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.

Lewis’ Website

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.

SmartBlogger

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.

Erica’s Website

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.

Jason’s Info Product Webinar

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.

Jude’s Book (audio)

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. I remember I had been to TCC IRL the first year, which was only about 50 people. And then I came back the next year and it was much bigger than I was expecting. But yeah, I remember just almost like walking away from that and saying, you know what, I can’t do this. Because I went to tech check the rehearsal. And I remember looking at the room and I’m just like, I can’t speak in front of all these people. Like, this is crazy. But I pushed past my comfort zone and did it. And that’s what started this journey that’s what I feel like has been a process of reinvention for the last five years, where I have been on over 150 podcasts as a guest. speaking and sharing and sharing my purpose, which I believe is to lead and empower entrepreneurs to have relentless courage, but also sharing just my own journey vulnerably about my experiences going beyond business. And so in the last two years, I have been contemplating this transition that I’d kind of put out in the atmosphere that I would walk away from video production. But I think in 2014, not 2014, 2024, what was of wild for me is that it was the year that I received the most messages from people that basically told me how I, through my voice, I changed their life. And I don’t know if I shared this with you, I had to have when we were talking last, because I think it had happened already, but I got this one email from a lady back in November, and it started with this line that immediately caught my attention. It was a very long email, and I wasn’t gonna read it at first, but it was this line at the beginning that said, my father died a week after walking me down the aisle.

Rob Marsh: That’s a great line. That is a really, really good hook. Sad, sad as well.

Jude Charles: Right, and she’s not a copywriter, I was just like, wait, where is this going? Because it’s in response to an email that I send out that you probably remember is the email that I talk about right before my 30th birthday, I went to Colombia, the country of Colombia, and got lost pretty much. And so at the end of the email, I asked readers, what did you do for your last birthday? And so she starts that way. And it’s like, wait, she’s not answering the question, but she’s going on this long journey. And ultimately, what she shared with me is that, She lost her dad back in 2010, right after she got married. And then most recently, she lost her uncle, which is her dad’s brother. And in losing her dad’s brother, she felt like she was losing this connection to her dad. And she was spending time remembering her dad. He used to wear this hat called Life is Good. And she was like, his whole life, he never wore a hat. But just about a month before he passed away, he started wearing this hat, and on the hat it said, life is good. She couldn’t figure out why he was wearing this hat. But in losing her uncle, thinking about her dad, she decided she needed to hear a calm voice. And so she looked up my name on the podcast app. 

Now, I don’t have a podcast, but like I mentioned, I’ve been on over 150 podcasts. And she’s obviously heard me on maybe one or two, and so she looked it up, and what she decided to click on was a podcast I did recently that’s not in her industry. She sells draperies and blinds, window blinds, right? But she clicked on a podcast that I think was called something like How to Grow Your Etsy Business or something like that. And she listens to this hour-long podcast, but in the last two minutes of this podcast, the podcast host asks me, hey, what books are you reading right now? And I share with her, you know, two books that I’m reading. And then she’s like, I want to send you this book. And I think you’ll really love it. The book is called Life is Good. And it’s behind the brand that is Life is Good. And it was all this lady needed that went to go listen to this podcast to feel a deep connection with her dad again. 

And Rob, as I read this email, I started crying because I think to myself how I downplay sometimes. about the idea of me getting on podcasts and sharing and talking and doing all these things. And of course, I get on and talk about storytelling and what I’ve done in the last 18 years. But then there are people who need, in a dire moment, they need something different. They need something deeper. And what are the odds that this lady clicks on something that is not in her industry, that she finds an answer to her problem that has nothing to do with video production or storytelling, which is what I do, but it’s exactly what she needed. 

And so this year, you asked me what I’ve been up to this last year is like figuring all of that out because the process of reinvention is not just about how do I grow in this industry that I’m in or how do I scale the business to this big thing? It’s like, how do you grow you? Right? And I know that’s the conversation we started and that’s what I’ve been thinking, even as I, every year I take two months off, June and December, I’m just coming off of my December break. And it’s a lot of what I spent time thinking about because when I did my analysis, I realized there were 16 different messages I got last year that I didn’t, I didn’t tally it up in the beginning. I wasn’t really paying attention to it in the beginning, but after going through the analysis and realizing, wait, I’m living out my purpose in a much different way than I expected. So that’s what I’ve been up to. That’s so interesting.

Rob Marsh: I want to ask you about, well, I want to go back basically to that first couple of talks, podcasts, whatever, because it’s really interesting to me that that was so hard for you because you’re the guy who’s behind the camera, forcing other people to step up and tell their stories. You’ve been doing that for years. Years, yep. And as soon as the tables are turned, it’s a struggle. Talk a little bit about that and the realization of how hard it is to put yourself, I mean, I’m guessing you found a new bit of compassion or empathy for the people that you’re talking to on the other side because now you’re not just the one telling them to do it. You’re the one that’s gone through that process yourself and you know how hard it is.

Jude Charles: Yeah, it was a 13-year process that I had my head down before I ever decided I was going to get on stage and talk about what I do, or not even just being on stage. It’s just public speaking in general. I had never really done public speaking before that. Other than doing presentations to clients, I had never taken the time to say, hey, this is my expertise. I’m going to share it with a wide audience and just see how it goes. I’d never uploaded YouTube videos or anything like that. Even though I had social media, I wasn’t promoting my business on social media. I was just putting up random pictures, random videos. 

And so, yeah, having gone through that first year, I’ll say, one, being on stage at TCC IRL gave me the courage, because it wasn’t just that I did it. That was cool. It was what people had to say after that really surprised me. They came up. I remember telling the skydiving story, and I started with that. I can’t remember her name, but there was someone that came up to me. She was one of the first people that came up to me after I got off stage, and she was just like, thank you for your vulnerability. She was like, I had no idea who you were, but in the first five minutes you told me this story, and she’s like, I feel like I know you now. 

And then another year at TCC, because I’ve spoken multiple years, I remember when I talked about burnout, there was another woman who came up and she was just like, I didn’t know what I was going through until you started sharing your story. And now I realize the symptoms, and I can go get help. It was never easy to tell these stories or to get on stage or to get on podcasts. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know if it would work. What was most surprising is what people would take away from what I was sharing that in theory I knew was like, oh, this is something that was powerful for me, but I didn’t know it would be powerful for others. I think It was, I didn’t understand, like you mentioned, the empathy that, I didn’t understand what my clients are going through when they would be afraid of how they look on camera, or they would be afraid of how they sound even. A lot of people don’t like the way their voice sounds. 

Because I’ve wanted to get better at public speaking, every podcast I’ve ever been on, I go back and listen to. and now I get it. I’m like, what was I saying there? Why was I saying, or why do I sound like that? There are times I see myself on camera and I’m just like, I must have been tired that day. It hasn’t been easy, but I look at it as, it’s still not easy. Even getting on this podcast this morning, it’s still not easy. But I look at it as an opportunity to just be human, to forget everything else and just be human and have this one-on-one connection. I think about, I literally replay in my mind what is my purpose and it’s to lead and empower entrepreneurs to have relentless courage. And if I walk away just having given you more courage today, Rob, that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter how I sound. It doesn’t matter if I’m getting the words out right. It just matters that I share what I have.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, this is tactical, but I struggled with the same thing. I mean, I’ve done the podcast now. We’re closing in on 470 episodes. There’s a bunch of unnumbered episodes beyond what we have. I go back. I listen to every one of them as we go through the edit process and I hear myself talk. I hate it. 450 plus episodes later, I still hate it. It’s not because I don’t like my voice. I’m fine with my voice, the way that I sound. It’s that even after doing this literally for 500 hours, I still sometimes stumble to get a question. I pause, like I’m doing right now. As I’m thinking, I say, um and all that stuff. And it just kills me to listen to it. And yet, I will say, I’m really proud of the fact that for seven and a half years, almost eight years, maybe eight years, I’ll have to add it all up, since 2017, January 1st, we have released at least one podcast episode every single week, never missed, which has been, I mean, it’s a great run, right? And I’ve heard like you from a lot of people who say this podcast is the thing that got them started on copywriting or taught them that they had permission to raise their prices or help them understand that something was even a niche. And so like you, I feel a responsibility in a lot of ways to keep showing up even though there are plenty of days when I sit down and I think the last thing I want to do today is edit a podcast, listen to my own voice, stumbling to ask a question. I just think we need a lot more of this from everybody. It’s probably not a podcast for most people. Maybe it’s a book or maybe it’s, you know, regularly posting something different, outstanding, whatever, wherever it is that people post. Or maybe it’s just calling up a friend and having it, you know, talking with them, somebody that you haven’t talked with in a few weeks, right? There’s so many ways that this shows up.

Jude Charles: What was it for you though that, like, yes, you mentioned you’ve done this pretty much at this point, 500 hours, 500 episodes, but what was it for you that was like, If I don’t show up, this person won’t get what they need. I’m asking specifically that thing because I think to your point of it’s hard on certain days where it’s just like, I don’t really want to do this. I don’t really want to write another email. I don’t want to get on stage and speak. What was it that shifted for you or that reminds you? Because for me, that story of this woman and life is good is now anchored. That’s my anchor point now. What was it for you? Was there a moment that got you?

Rob Marsh: There are two things. One is a moment, but the first thing is the habit. Because I have done it for so long, every single week, the habit is there. It’s on my calendar, it’s in the back of my head. If I don’t have podcast guests scheduled a few weeks out, I start thinking who can I talk to that would bring something of value, talk about something a little bit differently. or have a different kind of conversation. So that’s always there. So the habit kind of forces it to happen. But there are times when I’ve thought, okay, well, maybe now is the time to quit. So a couple of weeks ago, I addressed on the podcast that Kira is no longer actively participating in the business. And when she just made that decision, that was an opportunity to say, well, maybe now is the time to pull the plug and do something different. And I had a conversation with Linda Perry, my friend. You know Linda well, I believe. Yep. She’s been on the podcast four times, five times. An awesome individual. And as we were talking, she just said, you can’t stop this because too many people need this podcast, the information, the ideas, the connection. 

She didn’t necessarily say why, but I think a big part of that is copywriting and content writing and even marketing to some extent is a very lonely venture, especially those of us that are freelancing. Most of us don’t see another adult other than maybe our spouse the entire day, unless we happen to go grocery shopping or maybe you run out for your coffee or whatever it is. And so this connection that happens through a podcast and being able to have a discussion with you, it’s not just about you and me. But there are ultimately 5,000 to 7,000 people who are going to be listening to this over the next couple of weeks. And hopefully, they get something from that that makes them think a little bit less about, oh, I’m in on this all by myself. No, there’s an army of people doing this too. We just don’t have a great way of connecting with each other except for the Facebook groups and podcasting. 

I’ve mentioned this a couple of times. Podcasting is really personal because unlike every other kind of media in the world, television, magazines, books, billboards, whatever, all of that stuff happens outside of our heads. But because most of us listen to podcasts with headphones, the discussion actually happens inside between our ears. And so it’s very personal. It happens where we do our deepest thinking. And so the ability to bring great ideas or insights or things that people haven’t tried, or even conversations like this, and have it be inside your brain is just, I mean, for me, it’s really gratifying that I’m able to hopefully do that for people. And I’m not patting myself on the back here. I mean, I know there’s some value to a lot of the stuff that we share, but if I didn’t do it, I’m sure somebody else would do it, maybe in a different way. And so it’s not really about me, but it’s about this opportunity to have these kinds of conversations.

Jude Charles: I’d argue it’s not about you though, because I would not… So my journey of speaking and putting myself out there, stepping out of the shadows, that’s what I call it. When I made a conscious decision in 2019 to step out of the shadows, that started with you. And It started because I started listening to the podcast. The only reason I knew about TCC IRL, even though I’m not a copywriter, is because I had been thinking about, okay, what’s next? I had been in business 13 years at that point and I’m, it’s like, okay, I’ve been doing this a long time. I know it’s not my end game. So what’s next? How do I shift this? How do I go to something different? And listening to the podcast for me was really powerful because it showed me what was possible out there. 

But then coming to TCC IRL, and being, transparently, being one of the only few black people there, you can sit in a room and feel lost or feel invisible. and it was just you having a conversation with me saying, hey, I think you should be on stage. You never heard me speak before, but it was just like, you should be on stage. Just getting to know a little bit about what I had been doing, you’re like, you should be on stage and you challenged me because I wasn’t looking for that opportunity. That’s why I say I think some of it has to do with you because I think between you and Kira, you guys have an ability to see things in other people that they can’t see. You guys have been in copywriting for so long, doing great work that you understand the industries so deeply, and still having a student-like mentality, but what you bring, no one else can bring that. Are there other copywriting podcasts? Absolutely. Are there other copywriting resources? Absolutely. 

But truthfully, for me, I haven’t listened to any others or been a part of any other community other than TCC. And I think that has a lot to do with you. It has a lot to do with Kira. So I’d argue that because even for myself, like I mentioned, I downplayed a lot of just, oh, I just get on here and share storytelling. And maybe I share a little bit about who I am, but it’s not that deep. And I’m realizing it is. Because like you mentioned, not only copywriting, marketing is a very lonely world. Entrepreneurship is lonely. And you have to be, you have to make a conscious effort to say that no, I’m not gonna, I’m gonna seek help in whatever way you seek help, whether it’s watching YouTube videos, going to conferences, listening to podcasts. But then I’m actually gonna pay attention to what people are saying and do something about how I’m feeling. Entrepreneurship to me is spiritual. It’s a spiritual journey of stepping out on faith, of finding the thing that feeds your soul, and that happens through the connection we have with people. And I wouldn’t be where I am today. I know you don’t take any credit for where I am today, but I wouldn’t, I genuinely would not be here had it not been for you in New York looking at me and saying, no, you should be on stage.

Rob Marsh: It’s interesting you say that too, because I’m not sure, like you’re right. I did not know you. We had never had a conversation before that day and you were sitting there. Uh, but there was just like this, it was an idea. It’s a thought where it was just like, you need to talk to Jude and say he belongs on stage. Like, and so whether you want to look at that spiritually or whether that was just an idea that, you know, came to me because you happened to be there when I was thinking about what we do next year or next time or whatever. I don’t know how to assign the blame there, but I think you’re probably right. It probably is a spiritual thing. And maybe that was the thing you needed to hear at that time. And I just happened to be the vehicle for it. And I think that that’s why I wanted to have this discussion and record it because I think there’s so many people out there listening that are just waiting for that person to say, it’s time for you to do this. It’s time for you to take the next step. And because we’re all alone, it’s hard to get that person into our lives. to hear that voice.

Jude Charles: Sometimes people have already said it, but we’re not paying attention to it. I still had to make a conscious decision. After you said what you said, I think what my words to you were is I’ll think about it because I had never done it, but I still had to go back home and make a conscious decision. Am I going to do this? Rob has challenged me, but am I going to accept the challenge? Even like I said, I’ve looked at the last year, just what people have been saying. It’s like, okay, what do I do differently now that people have shared this with me? It’s easy. As we’re growing, we’re ambitious entrepreneurs and we want to make more money and all these things. It’s easy to focus so much on what’s missing that you miss what’s actually there.

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

Jude Charles: and what’s there are the strengths that you already have, the messages that you have received from people but you downplayed and like, oh, that thing you just told me I was good at that, oh, that’s nothing, so what, right? I’m not sure what you saw in me that day in 2018, I think it was. I don’t know what you saw, but I know I had to say, okay, he sees something I may not even know what it is. He may not know what it is, but I can nurture this. I can decide I’m gonna do this and figure it out. And I showed up authentically on stage. For those who probably don’t know, when I showed up to TCCIRL 2019, I wore a black cape.

Rob Marsh: By the way, we have that presentation inside the underground if anybody ever wants to check it out. And it’s a great presentation.

Jude Charles: Yes, but it was intimidating. It was intimidating because I am a filmmaker showing up in a room with copywriters, marketers and copywriters. It’s like, what is this guy doing here? I showed up authentically and people loved it and you guys kept inviting me back and so I kept wearing the black cape, but I still had to accept the call. As people think about how do I reinvent myself, it’s the top of the year, I probably didn’t meet my goals last year or I don’t like the way last year went. How do I reinvent myself? 

You got to think about, I think I think about two things often. How do you strengthen your strengths, number one, and number two, what have people shared with you? Message, whether it’s a DM, whether it is an email like I talked about, whether it’s whatever, what have people shared with you? that you’re downplaying, that is probably one of your strengths that you should lean more into. I never had the idea of speaking on stage or talking. I came to TCCIRA that first year because I was like, maybe I can combine copywriting with video. That’s all I was thinking. I was just thinking, how do I grow the business? I was never thinking about, how do I grow me? And going through that journey of speaking more often and now receiving these messages years later is just like, I’ve realized this whole entire time, the process of reinvention has been about growing me, and not just growing the business. 

Yeah, it’s great to make money and all those things, and I’ve done that, but I also needed to grow, and I needed to pay attention to what people were saying to me. It’s not my intention to go through like, oh, this is a spiritual journey, but maybe it really is. You are not some random person that is just here to exist and take up space, right? You’re here to fulfill a purpose, whatever that purpose may be. It may not be necessarily serving clients, but it may be, like you did for me, just sharing something, nudging me to say, I think you should be on stage, and it completely transformed my life. That to me is that spiritual journey that I don’t know how to define it other than you have to answer the call and the call has probably already been put out there.

Rob Marsh: That’s a really good point because most of us have that negative voice in our head, maybe all of us, so we’re always discounting what other people say, especially the good stuff. Of course, we’re magnifying any of the bad stuff that happens. you know, we’re unworthy or we don’t know enough, or there’s somebody out there that’s better at doing this thing. And so that’s always happening. And you even said, maybe that was happening a little bit after I extended the invitation, you sort of had to come over that kind of head trash and be willing to step out. But it’s one thing to say it, you know, oh yeah, you’ve got to take the next step or listen to the person or whatever. But let’s talk about what were the concrete things that you did as you started thinking through this because you didn’t just show up with a presentation. Rob extends an invitation and I know exactly what I’m going to talk about. So how did you get, and it’s not even really to that first presentation, it’s really to where you are today. What are some of those steps that you went through to figure out, okay, this is the next piece. This is the next part that I’m going to fit in here or that I’m going to stretch and reach out for?

Jude Charles: It’s a great question. If I think back to that first presentation I did with TCC IRL, I thought a lot about just what had I already done that I could talk about and how did it tie to copywriting? That was kind of my first thought. But before I even got there, I think Of course, there’s a question of, could I do this? Could I do it? Not just, okay, Rob has given me the opportunity, but could I really do it? I think that question I kept asking over and over, even, like I said, that day that I came to rehearsal to do the mic check, and seeing how big the room is, again, I’m asking myself, could I really do this? I think that question kept coming up for me, because I hadn’t really done it before. Um, what does this mean to do it? Like, what are the opportunities here? You know, I’ve, I’ve always been a risk taker. And I think that part helped me in, like I said, I’ve been an, at that point I was in business 13 years and I know even starting the business, I started the business very young. I was 17 years old. but it was me just kind of being naive, and I think that having that naive spirit helped me to continue to say, well, what’s the worst that could happen? Like, I know I’m gonna be scared. I’m going to, I was very worried about stumbling over my words and not coming off clearly, but I was like, what’s the worst that could happen? 

I could go to this event. I live in Florida, so I had to fly to New York, go to this event, look like an idiot on stage and I’ll never do it again, at least I tried. I think that’s the process that I went through in my mind was at least I tried. There’s a lot of things I tried that didn’t work out. This one happened to work out and I think I had to think through what am I going to do to make it work out. There’s a lot of things I’m not good at and I usually try to find ways to fortify what I’m not good at. A specific example is that when I was really scared to speak at TCC IRL on the day that we did mic check, I really was going through my brain on what I could say to you and Kira to say that I’m not going to do this. Like I really was thinking of all the lies that I could say. And then I really don’t remember, and I’ve been trying to remember how did this idea come up in my head, but I had an idea that I would just record my entire talk. I had written it out. 

So I was like, I’ll record it. And I recorded it on my phone, and then I put on headphones as I went to sleep, and I allowed it to play on repeat. What that did for me was gave me the confidence to speak the next day, because I was just so worried about messing up. So I was like, if I’m so worried about messing up, what can I do to not mess up? I could rehearse it for sure, and I started doing that, but I was like, I’m still not feeling it. So it was like, let me just record it, put it in my phone, let it play on repeat. I had never done that before. Other than playing music when I go to sleep sometimes, I’ve never done where I’m listening to myself give a talk over and over. I don’t know. I don’t know if I saw it on TV or something. I don’t know how I came up with the idea, but I did that and that’s what gave me the courage. Those are the practical steps. I’ve always kind of been a risk taker since I was young, but also I know the things I’m not good at. What can I do to make it easier for me to not necessarily be good at it, but at least get through it? I think that’s kind of what I went through.

Rob Marsh: So as you came off stage immediately, you’ve done the thing. You probably feel pretty good because there was, I think there was a standing ovation. There was, yeah. And people start giving you the feedback. Was your initial thought, good, that’s over, go back to what I’m doing? Or was it like a high and it’s like, I’m going to chase this thing? It was a high.

Jude Charles: It was a complete high. When I walked off stage, I’ll never forget that. I walked off stage and I breathed a very big sigh of relief like, damn, that’s done now. It was a sigh of relief, but it was also like, oh, I actually did good. Because like you mentioned, there was a standing ovation and I wasn’t expecting that. There were jokes that I had in my talk that I wasn’t sure if people were going to laugh. It all went well. But it was a high, not necessarily just getting off stage, it was the high that came after there was a line of people that came to talk to me. Because I think when I spoke, there was a break right after. And there was a line of people coming to talk to me. and it was what they shared of what they took away that I wasn’t expecting them to take away. I thought it was the tips that they were going to take away, but then something else happened that actually you don’t know about. Parris Lampropoulos was right after me, after the break. We had a lunch break and Parris was speaking right after. I remember, I think I’d hung around just because I was taking everything in. Everybody else went to lunch, but I was still sitting in the room just digesting what just happened, everybody that came and said something to me. I was watching Parris prepare for his talk. Parris was doing something that I’d never seen any speaker do. He was going around.

Rob Marsh: I think I know what you’re going to say because I was in the room and I was also, it was one of those things where it was like, wait a second, what is he doing?

Jude Charles: He was walking around touching every chair. And I was like, I’ve never seen this before. But I walked up to him and I asked him. And I was just like, I see you touching every chair, what are you doing? And he ended up telling me, he was just like, his whole idea is about owning the room. He learned it from his mentor, his speaking mentor, own the room. But then he also shared something else with me that I use now. Because I haven’t done the touch the chair thing. That’s very spiritual too, but I haven’t done that. But he gave me another tip that was, he was like, find someone in the front of the room. He was like, it can be very intimidating speaking to a big room of people. I wish he would have told me this before I spoke. But he was like, find the person at the beginning, at the front of the room, the beginning of your talk. And he was like, just look at that person, lock eyes with them the whole time. And he was like, locking eyes with that person owns the room too. Because you forget about everybody else that’s in the room and you’re just talking to one person. And he was like, find that person. And so I’ve been doing that ever since, at least when I get on stage. And when I’m giving stories, there’s stories that are sometimes difficult to share, like when I lost my dad or things like that. And there’s parts in the story where I really lock in, because I’m like, I can’t look around the room. This is too difficult. I need to focus. And so I focus on the person. So I think it was the high, but truthfully, I think it was that, because at that point, I was watching a master. Parris was not only a master in copywriting, but then I’m watching a master who speaks, and he gave a great talk too when I watched it after. It was like, oh, this can be something fun. And so I think it was definitely the high, but it wasn’t just the high of being on stage, it was the high of impact. And it was the high of, if I do this right, if I master this, I unlock something completely different in myself that I didn’t even know I needed to unlock.

Rob Marsh: Your advice or Parris’s advice to find that one person to lock in with, I think is also good advice for podcasts. I think a lot of people are hesitant to go on podcasts because they’re thinking a couple hundred, a couple thousand, maybe a million people will hear me make a fool of myself. And the reality is we’re locked on talking to the guest or to the host, right? And you only have to talk to that one person. And it’s not about the hundreds of listeners who might stumble across whatever it is that you share or talk about. Obviously, you want to show up for a podcast prepared with some notes about what you want to share, or at least an idea of what you’re going to be talking about. so that you don’t make a complete fool of yourself. But you know, when you pitch podcasts, I’m not talking about you specifically Jude, but like all of us, it’s really a one-on-one conversation that then we as audience members get to listen in on and learn from. And so I think that same approach works not just for speaking on stage, but for almost any conversation that we have.

Jude Charles: Yes, it takes this grand idea, this grand thing, or at least something that in our mind we’re making big deal, and it really boils it down to this is how simple it could be. It’s like finding clarity and constraints. I talked about earlier how it’s easy to focus so much on what’s missing that you miss what’s there. And sometimes we can get held back thinking about what holds you back, the things that you’re trying to get to this point in your future, in your life, but you’re so focused on what’s holding you back. That very thing might be the thing to help you move forward. The best time I can think and strategize and write and all these things is when I’m locked in an airplane, in the air, and I can’t do anything else. No Wi-Fi. and I can’t do anything else. And that’s when the best ideas come to me. It’s a constraint. I think it’s the same like you’re talking about with being on a podcast. There’s this constraint. Yes, there might be thousands, hundreds of thousands of people listening or who might hear this, but it’s just me and you right now. And if I just focus on that and even in recording this, we didn’t have much conversation early on because you knew Last time we talked, we needed to record this. Let’s just jump into it. Because of that constraint of time, we’re now having this conversation. I had no idea where it would go, what we would talk about. I didn’t even remember the Parris story until we started talking about it, but that’s that clarity that comes from, yes, I have this thing that is, quote, unquote, holding me back, but what if I looked at that constraint as an elevation instead of a limitation, right? This is the thing to elevate me to the next level, not to hold me back. I try to remind myself of that all the time. The only limitation you have is the one that you create. And I think it’s easy to discount, it’s easy to downplay, it’s easy to give up and say, no, I shouldn’t do that. I’d rather take the risk, try and keep trying. I’ve tried things that at first didn’t feel good. I’m thinking about something. I transitioned to, it wasn’t a complete transition, but I decided to go into a niche. where I would do documentary series for interior designers. So I had been doing documentaries for just entrepreneurs, any type of entrepreneur, as long as they were running a high-level business and they wanted to tell their story, I would do their docu-series. But then I kind of fell into this niche of interior designers, and I remember giving a talk, or going to give a talk once, and I had just decided I’m going all in on this industry, and I had reached out to over 200 interior designers. Cold email. And some of them who had known me, because I’d been on interior design podcasts, some that didn’t. But in their own way, over 200 people that I spoke to, some that I got on calls with, I think maybe about 70 people I got on calls with out of that 200. And in their own way, each one told me no. Or not now, right? And then I remember going to an event in Orlando And I was walking through the hotel before I was speaking at this event. It’s an interior design focused event. I’m speaking at the event. And I remember walking through the hallways and I’m seeing faces and I’m seeing names and they’re saying hi to me. And over and over, it’s these people that have told me no. And immediately I get hit with a wave of rejection because I’m like, It’s one thing to get no through a Zoom call. It’s one thing to get no one at a time. Now I’m having to see their faces. I’m being met with this wave of rejection and I’m like, I got to get out of here. And I had to go back to my room, and I literally, probably almost the same kind of process that I took myself through with, I didn’t record myself, but the same process I took myself through with TCC IRL, I just had to go back to my room and figure out what’s really happening here, because it’s never happened to me before. And I remember, Thinking, going back and thinking about my why, which is to lead and empower entrepreneurs to have relentless courage. And I remember there was a year at TCC IRL, I think it was 2022, the last one, that I was going through burnout and I really didn’t want to be there. Not because I didn’t like TCC IRL, but I was tired.

Rob Marsh: Right.

