had applied for a previous position last year. They applied again and sent me an email, hey, I applied for this again. And I was like, oh, I recognize you. So the DMs and the emails that are genuine and kind and not that templated, like, you know, I wish this email was a brick. Literally came through today, by the way. Uh, I think those, those stand out the most. And I, I personally, like, I recognize, I try to engage with every single person who, who emails me, who DMs me, who leaves a comment on my LinkedIn post or, you know, my newsletters or replies to my newsletter emails. Um, I try very diligently to respond to every single one. So if you’re engaging with me, you can better believe that I’m going to recognize your name and I’m going to recognize genuine engagement. And I try to reward that with my time. So I think that in today’s online world, that really does go a long way. And those same people who DM me and email me, they genuinely know what’s happening with our business. They know the clients we’re working with. They they make make mentions of it. Uh, they’re like, yeah, I saw this email that just went out for this brand I hope you guys are still working with them. That was awesome Uh stuff like that that really does carry weight it carries volume. So um, you you mentioned something about uh Kind of doing work beforehand and making sure that they’re a good fit. That was one of the tips I wrote down. I think if people pre-vet themselves for the positions, it saves me time and it saves them time.

Rob Marsh: What do you mean by that? Pre-vet. Pre-vet. Like, yeah, I’ve never written copy before, so maybe this isn’t a fit for me yet or… That could definitely be one of them.

Matt Snyder: I think, again, emailing or DMing or the hiring manager or even agency, like, I have questions about position before I apply. Who can I ask those questions to? I had several people do that, um, this last round. And there were a few that I was like, you’re just one person. Sue is But not like if anybody’s hiring and they need to senior copywriter, let me know because I will send you her her details but um, she was overqualified for the role. And I was like, look, you have an amazing portfolio. Like you have a great work history. You clearly know what you’re doing. You’re overqualified for the position we’re hiring for because we’re not hiring a senior writer. Uh, we’re not hiring a junior writer. We’re hiring a mid-level writer. And so if you are wanting to work with us, like we can’t pay you, um, what you’re worth. And so like, I, you know, later in the year or some other time, if we’re hiring a senior role, um, please say your name and hat, but it’s going to be evident. And so I think being able to ask those questions like, hey, before I buy, I just want to make sure like, what’s the salary band for this? Or like, what’s the expectations? Like, is this a mid-level role? Is this a senior role? What am I going to be writing and working on? That starts the conversation already. And so that helps you pre-vet yourself and know whether you want to put in the time to answer the application questions, piece together a portfolio, that kind of thing. I had a guy email me yesterday. He was like, Hey, I want to be a junior copywriter. I’ve admired your agency for a long time. We’ll love, like, I know you, who you are because of your work online. And, um, I know Homestead because of their influence and place in the DTC world. We’d love to work with you, but I want to work as a junior writer. Um, and I was like, well, he was a solid fit for a junior role. We’re not hiring for a junior writer. So like, you know, keep your eye on the website, like, uh, in our careers page. Like if we’re hiring, you need to throw your name in the hat. Um, it’s something that like goes a long way to prevent yourself, make sure that you’re going to be a good fit for the role. If you have questions, um, I had people apply that. It’s like, you’re a technical writer or like you should be writing case studies. Uh, you write long form content. These are short, quippy emails for e-com brands. You’re not going to like, do you pull that off really well? Great. In my experience, I’ve seen those kinds of writers struggle to adapt. And in this situation that we’re hiring now, we need somebody that can hit the ground running quickly. I don’t have time to like, train you how to write an e-mail. And yeah, clarity is king, brevity is key. So yeah, it’s the pre-vetting beforehand to make sure that you’re going to be a good fit for the position. It can go a long way.

Rob Marsh: What else should people be thinking through? So one of the things that came up in the training we did in the underground, Jessica suggested that every single role that you apply for, you should probably be rewriting your resume so that it is objectively aimed at what’s required for that position. And while that is a total pain in the butt, Uh, it’s, it goes a long way because, uh, you’re not seeing the generic stuff on your resume. You’re seeing things that apply directly to, you know, this particular position sucks if you’re doing this 30 or 40 times, but like if the key is to break through, you know, that kind of, or, or, you know, the generic, uh, cover letter is kind of the same thing. Um, so what else are you looking for?

Matt Snyder: Yeah, that’s definitely one of them. I look at resumes and when I’m looking, I don’t care if you send me a generic resume. I care about your cover letter and I care about your portfolio and I care how you answer the application questions. That’s how you’re going to get through to me. Your resume is great. It’s a great snapshot of your history. I always ask for a link to your LinkedIn. Um, again, I’m very active there, so, um, I will go to your LinkedIn and I’ll look at your work history. I’ll look at your posts. I’ll see what you’re talking about. I’ll see how you present yourself. So that, that matters to me. Your resume is great. It’s just a snapshot of your work history. I think some, some businesses, you know, it matters more than others in ours. I’m like, I like to know where you’ve been and what you’ve worked on. I think that’s important, but I want to see the work that you’ve produced. So your portfolio, um, carries more weight to me than your, Somebody looked at my resume, and I’ve worked at Blockbuster, I’ve worked at Ministries, I’ve worked at Brewster Coffee for five years. My work history is all over the map. It’s like someone’s like, you’re doing what you’re doing now? It’s like, yeah, I know, right? So I take your resume with a grain of salt. I take your portfolio and the rest of those things with a lot more weight. So when it comes to your application, again, I think I mentioned this earlier, but I put a lot of thought into the questions that I ask. They are all there for a reason. Ask about AI tools, preferred writing style, why you’d be a good fit for us, the latter demonstrating your awareness of the business and what we’re actively working on. um Writing style is kind of a tell too. I’ve had a lot of people who with journalism backgrounds that again are used to like long-form content writing They’re like apa style. I’m like, that’s not what i’m asking um, and it’s more than i’ve framed the question more than just preferred writing style, but it’s like That’s i’m interested. That’s the way you interpret it, but that’s not what I meant

Rob Marsh: That’s a really good strain or sifter for the right person if they answer that way.

Matt Snyder: It really is. It’s such a big tell. If they ask for your cover letter, a resume, and a portfolio and you don’t include it in your application, It’s an immediate no for me. Like, especially like, you’re applying for a copywriting role, you’re applying for a creative position to not include a creative portfolio demonstrating your ability. Like, man, you’re off the rocker. Like, I gotta see this. Like, I gotta see what you’re made of.

Rob Marsh: I recently saw a post on LinkedIn where they were so, they were that specific. It was for a direct response agency. And one of the things they said, you know, it’s like, you know, send in your cover letter, your resume or whatever. And then they even went and said, if you do not include a cover letter, you will not be considered, which like it should go without saying, but clearly people don’t follow instructions.

Matt Snyder: Yeah, I mean, that cover letter is your elevator pitch. So like, that cover letter could be the same thing you send to me via email to vet yourself out for the position. Like, I mean, it’s not, don’t make it difficult, but like, include it. It goes, like, it helps me interpret what I see before I see it. so i think that’s that’s huge i think um here’s a uh daniel drossel has like the anti cover letter um strategy course thing like that that would be worth looking into i don’t know anything about it but like apparently it gets results so um there you go shout out daniel um also great email lists to be subscribed to so that’s important. I check for errors. Um, especially if you are like, I’m a copywriter and you send me stuff that has grammatical errors or mistakes or spelling mistakes. Guys, put your best foot forward. Um, I think another thing is important. Don’t insult the hiring team or the business when you’re answering the questions. So it’s not funny. Give an example of that. Yeah, it’s not a place to air your grievances about the way an industry operates, for example, or that that question is being asked in the first place. I had somebody like, why are you wasting my time with this question? You should be asking this instead. And I was like, declined. It’s funny. Come on, man.

Rob Marsh: Have you had anybody reach out? It’s like, if you had me, your website wouldn’t be so bad or your response rates would be 10 times what they are. That comes back to what we were talking about, the lack of humility. But that seems really offensive. I mean, for me, it’s like, hey, I can see your website isn’t performing. How can you see that? You have no idea what my back end looks like. I get those all the time. Yeah, that’s okay.

Matt Snyder: Yeah, I’ve had those.

Rob Marsh: I’m not the only one.

Matt Snyder: I’ve had people put ultimatums in their application, like, I’ll send you my portfolio if you give me an interview. I was like, no. You’re not going to do that either, dude. I will say, guys tend to be the bigger offenders than women out there. So take that information as you will. But dudes, you need to straighten it up. But I think application, yeah, resumes are great. Cover letters are really important. Answering all those application questions is super important. Also, Don’t answer your application questions using AI. It is very obvious when you do. Last year we were hiring, we hired two roles, a junior role and a mid-level copywriter role. And I had both rounds. I had people answering, like, I was like, describe your experience with copywriting or just describe your preferred writing style. I can’t remember what it was exactly. I removed the question. But I had probably 15 or 20 applications that gave me the exact same response. Exact same response. Did it have the rocket emoji in it? No, no emoji. But I was like, can you just show some like effort at least um and change these a little bit and i had one person that did it was the same point just rewritten but same as everybody else like it’s an instant no for me um i want you to show that you can think critically and uh think like how you would think i don’t care how chat gbt would think or quad or deep seek or whatever it is like i don’t know how you’d think like One person in this last round, they answered the AI question like, yeah, I use AI tools. I used it for this. And this is why I used it. And this is how I used it. And this is how I changed it. And I’m like. That sounds awesome. Like it wasn’t, it wasn’t like copy paste. One person had copy and pasted chat. GBT said blank. I was like, wow, come on. Um, so, so don’t do that stuff. And then, um, I, I’ve noticed a lot of people too, like, you know, talking about boosting conversion of the websites and stuff. A lot of this, this is maybe a red flag for, for some freelancers, even pitching anybody for anything. Um boasting about the result that they can get client um, I would caution people about doing that to uh, hotly because it’s like I didn’t want to see receipts I want to see the client testimonials I want to see the LinkedIn recommendations. I want to see the screenshots from their Klaviyo accounts or MailChimp accounts or whatever it is or Shopify store. Like I want you to prove to me that your copy really did make that conversion. Um, otherwise I can’t, I have no reason to believe it. Um, cause I don’t know you from Adam. So bring your receipts. I had somebody was like, I did this for this person. I did this for that person. I did this for them. And I’m like, I don’t know if I should believe you, because you’re also the same type of person who sends blanket blasts to just lists you don’t know who’s on it. And so, yeah, I think be cautious of boasting your success. Please boast your success, but there’s a difference between confidence and cockiness, and one’s off-putting and the other’s not. And a good copywriter ought to be able to thread that needle. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think, I think it’s really important. We talk about portfolios. Um, cause I’ve mentioned this lots, but like, if your application doesn’t include a link to your portfolio, it’s a hard pass for me, brother. Um, I think something that a lot of copywriters that have applied this last round that overlooked is their portfolios were not easy to access or navigate. Um, there are websites that you are just for copy portfolios. So those are fine. They’re clunky. Some of them, I don’t even remember the names of them. Um, I don’t tip. I don’t even have a portfolio. Uh, but I would make one if I, if I was applying for a job, but like, make sure they’re easy to access and navigate. And then if you have to password protect it because of client NDAs or whatever, I totally understand that. But like, make sure you give your password with your application. And then also make sure that password is correct. So I had several people this last round who did not give me a password or they gave me an incorrect password. I was like, ah, detail. You overlooked that. Sure, it was a great portfolio, but you’re out. Um, and again, I had 206 applications to go through. I’m like, surely it was somebody else’s link to their portfolio. Um, I think, you know, Google docs work fine. I did Google, uh, folder drive, whatever. Um, that works fine. Most people come to me that way. Um, a notion database with tags, uh, has someone sent me a notion database. Um, Did that look good? I know it’s easy to put together. The tags were really helpful because I was able to be like, okay, emails, boom. Ads, cool. Landing pages, even better. And so it was like they knew what they were applying for. They curated that portfolio, it was clear. They knew they’d be writing ads, emails, landing pages, and text. And so that’s what they included in their portfolio to me. And I was like, this is money. They got an interview, by the way. um and then uh figma figma board was probably one of the best ones i saw recently uh they had just big old figma file it took forever to load but once it loaded i was like this person’s sick Uh, they did get an interview. Um, and they are awesome Canada, by the way. Um, but there are categories too, like ads, landing pages, emails, they did websites, they did, they did a sales pages. They had, I mean, they had, it was everything portfolio, but like, I could get to where I needed to go, um, to see what I needed to see. That was, that was great. But I think, yeah, if you’re putting together a portfolio, make sure it’s specific to the role you’re applying for. The number of people who, yeah, they want, they just want to work at Homestead or they just want an agency job or whatever it is. And they send me, like, long form content pieces. I’m like, I mean, number one, I don’t know if Claude or chat GBT wrote that, but also, you know, it’s just in a Google doc. Um, I want to see it on a website. I want to see it live. Um, and I want to see the kind of content that you’re going to be writing for me. So, uh, please include that stuff in your portfolio of whatever you’re applying for. Make sure that it’s there. If you don’t have. e-com ads or stuff like that. I accept spec work as long as you tell me that it’s spec work. I’ve had people apply to spec work and it’s top tier spec work. Even more, if you look at our portfolio on the website, like, oh, they wrote for Hexslide or they do emails for the Woobles or whoever it is. And then you spec work a piece of for that client. Like I can then see if you really have what it takes to write for us and our clients because I’m that voice. Um, so that’s, that’s huge. And even if you’re, um, you have content in your portfolio that matches the type of whatever you’ll be writing for that, that, uh, agency, um, it’s still to go a long way back. Hey, I did this for this brand. It’s pretty cool. I think too, I love to see designed content. Um, A lot of people send over just Google Docs with their copy. That’s fine. We write our copy in Google Docs. We send it to Design. Design drops it in Figma. We send clients the final product to review, copy and design. And so it’s like, If you have a design piece versus just a copy content piece, it’s kind of a hidden tell. I can tell that you can work with the design team to get your ideas from concepts to like reality. And so I prefer to see portfolios with fully designed pieces. I tend to favor those more. Do without what you will, audience. But I think that really says a lot. Yeah, we talked about curating content to the position. Yeah. I mean, those are just some, um, some thoughts with portfolios, but portfolios huge, uh, for a copyrighted role. Like if you don’t have one, don’t bother. Like just don’t bother applying.

Rob Marsh: That’s, yeah, that’s important. So a couple of things are slightly different kinds of questions. We’ve talked about junior level, mid-level and senior level copywriters. How do you guys break those into different bands? I know this differs a little bit from place to place or, you know, agency to agency, but there’s some pretty good break points, I think, for this. So what are you looking at for each level as far as experience and capabilities go?

Matt Snyder: Yeah, I think we have… So at Homestead, we spent a lot of time, our leadership team, developing role progressions. So if you enter Homestead as a junior copywriter, you know what your responsibilities are, you know what your… These are your main tasks, the main deliverables we want you to hit. These are your milestones, your growth opportunities. And so if you want to then become like, we have, we do junior, copy one, copy two, which those are mid-level, and then senior copywriter, lead copywriter, head of copy or direct of copy, whatever I do. And so if you want to move from the junior to copy one, you know what you have to do to get there. And yeah, it goes a little bit beyond your job description, but it’s like showing that initiative. Um, I tend to work with the team. So it’s like I make those kind of growth milestones, like your goals. So those are things we work on. Um, and you know how long you have to be in that position to qualify for a move up and what you have to do. So they, it kind of does that with each role as they, they progress at Homestead.

Rob Marsh: So if you’re, if you’re hiring for a junior copywriter, is that a pure beginner or what kind of experience are you looking for there?

Matt Snyder: Kind of a pure beginner. I’m looking for somebody that has copy chops. That’s what I like to say. They have the ability to write well and they also demonstrate a desire to learn, to be curious. We just interviewed somebody who That came off the screen. I mean like it was just so obvious like they wanted to learn and grow and they said I want to learn this, I want to learn that, I want to learn this, I want to be able to do this. And I was like okay, you know what you need to do, you know what you’re capable of now, like you know where you want to go, like that’s so helpful to me. Because I’m like I can kind of guide that and push you in the right direction. Um, it’s the people who come to me that are like, I know it all. I’m like, I want one. I’m going to hire you. Um, so a junior writer though, as somebody who’s hunger hungry, they’re teachable. They know they need to grow. Um, when we hire them as a junior writer, it’s like, you’re, you’re starting out with just emails and SNS. Like that’s it. And like the, the big piece for me there is like, I’m going to teach you not how to just write emails and SMS really, really well, our Homestead way, but I’m also going to teach you how to do content strategy. So you learn to master content strategy like that first year, writing emails and SMS, and you start dabbling into other areas like building out ads, learning how interpersonal connections, communicating well with clients, contributing to internal projects, you start to move up and expand your skills. As you move into copy one and copy two, your contributions kind of expand. So you’re not just writing emails and SMS and doing content strategy. You’re doing that and you’re helping the pay team with landing pages. And you might be contributing to ad copy. And so you do that. There’s a lot of other details at play, but like growth milestones. And then when you move into a senior role, it’s like you’re working obviously on bigger accounts. You’re working on fewer accounts, but with a lot more depth. And so these might not just be like a million-dollar brand a year in revenue. They’re like $50,000, $75,000, $100 million in revenue a year. They’re a big account. And so you have less clients on your plate so you can do even better work. That’s more focused. And you’re controlling the narrative across paid, landing pages, email. You’re helping the whole team with the whole funnel.

Rob Marsh: It sounds like you’re doing more strategy work at the highest level.

Matt Snyder: Yeah, yeah. We have one of our seniors, she’s very involved with audits and helping with pitching new business and she’s really good at deep diving. One of the things I’m really bullish on is having people identify Like, what do you want to learn? What do you want to be good at? Like, if there’s a specialty or a niche and the coffee space and, and our industry, especially that you want to get good at, we’re going to pour resources into cultivating those skills for you because they’re going to be a benefit to us as an agency. And so like, we, we have a team that’s just, we have some really good researchers. We have people that are really, really great with creative strategy and developing like Um, you know, customer persona and doing customer research and building a really well thought out customer avatar and, uh, buyer journeys. I mean, it’s somebody’s clients were like, this is just crazy what you guys are pulling off. It’s like, it’s because we taught, we help our team learn how to do this stuff so that they can add the value back to you. So it’s like when I, somebody comes into the junior, I’m looking for potential.

Rob Marsh: And at the mid-level then, are you looking for, obviously they’ve been doing some of this, but are you looking at time? Like I’ve been doing this for three years, or are you looking at like, now I have examples of landing pages in addition to the emails and maybe some other, you know, some of the stuff that your mid-level person is working on?

Matt Snyder: I’m looking at time. I’m looking at, yeah, the portfolio. Like if, if you’re at the mid level, like you’re going to be doing a lot of emails and a lot of landing pages. I need to know that you have a, not a broader understanding of the industry, e-commerce especially than just email. Um, and so like the people who I, who we’ve been interviewing, uh, diligently in the last week, it’s like they have a portfolio that supports that and they have experienced that support. So like, I, like we’re talking about two to three years experience, five to six, probably, probably two to three. Um, a junior, like if you have like a year of experience, I’ll, I’ll look at you. Um, but if, yeah, if you have like six months. Probably not a mid-level copywriter. Yeah, but a mid-level writer. Yeah. You’ve got like two or three years underneath your belt. Um, but yeah, one of the ones we’re talking about right now, she has had experience helping grow a B2C brand in all aspects. So she’s touched copy and all the areas of my. That is useful to me because you are going to be able to not just execute well on those deliverables. You can empathize with the client. You kind of know their pain points and where their focus is at certain periods of time. So I look at that stuff. And then for seniors, I personally prefer to promote from within. So I will hire a senior if it comes down to it. we have some really, really good riders, mid-level riders right now that deserve to be seniors. And so I would rather promote from within into a senior role than hire a senior. That makes sense.

Rob Marsh: Well, thanks, Matt, for sharing all of this. It feels like, you know, we’ve kind of opened up the secret door on hiring in some ways. Hopefully it’s enlightened a few people and we can improve, you know, if we’re applying for those kinds of in-house roles or even part-time roles. If people want to connect with you, I know you’re really big on connection and follow up, that kind of thing. Would you say LinkedIn is the best place?

Matt Snyder: LinkedIn is probably the best spot to connect with me. Matthew Snyder on LinkedIn. You can also have a newsletter. It’s free. It’s always going to be free. It’s called the Copy Minimalist, copyminimalist.com. I have like, you can sign up, you get access to my swipe file. I add to it every Friday. There’s hundreds of examples in there. You can also like on that same website, you can get a playbook I made about just some principles that I follow when I’m writing copy to keep it simple and short. So yeah, LinkedIn is the best place. You can also email me. My email is on LinkedIn. You can DM me on LinkedIn if you want to meet and have a call. I’m happy to do it. I’m always happy to connect. So yeah, just don’t be strangers. I’m an open book. I will share anything. So this is great. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for being here. I appreciate everything you’ve shared. Absolutely, man. Thanks for having me.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Matt Snyder for sharing his thoughts about getting hired as a copywriter.
Did you notice that Matt mentioned many of his writers are better than he is? That’s the mark of an agency or a company that hires A players. They want to work with people who are better than they are. They want to bring in new people who add new skills and add to the collective skill set. And if you want to be part of a group like that, you need to bring new skills and new ideas and show off how you’re going to elevate that group too. Not just show up and write the thing that your boss hands you. 

Matt was pretty brutal in his assessment of the people who should not be applying for copywriting jobs. And this is true of pitching for work as well. You have to be able to deliver. There are table stakes. Even at the entry level, you need to show that you can write, you understand grammar and spelling, and can be trusted to get those right. And if you’re not there yet, practice before you flood the inbox of a hiring manager or a client that you want to work with. The job market is tough right now, but if you follow what Matt shared, it will be a lot better for you than those who didn’t listen to this episode all the way through. 

And if you want even more help related to finding a real job as a copywriter or a content writer, jump into The Copywriter Underground where there are additional resources to help you do that. And there are even more resources for freelance writers looking for high-paying clients, so everyone should visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu to learn more now.

 

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 LinkedIn
Svet’s Facebook
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The 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/tcu

And 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 PDFs that I found online and all that stuff. 

And it was kind of a crazy couple of months just doing research and research and not getting anywhere, which was frustrating. But then there was this mindset shift that I said, hey, if I’m going to say, hey, I can’t do it, I won’t be able to do it, right? But when I said, hey, I need to do it and I will do it, things started to get better. Um, so after I finished my master’s degree, I started applying. It was actually in European policies and politics. So I started applying for different positions in the European Union related to politics, management and all that stuff. And I couldn’t land any, and I probably sent like more than a hundred different applications. Most of those applications were not only consisting of a CV, but also a cover letter. 

So I wrote a ton of cover letters. And later, like years later, I realized that has helped me a lot to master my skills in writing and also in persuasion, because when you’re writing a cover letter, you have to convince the other party to hire you, right? So I realized that that has helped me a lot, but I needed a few years to really understand that I was not cut out to be an employee for first of all the European Union’s different institutions. And I also realized that writing all those cover letters and stuff was really helpful to put in the reps, because I was probably writing every single day. I was changing stuff here and there. Obviously, I wasn’t writing a completely new cover letter, but I was constantly trying to change and see how it’s going. 