Jude Charles: And I did accept the invitation, but I was just so tired, still going through burnout. But I remember writing on my watch band. I have an Apple watch and one of my bands are white. And I remember writing something to the effect of, I’m showing up for the one who’s afraid of being in the room right now. And I took myself through that same thought process when I gave this talk in 2023 at the interior design event. And I did my Jenga presentation that I did at TCC IRL. And I remember there was a woman in the room who, one of my last pieces is courage. So I, for those who don’t know, I do a Jenga exercise. where I throw out these pieces and on the pieces, there are words written on the pieces. And one of my last words is courage. And I usually leave that for that one person. I just feel like in the room, they need it most. And I try to figure out who that is, because I have conversations in advance and I try to figure out who’s that person that just needs it most. The year at TCCIRL, gosh, your name just escaped me, but there was the one I went- Was it Robin? Robin, yes, Robin Crump. I wanted her to speak or get on stage and start speaking, so I gave her the courage piece. But there was a woman at this interior design event who was crying the entire time, uncontrollably crying. And I didn’t wanna bring attention to it, so I didn’t throw her the piece, but I went and handed her the piece right after. And she came up to me and she was just like, I don’t know how you knew I needed this. And she was like, this year has just been so hard, and listening to you talk about what you’ve gone through, I needed that courage, I needed this piece. And she was like, I’m gonna put it on my desk, and it’s gonna be my reminder to just have courage every time it gets hard. And I remember thinking after that, I got hit with all this wave of rejection, but luckily I looked back at what is my why? Why am I here? Show up for that one person. And she was the one that needed it most. And that’s… There’s this, I can focus on so much on what’s missing that I miss what’s there, and I would have missed the opportunity to help that one person that, not the whole room, but that one that needed it most. My process of reinvention has been that, just focusing on the one. Not the 10 different people, not the 10 different things I need to do. What’s the one thing? If I do that, it will mean the world. It will mean more than money. It will mean more than anything selfish that I could think of. It would just mean that that one person got impacted. I try to think in terms of that, that constraint is what I give myself and that’s what gives me the clarity to keep showing up and to keep reinventing myself. Yeah, and so I think, yeah, we drill down into the one, we drill down into that thing and that’s what keeps us going.

Rob Marsh: That’s one of the questions that you asked me last time we talked a couple of months ago, is you asked me, who am I showing up for? And I think this is a really good question to ask ourselves anytime. Obviously, there are answers like, well, I’m doing this for my family. I’m providing, you know, those, but in some ways, those are the easy answers. Yeah, because yeah, everybody has to earn a living, at least to some level. And yes, you have to care for the people who you’ve brought into the world or that you’ve partnered with in some way. But there are a lot of other people out there, too, that we should be showing up for or that we could be showing up for and make a massive difference. And I guess this is sort of leading into my question. You do a retreat, like you said, twice a year where you just go and think. I want to know a little bit more about the process and some of the questions that you’re asking yourself. Now, I’m not saying everybody should do a month off twice a year, although that sure sounds nice. I think my wife would kill me if I disappeared for that long. But there is a place for this kind of self-reflection where you can go deep and say, not just who am I showing up for, but how do I reinvent? What are the next steps? And how do you identify those questions and then what are the steps?

Jude Charles: The questions, I’ll start with that. The questions I ask myself, this is a long list, but a lot of it stems around what worked and what didn’t work. What do I wanna start doing? What do I wanna stop doing? I do it, I first started, when I first started this, it was 2013, and I used to do it every November, December. I would take those two months off. And it would work out because business would be slow in that time, it’s the holidays, and I knew I needed that break. After burnout in 2020, I started doing it June and December because it gives me five months of working and one month off. It gives me that cadence. So five months working, one month off, five months working, one month off. And I love it because instead of trying to plan out the whole year, I just focus on the next five months, that next block of five months. And I… When I go on, so June is a bit more of a slowdown, I don’t completely unplug, it’s just I slow down, I don’t do as much work. December is where I completely unplug. And I sit and ask myself those questions of like, what worked, what didn’t work? How did I grow personally? What business and personal challenges did I have? And asking myself those questions, it’s not a one day thing. I think about it, I give some answers, and then I come back to it. and asking myself those questions, it really challenges me to call myself out on BS and to celebrate the wins that I’ve had too. It’s easy to focus so much on what’s wrong or what happened that’s bad because maybe you didn’t meet your goals, but you got to celebrate what happened that was good too. Last year, something that I celebrated is pushing through So when I first decided to go all in on this interior design focused docu-series offering, it was 2023. And like I mentioned, it didn’t go as great as I thought it would go. Well, 2024, I stuck out with it, continued to pitch and find a way to make it work. And I did four interior design focused docu-series last year. And I celebrated that because I started with zero and started with thinking it was going to be a lot easier than what it ended up being. But each and every one that I did in 2024 were amazing projects. Even the last one that I did, I ended up loving that one the most, but they were amazing projects. So I celebrated that. I celebrated how much I grew spiritually, that I did go deeper into my faith and how I how I responded to challenging situations that I felt like I wasn’t responding well to. So I celebrate those things. And then I find the gaps. What do I want to do better? What’s not working? One of the questions that I love, and this came later, it didn’t come at the beginning when I started doing this, but maybe in the last two years, there’s a question I ask myself. So there’s the 80-20 rule, basically that 20% of your input will give you the 80% of results that you’re looking for. But then I found, and I can’t remember how I found it, but I found this idea that what is the 20% of the 20%? What’s that?

Rob Marsh: That’s something Perry Marshall talks about this a lot. The 20% of the 20%.

Jude Charles: Right. And that extra 20%, I did the calculations on it and I realized it’s not really an extra 20. It’s when you put it together, it’s 24%, right? It’s just an extra 4%. But what was, what is that? that really got you what you were looking for? And that question is the game changer for me. I didn’t always notice it. Last year, I took a break from podcasting as a guest, but podcasting has been the biggest difference maker in me, not just my business. In my business, I can definitely account to, at this point, I think maybe about $600,000 worth of business because I started guest podcasting. In me, it’s made a bigger difference. I wouldn’t know that had I not slown down to ask myself the question, to really dig deep, to really look at numbers, to really look at, okay, these are all the messages I got. Why does this matter? All these things. It’s so easy to just keep going and trying to reach the goal, but you need to slow down to speed up. You need to slow down and ask yourself these questions, go really deep, figure out if there’s things that didn’t work, why didn’t it work? What’s the real route? Something I learned last year about myself, I started putting too much pressure on certain goals that I wouldn’t even reach the goal at all because I’m putting so much pressure on it. Instead of focusing on what’s the next thing I need to do to reach the goal, not just the pressure, but What’s the next thing? So for example, if I wanted to close a certain amount of clients, it’s not, oh, I gotta close the client, I gotta close the client. How do I set up the one-on-one to have breakfast with them so we have a deeper conversation, right? And that was something I was messing up last year. I definitely don’t recommend two months for every person. I need two months. So that’s why you gotta figure out what you need, but I do recommend at least three weeks. The first week is usually, it takes a while to decompress and to really slow down. Trying to get all of the bad vibes out of your life, yeah. Exactly. So that first week is difficult. Second week, you’re kind of getting into, you’re starting to feel relaxed. At least for me, I don’t always feel as relaxed the second, but that third week is where it really hits. I’m like, okay, this feels good. So I always recommend at least three weeks consecutively. and one of those three weeks by yourself. I know it’s challenging when you have a spouse and kids, but that time by yourself where you’re not, there’s no noise, you’re really learning to think, what do you think? Because obviously social media and TV and YouTube and all these things, I have to ask myself, okay, I get it. I may believe in certain things that people talk about, but what does Jude think? And why does Jude think that? And do I need to challenge the way that I think? Am I being loyal to an old version of Jude that no longer serves me? I am constantly asking myself, how do I grow? How do I push myself? These questions, there’s a whole list, and I can share it, but that’s what gets me to open up and to really, to just be able to flow. I wouldn’t be able to do it without the breaks.

Rob Marsh: Tactically, do you go into this thing, you turn off Netflix, you don’t take any books with you? Is it true silence, only letting your thoughts do it all? Or are you thinking, actually, I want to do some thinking around some questions that is in a particular book or a podcast that I heard. How does that all come together?

Jude Charles: Complete technology, what’s the word I’m looking for? I turn off all technology. Is it going to diet? Yeah, pretty much, right? A technology diet where even for my phone, I don’t look at my phone. Only time I might look at it is in the morning to check in and let people know I’m alive. I don’t look at my phone, I don’t watch TV, I don’t listen to anything. I do have physical books that I take with me. So sometimes I’ll go to a cabin for a week, and I love doing that because it’s in the wilderness, it’s completely quiet, unless you’re hearing nature. But every digital thing is completely turned off. And again, part of that is because it’s overstimulation for me. I’m trying to decompress and destimulate, and I don’t want to have any kind of influence. And so, yeah, the books that I take are books that I read every year. So, like, the one thing is a book that I read every year. There’s a book called Detours that I read every year now. It wasn’t always the case, but I read that now. And there were books that changed my life. Like, the one thing really, really changed my life. Another book is, gosh, I can’t remember the name of it. There’s another book, but there’s like, there might be two or three books that I take with me. And I remind myself of like, why did this change my life? Or what is it something new that I can learn from this book? And then it’s just the assessment. So it’s the assessment, it’s the books, and that’s it. And a lot of sleep, a lot of quiet time. and a lot of walking in nature. Even if I don’t go away to a cabin, I try to take long walks, so two, three hour walks. I think best when I walk, so I walk daily now, and I exercise a few times a week, but I like to, my best thinking comes from when I walk, so I like to walk a lot when I’m on sabbatical. This last sabbatical was a bit challenging, because there was a family member that passed away. And I thought a lot about legacy and what that means. He was 90 years old, and he left an amazing legacy. And I tried to think a lot about, well, how am I living my legacy now? So that’s the practical. It’s a lot of thinking. It’s a lot of internal thinking and some people are afraid to sit with themselves because it’s deep internal work. But honestly, I would not have grown the business where it’s grown to had I not done this deep internal work. It’s the most important work I’ve ever done in my life that will help me be a great person, not just a great entrepreneur, but a great person.

Rob Marsh: As a podcaster, I hesitate to say we need to turn off the podcasts and pull out the earbuds and all of that. Certainly true of all of the other podcasts that are out there, but you’re right. If there’s always a book going on, I mean, going back to what I said about, you know, that consuming information internally, if you’ve always got headphones on, whether it’s music or books or podcasts, or you’re always watching Netflix, or you’re always engaging on TikTok or Twitter or whatever, it’s hard to hear your own voice at all. And we’re just inundated with everybody else’s voice. And not only that, it’s usually not uplifting. It’s usually not the kind of stuff that helps us grow. It’s information Twinkies that we’re consuming because it tastes good and it feels good, but it doesn’t leave us feeling good ultimately long term.

Jude Charles: Yeah, it doesn’t leave us feeling good. It leaves us feeling empty. And we try to fill that emptiness with noise. And I’m trying to fill it with, I don’t know exactly what I would call it, but just what feeds me, not just the noise, but the transformation that I’m seeking. Am I growing? Am I truly growing? And not growing financially, not growing because I have more things, Has my thinking changed? Has it evolved? Something else I had to ask myself is, with this last election, do I really know where I live? It was really eye-opening to me to pay attention to everything that was going on with the election. It’s not about sides or anything like that, it’s just understanding people. And I don’t think I really understood people. I mean, to some degree, yes, because I’m in marketing and I understand human psychology, but I think that’s shifting. And I think it’s evolving in a much different way than we’ve ever anticipated, not just because of the election, but I think because of social media, because of artificial intelligence. And I had to look at, okay, what role do I play in that? How am I gonna go deeper with understanding people? It’s not just about what I think and trying to force them to think what I think. Why do they think the way that they think? Where is that coming from? And understanding people, it’s probably the reason I love storytelling, is storytelling is what truly helps you understand people and their worldview. But yeah, it’s so much deeper, and it’s probably deeper than most people are wanting to go and think about. But to me, that is the gift of life, is to go that deep and to transform so you can help others transform.

Rob Marsh: So we’ve pretty much been answering this question for the last hour, but with a minute or two that we have remaining, Jude, who are you showing up for in 2025?

Jude Charles:  I’m showing up for the person who is tired, who is unsure about what the next step of their life is, who feels exhausted by life and needs courage to step into the calling that they have been called to step into. I’m showing up for that person. To lead and empower them to have relentless courage. Every word of my purpose is very intentional. To lead means that I’m guiding you on this journey. To empower you means that you have it, you hold it. So I’m gonna guide you. It’s not just me telling you what to do or me just trying to get you to think what I think, but I’m empowering you to have it, to obtain it so that after I’ve left you, you can continue to have it. Relentless courage, relentless means it’s unwavering, you don’t stop no matter what gets in the way. And then courage is obviously to be bold and to step into it. That’s what I’m showing up for, is to lead and empower entrepreneurs to have relentless courage so that they can do whatever it is that they wanna do, not just what I think they should do. What do you wanna do? And go out there and do it. It’s a pretty good mission.

Rob Marsh: If somebody wants to follow you or connect with you, I know we’ve shared your book in the past, your emails, which are always insightful. They’re almost never short. It’s not the candy that a lot of emails are, including some of mine, but they’re thought out deep. Where should people go if they want that kind of thinking from you?

Jude Charles: So I’ll share the, I didn’t plan on this, but I’ll have it ready by the time this goes live. I’ll share the questions that I asked on my break. If you go to juicecharles.co forward slash TCC, I’ll have that download for you, and it’ll give you the questions to ask yourself to go deeper, to understand how do you reinvent yourself, how do you, How do you find out what value do I have or who do I want to become? JuCharles.co forward slash TCC. And then if you’re inclined to join the newsletter, that’ll give you the opportunity to join the newsletter too, but JuCharles.co forward slash TCC. And that’s how to find me, connect with me and go deeper.

Rob Marsh: I’m already on your list, but I’m definitely gonna go download the questions. So thanks Jude for taking the time to really have a different kind of conversation than what we typically do here on, at least on this podcast. So thank you so much for sharing so much about yourself.

Jude Charles: Thank you for having me back, man. It was a great conversation, and I don’t often get to share these kind of things, so it was good to dive deep into it. Yeah, if there’s one last message I want to leave everyone with, the only limitation you have is the one that you create. That’s great.

Rob Marsh: Great way to end. I will always be grateful that you came to that first TCC IRL, because, well, I got a friend out of it. So yeah, it’s great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Rob. for getting so personal with me on what it means to show up in your business and how to think about what’s next. Jude collected the questions that he asks himself each time that he takes a month off to think. And you can get on that list. You can get that list of questions at judecharles.co/tcc. 

Those questions will give you something to think about in your own business, regardless of whether you take off an entire month to do it. and they’ll possibly help you discover what’s next for you. Jude is obviously very deliberate in his process and there’s a lot that we can learn from him, so download those questions now. There’s a similar list of questions to ask yourself about your business in The Copywriter Underground. It’s part of our quarterly or annual planning process training that we’ve conducted in the past. A recording of that process is available right now in the Underground, so if you’re a member you can check those out now, and if you’re not a member, You can fix that by going to thecopyrighterclub.com/tcu and signing up. You’ll get that training plus more than 30 templates and dozens of other workshops and trainings to help you grow your copywriting or content writing business. 

Obviously this whole episode is about courage, the courage to show up for yourself, for your clients, for your audience, for your family, and for others. But the thing about courage is you don’t get courage and then act courageously. Courage is acquired in the doing. You move forward and you gain courage as you go. So you can’t afford to wait for courage to tell you that you’re ready for whatever it is that you’re waiting to do. Get started and the courage is going to follow.

How do you stand out in a sea of copy and content sameness? A USP (unique selling proposition) isn’t enough. Neither is being different. My guest for the 230th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is marketing strategist Louis Grenier, author of the new book, Stand the F*** Out. We talked about what it takes to position your business, find your people, and build a durable brand. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Louis’ book and bonuses

Rob Marsh:  The biggest question facing most people who own their own businesses is how do I stand out? How do I position my busines in a way that makes it easy for customers to find me—and more importantly, to know they want to work with me? What can I do to make them care? Those important questions are answered in the new book, Stand the F*** Out by Louis Grenier. And Louis is my guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast.

The topics we cover in our discussion are the kinds of things that help copywriters go from helping clients get the words right to helping clients sell more products, grow their businesses and as the title says: stand out of the crowd. This stuff isn’t easy. It can take years to learn. But if you stick around, the insights Louis shares will shortcut your learning curve

Before we jump into this interview, I want to mention the guest trainings we have lined up in The Copywriter Underground this month one more time… the first one is focused on building connections with prospects and clients on social media without burning out. If you’re like me and struggle to show up on social media consistently, this one will change your approach entirely—and help you find a client. And by the way, a single new client could pay for your Underground membership, for the entire year, two or three times over.

And the second workshop is all about landing a “real” in-house job—either part time or full time. A lot of copywriters want something a bit more stable than the string of clients they get as a freelancer. If that sounds like you, you need to hear the ideas this workshop will include. The presenter for this workshop was a talent placement expert for creatives. She’s helped hundreds of copywriters find so-called real jobs. What she’ll share is critical to know if you’re thinking about applying for these kinds of jobs and want to stand out from the crowd.

Both of these workshops are exclusively available for members of The Copywriter Underground. If you want access to them plus more than 30 templates, 70+ other workshops and trainings, and monthly coaching and copy critiques from me… you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. If you’ve been thinking about trying out The Underground, now is the time to do it. The first workshop is tomorrow. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu for more information.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Louis Grenier. 

I like to start by hearing your story, how you got to where you are. You’re a marketing strategist, author of a fantastic book, Stand the F Out. I don’t usually use that word. I do. But it stands out for sure. So tell us how you got here.

Louis Grenier: Bonjour, bonjour. Thank you for having me on. And it feels like I’m part of podcasting royalty. So it’s good to be invited on this podcast, listen to it a few times over the years. And it’s funny how the copywriting discipline is is still thriving despite the fact that they were supposed to be dead a couple of years ago. So it’s good to see that you’re still fighting the good fight. So yeah, to answer your question, it started from a trip in Paris when I was 17. So that was 18 years ago. to visit one of my older brothers. And I saw this book on his shelf that was basically the French version of Influence by Cialdini. But it wasn’t a translation of it. It was like a psychology slash marketing slash behavioral psychology book in French about key facts about human behavior. And I remember reading it. I was a lost mechanical engineering student at the time. And I just loved it so much. And things started to develop from there. I started to connect all the little puzzle pieces that I had misplaced, like the fact that I love being on the internet from a very young age and love hacking stuff on the computer. I loved all things psychology, understanding people. I felt I had the knack for it in some way. It came naturally to me. And all of that came together while I was doing mechanical engineering, realizing that that wasn’t my thing, that marketing, digital marketing at the time was the thing I wanted to do. So that was the start at least.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I think a lot of marketers have a transition where they want to do something else or maybe not want to, but they’ve been sort of programmed by school or whatever to do. I was ready to go to law school when I started copywriting and kind of fell in love with the whole thing. So, there’s a little bit of serendipity, I think, in a lot of our journeys. So from reading Influence though, you immediately became a marketer or you had a lot of steps along the way?

Louis Grenier: I did. So after that, I quit engineering. I did one year of business school. And at the end of that year, I did an internship for a French car manufacturer in Dublin, Ireland. I was supposed to do that for three months, but I stayed on for like three years with them. So I got full-time employment after a year, I was doing contract stuff for them. And I wanted to get into marketing, but I was still doing basic business-y type stuff, like account management for dealerships across Ireland and stuff. The first opportunity I had to actually apply the knowledge I thought I had about marketing from reading all the books, but doing none of the work, just, you know, theories was for a startup, a mobile marketing startup at the time in Dublin. That’s when I started to work for real in marketing, realizing that all the things I thought I knew about it, or at least most of it was wrong or untrue, or just, I knew nothing really. So it took me a long time to unlearn all of that. I then launched my first marketing agency with 20 grand in savings that I burned through within a year and a half. I burned myself out doing that, but I learned a lot. After that, I joined Hotjar. which is a web analytics startup. It’s not really a startup anymore, more a scale-up. I joined them thanks to a little podcast I had started at the time, which was eight years ago, Everyone Hates Marketers, which I have stopped now, but I met the CEO of Hotjar through that. So Hotjar learned a ton as well for four years, kept the podcast on the side, kept sending emails, started to practice a lot more of what I would call real marketing. and then restarted a business, which is standard F out. And it’s really a combination of all the mistakes I’ve made and all the stuff I’ve learned into a book and a couple of other stuff.

Rob Marsh: We’re definitely going to talk about the book. I’m holding it up as we speak and it’s a fantastic book. Everybody listening should probably have a copy of this on their shelf just as a reference on how to work with clients. But before we get to all of that, you mentioned that when you started out your career, you knew all the theories, you knew all of the stuff to do, but you hadn’t done any of the practice and it was all wrong. Can you give us some examples of that, the wrong stuff, and how you figured it out in your own agency and through the other experiences, what was right.

Louis Grenier: If I had to pick one, I would say that not necessarily something that was purely wrong, but very biased in one way, which was, I thought it’d be much easier than this. Meaning I thought it’d be much, much easier to make people do what you want them to do. You know, like clicking on a link or registering to something, basically making them care about something and how hard, I got punched in the face so many times in that startup, realizing that it’s actually probably one of the hardest things to do is to make people care, make people do something you want them to do. It’s just so, so, so, so, so hard. And we were in an industry that was already dying. Kind of the demand was quite low. And yeah, it was really, really hard. So if I had to pick one, probably the biggest thing, because in my head, I was imagining how it would be and the impact I would have on, you know, all the books I could cite and the research and whatever. But the reality, yeah, was much, much harder than I had anticipated.

Rob Marsh: It’s interesting you say that because I don’t think that that has ever been mentioned on the podcast before and yet this is probably something that every single person who’s been on the podcast or even listened to the podcast has dealt with. It’s almost like an unsaid problem that we have is how do you get people off the couch? to make the phone call, to click on the button, to pull out the credit card. And I mean, that’s why response rates are so low.

Louis Grenier: Like you said, it’s not easy. We are talking about the pain here. I think the answer to that, the solution to it, what I found along the way, what seems to work the best to make people care is to stop trying to make people care and instead understand what they care about already. So where is the demand? Where is the flow? Where is the need going? And channel that. So instead of playing God, thinking that we are smarter, better than you, and we’re gonna make you do something that you don’t know about, like problem unaware. Yeah. I’m rolling my eyes so far back. So… When you do that, it’s easier, but far from being easy. I mean, an example, right? When we talk about percentage, you know, let’s say 200 people join a waiting list for a program, right? So they show intent, they join the waiting list for something that you’re announcing. And then you announce the thing and maybe what, 10% of people would act to like reply and maybe apply, you know? And you’re like, why? I’m sure that if you’re talking to folks outside of the industry, and you ask them, what do you think is going to be the percentage of people applying after they apply to a waiting list? I don’t know, probably 50, 60, 70%, right? But it just doesn’t work that way. So, very humbling.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, incredibly humbling. But there’s a way to overcome that, at least for a certain part of the market, like you said, that has that desire and has in some ways the need. And your book is about a lot of that. And how do you make that connection with the client?

Louis Grenier: Yeah, but it’s still hard, right? You can make it slightly better, but there’s no secret. There’s nothing that will make it unreal. I’ve noticed a few times in my life where the demand is so high, that you’re so much at the right time, the right moment, with the right people, that it’s so easy. Like at Hotjar, when we started out, oh my God, it felt like we had a very bad site. very poorly designed, a 99 cent logo, literally. And the demand was just so high. We felt like we were geniuses, you know. So, you know, when you feel that, you’re like, no, you’re not a genius. You were at the right place, right time. right people, good for you on that, but it doesn’t make you a marketing genius because then you move all of those marketers to maybe an industry that was dying where there’s barely any demand, they will fall on their faces, right? So it’s one of the key things that I talk about in the book is picking the right category, making sure that you pick the right category that’s on demand, not trying to like create a new category, which is very sexy at the minute. leaning on what already exists in people’s head, in the market, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, one of the things that you mention in the book, which I thought was really interesting and I started underlining is when you talk about picking a category, obviously, you’re looking for a category where there is demand. And so there are probably other competitors out there. But at the same time, you’re juxtapositioning yourself against everybody else. So you’re trying to stand out. So you’re basically saying, hey, look for a crowd to be a part of. But also, how do you be the tallest person so you get noticed?

Louis Grenier: Exactly. First, you need to imitate and learn. The process takes years for most people because you need to know the industry, the category, the box you’re in, first of all. You need to know its rules. You need to know… the way people think in there and whatever. And once you know that, once you’ve made the mistakes, you can start challenging it in one dimension. If you start challenging it in too many dimensions, then you lose the box you’re in and people start misunderstanding what you’re up to, right? So it’s really like, it’s a, I always talk about it like as a, almost like a dance, you know, it’s like tango. It’s like, you want to go far, you don’t want to go too far, right? If your box is “marketing podcast”, if you’re like a podcast for copywriters, you don’t want to try to come up with a new term for podcasts, like audio experience for copywriters. You have to explain yourself and you’re losing the demand that is already there. So it’s always a subtle movement inside a box that others are not doing. But it’s not a gimmick. You use the term like being the tallest in the room or something along those lines. It’s not really about being disruptive and challenging the norm for the sake of it. It’s really trying to find a set of ignored struggles, problems that others are not catering well for in that category that you can serve better or differently. And that becomes then a meaningful differentiation. So it’s not like a gimmicky I’m using this orange color everywhere because all the dealers are using blue. It’s really like deeper. It’s true innovation when it comes to like solving unsolved problems, ignored struggles that others are not taking care of very well.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, the term ignored struggles is another thing that I underlined in the book a few times. And in order to find that, you spent a couple of chapters talking about digging for insights and what insights are worth looking at and what insights, you actually call them, I think, poisonous. Poisonous versus juicy. Can we talk a little bit about that? Because this is a huge part of what copywriters, content writers, social media writers are doing is they’re looking for these insights so that they can find that hook, the headline, the thing that stands out, right? Or if they’re working with a brand for that thing that a brand can hang its name on and really differentiate with.

Louis Grenier: One of the other biggest mistakes I’ve done in my career was to listen and learn from folks or sources that could actually lie to you without even knowing, without necessarily doing it on purpose and really leading you to a place that you don’t want to be in. I’m being quite radical in my way of defining what is a good insight, what is juicy insight, what is poisonous insight. I’m being radical in a sense that yes, you could get insight outside of the group I’m going to mention now, but for the sake of safety, for the sake of efficiency, for the sake of just going for it, I think that the only group you should listen to are recent past customers. So recent because recency, making sure people remember. Past because you don’t want people who are thinking about doing something because they will bullshit you, it’s likely. So people don’t know what they’re going to do in the future. There’s no point trying to predict that. And customers, meaning we have proof that they spend resources, whether it’s money, a lot of time, a lot of effort, trying to solve one of the struggles you want to solve for. And it doesn’t have to be folks who you’re talking to directly. It doesn’t have to be folks who bought from you. And that’s the beauty of it. You can learn from folks who’ve bought in your category, in your industry, even if you don’t have a business. And you can scan through online reviews. Review mining is very popular amongst copywriters. You can do interviews, you can be a fly on the wall. There’s many ways to get that. But if you only focus on them and forget about the rest, you, I think, increase the probability that you will get juicy insight, or at least usable insight, by quite a lot.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. And there are a couple of different insight types that we’re looking for when we do this. I think you listed out six or seven of them. I would love to go a little bit deeper on three of them if we can. Sure. Jobs to be done, problems, and triggers. And I’m really excited to talk about triggers, but I want to leave that to last because I think triggers is the one that’s overlooked by almost everybody. 100%, I agree. Because we all focus on problem. And if we take it to the next step, we talk about jobs to be done. But let’s talk a little bit about your thinking around those insights and what we’re looking for there.

Louis Grenier: So my thinking is really a mix up of thinking from others who are much smarter than me, have done research and all of that on behavior and stuff like that. And it’s learning from them and applying, trying to apply their learnings and figuring out that it actually works because that’s the way people think. So it’s definitely not just my thinking, right? I’m only a student of this art we’re into, but I’m glad you’re mentioning triggers. I completely agree. This is the most underused, misunderstood concept, and yet it explains so much. Imagine, you know, let’s say I start to have a back pain, right? A literal back pain. Whenever I try to stand up for too long, it gets sore. I have to sit. It’s a pain. It’s a pain point, right? In the traditional way people would think about, marketers would think about that, it’s a reason to market to you, let’s say, something to solve that, right? I’m not going to go into the products or categories, but there’s so many ways to solve that, right? But I’m not going to do anything unless I have a direction to go to, meaning why I’m going to do this, and unless there is a trigger or several triggers that make me act. And this is where demands start to flow. So I can have a back pain for literally 10, 20, 30 years without doing anything about it. And I’m sure in your life and in folks listening, you can find examples of a literal problem or pain point that you do nothing about. Until I learned that maybe my grandkids is coming to visit me for the first time in a while. And in my head, I’m imagining, well, I’m going to bring them to the park and I’m going to do this. I’m like, oh, yeah, but I can’t do that with my back. OK, better call a physio, right? And that’s understanding those triggers are far more powerful than understanding the pain. The pain is easy to understand, but it doesn’t talk to people as much as I think we believe. And it’s a bit, you know, we push too much of the anxiety part of it, like, you know, like, are you in pain? And are you, you know, like the, in copywriting in particular, like agitating the pain and whatnot. I think if you understand the triggers that start them all, it’s much easier. Just to go through that example one level deeper, how do we use this information, right? If we take this fictional example. Well, when, I would ask myself, okay, when does this trigger tend to happen the most often? I would say during the holidays. Right? Maybe Christmas holidays in particular, Thanksgiving, when we are more likely, that’s when you’re more likely to see your grandkids to visit. So this is when you can then push this type of message instead of saying back pain. Now you say, do you want to enjoy a better time with your kids without worrying about pain in your legs or whatever? Then this is the place to be. And it even informs where to be, right? So now I know what to say around when, when to push for it, which is like highly seasonal likely. But I’m thinking of places where people travel, right? So airports and train stations and other places where there’s a lot of commuting or whatnot, right? Again, I’m just speedboarding here, it doesn’t mean it’s 100% accurate, but thinking of triggers adds flavor and adds depth and context that you’re missing with just the pain. just like a back pain that doesn’t talk to me, doesn’t make me more creative. The trigger makes me think of so many things straight away, right? The when, the where, the with whom, the with what. Those are like real contextual clues that you can use.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. And these, in my opinion, these are the hardest things to find because it takes real conversations with real customers. Like you said, if you start asking people who might purchase, you know, whatever the thing is that you’re saying, they have no idea what the trigger is yet because they haven’t yet made that purchase right there.