And then a few years later, I had an office job which was not related to what I was studying, and I didn’t enjoy it at all, so I quit it after a week and a half. And since I had some money saved, and just like a month before I quit my job, I actually met a Chinese girl at a hotel while I was traveling with my family doing a European trip. And I met a Chinese girl and I chatted with her a lot and then she invited me to go to China. Long story short, a few months after that I went to China and I really enjoyed it there. And I was like, hey, maybe I can start learning some Chinese and find a job in China. I still wasn’t 100% certain I was going to do a freelance career, and I had no idea what copywriting was. But since I’ve already studied and learned English and then French, I was like, maybe I can start studying some Chinese. 

Obviously, I wouldn’t master Chinese because it’s a completely different, much harder language. But still it would help me to land a job and a few months after that I landed unpaid internship although it was. It was a full-time job, I would say, in China. And while I didn’t enjoy it very much when I went there, because I realized it was very, very different from what it was supposed to be, I enjoyed living there. I enjoyed connecting with the people. And there’s a saying in Bulgaria that one year abroad is like two years at home. Well, I would say that when you go to China or probably another country in Asia, since they’re so much different from, let’s say, Europe, Western Europe and the US, I would say that one year in China is like three or four years at home. 

So I spent only three months, but it felt like a year or more. So when I came back, I was like, I definitely don’t want to find a job, but since I had so many different experiences and impressions from China, I decided to create a website to write about like a travel blog, although I was also writing about lifestyle, healthy living, healthy eating. And since I knew that I wouldn’t be able to support myself with a new website, a new blog, I also started looking for content writing jobs first. But I use my website as a portfolio. Obviously, it’s not a necessity nowadays to have a website. And I would probably even advise people not to create a website at first. This is my experience, and I used that, and I think it actually played quite well. And I started lending a few jobs here and there about content writing, and then, I’d say a year and a half later, I started exploring copywriting and I realized it’s not just like copy and pasting words on a google document is completely different and it requires a lot of persuasion. Most of the time it’s much better paid than writing articles for other companies. That’s the short story in like five minutes.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, how you shifted over. So let’s go back to just the experience of writing these hundreds of cover letters. I’d love to know what you learned from that experience or what tips you have for writing a good cover letter. And the reason I ask this is there’s been over the last few months, a little bit of a move for some copywriters to try to find a real job, either a part-time job or a full-time job, so that they have some steady income as the economy’s been a little less predictable, things like AI and some of the layoffs that have happened over the last couple of years. So, uh, but they’re struggling. They’re struggling to find those jobs just as much as they’re struggling to find freelance work. It’s hard to make those connections. So what did you learn from that experience that really helped you sell yourself when you were reaching out with cover letters to resumés?

Svet Dimitrov: Well, I would say that I learned how to get to the point as quickly as possible. So in the first one or two paragraphs, I would try to grab their attention and then also try to share what are my biggest strengths and why they should hire me. Obviously, I wrote very, very bad cover letters at first. And some of them were starting with a very weird question and some of them were like trying to express my wealth of vocabulary, which I think is something that you should never do when you’re writing copy, unless you’re writing for, let’s say, Harvard Professors for example probably they would appreciate flexing your vocabulary. 

But I think, yeah, definitely, I learned that I have to be very succinct and concise and straight to the goal, straight to the point when I am writing a cover letter. And it’s probably the same with copywriting, when you’re writing an email or even a VSL, which is a very long postal time, or at least 1500 words or more, which is probably longer than most cover letters anyway. You have to go straight to the middle of the action. That’s how I actually was able to land an internship. It’s called an elite VSO internship with Fran Reirengil. Probably you’ve heard of him. You’ve been in the game for very long. He’s one of the best VSO writers in the world and one of the It was a very elaborate process to hire those co-copywriters for his internship because it’s free but you have to pass through different phases. And one of them was to hand copy a whole VSL, which was 8,000 words and it took me like 14 hours. 

And the second thing or part of that phase was also writing a cover letter, which had to be between 750 to 1500 words. And yeah, that cover letter was I used a lot of storytelling and I got straight to the point in the middle of the action. So that’s what I learned from writing so many cover letters. So yeah, that’s a good tip for beginner copywriters, but I would say for most copywriters, because I would see sometimes even Those copywriters that are a little bit, let’s say, old school or that have come from a different generation, they would rely on different, I would say, they are not accounting the changing environment of the new generation where we have, I would say, lower attention span. So sometimes they will start with a paragraph or two about just kind of like fluff. And I think it’s better to just go straight to the point, grab the attention, grab them by the eyeballs, and then move on.

Rob Marsh: So a quick follow up on that, you mentioned stories and I think that a lot of cover letters in particular, as I think about the structure for them, you know, usually saying, hey, I want this job and here’s all the reasons that I should get the job and you list out your qualifications and if you’re doing it Well, you’re trying to match the qualifications in the job description, but almost never have I thought through that that’s a great place for a story. So are you telling your story or are you weaving this in a framework that made it into a story in some way? It feels like you’re doing something a little bit different from what most people do.

Svet Dimitrov: Yeah especially for this one that because i’m very very very proud of those i was the only non-native copywriter that landed or kind of got hired for that internship and fran also told me i had the best cover letter out of all the three that were the last the last three three people that got accepted. So I used my own story and then tried to tie it in with the VSL that I had hand copied. And it was a very beautiful transition because it made a lot of sense. For example, I haven’t shared this with a lot of people, but I have a physical problem with my gut, where the esophagus or the food tube is very narrow before it goes to the stomach. And this means that when I eat very solid food, for example, bread or meat or something fatty, it can get stuck in the esophagus. And I had to go to the hospital every, quite a while actually, I went to the hospital last week to do this, they insert a tube, and there’s also a balloon that has to be pumped so it makes the esophagus wider so I can swallow better. 

I call this process deep throating because it goes really, really deep, like 20 inches deep. And I used that story because I was copying a cover of the video sales letter about the product so it tied in very beautifully with that story. And the first line of that cover letter was that. I was puking every single night for three months, which is a true story. I was 11 years old. So I didn’t say, hey, this will be a story about, well, I just started, I was puking every single month. So it’s like, what the hell is going on? This is a cover letter and he’s talking about puking. This is how I grabbed his attention and then I tied that in with the VSO as well, because I was talking about the deep throating and then ED and all that stuff. And then I mentioned that I can tie in different elements, which is very helpful not only for VSOs, but also for emails, for example.

Rob Marsh: I’m glad I asked that because what you are doing is a massive pattern interruption from all of the other kinds of cover letters that would be out there. And so I think that this is one of those ideas that anybody who’s listening and thinks, yeah, I am going to apply for a real job, you know, in air quotes. to use stories or to do something different so that the hiring person, the creative director, whoever it is, will actually notice you. And then at that point, you can at least have a conversation where you can talk about your skill set and hopefully make that personal connection. So you also mentioned, and I want to follow up on this before I forget, that you don’t actually recommend that a lot of copywriters start with a website. Why not? I mean, I know there are lots of places where you can connect with people without a website, but a website tends to be a really good place to share success stories, build trust, that kind of stuff. So why do you think that it’s not necessary, at least at the beginning?

Svet Dimitrov: Because it’s a waste of time in the beginning, I would say, because you can just open a Google document, you can create your own portfolio. You can even add some design elements, maybe on Canva and then try and transfer those to Google Doc or just create your portfolio on Canva. But both of those applications, I would say, are free and they don’t require any crazy amount of no knowledge compared to when a website because if you’re creating your own website and if you’re using let’s say a wordpress.com sub domain, then it wouldn’t be a very, very, very good website. If you’re creating that on Wix, for example, it’s going to be an ugly website. So if you want to create an eye-catching website, you’re going to spend a lot of time. You’re probably going to invest some money into buying a domain. You’re going to invest some money into a designer. And it’s going to take you hours. Instead, you can just go create a Google Doc. You can add those images of people saying Google stuff about you. You can be a little bit more creative. You can even have a cover letter. in front of your portfolio. This is how I usually do it. And I’m not even sharing my website anymore. I’m now rearranging the website. 

I’m probably going to share it anyway soon. But this took me like four or five years. I haven’t updated my website and I haven’t shared it anywhere. And people that have paid me five figures for VSLs and for other copy projects have never asked for a website. They just want to see a Google document. And what I would do is I would just write like, I don’t know, like a few paragraphs, something like, hey, and I would try to personalize it. Hey, Mark, below you, you’re going to find my most recent portfolio. But before that, I want to share a few benefits of working with me. And if I really like the person or if I really like the opportunity that’s presented to me, I would probably even have a cover letter in a way that I would probably touch upon things that I have found on his or her profile. 

For example, I kind of created a very, very short cover letter in front of the portfolio for a person that wanted to do a rev share project with me. And he really appreciated it. He was like, oh, my God, nobody has done this before. And it took me like five to ten minutes. You just go to their profile, you just do some research. That’s what we are, what that’s what that’s what Coca-Cola operators are for. Right. So you do research, you try to find something that you have in common, maybe, or just something that can draw the attention and say, OK, this guy went to my website or went to my social media or whatever. and include that before the portfolio and then you just and you can even do that with most prospects you’re speaking to because you have that as a Google Doc, and then you create a copy, then you change the name, then you change some of the benefits. Maybe if it’s a person, for example, if most of my clients are in the US, and I always say that I’m based in Europe, which means that I am like 7 to 10 hours ahead of them, which means that they’re going to get their copy in the morning much, much earlier. 

So that’s kind of a benefit if they are based in Asia and would try to come up with something different but these are like very small things that add a lot of. value to your portfolio because they would just expect a Google Doc with one or two samples, but then they get a lot more. Sometimes I would even include a picture of me doing something crazy because it adds this element. And sometimes I would even shoot a short, long video which would talk about my experience and I would probably just open the Google Doc and just go through it and say, hey, this is me. But then they would also see my face and it would be a very cool experience.

Rob Marsh: I really like this idea. I mean, in some ways it is a website, but it’s not, you know, the typical website, right? But what you’re really doing here that I think makes the difference is you’re personalizing this message or this site that you’re creating with a Google Doc to the person you’re talking to every single time. And even though it may be based on a template, the communication is one to one which is not the typical website experience this feels unique in some way that I think is your really big advantage.

Svet Dimitrov: And it’s one hundred percent free it just takes  very little time and also money but if you are, as you said, I actually didn’t even think about that if you send them to website is not gonna be that personal obviously, and this is very very unique and then you cannot even just talk to that google doc to make it a little bit more humorous and spicy in a way so people are like oh this guy has a sense of humor this is great.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. No, I mean, you mentioned doing it with Google Docs. I can imagine people could do the same thing with a Notion template. There may be two or three different kinds of ways to do this, but it’s a great idea. Virtually free, like you said, and personal. Yeah, this is definitely something I think, especially with beginning copywriters, but even experienced copywriters can use this kind of an idea to their advantage.

Svet Dimitrov: Yeah exactly, I actually started using one with a little bit more experience because I think I got even more confident in a way that I can use that. I also see sometimes when they’re hiring for a senior copywriting position, they always want to see a long video. And even if they don’t ask for it, I would sometimes still shoot a long video and find some stuff that makes sense. Sometimes I would just try to provide some free value in advance even, and say, hey, I imagined this and that, or I checked your website and here’s what I found that can be fixed very, very quickly or something. So these two things, something very personal in whatever you’re using, whether it’s Canva, whether it’s Google Doc or Notion, as you mentioned, probably Notion is even sexier in a way than Google Docs. And then if you even include a long video, then it’s like, oh, my God, you’re going so much. You’re doing so much more than the average person who is applying. So it sets you apart. 

And I think people are saying that competition is getting fiercer and fiercer these days. And it kind of is true that there are more people that are calling themselves copywriters or that are still copywriters. But at the same time, they’re getting so lazy with AI, they’re just sending irrelevant stuff, and sometimes they would even make a small mistake in the outreach, they would sometimes spell my name because sometimes I have hired junior copywriters and content writers for some of my own projects. They would spell my name Sven or whatever, something, which is probably sometimes like an auto-correction maybe? But still, that doesn’t make sense when it’s like, hey Sven, and it’s like, okay, come on.

Rob Marsh: That should be the first thing you catch is the person’s name. But we’ve all seen the email that goes out even with the first name block without names. Stuff like that. So you started writing copy… how did you become so well known for VSLs and writing in the health niche? How did you move in that direction?

Svet Dimitrov: Well, maybe I could start with the second part of this question, how I started with the heavy health management. And probably it would make a lot of sense because as I said, I had this health issue with my esophagus and to curb the I wouldn’t say it’s pain, but it’s a lot of the discomfort and happens most of the time when I’m stressed and especially when I’m eating sunny food. So I had to learn to eat more slowly, which is actually better for your health. And anyway, I’m going to enjoy the food more. But I also started eating in a much more healthy way as well. Like I would avoid sugar. I would eat a lot of fruit and veggies and lean meat and all that stuff. So it kind of makes sense because I’m also very active physically or used to be a little bit more now that I have a very young daughter, it’s a little bit harder to find that time to go out and do a workout every day. But before that, I was very active. I was working out almost every single day for at least 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes twice a day, and eating in a healthy way. So it just made sense to be arriving in the health niche. I know a lot of people say it’s the most competitive niche right now, and it probably is. But at the same time, if you’re good, there’s always this hunger for the best of the best, right? And it doesn’t matter if it is getting better and better. People say that I will. Replace copywriters and I say. Copywriters who can use a i will replace other copywriters this is this is so i am always saying to begin with you have to learn. Or you have to master co-op writing very, very quickly, or at least master the fundamentals, and then start using AI. And you wouldn’t have any trouble finding work. But if you’re a beginner and your English is not great, or your co-op is not great, you’d have to work much, much harder than it used to be before. But once you get to a certain level and you start using AI, you won’t have any problems. You will actually be having probably more work than ever. So I think I lost my train of thought.

Rob Marsh: I was talking about… Yeah, I think as far as connecting with, you know, health clients in the health space.

Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, this is one of the reasons why I started then. I had… Yeah, I had one guy who was running an agency got referred to me and the first He was mostly active in the health space and I wrote a few ads for Facebook and a few landing pages for some of his health clients. And I actually really, really enjoyed it because I was already writing a lot of content for my website. As I mentioned, it was not only about travel, but also healthy living, healthy lifestyle. And the health niche is very specific in a way because you have to do a lot more research and they have to support every single claim of yours with very credible sources. Otherwise, you would get into a lot of trouble. You cannot be saying this would increase your testosterone levels by 25% unless you have prove from a credible source like the national center of biology or whatever it’s called, or Harvard University or some university, it doesn’t matter what university, it has to be from a university or from a very credible source. And I think that’s where my love for research, which materialized probably as i mentioned during my master’s degree around fifteen sixteen years ago really kicked in because right now i’m actually doing another health project which involves a ton of research and i’m actually even having a little bit of a hard time because i was i did probably like 30 hours of research this month just on a project that is not even certain But I kind of enjoyed it a lot because it just got me back to my roots, just like going, exploring like the first, at least the first two pages on Google, which nobody goes to the second page anyway. And yeah, health, as I said, even when I was writing content for my website when I was quoting something I would always look for a credible source and nowadays I’m also the co-op chief for a Brazilian DR company. And the copywriters who write all the vsl so we say hey where did you get that idea from you have to like have the source you have to have the source we need the source i have to see the source i have to double check if it’s true the fd and fdc are more. Stringent than ever these days so every single claim we have it has to be substantiated otherwise you will get into trouble.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, the laws around that in Europe and the U.S., the law in the U.S. is called DSHEA. Yeah, there’s all kinds of rules there about not saying that something cures or mitigates a disease. You know, there’s limits. You can talk about ingredients, you can talk about the research that’s been done on ingredients, but just because something includes an ingredient doesn’t mean that the thing can do what the ingredient does. So writing in this space can be a little tricky, and it’s good to know or to have writers who understand this kind of stuff. How important is showing that kind of knowledge to a copy chief or to a company that’s hiring writers? Or is that the kind of thing that they say, well, we can train you on that. We’d rather have you be a persuasive writer.

Svet Dimitrov: I would say the second part being a more persuasive writer is more important, but the ability to combine those two and also to really know how to do research well and really know to distinguish between a thing That’s really worth researching more and more. It’s gonna really help you and I think I’ve probably got a little bit rusty in the last few months because as I said, I spent so much time on research. But I finally started digging some gold and I think I actually had an email to my address this morning that’s—if you remember the ad by David Ogilvy—about Roll Royce, sixty miles per hour is the only thing you hear is the clock or something? Yeah, the ticking of the clock. Yeah. So he said that he spent, or he at least could claim that he spent, I think like three weeks digging through different papers to find that kind of exact quote from somewhere. And this was the most successful ad of Rolls-Royce, I think, all over the years. 

So it pays off to do a lot of research. But sometimes you can get lost in a lot of research. So I’m not saying I’m the best researcher in the world, but knowing how to do research, how to do it somewhat fast and how to especially find the best big ideas. Because the big ideas are what really sells and make a promo go to seven figures or even eight figures is the big idea that nobody has found. And this big idea has actually to be. It doesn’t have to be completely new or alien, but it has to have this And I remember this when I was part of Copy Accelerator and we had a live event in Tampa. And Stefan had a presentation saying that this new idea or new mechanism has to be 10% different. Because people have to have heard of it in a way, but it has to be a new Just just a little bit otherwise if it’s very very new nobody’s gonna believe that right.

Rob Marsh: Yeah people are looking for things that are familiar but different enough that they notice them if it’s too familiar they don’t notice but if it’s not familiar enough it’s seen as strange and weird and we push those things away. Yeah, exactly. So let’s talk about writing VSLs, this thing that you do mostly now. How is it different from sales pages? What are some of the things that we need to consider in addition to finding that big idea as we start to structure a VSL? And just in case anybody doesn’t know what a VSL is, video sales letter. So it’s really a sales message in a video format. Yes.

Svet Dimitrov: Well I would say the big idea of the mechanism which are a little bit different but let’s let’s say they are there the same for the sake of this argument so the big idea of mechanism are kind of. Like when you’re looking for them whether it’s a sales a sales letter or text sales letter or vsl you are probably have the same approach but when you are writing a vsl. It’s kind of different, it’s harder in a way, because with TSLs or the text sales letters, you have the headline, and then you have subheadline, bullets, and all that stuff. And people can skip and skim, and then they can stop and see, oh, okay, this sounds interesting. 

With a VSL, Most of the time, you can’t skip ahead. So it has to flow much, much better. Obviously, the sales letter has to also flow very, very well. But with VSL, if you lose the reader for just a couple of seconds, they’re just going to leave and that’s going to be it. With the text sales letter, it’s a bit different, obviously. If you lose the reader a few times, even with your subheads or the bullets or the primitive design, they’re still gonna leave. But the VSL has to flow very, very, very well, especially in the first part, the lead. The good thing about VSL is that the headline is not that important as with a text sales editor, because with text sales editor, you have to grab their attention A headline that is a very sometimes it’s very elaborate there’s like a few lines of the main headline there and there’s the sub headline and there’s something else with a vsl it’s usually a very short headline but then you have to be. You have to be very very persuasive in that lead in the first i would say at least. 30 seconds, maybe even five to 10 seconds, and then the next 30 seconds, so they really want to pay attention to the rest of the VSL.

Rob Marsh: And I know there’s a lot of training and books about how to write great leads. Do you have a favorite as far as what you’d like to start with, or is that determined entirely by the research, the idea that you come up with?

Svet Dimitrov: I would say it’s more it more depends on on what the research and what the market is and I would most of the time when somebody hires me to either write leads or a whole vsl i would ask whether they want a particular kind of leads or they want me to send my ideas for example last year. A person who is very well known in the help me to write a few days and ask them and I sent him a few ideas I think like four or five ideas for leads. with the Loom video and said, hey, I have these four ideas or five ideas, which do you like the best? So because he wanted to like just two leads and he said, OK, go with this one and this one. And that’s how I wrote those leads. So I would usually prepare a few more than they are asking for, at least the ideas. And sometimes if it’s like a new client. Probably and especially if the lead is not very, very long, I would probably deliver at least another lead, or maybe, for example, a new health client hired me recently to write three Facebook ads, and I delivered four, just to make sure I’m over-delivering, but also not over-delivering by a crazy amount. Because if they hire you to write two leads and you deliver one more lead, that’s kind of too much. If it’s like a short phase book and you deliver one more, that’s fine, I would say. So there has to be a fine line between over delivering and then delivering way too much that the person can then abuse you in a way.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. You open yourself up to when you start breaking those boundaries. Yeah. There is a fine line between over delivering and and, you know, giving up basically everything that you’ve got. So yeah, I agree.

Svet Dimitrov: And so but that said, I think with leads, I would say the most or the ones that I really enjoy writing are the ones that I actually that you mentioned this so-called pattern indeed interrupts, where you would say, for example, there’s a story that I shared about my deep throat experience was a kind of a pattern interrupt. So I think those perform very, very well. Sometimes it will be like, take a look at this weird object or something that’s completely not related to, let’s say, the health niche or the Pro pro pro pro state neutral doesn’t matter it has to be something completely alien to what the market has heard of. I think those always like almost always convert very very well of course you have to like it’s not only the lead the offer has to be good. But if you can do a great, great job with the lead, and the offer is good, I think that’s a win-win situation.

Rob Marsh: I really appreciate what you’re sharing about the fact that a VSL has to flow in a way that a normal sales letter doesn’t. As I’m thinking through this idea, a lot of copywriters, you know, we get caught up in features and, you know, mentioning, you know, the bullet points in a sales letter. And I hadn’t really considered how much that would get in the way of a video sales letter and how much more important a through line, a story that you can weave the entire time. So as I’m thinking about some of the best VSLs that I’m that I’ve seen, they really it’s almost like one story after another story after another story. It’s, you know, open loop. almost don’t close the loop before you start the next story to close the loop. And so it’s in some ways like dialing up the persuasion, almost every paragraph.

Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, I actually didn’t think that the VSL has to flow that much, but I recently read it somewhere and it makes so much more sense because I actually enjoyed it. I thought before I started writing VSLs that they’re so much more difficult to write. But then when I started writing, I guess it was more a more natural process that it has to flow better. And every single sentence has to flow with the other one. That’s why it’s really important to read the copy out loud a few times, because that’s where you spot those weird transitions or clunky flow. and you can fix it if you don’t read it out loud there’s a very high chance at least some of those paragraphs or sentences wouldn’t flow that much and if you don’t like rereading or listening to your voice you can just copy and paste the whole vsl into an app and it can read it out for you maybe Probably it’s even better because you hear it from another person or it doesn’t matter if it’s like AI voice or not. But it’s really helpful to hear it. And actually I think that’s also when I was doing my bachelor’s degree and my master’s degree because a lot of my exams were oral and I have to present them and talk, I would always, when I was studying the course materials, I would always read it out loud and it would help me a lot more to memorize it.

Rob Marsh: Okay, we’ve mentioned AI a couple of times. How are you using AI in your business? And I know you’re probably not just saying, hey, chat GPT, write me an intro or whatever. Have you set up various agents to help you, you know, or these super prompts that you’re feeding into it all the time or examples of your work? Like how do you use AI to get good copy or at least good ideas out of the system?

Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, that’s a great question actually, I just shared on my Facebook just a few hours ago that I was using AI probably since 2010, but it wasn’t there—it wasn’t Chat GPT or Claude, but it was google chat on translate because we will translate also kind of fall on fire and. Before I started getting into freelancing and copywriting I was doing a lot of translations. And when you just copy and paste a lot of text into Google Translate, especially back then, 15 years ago, it would give you a very, very bad translation. But if you copy and paste just sentence by sentence, it would give you a much better translation. So my point is that right now it’s similar. Obviously, AI is much more advanced. And even the first version of ChatGPT or Gemini or Cloud would give you a much better result with a very bad prompt. The more elaborate your prompt is, the better it will be. If you can provide it with a very good brief, it will give you a much better output and result. But what I found is, let’s say if you give a prompt to whatever you’re using and say hey can you write me this video even if it’s the biggest. Brief that you can imagine if you say right the whole video or the whole sales letter. It’s not it’s not going to create a great video but if you do it section by section and you give it great examples that say hey this is a great lead from. 

Whatever this this has grossed eight eight eight million dollars you can follow this lead closely just change whatever. it’s going to give you a very, very, very good first draft. And then you have to just edit it very, very slightly. And if you do it section by section by section, it’s going to give you a great output. Obviously, the more elaborate and your own prompt is the better. But in my experience, if you do it, just do it by parts. And I also saw a post or actually a video of David Garfield, he was also mentioned that he was using the same approach. He would just do it section by section, and the result would be 10 times better. 

So this is kind of my approach. I also use it for research. Though I found that using AI for research can be great, but it also can be a double-edged sword because it will give you, especially for the health, naturally it will give you sources that don’t exist, so you have to double-check them. Sometimes it will give you, sorry for that, it would give you ideas that are great but there’s no claim that there’s no source for those claims so you have to be really vigilant about those sources and claims. And you have to be very, like, it can give you a lot of ideas very, very quickly. And I have found some great ideas. But then I would see an idea and I would go to Google and do my own research. And then I would use AI again to distinguish between what is the strongest, strongest idea, for example. But I wouldn’t ever rely 100% right now on AI just to give me ideas. It can give me ideas, I would then consider them, do my own research, and then start writing.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. So I want to ask you a different kind of question here. There is a belief, and it’s probably true, that it’s very difficult to make a living as a copywriter as a non-native speaker. And, you know, there are a couple of exceptions to that rule. You are one of them. What advice would you have? Well, I guess, I mean, you’ve proved that you can survive because you’ve done very well as somebody who didn’t start out speaking English. But what is what advice do you have to those who maybe are English as a second language? They want to be copywriters. They want to be able to connect with clients with good work, high paying work. How can they go about developing these skills like you have in order to succeed?

Svet Dimitrov: That’s a great question. And I think I get this question almost every single day by somebody following me on social media.

Rob Marsh: That’s interesting. Yeah.

Svet Dimitrov: Yeah. Well, probably not every day, but at least a couple of times per week, because obviously they can see I’m not a non-native speaker of English. and they would see that I’m somewhat successful. Obviously, I can be a lot more successful and I strive to be successful every single day, at least by 1% as James Clear writes in his book. But yeah, I think the most important thing is to really practice copywriting every single day. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time at the beginning, but if you say, I’m going to write just twice per week. It could be more time, let’s say two hours per week during the weekend. You could write for 10 minutes every single day, which would be less than two hours. It would be probably 70 minutes, right? But it would be better because you would be practicing your craft every day. 

So I advise that people devote, let’s say, that doesn’t have to be a time frame. It could be like 300 words, 400 words, 500 words, even less every single day. And once they see it’s getting easier and easier, they can ramp up that either the time they spend on writing or the number of words. So I would say, Practicing every single day is the most important thing. The second most important or their kind of equal is to read good copy or read any kind of copy every single day. Obviously, the better the copy, the better. And then the third thing, and probably the most important if you want to grow really fast is to hire a coach or a mentor who would help you go there. I think that’s, I actually don’t think, I believe that’s what helped me really increase my income by maybe like six or seven times between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three. And now probably even more in the last few years is when I started investing in courses in my masterminds. As I mentioned I was part of Copy Accelerator for a few years and meeting those people who are more experienced than you, you will learn more about copywriting—how to write better copy, but also because those people are successful and the people you surround yourself with are very very important. Factor in your success because if you’re just around people who are struggling to get there or haven’t done it. you will also struggle obviously you can’t surround yourself only with people that are super successful because if there’s a very big difference between their level and your level you will probably get demotivated in a way so there’s like there should be people that are a little bit lower at a lower level than you, but also people at a much higher level, so we have this incentive to just become better and better and better. So I’d say, just to sum up, write every day, read every day, and write every day, or write, or hire a mentor so we don’t write in a vacuum.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I asked about non native speakers, but all three of those things apply to native speakers as well. If you want to copywriting, you should be doing all three of these things. So there’s, there’s not, there’s not a secret sauce to any of this. It’s put in the work, put in the reps, get feedback and do it all over again.

Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, so for non-native speakers, I would say that they shouldn’t like, for example, with me, it was very different because I came from an academic background. I had my master’s degree. I did a lot of research. I was trying to impress people with my vocabulary. And when I started my travel blog, and my travel and lifestyle blog, I would try to flex my vocabulary, which I think was working against me when I switched from content writing, which is probably fine, but still, you don’t have to learn English at a superb level, you have to understand the nuances, but you have to write really basic copy. It’s better to write very, very basic copy at first, no less, say, a thousand words or less, than to have a very rich like a very rich vocabulary but then you want to be trying to sound very very weird and not conversational so for example probably. You want a lot of people on this. while listening to this podcast episode would recognize Evaldo from Brazil, Evaldo Albuquerque, I think it’s.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, he’s the one exception most people mention when they say, oh, anybody can make it if Evaldo can make it.

Svet Dimitrov: And yeah, the idea is like, especially because Fran told me, because he’s a friend with Evaldo, his English was like five words, like 10, 15 years ago. So the thing that really helped him write a very good copy was his limited level of English, because he would have a very limited amount of words to use, and he had to make the best use of them. And I think there’s a lot to be said that where you write very common conversational copy, most of the time it would work, where sometimes people would just write this very long sentences very long leads that are like this first sentence is like twenty five words or fifty words or whatever life i’ve seen very different cases. This is gonna work most of the time against them because the market most of the time is not. Sophisticated at all so we have to write at the very basic level between the fifth and sixth grade sometimes even lower. So every single job jane or john can understand.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This has been great learning from you. I’ve got a couple of ideas, especially around the personalized website. I just think there’s such a great idea there to share. So I appreciate you sharing all of this stuff, Svet. If people want to follow you and see what you’re up to, where’s the best place to go?

Svet Dimitrov: I would say they would follow me on Facebook. Maybe they can also go to my website, copywriting.com, and I have a few links there that they can follow me on social media. But if they type my name, Svetoslav Dimitrov, or Svet Dimitrov on most social media, most active on Facebook and X, You and I actually connected on LinkedIn. I kind of quit LinkedIn, but I’m still checking, but I’m not going to be posting because I just don’t see the value in it right now. Maybe I will come back later with a better strategy. But yeah, these are the most the places that I’m most active on.

Rob Marsh: I’ll link to those in the show notes for this episode so that people can connect with you easily. And yeah, I appreciate you sharing everything that you have. This has been a fun conversation. So thanks, Sven.

Svet Dimitrov: Yeah, it was my pleasure, Rob. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Svet for sharing his story and his path to becoming a successful copywriter. As we were talking, Svet mentioned that he doesn’t have a website. Obviously, that was a big part of the initial part of our conversation. His old website doesn’t talk about his current business at all, and he doesn’t refer people there. And he instead uses landing pages customized specifically to each prospect that he’s vetting in his discovery process. 

Naturally, I wanted to know more about this. We talked a bit about it here, but to see what he’s sharing with his clients. Can’t really do that on a podcast. So this thing that I’m calling the no website website, I asked Svet after we finished recording, if he would share this idea, this no website website with me. And he sent me a couple of examples to look at. It’s so simple. And I think the no website website idea is one that more copywriters could benefit from using, especially copywriters who are just starting out or who are doing a lot of pitching and want to personalize what their prospects are seeing on their website. So I asked Svet if he would share that exact template that he uses and walk through a couple of examples for the members of The Copywriter Underground. 

Like I said, this idea is simple, but the real power of the No Website website is that no one else is doing it. So it stands out, which is a huge part of getting clients to pay attention to you. If you want to see how to use this No Website website strategy to land clients, jump into The Copywriter Underground before March 12th, and you’ll see what Svet does and how you can use this strategy to land your own six-figure clients. You can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.

 

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’ Website
The Olive Ad Breakdown
The Silk Cut ad
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The 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/tcu

And 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 how we can kind of translate that or how not to say how we can, but how that translates into behavior. But yeah, a career into marketing to copywriting and marketing started. Uh, I guess alongside uni, uh, I graduated with a degree in materials engineering and had every intention of following that path. Um, and. I don’t know, really, I don’t know how or what the, the kind of compelling idea was to, to leave and to start marketing, but it kind of happened. And of course, when it had a small business online selling vintage jewelry and yeah, I sort of helped him out as best I could. and end up discovering copywriting and haven’t really looked back since, to be fair. It’s sort of scratched itches that I didn’t realize I had. I’ve kind of always been more sort of mathsy, so to speak. Numbers, binary answers, right or wrong, you know, this either works or it doesn’t. And heading into copywriting in this kind of world was like, well, actually two opposing ideas can both be true. Uh, and it’s kind of challenged me in ways that I never really understood, but I really enjoy those kinds of challenges. There’s obviously loads of paradoxes in human behavior, especially consumer behavior. So.

Rob Marsh: A lot of copywriters come from different backgrounds. You’re the first person I’ve talked to. It doesn’t mean you’re the first copywriter that’s had a materials engineering background, but that is a big jump. Engineering to selling jewelry is your first client, but marketing, copywriting. Are there skills that you learned in materials engineering as an engineer that are directly applicable to what you do as a copywriter? That’s a good question.

Lewis Folkard: I think a lot of materials engineering is like looking at components that have broken and you then have to kind of find out why they’ve broken and how you can not help. So they don’t break in the future, basically. Um, so reverse engineering. those kind of concepts, I think have always stuck with me. That’s something that kind of pulled me into that in the first place. Um, and it’s definitely something I do now, especially with like rewriting old ads and sort of looking at how they work. Um, it’s kind of sort of leaned into that a lot more and understanding how some of the best performing pieces of copy work it’s, and help me sort of reverse engineer and apply those to my own pieces, I guess.

Rob Marsh: So you started working for your friend, selling vintage jewelry. How did you turn that now into a business? You got the first thing done, probably for not a lot of money, I’m guessing. How do you leverage a free project into now lending clients and doing the kind of work that you want to do?

Lewis Folkard: Uh, okay. So, well, I, I kind of did it on the side. So I did follow the materials engineering path for probably around six months after graduating. Uh, and I was sort of doing this on the side and helping out in the evenings as best I could. And yeah, he’s running ads on, on Facebook and Instagram. And I sort of wanted to find out, how can I help these ads perform better? As probably no surprise, first client, you’re a bit like a deer in headlights. You don’t know what’s going on and everything. And yeah, that’s where I ended up finding copywriting, in particular, Joe Sugarman’s copywriting handbook. And yeah, I sort of stuck at the job for a little while. And I guess it’s kind of the case of a lot of things. When you go on to a path that you’re kind of in control of, you’re like your own sort of freelancer. You’re in charge of what you earn, effectively. it seemed a lot more kind of fulfilling and inspiring and exciting. So I ended up leaving that job. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the job, but it was just, it was more stimulating doing my own thing. And yeah, I remember the first day that I sort of left and woke up and was like, well, what do I do today? Kind of thinking like, how is this going to work? How am I going to get money from this kind of thing? And yeah, I ended up, I actually led into, again, at the ads that I still look at now, Um, it was like, well, I need to kind of keep learning. I’m, I’m certainly no, no copywriter at the minute and just get reading books. And then I sort of found old pieces of direct mail and sort of thought, Oh, that technique looks familiar. I’ve seen that somewhere else. And that kind of spurred on the idea to, well, why don’t I sort of look at these in more detail and throw myself into the shoes of these copywriters and see why they’re saying and doing what they’re doing to effectively help me do the same thing. Um, and yeah, it’s a practice that I’ve continued to do since.

Rob Marsh: And were you cold pitching clients? Were you reaching out to friends and family? I mean, this is really the big challenge for a lot of copywriters. How do you find the clients?

Lewis Folkard: I was in some ways fortunate and in some ways unfortunate. There was a couple of local networking events that I went to. I met a few people. And a few months after that, nothing directly happened immediately after that. that, um, that event and then COVID happened and everybody started to look to move things online. And I was sort of positioning myself as like a, an ads copywriter. And when everyone was sort of like, well, I need to find someone who can help me bring my business online. And I happened to be there with a few touch points. I met a few other people, um, and a local agency. And that sort of gave me the first level of experience I needed. And it’s kind of grown from there really few agencies and yeah.

Rob Marsh: How does that work working with the agencies? Again, this is something that we talk about a lot in our programs that agencies can be great clients. Obviously, you make the connection, but what does the workflow feel like? Are you asking them for work from time to time? Are they just dropping things in your lap? What is that whole process?

Lewis Folkard: I mean, it does depend on the agency. Different agencies run it differently. The one that I worked with the closest was that, okay, we’d had projects come through and do you want to work on it? Yes or no. And then a brief came through and that was basically how it worked. So I kind of got to miss out on all the onboarding, which in some ways was nice, but I feel like that experience could have been helpful at the start because there’s lots to learn like later on, but it was also handy that I could just kind of get given a brief, do the work and get paid for it. And at the start, I just needed to get experience under my belt and learn the ropes really. And that definitely helped.

Rob Marsh: So your first project was free. As you moved into agencies, help me understand how your income has grown over time.

Lewis Folkard: I mean, I do less work for agencies now. I definitely do more independent. But that’s just, I guess, having kind of roots in one place and being able to kind of build more of a foundation to build a business from. At the start, I was kind of naive to how. I thought it’d be a lot easier than what it was, put it that way. And that was definitely a wake up call. Again, that first day was thinking, oh, right. Okay. I don’t have anything to do today. I also don’t have any money coming in. How am I going to do this? And you, I did cold pitch as well. I tried a lot of things and you certainly expose weaknesses when you’re, when you’re cold pitching, because it needs to be, it’s a very difficult thing to do. Um, and especially with no experience, I’d, I’d, I’d love to look back on some of those early emails to see what they look like now. Um, and yeah, just kind of building a base and. Agencies have been really helpful as like a, an extra, an extra step up. So when things have been tough, they’re like another, another source of income basically. So, yeah.

Rob Marsh: be helpful. So one of the ways that you got on my radar is your newsletter and the breakdowns that you do there. It might be interesting to do a breakdown of some of those earlier pitches that you were sending out. You break down old ads and basically talk about what works, what doesn’t work, and your thinking around them. I would love to hear the origin of how that came about, why you started sharing those thoughts, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about the process of actually breaking down ads to understand how they’re working or not working.

Lewis Folkard: No, of course. So yeah, it started off very, very early when I had very little copywriting experience. It was like, well, a lot of copywriters sort of preach writing or rewriting old direct mail pieces. And I did that. But I really wanted to sort of throw myself in it further, I guess, and to really understand like, well, what does this line actually do? It’s all well and good writing and having a similar style to, say, Gary Halbert or Richard Foster. But you kind of need to understand the why behind it as well as that. So yeah, with a little bit of sort of copywriting books, again, Joe Sugarman’s copywriting handbook was definitely the one that taught me a lot of these different techniques that are going on. And I started to spot them in other pieces and I’m thinking, oh, I could actually look at that. I had a leaflet come through the door and thought, oh, they’re saying that because that does that, for example. And just even basic things of like, well, we’ve had 8,000 reviews. Well, that actually performs a function that’s not there just for the sake of it. And obviously when you’re new, you don’t realize these things. And I sort of pieced it all together and it’s kind of developed from there really.

Rob Marsh: So maybe we can take a look at it. I don’t know if a specific example comes to mind, but let’s walk through that process with an ad. And do you start at the top and look at the headline, how the images work together? Let’s kind of go through the process.

Lewis Folkard: Yeah, so I think it was probably three years ago, I met a copywriter, a well-known copywriter over here, Lawrence Bloom, and he was in a lot of the annuals that I get the ads from. So that was a great touch point for me. But I have probably close to 40 old advertising annuals stored away that I literally flick through and think, oh, that one actually looks quite interesting, that one grabs my attention. And that is the first thing that I do is find one that grabs my attention and then I sort try and dissect it. Uh, and I probably got enough, enough, enough ads in those books to last me the next 10 years, I reckon. Um, but there’s no like immediate or performance based things. It’s, it’s done more from like a creative point of light. Well, sometimes the timing could be right. You might see this ad and think today it doesn’t do much for me, but in two weeks time, when you’re working on a similar brief, it could be like a stepping stone to something that helps you. And these breakdowns now serve more of a function of that. of like, well, these are inspiration. There’s nothing necessarily that these are the best performing ones. These are ones that are obviously somewhat respectable because they’re in the annuals themselves, but it’s more as like a creative stepping stone, I guess is the best way to put it.

Rob Marsh: So do you have a favorite ad that as you’ve gone through these, you’re like, wow, this, this one is just tops.

Lewis Folkard: Oh, the one I always mention is Richard Foster did one for Sainsbury’s, which is a supermarket over here. And he did it for an olive of all things. And It’s just the cadence and the rhythm of how he writes was just something so meaningless and olive. And it flowed so well like a story. And I thought, you know, if someone could do this for an olive, well, what can they do with something that’s actually genuinely quite exciting? Yeah. It’s definitely one that stands out.

Rob Marsh: And then you do the breakdowns, but obviously you’re learning from them. At some point you started sharing these as well.

Lewis Folkard: Yeah, that was a mere coincidence. I think I just thought, you know, I’ll just post it on LinkedIn as again, desperate for work at the very start. I think I looked at a smoothie bottle first was how it started and was like, well, they had about six or seven lines of copy on that. And I thought, well, each line or each sentence had like a function that at least it looked like to me. And I shared it online and it did. for relative speaking, it did quite well. It went quite far. And I thought, well, why don’t I try these with another one? And that was way before I got these annuals as well. And the annuals sort of just ignited that excitement for it and I’ve carried on looking at them.

Rob Marsh: Obviously, you’ve been sharing them, not just on LinkedIn, but you started an email list. How has that grown? And what’s the impact that that’s had on your business?

Lewis Folkard: Uh, it’s, it’s still growing for sure. Um, it’s something that I’ve, I’ve kind of done for the selfish that sounds for my own interests, um, than for generating business. It’s more than I want to help, help excite other creatives and see, you know, like the work. That’s come before us has helped shape and more of the industry that we work in. And I don’t want to kind of lose sight of that. Um, Yeah, this is like we as humans haven’t changed that much and the drivers behind these ads are still relevant today. They still tick the same kind of evolutionary desires and tap into those. And I just want to create a way of showing, you know, all these things have come before us. They’re not useless. I think many other industries like film, music, they all look back to see what’s come before them and to learn from. those that have, again, shaped and molded their industry, whereas in marketing, we’re very quick to dismiss, I think, like looking for the next silver bullet. And I think it’s important to look back to see what’s come before us.

Rob Marsh: As you’ve done that, have you compiled a list or you’ve got like, hey, these are the persuasion techniques or the headline techniques, the hooks that seem to be working. Have you kind of figured out like, okay, these are the formulas and maybe you start there or is it just really more of just kind of an artistic exercise?

Lewis Folkard: I mean, this is probably more the engineering side, the math side of it. I have a very large spreadsheet of all the books and ads that I’ve looked at, and I’ve kind of segmented them all out into different techniques. Okay, this is for headlines. Is this for boosting credibility? Is this for, you know, like smoothing transition between a headline to the first line of the copy? I’ve got that and I use that and I often refer back to that to kind of get the ball rolling. But yeah, the first ads, the first ones I look at are more just a gut instinct. And then I sort of look to dig more because there’s normally more going on than what meets the eye initially. And I guess that’s what makes a good ad a good ad, is that we don’t realize that it’s sort of a sales pitch that doesn’t feel like a sales pitch. And I yeah first first is always got feeling where this is interesting and I’m like well why is it interesting and then I sort of start probing and looking back at other ads and techniques and they’re always like stepping stones they just keep building out so yeah the documents that plan these end up getting quite long and it’s quite difficult to cut out what what doesn’t go in and what does go in again it’s the same as all copywriting is in that sense. So yeah, there’s a big extensive spreadsheet that maybe, I don’t know, I might turn into something that’s actually useful, but it’s just my eyes only and it’s quite a mess, but it works.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’m curious. I’d love to see it. But I wonder, what are the techniques that you see happening over and over and over that are just clearly like, these are the table stakes, the basics that every ad really ought to have?

Lewis Folkard: That is a good question. I mean, there’s normally some form of storytelling, and it’s kind of the old cliche that story sells. But how those stories come across they differ between the ads. And some of them again, some of the ones I look at, I guess, for the listeners, like, are not always copy heavy. Sometimes they are just an image in the headline. Sometimes they are copy, or very heavy body copy. And I guess there’s something that we can use for our longer forms of writing, because you know, the images, our brains process images a lot faster than what they do words. And a long piece of copy isn’t usually just words, there is normally some kind of imagery that goes with it or media. I like to look at visual metaphors. So I’ve tried to include those in longer form pieces of copy where I can. But obviously you like, you can’t overcomplicate it too much and sort of throw too much to the reader. So how you present that is normally a bit of a challenge. But yeah, I’d say a lot of the ads I’ve looked at have some kind of visual metaphor. They do a lot of work by pulling in symbols from other areas. One that comes to mind, I actually wrote a post for LinkedIn yesterday. that’s coming in the next few weeks. And it was just a picture of a happy baby for cow and gate baby food. I’m not sure if you guys have that over, over the pond.

Rob Marsh: At least I’m not familiar with that brand, but baby food for sure.

Lewis Folkard: Yeah. And it was just a means of having, having a picture of a happy baby on the front with like, it was the red and was very slight symbolic of the brand between a cow and the gate in the imagery. It was like a dad holding, holding a baby in the field. And Happy Baby does a lot of work without us really thinking about it. There’s so much that goes on sort of subconsciously that helps us process and evokes a lot of emotion without really having to say anything at all. And we can use those same techniques in our copy to deliver more pack for less punch, I guess.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s a really important point. I have a ton of old advertising annuals as well, from the 80s and 90s. And as I look through them, oftentimes just for inspiration or just to put myself maybe in a more creative mind, one of the things that I have realized is so much of the work back then was in this golden age of magazines, when visuals were really important, copy was sort of shrinking in ads. And the challenge for a lot of copywriters is, We’re hired to write words, not necessarily ads. Most magazines, so many magazines are defunct now, and that kind of art has shrunk. It’s still there in places. But as far as applying these kinds of ideas into blog posts or emails or so much of the content that we’re asked to create today as a copywriter, what do you see is the best way to do that?