Louis Grenier: Exactly.

Rob Marsh: And all of us have tons of things. It’s like, well, someday I’d like to have an iPad or someday I’d like to have whatever the car is or considering purchasing a subscription to that magazine, right? But we haven’t done it. And there’s probably a reason we haven’t done it. Maybe the pain isn’t high enough or maybe the event that makes that thing happen, the trigger hasn’t happened. So, give us just a couple of tips on how to find them, how to uncover them.

Louis Grenier: So you go back to the first insight that I shared, which is if you talk to recent past customers, you will likely find them. So you don’t have to interview people, right? So in copywriting and B2B in particular, B2B copywriting, this is like one of the most popular methods, but you don’t have to do that. So you could literally go to online reviews if your industry is prone to like having people leaving online reviews. And this is where you can start seeing the triggers if you pay close attention. So I have a real example here, right? Which is, I give this example of this toilet scent packet product, which is like you drop that in the toilet before going number two so that it doesn’t smell, right? And I went through Amazon reviews just to see what other triggers, what make people say, I need this now, even though they might struggle with that smell beforehand and whatever, they haven’t really searched for it to search for a solution, right? So for example, there’s this review, this product will work wonderfully for my upcoming cruise. It smells so nice and seems to work great. for my upcoming cruise is a trigger, right? Or at least it’s a contextual cue that tells you that there is a trigger behind it. This person is planning to go on a cruise in close quarters, right? Share a toilet with someone else. And they are thinking of this toilet situation. The problem has always been there. Maybe they’ve struggled with digestive issues all their life. They never bought anything for it specifically, but as soon as We mix the job to be done, which is masking bathroom odors in that case. We mix the problem, which is making sure that maybe the friend you’re going with isn’t smelling anything. with the trigger, the upcoming cruise, you create a chemical reaction, which is where the demands start to flow, right? So another example in the review, easy to use, I’m going to travel soon and it will be super handy in small bases. Again, cruise, travel, when you start, when you look for them, you will find them. But you need to look at many sources, right? If you can’t find them in reviews, if you can’t find them in interviews, if you can’t talk to people like that, there’s plenty of other ways. So I mentioned like be a fly on the wall. So maybe like observing people in their natural habitat. If you’re selling, let’s say, you know, cheap enough product or FMCG, you know, like a very fast moving stuff in supermarkets, you could literally see them buying it and asking them, why did you buy it? What made you buy it? Let me see. I’m just trying to find the fully so we give as much as possible. But it’s really like once you know that that’s what you’re looking for, the when, the where, the with whom, and the with what. So with whom could be like with a friend or whatever when they mention people. With what could be another product, the where, like a place, but it doesn’t have to be a location per se. It could be at your desk and whatnot. You will see them, honestly. That’s what I think. It’s not hidden that much. It’s just that we are never really looking for them that way. Yeah. Makes sense.

Rob Marsh: So, I imagine somebody listening, and I’m actually thinking this as well, although I have some thoughts on how to do it. Somebody might be thinking, okay, that’s easy for a packet that you drop in a toilet, that kind of a product. There’s four or five competitors out there. But what about my industry? I’m a copywriter. If I go on LinkedIn, there are over a million copywriters on LinkedIn. How do I find those jobs to be done, those triggers for something that’s literally a commodity and can be bought anywhere by anyone at almost any price point?

Louis Grenier: Well, I would say good news. First of all, that means there is demand for it. There is money flowing into it. So that’s already, that’s a good thing. I get excited when I hear those questions about, oh, I’m in a saturated industry, crowded market. I’m like, great, that’ll be fun. Because I know I can get data really fast, insight really fast. And I know then we can use a unique positioning to really dive into very specific ignore struggles, because despite what we may think, there’s always ignore struggles appearing, right? AI has just changed a lot of stuff. And as soon as that appeared, that created new struggles for people. So you can be the first, you can be someone looking into the forefront of the industry, A crowded market is not an issue. It’s just, it becomes an issue if you can’t figure out, you know, if you can’t go granular into specific problems you solve, that’s the first thing. And if you can’t pick a category that is niche enough for you to become the only, the only in that very sub, sub, sub, sub category that solved that specific ignored struggle for this specific group of people. So then you really minimize the number of direct competitors while still taking advantage of the demand. Then once you have that part, you you can then build distinctiveness, which is a different concept than differentiation. So we can talk about that. But you mentioned the insights. They will be in front of you, right? The jobs, the struggles, they are easy enough to find. You can look at literally competitors’ websites and look at case studies that they’ve shared. You will find insight that way. They’re not going to be groundbreaking new insight that you’ll be the only one to find. However, you can be the first, the only one to interpret them in a specific way and solve them in a specific way. And as you mentioned earlier, a few minutes ago, very few people care about, think about triggers. And so you just looking at them and understanding people that way, is already, I think, a huge competitive advantage. But on its own, to finish, on its own, a unique positioning might not be enough for you to stand out. You might need also distinctiveness on top, especially in crowded markets.

Rob Marsh: So yeah, let’s talk about then that unique positioning. The concept of USP, unique selling proposition, I think was invented by Ross or Reeves 60 years ago. Yeah, and it’s bullshit. Yeah, well, people still talk about it and I agree with you. I don’t think it works anymore. I actually think there’s a concept there that’s really nice to think about, but the reality is, It’s so easy to copy a unique selling proposition today. Literally, you might have one, but you’re not going to have it in 90 days. Somebody is going to copy it. You can’t be unique like that. So how do we become unique?

Louis Grenier: So the formula, the statement that I’ve put together uses the ingredients that you collect along the way. So the sentence, you need to be able to feel a sentence like that, unlike alternatives. So that could be competitors, there are competitors, there are competitors. my product, my service, my brand, whatever, is the only in that category to solve those ignored struggles. So like a list of the ones you’ve identified and get the job done for this particular segment. So the key is not to find an ignored struggle that others haven’t found or a category that others haven’t claimed. It’s the intersection of all of those things that create a unique positioning. And this is not meant to be customer facing, right? This is not meant to be on your homepage as a headline. It’s meant to really be to give you the clarity and direction to say, okay, we have a unique positioning, niche enough, specific enough, granular enough that gives people a reason to trust us. We become the least risky option, not necessarily the best. That’s another important concept. And that gives us the direction we need to then move on to maybe distinctiveness. So if we are Going through an actual example in the B2B world, I work with a company called the PTDC, which they do fitness training for personal trainers. And their statement, their unique positioning statement could sound something like, unlike just working more or selling out for quick cash, that’s the alternatives. The PTDC is the only online fitness training program. So that’s a sub, sub, sub category, right? That helps you, and now we’re talking about the inner struggle, overcome self-doubts, build a real business, and create a successful career you love as a jacked nerd. That’s the segment. That’s the smallest way they kind of talked about it. And you can see, if you take each of them individually, like online fitness training program, they’re not the only online fitness training program. But if you start mixing with the alternative, the triggers, the triggers are not there, but the struggles, the inner struggles, the job, the segment, that’s when you have an intersection that is quite unique. But it’s not in the same way, it’s not described as a, it’s not like a unique value proposition thing because you cannot genuinely realistically have that because as you said, others are probably using it and others will pick it up and use it as well. So it’s disingenuous this way. Well, the unique positioning statements and the ingredients that it’s using can’t be disingenuous because you have to go granular and the intersection again is something that you can uniquely claim.

Rob Marsh: So like you said, this is a statement then that drives the marketing.

Louis Grenier: Yes.

Rob Marsh: So then the job becomes, okay, how do we go from that statement and start creating assets, offers, branding, messaging that starts to convey that to our audience in a way that they’re going to connect with it and say, oh yeah, this is the product for me.

Louis Grenier: Yeah. So this is really like the very core of any business. You know, I don’t remember who said that. It might be Peter Drucker. I’m going to butcher it, but it’s like, there’s only two functions in business, two functions in a business, the marketing and innovation or something along those lines.

Rob Marsh: Yep.

Louis Grenier: Yep.

Rob Marsh: That’s a Peter Drucker quote. Yeah.

Louis Grenier: Something like that. Something like that, right? So this is the very core of your innovation strategy, your marketing strategy, because it’s how you serve people, how you serve a specific group of people in a way that others don’t. You already, in one single sentence, you have much more clarity and that’s the biggest job to start with, right? As soon as you become more than one, you have more like a team or even for your own sanity, and clarity and relief, having one single sentence that gives you direction is already a big, big win. So the benefit doesn’t have to be monetary or business directly related. It could just be like relief and confidence and clarity. Once you have that, it’s already much better to do marketing and to be creative once you have a bit more confidence, a bit more joy into what you’re doing, a bit more clarity. It changes the game, really, because it removes the noise and stuff. So this on its own, just going through that exercise and having it is already a huge, huge, huge relief for people. That’s what I’ve noticed. But let’s say we have that. So you have the knowledge. That’s the core of your business. You know who you serve, how you serve them, why you serve them, whatnot. Then you can move on to, you mentioned branding, so distinctiveness, which is not the same as differentiation. So differentiation is the ability to solve struggles that others alternatives are ignoring. That’s differentiation. Struggles that people care about, not struggles that people don’t care about. Distinctiveness is being able to stick out in people’s mind for things that don’t necessarily connect directly with what you do. So that’s why I talk about the concept of meaningless assets, meaning you don’t have to create logos and colors and whatnot that connect directly to what you have to say. For example, in the copywriting world, you don’t have to use a a pen as your logo, you don’t have to.

Rob Marsh: If you want to stand out, you probably shouldn’t because half of the industry does.

Louis Grenier: Yeah. So it’s okay. Again, it’s the same concept in differentiation and playing inside the box. You don’t want to challenge too many conventions in the branding side. So if you’re a writer and you want to be known as a writer, a copywriter for B2B SaaS, let’s say, whatever, you do need to make sure that you use some conventions that others recognize of that category and specific brands or else you might lose them. So it’s always, again, this subtle dance and this tango between going far and also staying in your lane in some way. So it’s always recognizing the few places where you can play without going overboard or else people just won’t know at all what you’re up to, what you’re doing and who you are and why you’re here.

Rob Marsh: So would you characterize these usually as design elements or are they like actual parts of the offer, parts of the business? The immediate example that comes to mind is the original iMacs. When Apple innovates and they add color and they kind of create this bubble shape to the iMac, suddenly it’s a computer, but it’s very distinctive. It’s very different. Some people reacted to that negatively. It looks like a toy, which it did, but also that was the thing that made it distinctive, but it didn’t really affect the function of what the Mac did. So, is that distinctiveness versus differentiation?

Louis Grenier: Yeah, so assets, brand assets that are part of your distinctive brand, they are basically what makes your brand uniquely yours. So it could be color, shape, sound, word, even a mascot. And it’s the association of all those things that create a branding experience, that create the memories in people’s brain, right? Which is the core thing. You want to associate certain things about you to specific triggers. So instead of thinking of pain points, if you start to think of how do we associate that with this specific trigger, to go back to the example of the back pain and the kids coming back for holidays, you could think about ways to develop things that people could associate with, my kids are coming back, my grandkids are coming back for the holidays. And this is how you kind of create connections between you, your brand, and people’s brain, so that when the need appears, the demand starts to spark in people’s mind, you come first to mind, or second to mind, or third to mind, or at least you’re there, right? So yeah, faces, colors, phrases, anything that is there to stick to people’s brain, right? So like the speech thing, the facial reconnection part of the brain, the vision, the different bits and bobs that are there to like tickle your brain, tickle your customer’s brain.

Rob Marsh: This is where we start to get into points of view as well. And the things that we talk about, content we create. I know there’s a whole section in the book about point of view. I’ve got mixed feelings when it comes to points of view. I think that there’s a lot of value, particularly with points of view that are related to what you do. But I think there’s a lot of people who talk about your point of view as being your politics. And there’s almost been this trend over the last maybe decade, maybe it’s a little longer, where politics is the point of view. And to me, that becomes really dangerous. Michael Jordan, I think, was really famous for saying, he was asked why he doesn’t talk about politics. or do advertising that’s political. And he famously said, Republicans buy shoes too. And he obviously, from that comment, we can discern that he probably leans left, but he wants everybody to be able to buy his product. So there’s this tension when we talk about sharing points of view. Tell me your approach to this and where we should draw that line.

Louis Grenier: So the line is drawn by sharing things, opinions or signals to the people you seek to serve in order to protect them from the pains, the struggles, the monster, I call it as well. We can talk about that later if you want. That is preventing them from making progress or just doing something, right? So it’s not there to be controversial for the sake of it. It’s not there to stir the pot for the sake of it. It’s not there to be disruptive. It’s there to be distinctive and sending a signal to the people you seek to serve that you’re here for them, right? So I would define a point of view as a collection of consistent messages inserted into everything you do and say, showing the people in your segment you’re committed to protecting them and earning their trust, right? And that creates a sense of coherence and control, right? Meaning we’ve got you, we’re here for you, and that’s why, right? So this is a point of view, like, I don’t know, every time I talk about or share point of views, I think of LinkedIn. It’s just the place where people misunderstand the concept quite a lot by sharing points of view that have nothing to do with your industry or nothing to do with the people you seek to serve. That’s my rule of thumb. Just stay in your lane for the business you have. The point of view should be there to protect your segment. And maybe some others outside of it might disagree, but that’s fine. But you don’t want to be disruptive for the sake of it and sharing stuff that have nothing to do with what you have to say. So that’s kind of the, again, the tension. And as you mentioned that word, I’ve noticed that, yes, a lot of the concepts we’re talking about here There is a tension, there is like a dance, there is subtlety because it’s not black and white. It’s not as easy as just, you know, a five-step formula. There is always subtlety and you need to build your taste and develop your taste towards that, right? Toward all of those concepts, like to try things and see how far you go. Is it too far? Is it not far enough? Yeah. It’s, it’s, there’s always a messy middle.

Rob Marsh: And just to be clear, as you talk about that, politics might be okay, right? Just depending on the product, your audience or whatever. So I’m not saying, hey, never touch that, but what we’re saying is it really needs to relate to the thing that you’re doing or to your audience or to the offer in some way.

Louis Grenier: Yeah, or else you lose yourself.

Rob Marsh: Okay, you mentioned the monster. I think another marketing concept that a lot of people are familiar with is picking an enemy. I think the monster is a little bit different from the concept of picking an enemy, where like Apple goes after IBM and Microsoft or whatever. So let’s talk about what is the monster and how do we develop or create this monster that actually works for our brand?

Louis Grenier: So a monster is a fictional or semi-fictional enemy that represents some of the problems that the people you seek to serve face. And the game is to give a name to some of the inner struggles they are facing. And that helps them to understand what’s going on better. that gives them the sense of control and coherence in the world. As an aside, that’s what religions are here for, right? They give this randomness of the universe and why we’re here. It gives some sort of a sense into it that, oh, it’s because God or multiple Gods are creating all of this instead of just pure random chaos. You know, it’s just you can’t explain it. It’s much more unnerving to think about it this way. So anyway. Pointing the finger at a specific monster that tells you this is why you’re struggling. It’s not your fault. And I’m here. The brand is here for you. It’s kind of the concept behind it. But the biggest mistake I see people make with this concept of enemy or monster is that they sometimes make their segment feel guilty instead of, um, getting them on their side. So for example, like procrastination, like you’re always doing things late. Well, it’s your fault. You need to pick yourself up and do this. So it’s never really like that. It’s always making sure that you get them on your side by instead saying, The way you’re built as a homo sapiens is a result of millions and millions of years of evolution, and it’s just the way you’re built. It’s normal that you’re procrastinating. It’s completely normal behavior. Now I can help you channel that, right? So that changes the entire narrative where you get people on your side, you show that you understand them, you bring empathy into the table, and then you can move them further.

Rob Marsh: So to be clear, in that case, the monster is this evolutionary development of… For example, yeah. Yeah, human kite. Okay. And it’s not my fault.

Louis Grenier: It’s not you per se. I mean, I’m spitballing here, and I’m sure that others might disagree, but… That’s one way to talk about it. So the other mistake I see is that people think enemy equal picking a direct competitor, naming them, shaming them out loud. That’s not it. So a monster is something that is responsible for the struggles or some of the struggles that your people are facing. It doesn’t have to be, and in fact, it’s almost never a direct competitor, unless you’re in incredibly crowded categories where almost everyone have used that direct competitor’s product before, like let’s say you do a new search engine, then I would say it’d be difficult not to pick Google as the monster that’s causing their pain, potentially. So there’s four types. It can be a corporate giant that is so big that it’s creating the the issues that your people are facing. So like an example would be big oil, right? You could point the finger at big oil, the four biggest oil companies in the world are responsible for climate change. The alternative solution. So this is what people use instead of using your category. So for Hotjar, that was a typical thing we did. We pointed the finger at only using traditional web analytics. We didn’t point the finger at Google analytics. We pointed the finger at only using them. And the subtlety is important here. We are not saying we shouldn’t, we didn’t say you shouldn’t use GA. We said you should use GA and Hotjar. And the third type is the culture of the category, right? Like the hustle culture or fast fashion or all of the biggest, you know, the biggest trends and themes that are causing people issues. And the last one, which was part of the example I gave from the procrastination is the monster within. So it’s like the feeling of behavior or something within us that is causing us pain. So those are the four types. So it’s quite in-depth. And again, you need to be subtle about it. You don’t have to talk about it out loud every single time. It could be just something for you to be clear about internally. You don’t have to say it out loud. But I like to use it as a, it’s almost like the Death Star, you know, in Star Wars, it’s so big, everything gravitates around it. And so everything you do and say is kind of there to help people slay that monster. And it, again, gives us clarity, this sense of direction that leans on negativity bias or the way people are, you know, we are just geared towards negativity and it creates this anchor.

Rob Marsh: Should every brand or every personality, everybody who’s trying to stand out, should they have a monster? Or are there still places where that’s not important?

Louis Grenier: You should because I think if you don’t, you run the risk of blaming people and actually going against your audience and not having this empathy that you need to have. But again, it doesn’t have to be written on your homepage. It doesn’t have to be said out loud at all. It could just be an internal compass. I think it simplifies things. I’m a sucker for simplicity and the rule of one in as many things as we can, especially in marketing, right? You’re going to have to pick your battles. You can’t do everything, especially as, let’s say, a solo copywriter. You’re going to have to pick something, go after it. And yes, there could be others and there could be other type of monsters or whatever, but the point is not to pick the perfect one. The point is to pick one and fucking go for it, commit to it with intensity.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so let’s say we’ve done all of this work. We’ve gone through the frameworks, we’ve got our insights, our unique positioning, we’ve created our monster or identified our monster. We know how we’re gonna be unique. Let’s talk a little bit now about how, now that we’ve done that, how do we find our audience? What is the, where basically the tire hits the road?

Louis Grenier: Yeah, so ideally, you would have not spent too much time in the framework, in spreadsheets and stuff like that. Ideally, you start to play with some of the concepts already, test them and see how it feels. But the last stage is what I call continuous reach, which is reaching as many people as we can for as little efforts or resources as possible, right? And it’s really based on pure behavioral psychology and basic psychology on how people remember things and why people think of Google as the first search engine and why some brands are first in their category and whatnot. It’s really using the triggers we mentioned as the source of all of that. So once you understand what makes people act, even if it could be six months before they actually purchase. But like this series of triggers, you can find ways to be there, be at the right time, the right context. And that’s how the concept of triggers gets so, so powerful. Because if you split them into the four contextual elements that I mentioned, so when is this trigger happening, where it’s happening, with whom it’s happening, and with what it’s happening, you almost start to get your marketing plan created for you without thinking too much about it, right? So for example, for my own agency, my first failed agency, I actually looked back at all the notes I had about clients and whatnot. To understand the triggers and to see how differently I would have maybe marketed if I had a bit more brainpower by then, right? So let’s say there was this software company I consulted for and they told me that the French website conversion rate was lower than the American one. They wanted to understand why because I think their boss told them I need to do something about this after the quarterly meeting. So that’s an unexpected event. Let’s say that’s a trigger. You can start thinking, okay, when was that happening? Where? So for example, when it’s like pretty much every quarter. You can start playing with that. But once you really understand the triggers, where to be, when to be, what to say, it becomes quite… Again, it just comes naturally because it talks about the way people experience them, not about the pain points that are completely abstract, right?

Rob Marsh: Yeah, so I’m going to change subjects here just a little bit. You somewhat famously asked Seth Godin on your old podcast, a question that he told you, you’re asking the wrong question. You’re asking like, you know, if you probably phrase this better than me, but you asked him something like, you know, if you were a tech company, same as everybody else, how would you differentiate? your business if you’re building it. And he said, you’re asking the question the wrong way. I’m not necessarily asking the same question, but I wonder if you’ve taken what he said, what he told you how to build, if that’s how you’ve built your consultancy today.

Louis Grenier: So yeah, I’m happy to say, I’m happy to report that all the learnings, all the stuff, all the mistakes I made, the lesson learned and whatever that I’ve compiled into that book is something I try my hardest to apply to every day. So yes, in terms of I think the biggest concept that I’m trying very hard to make sure I’m using when I launch a new product and do stuff is, is there a demand for this? Is there a crowded market already? And can I play inside that? So I’m sending a newsletter. Yeah, everyone does it, but actually no, very few. But like, let’s say I sell, I’m going to start to sell a certification program specifically for marketing business owners. So folks running marketing businesses as a solopreneur, freelancer, consultant, agency owner. certify them on the methodology, give them an exclusivity in terms of the badge and other stuff. So limited, all of that. I think 10 years ago, five years ago even, I would have said, everyone does certification, so I’m not going to do it. Let’s find another way to do this. And I would have completely messed that up by essentially stop myself from using the demand that is already there. If there is certification programs out there that are being run by, let’s say, Donald Miller and StoryBrand, like they do, like the StoryBrand certification stuff, and it’s been running for years, I know, therefore, that there is demand for it. And therefore, this is a box I can be in as a product. And so, yeah, I’m using that entire unique positioning. The only difference, the only inner struggles that I’ve identified that I’m going for to have a unique positioning, all the rest stays the same compared to others, is the fact that this badge is earned. You don’t pay for it, even though you pay to enter, but you need to earn it in order to get certified. Meaning you have to show me that you’ve created actual results for clients using part of the methodology, and I reserve the right to not certify you if I feel you don’t fit with the brand. That’s it. That’s the main difference compared to everyone else. creates more exclusivity, this feeling that the brand is protected and the feeling that people who enter this are not just, you know, they just didn’t pay their way to get a fucking badge on the bottom of their website, right? So that’s unique positioning. Distinctiveness, well, distinctiveness, I can talk about it forever, but behind me, you’re listening to this in audio, but you can see that behind me is Roger, my rooster.

Rob Marsh: Big rooster, big orange rooster.

Louis Grenier: Yeah, this is my mascot with a purple beret, with this look on its face, just this aggressive… It’s just such a funny facial or whatever expression. And that has nothing to do with what I do. directly at least. Yes, it’s a nod to me being French because it’s a rooster and wears a beret, but it’s just a nod. It doesn’t explain it. You’re looking at this, you don’t know that I do marketing, right? And this is why, like, this is the beauty of a distinctive brand because it connects meaningless assets that I’m the only one that can claim in the category. I’m the only one with this, right, in the entire marketing category. So that means when people think of me, they think of the rooster. When they think of the rooster, I want them to think of a couple of things such as, you know, they may maybe feel that their business is stagnating and that it’s the new year, turning the new year and they are stagnating. Their positioning is not where they want it to be. This is where this is a trigger. This is where they can think of me. Right. So I genuinely try to apply the entire framework as much as I can. It’s not easy all the time and things change and it’s not perfect, but I try to. Because it’s all rooted in science. It’s not my point of view, my opinion, this is what you should do and this is my way. I sincerely think that this work is rooted in first principles, meaning things will not change. And so if you pick up that book in 50 years, I really hope that most of it will still be relevant. And that’s, yeah, that’s what I’m probably the proudest of.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I agree. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast in the first place, Louis, is because I think that this book basically gives the structure for anybody who is doing marketing and copywriters. Oftentimes we think, well, we’re just writing the copy, somebody else is doing all of this work, but a good copywriter is looking for those insights, is helping to develop that unique positioning statement, you know, so many of the things. It feels like a manual that helps marketers just do business. The frameworks, the tools, the practices that are in the book. And so I agree. I think in 50 years, it’ll still hold its value.

Louis Grenier: Thanks, man. That’s really nice of you to hear because I’m looking at your library of books behind me and the fact that you’re saying that behind you, The fact that you’re saying that it’s a good one, that makes me very happy. The last thing I would say on this is that it’s not easy. It’s not meant to be easy, right? It’s difficult to stand out. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes, you know, mistakes and whatever. And it’s normal. Don’t allow those marketers or not marketers to gaslight you, making you believe that There is a secret you don’t know yet that you should follow, that there is all this like an AI tool that is going to change everything and put you out of business. Be very careful with all of those. They are making you feel bad in order to sell stuff to you. So it’s not that easy, but it’s also not that hard and there’s no secrets and you already know everything. You just need to go for it, try, do new things, try again. So yeah, be careful out there, especially in the marketing space where people are trying to sell stuff you don’t need and recreate, reinvent the wheel. So, yeah.

Rob Marsh: Louis, you have a daily newsletter email that you send out. Let’s share where we can join that. I’ve been on your list, I think, for years. It is unique in the stories that you tell. You’re very outspoken. You have your opinions. You will probably offend some of our listeners when they join, but I think if they stick with you long enough, I think they’ll learn a lot. Where can people jump on your list?

Louis Grenier: If you just Google Stand the F*** Out, you’ll find the newsletter, you’ll find the book. Honestly, it’s as simple as that. And the last thing is I’ve put together an offer specifically for folks who have been courageous enough to listen through my French accents and my cursing. So you can get the book, instant access to the book, meaning through Kindle, through like PDF, EPUB. plus a bunch of other little stuff outside of it, like action kits for $9. So that’s it. So it’s cheaper than the Kindle on its own in Amazon, but you’ll get way more. So the link is stfo.link/tcc.

Rob Marsh: Fantastic. I mean, I hope everybody jumps in and gets it, but I will say it’s worth having the physical book to underline, to go through, to have on your bookshelf and next to you just to refer to because it really is how to build a marketing plan for any business and I think will help a lot of copywriters be more strategic about the work they do.

Louis Grenier: Thanks so much, man. Thanks for all the kind words and your support, encouragement, and thanks for being on the list for that long. I know it’s not easy sometimes.

Rob Marsh: It’s a great email. I probably overstated it a little bit, but it is a great email. So thanks, Louis, for sharing so much. I appreciate it.

Louis Grenier: You’re very welcome.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Louis Grenier for taking some time to sit down with me. You should definitely join his list at everyonehatesmarketers.com. and get a copy of his book, Stand the F Out. As Louis mentioned on the podcast, he has a special offer for anyone who is a listener to the podcast. You can get a PDF or Kindle version of the book, plus a few other bonuses for just $9. The book is a primer for anyone who wants to stand out in a crowded market or for anyone who works with clients and needs to stand out at a crowded market. So get your copy today. 

I really appreciate how deep Louis was willing to go on all of this. Insights, ignored struggles, triggers, distinctiveness, positioning. These are things that don’t always come up when we’re talking about writing copy. But if you add these skills to your writing process, you will stand out from the writers who only think about words. Guys that are calling themselves wordsmiths. 