Lewis Folkard: I remember reading a book probably a couple of years ago by Orlando Wood. And it was sort of discussed—the different ways that different sides of the brain have kind of dominated in different sort of phases of history and how that kind of looks in art. And something that we see a lot today is kind of a quote, kind of left brain society, so to speak, is that everything is very short term and kind of spoon fed that a lot of the better ads from way back when where they sort of trusted the reader to figure them out a bit more. And I feel like that applies to all copywriting is that we make it too simple and too obvious. It’s kind of a sign of the times, I guess, in some ways, but we can just put more trust into our reader to figure out what we mean. We don’t have to state every little detail, we can let their minds figure things out. And our brains generally enjoy doing that as well. And so if those positive associations come from thinking and solving a sort of a problem, so to speak, then those associations sort of stick with who they’re getting them from. And that helps come to mind sooner, which then helps advertising and copywriting in the future. So there’s like a long-term effect of letting our reader do a bit of work, basically.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I really like that. I’ve noticed you’ve mentioned that a few times. In fact, I’ve got a swipe file where I’ve collected what I call puzzle ads. It’s where you’re basically forced to complete the connection between the headline or the image. One series that I remember, you’re probably too young to remember these live, they probably are in your annuals, is Silk Cut Cigarettes, which was a brand in the UK. had an outdoor campaign where there was always some combination between a sharp object and this purple, this beautiful purple silk. And I remember seeing them all over Scotland when I was there in the 80s. And I just kind of fell in love with these ads that were just, it was intended to make your brain have to think about what was being advertised because it was not clear. And as the campaign builds, obviously every time you see this purple silk with a pair of scissors or a knife or something, you started to see the silk cut and it’s the kind of, it stuck with me. And there are other campaigns that do something similar. Absolute Vodka in the 90s ran, they’re basically puzzle ads where you kind of had to figure out what was the bottle and what was the connection to the thing.

Lewis Folkard: I think I’ve seen one, it was like an x-ray bottle, wasn’t it? Yeah, there’s all kinds, right?

Rob Marsh: So they would have one that would say like, Absolute Manhattan, and it would be a photograph looking down at New York City and Central Park. was shaped as an absolute bottle. And which, you know, it’s not, but you would look at it like, oh, a familiar image, tweaked a little bit to, you know, advertise this cool brand. So that’s a little harder to pull off in a blog post or in an email, but there are probably ways to create these kinds of puzzles and connections and help our readers think a little bit so that, you know, like you said, they’re spending a little mental energy and it makes the work more memorable and more effective.

Lewis Folkard: It’s definitely a tough balance to get right. Because if you make it look too complex, then no one’s going to even bother attempting it. But if you make it too simple, it’s kind of insulting that it’s just boring and not entertaining and engaging to look at. And if we’re putting ourselves in front of all these people in all these different ways, the least we can do is make it somewhat enjoyable to like to read. And yeah, there’s obviously loads of different ways that we can do it. And I just they always put a smile on my face, seeing something that, you know, just the two or three seconds of thought, you think, ah, it’s normally the product, but then like completes the message as well, is kind of the missing piece. But that’s, again, it’s a sign, again, of more left brain advertising is that there’s no kind of thought, it’s, you need to be able to prove it, and there’s too many reasons for something not to work, whereas more right brain, which is more like sort of dialogue based, and there wasn’t much about the product in a product ad, for example. Um, that was something that, you know, you trusted the reader to fill out the archive. The actual answer to this is the brand of advertising here, whereas now it seems too risky, but yeah.

Rob Marsh: So if you, as you’ve spent so much time looking at these ads, dissecting them, trying to figure out what works, how has that impacted the work that you do for your clients? It’s really helped me sell work, um, for one. So how, how does that work?

Lewis Folkard: For example, if I’ve written a website, it’s a lot easier for me to justify each line because I know what techniques I’m using here and why that’s being used on this page here and this position on this page. And obviously everything should earn its right, but it’s sometimes difficult to kind of justify everything. But these, having the techniques and seeing it in different formats have really helped. They’ve also helped me critique other people’s work. So in different sort of like groups that I’m in, if we’re sharing different pieces of work, it’s easy to sort of pinpoint and say, well, have you thought about doing this technique to add credibility here instead of the one you’ve used, for example. So there’s different ways like that and obviously then I feel like a lot of the creative decisions that we use, like obviously we have constraints to work with this undeniably some science behind what we do or a lot of science but there is a little bit of wiggle room for some creative work and a lot of these decisions that we make come from our unconscious and the more that we can kind of draw attention to those in different ways, whether we study, whether we write them, we then kind of give us a conscious, that ability to kind of use them in our work. And they come out sometimes naturally, or sometimes we have to kind of like actually apply them and go back and intentionally insert them sometimes. And it depends what we’re working with, but it has helped for sure.

Rob Marsh: So I’d love to shift our conversation a little bit and just hear more about how you work. What does your typical day look like when you get up and start thinking about a project or working on a project? How does that all come together? Okay.

Lewis Folkard: So for the last three, three years or so. Um, I have just been living out of a backpack, traveling the world with my girlfriend. So my days do vary quite a bit. Uh, I usually, depending on which side of the world or my clients have always stayed in, in the UK. So sometimes that involves me working in the evening. Sometimes it involves me working in the mornings, depending on where I am. Um, but yeah, I normally keep my evenings aside where I can. I tend to prefer to work in the mornings and just sort of do the, to eat the big frog first, I think is the saying goes and to do the heaviest, most kind of demanding task and then save emails and calls for afternoons as best I can.

Rob Marsh: And I mean, traveling and working is a challenge. It’s one of those things. I think a lot of people who work for themselves think, oh, I can do this so that I can travel. A lot of us don’t travel. It’s something that I’ve done with my family a bit. Talk about some more of the challenges of that because it’s not just as easy as saying, well, I’m going to work late or I’m going to work early. In my experience, my family and I, we lived in Europe for seven or eight months while I was working. The balance between everybody else wanting to go do something, me having to get work done, it was not an easy thing to strike.

Lewis Folkard: I know it’s yeah, it’s definitely posed its challenges. I’ve quite enjoyed working from different places and seeing how different places kind of inspire different trails of thought. Yeah, it’s been interesting to observe how people act in different places and scenarios. And it’s definitely granted me that opportunity. But the lack of routine has been very challenging. So sometimes it’s a matter of squeezing work into an evening if I’ve got a flight and I’m changing time zones, for example, I know I’m not gonna be able to do much the next few days. And just settling into that took a little bit of time. But it’s been exciting, but it is definitely difficult. And yeah, trying to find times where You have to sort of think on tap rather than like plan when you’re going to have your times and you don’t know when that’s going to be. If you’ve got an hour before a flight, okay, well, it’s what can I do that’s not too demanding here and saving and it forces you to sort of manage your time a lot better, I think is the best way to put it. What are your favorite places where you’ve been? Probably Thailand, I think takes the top, the top draw. And why is that? The food, the beaches, the people. It’s just, yeah, it’s lovely. Good coffee shops. And there’s always good places to work. So, I think that takes the biscuit. But I’m back home now. 

Rob Marsh: And when I reached out to you, I know you were in Australia. And what are some of the other places that you’ve been?

Lewis Folkard: So we did, I guess, Mexico, Columbia, we’ve been in and around Southeast Asia from like Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia. That’s amazing. Yeah, Australia, we’ve done obviously a lot of places in Europe as well. It’s a lot closer for us.

Rob Marsh: And were you carrying your annuals with you or how are you finding the images? I’ve got a suitcase packed full of them. Yeah, exactly. That’s heavy stuff.

Lewis Folkard: That was a lot of preparation. So I took enough pictures of the annuals before I went and I’ve got an album that’s got close to a thousand pictures of different ads in there that I kind of pull from. And when I need to find another one for the next newsletter or however many in advance I’m doing, I’ll just go through and see, okay, this one’s really taken my fancy here. But yeah, I had to really think about what information I was going to need because I can’t just flick back through them books and find the bits. So there’s a lot of note-taking that goes involved into that, but I’ve got them with me now.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So now that you’re back home, at least temporarily, are you looking at your business differently? Do you do anything differently because you’re in the home base or is it more of the same?

Lewis Folkard: I mean, I’ve only been back about a month, um, but I definitely have the. The desire to, it’s one I, I can do the same thing. I can follow a fixed routine, which is nice. And I can actually go and meet some of these clients in person, which I’ve not been able to do. So I’m hoping it’s going to have a positive impact in that sense that, you know, I can solidify the relationship a bit better than what I can via email and video call. And also just the kind of to go out and speak to local people and attend more in-person events that I’ve not been able to do. Um, so there’s. It’s happening slowly. Um, but again, I’ve only been back a few weeks to kind of make the most of that.

Rob Marsh: So where do you see your business going from, from now and, you know, in the coming years?

Lewis Folkard: I would like just to keep doing what I’m doing really, I really enjoy and ever since I started it, I’ve enjoyed it and I still enjoy it to this day. Obviously it’d be, I mean to say work fewer hours, I don’t know. I think the best thing about being a freelancer is that you can pick and choose how and when you want to work. If you want to do more, you can. If you want to do less, you can. Obviously, it comes with its risks and challenges, of course, but I’m really content with how things are and don’t want to change too much, really, as naive as that sounds.

Rob Marsh: That makes sense. So if you could go back in time, you know, to Lewis, who is maybe, you know, just coming out of uni, materials engineering, you know, working on that first client, what kind of advice would you give him in order to help him make progress or do things differently, you know, have success faster or something like that?

Lewis Folkard: It’s all kind of come in waves. I think I would tell myself that when things are good, they probably won’t stay this way. If you’ve got lots of projects coming through all at once, there’s going to be periods where these projects do not continue, even if you think they’re going to continue. So keep planting seeds for the future and don’t put that off. Just keep doing that consistently. That’s been a lesson that’s been quite difficult over the years, and especially when I’ve been other parts of the world. sort of really relying on people finding me via online somewhere or another, is just to keep going. Don’t stop with planting seeds because you need to keep nurturing them as you go along.

Rob Marsh: Obviously what you’re posting on LinkedIn, that’s planting seeds. What other ways do you plant seeds in order to connect with clients?

Lewis Folkard: I’m in a few different groups of copywriters and business owners that I now attend to as well. They were online, but I’m now able to go out and see them in person. I mean, just doing things that I quite enjoy doing, and you never know who you meet or who that person knows. There’s been a lot of relationships and clients that have come from sort of word of mouth referrals that very, very slim off chances. And now I kind of have this idea, you know, well, you never know who you’re going to meet and who you’re going to talk to is just to try and spike up conversations in day to day. If I’m out in coffee shops, you never know who that person might know. And that’s proved pretty, pretty positive.

Rob Marsh: So, yeah, that’s, I think, a really critical piece of advice that I think a lot of people need to hear over and over and over. is these relationships matter. Striking up conversations matters. Creating friendships matters. And I know a lot of people shy away from networking, the concept that you’re out there looking for work or asking for work. But when it comes right down to it, people work with the people they like and the people that they know. And the more we can get out there, the better it is for all of our businesses.

Lewis Folkard: 100%. And yeah, it’s been, again, a tough lesson to learn over the months, over the years that, you know, you really don’t know who you’re talking to. And sometimes the least expecting ones can be the ones that provide the most, whether it’s on LinkedIn, whether it’s in person, you know, you just have these conversations and there are opportunities to learn about people as well, which obviously is a very big part of what we do. And yeah, if you kind of see it as a game and a bit of fun, you can Have a good time doing it.

Rob Marsh: And I do. Any other advice that you would offer copywriters looking to grow their businesses and do some of the things that you’re doing?

Lewis Folkard: Again, plant the seeds and just be consistent that these things, I was naive thinking, you know, within six months I’ll have all these clients and all these different things to do. And it takes a lot longer than what you think you’re going to take. I don’t want to dishearten people, but the reality is that, yeah, these things do take time and anything that comes quickly normally goes quickly. So if it’s a slow builder, you’re normally in a safer position in the long run. So prepare for the future and yeah, just keep, keep planting those seeds.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. Lewis, if people want to see your creative breakdowns, be on your list or find wherever it is that you’re posting, where should they go? So my website is lewisfolkard.co.uk.

Lewis Folkard: That’s L-E-W-I-S-F-O-L-K-A-R-D.co.uk. And yeah, the newsletter was on there as well if you wish to sign up to that. If not, I’ve got all the past ones on my blog for you to look through. So they’re all there.

Rob Marsh: We’ll link to it in the show notes. We’ll also link to the olive, the breakdown that you have of the olive thing. I remember when that one came out and you’re right, it’s interesting. If a copywriter can wax poetic about a single olive, you know that they can write. So we’ll link to that so that people can find it. I really appreciate you taking some time this morning to talk to me. 

Lewis Folkard: Perfect. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. 

Rob Marsh: Thanks, Lewis. 

Thanks to Lewis Folkard for sharing his story, details about his newsletter, and how he breaks down older ads. 

Breakdowns are tremendously useful. Seeing how other copywriters think about copy, copy written by them or even by others, that helps us see techniques so that we can find them in other copy that we read later or even copy that we write ourselves. In fact, having an experienced copywriter look at your work and make suggestions about how to improve it is perhaps the best way to see things that you miss and ultimately it makes you a better writer. Lewis mentioned that we as humans haven’t changed all that much over the past centuries, let alone decades. So we can learn a lot by looking back at what has come before. 

And Lewis didn’t mention this, but one of the reasons that I like to look back at old ads is that it puts me in a different frame of mind for thinking about headlines and hooks. There’s something about studying clever ideas that helps you flex your own clever muscle and can make your headlines more intriguing. These kinds of reviews are something that we do a lot of in The Copywriter Underground. 

I even broke down one of my all-time favorite sales pages by Gary Bencevenga, showing how Gary uses more than a dozen different persuasion techniques. I think there’s 18 or 19 of them that he uses in a single sales page. I’ve also broken down web pages, sales pages, social media posts, emails for different members of The Copywriter Underground. You can see them all inside The Copywriter Underground. 

If you’re not already a member, you can jump in at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. 

 

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:

SmartBlogger
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

Full 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 my body except my face. I use Dragon, naturally speaking to type. I have people that take care of me around the clock. Despite that, I mean, I’ve built several successful businesses. I’ve written tons and tons of copies. And it hasn’t really held me back at all. So that’s the first piece that if you’re listening to the audio, you wouldn’t be able to hear me being nervous probably, except for my voice is a little scratchy. That’s one of the symptoms. But yeah, that’s a big part of my life. And then my career really got started when I went to work with a blog called CopyBlogger. That used to be huge. When I left Copyblogger, it was 35 million pages a month. A lot of the best writers in the world worked there. And I started out as a writer, eventually worked as an editor. and then started also learning and mastering copy while I was there. My first mentor was Brian Clark. My mentor after that was Neil Patel for a little while. After that, Frank Kern for a little while. I’ve worked with a lot of people and really been blessed to learn from the best of the best.

Rob Marsh: One of the things that I love about your story is how you actually launched your own business. You know, as copywriters, we’re always thinking about offers and how to sell them. And you made an offer to Brian Clark at Copyblogger that to me is off the charts valuable for him. Would you mind just sharing that story? Because I think a lot of people don’t get started. They have excuses, you know, all of the reasons why they can’t do something. Obviously, that doesn’t work here, you know, if you’ve succeeded, obviously, you know, excuses aren’t enough, but you did something pretty original that made Brian take you on and then really launched your career.

Jon Morrow: Yes, I was in the bad spot where I was dependent on Medicaid to pay my medical bills. It was about at the time 150 grand a year of medical bills that they were paying. But the limitation was they limited your income. You have to be in poverty to receive the service. So I couldn’t earn more than $800 a month. So I had to figure out a way out of that trap. What it meant was I couldn’t gradually scale up my income. I had to go from $800 a month and then immediately flip to $600 a month. And how do you do that? So I made a brand new deal that I would work with them and edit, hopefully, full-time for two years. And at the end of it, I would ask him for a favor, and he did not say no. And that was the deal. And the favor that I asked was that I wanted to email all of the subscribers to Copyblogger and tell them I was launching an agency and to endorse it. And that was it. That’s all I wanted for two years of work. And Brian did it. It was the only time he ever endorsed anyone. And I had my 500 clients overnight. I literally couldn’t help everyone who was coming to me.

Rob Marsh: Did you know you were going to make that request when you started, you know, the two years? Or was it, hey, there’s just this favor I’m going to ask later?

Jon Morrow: I didn’t know. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: That, yeah, to me, that story is, I mean, in one instance, it’s great faith in your ability to, you know, figure something out and just knowing that you had the time to do it, but also in having Brian there to make good on that promise, which, yeah, I mean, sending you out to the entire client list of Copyblogger, I can’t think of a writer who wouldn’t want that kind of a thing.

Jon Morrow: Yeah. And I mean, I guess there was, he had enough confidence in me to say, okay, I accept the deal. And I had enough trust in him because he always, everyone around him—he treated them well. So it wasn’t, I wasn’t really worried about, is he going to screw me over? because he never screwed anybody over. Everyone around him was happy to work with him. And because of that, we made a deal. And it really, one thing I would point out to anyone who’s just getting started, do you know that your reputation is infinitely more valuable than getting paid on a contract? I’m not saying you shouldn’t do both, but if you had to choose between accelerating your reputation and accelerating your bank account, choose your reputation over that.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, really, really good advice. Did you launch SmartBlogger? Did you launch that at that time or had that been already going while you were writing for Brian?

Jon Morrow: So, the order was I worked for Brian, then I did consulting and agency work for about a year. And I worked for him until he was one of my clients from my email. I helped Neil launch a blog called Kissmetrics. And we went from zero to a quarter million views a month in 16 days. And when I did that, I just looked at myself and I was like, why do you do this for other people and not yourself? You’re obviously going to do it. So I launched Smartblogger. Neil promoted it. Brian promoted it. And I had 13,000 email subscribers before I even started the business.

Rob Marsh: Wow. Again, reputation and relationships. Yeah. So what does your business look like today?

Jon Morrow: So, it’s been through several stages. For a long time, it was my only business, and it grew up to 16 employees at its peak. There is a murder there. And we monetized by teaching classes on freelance writing of all types. And we had 70,000 or more students go through our programs. And it was the dominant writing brand and still is today. for a long time. Nowadays freelance writing is changing because of AI. And because of that, I’ve diversified into other businesses, other offers. Now I work a lot with course creators because I’ve made over $15 million from selling out on courses. So that’s another business that I have. I’m also an active investor. But SmartBlogger still exists. Now we have four employees. And it’s really just passive income for me at this point. Everything is automated.

Rob Marsh: The other businesses are less passive. That’s where you’re spending all of your time. Yeah. So you mentioned that AI has changed the writing business. How are you seeing the biggest impacts? And just to set the stage, obviously, a lot of people freaked out when ChatGPT came online. Writing is over. And then maybe it kind of transitioned a little bit to you’re not going to lose your job. but you might lose your job to, or AI won’t take your job, but somebody using AI will take your job. Maybe it’s not even that, but there’s been so much just disruption happening, and I think scaring people out of the industry. At the same time, maybe bringing in people from the industry who are using AI. How have you seen it change the various businesses that you work in?

Jon Morrow: The biggest impact has been on search. SmartBlogger for years got four to six million visitors per year from Google. And a lot of those were what’s called information inquiries, like how to become a freelance writer. We rank for that. We rank for how to get freelance writing clients, stuff like that. What’s changed is two things. Now there are what Google calls AI overviews, where they just answer the question with AI, and then they have all the links underneath. So that cut everyone’s traffic on informational queries by 30 to 60%. The other big change is Google search is dying. Now, people are going to change everything and typing in their question. Now, they’re going to perplexity and typing in their question. And so, it’s affected search the most. In terms of creating content or creating copy, One great writer can now do the job of a hundred writers. And what that means is if you’re really good at what you do, and if you know how to use AI, you get rich and you take all the jobs out of the marketplace. With AI now, I mean, it used to take me, I don’t know, 20 hours to put together a really good sales letter. Now it takes me 30 minutes to an hour. The productivity increase is massive and that’s driving down costs and also What it means is, if I were a freelance copywriter, and I’m not, I could now do 20 times more contracts than I could before. So if you’re at the top of respect and a push for burnout, it’s a gold mine. If you’re a beginner, it makes it harder than ever before to get started.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s what I’ve seen happening in the people that I talk to as well. The people who’ve embraced it and have been using it are getting better and better at using it as well. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but those who don’t have the skills to even ask ChatGPT or whatever the tool is, you know, what they need to get out of it, They have a hard time knowing if the copy’s good or that they’re asking for the right stuff, that they’re prompting in a way that actually creates something that’s valuable.

Jon Morrow: Right now, the one thing AI doesn’t have is taste. It can’t tell the difference between good copy and bad copy. If you’re using AI, the most important thing to know is the difference between good copy and bad copy. That’s step number one. Step number two is to get really good at prompt engineering. My prompt is not writing a sales summary. My prompt is first generating a copywriting page, then feeding that copywriting page into a series of six prompts that are on average about 300 words each. Okay? It goes a hell of a way. And if you really want to have examples of every section of the sales letter, The next step beyond that is an agent that can do it all for you. And that’s what I’m building now, is AI agents.

Rob Marsh: So are you primarily just using ChatGPT and the actual tools? Or are there writing, editing tools that you’re also using that harness AI as part of how they function?

Jon Morrow: No, I use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini for different things. But no, I’m at the stage now where I connect to the APIs of those tools and I’m creating workflows and really code for software to do things. That’s the highest level of AI. So if you combine a master-level copywriter with an AI engineer, that’s very hard to do. Very, very hard.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s the maximum or the best combination in the people that I’m seeing use it in the copywriting world as well. So beyond the way that you’re using AI to create things like sales pages, has it impacted the work that you do, say, with course creation or any of the content that you’re producing for the world?

Jon Morrow: Everything is AI assisted. Every piece of content, every course, it’s all AI assisted. We’ve come up with classes where I’ll have a human interviewing me on the topic for about three hours. Then we get the transcript for the assembly AI. And then we use that transcript to where I have a project manager that can generate the entire course off of that three-hour transcript. And I don’t do anything. My involvement is a three hour interview.

Rob Marsh: And the project manager is AI or is human?

Jon Morrow: Human.

Rob Marsh: Okay.

Jon Morrow: Yeah.

Rob Marsh: That’s not a bad workflow for creating a course that then can generate plenty of money. Tens of thousands of dollars, maybe more.

Jon Morrow: I’ve been seven figures on courses like that. So over the past two years, every course has been generated that way, that I’ve done, and every problem upgraded has been from AI. And I’ve made no ends meet.

Rob Marsh: So it seems like somebody listening might think, oh, cool. I can just use AI to generate a course, but you’re actually starting with your brain and the stuff that’s in there, decades of experience. So, you know, obviously it’s not, it’s not really an AI course. It’s a Jon course augmented and made possible using AI tools. Is that correct?

Jon Morrow: Yeah. My project manager. He has been doing instructional design for five years. So he knows the difference between a good lesson and a bad lesson, a good homework assignment and a bad homework assignment. And he’s shaping that all the way through.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s amazing. So before we started talking, you mentioned something that’s really intriguing to me, and I want to make sure that we get to this really quickly, or before we run out of time. And that is, you said that you’ve gotten really good at maximizing the lifetime value in emails. And this is yet another challenge that’s maybe even gotten harder for people using AI, because AI is not great at maximizing lifetime value. Talk to us about that. What’s your process for making sure that email makes money?

Jon Morrow: I call it funnel stacking. So I’ve worked with a lot of seven figure businesses and I’ve noticed they almost never do enough with email. Let me give you SmartBlogger as an example. When someone subscribes by downloading our lead magnet, and by the way, we have over a thousand people a week, can be up to 2,000 people a week, who download our lead magnet and subscribe. So that’s a lot of leads. Yeah. We have An initial offer and follow up next with content, introducing them to the business. And then we, the next week we have another funnel. The next week, another funnel. They get four, um, multiple offers in a row. over 30 days, mixed with content. With that process, we tripled the cost of ad spend, for example, in profit. We did it three times more or less. And then what we do, every week, we have a promotion. for either a low-ticket offer or a mid-ticket offer. And we do one every single week. All of those are automated. So the way it works is through what’s called broadcast triggering. So we’ll send a broadcast offering free content, okay? When they click the link, it triggers an automation. And it starts the funnel. All of our funnels are evergreen. So when they click the link, it puts them into the funnel. And everything happens automatically, all the way to park racing. So what that means is, if we send out to rebroadcast emails. We may get 3,000 people to enter that automation. Now what happens is if they don’t enter the automation, then we send out content for the remainder of the week. then the next week it starts over. So it’s taking people and segmenting them by interest on a weekly basis and they get to see a new problem. every single week. The compounding effect of that over a year is like a 50x increase in LTD. It’s absolutely enormous. And because you’re sentimental, it doesn’t burn out the list. Ever. You can do it forever.

Rob Marsh: So let me make sure that I understand it. So you’re sending out, after those first four sequences, you send out, or however many sequences it is, you’re sending out a broadcast that is informational in nature, but it has a link, or it basically gets them interested in a product that you give them an opportunity to. If they click that link, they’ll drop into a sales funnel for that. And if they don’t click that link, You’re not continually sending them messages, selling them stuff. You’re just sending them two or three more emails that week with other information. And then you do it again the following week with an opportunity to drop into a sales funnel.

Jon Morrow: Exactly.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. This is really similar to something that my friend Todd Brown has talked about. And I think that it’s one of those ideas. And like you said, it’s game changing. I hadn’t heard 50X. That’s an amazing number. But I’ve heard some pretty nice results from doing this kind of stuff. And I like the way you talk about it, broadcast triggering.

Jon Morrow: Yeah, it’s definitely an advanced tactic. But anyone that does it, There are two problems that plague a lot of businesses. One is a low LTV, and the second one is inconsistent income. They do launches twice a year, something like that, and it’s feast and famine. This has the benefit of literally delivering daily revenue. off of existing subscribers. So if for some reason my ad account got shut down, or we got banned from Google search, we would still make money from all of the subscribers that are still on the list. So the value is massive. I can predict my quarterly revenue with a 10% margin error just based on existing subscribers.

Rob Marsh: What is the content need on the front end? So, you know, the reason I’m asking this is I imagine somebody who’s listening saying, well, that’s easy for Jon. He’s got 15 plus years of content that he can send people to. How often are you creating new content in order to send either the daily email or the stuff that you’re sending people, you’re directing them to in order to drop them into a sales sequence?

Jon Morrow: I created content for years, I still create some. But for example, let’s say you put up a YouTube video on funnel stacking. Let’s say I was doing a YouTube video on that. Then what I might do is email my list about that YouTube video. Anyone who clicks the link gets moved into an automation to sell them a course or a service on funnel stack. So it’s literally, and then I might circle around. So that’s one asset is a video. Later, I might do a challenge, a 30 day challenge where we map out your funnel stack. That’s another email I could send and something I could sell. Later, I might take everything I’ve done and write a book with AI called Bubble Stacker. Now that’s another quick wire I can sell. Now I have three different bubbles off of one piece of content that can be used throughout the year.

Rob Marsh: And how often are you reinventing that or thinking, okay, here’s the next offer. Is this something you’re thinking, I’m going to do one of those, you know, one piece of content, three or four offers every month? Is it every couple of months? How do you think about that?

Jon Morrow: I repeat offers, but change the broadcast email at once every quarter. And nobody notices. It’s just a different broadcast email on the planet, but all of the funnel is the same. So it gets repeated once a quarter.

Rob Marsh: That’s interesting. Okay. Well, this is definitely an idea worth stealing, especially if people have products to sell, but maybe more importantly, it’s an opportunity for copywriters to step up as strategists for their clients and help them build these kinds of funnels, these kinds of opportunities for the clients.

Jon Morrow: Yeah, the more, the better you can get at optimizing people. What most copywriters do is they create one funnel and they send people to it and they expect a positive ROI based on that one funnel. That is a mistake. In really big business, when you get to seven, eight figures, you’re almost never making money on the first funnel. You’re always doing a series of funnels. And for people who do have the luxury of breaking even or making money on the first funnel, they don’t realize if they stack career movement bubbles with email sequences and automations behind that. They might literally triple the revenue overnight.

Rob Marsh: Is this something that you’re, so you mentioned that you work with course creators. Is this a big part of what you do with them to help them sell more or is that different? Yeah, I do two things.

Jon Morrow: I consult. on strategy around funnels and marketing calendars and monitoring strategy. I also did this as a service every now and again. And I just charge like 10% of the extra revenue that we make the client. And I do that every now and again too.

Rob Marsh: So there’s another can’t say no offer free work from Jon that results in a nice outcome at the end, assuming that everything goes well.

Jon Morrow: Yeah. I mean, I mostly do that with businesses where I expect to earn them two to three million a year extra by doing it. And so 10% is just fine.

Rob Marsh: That’s pretty meaningful. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So a lot of people in the course world have said that the last year or two has been a little bit crazy. It’s harder to sell courses. It’s harder to sell through webinars, all of the things. Have you seen that? And if you have, how have you been helping course creators overcome that?

Jon Morrow: There is a deficit of trust. If you are not trusted, it’s much harder. If you are trusted, nothing has changed. So it really becomes a question of how can we make people trusted? And what that means is nurturing is way more important than ever before. By email, by retargeting, the days of expecting to have no social media buttons and not getting rid of their emails to nurture, those days are over. you have to be nurturing and building trust and authority with your audience to make seven figures, eight figures for sure.

Rob Marsh: One of the things that you also mentioned earlier as we were chatting that I’d love to get your thoughts on, you mentioned that you had worked with Neil Patel and Frank Kern, obviously Brian Clark. Talk about what you learned from these personalities. Some people might call them gurus or experts. How did they impact the way you think and the stuff that you do?

Jon Morrow: Brian taught me that writing a good copy is not a creative exercise, which a lot of people would disagree with. But he said it’s really, almost like, paint by numbers. You have to have all the components. And maybe there’s a little bit of creativity in the order you put those components in. But otherwise, it’s about having everything in place someone needs to make a purchase. It’s not about being clever. It’s not about having brilliant players. None of that matters at all. In fact, it probably hurts you. It’s about really paving the way for a purchase decision. And to do that is a mechanical process, not a creative one. That was a huge answer. But Neil, I learned about delegation. Neil was a master of doing nothing. Of getting smart people around him to do everything. It really just taught me about the value of leverage of all kinds. So those were, I mean, they’re way more lessons than it was, but those are the two big ones. I think so.

Rob Marsh: I think a lot of people now look at you as the expert. You know, what are the things that you are trying to teach the world or the people that you’re trying to have the biggest impact with? What are the lessons that you’re passing on?

Jon Morrow: The big lesson I’m trying to pass on now is that everyone is worried about AI, but there are certain things that are not going to change. Um, an old Brainian nursing home is not where the one-eyed robot lives. It doesn’t matter if it’s better. It doesn’t matter if it’s cheaper. She’s going to want the human being. When people learn, they don’t want the most intelligent teacher. They want a teacher they can identify with. The thing that’s not going to change is human connection. And even our loss is going to become more valuable than ever before. Because people are going to thirst to learn from another human being. Rather than omnipotent AI. They’re going to thirst to talk to another human being when they’re deciding whether or not to buy. And so putting ourselves in a position where we are trusted and have a connection with millions of people that is about you that’s not going away. Not in this episode. Maybe never. As long as humans are around. And so, I find myself talking a lot more about immersion, about brand, and about really building trusted connections. And all of the other formal optimizations, stacking, AI to accelerate sales leaders. All of that is flashy, but everyone’s going to do that. It’s not a competitive advantage. On the other hand, if you have a million people to love you, to respect you. That’s not something other competitors can just create overnight. So, the power of love is really what I spend a lot of time trying to push.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s more good advice for anyone, which kind of leads into my next question. So let’s say that you lost everything today. You no longer have the businesses that you have. You don’t even have the relationships you have. You had to start over. What would you do? Would you do the same thing? Would you do something different? And again, the reason I’m asking, you know, earlier we were talking about AI making it so difficult for copywriters, content writers to break in now. It’s become immensely more challenging. What would you do to overcome that?

Jon Morrow: So where I’ve also lost my skills. if I was starting over or do I still learn less skills?

Rob Marsh: Well, let’s say that you have the skills that you had, you know, as you started writing. So, you know, you’re basically a beginner, but you, you maybe haven’t figured out the whole, uh, broadcast trigger stack, that kind of stuff.

Jon Morrow: I would build an audience on Facebook, which catches a lot of people off guard. But there’s an enormous advantage to Facebook that everyone overlooks. On Facebook, you can send a friend request to just about anyone. So what I would do is I would start writing things for free for people with a lot of friends, people who already had big brands. And when I asked, what do I want to be paid, I would say nothing, just bring me on Facebook. That’s all I would ask for. Now that sounds ridiculous, but then I would go to all of their friends, and I would bring them. And just say, hey, it’s great to meet you. You know, how do you know Rob? By the way, I just wrote this weird thing for it. Do you know anyone who did that type of writing? And I would keep doing that until I had thousands of friends and so many people who had started to trust me because I was friends with people they respected on Facebook. And that’s how I would start getting work. And the reason why they would pay me is not because of the best copy. It would be because of the trust that they’ve gotten from the employer and endorsements of just being a friend with someone. That’s what I would do.

Rob Marsh: I want to see somebody do this. I mean, it goes back to the same idea you started with. It’s all about relationships and making sure that those are really solid before you do anything else.

Jon Morrow: Yeah, next week, I’m actually going to, we’re teaching this. I’m launching it to my list—I believe Facebook is the best platform to get started. Now, do you want to stay there? No. But in this story, you could get to six figures within a website with just Facebook posts, friends, and DMs. I’m sure you could.

Rob Marsh: What are some other thoughts or ideas in addition to that, things that you might do in order to, you know, maybe it’s launched the first course or, you know, create the first information product or, you know, however the next step is to grow the business?

Jon Morrow: For information products, the first big hurdle is proof. So what I would do is I would sit down and I would say, What are the things I have done in my life that other people would love to replicate? And I would start there. Then once I have a list of those, I would say, what visual proof do I have that I accomplished this? It could be a screenshot. It could be, let’s say you’re a mountain climbing instructor. It could be a first review on the top of Mount Everest. That’s visual proof. So I would connect my accomplishments with my visual proof. Then if I were a beginner, I would make this offer. I would teach you how to do this for, let’s say, $1,000. And here’s the deal. I really need testimonials. So if you do every step, if you do every homework assignment, and you give me your honest review at the end, I will give you back. your full tuition of $1,000 at the end. If you miss one full month assignment, you don’t get it. Okay? And I would do that for that testimonial. Then I would want the next version not offering people their money back. That’s how it gets started.

Rob Marsh: I love that idea too. It’s a no loss for the person creating the product because either they get paid or they get the testimonial which they can leverage into getting paid again. So yeah, it’s really, really great advice. So John, last question for you. If you could go back in time and just give yourself some advice that would help speed up the process or make things easier for you as you were starting out as a copywriter or content writer, what would you say?

Jon Morrow: I would tell myself to think even bigger. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, what do you mean by that? Because you thought pretty big. It feels like you were thinking pretty big.

Jon Morrow: One of my regrets is staying in a small market of freelance writers for a decade and never branching out. into anything bigger. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. And at the same time, I know that if I’d gone to a bigger market, I’d be a hundred times richer than I am today. My choice of market, it wasn’t a waste. But I have monotonically underperformed my potential. Even though I made dividends, I’d probably be worth, I don’t know, a couple hundred million, maybe a billion dollars by now if I just chose a different market. That was my biggest mistake.

Rob Marsh: And obviously you’ve got the skills you could make work in any market. So, so taking that anywhere else you go. I want to, I want to thank you for your time, Jon. I’ve admired you just the way you overcome obstacles, how hard you work, the way you’ve built teams, as I’ve watched sort of from the sidelines. It’s, it’s one of those experiences where, you know, sometimes I’m thinking, ah, I wish I’d thought of that, or I wish I’d done that. Jon got there first. And so I find the advice that you’re sharing and just your experience incredibly valuable for me personally, and hopefully for our audience as well. So thank you for that.

Jon Morrow: Thank you for having me. I’m honored.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Jon Morrow for walking through his business, what he’s built, what he’s building for the future. I’m inspired by John’s work and what he’s accomplished in the face of some pretty big challenges. 

Now, I have to admit, Jon’s advice about building an audience on Facebook was a bit of a surprise to me. Obviously, we’ve got a very large free group on Facebook, The Copywriter Club, but over the past year or so, we found that getting traction on posts in the group is getting harder and harder. Jon’s approach of connecting with prospects, then connecting with their friends and making an offer is really interesting to me. And given that it’s so different from the hundreds of pitch emails showing up in our inboxes right now, I think it just might work. It may work even better than I imagined, thanks to the implied endorsement that you get with their friends who you refer to in your friend request. If you try this tactic, I want to hear from you about how well it works. Email me at rob@thecopywriterclub dot com and let me know how it goes. 

And if you’re looking for other ideas on how to connect with your ideal prospects and pitch them for work, there are close to a dozen workshops inside The Copywriter Underground that will help. You can try The Underground right now, watch those workshops, try out the ideas that we share there, and if you like what you see and you want to stick around to use the templates, training, community, and coaching, no problem. And if it’s not for you, that’s also not a problem. Just let us know within seven days and you’ll get every penny back. There’s no risk. So why not check out thecopyrighterclub.com/tcu now. 

 

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 Website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The 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, I wanted to either teach or write or one of those two things, but I just didn’t know how to do it. Um, and so while I was head of content, which I was loving, uh, I realized as, uh, through the effort of building a personal brand that I was sort of teaching at scale. just by sharing content every day. And my audience was asking me, hey, you know, could you help me with this thing or that thing? Got my wheels turning, like maybe there’s a way that I could actually go out and teach people and make money for it and write and teach other people how to write. And so that was a couple of years ago that I had that aha moment. The creator economy luckily is booming and I hopped on board. So that’s sort of the short version of it.

Rob Marsh: Before we jump into all the things that you’re doing now, there are a lot of people who would love that career track, you know, getting into content to head of content. And I think it’s not as easy today as perhaps it was, say, 10 years ago or in 2018 when you started. Let’s talk a little bit about how people could do that today if they wanted to follow in your footsteps.

Erica Schneider: Yeah, so with AI especially, it’s getting easier and easier to create basic content, right? I don’t think AI is fantastic yet even when it’s well prompted. The best thing that you can do as you become a writer or an editor is to think why is this piece of content that I am tasked to work on even existing in the world? Just start asking yourself that question all the time. Um, when you start to dig into the purpose behind content, you start to force yourself to think a little bit more like a strategist. And when you understand how content actually affects audiences and potential buyers and clients in the real world, You can start to link that back to the decisions that your clients or the companies that you’re working with are making and form your own opinions on whether or not you think it’ll work or why. strategist mindset of, well, hold on a second. Why are we even doing this? What’s the purpose of this? What’s the goal of this? What kind of play is this? It just forces you to gain those skills that are necessary to either climb up the ladder internally or leave and help to serve people externally. I know a lot of people that They skip the whole, I’m going to work in-house thing and they just become freelancers, but then they get stuck there as well. And again, a lot of people are really worried about AI. And so my retort to that is always think strategically. AI is a fantastic brainstormer back and forth, but it shouldn’t ever be the thing that clients or companies make decisions based on. It should be based on human input.

Rob Marsh: And if you do that, it seems like occasionally you’re going to come across content where the answer, as you think about why is this existing in the world? The answer is going to be, it shouldn’t exist in the world. A lot of times, yeah. Yeah. Well, and that seems to be an opportunity then to say, okay, so what would I do differently? Where you’re stepping, like you said, into that strategist role where you’re helping either your client or your employer improve what they’re doing. And you’re not just there as a writer, but you’re actually solving a real life problem.

Erica Schneider: Exactly. Like, I think that there was a time when companies were just all following the same playbook, right? Like HubSpot created the, the SEO, you know, inbound play and everyone was just cranking out, you know, four to 20 blog posts a week and putting it on their site. And everyone needed a bunch of writers for that. That is starting to not work as well. Um, especially since AI can do that too. So like the whole, the whole, you know, trend, the whole, uh, setting is changing. And so again, like instead of just thinking, I’m going to write this because the client said yes, I want to write this. You can do that if you need the money, but just ask yourself, zoom out. Are they running an old play? Are they running a new play? What have I seen that’s working? What have I seen that’s not? And just familiarize yourself with marketing in general instead of just blogs or so to speak.

Rob Marsh: So also as head of content, it’s not just about strategy. What other skills would you encourage content writers or copywriters to develop in order to step into a role like that?

Erica Schneider: So absolutely. It’s definitely not just strategy. So self-editing is probably the best skill that you can develop as a writer because generally you’re going to send it to an editor. And that editor is going to have a lot of questions for you, if they’re a good editor. Otherwise, they’ll just make changes and not tell you anything. I luckily had good editors that asked me questions and forced me to think hard. Like, why do you make this decision? Do you believe that this should really go here or there? Why did you choose this style of introducing whatever? And so if you start to ask yourself those questions, then you can get ahead of it. My favorite thing that writers did when I was an editor was an editor, which also was part of my role as head of content was to review all the pieces. They would come to me explaining certain decisions that they made before I had to ask them. That was huge. Like immediately if a writer did that, I knew that they were critically thinking about the work as opposed to just doing the work. So tell your editor, like leave comments on your document. Hey, I put this here because reason. I think that this example fits here because whatever, but I also think it could fit there. And so I’m letting you know, let’s talk about it. Make it a collaborative effort where you’re kind of leading the charge and making it easier for an editor to understand your choices as opposed to just sort of shipping it and saying, here you go. Again, it all comes down to like the strategic developmental viewpoint of why does this piece exist? And then within the piece, why does this exist in this order? Why have I made these choices?

Rob Marsh: That makes sense. So you were head of content and then it was time to do something different and move on. Let’s talk about that part of your story.

Erica Schneider: Yeah. So, um, I got challenged by the founder CEO of the agency while I was still there to create a personal brand. I was very anti personal brand. I didn’t like the idea of having to be in public like that. I thought that I was more of a, a shy person. Turns out that I actually quite enjoy it, but I didn’t think I would. So. It took me a while to get into it, but I did get into it. And there’s something about sharing what you know online in a way that is actually helping people that just completely captivated me. And so I made a course, that’s how I got into this. Normally people start by doing one-to-one services, which is generally, I actually think that’s probably smarter. I got lucky because I built a pretty big audience before I launched anything. And then I collaborated with people that had even bigger audiences. But you need a huge amount of volume if you’re going to do the course route. So generally, I say do one-to-one first, build that up, have some recurring revenue, and then try courses. But I did it backwards. So I made a course on writing hooks online, and it did extremely well. We had a really fantastic launch, $60,000 in a week, which was crazy. And since then, I’ve made three more courses. I’ve run several cohorts. I’ve got a one-to-one offer now. And I also have a community, so I’m doing all the things. Which one of those do you want to dig into?

Rob Marsh: I want to talk about all of them, but before I do that, though, it’s really a rare thing, I think, for an agency owner or even a creative director to encourage their people to develop a personal brand. Oftentimes, the focus is on creating the agency brand and leading that way. So, you know, was there something different about this creative director that made him want it?

Erica Schneider: His name is Tom Watley, and he’s just a fantastic human. He’s a really good guy. And he understood, years ago, the power of a personal brand. He knew that it was going to be good for the people that work for him and for the agency. His mantra was always, I want people to leave better than they came here. And he genuinely means it. And I certainly did. And having an online reputation where people feel that you are credible, they know of you, and they like learning from you, makes it way easier to either change jobs or start your own thing. So I think he knew that, but as a byproduct of that, he’s just a smart marketer and he understood that if someone was out there having success with their personal brand, and it said head of content at Grizzle, in the headline, that was going to drive traffic. And it did. It did. Within a year, we were getting tons of leads from my personal brand. And then people were trying to poach me. And I was able to turn those people into clients. And it was fun. It was exciting. So I think he just had the foresight to not be afraid of it, I suppose.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s a really smart approach. Obviously, if you’ve got five, 10 people in your agency, in your company who are building these brands, like you said, the byline is always reading, you know, whatever the company name is, clearly that company is doing something amazing.

Erica Schneider: Yeah.

Rob Marsh: 100%, yeah. So how did you get started then? Because like you said, you built a huge following as you had this paycheck. You weren’t depending on income from that. And I think this is maybe one of those things that stops people from doing it. Because like, oh, do I do work? Do I start posting stuff on LinkedIn? How do I make that balance happen? How did you make it work?

Erica Schneider: Yeah, so I would say start slowly. it can become all consuming. And there is a fine line between how much time you spend on there and it can absolutely cut into your work. So I started slowly, but I did have early luck. And I think, again, like you said, it was easier back then. I didn’t start until 2022, but I still think that was easier than now, 2025. So within my first few posts on LinkedIn, they were doing well. And I never really had those like cricket moments. So again, I don’t know if that was luck or good writing or what, but I was lucky there. Not so lucky on Twitter. Before Twitter became X, I spent a year desperately clawing for an audience there and it just wasn’t happening. And then slowly, I can’t remember the specific details, but just like slowly over time, I grew a really big audience on Twitter, which I’ve since kind of, abandoned because the app has gone a little bit nuts. But my recommendation is to start slow and not worry about results. Just get used to pressing post and publish and getting yourself out there. Your voice is something that you develop over time. Your boldness is something you develop over time. And the relationships obviously take time. So don’t expect it all to work right away, but also don’t force yourself to be on there seven days a week, even five days a week. one or two times a week, you know? And also the most important thing you can do at the beginning and throughout is go connect with people and leave comments on their posts and just get used to having conversations there because it really feels bad if you’re posting and you’re getting nothing. It feels horrible. But if you go and comment and have conversations in the comments with other people, at least you’re talking to people, right? And then if you hit connect on LinkedIn anyway, it’s the only platform, I think, where they automatically follow you back. So if they accept it, then they’re a new follower. And for however amount of time, I don’t know, their algorithm changes all the time, but I believe new followers see your content before older followers, like it’s boosted to them. So you connect with people, they’ll start to see it. And you’re having conversations with people and slowly over time, you log in and you recognize faces as opposed to just scrolling a feed with nobody in it. But again, it takes time, right? It takes time. I would say just try to find your community. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So finding community is the challenge, but part of that is writing about the things that are going to appeal to the right community. So can we talk just a little bit about what are some of the things that we really ought to be focused in on when we sit down to write that first post or the third post or the seventh post early on?