As we started talking, Louis mentioned the problem of getting people to care about your offer. This is where knowing how to write emotional copy becomes a valuable skill set. We have a masterclass that teaches you how to do that. It’s called the How to Write Emotional Copy Masterclass, and you can learn more about that at thecopyrighterclub.com forward slash emotion. Rather than me telling you what it covers and includes, simply just go to thecopyrightedclub.com/emotion and see for yourself what you get there. 

What makes a good newsletter? How about “unfiltered stories and what we learn from them?” For this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed business strategist Kristin Kenzy, the writer and strategist behind the Drunk Business Advice newsletter. Kristin’s formula for figuring out what makes a good story for sharing in email or newsletters is gold. As is her “accordion pitch” process. Don’t miss this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Kristin’s Newsletter

Rob Marsh:  Okay before we get into our interview… long time listeners are probably wondering, what’s up with the new music? For the past five-ish years, we’ve been using a bit of music composed for us by Addison Rice. But after so many years, it just felt like it was time for a change. So the music is different for the new year and we’ll see if we can’t go another five years or so with this new mix.

On top of that, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been hosting the podcast for the past six months without my one-time co-host Kira Hug. Enough people have asked what’s up with that, that it’s probably time to let you all know what’s up. I mentioned this briefly on one of our throwback episodes, but to make sure you don’t miss it…

I wish there was a juicy story here, or a controversy, a messy falling out worthy of the pages of People magazine, but there’s not. Last year Kira told me that after seven years working on The Copywriter Club, that this project just didn’t light her up like it used to, and she was ready for a different kind of challenge. So we worked to slowly move her out of her daily role at The Copywriter Club. Kira’s still officiallly—legally—a partner behind the scenes, but is no longer working on Copywriter Club projects. We’re still friends. There was no drama… just time for a change. 

At the time I considered ending the podcast, but whenever I mentioned ending the podcast to someone I trusted, they all said, “no, you can’t do that… this podcast is too important for writers who want a look into how other people are running their businesses.” And on top of that I really enjoy talking with copywriters and other marketing experts about this thing we all do. It’s still lighting me up and I’ve got some great guests coming in the next few weeks, so hopefully you’ll all stay tuned to see what’s coming next. I’m still committed to our original promise of sharing strategies and ideas you can steal and use in your own business.

Speaking of great guests… my guest today is business strategist and story teller Kristin Kenzy. Kristin writes one of my favorite newsletters, Drunk Business Advice. In it, she combines interesting marketing take-aways with fantastic storytelling that makes me (and thousands of other readers) look forward to it each week. I wanted to talk with Kristin about her approach to finding and writing the stories she shares. The formula she uses to figure out if a story is worth telling is excellent and she walked me through during our interview. We also talked about why writers need to stop journaling and a better way to pitch prospects in person… something Kristin calls “accordian pitching”. It’s good stuff, so stay tuned to hear what she had to share.

Before we jump into this interview, we’ve got some really great guest trainings lined up in The Copywriter Underground this month… one on building connections with prospects and clients without burning out on social media. If you’re like me and struggle to show up on social media consistently, this one will change your approach entirely. And a second training on landing a “real” in-house job—either part time or full time—if you are looking for something a little more stable than freelancing is. Ironicallly, copywriters are bad at telling our own career stories and this workshop will show you what to do if you want to land one of these so-called “real” jobs. Both of these workshops are exclusively available for members of The Copywriter Underground. If you want access to them plus more than 30 templates, 70 other workshops and trainings, and monthly coaching from me, you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. If you’ve been thinking about trying out The Underground, this month is the month to do it. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu for more information.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Kristin Kenzy. 

Rob Marsh: Welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. We always start with your story, but I’ve got to say, I’m hesitating to ask that because you’ve had so many experiences that I’ve read about in your newsletter. We could talk about your story for the entire podcast. So your version of how you got to where you are today, running your own newsletter and the businesses that you’ve been starting.

Kristin Kenzy: Of course. Well, thank you, Rob, for having me. It’s really an honor to jump in here in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, where none of us know what day it is or what’s going on outside or where anything is in the world, to actually be a little centered and talk about writing and talk about business. 

So I’ll answer your question by just looking at the last couple of years, because the last couple of years is when I’ve become a writer. And I have a definition of a writer, right? A writer is someone that actually gets paid to write. So lots of people write. I have written throughout my entire life. A lot of us have written, have published, have done self-exploratory work through writing. But I only became a writer really in the last 18 months. And that is a result of having had 20 years of entrepreneurship experience. So as you mentioned, we can talk a lot about all of those different ventures that I’ve been a part of, but how that switched from being an entrepreneur to being really a writer or an entrepreneurial writer is getting hired by Trends by the Hustle. Trends was the premium subscription of the Hustle newsletter for about five years, and it was an entrepreneurship analytics publication. And they had had many editors, many writers, many analysts over the years, and they needed someone to take it over who actually wasn’t a writer. They wanted someone who viewed the world through the lens of entrepreneurship. 

So with zero editorial background, zero professional writing experience, I stepped into that role simply because they thought that I knew how to talk to that audience. And again, I looked at it as an exercise in clarity, an exercise in taking actual experiences, actual advice, actual data, and communicating it as effectively as possible to an audience that is really looking to be entertained while they’re reading it, but also they need to get something out of it. So that started my entire sort of writing journey, and I was the managing editor there for about a year. Decided to part ways with them just because The hustle and trends had been acquired by HubSpot, which is a big software conglomerate. And journalism and media and corporate America don’t blend super well. And I thought that there was just some cultural nuance there that wasn’t really jiving for me. But in that time, I had just fallen in love with editorial. I had met the coolest people that I’ve ever known before in my entire life, in my entire career, who were our writers and our analysts. The most incredible entrepreneurs who were part of our readership and part of our community. And I just said, this is what I want to do. And I felt that after having 20 years of business experience, I had earned the right to stop doing it and start talking about it and start teaching it. And so I made that big shift. I was, you know, a huge part of my career was in real estate development. And I like to say I retired my hard hat and adopted a laptop as my main business tool and made that shift into editorial. But again, I don’t look at any of this as a writer. I look at it as a person who has had experiences that I think can help others. and or entertain others, hopefully both. And that’s really the platform by which I’ve built my newsletter and all of the other editorial and community aspects of what I’m working on right now.

Rob Marsh: So before we jump into a lot of that stuff, what’s really interesting with what you’ve shared so far is the fact that you weren’t a writer before you became a writer. And there are a lot of people who listen to this podcast who are starting writing businesses or have been writing for a little while. They’re looking for clients. that the challenge of how do I communicate now that I can do this thing, this writing thing. And you obviously did it. I mean, it’s almost counterintuitive where you say, well, I, you know, you, you managed, you know, skating rinks and you’ve like, you mentioned your real estate development stuff that you’ve done and you’ve worked on a cruise ship and all of like these amazing experiences. But it wasn’t writing. And so what was the thing that made you think or even made the hustle think that you were the right person for that job?

Kristin Kenzy: There’s, there’s two things. So what the hustle thought and what I thought, two different things. Um, so I think the hustle really did want someone who could manage the business of their trends publication. I think they were thinking about that because trends was a business within a business. When the hustle was purchased by HubSpot, they relinquished their advertising business. They were, you know, that was how they made money before. And they became a platform for which HubSpot could promote its products and services. Whereas Trends uniquely was not that. Trends was a premium subscription. So they needed to look at Trends as a business plus editorial. So I was responsible for both of those elements, right? I was the managing editor, not the editor-in-chief who was in charge of both the hustle and trends. I was really looking at how can we maximize this business? Who are our readers? What interests them most? And when I say who are our readers, what stage in development are they? Are they people who are questioning going into entrepreneurship, questioning taking that leap and quitting their 9 to 5? Are they experienced entrepreneurs who are looking for operational tactics? Are they investors who are looking to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the startup world, right? Like, you know, delineating between all of those different user groups and then creating product services, programming, and of course, strong editorial that resonated with them. So I think that that’s really what they were looking at me for. I think that they thought, okay, our writers are strong enough that if our managing editor isn’t the best editor in the world, the business will still thrive as a result of that. So I think that that’s where they were coming from. I don’t think they expected me to step into the editorial side. And I know I didn’t expect myself to step into the editorial side as competently as I ended up doing. That was a huge surprise to everybody. And the thing that I thought I would find most interesting about taking on that role was building relationships with that audience. So I had been a subscriber and member of Trends since its inception, and I was an active part of that community. That’s how they knew me. I actually ran their blockchain subchapter as a volunteer, because at the time I was the COO of a blockchain startup. And so I wanted to like, you know, make sure that we were exploiting all the resources that Trends had to offer in that industry and making sure that we were constantly discovering things and sharing it with the community. So I was very actively involved and I had met some of the coolest people ever. And I was just like, if I could be in a position of authority and looked up to by this incredible community of entrepreneurs and business leaders, That can’t be bad for me at all. There’s no downside to that. And so I was really in it more for the community, the relationships, the connections, and looking at it as a stepping stone to what my next venture might be. And I think that they really wanted someone who could streamline their business operations and make sure that they were maximizing all of their programming and all of the products within the trend suite, not just the editorial.

Rob Marsh: Okay, that all makes sense. So you left there and maybe there was a step in between, but you have started your own newsletter, Drunk Business Advice, which before we started recording, I told you I love it. I think it really stands out in the newsletter space in some really unique ways. Tell us about that. Why start a newsletter and what is your approach?

Kristin Kenzy: So this all happened while I was still with Trends. It’s funny. I had wanted to either start a newsletter or a podcast or both. And it was because I had suddenly been exposed to the world of media. And like I had mentioned, I had just met so many great people. And conversely to the world of tech and the world of real estate that I had come up through, I felt like there was an openness to the relationships I was building. I met, for the first time in my career, really incredible women who wanted to uplift other women. And in a lot of more male-dominated industries, even the women in them kind of want to push women down. And I had experienced a lot of that sort of thing. And so I kind of, not to be too kumbaya about it, was like, Oh, this is just like a fantastic space to be in. And this is how I want my world to look. And so, um, I had started, my initial idea was to start a podcast and a newsletter called business and benevolence. And this was from a, uh, panel that I hosted while I was with trends with people who were really strong business leaders and entrepreneurs, but also either ran nonprofits on the side or had, um, certain like, uh, social or economic missions that were really just benevolent within their businesses. And it was this idea that you can be both and you can be successful at both, right? You don’t have to be, you know, looking just at shareholder management. You can look at stakeholder management and manage both and make the world a better place while also running a super successful and profitable business. And I wanted to explore that a little bit more greatly. And so that was kind of the first idea that I played around with. And then I’ll tell you how drunk business advice, which is so much more suitable to me, by the way, than the benevolence thing, came about. I had been at an event here in New York City that a friend of mine was hosting for entrepreneurs. And she’s someone that I support and I try to go to as many of her events as possible. And I was talking to someone there about his fundraising strategy. He was trying to raise venture capital, but also looking at smaller angel and even like some private equity. And I was talking to him about the strategy and we were having wine and then we were talking about the strategy and then we were having more wine. And then we were talking about the strategy and having even more wine. And I came up with an idea to kind of flip his fundraising strategy on its head by segmenting all of his business units and making them investable assets as individuals rather than the whole company. Not to get into too many details about it, but it was like this whole like completely rethinking how he was going to go out and raise money. And he went and did it. And the next morning I had an editorial meeting with Trends, with all of our writers, and I was like, oh my God, last night this guy took my drunk business advice. And it was the most, like, I can’t believe that he took this advice. And they were like, that needs to be your newsletter. Drunk business advice. And so it started with a name first, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about. But as I was workshopping the idea, I initially wanted to look at sort of the key aspects of business operations that get ignored. So I had three tests, the toilet test, the tell me test, and oh my gosh, there was one more. Now I feel like a presidential candidate in a debate for getting the third thing of a policy. So I’ll talk about the first two first and then the third will come back to me. So the toilet test was what’s the toilet of your business, right? What is the thing that if you don’t keep it maintained and running well, the shit will hit the fan, literally. But it’s not a sexy thing to look at. How do you identify that and keep that running? The tell me test was all about communication. And that is, how are you communicating your mission, your values, your structure, your tactics, your policies, not just to your staff, but to your audience? Because there’s usually a strong disconnect between what you want to do and how that’s actually landing on your team and on your audience. And now the third one is still like, leaving me, which is good. It’s good that this has happened because obviously that was not the right structure for drunk business advice. I recorded four podcast episodes initially of drunk business advice, focusing on those topics, and it just didn’t work. There’s a bunch of reasons why it didn’t work. Number one, I suck at podcasts. I—full disclosure—don’t really listen to podcasts. It’s not how I consume media. I’m a reader. And what you’re doing is incredibly difficult. Interviewing people live, editing them, promoting them, all of that stuff I was just not good at. But also, I felt like I was too structured by having these tests, these cutesy little tests. And that’s also my biggest flaw in copywriting is that I tend to be a little too cute with copy and try to find things that are a little too fun and adding structure where structure doesn’t need to be. And so I took a big step back for like probably four or five months to rethink it. And I realized that the essence of drunk business advice is just unfiltered stories and what we learn when we are actually talking to people we care about with a drink in our hand and reliving those experiences and having those experiences reflected back onto us by our friends and the people who are hearing them. And so that’s the direction that I ended up going. It’s far less structured and so far has been working a lot better than trying to be cutesy and offer all these different operational advice elements.

Rob Marsh: I think it’s the stories that resonate so much, at least why I love the newsletter so much. There’s a ton of variety. One of the first newsletters that really resonated with me, I think you were doing a critique of managed care facilities because you were putting, I think, a relative in a managed care facility, which I’ve had a mom go through that and, you know, passed away in a facility and like the criticisms that you were offering through that all hit home, but you were telling it in a way that was so compelling and almost, I mean, the experience is kind of over the top, but it was almost over the top ridiculously bad. But then the next week’s episode may be about your experience managing an ice rink or an experience on a cruise ship. The stories are so different, but they’re always compelling. So let’s talk a little bit about storytelling. And I know you even got, I think, a program where you’re helping business leaders tell their own stories. But how do you approach stories? As you’re thinking about this, oh, this would be a good story, or this is not a good story for the newsletter. What do I need to do to make this story acceptable for the newsletter? Let’s talk about that process a little.

Kristin Kenzy: Sure. So for the first probably 20 to 25 issues, I had no process. I was just publishing. And this is, I guess, one of those unique aspects of coming at this as a non-writer, right? I don’t have any experience in being taught how to write, in storytelling formulas, in any of this stuff. And it’s actually been through working with other people who have that background to provide me with clarity on what it is I’m actually doing so that I can repeat it moving forward. Because that was my biggest problem is when I first started writing drug business advice, people would ask me that question and my answer was, I have no idea. I just write it. It’s like when I was a figure skater, I didn’t know how I did a double axel. I couldn’t break it down for you because it was almost like muscle memory and I would just do it. And that’s how I was initially writing it. But since I’ve started working with actual writers and people who have been giving me feedback on what it is that I’m putting out there, I’ve been able to put a lot more structure around my process. And that’s one of the things that I’m going to be working on with my new Rebel Scribes cohort, the business leaders that are going to be joining me here in January to work on their own storytelling. So, there’s a few things. The first thing that I do, or the big structure, is something that I never knew of, but apparently is pretty common in storytelling, and that’s the, and then, because, and therefore structure. Do you know what I’m talking about when I say that, or should I?

Rob Marsh: Well, I mean, let’s elaborate on it a little bit, just in case somebody listening doesn’t. There’s a few different versions of this framework for, like, how does the story work?

Kristin Kenzy: Absolutely. And so I start with the and then. Most people tell stories this way, just, you know, when they’re talking to their friends or communicating with people on social media. And it’s this sort of anecdotal stream of consciousness way of telling a story. It’s one event happens, then another event happens, then another event happens. It’s not a story, but is a series of events. And so like, as an example, this might be, My boss dismissed my idea in a meeting. And then I started not caring about my job. And then I got called into a performance review. And then I decided I was unhappy, and then I quit. That’s a series of events. And I start with that because that’s how most of us, like, remember things. Remember this event happened, and that event happened, and that event happened. Or in the cases where I’m interviewing subjects for drunk business advice, that’s how they usually relay things to me as well, right? Like, this is the story of what happened. The next step is the because, right? Looking at the why behind that. So after I get the and thens out, and I don’t self-edit myself while I’m trying to do that. I don’t try to self-edit and go, and then, oh, what was the because here? I just get it all down. Then I try to add the becauses. So what this might look like in the previous example is my boss dismissed my idea in a meeting because he was always adamant about appearing to be the smartest guy in the room. Because I realized that I was never going to feel valued at work, I began disconnecting my self-worth with my job performance. Because I was then underperforming, I was called in for a performance review. And during that performance review, it became clear that because my boss was never going to provide me with the validation and the upward mobility I needed, that it was time for me to resign. So now that’s more of a story. And we’re getting through to the why behind the and thens. And then the final thing is the therefore. So that’s the last thing that I do, and that’s typically the drunk business advice. And for those of you who may have read it, I always kind of start, there’s this bubble at the top that has the drunk business advice, and they’re just a few bullet points to kind of entice you into what’s going to come. But the final thing is the therefore. So the therefore in this example might be, You know, therefore, while it’s healthy to find self-worth in other places other than work, work consumes so much of our time and energy that it’s important to recognize the signs of a toxic workplace and make changes before that toxic environment impacts our mental health, our reputation, our career. And that’s like, that’s the final therefore. And then you have something that is worth reading because not only does it take the reader on a journey that they can emotionally relate to, there’s advice there, right? There’s something about a piece of value that they could take away. So I start with my and thens and I just get the anecdote on paper. Then I try to look behind that, come up with the becauses. And then I finally come up with the therefore. What are the main takeaways from this? The things that really matter and that I want them to remember after reading the story.

Rob Marsh: Copywriters will recognize the advice part as the transformation or the result or the thing that we’re driving to that’s going to create that sale or whatever the activity that we need somebody to take. And so it makes sense, not just from a storytelling, situation, but when we’re writing any kind of content, any kind of copy that’s trying to move somebody from where they are now to where they want to be at some point in the future. And I think one of the wonderful things about your newsletter is it’s not always something that we’re aware of that movement because of how it’s coming from your life and your experience. But again, we’re along for the journey the whole time. And when we get there, it’s really satisfying to read.

Kristin Kenzy: That’s really nice of you to say. And I’m glad that that’s coming through. But it is hard. And you had asked how I determine what stories are worthwhile. And it really is that bridge between the and then and the because. Because if there is a because behind the story, and it’s not just a fun anecdote, I started writing one the other day, a story that I have told a million times before about a horrible experience I had at Disney World. And there’s actually a lot of business lessons in it. from a Disney perspective because they just dropped the ball on, they were definitely not the happiest place on earth. And there are just some crazy anecdotes and things that happened there. But as I was putting the story together, I just couldn’t find enough because and therefore in it. It was just to me a series of ridiculous anecdotes. And I might be able to take some of those anecdotes and use some of those for like social media posts or other things. But drunk business advice, as you mentioned, it’s long form narrative. And I need to have really strong becauses and really strong therefores. And I wrote half of it and went, there’s just not enough here. And again, this is a story that I’ve told at dinner parties for years, thinking it’s one of the best stories I have in my back pocket. And it’s really not. It’s just like an outrageous thing that happened in a series of events. but there’s nothing to really draw from it.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s a big, I mean, there are all kinds of different stories, varying lengths or whatever. But when you need a story that fits a purpose, you know, if you’re trying to communicate something specific, like you said, advice or some kind of transformation, there has to be a change. There has to be that thing. You’re right. And so, yeah, there’s a place in the world for anecdotes and funny stories, you know, the give a laugh at the bar or whatever. But for a serious or a weekly newsletter, it’s nice to have a little bit more.

Kristin Kenzy: Absolutely.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so we’ve talked just a little bit about your storytelling approach. One of the things you mentioned to me that got me thinking before we started recording, you sent an email with a couple of ideas of some things we could talk about. One of them was stop journaling. And one of the things that experts have said is if you want stories to tell, you need to be writing them down in the journal and you’ve got to keep this list of your potential stories and you’ve got to be thinking about it. So I’m curious about, your approach. I know you’re not saying don’t write things down or don’t keep a journal, but what do you mean by that idea of stop journaling?

Kristin Kenzy: So I would say there’s a difference between a journal and a second brain. And I am a really strong advocate for keeping a second brain, recording your thoughts, making sure that you have notes written down every time an idea comes to you, every time you remember something, witness something, have a conversation that inspires you. Yes, 100% write that stuff down. So when I say journaling, I say like, OK, it’s like that dear diary at the end of the day. Here’s all the stuff that I did today. possibly here’s how it made me feel. The reason I think people should stop doing that and start writing for an audience is because when you’re writing for an audience, it forces you to find value in your experience that is going to be, you know, value for the audience. I like to say that my favorite quote is from one of my best professional mentors, Frank Sipovitz. He was in charge of the Super Bowl during the blackout. And he was in charge of the Super Bowl for 10 years. Prior to that, he was in charge of the NHL events. And prior to that, he was in charge of Radio City Music Hall. So this guy has been in some of the most crisis, dire situations you could ever imagine. And my favorite quote from him is, learning isn’t linear. You don’t have an experience and immediately learn from it and take those learnings and apply them to your life or whatever it is you’re doing, your profession. Our brains don’t work like that. We don’t look backwards like that. Some of the lessons kind of seep into our subconscious and become like intuitive and things like that. But like intellectually, we typically don’t look at our experiences as lessons. You know, we’re not an after school special, right? Where it’s like, oh, this experience happens and here’s what we learned from it, boys and girls. That’s not how our brains work. But we can trick our brains into doing that if we start writing those experiences down for an audience. and forcing ourselves to extract the lessons because now not only are, you know, they hopefully learning something and we’re providing value to an audience, but now we’ve intellectualized this and brought it up into the forefront of our minds so that we can now use those lessons as we move forward through our lives. And so I would argue that anyone who journals right now or likes to write down their experiences, their thoughts, their feelings, I would encourage them to start doing that for an audience. Whether it’s you’re posting on LinkedIn or any sort of other social media you happen to be on, starting a newsletter, even if you only have 20 subscribers and they’re your friends and family and cousins, right? Even if you have that small of an audience, it’s worth doing just because it’s going to force you to reflect back on your life and extract value from your experiences. So it’s a little bit of a life hack. And I also think that writing for an audience opens up enormous opportunities. Because even if you start small and gain a little bit of traction, staying top of mind for people and constantly bringing people value means that people are going to start reaching out to you for all kinds of things. I mean, I just got a text message this morning from a former colleague who I’ve remained top of mind for and wants to know if I’m interested in a job. Answers probably no on that one, but how many people get text messages like that when you’re not actively putting yourself out there? So I think it’s super valuable for a number of reasons.

Rob Marsh: I think also using writing to an audience, which is a little bit, you know, using writing as a thinking tool to figure out what you’re saying or what you’re thinking in the moment. But there’s a filtering effect that happens there too. You know, there are some regular email writers when their email shows up in my inbox where I think, that story maybe wasn’t that valuable for me as an audience, right? you know, wasn’t what I was expecting from that particular writer, whereas if they were thinking, oh, my writer includes this persona, this kind of person, and so they’re interested in, you know, this topic, or my lessons about, you know, this experience, it feels like that filtering effect could improve a lot of email writers work.

Kristin Kenzy: Oh, completely. Because you are, you’re thinking about who that person is that’s reading it. And it’s also possible to kind of segment that, right? So sending, if you have an audience and you know a little bit about that audience, you can choose to send them different versions of the same lesson in ways that will resonate with them. Or you can just choose to only send them things that you believe are really going to be impactful so that you get that click and you get that open. every time rather than them starting to become disinterested and then just not opening your email when it does contain a little nugget of gold for them. And I think that that’s something that not enough newsletter operators are actually doing right now. I asked this question to a group of newsletter operators the other night, how many segments do you send the same email to? And the answer is usually one. I have my audience segmented based on acquisition method, based on how they’ve responded to various surveys and things that I put out. For instance, entrepreneurs versus nine to fivers with a side hustle versus retirees versus C-suite. I have this information about my audience. Why not segment it? And if I want to in the future, create customized content for those segments. So I do think that that’s something that people should start thinking about at the very top, even before they have a large audience, is how to find out the most you can about them and then segment them. And sometimes you’ll just send the same blast out to everyone, and that might be the case, you know, 90% of the time. But having that information about your audience so that you can customize the message is really important as well.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I remember you sent a subscriber survey to me that I filled out. In fact, that was probably our first email exchange.

Kristin Kenzy: Can we tell people what you told me?

Rob Marsh: Sure. Well, I mean, you’ll have to talk about what was on your survey.

Kristin Kenzy: I just want Rob’s audience to know that he told me to f*** off in that.

Rob Marsh: Sort of, sort of.

Kristin Kenzy: No, it was perfect. It was the best response I ever got from that survey.

Rob Marsh: We have to be clear, the survey itself categorizes each person, so I had to select a couple of things. One of them was my age, and I think The age for millennials said you were in the prime of your game or something. And then the one for my age group, which is just slightly older than millennial, was something about being past, not past the prime of my life, but being at the stage of my life where I could tell people to F off, basically. And so, yeah, I responded back with, I was trying to be funny, I think.

Kristin Kenzy: It was the best response I’ve ever gotten. I love that. And it showed that you actually like paid attention to the content and were engaged with it. And I love seeing stuff like that. And I’m never offended when people use that language with me because I use that language with them.

Rob Marsh: I think this points out to an interesting bit of micro copy as well, where it’s not just about the big long form newsletter. But it’s about all of the other ways that you communicate and a survey can be fun. And so especially if you’re asking people to divulge information about themselves, you ought to make it fun or at least enticing for them in some way so that they’re willing to share. And your survey did that, at least for me.

Kristin Kenzy: Thank you. Thank you. I think it’s important to bring authenticity and personality to every type of communication you have with your audience. And whether it’s a survey, whether it’s a social media post, whether it’s just an email exchange, you know, I get a lot of responses to the newsletters that I send out. And when I respond, I try to be the same person that they expect, right? I try to be fun and, you know, engaging and authentic. And I never set up If I scale to a certain level, I might have to do this, but I usually don’t set up any sort of auto replies, nor do I have at this point an assistant or anyone responding on my behalf, which I know a lot of the bigger publications have to do. I really do try to individually respond to every single thing people send me, because they’ve taken time out of their day to say hello to me, and they deserve an authentic response from me.

Rob Marsh: So when we’re talking about segmenting, have you done this with Drunk Business Advice yet, where you’re sending a different message to certain segments that I may be not seeing, or is this the plan for the future?

Kristin Kenzy: It’s more of a plan for the future. My audience, first of all, isn’t big enough yet, I think, to send those segments, but I guess the point behind this was that start collecting that data early so that you can begin segmenting once your audience gets to that point. The only difference that I have right now in emails that I’ve sent have been to promote Rebel Scribes, my writing cohort. based on people who have either shown engagement, responded to surveys, versus people who might read the newsletter and open the newsletter but are a little bit more passive. And that’s mainly just to reward those who are more engaged with special offers and pre-launches and things like that. It’s not been a like, hey, this is the segment of C-suite, so I’m going to speak to you differently than the segment who are entrepreneurs. I haven’t experimented with that yet, but I plan to in the future.

Rob Marsh: You did do that when you were with Trends, though. I mean, that publication was pretty intense in the way they used data and thought about data.

Kristin Kenzy: We actually did not. The whole time I was there, we definitely didn’t mix our editorial. Our editorial was the same message to everyone. It was a premium subscription. People paid for that. Everyone got the same thing. On the marketing side of things, we did. We segmented our list and did email marketing to try to target the most, what we thought were the best types of Trends members, which were people who were actually operating and actually doing. We found that even though people who were thinking about diving into entrepreneurship were really engaged at the beginning, they typically didn’t renew their subscription. Whereas people who were operators, you know, because if they go a year and they don’t start a business, why are they, you know, and so we were really looking more for operators, people who actually had quite a bit of experience and were looking to either pivot their business, start a new business, open up different operational aspects to their business, and they were looking for different insights. we found them to be far more engaging. And so we did segment our list based on that to try to make sure that we were targeting the right members for more sustainability and less churn overall. But editorially, no, we just sent the same email out to everyone. We probably should have thought more about that actually. But I was new at this back then. So I didn’t even think to like, these are all lessons again, learning’s not linear. And these are all lessons that I’ve learned throughout that process.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. One of the things that you mentioned that we should definitely talk about is related to this, that’s humanizing data. The fact that there is a difference between talking about numbers and knowing numbers or the way that we talk about numbers. And this is a huge problem online, you know, especially in marketing where people are willing to share like top line numbers, but they don’t talk about all of them. you know, the stuff that happens underneath, you know, when we’re talking things like income or revenue or costs and value and all of that stuff. I’m assuming you’ve got maybe a related take on that. What do you think about this whole way that we talk about data?

Kristin Kenzy: I mean, everything is spun. So to answer your question about like sometimes people are gonna like share whatever numbers make them look the best. And if that’s top line revenue and not profitability, then that’s what they’re gonna share. So I don’t know that I have a judgment to make on that because I mean, that’s more their own kind of moral dilemma. When I talk about humanizing data, I’m talking about how when you are either pitching an idea or telling someone about your business and there’s data involved. The quote that I use is like, everyone wants to know your numbers, but no one wants to listen to you talk about your numbers because it’s boring as hell, right? You want to express numbers in a way that makes people able to relate to them. So to give you a couple of examples, and I’m going to credit Carmine Gallo with this as well. He was another mentor of mine. He’s published I think 10 books now, several bestsellers. His latest is The Bezos Blueprint, where he analyzed all of Jeff Bezos’ shareholder letters over the course of the decade or so that he was chairman of Amazon and writing shareholder letters. He talked about Jeff Bezos’ storytelling ability, his ability to simplify complex situations and concepts. And most importantly, his ability to humanize data. So this is a concept that I got from Carmine Gallo in this book. And to give you an example, we might say, by the year 2050, there will be over 850 million tons of plastic in the ocean. What does that mean? It means nothing.

Rob Marsh: It means there’s a lot of plastic in the ocean.

Kristin Kenzy: It means there’s a lot of plastic in the ocean. But what if we rephrase that and we said, by 2050, the weight of all the plastic in the ocean will be greater than the weight of all the fish? That humanizes it. It conceptualizes it. And you can think, well, there’s a lot of fish in the ocean. There’s actually, I think it’s 890 million tons of fish in the ocean. And it’s going to be greater than that of all the fish. Or if we have, I have a few really good ones here. Amazon stores over 3 billion gigabytes of data.

Rob Marsh: I have no idea what a gigabyte is.

Kristin Kenzy: Amazon stores so much data that if you burned it all onto DVDs, the stack would reach the International Space Station twice. So these are examples of how you can take any time you’re writing and I try to do this. My example is figure skating, right? So when I talk about how I injured myself as a figure skater, when a figure skater falls on a jump, it’s eight times their body weight. So what I did is I was like, well, when I was a figure skater, I weighed about 100 pounds. What weighs 800 pounds? And I went through this process of trying to figure out things that weigh 800 pounds, and I figured out that a grand piano weighs about 800 pounds. I’m like, what a visual is that? So now when I talk about that, I say that when I fell on that jump, the force of it was equivalent to a grand piano crashing onto a frozen sidewalk. And that just helps. You can hear the wood splintering, right? You can feel the impact. And you can now understand what an incredible injury I had as a result of that particular fall, right? So I always try to look for ways to take a number and then humanize it or contextualize it in a way that people can understand. And I still don’t know really how many gigabytes of data all these DVDs stacked up to the International Space Station might be, but it instilled a feeling in me of like, that’s an astronomically large number. That’s an incomprehensibly large number. And Amazon stores all of that data. That’s incredible. That’s what I mean when I say humanized data, and I think it’s a really strong exercise that we can all do when we write. Every time a number comes up, just stop yourself. Well, write because you shouldn’t stop yourself while you’re writing. Write everything down. But when you’re going through that because and therefore process in your self-editing, think about more creative ways that you can tell those stories. I’ll tell you what, AI is a fantastic tool for this. Because you can put that number into ChatGPT or Cloud or whatever you use and say, give me 20 examples of this. And then you want to verify and make sure, of course, that those examples are not hallucinated and that those numbers all stack up. But it can definitely help the process when you’re trying to think of creative ways to humanize your data.

Rob Marsh: This is another huge copywriting lesson, and it’s not just numbers and data that we need to contextualize, it’s experiences, right? So, this is just off the top of my head, but if you are writing for, say, a knee supplement, because your knees hurt and you want to sell this and you’re selling it to maybe someone in their 50s or 60s, You can’t just say it stops knee pain. You have to contextualize what that knee pain is, right? Like it’s keeping you from playing tennis or being able to go running or maybe playing with your grandkids or whatever those things are. We have to contextualize this stuff in order to tell a better story and in order to get readers to relate to the stuff that we’re doing. This is key to connecting emotionally with our readers.

Kristin Kenzy: Absolutely. And it’s honestly something that I struggle with in copywriting because while I do think I’m strong editorially and with long form narrative, I lean into the cute with copy and I forget about the emotion behind it. I forget about the why. And luckily I have people in my life that are constantly banging me over the head, reminding me that I need to focus on that whenever I’m writing copy because I think it’s hard. I think it’s really hard.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. One other thing that you mentioned that we should touch on that’s a totally different subject, I think, but it’s accordion pitching. And part of this, again, copywriters, content writers, we’re always pitching for work. Oftentimes we’re pitching for other opportunities. But you said that we need to sort of shut up a little bit and take maybe a different approach.

Kristin Kenzy: Well, I mean, it’s all accordion pitching is, and this is a skill that I learned from a screenwriter friend of mine. And so it’s actually a screenwriting concept, and I’ve never heard of this being applied in business. But an accordion pitch is where you just give a little nugget of information at the top, and then you look for a positive signal to proceed. And then you give a little bit more. And I think what founders specifically, I’m not quite sure about freelancers or copywriters, usually folks are pretty good at nailing their one-liner, right? If somebody asks, what do you do? Or what does your company do? We practice this, we rehearse it. There’s a lot of people that’ll say that your one-liner is, my company solves X for Y using this secret sauce. There’s all kinds of formulas for doing this. And that’s great. What happens when they say, interesting, tell me more. Word vomit. I would say that even in this conversation, I have been guilty of that because I’ve been answering, I think, far too monologuish and not turning this into a conversation. You’re okay with that because you’re a podcast host, but if we were meeting at a dinner party, you’d be like, oh my God, I want this girl to shut up. When is she going to let me show interest or ask a question? And so what an accordion pitch basically does is, and I have, I know that people can’t see, but I have a visual aid for this, which is when somebody asks, what do you do? You open up the accordion just a little bit and you say something like, oh, I write a newsletter called Drunk Business Advice. wow, like, okay, that’s, and then I stop there, right? I write a newsletter called Drunk Business Advice, and if they’re like, yeah, okay, and they change the subject, then I know that they’re not interested in learning more about drunk business advice, and that’s okay, because I’ve given them that opportunity to say no, but if they’re like, oh, wow, what’s drunk business advice? I’ll expand the accordion a little bit more, and I’ll say, well, you know, learning isn’t linear, Our lives are not like afterschool specials. We don’t immediately learn our lessons right after we have our experiences. And what drug business advice does is it dives into those experiences in an unfiltered way to provide valuable lessons in an entertaining way. interesting, tell me more, or they might change the subject at that point or ask a question. But if they say interesting, tell me more, then I open the accordion a little bit more and I say, well, I send it every Thursday. I also have writing workshop and I can go on and on. Right. But the idea is that you will have, you know, three to five to six layers of your story. to be able to communicate in a conversational setting that occurs when people are giving you positive signals that they want to learn more. And also giving them an out and therefore respecting their time. Because nobody wants to be that person at the cocktail party who’s just blabbering on about themselves for an hour, not giving anyone else the opportunity to interject or change the subject. And so that’s accordion pitching.

Rob Marsh: I love this idea because everybody has that first answer, but almost nobody has thought through, okay, if I keep opening the kimono just a little bit more, revealing a little bit more, oftentimes we haven’t thought through like, what are those second, third, fourth level answers? And not just like, what would I say, but how do I make it so intriguing that the next response is tell me more. Every time is to tell me more. And that takes work. Again, copywriters, content writers should be able to figure that out. That’s what we’re supposed to do for our clients. But when we sit down to do it for ourselves, it’s oftentimes a harder task and it takes a lot of thinking through to get that right.

Kristin Kenzy: Totally. You hit such a fantastic point. I can give this advice all day long, but even I am bad at doing it. We all know what we should be doing, but trying to do it for yourself is really challenging. As you’re going through this process, don’t be too hard on yourself because even the people who are touting this as being the best process ever still have a hard time doing it in execution.

Rob Marsh: Well, this is one of the things that we’ve always taught in our programs. It’s oftentimes really good to have somebody that you can reflect this with. It’s like, this is what I wrote. How would you change it? This is what you wrote. This is how I respond to it. So having a business buddy, a writing partner, however you want to call it, somebody that you can reflect that is really helpful.

Kristin Kenzy: It takes practice. You can’t really do this necessarily in front of a mirror. It’s great to have a buddy who’s doing this. And this is one of the things we’re doing in my upcoming cohort is everyone’s going to craft their own accordion pitch and they’re going to have an accountability partner who they’re going to practice the hell out of it with. Because you need to be in that situation when someone’s either showing interest or maybe not showing interest or kind of showing interest. And you need to run through those scenarios and role play it so that when you get to that situation where you’re in front of someone who it matters for, then you operate like it’s by rote, like you don’t even have to think about it.

Rob Marsh: While we’re talking about this idea of having people to work through things, I know you’re interested in learning. You’ve done courses at Harvard. You’re in masterminds. Talk just a little bit about why you’re so invested in those kinds of experiences as opposed to only just reading books or only reading newsletters or what other learning opportunities that we all have.

Kristin Kenzy: And well, we all learn from books. Books are great. Teachers are great. Practice is amazing. But we learn the most by surrounding ourselves with people who care about our goals as much as we do. I mean, it just 10Xs everything. So for instance, I have a mastermind. called Stealth, Stealth Mastermind. And I was launching a landing page for a new product the other day. And I went to my mastermind and I said, shred this. And within 10 minutes, from people that I trust and love and respect, had feedback that completely reshaped that landing page. And, you know, of course you can hire someone to build a landing page for you and you can like go through and watch YouTube videos and read, you know, newsletters and listen to podcasts about all this stuff, but I mean they just within five minutes I had a completely different approach to what I was doing. And having, I think, a relationship with people who you love and trust also motivates you to do more. It’s really difficult when you’re a business owner, especially if you’re a solopreneur or someone who’s really just starting out, to have that accountability and feel like there’s someone looking at you saying, what are you doing today? How far have you gotten? And so I think the communities are really important. And for instance, when I went to Harvard, that was probably my biggest revelation. I was thrilled, obviously, to be going to executive grad school at Harvard. It was the biggest achievement and joy of my life. And I went in thinking, oh, I’m going to get the best education ever. Why wouldn’t I? The education was fine. I mean, it was good. The education was fine. The real value was derived from the relationships that I built with my classmates. And that compounds just every single day. I’m in touch with them, honestly, almost every single day. I’m either texting or on a phone call with one of them. And they make me better people. One last anecdote on this point. I received a response to my last Drunk Business Advice newsletter that was about friendships from a reader who’s really fantastic. And he talked about a Simon Sinek concept, which I had not heard about before, but was something about how friends are not people who are there for you when you’re down. They’re really people who are truly happy for you when you succeed. And when you surround yourself with people who are just as happy about your success as you are, it compounds as well. And I had never thought of it that way. I had always thought people who are the best friends are the ones that are there to rescue you. And that’s true. And you can have those friends. But the ones that celebrate your successes very meaningfully and truthfully are probably the best friends.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s a really good way to look at masterminds and cohorts as those friends who are there. And I’ve seen that reflected as well. It seems to be the people who are most engaged and most caring are most excited about everybody else’s success, even when they’re not seeing it, or the same level of success.

Kristin Kenzy: Exactly. And they don’t want to tear you down to their level, right? They want to pump you up.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, exactly. Okay, Kristin, if you could go back to Kristin just starting out in the business world and give her some advice that might help her make progress faster or might help her make more sense of the whole journey in some way, what would you tell her?

Kristin Kenzy: Honestly, what we had just talked about the value of relationships. I was bullied horribly in high school. And so I thought that I could have success or friends, but not both. That was, I sincerely thought that because my friends in high school, anytime I did well, you know, exceeded, whether it was academically or in any of the extracurriculars I did, they weren’t my friends anymore, right? And they would try to bully me and beat me down. And so I sincerely had starting out in my career, this idea that like, well, I can’t make friends with anyone because they are going to inhibit my success. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. And as a result, I threw a wall up. for like 20 years and did not allow myself to have vulnerable and authentic relationships. I did not open myself up to mentorship. I did not open myself up to mentor. I really felt like this was my journey and everyone else was out to get me. And that couldn’t have been further from the truth because looking back, I had many opportunities to build incredibly meaningful relationships with people who I kept at a distance. And so that would be the advice that I give to myself is that life is not high school. Those crazy mean girls in high school are not the same people that you’re going to interact with. Keep your wits about you. Don’t let yourself be taken advantage of, of course, but allow yourself to be in vulnerable relationships because I feel like that would have just not just given me more success, but made life more enjoyable. It would have given me more joy. And I do regret that I didn’t experience a ton of joy early in my career. It was a lot of work and no play. It could have been a lot more play and a lot more fun.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And great advice because everybody needs more play, more joy. Yeah. So if people have been listening, and I hope everybody who’s listened is thinking, I definitely want to subscribe to Drunk Business Advice. I got to see what Kristin’s sharing with the world. Where should they go?

Kristin Kenzy: Drunkbusinessadvice.com.

Rob Marsh: And let Kristin know you heard about it on the podcast so she can segment you properly because someday who knows if there’ll be a podcast segment.

Kristin Kenzy: Absolutely. And shoot me an email. Once you get my first welcome letter, definitely shoot me an email. I will respond and I’m really excited to meet you.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. Thank you, Kristin, for sharing such great advice. I’m excited to share this with everybody who listens and yeah, let’s keep in touch.

Kristin Kenzy: Thank you, Rob. This has been so much fun. I really appreciate you having me on.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Kristin Kenzy for taking some time to sit down with me. You should definitely check out her newsletter at drunkbusinessadvice.com. If you join her list, you’re gonna see the survey that I responded to. We talked about that earlier when Kristin mentioned that I told her to F off and you’ll see the context of why I said that to her. And you’ll have a shot at possibly giving her an even better response than I did. I’m not kidding when I say that her newsletter is a favorite and you should definitely check it out. 

Let me make one last plug for The Copywriter Underground before we wrap. You heard Kristin and me talking about the power of masterminds and connections for growing your business and how they lead to all kinds of opportunities that you just don’t get working on your own. If you’re not ready for an expensive mastermind, but you want that kind of support and connection, you need to check out The Copywriter Underground now at thecopyrighterclub.com/tcu. I mentioned all the stuff that includes at the top of the show, so that’s enough. But just trust me, this is the month to join if you want to try it out.

In another throwback episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re taking a deeper look at goal setting and a proven process to help you get more done in 2025. Dave Ruel, the author of Done by Noon, walks through his framework for setting goals (or intentions) and making sure they happen—before noon. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Done by Noon by Dave Ruel

Rob Marsh:  If you’re listening to this episode as it goes live, today is the final day of 2024. Many of us are looking forward to the new year and new opportunities to grow and get things done.

I’m not a big fan of resolutions. They tend to be good for a few weeks, but after 4 weeks are often forgotten. It’s even a cliche now to mention how full gyms are on February 1 compared to January 1st. The drop off shows how ineffective resolutions can be for most of us.

So what does work? Well, the past year or two I’ve focused more on behaviors rather than goals or resolutions. That is, making time to exercise every morning without a goal to lose weight or compete in a marathon or bench press a certain weight. Making time to do something every day is something I can do. This applies to other goals as well, like time spent reading rather than having a goal to read 24 books a year. By scheduling time to read every day, I can reach the 24 books read without setting a goal. 

So that begs the question, how do you make sure you spend your time on the activities and behaviors that will get you closer to the person you want to be?

A few years ago, we asked something similar of Dave Ruel, the author of Done by Noon. That book is one of my favorites when it comes to getting stuff done. My other favorite takes an almost completely opposite view of time management and getting stuff done and that’s Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks. I’ll link to both in the shownotes in case you want to check them out.

For today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I went back into the archives to resurrect this mostly forgotten interview with Dave Ruel. And while he does talk about goals, he shares a framework for making sure your schedule includes plenty of time for the behaviors you want to implement into your life. If you’re looking to get more done in 2025, some of his ideas will help.

Before I share what Dave told us, after this interview we realized that we wanted to go deeper with Dave and his system. So we recorded a workshop where he walks through everything what he shares during this interview… at an even deeper level. That workshop is one of the dozens of business focused trainings available right now in The Copywriter Underground. Coming up in January of 2025, we’ll be adding several more, including a workshop for copywriters who want to work either part time or full time with a client. My friend Jessica, who spent 2 decades as a recruiter for a creative talent agency will share why copywriters are so bad at resumes and cover letters and what they need to do differently if they want to land a so-called “real” job. And Esai Arasi will be sharing how to build relationships with prospects at scale, without burning out on social media. Both of these workshops are happening in January and are completely free for Copywriter Underground members. If you want them… along with the time management workshop from Dave Ruel, go to thecopywriterlcub.com/tcu now to join.

And like last week, you’ll hear Kira Hug asking questions on this episode as it is a throwback to 2020 when she and I were co-hosting this podcast. Okay, with that let’s jump in with Dave Ruel as he tells us how he became an entrepreneur focused on sharing better time management strategies…

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Dave Ruel:  I’m going to go back to my days as a fitness athlete. This is pretty much when it all started. So, in the early 2000s, I was an amateur competitive bodybuilder. So, I was very obsessed with everything fitness, bodybuilding, muscle building, you name it. In 2007, I met a guy named Lee Hayward. We were fellow competitors on the regional circuit. So, we’ve known of each other within the local circuit, but I’ve never met Lee in person. I was traveling to his hometown to compete that weekend. So, Lee actually offered me to stay at his house that weekend. We only knew each other little bit, but I never knew what he was doing for a living.

The first morning, he was having coffee. He’s like, “Well, I’m going to do some work. I’m going to answer a couple emails and then I should be done by noon. And then we can go work out.” I was like, “Yeah, it’s nice to be on vacation and have that schedule.” He’s like, “Well, it’s pretty much like the way we operate here.” I was like, “Really? What is it that you do?” He’s like, “Well, I have a bodybuilding website. I make a full living out of it and making six figures a year, working from home. My wife works with me.” I was like, “Well, okay, I need to understand how you do to that.”

So, I quickly treated my passion for fitness to an obsession for business building, started studying direct response marketing, anything that had to do with online marketing. It was very limited at the time, because obviously, that’s in 2007. So, there was not that much going on when it comes to online businesses. Now, everything’s online. If you’re not online, you’re nowhere. But at the time, it was very different. So, I created my first business at that time. It was a website that I was sharing nutrition and cooking tips for bodybuilding and fat loss that was called the Muscle Group. The website is still on. We still sell digital products on that platform. From there, I emerged more on the publishing marketing agency.

So, basically, other coaches and other experts saw what I was doing online. They wanted to do the same thing. So, I was like, “Okay, well you have an audience, I know how to monetize that.” Then we launched an agency that led me to invest in a company called BiOptimizers. So, that’s natural supplements company. We did full turnaround with that company, sold it in 2016. During that time, for me, becoming an entrepreneur, it’s like anything else, going to the gym once doesn’t make you an athlete. I feel the same thing with entrepreneurship. You have to do it in order to understand what it is. In the process, I did obviously all the mistakes in the books that most entrepreneurs make when it comes to managing their time, their energy, their attention.

I build systems around my life in business in order to fix that and mostly inspiring by what I had learned in sports performance. I saw there’s too many weird similarities between both worlds. So, I started adapting that. Yeah. So, in 2016, I had the opportunity after I sold my last business to start coaching entrepreneurs. So, basically, entrepreneurs were coming to meet for the online business stuff that you’re talking about. Okay, I want to build an online business to have the freedom and yada, yada, yada, but what I realized that these entrepreneurs don’t need more tactics or strategies to gain more customers and convert more.

What they needed really was a framework to help them operate as entrepreneurs. I started sharing my systems with them. The results spoke for themselves. This is how Effic was born. We’re going to share these techniques, these systems with everybody. Yeah, now a few years later, we don’t do coaching, but we have certifications now, where we certify basically various business coaches or consultants who want to use that with their clients. We have, obviously, the Effic planner, which is our best-selling tool.

Rob Marsh:  So, we’re definitely going to get into more of that, but I want to go back to the amateur bodybuilding phase of your career as you’re just starting out. I’m guessing that there are a lot of behaviors, a lot of things that you were doing as a bodybuilder that apply to how you ran your businesses or that even run your business today. Will you tell us a little bit about what you learned in that phase of your career that you apply to your business today?

Dave Ruel:  Yeah, a lot of timeless techniques that we have in… It’s not just bodybuilding. It’s really through sports performance in general. The thing that you need to have in order to become a good athlete or a good entrepreneur is discipline. The thing is that when I started training really and didn’t know that I was going to compete or anything like that, I did that just to transform myself, I realized the structure it would give me, the workouts, how to structure my workouts, how to structure my goals, having an understanding, “What do I really want? Do I want to build muscle, burn fat? What do I need to do first?” The foundational work that you set and from there, you start optimizing and optimizing with time.

The thing is that your structure needs to be solid before you actually optimize, right? I see a lot of people do that. The mistake that many gym goers do in the beginning is that they’re going to take all the supplements on the market thinking that it’s going to fast track their results and they don’t have a solid base. Their nutrition is not good. Their programs are not structured properly. They end up going to the gym all the time thinking like, “The more I’m going to lift weights, the longer I’m going to do it, the bigger I’m going to get or the more fat I’m going to lose.” It’s actually the opposite that happens. So, there’s an order to how things need to happen.

Within this structure, you need to have different habits, different routines that make that sustainable. You don’t just want to do that for X amount of time and it’s done. It’s a lifestyle. So, it’s the same thing with entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is very much of a lifestyle. If you approach it as a sport or as something that you have to do in order to perform and do it well and structure it properly, there’s a lot of similarities, right? So, we talked actually quite a bit in the book about load management and the principle of adaptation and periodization, different basics really in sports performance. But if you don’t have that really mastered on a personal level, it’s going to be very hard for you to evolve as an entrepreneur.

Kira Hug:  So, I’m wondering that when you had a moment where you felt like an entrepreneur for the first time and if that was a specific moment or if it was 10 years into your business, because I do think you’re right, it doesn’t happen overnight. A lot of us, even if we’ve been doing it for a while, we still don’t feel like an entrepreneur.

Dave Ruel:  Well, I think nowadays, people call themselves entrepreneurs before they actually accomplished anything. As I said, it’s like an athlete. You don’t call yourself an athlete the first time you play a sport or you step into a gym. You have to do the work and understand. Not everybody is going to be an athlete, just like not everybody’s going to be an entrepreneur. So, it wasn’t a conscious decision for me. Entrepreneur now is the word that everybody uses. I think there’s a lot of hype probably around the word ‘entrepreneur,’ but really, it’s defining what it really is to be an entrepreneur. For me, it was not a conscious decision. There was not a specific moment that define that.

I think it was just a matter of seeing my pattern and seeing how I was operating as a human. I see a lot of similarities between entrepreneurs, right? So, for example, academically, for me, it was a disaster. I was not good at school. Not that I was not smart enough, just because I was totally disengaged and disinterested. I realized that it was not the norm, let’s say, where I grew up. You needed to have a career and a diploma to get the job, et cetera. I realized that a lot of entrepreneurs had very non-typical type of journeys.

So, there’s not a one path, but there’s similarities with behaviors and the way we saw the world and things like that. So, yeah, it’s just realization. Even to this day, I love entrepreneurship. I love the creative side of business, which is in my opinion, probably what the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur per se. That’s the creative piece that entrepreneurs might have, that others who might be great at business management, but don’t have that spark of craziness.

Rob Marsh:  So, Dave, as you were telling your story, you talked about developing some of these systems and routines that really help you in your business to be done by noon as your book is called. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of those, maybe even the whole theme behind Effic and how we as entrepreneurs and as freelancers can start to use a system like that or that exact system in order to start getting more of our stuff done?

Dave Ruel:  Yeah. So, we can talk about a little bit more in depth about the system. I think we’re going to have a training, Rob, soon, right? I think next month, we have something scheduled for your audience. So, we’re going to go very, very deep on the topic. To go back to Effic itself, so Effic is actually short for two words. The first one is efficiency. So, obviously, it’s achieving something using the least amount of resources. So, as entrepreneurs, we have three main internal resources or resources that we have, internal and external. So, first, our energy, obviously, and also our attention. So, pretty much how we’re going to be putting our energy and attention, how and on what we’re going to be placing our attention.

The other one, our external resource, finite resource is time. So, time is not something that we can really control. We all have 24 hours a day. Time is the same for everybody. It’s just how we operate, how we use our time and energy within that constraint of time where you’re going to be at work. It’s not about working less. It’s really about working right. We glorify working hard or working smart, but working hard is a given. For example, you go at any sport. No one is successful by going how fast on the court or on the ice, if it’s hockey or whatever. You have to work hard. It’s a given.

Then obviously, you have to work smart. You’re not just going to walk around or run around for absolutely no reason. You have to manage that energy and I would say, optimize it in a smart way. I think the key is really understanding to work right, understanding what is the desired result or outcome that you want to produce. Effic is also short for efficacy, which is the ability to produce the desired or intended result or outcome, right? So, based on that, what we try to make entrepreneurs realize, especially in the first step of the methodology, which is the projection phase, it’s understanding, “Okay, well understand where you want to go.” Be very, very clear on what you want to accomplish, right? So, we divide that in two steps.

The first one is to create what we call your big picture, okay? How do you see yourself? How do you see your life? How do you really envision that for your future? What does it look like? So, creating that big picture, it needs to be specific in some ways, but it’s like going on a trip, right? You’re going to go on a trip. You’re going to visualize in your head what you think it looks like, but in reality, it will look different when you get there, but it’s equally as good. It’s just different. So, you’re going to have that general idea of where you want to be, how you want to feel, and what you want to accomplish. From there, we’re going to ask you to look into what’s really ahead of you. So, what are the goals that you can really see become a reality?

We ask you to create goals. It’s called an annual guideline. So, it’s five goals you want to see become a reality within the next 12 months. So, now we’re not talking about projects. We’re talking about outcomes. We’re talking about results here. What do you want to become a reality? It could be you want to net $100,000 a year. It could be that you want to sell X number of copies of your book. It could be that you want to work 20 hours or less per week, right? So, it’s very, very, very clear on where you’re going or your alignment point. The key is that when we talk about alignment is that the goals that you set in the next 12 months should always be aligned with the type of lifestyle and business that you want to operate, right?

I think the problem is that a lot of entrepreneurs think that they want something. But ultimately, it’s what we call ambition appropriation. It’s that you’re going to look at other people. You’re going to look at other entrepreneurs. You’re going to let their definition of success become your definition of success. I think you have to really dive deeper than that in order to understand what you really want.

I feel like it’s a starting point for a lot of entrepreneurs, because they’re going to come to us when they’re going to feel lost, right? They’re not going to do that when things are going great and there’s no problem. They’re going to do that when, “Okay, I really need to help because there’s just too much to do. I don’t know where I am. I’m not even sure it’s what I want. I need really to recalibrate.” So that’s really the first step. We show you to do that in an efficient manner obviously.

Kira Hug:  Can you share some examples of those goals that you’ve set for yourself, just to bring it to life a little bit more, for your own life and your own business?

Dave Ruel:  Yeah, like I said earlier, it could be financial goals. It could be time, because here’s the thing. I think when we go in business, we go for one thing and that thing is freedom. I divide freedom into three categories or three types of freedoms, time freedom, creative freedom, and financial freedom. I feel like always your goals will revolve around these three freedoms, depending on what season of your life you’re in. If it’s early on in your career, more than likely, you’re going to have a little bit more financial goals regarding financial freedom. When you’re going to start working and things are going good in your business, you’re going to realize that you have less time. You’re going to be focusing more into having goals for reclaiming this time, for example.

So, this is when the goal is probably going to be chop 10 hours of my workweek or work less than 20 hours a week or have six-week of vacation a year or something like that, things you want to see become a reality. I think the big thing that I see entrepreneurs do, especially when they recalibrate or realign, is that they’re going to set more creative goals. Meaning, I want this to become a reality. I want to write my new book. I want to create an online course. It’s being very specific on that outcome. Yeah, create my first online course. From there, when you know that that’s indeed the agenda or that’s an outcome that you want to have within the next 12 months, now, you can start setting your 90-day, what we call, bucket. So, your 90-day projects.