Erica Schneider: Yeah, I would say the easiest mentality is write about what you know, write about what you love. So if you’re out there trying to become known for something that you don’t love, uh, you’re going to absolutely hate your time there because you’re not going to want to talk about it. Um, writing about, you know, gets rid of the blank page syndrome of like, you know, what version of myself do I have to present today or who’s going to even care type thing. Just write about what you know. So when I got there, for example, I was writing about writing and editing. That’s what I know and what I love. So I went in with my experiences and said, I’m a head of content. I think one of the first posts I wrote on LinkedIn was, I reviewed 44 content writer applications yesterday, and only two made the cut. Here’s what those two did well. That was my first hook. And it performed very well because it was a relevant topic that people wanted to hear about. And that was just in my experience. I then went on to just be like, you know, I was editing blogs last week and these are the 10 changes that I made. Or, you know, here’s how I got into my career as a head of content person. Just tell people that are a few steps behind you what you would have wanted to hear when you were in their position.

Rob Marsh: So you’re basically documenting your journey for everybody else. That’s certainly an easy way to create content.

Erica Schneider: Such an easy way to create. I think it’s the easiest way to start documenting your journey. As you get more experienced and you are trying to get clients, you then need to make sure that you’re speaking to the problems that they have, poking the pain, offering your solution, all of that stuff. But I think that that’s not going to get as much engagement at first. It’s going to feel a little bit harder to crack that egg, so to speak. Whereas if you get on there and you tell people who you are and you talk about your journey. It’s much easier to make connections, at least with peers at first anyway.

Rob Marsh: What about the challenge of always having to come up with something new? How often can you basically repeat content or reorder, re-edit, rework content, and basically be telling the same thing over and over? All the time. So this is maybe, this is, I think, one of the big secrets that a lot of people don’t think about.

Erica Schneider: Yeah. Like I rarely write brand new things. I am, constantly diving into a subject either from a deeper angle or from a zoomed out angle. So the way that I like to think about regenerating or repurposing content is you have an idea, And then you have to ask yourself questions about this idea. So say that the idea is editing is important. Okay, why is editing important? Answer that question. Okay, what happens if people don’t edit? Answer that question. What are the lies that people tell themselves about editing? What are the truths? Whatever it is, ask yourself a series of questions. And each answer to that question is going to give you a different point of view that you have on the thing. And each one of those things is a post idea. So you go through those and you start to cycle through them. And then as you post, pay attention to signals. So if somebody replies, well, I edit this way, what do you think about that? Your answer is another post idea. And it’s all under the topic of editing is important, right? So I’m not creating any new brilliant ideas here. I’m just telling you my point of view based on my experience over and over again in different ways. I do that all the time.

Rob Marsh: And part of your experience here led to the development of your hooks course, which I’ve been in. I bought it, I think, when it first launched.

Erica Schneider: Fantastic.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I went through. And the thing that’s nice is if you have a piece of content or something that you want to say, you basically can apply the various hooks the way you would open up a Swiss Army knife, right? It’s like, well, this one, I’m gonna use the scissors. And this one, I’m gonna use the magnifying glass. This one, I’m gonna use the tweezers. and you can basically take the same content over and over. So can we just talk a little bit about hooks, what works, maybe some hooks that don’t work, what we should be ignoring when it comes to getting people interested in our content.

Erica Schneider: I love the Swiss Army knife thing. That’s a really good way to put it. I’m going to noodle on that. Maybe I’ll write about that metaphor. That’s a good one. There you go. Link me so I can like the place. Of course, yeah. People love to hate hooks, but regardless of who you are, you need a strong first line in order to hook people in. So love them or hate them, you need them. Every first line is a hook, whether you view it as a hook or not. Why does a hook matter on social? Because people only see on mobile one line, on desktop they see four lines, and then they have to click see more. That’s a choice that they have to make. So you have to get them invested in the content in order for them to care about reading the content. So the best way to do that is to open a loop or peak curiosity. That’s like the easiest, that’s the easiest principle. So saying something like, yesterday I learned this one thing and it’s changed everything about how I think about this thing. Like, you can’t not read that. You have to know what that person is going to say. So there’s principles such as opening a loop, peaking curiosity. But then you guys dive deeper into the specifics. So you don’t want to just say, here’s this thing that I learned yesterday. You want to get specific so that your audience understands that this is for me, right? So here’s what I learned about, you know, working with solopreneurs yesterday, like this one thing made me realize that all solopreneurs are suffering from this thing, right? So the more specific that you can get, the more that you are signaling to your audience that this is either for you or not for you. Another way is to add your credibility into it. So a hook can be more than one line, right? So you can say, after working with hundreds of solopreneurs, I noticed that this tends to happen, but it wasn’t until last week when I was working with a new one that it really made sense, whatever it is. And then you’re showing people you’ve worked with. I’m implying I’ve worked with a lot of people. I’ve got the credibility and I’m still working with them today. This isn’t a thing from 10 years ago. I’m still practicing, right? You’re signaling to people your expertise with specificity. So tons of principles that I could dive into there. Basically, you want to focus on the principles and then there’s frameworks as well that we could dive into.

Rob Marsh: I want to ask you about some of the frameworks, but just to be really clear about this, there’s a couple of things that have to happen. The hook has to have a payoff. Otherwise, people will get wise to it eventually. It’s like, oh, they always promise something and I never get anything. It’s that one weird trick problem, I think, that was so popular so long ago. But do you, when you sit down with a piece of content, do you have your list of, you know, 70 plus whatever hooks that you’re like, Oh, I want to use it this one. Or is it so internalized now that it’s just, it’s coming out of your head naturally?

Erica Schneider: It’s internalized now. Yeah. I haven’t looked at a framework in years to be honest, but I did look at them a lot when I first started. So I think that everybody can benefit from frameworks. I don’t think anyone’s above them or templates if you prefer that phrase. I just think frameworks give you a little bit more room to play. Um, I really do think that they help you because it’s a copywriting framework, right? Like you want to take people through a journey. S-C-Q-A, situation, challenge, question, answer. These are things you practice them over and over again. But it’s like learning a sport, right? You’re not going to ask your coach, hey, how exactly do I dribble the ball again? Where do I start? You just dribble the ball. It’s the same thing with copywriting. Once you’ve done a bunch of framework writing, then it’s just internalized. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about a couple of your favorite frameworks.

Erica Schneider: OK, so SCQA. This works for blogs, and it works for social posts. It works for every writer. It’s my favorite framework in the world. You present a situation. Then you present the challenge that the situation faces, brings up. Then you ask a question. And that’s just a nice way to get people to be like, OK, I’m still paying attention. And then you answer the question right away. So for example, most B2B teams suffer from checkbox marketing. That would be a situation. So I am presenting a situation from my worldview. It doesn’t have to be a fact, but it’s my bold point of view. And then I say the challenge that that presents them. So this leaves them wasting time, creating blogs that are never going to bring in revenue, whatever. That’s the challenge. Then you ask a question. So what, so, so, Hey, what are you going to do about it? And then the answer, the answer is, ditch the playbook, do this instead, colon, whatever. So just made them up out of thin air, but that would be that framework. Then there’s PAS, problem agitate solution. So you present, this is the classic one, you present the problem, and then you agitate the problem, and then you give a solution, so problem, you’re never going to earn what you want unless you raise your rates. But you can’t raise your rates because you’re scared to, right? So you’re twisting the knife of it. And then it’s like, stop trying to whatever, do this instead, type of thing. Those are my two favorite, and then there’s one more in the course, I think it’s TAS, Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. It’s very similar, but just a little bit spikier with your thesis, for example. So editing is not a cutting exercise, it’s a value-adding exercise, but then the antithesis to that is that, but everybody follows the advice that you need to be cutting 30% of everything you write, and then the synthesis is, Like, forget everything you think you know and just think about editing this way. Something like that.

Rob Marsh: All makes sense. So as you see people using, and I know you take people through your course sharing this, obviously those are the three big ones. Have you seen people using them in interesting or different ways? You’re just like, wow, I wish I’d thought of that. Or that’s really different.

Erica Schneider: There’s tons of ways that you can mix and match them. I mean, that’s such an interesting question. I think that… Potentially, people are playing with a lot more sarcasm lately, at least on my feed. And so there’s a lot of like, they’ll start with something that you think is real, and then it turns out that what you just said is real is a total joke and the opposite thing of what you should do. But they don’t reveal that until later on when you get into it. I’m struggling to think of an example now, but Jen Allen Knuth, she’s like a sales superstar. I follow her and I read all of her posts and she does a lot of that. She actually wrote a really interesting hook once about nunchucks, but I can’t remember the specifics on here.

Rob Marsh: That’s good. We can all use the search feature in LinkedIn and find it. As I’m thinking also about hooks and all of that that goes on in the feed, at what point does a visual help or hurt? Obviously, if you’re doing this on Instagram, it’s almost visual first. On LinkedIn, Twitter, it’s probably text first, but there’s still a lot of visual stuff that can happen. So how do you balance visuals with the writing?

Erica Schneider: Totally. I think of visuals like, for example, a carousel where you’re going to have like a headline. So I think of visuals more as have a headline as opposed to a hook. So for example, if I was doing a carousel on hooks, one that I’ve done before is like how to stop the scroll parentheses without sounding cringey. And that’s what I would call a classic hook, but I don’t use those as my hooks personally. Because when I see something that reads like a headline on LinkedIn, I’m assuming that it’s kind of a templated hook that might not give me valuable information personally. So I’m happy to use those as headlines in carousels that accompany my hook, but I want my hook to be more interesting than that. So I remember that the hook that I actually used for that carousel in the text version of the post was, are you worried about sounding like an asshole on LinkedIn? And that was the hook, which was basically, I think I followed the PAS. That was the problem. You’re worried about sounding like an asshole. And then I agitated and went on. But then obviously, I’m hooking them with that, and I’m hooking them with the carousel headline that’s telling you exactly what you’re going to get. So that’s a fun way to kind of use both in the same thing. But I also think images are fantastic for further explaining something, like a process that you’re trying to explain. So if you have one of those tables where you’re comparing things on one side to the other, or you have like good versus bad examples. Those are just fantastic supporting elements. Selfies, we could debate about that all day.

Rob Marsh: Well, that’s a great question because I’ve seen people recommend you do selfies on LinkedIn, but I have to admit, I don’t love seeing them. I especially don’t love posting them of myself.

Erica Schneider: Yeah, it’s a personal thing. So I think that if you are comfortable with it and your audience gravitates towards it, then you should totally do it. I am not comfortable with taking selfies or posting them, so I don’t do it. But that’s I’ve done it like maybe five times. That’s just me. I get away with it because I like to be very playful with my words. Some people who are not really creative writers, they feel like if they post a selfie of themselves, that’s their way of kind of communicating, hey, this is me. This is my personality. I’m a real person, which can be a very good thing to do if you aren’t necessarily able to bring people into your world. Or again, if you are a good writer, but your audience is also the selfie type of person. So it just depends. If you don’t want to do it, you certainly do not have to do it.

Rob Marsh: It also feels like if you have created a brand where your face is part of that brand, you’re easily recognized, then you should be doing more of it. So, Gary Vee, if you saw content without Gary Vee in it, it doesn’t feel very Gary Vee. It’s all about him, right? And that’s maybe not the way all of us should go. In fact, it’s probably the way most of us shouldn’t go, but it certainly works for Gary Vee. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so again, talking about this personal brand and building it for ourselves, obviously there’s this content portion where we’re throwing stuff up online for people to see. What other elements do we need to be thinking about in order to, I don’t know, is it driving them to a homepage? Is it driving them to other content, maybe a book or a podcast? How do you think about these other elements that contribute to your personal brand?

Erica Schneider: Yeah, so I would say at first, I wouldn’t worry about that too much. If you’re brand new, it’s too stressful to try to get people to DM you something or go click on something. You are first and foremost trying to build a community and build relationships. As soon as you feel comfortable that you’ve got a little bit of a community around you, that’s when you want to get those people and then anyone else who joins your world off of social, which is always going to be rented land and onto somewhere that is owned land. So even if you don’t plan on starting a newsletter that you send out like once a week, I still highly recommend that you start an email list and get people onto it via a lead magnet. of some sort. Like I have an educational email course that I’ve just put out for a new program that I do. I’ve done other lead magnets where you get like my editing library and then you join the email list. And again, it’s not something that where you have to send emails right away, but then you have those emails. So you have the option to do that later. And that’s so, so, so important because you just never know when social is going to blow up and you’re going to lose your role. We’re watching it right now.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, three days after TikTok shut down briefly, shut back on, I think they’ve got a 75-day window to figure something out and it’s going to turn off again. There are a lot of people who are losing millions of followers if they don’t have their own land.

Erica Schneider: Yeah, and I grew my audience on Twitter to 50,000, 51,000, and I haven’t really posted in there in a few months because it’s all changed, right? And so I’m happy that before I left, I was able to get at least a fraction of that onto an email list. So yes, I think that absolutely you should get them onto an email list. So how do you do that? Well, all of your posts should have standalone value, first and foremost. Amanda Natividad coined the phrase zero-click content. And I truly believe that everything should have zero-click value. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t give them a place to go. So I still post links every once in a while if I want you to go sign up for something or get on a wait list. But the other way around that is the DM, DM me feature. Just the past two days, I realized, hey, Erica, you haven’t asked someone to DM you about something in about a month. Why don’t you go ahead and do it? Past two posts, I’ve written posts with standalone value. And then at the end, I’ve said, if you’re interested to learn more, DM me this word. So DM me full stack and let’s talk about it. And what do you know? It works. I got like 10 DMs and I’m having conversations that are leading to discovery calls just because of doing that. And so if those people don’t end up buying, then I will say, hey, by the way, you should take this free email course because it’ll at least help you get started. And then I have them on my list. And then I can interact with them and nurture them over and over again there in a place where I know that they’re at least going to see what I’m sending to them.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. One of the things I noticed about you is obviously you’re driving them to a list, but you waited a long time to launch a website. I mean, what was the hold up there that made it not important?

Erica Schneider: Well, I actually spent a lot of time with people who said, you don’t ever need a website. So I was hearing that from people and I was still making money without one. So in my mind, I felt like, well, this is working without one. And if I’m going to do one, I can’t do it myself. negative design skills, like less than zero. Anything I touch is just terrible. So I knew I was going to have to hire somebody to do it. And I was very protective of my revenue. I didn’t want to hire people for a while. That’s something that I feel like a lot of new entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs face. And I guess the advice for that is hire people sooner than you think you do. Please get help. You don’t need to suffer. I think I got to the point where I was on enough podcasts and things like this where people would say, where should people go? My answer was always, just go to LinkedIn. And that felt really silly because then I’m not capturing anyone. And you can learn about me on LinkedIn, but you can’t see all the things. And I have all the things, I have courses, I’ve got group coaching, I’ve got one-to-one. And unless you really dig through my about section on LinkedIn, which I don’t think a lot of people really read those, then you’re not gonna know. So it just felt like it was time, it was three years, I had all these media appearances, I had all these things that I wanted people to be able to read and just see. So it was time, I wish I had done it a year earlier.

Rob Marsh: And the flip side, of course, though, is that when you did launch, it is dialed in. I mean, your messaging is dialed in, the brand, it looks fantastic. You nailed it. It looks like you got everything right. And that usually doesn’t happen if you launch the website week one.

Erica Schneider: I agree. I totally agree. It’s the same reason why I think that you should spend some time figuring out your voice, your style, you know, your offer, all of that stuff. If you, if we’re talking to soul openers here, just people who want to teach, like, how are you, like, what are you going to do when you spend time on, on the social platform before you then try to get people onto a list where you talk even deeper about something. Um, so spend some time, don’t try to get people onto a list for at least a couple months. And then once you hit that moment where you’re like, this feels good, I think I’m in my, I think I’m in my groove, get people onto a list.

Rob Marsh: So as you went through your own website development process, talk a little bit about your thinking there. We’ll definitely link to it in the show notes, because like I said, it’s a really great website. The first time I saw it, I thought, ooh, I want to copy that. What template is that? That is so good. Not that I would. That’s the kind of reaction I think you want from designers when people look at it. It’s like, wow, I wish I had that. How did you get there?

Erica Schneider: Let’s shout out to Emily Court. She’s the one who designed it. I got there because she was someone who I had networked with a bunch on LinkedIn. She changed her offer from copywriting to design a few months before. I knew that she was looking for people to design for, and obviously I paid her, but I think she charged me less than she would have charged now because she was kind of getting into it. And in exchange, you know, I said, I’ll give you testimony and get you more clients. So that’s always a fun way to do that. And so she just had a fantastic process. We had a call. She asked me a bunch of questions. The first thing I said to her was, I’m terrible at design. I have no idea what I want. I just know that I don’t want pink. That’s what I said to her. Because all of her stuff is pink. And I was like, I know you love pink, but I don’t want pink. So she sent me the process. She sent me a bunch of mood boards with colors, and yes, no, yes, no. And then I wrote the copy. We went back and forth on the copy a little bit together. And she asked me questions again. Do you want stock images? No. Do you want stock video? No. Do you want this? Sure. It was just a lot of like, back and forth, back and forth, to be honest.

Rob Marsh: Then it worked.

Erica Schneider: It did. I got inspiration from other people. So whose websites did I look at? I looked at Devin Reed’s website, but now he’s since redundant. I think his looks really good. He’s my friend. Who else? I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I looked at a bunch of websites.

Rob Marsh: for help. Well, like I said, I’ll link to your site in the show notes because it’s fantastic design. And I mean, that’s where you can see all of your stuff as well. But let’s talk about some of the other courses that you’ve designed and developed. One is AI focused. In fact, a lot of the stuff that you’ve done in all of your courses, I think, is there’s a lot of focus on AI because it’s such a huge part of content creation. But yeah, as you expanded your course offerings, why did you go into the areas that you did?

Erica Schneider: Yeah, so the first one was hooks because people were literally asking me, hey, you write great hooks. Can you help me write great hooks? And I said, yes, of course I can. Also, all the products that I’ve researched on hooks seem to just kind of give templates and that’s not my vibe. So I’ll do something different. The next course was a course that was in my head for years. While I was still head of content, I was thinking about creating an editing course, because I just was geeking out on editing. And so the next course I released was Content Editing 101. And just to preface, Hooks was not AI at first. And then I teamed up with Rob Lennon, who did the rest of my courses with me. And it just turns out that because AI is a thing, people absolutely love the idea of being able to play with what they just learned right away. So it makes it like a fun, learn, do, play style. And the interactiveness of putting in an idea and getting it back in the frameworks that you just learned in the course. is really cool. So that’s the style that we do in all of our courses. So that’s how Hooks is. With content editing, same thing. Teach the principles, learn the principles, do it yourself in a workbook, go play with AI, ask it to edit your content, see what it says. Uh, the next course I did is called long to short and that’s targeted at people who write like a thousand plus words all the time for themselves and like in a newsletter. And then they just don’t know how to turn that into social content. So it helps you kind of ask yourself those questions that I was referencing in the beginning. You know, what happens if people don’t do this? What happens if they do? What happens if this, all of those things and it’s AI-ified as well. So it helps you repurpose your content. The most recent one is the one that I’m most excited about because this is, less of a principle based where you learn and then you go play. And it’s called Launch Content Playbook. And this one’s actually more of like an AI product where you put in your offer, whether it’s your landing page or you answer questions manually, and it gives you back in a spreadsheet, 60 days of launch content with hooks and the plays and the psychological principles behind why they work. done for you in 10 minutes. It’s crazy, it’s absolutely crazy.

Rob Marsh: You built an agent to create that, is that right?

Erica Schneider: Yeah, so I didn’t, I built nothing. I am not good at behind the scenes of AI. Rob built it. I did all the principles that it’s based on. So we still stayed in our lane. So I wrote all the principles, the stages of launches, every play, like I created all of that stuff. And then Rob trained agents to you answer questions in a form, it does a bunch of things in make.com and the automation thing behind the scenes, and then you get an email with your results.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s very cool.

Erica Schneider: It’s really cool. It’s very, very cool.

Rob Marsh: And then, of course, you also offer coaching.

Erica Schneider: Yeah. So last April, so we’re in January right now, so I think it was nine months ago, I finally figured out my offer, which is called content sparring. And before that, I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to work with people one-to-one. Did I want to work with teams? Did I want to work with solopreneurs? Was it going to be editing asynchronous? Was it going to be just kind of like teaching synchronous? And I came up with the idea of content sparring with the help of my partner now Nick Bennett on something else we do together through his program. He does an offer design program and he helped me realize I don’t have to pick between who I serve. I just have to solve a very specific problem that is niched down. Um, and then tell them very simply, this is how we work together. That’s a really simple version of what he does, but basically content sparring is for seasoned solopreneurs or founders who want to get their work live, edited and co-create with somebody once a week. Very simple. So you show up to calls with writing. We read it out loud. I ask you questions. We make it better. That’s the offer.

Rob Marsh: One of the things I love about hearing all of the offers, the courses, everything is that, I mean, again, you started out, I think you said as like a junior content creator, right? And so for people who are starting out and say, what is my future? What are the potentials? you’ve obviously grown several different opportunities for yourself. And part of that, I’m sure, is because you’re super capable and willing to put in the time to do it. But also, if people have the skills they put in the time like you did, there’s a huge opportunity here still for content, even in the world of AI and competition with the content farms and all of that stuff going on.

Erica Schneider: 100% there is a huge opportunity right now to take the skills that you have, figure out what your superpower is. My superpower is live editing. Like that’s something that’s always been there. I absolutely love talking things through with people. Um, whatever your superpower is, is there a big enough market for it? Um, and then figuring out, okay, how do I go out and find these people? And generally the best way to do that, the way that I did it, is to build a reputation online. The people, you will start conversations, you’ll start to network, and it all happens. I mean, again, it’s not gonna happen right away, but it all happens for me. It all happened within a year.

Rob Marsh: We keep coming back to this idea of relationships. So I want to dive in a little bit more on this because it’s one thing to create content. It’s even one thing to reply with comments or DMs, but it’s a little bit different to start to create a real relationship or a friendship, you know, that can develop into a content or into a client type situation. So what are your best strategies for taking it from, Hey, nice article or great idea to, I want, I got to work with this person.

Erica Schneider: I’m so glad you asked me that because this is like the dark part of it. And by dark, I don’t mean like scary. I mean like the less talked about.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, nobody talks about it. We want to protect our secrets, right? Because otherwise, everybody will take our clients.

Erica Schneider: Sure, yeah, sure. That’s part of it. I think also, though, you can’t see it as well. It’s one of those amorphous things that just kind of happens. And so it’s harder to explain. I didn’t do any of it on purpose. Luckily, like I said, I think I thought that I was more of an introvert than I was when I first started. But luckily, people reached out to me at first, so I didn’t have to do the reaching out. I had built enough of a reputation that after a few months of posting consistently, people were reaching out and asking me if I wanted to hop on a call. My advice is when people start to do that at first, just say yes to all of it. Just see what’s going on. It doesn’t mean that you should get stuck giving free advice all day. But you don’t know what’s going to come from those calls. That’s how I met Rob Lennon. He DMed me. because he kept leaving comments on Twitter with like dad jokes on my posts. And then he finally DM me and was like, I hope I’m not bothering you with all these dad jokes. And I was like, no, it’s hilarious. And we talked back and forth for a few days. And then we decided to hop on a call. He must’ve asked me, hey, do you want to actually meet? Like, let’s say hi. And I said, sure. So just talk to people, like be human. I know it’s weird because it’s all online, but if someone came up to you and started to talk to you, hopefully you would talk back, right? Like it’s just, you know, have conversations. Um, I, so it wasn’t frameworked at first. Uh, now I try to intentionally hop on like coffee chats with people at least a few times a month just to say hi. Um, just to get to know you better because you never know. Do you have services you could offer me? Do I have services I could offer you? Is there a collaboration opportunity here? Do you have clients that might be perfect for me and vice versa? And so the more that you just say hi to people, the more that you’re top of mind and they remember you for things. I’m in Slack communities now with people that have introduced me to tons of other people and we all refer each other all the time to things, all because I hopped on phone calls and said hi. So it’s like the most underrated yet probably the most valuable thing you can do is just say hi to a lot of people.