Okay, well, if I need to create my first course, probably I need to create that course. I need to create the content of that course. So, we’ll have a bucket that is dedicated to creating the content of the course. Then you were going to realize that “Well, I might need to actually produce that course,” right? So, it might be another bucket. The other one is you’re going to need to market and sell that course. So, that’s going to be another bucket, but you’re going to realize that amongst all that, you’re still going to have all the tasks to perform your business. So, it’s that juggling act of understanding… Rob, we talked about load management. … how much can you carry as far as workload and also how to divide it through the year in order to achieve that goal, right?

The main problem that I see is that people set goals as just project. So, this is the project that I’m going to do. Instead of looking at it as an outcome and understanding, “What do I need to do for this outcome, for this result to happen?” So, it’s not about creating a massive, massive project and then start working on it. It’s really understanding, “What’s the result? What can I do right now with the time, the energy, and the attention that I can dedicate to it this quarter, within the next 90 days to move in the right direction?” Understanding that sometimes it could be the main priority and you’re going to be spending a lot more time and energy and attention on that product, on that project, or something that gets you closer to this result to be achieved.

Sometimes it could be, “I’m going to have one bucket that is more in line with this result. Another one is more in line with this result.” It really depends on your context. In the best case scenario, obviously, it’s A, A, A, B, B, B sequence where okay, well, let’s focus on one and then go to the other one. But again, it depends on your business context and what needs to be done. So, yes, there’s optimum ways to do it, but there’s other ways to do it, too. The key really is understanding, “How much workload can I carry sustainably so this becomes a reality?”

Rob Marsh:  So that’s my next question then, Dave. So, let’s say that I have those goals or those outcomes. I’m pretty clear. I want to make, let’s say, six figures in the year or I want to take the summer off to spend with my kids and travel and not have to worry about work. Maybe there’s some other goals like that. So, I know that. I know that I want to accomplish that stuff, I want to do it.

But when I sit down to work on Monday, my inbox is full of stuff that I’ve got to pay attention to. And then I’ve got to record the podcast. I’ve got to get the podcast posted. And then after that, somebody needs help with some customer service stuff in our membership. We have to get the training for the membership. All of the other stuff just starts to happen. I don’t end up taking the summer off, or I don’t hit that six-figure goal. So, how do we translate from the big goals to actually getting some of this stuff done?

Dave Ruel:  Yeah. Now, we move to the next step, which is the prioritization phase. It’s understanding that out of everything that you said… For most entrepreneurs, all these tasks are on the same big pile, right? So, picture, you have a messy room and everything’s in the middle. It’s a big mount of stuff that you have. That’s usually how entrepreneurs deal with their things. They’re going to prioritize based on what they think is the priority, right? Usually, because since you’re busy, there’s a lot of things going on your business, you’re going to look where there’s fire and you’re going to try to extinguish the fire. And then next thing you know, there’s another fire somewhere else. You’re going to play firefighter all the time.

The problem is that if you prioritize that… That’s why in the book we talked about now, our matrix being glorified. We’re like, “Well, it could be a good tool. But if you want to be more proactive, if you want to have less fires, maybe it’s better to look at your task from a different perspective.” So, the Eisenhower matrix gauges the task based on the importance and urgency. The problem is that entrepreneurs don’t have that native capacity to really say, “Okay, well, this is urgent,” or “This is important.” What I’m going to see as a fire, that’s urgent and important. I’m going to have to extinguish it right now. So, the tool that we use as the impact matrix at Effic is that there’s four types of tests that you’re going to have to work on as an entrepreneur. That’s universal.

We all have these four types of tasks to attend mostly on a daily basis. It’s really how you’re going to be prioritizing these four, some of these tasks that you’re going to have in your schedule. So, number one that we have are the rock. Rob, you’re a big fan of and you’re a trained FranklinCovey professional. As we said before we started recording, the big rock, small rocks, and sand analogy was just the game changer for me when I saw Dr. Covey perform this. Dr. Covey really uses that to show what to prioritize, the important things in life. When I saw him do that, I was like, “Yes, this is definitely the way which you see prioritization,” but also, I saw the way I was actually designing my workouts, designing and operating as an athlete.

You don’t just go to the gym and start doing random dumbbell curls and bench presses and thinking, “You’re going to get that goal.” You need to understand, “Okay, well, that’s the goal. So, first of all, here’s where I want to go. Now, here’s what I want to accomplish short term. Here’s a program that’s going to get me there.” In this program, you have core exercises and then you have different sets. You have different reps and you have different moves, different tempo, et cetera, right? But you need to identify, “What are your main exercises, your foundational pieces?”, and go from there. You don’t do the opposite. This is perfect for me to illustrate, first of all, how to experiment with my workload, because it’s like going to the gym, for example.

You’re going to go to the gym the first time and going to think you can lift 220 pounds on the bench press. And then you’re going to realize that “Well, that’s actually really, really heavy. I thought in my head that I could do it, but there’s no way I’m listing that weight.” So, you’re going to start taking a little bit more weight out of it until you have something that you can manage and you can have a nice set. You do that gradually. Over time and after 90 days, your first program is completed. You’re like, “Okay, well, now I can actually move up in weights. I can add more weight to my load. I can lift more, because I can carry more load, because now I’ve adapted to this workload, right?” You get better and better and better.

A year from now, Rob is a beast benching 400 to 500 pounds in the bench press for reps, but started with barely being able to do 185. You don’t know. So, this is the thing that you have to adapt that workload over time. We use the analogy of buckets, big rocks, small rocks, and sand in order to show you how to actually break down projects into bite-sized pieces. So, understanding what are your milestones, what needs to be accomplished, and then break it down, breaking these milestones into actionable small rocks, bite-sized pieces, right? You could tell me, there’s sand in this bottle, but the problem is that entrepreneurs are great at playing in the sand, right? They’re great at managing all small stuff or taking care of small stuff before the actual real stuff is accomplished.

The sand exists. You just don’t need to overplan the sand. You have one small rock. Well, you’re going to know what the sand is. You can prepare it the day before, that sand. But you don’t have to go with the micro, micro details way in advance. This is how you get lost. This is how perfectionism kicks in and nothing gets accomplished, right? So, it’s a matter of understanding your workload from a work perspective, but also from an energetic perspective, where not all tasks are created equal based on what you’re great at and your natural tendencies and your natural capacities. So, we help you do that or establish that by yes, looking at what tasks are more impactful and what tasks take the most energy.

So, obviously, the rocks, which are always associated with innovation, with growth, they’re going to take a lot more energy for you to perform. That’s perfectly normal. So, you’re going to have to schedule them at a time that allows you to have that energy, to really push through that task. So, in the impact matrix, the second most important task that we have, the second most impactful task is routines. So, routines are tasks that are associated with the proper operational well-being of your company.

So, there’s things that you guys probably do day in and day out without even knowing but you need to do in order for your business to run properly. For example, it could be sharing on social media, interacting with your membership, students, sending emails, for example. Maybe email’s not the right example, but this task that you need to perform, whether it’s a daily, weekly or even monthly or quarterly basis that we’re going to encourage you to start putting into processes. So, listing, okay, “This needs to be done. Here’s what I need to do.”

Social media is a good example. You need to post on social media. Well, guess what? You have a process probably you’re following every day intentionally that can be documented and then made into a procedure, a series of procedures that you can then outsource or automate or even delegate to someone else, right? So, when you look at these tasks that are really associated with the growth of your company, with things that need to happen in order for your company to grow and evolve, this is what we call the power moves. These are the ones that you should prioritize.

The other types of tasks that you’re going to have are one, the reactive tasks. So, they’re the byproducts of your business operations. So, they will come. They’re things you don’t anticipate that you cannot really plan or proactively overplan, because they’re just reactive by nature and they will happen. As much as you prepare, as much as proactivity you bring into your business, there will still be some reactivity. It’s an inevitable thing. So, there’s a way to actually start looking at that and not having your day just filled with reactive tasks. You need to optimize. You need to limit personally, the number of tasks you need to do and then optimize the process, obviously.

The fourth type of task that you’re going to have are responsive tasks, which are tasks associated with communication. In this day and age, obviously, direct messaging, emails, team meetings, Zoom meetings, I mean, you name it, you’re going to have that always in your day. So, there’s a way to actually really optimize the way you operate your responsive tasks and attack them. That’s what we show you as well. So, obviously, it doesn’t happen overnight. There’s obviously constant work and optimization to be done, but the goal is for you to manage these four types of tasks in the most optimum and right way.

So, for a lot of copywriters we work with, it seems like they have the vision, they can set the goals, they understand the concept of the big rocks versus the sand, but I think a lot of us have a hard time figuring out the program and the how behind it, laying that out whether it’s for a workout at the gym or it’s for business. It’s almost hard to just break that down. What would you advise? What could help us figure out the path? I mean, we could work with the teams and coaches that you work with, but what if we’re figuring it out on our own and we can’t see how to get from point A to point B?

Dave Ruel:  So, it’s like anything else, you have to do it in order to get better at it, right? So obviously, if you use the big rocks and the small rocks and that allows you to start creating frameworks for you and depending on what type of copywriter you are. You could be a sales copy, a sales page copywriter, or an email copywriter or you do a little bit of everything. There’s always these frameworks that you’re going to have. There’s always these ordered things that you’re going to be doing, right? So, it’s understanding, for example, when you work for a client, well, I have this part, my bucket that I really need to carry for myself. So, maybe it’s a lot of outlining work, a lot of putting bullets in. And then this may be processes that you have.

So, routines that you’re going to have in order to maybe speed up the process or work on with multiple clients. So, obviously, if you’re a solopreneur and you do everything yourself, well, there’s only so much that you can do; versus if you’re like, “Okay, I have this project.” The goal is to write a sales pitch, for example, but what is your main process to write a sales pitch? It could be a routine or it could be something that is these creative elements that you fill into buckets. The second one, which is going to be more of a routine practice where you’re writing 500 words every morning or it could be having a specific process to fill in the blanks where you send some part of the copy to someone else in order to write different chapters or whatever.

So, again, I’m not a copywriter. So, I wouldn’t know exactly all the steps, but it’s understanding what the nature of the task. So, is it something that needs for me to create, that I need to create, or is it something that is more operational, that is more routine, if you want, within my creative process? Maybe parts of these routine tasks can be outsourced, delegated, outsourced or even automated sometimes now with AI. I know it’s a big trend now in copywriting to have AI assistance. So, yeah, you need to start doing it and then understanding how you operate. There’s no right or wrong. Some people operate at a heavy capacity to create. Some people are going to be more mechanical and have more processes in their lives. So, it really depends.

Rob Marsh:  So, Dave, I heard you twice say, “You need to do it.” For me, this is where the rubber hits the road. I can have the planner. I can have the goals. I can even have the task list. But there’s still something around personal discipline. You still have to show up, not open up social media, or not get lost in reading too much or whatever the things are that can distract us. Talk a little bit about personal discipline and how you learned to be more disciplined in your approach to the things that you do in your business.

Dave Ruel:  Yeah, here’s the thing with discipline or creating habits in your life, it comes down to the small things and then things compound over time. I think if you’re focused on just hacks and things that are going to give you fast results, this is probably a good approach for you or even what we do, because discipline is built over time and through repeated actions over a long period of time. There’s a concept we talked about it on sustainability in the book. You don’t want to just do things once and then it’s all fixed. To have sustainability, there are different things that you’re going to need to do consistently over time. So, it’s understanding that these rituals and these routines and these habits that you’re going to be putting into place will build that discipline.

It goes into as simple, for example, as drinking water in the morning. That’s the most simple habit that you can have that will boost your productivity and mental capacity. Most of us are always dehydrated, especially for a copywriter, where your brain and your creativity is, “There you go, there you go, guys,” but you know that. You know that hydration is ultra-important for the proper functioning of what’s in between your two ears. The problem is that it’s good thing to know it, it’s another thing to do it. Drink big, tall glass of water in the morning, that’s how I did it. Drinking the water for me was not native. It’s not something that I’m going to drink a gallon of water a day. But when you’re bodybuilding, you have to do that. You have to hydrate properly. It’s part of the plan.

So, drinking a big glass of water in the morning and filling up a jug that’s two liters of water in the morning. I’m still carrying that bottle of water when I go off and stuff like that, because that’s going to ensure that I drink my water daily. That’s going to ensure that it’s done, but I didn’t do it once and it was fixed. It was making sure that I was crossing water, check, done. All right. And then you do that. Now, I didn’t even have to check it. It’s built into my habits and my routines. But it’s the same thing with everything that you’re doing, whether it’s your exercise, your meditation if you’re into it, your gratitude, your healthy eating habits, so many things that you can build.

Actually, in the planner, we have a self-care routine that we lay out. It’s more of a self-care, I would say, checklist that you don’t even need to do it like back to back to back routine. It could be something you do daily, and it compounds over time. So, hydration, making sure… You don’t check your clean eating checkbox for three days in a row. Well, hopefully, your entrepreneurial competitive spirit is going to kick in. So, I need to get better with that and understanding that too, understanding how you react to it. So, every week, for example, we have a review process where we ask you to understand what went well in your week and what didn’t go that well.

We have something called this self-awareness scorecard and something very, very simple to do, but it’s going to allow you to introspect and say, “Okay, well, my energy level was two out of five this week. Why did that happen?” Then you’re going to look back and say, “Well, my eating was not that great four days out of the past seven days. I know, I didn’t drink enough water two days a week. Well, maybe I’m going to fix that. What can I do right now what’s in my power that I can just improve next week?” So, you’re going to look at these things.

Over time, these habits, these rituals are going to become second nature. This is how you build discipline over time, right? Next thing you know, it’s not even hard, it’s super easy to do. So, it’s the principle of adaptation. It’s the same thing as, for example, increasing your ability to carry weight or to carry some load. It’s the same thing with habits. You just have to do it over time and it compounds. It’s like saving money.

Kira Hug:  Well, I did not pass my clean eating test today, because I are French fries. It happened.

Dave Ruel:  So, it’s another thing though, Kira. As you said, it happens. You’re not going to be perfect 100% of the time, just to be aware of it. In the book, I talked about more than often, it takes at least two cycles. So, two quarterly cycles in order to start actually having the awareness of, “Where do you stand regarding load management? Where do you stand regarding your habits, et cetera?” Embodying all of that, it does not happen overnight. Guess what? Nobody’s perfect. You’re going to screw up, especially at the beginning. That’s fine.

That’s another part of it is that you don’t want to be… If you keep all the fun out of your life and everything is regimented and so rigid, that’s why people actually don’t adhere to a lot of productivity methodologies. The things are very, very, very strict. One of my friends always say, “Most productivity methodologies are created by single male in their 40s.” It’s so regimented that it doesn’t allow for any flexibility. So, we made sure we built that into what we do.

Rob Marsh:  French fries for everyone.

Kira Hug:  I enjoyed those fries, so I don’t regret it.

Dave Ruel:  That’s something you should put on a T-shirt. I’ll buy it. French fries for everyone.

Kira Hug:  Okay. Because you shared the habit of drinking water, I’m just curious what some of your other habits are, your personal habits, maybe your morning routine too. I know this is in the weeds, but we’re pretty nosy and we like to know what you do.

Dave Ruel:  Yeah, my morning routines change all the time. I’m a dad of two young girls, two years old and seven years old. The thing is that it changes, because yeah, they wake up at different times. Now, it’s more stable, obviously. Seven years later, it’s getting a little more stable. I traded very strict routines. I was more of a routine person when I was in bodybuilding and I had no kids. It was just me and my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time. It was a lot easier to obviously have the flexibility or that back to back sequence. But now, there’s things that I need to do through the day, that I need to do. At the end of the day, it needs to be done. So, there’s five elements, and I covered a little bit about it. Again, I can tell you what they are.

So, first of all, you need to cover hydration. So, one thing I do every single morning when I wake up is hydration, rehydrate, tall glass of water, then fill up my big jug of water. That’s the one thing that I do all the time. Now, from there, I like to as much as possible wake up before the kids. So, I have that little window of time where the house is actually quiet. I can have some introspection and me time. So, there’s two things that I do. So, first of all is gratitude. When you haven’t practice gratitude and I was like that before, it’s a lie, yeah, whatever, gratitude. But truth is gratitude is the greatest remedy or the greatest medicine for anxiety.

At one point, when I was running my second and my third business simultaneously, I started developing anxiety, because I was so, so busy. Here’s a weird thing. I started developing anxiety when I was hearing the Skype message, because obviously, I was facing a workload that I had never faced before. That was a whole period of that adaptation. I knew at the time, my business partner and I had the systems in place in order to face that. So, we were building that as the business was growing. But I remember that every single time we had a meeting, for example. We had just way too many meetings. That’s why we actually build frameworks to have better, more efficient meetings.

I was getting sweaty palms. My heart was racing, because I was future pacing that there will be fires, there will be more things added to my plate. The weird thing is that the trigger was the Skype ring. It was absurd. So, I’m blessed that my wife, Karine, is a psychotherapist. So, I started talking to her about that. She’s like, “Listen, gratitude.” Gratitude is one of the core things that she does out of her practice. She actually has a gratitude journal that she sells in the French speaking market. That’s a best-seller. She’s like, “You know what? You have to list the things that you’re grateful for, list the things that you have that are right there that you have right now that you are grateful for.”

I started doing that. It was not immediate, but it was very fast that I started changing or rewiring the way I was seeing things. Why are you stressed about that? You’re stressed about future events that never even happened, right? So, it teaches you to focus on the present. It teaches you to focus on what you have right now. Because when we’re busy or we’re anxious, we’re going to tend to see things a little bit more negatively. By focusing on the things that you have, hey, I have my two hands, stupid example, easy example, but guess what? Still a miracle. Two hands, 10 fingers, I mean, think about it, but we take that for granted.

Another weird example and I tie it into water is that I can just turn a knob and there’s clean drinking water coming out of the faucet. We take that for granted. Think about how magical that is and how many people in the world don’t have that. It’s not about what they have, what we don’t have. Still, in my opinion, it’s finding magic into random things that you take for granted. When you do that over time, same thing, it compounds and you tend to have a different perspective on life. For me, that really cured my anxiety. That really helped me in the long run. So, I ensure that every day I do that. In the planner, we actually have what we call the reconnection phrase. There’s different tools that’s found in the journal, that you can listen to different gratitudes, things like that.

You can do it in your own journal if you want. But I’m more of an efficient guy. What I do now is just that reconnection phrase. Today, I’m grateful for, fill in the blanks. I keep in mind that. I added the second part too is that I’m a big believer in the frequency of alignment, checkpoints of your alignment, making sure you’re still in the right direction, where you want to be. Reminding yourself on the things that are important whether it’s like outcomes, but also values. When you stay true to your values and align with what you want to accomplish, you can rarely go wrong. So, it’s the habit of doing that daily, the little practice that will make you more disciplined all the time. So, that’s the second thing.

There’s daily exercises. So, obviously, you don’t have to go to the gym and do bench press and deadlift, PRs every day. The key is just to sweat every day. Dedicate 15 minutes to it. If you don’t feel you have time or you don’t have to go, let’s say, to gym or whatever, just sweat every day, right? So, if you have talked to me 10 years ago, I would go to the gym five times a week, but guess what now? Ten years later, I’m a dad. I have different interests.

Now, I’m going to practice different sports. I’m going to go take walks. I’m going to go be active and do something. Just to model sweat every day, for me, that works, right? So, it’s doing that. Once you do it, boom, check, the box is checked. It doesn’t need to be part of the morning routine process as long it’s done that day. So, that’s the third.

Fourth one is meditation. What I mean by meditation is really some you time with your own thoughts, with your environment. Take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to do that. Focus on your breathing. Little things that first of all will compound for stress management. Also, slow down the pace sometimes when needed. So, I do that. I try to do it in the morning when I can.

If I don’t have time, let’s say all the kids wake up early or whatever, I’m going to keep a moment during the day to do that. I’m going to sit down, inside or outside when it’s nice. I have a nice leather couch in my office where I just sit down and do that. So, focus on my breathing and let things calm and bounce. I’m not a 15-minute meditation yogi who’s going to go in deep trance every day. That’s not what it’s all about. It’s just reconnecting with yourself.

The last one is the no French fries policy. It’s not true. It’s not true, because I love French fries, but it’s just keeping a clean diet. It’s just like basics. Keep it 90% clean, and you’re going to be fine. That’s the basic rule. So, yeah, but there’s some days where we’re going to order the poutine from the dairy bar.

Rob Marsh:  Clean eating’s over once you have poutine on your plate, that’s for sure. So, Dave, before we run out of time, I want to talk a minute about your book and maybe your planner. When I’m thinking about books about time management and productivity and goal setting, there are a ton of them already out there. We talked about Stephen Covey’s books. Hyrum Smith wrote several about them, the goal setting books by James Clear and BJ Fogg. There’s so many. Dan Kennedy has a great one on time management as well. So, what made you sit down and think, “Hey, what the world needs is another book about how to get stuff done”? What’s a little bit different about your approach?

Dave Ruel:  Yeah, it’s not just about getting stuff done. Really, what I wanted to bring out, let’s say, is more of a guidebook to how to evolve as an entrepreneur. It is very specific for entrepreneurs and obviously solopreneurs, et cetera. Even now, we see people in corporate applying it to their employees. I talk a lot about it. I’m a big fan of introversion, meaning giving more power and more freedom to your employees, so they can create their best work, right? So, it’s not by looking at every single move that they’re doing or micromanaging them that it’s going to happen. So, actually, they do use it quite a bit more. We had trainings with Shoppers Drug Mart, for example, here in Canada and other companies.

But the key is to understand how to operate, an operating manual to how to operate personally as an entrepreneur, right? We make a lot of parallels. We explain it very well in the book. Everything that we’ve built or that is included within this book is inspired by sports performance, so timeless sports performance techniques that we’ve applied to entrepreneurship. Based on that, we applied, like I recently said, concept of workload management, prioritization, and make it all integrated into something coherent. The other thing that I saw is that there’s a lot of methodologies that are collection of hacks, collection of tricks, they’re going to have this, they’re going to have that, but there’s no actual system that involves that.

I became a really big fan of EOS, Traction, Gino Wickman. When we implemented that at BiOptimizers, that looks a lot at what we’re doing. But on a business level, I got a bigger operational level for the business itself. I really love it, because first of all, there was a lot of parallels between with what I was doing and implemented in that methodology, but it’s really a holistic methodology that doesn’t look into one piece of the business. You have to look at your values, understand where you’re going, break down your projects, but also, your health, team health is important. They have that. For me, the health side of it, having a holistic approach.

I talked about work-life harmony in the book, where you hear a lot of people talk about work-life balance and I really hate that word. Work-life balance really implies that we have two competing forces against each other. When you’re an entrepreneur, it doesn’t happen like that. It needs to be integrated. There needs to be some synergy between both. There needs to be some harmony. I illustrate that with the yin and the yang and also like a dance. Sometimes one partner is going to lead. The other time, the other partner is going to lead, but you might not even see it, because the result is beautifully executed. You don’t see any problem. So, this is more the way we look at it.

So, Done By Noon, it’s funny, because I got to talk about the title, but a lot of people think it’s about just working less. When they’re reading the book, you understand it’s not about working less or not working hard. It’s about working right. The key question that we asked regarding time management is, “If you only had before noon in order to do everything that you have to do, how would you structure your days?” That’s considering you’re not waking up 3:00 in the morning obviously. But how would you start? So, there are things you will need to optimize. There are things that you will need to obviously let go of and build better systems overall to make it happen, right? It’s more about that.

When you think about The 4-Hour Workweek, for example, it’s not about working four hours a week. It’s a book about leverage. It was the same thing for us, but we look really into personal self-leadership aspects. So, yeah, it’s going to help you become a better leader, work on yourself. But also, as a result, you’re going to become a better business leader as well. That’s what we really wanted with the book, not just be done by noon and doing nothing. That’s not what it’s all about.

Kira Hug:  That sounds good too. Dave, my last question, for anyone listening that may not have been involved in sports growing up or just may not be as athletic or may just not believe that a system like this could work for them or framework could work for them because they’ve tried so many, what would you say to them, the doubters who are like, ” Everything has failed me.” Why is this different? Why could this work for them, especially if they’re not necessarily a sports person?

Dave Ruel:  The sports analogy obviously is what we used to illustrate what it takes in order to evolve or becoming an athlete. For example, I was never a pro bodybuilder. I love the sport. I was competitive bodybuilder. I did pretty well when I was competing, but I never was a pro. I think the key as well and that’s one thing we talked a lot about in the book is that it’s to develop that self-awareness, develop that self-respect and that self-discipline that everyone needs in order to become a good entrepreneur. It doesn’t matter where you want to build $100-million dollar company or you want to build $100,000 a year company. It does not matter. It’s understanding, first of all, how you operate. We’re all different.

As I said, I think one of the main reasons why people don’t stick to “productivity” approaches or techniques is that it’s so rigid that when they drop something, the whole thing fails. For us, it’s more of a manual to build more self-leadership. We divide self-leadership into self-discipline, as I said, self-awareness and self-respect. So, self-discipline, we talked about it. Self-awareness is the fact of understanding yourself and how you walk. We’re all different. Yes, entrepreneurs have commonalities. A lot of them operate, I wouldn’t say, in a similar fashion, but we all have our own specific context. I’m a dad with two girls. I mean, my co-host, Chris Lopez has five. So, I guess his lifestyle needs to be a lot more structured than mine.

So, the self-awareness of who you are and how you operate in your own context. Also, self-respect is respecting your capacities, respecting your limits, respecting your ambitious, and staying true to what you truly want. So, I think not everybody wants the same thing. It’s very, very important to understand that when you start, because based on that, your reality will be different. Your reality, the way you operate, the type of business you operate, the type of lifestyle you’re going to have is going to be different. I don’t have the answers. You guys don’t have the answers. Only the one who actually wants to work within this framework will know what the result will look like. So, the key is working right.

In my opinion, this is probably a message that we don’t hear enough in the entrepreneurial world, which is always about doing more, getting more done, and glorifying the hustle, things like that. It’s not about checking things off your to-do list as fast as possible. This is not what it’s all about. This is not productivity. Activity is not productivity. For us, we have an efficient philosophy to it, an efficient approach. Yeah, I think that that’s my view on it. That’s the way I see business. So far, it’s worked great for many entrepreneurs.

Rob Marsh:  Dave, we want to thank you for joining us for the podcast. I mentioned before we started recording that we’re sharing your book with everybody on our team, because it gives us the language and the processes to talk about projects together, a common language. So, it’s one of the best productivity/time management/getting things done type of books I’ve ever read. That’s part of why we wanted to bring you on.

So, we’ll definitely link to the book and to the planner on the show notes for anybody that wants to check those out. You’re also coming back for a training for our membership, The Underground, and some of our other programs on April 21st that we’re really looking forward to. So, anybody who wants to catch that can get to know you a little bit better there as well. So, thank you so much for sharing what you know and what you’ve accomplished with our audience.

Dave Ruel:  Thank you, Rob. Really appreciate it. Yeah, I can’t wait for the training in April. Yeah, thank you for the nice words, because you coming from the Covey world and God knows how much I respect and love Dr. Covey’s work, it means a lot. So, thank you very much.

Rob Marsh: And that’s our interview with Dave Ruel. 

Notice that Dave starts with outcomes… what do you want to become? Where do you want to be in three months… or next year? This helps make sure that whatever you do—whether you set goals or simply make time for behaviors in your daily calendar—gets you where you really want to go. I’ve seen a lot of copywriters adopt the goals they see other copywriters setting… because it feels like that’s what you should do, but it’s not reallly what THEY want to do. Running your own business is one of those… that feels like the right thing, but once you get into the reality of what that involves… finding clients, managing projects, filling your pipeline, earning enough to pay yourself a decent salary and so on… Or a goal like hitting six figures which forces you to work more than you really want simply to bring in enough to hit the six figure mark, but also keeps you from doing some of the things you want to do away from work. Knowing the outcomes is critical when you start planning for your next year.

Dave also talked about the big rocks/small rocks framework which helps you ensure you fit in the big important stuff before you use up all your time on less important stuff. At the top of this episode, I mentioned my other favorite time mangement book, 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Burkeman points out that one of the big problems with the traditional approach to time management is this idea that there are only 3 or 4 big rocks to fit all the other stuff around. The reality is that most of us have a lot more than that. So a big part of managing your time is realizing you can’t manage your time well enough to do everything. There are just too many possibilities. And you have to choose. And once you eliminate some of the possibilities, only then can you really focus on getting that stuff done.

I want to mention the workshop that Dave did for members of The Copywriter Underground again. In this workshop, he breaks down how you figure out your big rocks, how to break them down into goals or behaviors you will focus on for the next few weeks or months. And he also addresses the challenge of personal discipline so this stuff is actually scheduled into your day so it gets done. You can get immediate access to that workshop in The Copywriter Underground at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. There’s also a recording of our process for reviewing last year and setting your goals for the coming year or quarter that dovetails nicely with what Dave is talking about in this interview.