Rob Marsh: I’m glad you shared that example of Rob too, because posting dad jokes to certain people is going to be, wow, this guy’s weird. But because he’s doing something different, it’s going to stand out from the typical comment that is, hey, you’re right, Erica, great idea, you know, whatever. So it’s an opportunity to stand out in a different way. Now, obviously Rob’s not going to connect with every single person with that strategy. There’s some people it’s going to turn off. The right people, the people he wants to connect with will likely connect through that way if that’s part of Rob’s personality.

Erica Schneider: Totally. And it was when Rob and I were at a similar place, we were both starting from zero. We met each other kind of towards the beginning. And so it’s a lot easier to try to meet people who are at the same stage as you because I’m not as likely to hop on a call with a stranger now as I am to hop on a call with someone that I’ve been interacting with. for a few months who we have mutual friends and this and that, just because I’ve been doing this for so long and I get DM spam all the time. And so I don’t love the whole advice of just comment, be the first person to comment on a big creator, DM them and they’re not gonna see it or be as interested as someone who’s more at your speed, on your level. You’ll get there eventually if you wanna talk to these bigger creators, so to speak, but I wouldn’t start there.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, at that point, these conversations almost move out of comment sections or DMs and into events or various other channels where people are hanging out in a slightly different way.

Erica Schneider: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It moves on to, it moves on to networking for sure.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, exactly. So Erica, if you could go back and just, you know, give some advice to you just starting out, you know, that would help you make progress faster, do something different or avoid some kind of a mistake, regret, you know, cringe moment, whatever that is. What would you say to yourself?

Erica Schneider: I would say I think that the biggest thing I hear from people that are just starting is I don’t have anything unique to say. Everything has been said before and there’s nothing special about me. And the way that I’ve been framing this recently is think about music. every song in the world has been written, right? Like all the great songs, there’s classics, you know, everything is basically a different version of the same chords. Like you’re not creating a new instrument. Right. And yet every day there are up in rising quote unquote stars, right? There’s new people coming out there and doing interesting things that sounds different, that resonates with you in that moment for whatever reason. And so, All you have to do is go out there and be yourself because you are inherently unique. And like I said, start with the experiences, share what you know. If I could go back in time, I think I did do a lot of that, but I was confused between sharing experiences and sharing personal things because I thought you had to share personal things. And there was one time that I said something about going on a vacation And I won’t get into details, it was taken the wrong way. And I got a lot of troll comments. And I almost quit after that, because I was like, this place is weird. It’s terrible. This was on LinkedIn, not even Twitter. And I wish I had just trusted myself that I didn’t need to do that. And so I think that your gut is something you should listen to, like follow it. If you don’t want to post selfies, don’t post selfies. If you don’t want to share personal stories, don’t share personal stories. If you do, great. But there are no rules. There are best practices, but that doesn’t matter. Like they’re not a rule. So do whatever you feel comfortable with. And you are absolutely somebody that people want to hear from because you’ve lived a life. So just talk about it.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, my takeaway here is don’t let anything stop you. Just go out and do it, experiment, try and see what works.

Erica Schneider: Yeah, if you want to.

Rob Marsh: And of course, if you don’t.

Erica Schneider: If you don’t, then don’t. Just don’t if you don’t want to.

Rob Marsh: That’s right. There are other ways to connect with clients, but there are so many things that come out of building your personal brand, building authority online that don’t happen in other ways as easily, being invited to speak, being invited on podcasts. Those kinds of things tend to naturally fall out of an online personality, whereas you’ve got to work a little harder to make that stuff happen offline.

Erica Schneider: Totally. Yes. I’ve never had to pitch myself to a podcast.

Rob Marsh: So, well, except for this one.

Erica Schneider: Except for this one.

Rob Marsh: Obviously, I asked you to come on just because I admire what you do. And in fact, I would love to share your email, your resources with our listeners. Where can people go to find you, Erica, if they want to learn more?

Erica Schneider: Yeah, so the best place to go is erikaschneider.me, which is the website that I finally have. And the thing that I’m most excited about where I’m putting most of my attention at the moment is called Full Stack Solopreneur. So when you go to that website, you’ll see a tab that says group coaching. And I’m really excited about this new program. It’s just two months old, and there’s 60 people in there. And we’re helping Solopreneurs refine or define their offer, learn how to drive traffic to it with content, and then sell like a human so that they can actually get people to give them money. And it’s working, and it’s fun. And if that sounds like you, I’d love for you to join.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. Thanks, Erika, for sharing so much about content, editing, growing a brand. I really appreciate it.

Erica Schneider: Thanks for having me.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Erica for sharing so much about content strategy and creation hooks and frameworks and what she’s created in her own business. I’ll link to her website in the show notes that you can jump on her list. And of course, you can probably find her on LinkedIn where she’s still pretty active. 

We didn’t talk about this, but I think a big part of Erica’s success is consistency. Showing up day after day in the same places, talking about the same things in slightly different ways. Her clients saw her and came to trust her through the content that she was sharing over and over. Now, you don’t have to do it every single day. In fact, Erica mentioned that once or twice a week is probably enough, but showing up consistently is a big part of success. And if you want to be the writer who clients find instead of ignore, you need to build processes and systems to help you do that. 

This is something that I can help you with inside the Copywriter Underground. And if you’re interested in that kind of accountability and training, visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu and join now. 

 

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 Webinar
One to Many (Jason’s book)
Jason’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The 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 took his business.

Jason Fladlien: Yeah, I mean, because back then all the copywriters that tell you how to write copy, they would give you this very long convoluted process that involved a tremendous amount of research, which I get. If you’re going to write for Agora back then when they were printing stuff and putting it in the mail, and there was lots of money on the line, you should do that. But we are at this cross section of the new internet where I found very quickly, and this is what changed my life, is I didn’t have to have to write world-class copy. I had to have an interesting offer that I could just write very quick, formulaic copy around, and that’s what I did. I create a lot of info products because that’s where I created that first one and it sold well, Rob. It was like, let me just repeat the process. Let me create these cheap little ebooks, $7, $17, $27, make them very simple, solve problems because I could publish them fast. All of them needed a sales letter. So let me come up with a formula to write these sales letters. 

So here’s what I did. It was brilliant. I went and I found every good sales letter I could find and categorize them. I said, okay, what kind of headlines do they all use? Can I fit them in a category? Turns out 80% of them could fit into one of four categories of a headline. So when I sat to write it, Headline, I wrote one of four headlines. That was it. Leads, there were about five ways I saw repetitively that were used to open up a sales letter. Great. Bullet points, I found there were about five different structures of bullet points that I could use when I wrote bullet points. Guarantees, so I isolated these key variables and then I found the structure. I didn’t copy it. Here’s a lead as old as time, Rob. I’m sure you’re familiar with this. If you’re looking to X, Y, and Z, then this will be the most interesting letter that you’ll ever read. Here’s why. Halbert made that very popular. To this day, people will still use that as a lead. The important thing isn’t the words that are used, it’s the structure behind it. If-then statement, it’s the linking of the two. It’s calling out something very exciting that’s in their mind right now that they’re so desperate for, and then dramatizing it to say, to open up the idea that you have a solution for it. And that’s a good strong lead. So it was less the specific words, which is what a lot of copywriters are focusing on. It was more the structure underneath it. I isolated that, and then I would assemble them together like blocks. And that’s how I wrote a lot of my copy. And what was really cool, Rob, is along the way, you become unconscious about this. So I could recite phrases by memory after a while of doing it enough. 

Guarantees that I would use over and over again after a while and I really got good at it was like Whether it’s 29 minutes from now or 29 days from now on a 30-day guarantee, right? If you want your money back you get every penny. So the word penny was used because it diminished the cost associated with it. If you said dollar… dollar seemed bigger than penny, right? You get every penny promptly and quietly returned to you. So I was like, okay, no fuss. So I could memorize these because I would use them so often and then I can think and copy. And I didn’t have to like create so much as pull it out with a swipe file inside of my head and stitch them and assemble them together. And that was a game changer for me. And so then people would want me to write copy for them because they would read the copy I wrote for myself. And they say, can you do for me what you just did for yourself? And I’m like, if the, if the, Jack’s big enough. Of course I can. That’s how I really got to copy.

Rob Marsh: How long did that process take? In my head, I’m seeing copywriters who buy the book, a book, and they’re like, oh, here’s the formula in the book. I’m just going to apply that across the board. And it usually doesn’t work because they’re not thinking there yet.

Jason Fladlien: It only works if the context fits the formula. That’s the challenge, right? So like, you know, and I still remember most of this today, even though this is now 16 years ago. The most tried and true headline that you could always use is how to do insert something incredible. In certain specific time without big things that normally would get in the way. So that structure, it’s still one of the best ways to write a headline to this very day. How to do something they desperately desire in a certain specific amount of time without normal obstacles that would prevent or stop them from getting the thing that they want. That covers like all the bases. Now, you could dress that up, you could play with it, but at the end, what does it have? It has a promise in the headline, it has a timeframe associated with it because one of the strongest appeals is instant gratification. There are very few things that are more persuasive than instant results, right? And then it also starts to attack the objections. because the number one reason somebody won’t buy something is because they don’t believe either you or they don’t believe they will get the value out of what you promise. So we do all that economically in a single headline. Now, if we can add proof to it, even better, right? And sometimes the proof itself, I noticed is the whole headline. So you know, the old school headline, like, you know, 65 miles an hour, the loudest sound is the clicking of the ticking of the clock, right?

Rob Marsh: Yep, yep.

Jason Fladlien: The structure of that is that’s a proof headline. If you have compelling enough proof, then that should be your whole headline. And that’s how you should run with it. And so if you don’t have proof, A, you shouldn’t be writing a sales letter, period. I mean, why sell a product that hasn’t proven itself? That’s stupid. It’s like, hey, let’s cut down this tree with a blunt axe, right? Or a butter knife. Let’s cut down the tree with a butter knife. I’m going to be the strongest person in the world. I’m going to work. But there’s proof, and then there’s an insane amount of proof, or proof is the unique mechanism, if you will. If you have this unique amount of proof and you don’t articulate it immediately because you’re following some formula that doesn’t include that, then you’re limiting your capabilities. But at the same time, if your proof is so dang good, you don’t want those other things to get in the way of it. then you don’t need to make a claim. You don’t need to handle an objection because you can just use the strongest dominant appeal of what that offer is. If I could look at any offer and say, okay, I could write a headline one of these four ways, all four of those cover every context and then I’m just guessing. After a while, I get better at guessing. I think for this particular offer, this type of headline is going to be the one that works the best. I didn’t have a formula. I had like four options at each step of the process, and I could pick and choose and apply them based on what I thought made sense. The other thing too, Rob, that people weren’t aware of in 2008, I mean, they still pretend like this doesn’t exist. I could change a headline in two seconds. If it didn’t work, I clickety-clack, clickety-clack, and it’s changed. Again, the old dogs of copywriting from years past, they were going to write an ad, it was six weeks before they could do anything about it. So a lot of people were using these old paradigms in these new emerging markets.

Rob Marsh: So as your business developed then, obviously you were doing all of these digital products. You were also writing copy when it made sense for other people. And what was the balance there? And when did you, because, and I’m making some assumptions here just from hearing you speak, but at some point you basically built an agency and went in with your clients, you know, webinars and all kinds of different marketing materials. So how did that all come together?

Jason Fladlien: Well, what was cool is, you know, it’s so funny, like. It’s hard to make a lot of money just purely as a copywriter, it’s incredibly there’s an upper limit. Yeah, time really is like a Clayton Makepiece can sometimes break through it, that type of talent and still be like a pure copywriter with royalties and arrangements. But those are so incredibly rare. There’s something Gary Benzavinga said that I really liked. I had a client once and he bought the Only 500 seminar or whatever it was that Benzavinga did. It was a $5,000 product. He bought it and he shipped it to me because I was writing copy for him. He bought it just so I could study it. I’m studying it. I was doing this stuff already without even realizing it. Gary Benzavinga tells this story. He was working with a client on an anti-aging product. And he goes to the client and says, Hey, listen, if we had a bonus, uh, where I, we went out and found like 50 women that were like 50 years old, but looked like they were 25. We interviewed them and we created a bonus around them. This could increase the copy. And Benzavinga was given this as an example of, Hey, if you don’t have the necessary ingredients to sell the thing, don’t just say I’m a copyright or I can’t do anything about it. Right. Like, your job is to make the client money. While copywriting is the primary way you do that, if you can give yourself an unfair advantage, why wouldn’t you? And so most copywriters only rely on the copy. I’m just trying to stack the deck as much in my favor as possible. And so when I can write copy for myself, I can control more elements. When I partner with people, what we’re trying to do is I’m trying to find clients with proof that’s underutilized because all I got to do is pull the proof out and that’s it. But what I also discovered is if I can take copy and speak it, Not just write it. That’s an extra skill. There’s no doubt about it. But the return on that skill is so much more valuable than just putting it in a written word. And so I started to notice this, that if I could take copywriting concepts, develop them into presentations, then I could make a tremendous amount more money. And if also copy generally doesn’t add value, it sells something that adds value. So if I could churn copy and blend it into something that was simultaneously valuable as an advertisement, make the ad valuable in and of itself, regardless of whether they bought it or not, then I could have the opportunity to grow and create a brand. and then have the opportunity also to sell all at the same time, which, you know, that’s what I wanted to do. And so the webinar was the best vehicle for that because I could train for 45 minutes. Then I could sell for the remainder of the time and it’s a hybrid model. It’s not pure advertising. Nobody likes advertising. It’s not pure content because that doesn’t really make money very effectively. It’s a blend of content and advertising. By putting those two things together, that’s how I really started to crush it. Webinars were the thing that I found most often for the type of business I ran. There was nothing that could make more money and that’s even true to this very day. But because Rob, I love to work in all kinds of environments. I love to learn how to sell and communicate in all different atmospheres for myself, for clients, as partners, as a publisher, as a spokesperson, I’ve done it all. Each one of those slightly different versions of copy allows me then to infuse that in all of my copy. And that way, I don’t, there’s, There’s a million copywriters that are better than me because they focus on just the copy. I recognize that copy is an element in the whole campaign. I try to get good at all of the elements of the campaign, good enough. Then when you combine them together, it’s multiplicative.

Rob Marsh: That’s actually a really interesting takeaway. I doubt there are a million copywriters better than you, but there might be a couple of hundred, maybe a couple of thousand. But the idea of solving problems as opposed to writing copy is huge. It’s something that we’ve taught for years. But for whatever reasons, I think the same thing is true of designers. Designers get into design because they like to make things look nice. They’re not really there, most of them. This is not categorically true, but they’re not really there because, hey, I’m a designer because I want to make people buy stuff. And I think a lot of writers maybe approach it the same way. It’s like, yeah, I’m really good at writing. And so I’m just going to write good stuff as opposed to I’m here to sell. And I really appreciate your approach here where it’s if I can get good at every step of the process. Now, yeah, I’m a copywriter, but I’m a problem solver. I’m a revenue generator. I’m a sales, you know, system for your business.

Jason Fladlien: I mean, like, it’s good practice to read all your copy after you write it. And we’ve all been told to do that. Read it out loud. Read it to somebody else. Have somebody else read it to you. But it’s like, if I take that same time and just figure out how to add a new bonus to the offer, I’ll probably convert better. My copy won’t be as clean. I didn’t run it through Grammarly. I didn’t try to get it down to a third grade level because that would take another 50 hours, right? I went out there and said, how do I make a better guarantee? And so we use double your money back guarantees. Very rare thing that almost nobody uses in this business. I spend more time on how do I make a better than money back guarantee than how do we use power words in certain verbs in our copy to you know, grease the chute, if you will. All of those are cool things that a lot of copywriters are really good at that I’m not very good at. I’m not even necessarily very good at making sure there’s a tremendous amount of benefits, like, you know, a Eugene Schwartz style copy where, you know, there’s a benefit every three words, right? Like, I probably use too many features and not enough benefits because I’m speed writing that part of the copy. I’m good enough at it. But I’m then saying, how do we make a guarantee that’s better than money back guarantee? How do we do a dramatic demonstration in the copy itself so people can’t forget about it? How do we be different than the last 15 letters that they’ve read? And I find that those are better leverage points to create higher converting copy than most of the mechanics that are related to the copy itself. I’ll give you another one, Rob. It’s better to write two sales letters selling the same product than to try to make one sales letter sell the whole product. So it’s like, I can write a sales letter that focuses purely on the positive aspect of it, and then I could write another sales letter that sells to the negative aspect of it. And why not? It doesn’t cost any more if you’re the one writing it. It’s let me hit this angle for this audience and let me hit this other angle for this other audience, as opposed to trying to write the one sales letter that rules all like, you know, the ring from Lord of the Rings. There’s so much more flexibility than I think people recognize. And so these are some of the principles that were very revolutionary in my day when I was writing copy that I was able to take, run with, develop, you know, some of the most powerful marketing campaigns in our industry that we’ve ever seen as a result of that.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re known for having the highest ever collecting webinar. Is it 50 million?

Jason Fladlien: No, it’s higher than that. 57.9 million, yeah. Yeah, and that’s a great example too, Rob, is if I wanna cook a good meal, I want the best ingredients. And so before we launched that product, the first thing that I did was I got a beta test of clients to run through the system. and then had them agree that I could document all of the results and share them with anybody whenever I wanted to. And we got the results captured in a third party system that there was no funny business that you could do to it. So it was completely authentic. And then when I rolled that campaign out and go, here was our 18 beta tests. I’ll show you all of them. I’m not going to handpick them. I’m going to show you everything, the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s all going on right now. If you want to know exactly how well the system is performing, here you go. It’s right there in front of you. Right now, that was intentionally set up like, by the way, Rob, if it didn’t work. then we don’t launch. We save a lot of time and headache, right? If it kind of worked so-so, we adjust it. We go back and we do a beta test again and we adjust it. But in that case, it worked right away and it worked better than I anticipated it working, so we immediately rushed it out to the market. And now the market is seeing the story unfold in real time. And what’s more exciting than being part of history being made and buying to be part of that history being made? Those were the results of me learning these dynamics. Now, copy’s at the center of it, because how do you communicate your value in a way that your audience can understand that and know that it’s right for them? That’s copy. But it’s so much more organic in this day and age than it ever has been in the past. Now, the purest copy education you could ever learn still comes from the old greats. I think more about Claude Hopkins, and how he would solve a problem than I do with any modern marketer that you can name. But that’s for high level strategy. It’s very little of it is then directly translatable into something that you could like, you know, specifically implement, because you read it over here, you got to do some critical thinking, which is very rare in this day and age.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, all too rare. So let’s talk a little bit about webinars. You’re known as the best webinar guy out there. I know people pay tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get you to write the webinar or present their webinar for them. You’ve got this down. And we’re in a time, you know, the last two years where a lot of people are saying webinars just don’t perform the way they used to. And there’s a little bit of truth to that. But I also know there are webinars out there that are performing just fine. So let’s talk through this. Like for anybody who’s out there writing webinars, selling through webinars, and it’s not going as well as it used to, what do we need to be doing differently?

Jason Fladlien: First, let’s understand where the sentiment comes from. Anything, eventually somebody’s going to say it’s dead. Blank is dead.

Rob Marsh: Email’s dead. Marketing’s dead. Facebook’s dead.

Jason Fladlien: AI will be dead. Here’s what they mean. Here’s what they want. They want to be able to do it half-assed and get a good result. And every new emerging media, if you get there on the trend, then that happens. So like in the old infomercial days, like I heard John Carlton always tell this story, like at first it was free because people had dead air time. So you could do anything and it would make you money. And then there was this golden era where you didn’t have to produce it and you didn’t have to spend hundreds of thousand dollars on infomercials, any of that stuff, right? And it all worked. And so, When people say webinars are dead, what they mean is you can no longer show up, half-ass it, not have a good webinar, follow some old-school script where you’re useful but incomplete, you do some of that stupid nonsense, right? That won’t work because there’s too much supply. There’s too many webinars out there for people to pick from, and so therefore, they’re going to be choosier on the webinars that they want to go with. So no longer can you sleepwalk through a webinar and expect it to do very well. However, all the biggest names in the industry still use webinars. All of the biggest impacts, a webinar is at the center of it. And it’s just a pure fact. I mean, it’s like, But so you have to do it properly, which means you have to be better at it than you used to be. Now, if you’re better at it than you used to be, you’re going to make more money than you used to be able to make, because it’s easier to reach people on the Internet than it ever was before. If you have a good offer, you can scale it 10 times as much. You know, Rob, I’m running an event right now. I didn’t realize I double booked. So I had to sneak out here. And this is a $35,000 per person event. And my business partner is on stage right now interviewing Sean Clark, who’s the CEO of High Level. High Level is a billion dollar valuated company that started six years ago. And so my business partner is downstairs, interviewing a billion dollar company. That was unheard of 10 years ago. You couldn’t come out and make a billion dollar valuation in six years. So if you do it right, the prize is bigger than ever, but you have to be more technically effective with it than you used to be able to. The good news is it’s the same amount of work. It’s always the same amount of work as it ever was. It’s just people don’t ever want to do the work because it’s tough at first and it’s challenging at first. A webinar is very hard to do initially because you have to be A, a good public speaker, which scares the bejesus out of most people. B, you have to be a good coach. So regardless of whether you sell or not, you have to know how to educate and train. And not a lot of people can do that. And then C, you have to know how to sell. which is a separate and distinct skill from everything else. And then D, this is less a problem now, but you’ve got to have the technical stuff all in place. You’ve got to have some sort of funnel with a reg page, a thank you page, an order checkout page, a sequence of emails that go out that glue the whole thing together. So there’s a lot of moving parts in a webinar. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so profitable is because it orchestrates all of these things together in a very beautiful way. So it’s tough. There’s no doubt about it. A webinar is a very hard thing to do. So here’s what most people need to do that they don’t like to hear from me. But this is how I did it. And it’s still true in 2025. First webinar I ever did was not to sell anything to anybody. In fact, the first webinar I ever did is I went to my email list, and these were clients. Most of them had bought these $7, $10, $12 e-books from me. I said, hey, I’m going to create a new product, but I’m going to do it live on a webinar because I want to test out this technology. I’ve never done a webinar before. If you show up, I’ll give you the product for free. If you don’t show up, then you’ll have to buy the product from me later. So 17 people come, that’s it. A measly 17 people, but hey, if you change 17 people’s lives, that’s pretty good actually. So I got on and I trained for like four and a half hours. So now I have four and a half hours of webinar experience under my belt in a low risk, no risk environment. There was no risk. Worst case scenario, people got a free product. Whoops, right? And they liked it. Good. I go back to my audience and say, hey, listen, you didn’t show up. I’m gonna sell this product for 27 bucks or whatever. I’ll give you a second chance. Buy it for $17 for the next 48 hours. And then it converted like crazy. It blew my mind that the thing that the people wouldn’t show up to for free the day before they now are willing to pay for. The conversion rate was really high on that. But here’s what’s cool. I’ve now got a really positive experience in a low-risk environment of doing a webinar. So the next time I do a webinar is I say, hey, listen, I got this training that I do on this. It was copywriting, believe it or not. I had published a book called Three Hour Ad. And the premise was you can write good enough copy in three hours or less from start to finish. That was the whole hook.