Hopefully this throwback episode is helpful to you as you think about what you accomplished last year and what strides you want to make in 2025. And if I can help you with your goals in any way, please let me know. 

I’ve linked to Dave’s book in the shownotes if you want to check that out. But the workshop is where the real power in this system is. So check both of those out.

Becoming a great copywriter is not easy. But there are things you can do that 99% of other writers will not invest the time to accomplish. In the 427th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we talked with copywriter Jason Rutkowski about the process of mastering copy, how to find a mentor, and all the effort that goes into the process of becoming great. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Parris’ Book List

Rob Marsh:  It’s the holidays and if this year is like most of our past years, that means fewer of our regular listeners are tuning in for the next week or two. So instead of bringing on a new guest you won’t have the opportunity to listen to and learn from, I’ve gone into the archive to uncover an excellent old episode that you probably missed. And if you did hear it back when it aired a few years ago, you might have forgotten it.

But honestly, this is one of our best interviews about mastery and the process of becoming an in-demand copywriter. The guest for this episode is Jason Rutkowski. At the time we interviewed him, Jason was writing for some of the top financial and health clients. So he’s got a lot of great, timeless advice. 

You’ll also hear Kira in this episode. Long time listeners will know Kira is a co-founder of The Copywriter Club and until the middle of this year, my co-host for The Copywriter Club Podcast. Some of you have been asking, where she went? Earlier this year, Kira shared that after seven years of building The Copywriter Club, she was interested in pursuing some other challenges. So while she’s still offically a partner behind the scenes, she hasn’t been actively involved in the podcast and our programs for the past six months. Everything’s fine. There was no messy break-up… and who knows, if the right opportunity presents itself, we may work on something together again. We’ll see.

So, while you’ll hear Kira’s voice, she is still working on other stuff for now.

One more thing before we get to the interview, you’ve heard me talking about The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track and that in the coming weeks it will be retired forever. This is the proven business building program used by hundreds of copywriters to start and grow their businesses.  Many used it to create six figure businesses. A few have earned seven figures since completing the program. And I know it will work for you too. But time is running out to get the strategies, insights and ideas we share in this business-building program. So go to thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack now to learn more—and if its a fit for you, join so you can build a successful copywriting business for yourself.

And now, enjoy this throwback interview with Jason Rutkowski.

Hey Jason.

Kira Hug:  Welcome Jason.

Jason Rutkowski:  Hey Kira, hey Rob.

Kira Hug:  How’s it going? Glad you’re here.

Jason Rutkowski:  Oh no, I’m excited. I haven’t done one of these in a while, so I was excited to do it with you.

Rob Marsh:  Definitely took a little time to get our schedules aligned. We’ve been trying to make this happen for a little while, because we know a little bit about you and where you write and we think it’ll be a great conversation, so we’re glad to have you here.

Jason Rutkowski:  Yeah, definitely.

Kira Hug:  All right, so let’s kick this off. Jason, how did you end up as a copywriter?

Jason Rutkowski:  Okay, I’ll give you the quick story about this. I was 19. I just finished my freshman year of college. I got an internship at a normal 9-to-5 job. And I realized I hated it. I was like, oh man. I saw all these people who worked in an office, you know, 30, 40 years; I’m like, is this really going to be my life?

And also at the same exact time, I was on the internet one day and I found an internet marketing forum. And I was like, what’s an internet marketing forum? I don’t know. So I go on it and I see all these guys, like ‘Yeah I just made 200 grand this year, 500 grand this year. I work from home; I’m sitting at my desk all day.’ I’m like what? How is that even possible?

So I started getting really into it. And then I learned about traffic drivers and marketing and product creation and all these things. And I was really confused. And I was like 19, 20 years old. So I heard about copywriting, but I didn’t decide to be a freelance copywriter right away. I was like, you know what I’m going to do, I’m going to create my own products; I’m going to do Google Adwords; and I’m going to drive traffic. I’m going to do the whole thing, like from start to finish.

And I horribly failed. You know, I was going to school full-time, and then I was doing this part-time, and I was just failing and failing. And then after a couple of years of that, I decided, okay this isn’t working. I’m just going to do copywriting because I think this is what I like most. I don’t like doing all this other technical stuff, marketing stuff. I’m just going to do copywriting.

So, from then on out, I just picked a niche. I was like I’ll just write in health. And from then on out I just started growing a business.

Rob Marsh:  So, I’m interested in what some of those failures looked like. What were the products that you were creating and why were they failing?

Jason Rutkowski:  Oh. I mean, the why is a lot of reasons. The products I was creating, I created kind of an … E-books were a big thing back then. Back then you could just write an e-book and like sell it and people would buy it. So I created one for anxiety, which I actually went through a lot in the beginning of my life. And I also created a few for some, like headaches solutions and kind of like different health things.

And I put, I don’t know, these 150, 200-page books together with just some random info, that I thought was good, but then the whole process of, you know I was trying to organic SEO, trying to target the right keyword. I was in college so I had very little money to actually spend on driving traffic, paid traffic. And I was just doing a lot of things wrong.

It was a lot of small marketing things that you don’t know, don’t you know it? Like how to do the SEO right, how to do the traffic right. How to do the delivery right. How to build your list. Like, doing a lot of bad stuff with building my list. A lot of mistakes; it was just like, I was just some teenage kid and I didn’t know what I was doing.

But I did learn a lot, and I also learned through the process that what I really liked doing the most was the copywriting. So I just decided to give up the whole build my own business thing and do the copywriting thing instead.

Rob Marsh:  So what did that look like in the first stages? How did you connect with your first client, and why did you choose the niche that you chose?

Jason Rutkowski:  Oh, back then that was me doing my own stuff. In terms of the freelance copywriting, I started on the freelance websites, which I don’t know if it is a good way to do it anymore. But, you know, it was like these cheap little jobs on like Elance and Guru and … Like, I don’t know if that stuff was even worth it. I mean, I guess it paid me some money, and it gave me some actual samples I could send to people. But I didn’t really get any good long term clients out of that.

I didn’t start getting good long term clients until I decided, and it took me way too long to figure this out, but to actually go to live events, and like talk with people. And actually like start-

Kira Hug:  Wait, what’s that? Talking to people? What’s that?

Jason Rutkowski:  No, I know. I literally spent like my first three years of copywriting trying to do everything from my room. Like cold calling, Edesk, Olance, like cheap little, I mean, I don’t know, I was making still a little money from it. I had like a 9-to-5 office job to support myself, and then I would come home and do this. I wasn’t even close to making enough money to support myself.

So I decided, okay the only way this is going to work is if I start going to live events. So I’m like, okay, what live events should I go to? Which ones are good? You know, what’s some high quality live events I could go to?

And the first one I ever went to was a Clayton Makepeace, like $5,000 seminar. And I did not have $5,000 by the way. But I did have good credit, so I put it on my credit card. And I actually did, actually. One thing I always thank my mom for is she got me a credit card at 18 and she taught me how to use it. And by the time I was in like, my early to mid-20s I had a credit card with like a $25,000 limit on it.

Kira Hug:  What? That’s dangerous.

Jason Rutkowski:  It was completely paid. I know, but I had no debt. Like, it was unused. So I decided to be a little risky and go to this Clayton Makepeace seminar, which ended up being the absolute best decision of my life because I met my mentor Parris Lampropoulos. I met Marcella Allison and I meet Paul Martinez, all at the same conference. We are all very, very good friends to this day.

And then, after that, it was a matter of … I mean, I don’t know; when I talk face to face with people, I feel like all my failures from early in my career gave me a kind of a big foundation to talk about, where it’s like okay, this person clearly has done the studying, has been in the trenches, has done some work. I haven’t had a lot of success, but at least, like this kid just needs a chance. Or this kid, he’s not a newbie. So I trust this guy to some extent.

And then from then on out it was just, kind of going to more conferences, building my freelance career and you know, kind of trying to develop some long term relationships with people and that type of thing. So, that’s how I did it.

Kira Hug:  Okay, this is exciting. So, we’re going to talk about, you know, cubbing with Parris and some of these relationships you’ve built, but it sounds like this first event, this Clayton Makepeace event, was like the first big event that you invested in.

Jason Rutkowski:  Yes.

Kira Hug:  That’s a big deal, and how did you even find the right event and like how did you even get over all of your hesitations and probably your own objects around spending $5,000 on an event that may not pay off?

Jason Rutkowski:  Right.

Kira Hug:  Especially when you’re still figuring that out. And you didn’t know that you would build a relationship with Parris and meet Paul.

Jason Rutkowski:  Sure.

Kira Hug:  What did you have to go through to make that investment?

Jason Rutkowski:  Okay. So, I think the most important thing about going to any event is having a plan. Like, you should have a plan. You should know who’s going to be there, who are you going to talk to, and what you want out of the event, 100%.

So when I went, I was like okay … Here’s what actually happened. So, before the event, I’m like, okay I’m trying to do this freelance copywriting thing; I’m on these freelance websites; I’m making like, no money. I have like, no relationship and no reputation with any of these big names in the industry. I was like, what’s the fastest, best way to both build my reputation, and what’s a better way to get better results, and to increase my skill level?

And I started researching, and I noticed all these top A-list copywriters were trained by other A-list copywriters. So it’s like okay, John Carlton was trained by Gary Halbert and Jim Rutz. Parris was trained by Clayton; Carline Cole was trained by Clayton. David Deutsch was trained by Jim Rutz. It’s like this whole succession of like, mentors and apprentices, and learning from people who are way smarter than you. And I was like okay, that’s what I need.

And this was kind of back in the day, way before communities like, you know kind of like The Copywriter’s Club. Back in the day it was just like, internet marketing forums where it was just like thousands and thousands of people who didn’t know what they were talking about. And like these Facebook groups that don’t know what they’re talking about. And it’s just like, there wasn’t really a lot of high quality places you can really go to. So I was like, okay; I need to find a mentor. I was like okay, I’m in the health niche; who’s like the top health niche mentor that I know, that trains copy cubs? I go, oh, Parris Lampropoulos. And it’s 100% true.

I was like okay, I need to find Parris. How can I contact him? I was like well, he has a LinkedIn and a Facebook; and I’m like, that’s not going to work. You can’t really form a relationship by sending somebody a Facebook message, right? And people try to do this with Parris all the time. They try to send him like, a LinkedIn message, and be like, ‘Hey Parris, can you be my mentor, and you know?’ I was like, that’s not going to work.

So it’s like okay, I’ve got to meet Parris. And I’ve got to meet other people too, but I especially want to meet him. So I was like okay, where is he going to be? And then I was like, who does big copywriting seminars and programs? I’m like, AWAI. Which I was never really a part of. I never really went through AWAI’s training program; I never did any of that stuff.

So I went on their website and they have a live event page. And I went to that, and they’re like oh, in two months Clayton is having this $5,000 seminar. I was like okay that’s interesting; I love Clayton. Who is on the guest list? And then on the guest list was Parris Lampropoulos. I was like, oh perfect; I’ll pay $5,000, and I’ll go to the seminar, right? And I’ll meet him there.

Like here’s the question. One of my goals was to get him to be my mentor. But there’s no way you’re going to do that, just from meeting him at one seminar, right? You’re not just going to talk to somebody at a bar, and be like, ‘Hey want to enter into this five, seven-year relationship with me?’ You know, like that’s not going to work.

So I did what I always tell people to do when they go to seminars. You have to focus on like, making friends, and developing relationships. And getting people to like you. And the best way to do that, in my opinion. And I used to do this, and I still kind of do this to this day, before every seminar I read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People two times. I read it two times. There is this section in the book called ‘Six Ways to Make People Like You.’ And it is like gold. It is like, if you just follow those exact six things, just follow it, like don’t even question it, just follow.

And it’s like simple stuff. It’s like, ‘Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. Make people feel important. Remember their name.’ You know, it’s like ‘Ask them questions about …’ It’s the most basic stuff that people don’t do. Like, most people go to seminars and then they do one of two things. They don’t talk. They’re super shy, which I’m a naturally introverted guy really. They don’t talk. Or if they do talk they talk about themselves. Both things are awful things to do.

But yeah. So read that book and I went there, and I met Marcella and I met Parris and I just really tried to become friends with them, tried to get them to like me. You know, I asked them questions about themselves; they asked me questions about myself, I told them about my career. Yeah really it kind of blossomed from there, and I was able to, Parris gave me his email, which I thought was great. Turns out it was kind of luck of the draw; he was starting a new copywrite group sometime soon.

And from then on out, we did a project together. He liked it, and then he invited me to his group. So that’s how that worked out.

Kira Hug:  I love how strategic you were about this entire process, and I’m so glad I asked about it because I had no idea that you planned it out. I just thought you accidentally bumped into Parris …

Jason Rutkowski:  Oh no.

Kira Hug:  And built a relationship. And even now I’m thinking wow, what a great idea to read that book twice before going to events. Because, I met you recently at an event, hung out, and I really like you, so I feel like you used those steps me on me, and it worked!

Jason Rutkowski:  It’s just stuff you should be doing on a day to day basis, really. I mean, it’s not even stuff like, okay I’m only going to do this at this event.

So, for the people on this podcast, I know Kira and Rob through a Brian Kurtz mastermind group. And you know, Brian talks about this all the time, about becoming interested in other people and talking with them. I mean it’s really basic stuff that a lot of people forget.

Rob Marsh:  I mean, you talk about using this to meet a mentor; have you used the same process to meet clients and connect with clients?

Jason Rutkowski:  Oh definitely. I mean, so another thing you should be doing is finding out what client’s going to be at these events. Like before you even go. And you should be knowing, like, who they are, what their marketing is. You know, what promos are they running, what’s their marketing strategy; how does the funnel look?

To give another example at the Cleveland event we were at for Brian Kurtz’s thing, I went up to this guy, and Paul Martinez introduced me to this guy named Allen and he’s the CEO of a health company called Patriot Health Alliance. And I didn’t know who he was. However, I knew who his company was, because I’ve been following them for like a year and a half.

So he introduces me himself, because Allen’s kind of a low key guy, he doesn’t like speeches or podcasts or anything like that. He goes, ‘My name’s Allen; I’m the CEO of Patriot Health Alliance.’ And I go, ‘Oh, I’ve seen three of your VSLs and eight of your sales letters.’ So like, how’s this thing doing? How’s that thing doing? And he had this look on his face like, how does this guy know all this, right?

Because when most freelance copywriters go up to clients, they don’t even know the basics, man. They barely even know who they are. You know, last year I was at AWAI’s boot camp, which is every October. And Parris forced me to do the … Parris has a booth there for one of his clients and he was like ‘Jason you’ve got to help me. Barnaby’s not,’ because Barnaby wasn’t there that year. He’s like ‘You’ve got to help me do it, Jason! I need some help.’ I was like, ‘Okay Parris.’

And then I’m standing there, at the job fair booth, so it’s a job fair where people come up to you and tell you about themselves. And they would come up to me, they would be like ‘What does your company do? What products does your company sell? Oh, what type of writing do you guys do?’ I was like, how do you guys not know this information? I was like, you’ve got to, like, when I went to my first boot camp years ago, I had like five or six clients where like, I took notes, like before I went. I knew what products they sold. I knew what campaigns they were running. I knew all this information.

And then when you enter into a conversation with these people, you’re like six or seven steps down the line instead of at step one, which who are you and what do you do? You know? You don’t want to be there. So I think that’s a big mistake a lot of people make. And I mean, if you can show clients that like …

Because these people care so deeply about their businesses. When you talk, like Allen, he’s the CEO of a company. Like, his business is his life, you know. He’s spent hundreds of thousands of hours of his time building that business. I mean, if you can talk with him at a deep level about it, and you can show like, you have like a high level of knowledge of his marketing, he’s going to like you. He’s going to be like, ‘Wow this is someone I can actually talk with at a deep level.’ And maybe he starts to like you a little bit, and maybe somewhere down the line, you get, you know.

A lot of times when I meet clients, the only thing I want is their contact info. I don’t ask them for a job right away. Sometimes that happens, but I just want like, ‘Hey man, let’s just like, give me your email, let’s set up a phone call, let’s talk later. Or let’s meet in bar later.’ You know. I just want to be liked enough so I can continue the conversation later. Which should be your main goal really.

Then, stuff blossoms from that. So I think that it’s a big mistake people make, when they go to conferences not knowing what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. Who you’re going to meet. What you want from them. You know, how this relationship’s going to develop. You know, stuff like that.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah that advice to me, that is gold right there. This interview, just for that one thing is worth the hour of time that we’re putting into this.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. We’re done.

Jason Rutkowski:  I don’t want to repeat everything I just said, but it is really important. It’s funny Kira says, you were surprised by how strategic in meeting Parris, but I mean, that’s how you get those results, is by being very strategic, you know. You have to have some goal in mind, and then you have to have some action steps to achieve. And it’s like, if you just start thinking about that way in everything that you do.

A lot of stuff I’m just sitting at my desk and I’m thinking, what should I do? And so, I’m going to go to this conference, what should I do? What do I want? Like, three or four basic questions you could answer to yourself before you do anything. Don’t just go do things without thinking about it. It doesn’t require much, but …

Here’s one thing that I wanted to bring up. I was reading your questions this morning and I thought, I definitely want to tell you this. If you’re a freelance copywriter and you go to a marketing event, what’s great about going to a marketing event is you get to meet other, successful writers. Which is something you don’t usually get to do. Usually you’re sitting at your desk, wherever you live, and you’re just all alone, and that’s it. So like, okay, two or three times a year you’re able to actually talk with people; this is great.

And one thing I used to do, when I was like, I had no success and my skill level was low, and I had no reputation, is I would go up to people like Marcella and I would just ask them questions about, kind of like what you’re doing on this podcast. Like, how did you get started? What was your first job? Like, what steps, what was your biggest obstacle?

What was your first job? What steps, what was your biggest obstacle? What did, same questions. But in a face to face interaction, maybe at a bar or a restaurant, or conversation flows really easily and all the benefits of face to face interaction. I would just, take mental notes and I would go and I would find as many successful freelance copywriters as I could, which would be eight or nine of them at each conference, and I would just ask them the same questions. How did you get started? What was your first jobs? People love telling you their stories, man. Especially, if you’re successful, and you’re and entrepreneur, people love to talk about, ‘Oh man, I was struggling so hard, and then I was homeless for six months,’ everyone wants to tell them that story. But you get to learn so much. You get to see what the thinking is. Just like this podcast. You get to see what the thinking is. Its like, ‘Okay, I should be doing that stuff. I should be doing that.’ Almost like the questions I were to ask myself I learned from these people. Because it’s the same questions they ask themselves. Okay, I’m going to start doing that. You might not get success right away within the first day or two, but if you plan it out, six months from now, 12 months from now, you’re going to be so much farther along than you ever thought was possible.

Kira Hug:  You should’ve recorded those conversations. You could’ve turned it into a podcast.

Jason Rutkowski:  If only.

Kira Hug:  So, I want to ask you about-we’ll kick off and talk about your copy cub experience with Parris because you mentioned him. Did you know the exact moment where Parris leaned in and was like, ‘Oh yeah, I want you to be my copy cub.’ Was there a moment that you had together?

Jason Rutkowski:  Yeah. You know, I really want to send you guys something. The story of how I met Parris and how I him to give me his email address. Because by the way, the funny story about Parris giving me his email-Parris doesn’t carry business cards, because he doesn’t want anyone to talk to him, right? He’s actually an incredibly nice guy. But he doesn’t want people..If you meet him at a … I’m making him sound like he’s the Scrooge or something, he’s not. He’s actually a nice guy. But he doesn’t want people contacting him because too many people contact him, right? He’s at that level where he’s too famous in our industry. So, too many people ask him for stuff.

It was really funny. I was talking with him, and it was Paul Martinez, me, and Parris. And Paul asked Parris a question. And then Parris turns around and there’s a piece of paper on this table that’s behind them, and he writes something down, I’m like, ‘Okay. He’s going to give Paul—it’s a note for Paul.’ because Paul just asked a question, he’s going to write something down and give this thing to Paul. So he writes something down. He folds it up. And then he walks up to me. He hands this thing to me, and he says, ‘I never give this to anybody.’ That’s what he said. He didn’t say anything else. He just said, ‘I never give this to anybody.’ And he handed it to me, and I opened it up and it was his email address. I was like, ‘No way! This is unbelievable!’

Kira Hug:  What!

Jason Rutkowski:  And by the way, when you gave me that, I instantly thought to myself, ‘That $5000 was worth it. This is exactly what I came here for.’ Like I said, my main goal wasn’t to become…

Kira Hug:  Score.

Jason Rutkowski:  My main goal was to become his friend, and have him at least give me his contact info. Which is super hard to get. That was my big, big goal. And that happened at the second day, and I was like, ‘Okay. I can go home now. I don’t even need to stay at this conference anymore.’ Even though it was a great conference.

So what I wanted to send you guys was when I first met Parris-well, let’s rewind. Right before I met Parris and met Marcella, because I was too nervous to go up to Parris, I met Marcella and I asked her the standard … how to win friends and influence people questions. I asked her a bunch of questions about herself. Then, what happens was when you ask people questions about themselves, they ask you question about yourself, and I had a couple of stories that I actually had planned out about my career and myself, and I told one of them to Marcella, and she goes, ‘Wow. That’s actually a great…’ I don’t have time to go into the story right now, because it’s really long. It’s a ten minute story. But she’s like, ‘Wow, that’s actually a really great story.’ She goes, ‘You have to tell that to Parris.’ And then she dragged me over. Marcella always takes full credit for this. Every time I meet Marcella, she goes, ‘I introduced you to Parris! You have to thank me!’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, okay Marcella.’

She dragged me over there, and she’s like, ‘Parris, you have to listen to this kid’s story.’ And I told them the story. When I told it to him, his eyes lit up. Like when you’re surprised, your eyes get really big. And he’s like, ‘who is this guy? Who is this-’ I don’t have time to go into the story, however-

Kira Hug:  You’re teasing the story! You’re teasing it.

Jason Rutkowski:  Here’s the thing. About a year ago, I wrote out the story because Marcella just started her … thing. She needed some content to send to her list of people. I wrote this thing, and I go, ‘Hey, Marcella. You remember this story I told you?’ She was like, ‘Yeah, that’s a great story.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I wrote an article about it.’ I think the title is, The Single Most Important Thing You Could Do At Life Marketing Events. And then I went into this thing about telling a really interesting story about yourself that gets people really excited about you and who you are. And I told the story. And then I taught the lesson that comes after the story, it’s the same thing I’m telling you right now. But I actually wrote out the whole thing. So I’m going to send it to you, and you guys can share it with your people.

Rob Marsh:  Cool, we’ll link to it.

Jason Rutkowski:  What’s great about stories is, it convinces people, ‘Okay, this guy’s marketing now, just copywriting now, just work ethic.’ It instantly communicates all that, but in an exciting, interesting way. You should be really using that when you’re meeting people at marketing conferences. That’s what the article is about. But yeah, it has the whole story in there if you want to read it, the whole thing’s in there.

Rob Marsh:  Cool, we’ll check it out. So, I am a little hesitant to ask this question because I know you can’t answer a whole lot. We’ve talked with Paul, we’ve talked with Marcella, and any time we talk to people who have been Parris’ Cubs, everybody wants to know what the experience is like. I’m guessing you get this from just about everybody that you talk to, who knows that you’re in that relationship. Parris actually shared his book list at our event, so there are some of those kinds of things that I know that he’s willing to share, but will you just tell us a little bit about the experience? The kinds of things that you do with Parris? Without revealing anything that’s super secret, but just what’s that experience like, and what have you taken away from it?

Jason Rutkowski:  Yes, I could give you a general overview. It’s like you said, you got the book list. Parris always has us reading books. We get on these calls that are two, three hours long sometimes. The books in itself, you should read the books, 100%. But they kind of provide a syllabus, where he teaches the lessons through the book. So we read the book, we discuss our notes, and then he starts going very deep into what he thinks about it. What the deeper, psychological lessons are in the book. He throws in a lot of examples from his career, stuff he’s written, he sends us writing examples. The books, I can get more into this about the other stuff too, but the books are kind of a launching pad to other things he wants to talk to us about.

There’s a lot of homework. There’s a lot of writing. There’s a lot of unpaid writing, by the way. There’s paid stuff, but it’s a big time commitment. From the moment he starts to call, like I said, some of these calls are three hours long. It’s constant. It’s constant copywriting. Constant marketing. It’s almost overload. He gets out of the call, and everyone’s extremely exhausted. Course he has his techniques that I can’t talk about. He has proprietary stuff I can’t talk about, but overall, it’s a lot of Parris talking. I don’t know how he does it. When you’re at that level, that Parris is at, he could just go off on one topic for a really, really long time.

But at the end of every call, you feel, man, I learned so much, and then what Parris says, he records the call, and then we have to re-listen to it. If you really want to get all the lessons out of that call, you’re re-listening to it five or six times at least.

Do you have any specific questions, any more about the group?

Kira Hug:  I have a question. For someone who is listening and they’re, ‘Okay, I don’t know Parris, I’m not going to be his copy cub anytime soon,’ for whatever reasons, ‘but I want to do something similar.’ Do they need to read the books? Do they need to find another mentor? Is there a way we could almost hack the system and, of course, you can’t replicate that type of experience that you’re currently having, but what about for people who cannot be a copy cub for whatever reason, how can they take something that you’ve learned and use it?

Jason Rutkowski:  The thing about Parris is he teaches you the lesson and you might understand the lesson intellectually-and the same thing, say you read a book. Say you’re reading a copywriting book. One of the books on those lists. It talks about some headline technique, or it talks about some bullet writing technique, or it talks about some other copy technique. You might understand it intellectually, but if you want to actually understand how to apply the stuff in real life, the absolute best thing you could do is take winning promos, and I could talk about how you actually know how a promo is winning or not, take winning promos in your niche, and start reverse engineering what you’re looking at.

Specifically for the one-so Parris would say, ‘Okay, here’s this super specific bullet writing technique that I came up with. And here’s why I do it.’ Okay, that makes sense. And then what I do, is I pull up five or six winning promos, preferably Parris promos, but it could be any top health copywriter. And I just reverse engineer, I look for instances where that technique is happening over and over, and I write it down. I have a notebook or I have a Word document and I have all these Word documents on my computer, where it’s, ‘this technique.’ And I open up that Word document and it’s just like 20, 25 examples of that technique. And it’s like-this other technique, this headline type, in the health niche there’s three or four stories you can write.

A common story in the health niche is, some person has a problem, they tried a million different things, they came in to the doctor, ‘Doc, I tried all these million different things, didn’t work.’ The doctor is like, ‘Okay, I got this new treatment that no one knows about.’ Do the treatment, ‘Wow, Doc, two weeks later, my thing’s cured, I suffered from this for 20 years and now it’s gone.’ Then people wonder, ‘Well, what’s the technique? How-’ And then you could go into copy. That’s a common health niche story technique.

Well, what I do is I create a Word document. I go find five or six or 10 or 15, 20 examples of that and I just either hand write it or I type it out. And now I have a document where it’s just, ‘Okay, anytime I’m writing health copy,’ I can open up that document. ‘Okay, I want to use this type of story, this type of technique.’ Now I’ve got, 15, 20 examples that I can, not steal the copy, but I can swipe the structure, I can swipe the buildup, how they tease it. It just drills it into your mind. The most important thing is not just realizing what you need to do, but how you can actually do it in your day to day life. There’s so many times where people read the books, and go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s interesting, I understand that intellectually.’ But then, they’re doing the same copywriting now as they did six months ago. That’s because they didn’t drill it into their head of, well, how is this actually used in real life, and how can I structure this so when I’m doing a project I can use this in real life. How’s it going to change the way I write copy.

A lot of people think it’s going to happen automatically, it’s not. Okay, you need to go out of your way. Which is why Parris recommends handwriting promos. A big benefit of that, it drills it in your head of how you’re actually supposed to be doing this at this moment. So, I would recommend that. That was the biggest breakthrough. Really, I used to not do that. When I first started the Parris group, and then I started reading books and reverse engineering things, creating Word documents, finding real life examples. Honestly, I think it made me a lot better.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, I think what you’re talking about here is mastery. When Parris was talking about his book list at our event, he mentioned you don’t just read them once. You read them once just to get a sense of what’s in them, then you go through the second time and you underline, and then you go through the third time and you start taking notes, handwriting what you’ve underlined into a notebook. And then there’s two or three more times you go through it. You’re basically taking that process to everything that you’re doing or seeing. My sense is, Jason, you don’t just want to be a copywriter, you want to be a master of copywriting. I think there’s a really significant difference.