Rob Marsh: I like it. I’m ready to buy.

Jason Fladlien: Yeah, and it was a 12-step process, basically. So I said, you know, these are the five types of headlines that I write. These are the five types of leads that I choose from. These are the five types of bullet points, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. So I said, hey, listen, you guys like this product. Many of you bought it and thought it was a really good product. I’m going to teach you the same thing that’s in that $17 e-book, but instead of doing it in an e-book, I’m going to do it over a series of webinars. 12 webinars, one per step seemed very logical to me. If you want to buy, it’s $197. I’m going to take a small audience through it. And I sold that thing out. And by the way, up until that time, Rob, I had never sold anything for more than $47. This is a big ticket for me back then. And so I trained for 12 weeks, one hour, two hours per week. So by the time that that course was finished, I had been now 24 hours on webinars, plus the four hours from the previous training, 28 hours of webinar experience in a single month. Okay. I’m good at training and people like it. And I’ve gotten the technical stuff down. So the next thing that I do is I say, hey, listen, that class went really well. So let me do a webinar to sell the next series of webinars because it’s very logical. Hey, did you like this one webinar we did? Yeah, it was awesome. Want to do it 12 more times or eight more times or nine more times or however many more times? Yes, of course. Sell it for 200 bucks. And so that was the next thing that I did. But see this gradual stair-step approach? Rob, most people want to go out there and they want to do the whiz-bang fancy sales pitch to cold audience webinar from day one. That’s like fighting the black belt in your first day in karate. That’s insane. You ain’t ready for that yet. And so no wonder they inevitably fail. Get your reps in first. Use webinars. Use portions of the webinars. And then once you get positive results from that, add in the next layers on top of that, and you’ll get there faster doing it that way, actually. And so by the time I was now selling, using webinars to sell things that were not other webinars, I had probably put in 40 real-world hours with real people in real environments on webinars before I ever even took the step of what most people want to jump to immediately.

Rob Marsh: When you sit down to write a webinar, what are the first steps? What are the things you’re lining up? And I should mention, you’ve got an entire book on this, one too many. Everybody who uses webinars to sell or writes them for clients ought to have it on their shelf. It walks through templates and all kinds of the stuff that you’re talking about here. But what are the things that you’re like, okay, I’ve got to have this stuff in front of me. And first thing I’m starting with is, is it offer, is it headline, is it promises, is it call to action? Where do you go?

Jason Fladlien: 80% of the time it starts with the offer. So the first slide I usually will write is what I call the call to action slide. And it goes like this. If I had only one slide to sell, what would that slide look like? And so that slide lists every single deliverable that they get. It lists the guarantee. If there’s a guarantee, it lists the price. It lists the call to action. If I have a really cool proof element that I could put on that slide as well, I do that. And now I know everything that I have. And that’s the one slide. So then I say, OK, each deliverable now that needs its own slide. So then I start building out those slides as well. And typically a deliverable will use you need about three to four slides to really sell each deliverable. So. Let’s say, for example, one of the products that I sell on a webinar is how to create info products. So I do a webinar.

Rob Marsh: It’s a really good webinar, by the way. Anybody should get on your list and look for that product because the way you stack the offer, in my opinion, is top notch. I mean, you’re the best at it, for sure. Thank you.

Jason Fladlien: Yeah, so it’s for a product we call Product E-Class, and it’s only 500 bucks. It’s a great lead gen of paid clients. It’s a mid-ticket offer, and we can convert very high on that webinar. One of the deliverables for Product D-Class, there’s a lot of them. Let me think of the one that would be the best as an example there, because God, I do some really fancy stuff with these offers that is a little bit advanced, but I’ll give you a really basic one. One of them is like 101 product ideas. One of the reasons we include that as a deliverable is because years ago on a webinar, I would get the objection, well, Jason, what if I don’t know what to create an info product on? And instead of just, you know, saying, Hey, well, you’re going to be able to find out young buck, right? It was like, I just give them a bonus. You’re going to create an info product on one of these. And so I have a deliverable that not only has these really good, uh, different types of products that are like winners that you could easily twist into your own unique version. I then show you how to take those, combine those together and create even new things that are in demand. And it gives you such a high degree of confidence that no matter what, you’re going to have a killer product idea. And so that’s a deliverable. And so I will write out two or three or so slides that will sell the value of that. Here’s what it is. Here’s why it’s awesome. Here’s what life will be like once you use this. That’s typically the formula, right? Then I try to eliminate as much of that as I possibly can, so maybe I get it down to one or two slides. Then do I have proof that can show how cool it is? In that case, I have an animated GIF of me scrolling through the product and they say, wow, I want that. You build out a deliverable like that. Another deliverable I do, this is a conditional bonus, is a really powerful way of making an offer. is I say, hey, you know, my consulting time, by the way, is $3,500 an hour. That’s not a made up price anchor. That’s like people. Far more people pay me that than I can even take on at this point, right? My calendar is fully booked for the time I allow for that as a consult, consulting. One of the bonuses I offer for Product D class is a half an hour of consulting with me. That’s a legit retail value of $1,750 on a $500 product. It’s stupid. It doesn’t make any sense. Now, here’s the catch. It’s conditional. And I let them know it’s conditional. I say, once you use these strategies and you sell $10,000 of an info product, then you get to book a call with me. I’m happy to do that half hour. Rob, worst case scenario, I get another testimonial that I can use in my marketing, right? But that’s a great bonus. So I know that that’s one of the deliverables. So I’m going to write a couple of slides around that deliverable. And then I have another bonus where I give them three resale rights to products that I’ve already created. And that kills the objection. What’s the objection? What if I don’t have a product by the time I take your class? Well, you’ll have three. Yeah, they’re not yours, but you still have them. And so that you when you start adding these up for a $500 product, it’s stupid. It’s like only an idiot wouldn’t buy it at that price point, right? So that’s where we start. So I build out those offers, I all of those slides, and I might have 15 or 20 or 30 slides just on the deliverables. I also do a better than money back guarantee. So I basically say, hey, listen, all you have to do is document your progress twice a day for 60 days straight. And if you don’t make twice your money back on this course, I will pay you twice your money back. So I have to build that out over a couple of slides. And yeah, this is just completely insane at this point in time.

But now I have my offer, my whole offer section, that’s all built out. And that’s where I will start on a webinar. And then what’s cool is when I create the content section, which is what I’ll create next, a big part of that is how do I set up the offer? Like, what are things that I can do to then get people excited about what this offer is? Now, everything I just talked about was deliverables as bonuses. Those are free stuff. The actual thing that they get is they get, I think it’s six or eight weeks of training recorded one one session per week, where we focus on strategy. So I have eight different ways that I can make money with with info products, eight unique separate models, and they get all eight of those models, or all six of them, I think it’s six at this point. So that’s the core offer. And that I’m like, how do I set that up? How do I use what’s in the content to set up what’s in the offer? And so that’s when I’ll create the content next. What I try to do, Rob, there is I have a paradigm shift. The number one thing I think about in a webinar, in the content portion of it, is what’s the biggest excuse that would stop somebody from doing this? And how do I destroy that excuse so they no longer have it? And so with info products, the biggest excuse they have is I’m never going to get it done. It’s going to take too long. It’s going to be too hard. I’m not an expert. I’m not qualified in order to do it. I don’t know how to drive traffic to it. It’s impossible. I mean, that’s the attitude coming in. They’re like, God, I want it. I wish I had it. I would be so happy. Oh, my God, my world be so good. But this is the excuse.

Rob Marsh: Well, and there’s probably a bunch of people who have tried it and failed because it’s not the easiest thing to do. Right. So yeah.

Jason Fladlien: So my paradigm on that webinar is you’re going to create a product in one sitting. That solves one problem with one solution, and you’re going to sell it at a stupid low price. That’s it. So you will get it done. Is it perfect? Hell, no, it’s not perfect. Are you going to retire from it? Nope, you’re not going to retire from it. But look at all of these amazing things that you can do. So one of the examples I give in that webinar is I show, hey, here’s a book on Amazon. It’s like 270 pages that I read that I bought and I read and it’s like 10 bucks. I said, now, let me let me tell you, there was one page in that book that changed everything for me. And I show that page in the book. I said, Now, let me ask you a question, because that page had like a four step process. If I took that one page, and then took each step and only wrote a page per step, and then wrote one page for the introduction and one page for the conclusion. The result is a six-page e-book. And we sold it for half the price of a 354-page regular book. So regular books, 10 bucks on Amazon, 354 pages. My model would take that same book, make it six pages, sell it for five bucks. And then I asked the audience a question, what do you think people would prefer? The six-page $5 book or the 350-page $10 book?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, almost everybody wants to start at least with the six page intro, right?

Jason Fladlien: What’s easier to sell? Six pages or 350 pages? What’s easier to create? What’s easier to call out to people? Because the 350 pages is a broad mass market appeal. The six pages, as you can point it at some very narrow audience very specifically and cut through the noise, right? Now, this takes about 15 minutes to explain, because this is a concept that I want to make sure everybody in the world can understand 100 percent. clarity and certainty. So I got to create content around that. So a majority of that webinar is proving that one point. This is where less is more. This is where the right type of research, knowing how to shape and communicate products in a specific fashion designed to sell them in this context. This is how anybody who knows this strategy can be successful with it. And you don’t have to be an expert, and you don’t have to take six months, and you don’t have to do all these complicated things, and you’re gonna sell it incredibly cheaply because you’re new. And people can believe that. People can understand that. People can accept that. And then you’ve got to remember, now here’s the transition to the pitch. Once you do this, then you can take all these other models that I know about info products. Because I can show you 100, because I’ve sold over $100 million worth of them. I can show you all the other strategies. But you’ve got to start with the first brick. And then you can add the bricks to it. And then you get this bonus. And you get that bonus. And you get this bonus. And you get that bonus. And you get a double your money back guarantee. And people are like, if I’m ever even thinking about doing anything in the info product space, I’d be a complete moron if I didn’t buy this offer. And that’s how the whole thing is kind of structured. And then once you have the content, then you write the intro and you write the transition for it. Those are the, yeah, I write the intro last because how do I know what to introduce until I’ve created it? And then the transition is what’s the easiest way to shift them from learning something to wanting to own the thing that you’re selling them. And so then those are the, uh, the other two pieces we connect together.

Rob Marsh: So I’m going to try to link to that webinar in the show notes for this episode. I’ve watched it a couple of times. Like I said, I think the way you stack everything there is just so good. It’s a masterclass on webinars, which then you also have, you know, you do the same thing with webinars and you’ve got several products where you do the same kind of thing. So I’ll definitely link to it because, again, I think a lot of copywriters could learn a lot about webinars just watching it. And of course, they probably ought to buy the product, too. especially if they want their own digital products. I want to ask you about AI and how AI is changing what we’re doing, particularly with webinars in the sales space. Or is it changing? Is it something that you’re paying attention to? What are you doing differently now that AI is becoming a big part of marketing, really?

Jason Fladlien: Yeah, I’m very nervous on how people are using AI in their webinars right now. Because if you ask it, write a webinar like Jason Fladlin, it’ll get about 70% of it right. 20% of it, it will deviate in a non important way. And then 10% of it, it will be disastrous if you implement it, okay? I just got back from France, Rob. We went there for 21 days. We rented a Peugeot, which is like, you know, some European vehicle. And over in Europe, you don’t know if a car takes diesel or it takes gas. Like, you just don’t know, right? And to make matters worse, I’ve driven Teslas for 10 years, so I was telling my wife, I’m like, I haven’t pumped gas in a decade. I was nervous because I hadn’t pumped gas before and now we’re in a foreign country. And she said, I know, I’ll just ask Chad GPT. And Chad GPT tells her that this Peugeot takes diesel. And I go, I know it doesn’t because I opened it up and I showed her, see, this thing takes gas. And if we would have listened to stupid Chad GPT, we would have put diesel in a gas vehicle. And same thing with chess right now. If you try to have ChatGPT play chess, it will make up rules that don’t exist, and it will move pieces that don’t exist. So a lot of people are thinking, cheap bastards that they are, hey, I’m not going to buy Jason’s stuff. I’m just going to use ChatGPT. that will lose you more money than paying right now for what I’m doing. So now here’s how we’ve been able to help clients use AI to write better webinars. It’s not a widespread approach. It’s a scattershot narrow approach.

So we only train it on my material. We don’t allow it to deviate from my material. And we do it at a hyper-granular level. So we teach it a technique that might take up five slides. And so it’s a lot of preparation. To create a little GPT or a little agent on the thing, that outputs may be something that adds two minutes to your webinar, but we know then with absolute certainty that it’s doing things right, because we make its scope so very small that it can’t deviate outside of that scope. And as of now, that’s the only way that we can control the quality of the output. And so what I did, Rob, and this has taken me about 40 hours now, I sat down and created, fill in the blanks, for all of these micro slices of a webinar. I went through all of my best webinars and anytime I saw any technique that I use that could be fill in the blanks, I could create a structure around it, I wrote the structure. Then we created three examples and three different niches on how to apply the structure and then train the AI on that. And then now the AI for that one technique or that one tactic can do it incredibly well, better than most human beings can do it, with rare exception, and faster, of course. And that’s what we’re doing it. So if you actually dissect a webinar and you try to reconstruct it, there might be 86, 96, 106 different little GPTs that you could build it around. And that’s how we’re doing it. Because damn it, there’s too much money not to do it right. And so I’ll give you I’ll give you an example. I’m doing this at the top of my head. So I might get this slightly wrong. But one of the intros that I create in webinars goes along this way. Well, maybe I maybe I have a fill in the blank that I can show you here. Yeah, let me just pull up one. I’m sure I could find one. I’ll give you an example. Because what I’m learning now is, the more I can give people the things that they can use with the least amount of ways that they could screw it up.

Rob Marsh: That’s just, that’s just offer 101, right? Like, how do I make this easy for you to get the result you need?

Jason Fladlien: Yeah, but it’s like, God, yeah, if I let them kind of even think for themselves, like even my clients until they get to a certain point, man, it just doesn’t. They kind of mess it up a lot of times. So let me let me find one of these intros. I’ll give you an example, OK? And this is the fill in the blanks. So this is a good way to start a webinar. You say to them, I stand today before you with a tall task, a challenge, a great duty that I feel obligated to do my absolute best at. Now, if I can meet this challenge, then I will insert accomplishment here and insert another accomplishment here. Plus, I’ll finally be able to put an end to your insert problem here and insert other problem here. So you can insert specific results here. My goal here today, my job, my duty then is to present to you the very best insert type of information on insert topics so you can insert benefits here and so I can insert your own benefits as a presenter. I come to you today with a message more timely than ever, more important than ever, more impactful than ever, yet a message that is more neglected and overlooked than ever and a message most people are unfairly resistant to even though it holds the key to insert solution that they desperately desire here.

That’s a GPT that we can put in place that if people follow, we’ll give them the first three minutes of their webinar, maybe, or two, or four. But it comes from an intro that I’ve done very successfully in a webinar in the past, where if you just listen to the hook of it, I stand today before you with a tall task, a challenge, a great duty that I feel obligated to do my absolute best at. It’s dramatic immediately. There’s poetry. And there’s meter and there’s rhythm on how the words are delivered, which is kind of important, right? And then, you know, I start to add these things. And if I can meet this challenge, then I will be able to say that I blah, blah, blah. And I will be able to feel proud about how I was able to help you. And it’s like, oh my God, now it’s your selfish best interest. So a lot of people, when they do a webinar, they screw it up. They never tell the audience why they’re doing the webinar. It’s insane to me, Rob, right? Because if you don’t speak it out loud, then at least subconsciously there’s going to be resistance.

What’s the catch? What’s the angle? Why is this guy, out of the goodness of his own heart, training me? So many webinars miss that. So there’s a lot of ways you can address that. The best way is selfishness. Hey, I’m doing this webinar because it’s gonna make me a bunch of money. There’s not a better reason why that I’ve ever found than that, right? Oh, yeah, you’re gonna benefit too, but this is selfish for me. But you don’t care because it’s so good for you that it doesn’t matter, right? And so like, I baked that in so people could have a reason why for it. Here’s how it benefits me as a presenter, not just here’s how it benefits you as an attendee. I address an objection immediately in the beginning of the webinar, which is always important, because I say in this one, I say, yet a message that is more neglected and overlooked than ever, a message most people are unfairly resistant toward. I’m already bringing up their excuse. Now, a lot of people that do webinars are afraid to do that. But what I found is if you can immediately as fast as possible, put them in the state of like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get through to you because you cling to your problem as if it has value, right? The better you and the quicker you can do that, the better you’re likely to sell to somebody. The more direct you can be about the reasons why they won’t buy from you at the end, the more they will end up buying from you at the end. And so we dig that in there. Yeah, so that’s how that works. But again, that’s two or three minutes of a webinar. Now, I’ll give you another one. So this is during the pain section of the introduction of the webinar, because immediately in the first three minutes, I like to challenge all of their misconceptions.

So here’s a piece of copy that we’re putting into AI that will do that. It goes like this. Before diving in, let’s clear up some misconceptions that keep insert audience with problem. Misconception number one, insert excuse. Tell why it’s not a valid excuse. Then say, we’ll discuss more of this later. That’s an open loop, right? Misconception number two, put the excuse in there, explain. and why it’s not a valid excuse, and then say, once I show you the specifics, this will completely change the game for you. That’s a second open loop, right? Then misconception number three, put that excuse in there, explain why it’s not a valid excuse, and then say, by focusing on what I’ll show you, then this will become insert benefit here, instead of disadvantage that you currently think it is. Now, we’ve opened three loops, we’ve addressed the problem, we promised a solution to it, we haven’t told what that solution is. And AI will be really good at knowing what the excuses are. Now, here’s how we are using it currently. We say, give me 12 excuses or 15 or 20 excuses that this audience might have. And then we manually pick the three or four that we think are the legitimate actual excuses. So instead of me having to really think hard about the excuses, I get a pick of 20. This is no different than how I rate bullet points, Rob, and most copywriters. All right, 200 bullet points or 50 bullet points, and then I’ll throw away 30 or 40 of them and I’ll keep five or 10 that are really good. Or maybe I’ll combine a couple together. So it’s like, you know, give me 27 excuses that people that are in this specific niche might have, and then I will pick the three or four or five. out of it, and that’s how we’re using that. And then again, that’s another two minutes of the webinar. Here’s what people want, Rob, and it almost never works. They want to feed a script in, they want AI to spit out the whole webinar for them.

Rob Marsh: And they would have the AI deliver it if they could as well.

Jason Fladlien: And that would be very sad. Or happy for me, because I will make a sale that you will lose, but sad for you, it’s not there yet. Could it be there one day? I don’t know. I do know it’s not there yet. But if I can get it to give me two minutes here, two minutes here, two minutes here, two minutes there, and that cuts my writing time in half, and I can outsource some of this now that I was having trouble outsourcing it with before, that’s where the win is for now. And that’s how we’re using AI. And to me, that’s very exciting. It’s also exciting too, because my clients, they don’t have a lot of confidence in themselves. Most of them don’t. So if a robot tells them it’s okay, then all of a sudden they can move forward with it. So that’s the other way we’re using AI. Well, the AI… Permission. Yeah, it’s permission, right? It’s psychological. It’s not actual, right?

Rob Marsh: Same reason people get certifications. It’s literally permission to do the thing that you probably already know how to do.

Jason Fladlien: They can blame the bot if it doesn’t work instead of themselves. Right. Exactly.

Rob Marsh: Exactly. Well, Jason, we’re out of time. And at three thousand dollars an hour, I’m not sure I can pull you away from your other clients. You know, keep talking about all this stuff. I just want to encourage anybody who’s been listening and intrigued by what you’ve shared to jump on your list. You write about all of this stuff almost daily. Maybe it’s daily. It shows up in my inbox a lot. So And beyond that, you even talk about things like your personal operating system, the prosperity algorithms and other stuff so they can learn from you. But where’s the number one place that they should be going to connect with you and where you’re sharing with your audience right now?

Jason Fladlien: Yeah, we’re building Instagram. So, I did all this stuff without any social media. So, follow me on Instagram. It’s just at Jason Fladlien and definitely get the book One to Many. It’s on Amazon.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, fantastic book. I’ve got it on the shelf behind me and every time I sit down to work on a webinar, I pull it out. There’s just so much good information in there that I’m sure I’m screwing up that extra 30% like the AI is, but it’s worth having.

Jason Fladlien: It’s better to have a webinar out there than no webinar at all, right? Exactly.

Rob Marsh: Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it, Jason.

Jason Fladlien: All right, thanks, Rob.

Rob Marsh: Thanks Jason Fladlin for walking through webinars and creating digital products, as well as sharing his process for learning copywriting. If you listened to the throwback episode with Jason Rutkowski that we published last month at the end of December 2024, you probably picked up on some similarities between how both Jasons broke down the elements of copy into reusable blocks that could be pieced together like a Lego model. Having 10 to 12 go-to headline formulas and another 10 hooks that you can reuse and blocks for guarantees and calls to action and proof elements, authority building, overcoming objections. When you have all of these, assembling a sales page or a sales email or a webinar becomes so much easier. You just take one block and mix it with the next. And the very best way to get all of those is to read copy, break it down into its components, and create your own swipe file of copy blocks. That takes a lot of work. You heard Jason Fladlin say that it took him about eight months of constant work. But once you know them, they’re always there at your fingertips to use on every new assignment that you take on. This is something that I’ve been thinking about working on myself. I’ve got several folders full of these kinds of examples, but adding some structured swipe file study time to my own day may help me improve even more, and I invite you to do that as well.

I mentioned that we would like to link to a couple of Jason’s webinars in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. I’ve done that, but links change from time to time. So hopefully these will still be working if you listen a few weeks or even a few months after today’s episode goes live. Those webinars, those sales pages are really worth watching and checking out and even studying, even if you have no intention of buying the products that Jason mentions. Jason is a master seller. You’re going to learn from watching him or listening to what he has to say. But more than that, notice at what point in the webinar you go from, I’m just watching this to learn to, actually, maybe I should buy this product. Because if you understand how Jason makes this happen, you’re going to be a better copywriter. So check out those links in the show notes, then set aside some time to watch the webinars. I’m not an affiliate for any of these programs. I’m simply sharing because when you see someone selling this effectively, it’s worth paying extra attention to.

One more thing, Jason’s book called One to Many is an easy way to learn the basic format for webinars that actually work. He shares some of those copy blocks that I mentioned a couple of moments ago in the book. So you can be sure to check that out as well. It’s also linked in the show notes.

 

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 Questions The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The 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.