Jason Rutkowski:  Oh, definitely. A part of that’s just my personality. I do it that way because that’s the only way I can imagine myself doing it, you know what I mean? I don’t think of it as I have to put in this hard work, I think of it as, well, this is my career, and the more I do this, the better results I get. Then when I’m sitting with clients or talking with other copywriters, I can speak about things at a higher level. You if you do stuff on a daily basis, if you’re constantly reading promos, reverse engineering promos, reading books, taking notes, even just one or two years down the line, you’re going to be able to sit down with people and just-almost like this, have a huge conversation about the tiniest, littlest thing. When I talk with Paul, Paul Martinez, huge A-list copywriter, that’s what we do when we sit down and we have private one on one conversations. We’ll just talk about one tiny little copywriting thing for 20, 30 minutes. Because we both went through that process of deep diving, studying handwriting, reverse engineering promos, reading books. That just changes the way you think about things.

Rob Marsh:   So, before we leave off this whole idea of what you’re doing with Parris and this self-mastery thing, is there one book or one course that you would say, ‘Hey, if you want to get started on this path, this the book to start with.’ What would that be?

Jason Rutkowski:  This answer is an answer no one ever talks about, and it makes me really mad. It’s actually one of the first books Parris had us read. It’s actually about a topic that so many people ignore. It’s so obvious. At this point, I get a lot of people who want me to critique their copy. ‘Hey, Jason.’ It doesn’t have to be for the health niche, but, ‘Hey Jason, I have my business, can you please, I’m not a copywriter, can you critique my copy.’ And they send me their copy. All of them have this one huge, huge problem that they don’t seem to realize that they have. And it’s not that they don’t understand copywriting, it’s that they don’t understand how to write. Just so many copywriters who cannot write.

So, a book that’s on Parris’ list is, On Writing Well by William Zinsser. I love that book. Another book I would recommend is The Brilliance Breakthrough by Eugene Schwartz, specifically the first eight chapters of it. Listen, when I critique copy, the first thing I critique is how it’s written. Not your power words, or motion or any of that stuff. Just, your sentence doesn’t make sense. Or, this sentence doesn’t connect to that sentence, or it’s too long. Or, you’re bouncing around, or you’re using the wrong thing in the wrong-really basic writing ability that people think, ‘Oh, Jason, I passed 11th grade English class. I don’t need to learn how to write.’ Or even worse, ‘I have an English degree.’ I’m like, ‘Show me something you’ve written. You could’ve been bad, I don’t know, just because you have a bachelor’s degree doesn’t mean you’re good at writing.’ I always tell people, it’s so foundational, people ignore it. Learn how to write. Read those two books. I’ve read On Writing Well and The Brilliance Breakthrough probably, and this is not exaggerated, eight or nine times each with my notes. I re-read the book and re-read my notes.

I spent the first year with Parris just learning how to write. One thing, when Parris critiques my copy, if you haven’t applied the lessons from those two books perfectly? He’s going to chew my ass out. For ten minutes. ‘Jason, we went over this a million times.’ Nothing to do with copywriting. Just with writing sentences.

Kira Hug:  Oh my gosh.

Jason Rutkowski:  It’s so important, and so many people ignore it. Then they come to me with this fake John Carlton copy where they have these 40, 50 words sentences that never end. And none of it makes sense. I’m just, ‘Dude. Forget the copywriting books, man. Start with the writing books. Go through those two books and then go to John Caple’s and Vic Schwab and those books, okay?’ So that’s my recommendation. Learn how to write.

Kira Hug:  That’s incredible advice.

Rob Marsh:  Good stuff.

Kira Hug:  Thank you. That was a PSA.

Jason Rutkowski:  Really, people listening to this, I mean it’s a big thing. If you read those two books, especially multiple times, like I said, The Brilliance Breakthrough, Eugene Schwartz. Brian Kurtz sells it, and On Writing Well, William Zinsser. It should fundamentally change the way you write sentences. It should. If it’s not, maybe you’re already an amazing writer, that’s great. I hope you are. That’s a lot less work. But if you’re like me, which is like most people, you need to really sit down and do it.

Rob Marsh:  And just as far as Brilliance Breakthrough goes, just to add, when you buy that book you get a workbook because there are writing exercises in the book and basically that allows you to run through the workbook. You’re not necessarily writing in the book itself. You can actually practice with it. So it’s a fantastic resource.

Jason Rutkowski:  Totally. I think he sells it for $200. Which people might think, ‘$200 for a book? Wow. I’m never going to pay that.’ Totally worth it. 100%. It’s funny, at the end of the eighth chapter, Eugene Schwartz actually says, ‘I could end the book right here if I wanted to.’ Which is true. Because the most fundamental part is the first eight chapters, and then everything else is supplementary, it’s good stuff. But the first eight chapters, man. It’s stuff about, ‘how to write clearly, how to write simply.’ Simplicity and clarity, two big things people don’t know how to do. The way Eugene Schwartz talks about it in that book is amazing. I love that book so much. Totally worth the $200.

Kira Hug:  So, I want to hear more about your writing process. When you’re sitting down to work on a project, I want to get a glimpse into what’s happening in your office. Where are you starting, clearly you have an incredible resource library and swipe files to pull from, but what is your process look like as you’re moving into a project? Even starting with the research portion.

Jason Rutkowski:  Yeah, research is huge. Becoming a good researcher is just as important as becoming a good writer. I know I just talked about it for 10 minutes, about learning how to write. The thing about copywriting is

Like, I know, I just talked about for 10 minutes about learning how to write. Thing about copywriting is, there are so many things to learn. Right. If you want to do this at a really high level, you have to master like, a hundred different skills. Which is kind of daunting, but also, kind of exciting. And, one of the big skills you need to master is research. So, the question is, what do I research, and how do I do it? That’s going to depend on the niche. It’s going to depend on your product.

You know, in health, the big products are supplements, books, just DVD programs and like, newsletters. Okay? All those products have like, their own research methodology that you’re going to go through. That’s specific to the product in that niche. I would say overall, the best thing you can do … And this is another thing that takes forever to do, but it’s totally worth it is, I would take promos written my Parris and Health Niche, like, ‘Okay Parris, I’m doing a book promo for Bottom line right now.’ I would take a book promo, that Parris did for Bottom line, and I would open it up, and I would read the information. And then, I would say to myself, ‘How did Parris come up with this information?’

You can just ask yourself, ‘How did he do this research?’ And you’ll come up with the most surprising answers. So, one thing I used to do was, Parris wrote a bunch of promos for Bottom line Books. Five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago. Well, those promos, because Parris wrote them, were hugely successful. And that means, millions of people bought those books, or hundreds of thousands of people bought those books. So that means, people have those books. Like, books are eternal. Right? People buy a book and put it on their bookshelf and never look at it. But, that also means, that people sell those books, to this day.

So, you can actually, I would take a Parris promo from 15 years ago. They were from Bottom line, and, the book would be called … I actually have one right here. Oh. Speed Healing Unlimited, Bottom line Speed Healing Unlimited. It’s right by my desk. I went on Amazon. I typed in Bottom line Speed Healing Unlimited, and there’s people that sell this book for like, two dollars. And you can buy it for like, two bucks.

So, I bought the book, I put the book on my desk, I took Parris’ promo, I put the promo on my desk. And, I would open up the promo, and it would say a bullet, or an article. And then, it would say the page number. It’s like, I found this information in this page of this book. I would take the book, and I would open it up to that page, and I would read the page. And I would say to myself, ‘Well, how did Parris come up with this information?’ So, I’m like, reverse engineering his research process. Right?

And you’ll see stuff, like the book would be so boring. It’s the most boring information ever. And Parris turned it into like, amazing … You know, David Deutsche is like good at this too, like this amazing, amazing thing. And, you can do this to this day. Especially with information products. Just reverse engineer the research. Like, find out what the final copy was. I think go back to the source, and then you’ll start realizing, ‘Oh. During my research process, I should think like this, I should do this.’ You know, if I’m reading information, it’s like this. I should think about in this way. I should write this down, and maybe this turns in a piece of copy later.’

And, I would just do stuff like that. I did that for like, seven or eight books. Like, seven or eight promos. And, books are great, because people always keep up … Like I said, people always hold on to books, people … Books last forever. So, if you get some book promotions, written by A list copywriters, and if you could buy the book, or buy the free report. Whatever information product it is. And, you can like reverse engineer it. I mean, that influenced my research process.

So, like I said it’s going to be different depending on what product you’re doing. What niche you’re in. But, a lot of it is, a lot of learned copy is, reverse engineering. And then, it’s going to influence your research process in your own way. Really, because I feel like a lot of people’s processes different. So, specifically if I’m doing like a supplement, you know, I’ll research Google or, I’ll go to scientific articles, I’ll do bunch of random different things. But, all my reverse engineering is influenced by process in some way. You know, Parris always says, ‘I can look at a piece of information, and I see something amazing. And a B list copywriter looks at the same piece of information, and they see something that’s boring. Right?

So, it’s like, I take that amazing thing, and I see the gold nugget in there that other people don’t see, and that’s a big reason for its success. And, that’s a way you can learn to do that by, ‘Well okay. What did Parris see? Okay. Let me go back. Let me see what he saw.’ You know. So, that’s what I recommend.

Rob Marsh:  There’s so much stuff here, that I’m just totally, jonesing over it. This is awesome, so. I’m thinking that there are, you know people may be listening to this, and thinking, ‘Okay. Jason works in the health niche. That’s something I’m really interested in doing myself. You know, in addition to the advice you gave about like, how do you connect with potential clients. What are the things that people can do to break into this niche? You know, what should they be looking at, studying, you know, how do you get your first client, you know, writing for say, a newsletter, or a help supplement?

Jason Rutkowski:  The very first thing is, studying the market. So, you need to get on everybody’s list Everybody’s on the list. For health, I’m just going to name some random companies. You got, New Market Health, you got … And all their companies. Health Sense Media. You got, Dr Gundry Advanced Bio Nutritionals. Nature of City, Patriot Health Alliance. So, you get on everybody’s email list. And what I did is, I created my own Gmail account, just for health. So, I have a Gmail account, that’s just for collecting health emails. Like, chaff and chiving emails. That email has like, 80 thousand emails. I have 80 thousand health emails.

Rob Marsh:  Wow.

Jason Rutkowski:  Because, I’ve been doing it for years. Right? It’s like, years old. So, first process, before even thinking about writing for somebody, is studying the market. If you’re meeting people, if it’s through an email, through LinkedIn, at a marketing conference, through a reference, or recommendation, you should know who you’re talking to, and what you’re talking about. Like, you have to know that stuff. It helps if you have some writing samples, because everyone always asks writing samples, and if you don’t have writing sample, do what I did, rewrite somebody’s copy. Take a control that’s already out there, and rewrite it completely in your own words. Like, this works well for an information product, so it’s like, okay.

Bottom line, it has this promo, and it’s a book, a book promo to sell a book. Ordis Guy has a program that’s like an e-book or free report. And the copies about that information product, well, just buy the information product, and rewrite the copy with your own headline, in your own body copy. You know, using all the lessons you learned from the books, in reverse engineering, and studying the health market. And have, you know, at least two samples just have two samples. Clients just want to see that you can write something.

Also, do the two books I talked about, on how to actually write sentences. And, put a couple samples together. And, I mean that … I always hated, things like, at least for me, like cold emailing, and cold calling people never really worked. Really, I was struggling until I started going to events, and you know, started doing all the things I talked about. About researching people and becoming friends with people. That’s just my process.

I know there are some people out there that have some success with, you know, I know Paul Martinez on his podcast on here, talked about some things he did, that sounded really good, that I never did. So, maybe in terms of contacting people through email or LinkedIn, or online, maybe other people have some better information than me. But, for me it was, you know, get to the point where you know what you’re talking about. Learn how to make people like you, how to become friends with people, form relationships with people. Go to live events and then, grow your copy writing business from there. And you know, deep dive your niche. Deep dive into you’re market, and know what you’re talking about. And, that’s what we’re for me so.

Kira Hug:  What’s clear and all of your responses is that, you are deeply committed to mastery, which Rob mentioned, and that you’re, you do the work you do the work times …

Jason Rutkowski:  A lot.

Kira Hug:  Ten. And, that’s why it will make you the master, compared to a lot of copywriters who will not do the work. And they’re not ready to write copy, and copy books, and read books eight times. My final question for you is, what does the future of copyrighting look like to you?

Jason Rutkowski:  It’s real interesting, because, I spend so much of my time in health, and now finance. And those tend to be the two big niches like, everyone likes to talk about, because that’s where like the most money and most competition is. I know this many niches outside that. But, I find that, it’s kind of niche by niche. You really have to understand how you’re niche operates. And, I’ll give two examples of health and finance. Like, health, I found that, there’s a lot of health companies out there. There’s a lot of like, supplement companies out there, that are like the low eight figure supplement companies that love to hire freelancers, and even maybe high seven figure companies.

Like, love the work of freelancers, they don’t have a big in-house team, and they’re willing to hire people to come in, you know, just for a project or two. And that’s something that’s very unique, and specific to the health niche. And then, another hand, there’s the financial niche, which nowadays tend to be very in-house focused. Like, very like … Especially their Agora divisions. Like, big companies, big in-house teams. Who don’t like working with freelance copywriters, unless you’re high level.

If you’re high level, and by high level, I mean like you really got to know what you’re doing. You really already have to have a reputation, and you have to like, have connections and know people. Unless you’re at that level like, they love their in-house system. The financialist loves like, their in-house teams. And, you know, you move to wherever in Baltimore, Florida, or wherever they’re located. And, like, you worked in their system for two years. And, that’s a very financial niche thing.

But, health thing, they’re just kind of, there are in-house health niche teams, but it’s like … So, it varies like, as you travel through the different niches that exist. The best thing I always tell people do is, like get as much good information as you can. And, the best way to get good information is, well, listen to stuff like this. And also, go to events where you have like, successful entrepreneurs, successful marketers, successful copywriters. Find out what industry they work in, and just like … I’m always the digging up information, and I’m always talking to Ridge Abraham who worked at Agora Financial. You know, Ridge is successful financial copywriter.

I’m always asking him some questions about the niche. Always asking him questions about Agora. I’m always asking some questions. Like, I’m always trying to get a better picture of, you know, how does this niche work? You know. What’s going on? What’s the freelance landscape like? What’s in-house landscape like?  How do these publishers executives make decisions? Like, I’m always just gathering that info. Right?

So, you kind of have to do that in whatever niche you’re in. But, I will say, the freelance niche still exists. You can still have a lot of success with it. I think in health, is a good opportunity. Other niches, I’m not too familiar with like the biz op and internet marketing, that’s really, but, I assume … I know a couple finances that are very successful in that, those type of spaces so. Yeah. Try to get as much good information on whatever niche you’re going to go into as you can.

Rob Marsh:  Lots of opportunity for anyone who’s really willing to put in the work it sounds like.

Jason Rutkowski:  Oh yeah. I mean, you got to stand out. Because, because I was talking to Parris about this the other day, I was on a phone call with him. He’s like, ‘Yeah. You know twenty years ago, there were very little copywriters.’ There’s very little, just in terms of value. And, there is even a smaller amount of A list copywriters, like 20 years ago.’ And he’s like, ‘Now it is. just a ton of copywriters. But, it’s still a very small amount of high level copywriters. There’s a ton of copy, like, there’s thousands of tens of thousands of freelancers and in-house people, that, are not that great. And then, there’s, a smaller amount of people who are at the highest level.

And, really, the amount of work that, you guys keep saying I do a lot of work, and I do, I do that because, like I said, it’s a natural part of me, and I just feel like that’s what I should be doing. But also, if that’s how you become successful. That’s how make more money and that’s how … I mean, because the problem nowadays is, you got to convince people like, ‘Hey. I’m not like these ten thousand other freelancers who, you know, all have the same skill levels. Which, is not that high. They don’t have much of a reputation.’ And, you’ve got to stand out from that. And a big part of that is, well, becoming friends with people, especially through live events, but also knowing what you’re talking about.

Rob Marsh:  You know, who knows if Parris is ever going to do another round of copy cubs, but Jason, if you ever open up for taking cubs, you’ve sold us. Really. We’re ready to sign.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. I’ll be a cub.

Rob Marsh:  You dropped a lot of really going advice.

Jason Rutkowski:  I don’t know man.

Kira Hug:  Yeah. You got two cubs right here. Right here.

Jason Rutkowski:  What’s interesting, I will say this really fast, I know it’s the end of the call but. A big reason a lot of top A listers have copy cubs is, not only because they like to teaching, and Parris really does like teaching. But also, out of necessity. You know, a lot of A listers form very deep relationships with clients. Relationships where it’s like, ‘Hey. I’m essentially going to be running your marketing department. And, I’m going to be getting a cut of the front end and back end. I might be getting some equity deals.’ Like, they set up these big deals, and then, these A listers, its like, ‘Well, I’m running this market department now. But I need all this copy done. And not just the big promos, but the back end stuff, the traffic drivers.’

Kira Hug:  Right.

Jason Rutkowski:  ‘Like are all this, you know, the Google stuff. All this copy.’ And a lot of these A listers, the reason if I’m in copy cub groups is, out of necessity. Right? They need Copy Cubs to, you know, do all this copy that they’re just not capable of doing, because they don’t have the time, or they just don’t have the desire. Because, they want to focus on the big money stuff, they don’t want to focus on the small money stuff.

So, I always tell people get somebody, I don’t care if it’s in-house. I don’t care if it’s a mentor. Preferably, in like a one on one relationship, it doesn’t have to be. But, get somebody who knows what you’re talking about, to train you. Hopefully, they’re at a level where they need some smaller copyrighted work done, and maybe could do some smaller stuff for them. But, go for the highest level person you can man.

I went for Parris Lampropolous. I was able to get that and I was right. It doesn’t have to be Parris. But, it’s such a valuable thing. And, a lot times, a lot of these top guys need smaller copy work done, and a lot times, if you could give ’em, like, ‘Hey. I’m at least at the level where I can do, you know, these emails, or these articles.’ You know. Could be content, could be traffic driving. Like, maybe you can form relationships, and it’s extremely valuable experience.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. It’s really good advice.

Kira Hug:  Thank you. This has been very grounding. I feel like, it reminds me of how much more I want to learn and how much more there is to learn. So, thank you for sharing so much advice, actual advice. And then, inspiring us too.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah. Thanks Jason.

That’s the end of our interview with Jason. Jason’s process for studying and reverse engineering older promotions to learn how to write great copy is something more of us should be doing. To become great, we need to spend more time studying great copy. But not just to copy the words or read through a particular swipe… to deconstruct what’s going on so we can apply the strategies and tactics to new products and services.

Jason’s practice of creating swipe document with lots of examples of great copy when you come across it. So having a swipe doc with 12 or 15 different examples of strong guarantees that effectively overcome risk aversion or a swipe doc with lots of examples of headlines… even multiple examples of headlines variations on a particular hook and so on.

By becoming a collector of good copy, you teach yourself how to write it and perhaps more importantly, you have lots of examples to refer to when you need to sit down and produce copy for a client. Taking the time to master this stuff before you need to write it makes you a much better writer.

Hopefully you see why I chose to reshare this interview. And now, what will you do to implement these ideas into your writing practice?

Since recording this episode, Jason moved from copywriting about health and investing to actually doing the investing himself. By applying the ideas he was writing about, he found he could make even more money so he doesn’t do a lot of writing any more. But the ideas he shared are still worth gold.

Before I go, I want to remind you again that The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track program is going away forever. You can still get these business building strategies and ideas to implement in your own business, but only for a few more weeks. After that, this program will never be sold on its own again. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack to learn more.

The world is drowning in content—most of it bad. So when a creator is doing something different, something that really stands out and challenges the rest of us to up our game, we pay attention. That’s why Content Strategist Heather Parady is our guest for the 426th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Heather shared her unique approach to content creation and lays out a roadmap for anyone else who wants to up their content game. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

The Copywriter Accelerator Fast Track

Rob Marsh:  Content is everywhere. Almost every business knows that content is one avenue that helps prospects discover and connect with them. I’m not telling you anything new here, most copywriters work with clients who need this kind of content whether it’s on social media, regular emails, videos, workshop and webinar content. We even use it ourselves.

So when I discover someone who is making cotent that stands out or is even a little bit different, I pay attention. And today’s guest on The Copywriter Club Podcast fits that description.

Hi I’m Rob Marsh and today I’m speaking with Content Strategist, Heather Parady. I’ve been watching Heather’s content for a while now and I am impressed. She connects ideas from interviews and books and all kinds of other sources to create short video content that grabs attention and teaches with a story, almost always gives me something to think about. This is one of my favorite interviews this year and I think you’re not only going to enjoy it, but you’ll have a bunch of takeaways to apply to your own business and content creation.

Before we jump in, as we wrap up the year I need to let you know that The Copywriter Accelerator as it is today is going away forever. This is the proven business building program used by hundreds of copywriters to start and grow their businesses. And I guarantee it will work for you too. But to get the eight modules, eight blueprints, the bonuses and the coaching calls that go along with it… you need to opt in now. And if you decide to join the Accelerator now, you’ll get absolutely free, the program I am working on behind the scenes that will replace it. I don’t even have a name for the new thing, just know that it will be worth it. And if you don’t agree, you’ll get your money back. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/fasttrack for details now.

And with that, let’s go to our interview with Heather Parady.

Heather, welcome to the podcast. I, I’m thrilled to be here. You know, as we were just talking before we started recording, I’m a big fan of yours. I would love to start with your story and how you got to where you are building this list, this following that you have, you know, video producer, all of the things. Yeah. How did you get there?

Heather Parady: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I was listening to your show and I’m just really impressed with the quality of guests and the topics and how thorough you guys are and professional. It’s just really, really valuable, valuable show that I look forward to continually listening to now. I was a therapist, you know, I went to school to sit in rooms with people and hear their problems and sort it out. psychology of trying to figure out why we are the way that we are. And I’ve always been kind of like a helper. You know, I think through and through, that’s really who I am. So it’s funny because a lot of people are kind of coming to me for like the media side of stuff. They’re like, video editing and all this stuff. And I’m like, that’s something that I’m learning how to do. It’s not something that I’ve been doing all along. What I’ve been doing all along is sitting with people and reading books on Adler and Carl Jung and stuff like that. So I’m Kind of a mental health therapist turned media person. Short story is, at some point, I really just fell into the world of personal development and the online space. Probably about 10 years ago, and I was just really drawn to this idea that you could create something from nothing and reinvent your life and all the possibilities there. And I really loved the freedom, the idea, which is funny because I work now so hard and so long, so I’m laughing at the whole freedom thing. This idea that you can make your own path especially i was pregnant at the time of my first daughter and really torn with going into the workforce and wanting to be with her and so forth so i’m very reluctantly very reluctantly i. Turn down a whole bunch of therapy jobs and we moved perfect jobs. and cried and talked to hours and hours to my husband, bless his heart, and said, I think I want to build something online and figure out my voice here. It has been so messy, Rob. I started off podcast editing, I started off, I did photography, I managed people’s calendars, I did everything and anything. And what I didn’t know then is skill stacking, how valuable that was, because now, you know, I know a little bit about all the little nuances of online business. And eventually, eventually I ended up in media and video and I just found something that really worked for me and I’ve gone headfirst into it.

Rob Marsh: I’ve followed your videos. I love what you’re doing. And I definitely want to, you know, talk about your whole approach to storytelling and the way you set all of that up. But first, I think you’ve touched on something that, you know, in 420 plus episodes of the podcast, we really haven’t talked a lot about and that is the mental side of marketing. Can we talk just a little bit about that? Because what you bring to this as a therapist, I think makes your voice different from everybody else that I see on YouTube, talking about video and getting yourself in front of people. And the way you’re taking a step back and say, wait a second, there’s, there’s actually some human stuff that has to happen before we even talk camera lighting equipment. Yeah. Yeah. What’s your philosophy there?

Heather Parady: Yeah. I know my tendency is when I came into this conversation as more of a helper and a feeler. I mean, I cry every freaking day, just deeply empathic and stuff. I was thinking, oh man, that’s a weakness in this media space. I have just really doubled down on what a freaking strength it is to have folks who aren’t naturally bent towards media getting into media and really showing the humanity because folks are so burnout with the salesman type vibe and strong calls to action and feeling like they’re being scammed. And there’s looking for somebody who’s human. So, you know, I really would encourage folks to understand that people aren’t looking for highly produced stuff. They’re looking for honest content, honest, honest, honest, even if it’s just your freaking cell phone and it’s bad lighting or whatever. There’s stuff like that stuff’s important and you can work on it, but it’s not what people are looking for. And you said something a minute ago, Rob, you mentioned in over the 400 something episodes, I noticed that when I was listening to your show is like 400 episodes. What a rare rarity nowadays for someone to get that far along in podcasting. And so Reps is the name of the game. I have done hundreds, probably thousands of videos at this point. You can go to my TikTok and scroll to the bottom. It’s humiliating. Some of the first ones I did. Terrible, terrible, terrible. We’re so afraid, though, to look like a beginner to people. We want to come out of the gates looking like Mr. Beast or Brene Brown or whatever your person is. And it doesn’t work like that. You have to be willing to look like a beginner in front of people and own it. And here’s the thing at the end of the day. No one is watching you anyway. We have this illusion that so many people are watching us. I have a pretty good following now, and I put out a lot of content, and to this day, my friends, my family, and all that are like, what do you do? Huh? What? you know, and then they miss so much because people are busy, they’re consumed. And you know, the spotlight effect in psychology, we all think that we have the spotlight on us. And when you kind of get past the insecurity, and you really do want people to pay attention, you realize they weren’t paying attention all along, because it’s really hard to get people to pay attention. It’s very hard. So I know it’s, it’s, um, you’ve probably heard all this before. But also give yourself a lot of grace because we’re the first generation. We’re the first group of people who’ve had to figure out what it means to be a human being online and try to navigate this. It is normal to be nervous. Like you’re putting a camera on your face and putting it in front of strangers. Why wouldn’t you be nervous? That’s normal. It’s a normal thing.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s interesting to think about this. We all have that moment in our lives that it’s frozen in our brains, that moment of shame where something happened. To this day, I don’t think I’ve shared this story with anybody ever. I can remember the moment in fifth grade when Walter Romney and Gerald Gray made fun of a shirt that I was wearing. I probably had worn it to school three or four times in a row because I loved this shirt. And to this day, That feeling of people looking at you and shaming me resonates. And so when you think about getting out in front of people, obviously I’ve overcome that in some way because we do the podcast. I’ve been speaking in advance. That’s not really something that holds me back, but I still worry about that, people making fun of me. And if I have that, like you said, after 400 plus episodes, I can only imagine the person who’s thinking, okay, I have to get out there. I have to do something. I have to do something on Instagram, or I have to be on LinkedIn or wherever. How do I take that first step? Because leaning into overcoming that is not easy. No. I mean, even in my saying it’s not easy, I’m, I think, underestimating the difficulty of how hard that is.

Heather Parady: This has been helpful for me is redefining what normal is and being very, very intentional with being friends with content creators. Because when you’re friends with other content creators, then it becomes the normal thing to do to put out content. When you’re out, I was just taking my girl to school the other day and one of the other moms is like, So I heard he put out stuff online and I’m just like, Oh my God, this is, and I just, yeah. And it’s just so, I don’t want to say embarrassing. It’s just awkward because people don’t understand and they don’t get it out in like the regular world. And so if that’s your measure, if that’s your normal, if those are the only people you associate with, I’m not saying cut people out. They’re not a content creator by any means, but be intentional with putting those people in your life because not only are they going to encourage you and give you feedback and all that, you’re, you start to retrain your brain. on what’s normal. And if you look at the mind, you can adjust its narrative through repetition. Neuroplasticity is a very real thing, but it takes time. And so that’s interesting. And another thing I wanted to comment on that you mentioned is, I know my experience and folks I’ve worked with, it’s not usually the stranger we’re nervous about. It’s the people we know that we’re nervous about. And I don’t know if you follow Lewis Howells, he had an incredible clip with Jen Sierra, I believe was her name. And she made this comment that when people are negative or critical of you stepping out and doing your thing, you’re killing off the person that they loved. And so they’ve had this narrative of you for so long. And when you step into something else, they get defensive and weird over it because they’re like, but I’ve always liked Rob. What’s Rob doing? Where’s old Rob going? And they don’t understand that the new Rob is just an upgrade. And so that’s where the panic and the making fun of and the weirdness stuff because they feel like they’re losing something.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. definitely see that. And that struggle is very real. I, you know, my heart goes out to people who are just starting the podcast or just starting to get out there. So let’s, let’s talk about some of those realities, because again, I think you’ve nailed storytelling in ways that, you know, maybe other people aren’t doing it quite the same way. What’s your approach when you sit down to create a video, you know, to tell a story, to make a point, I think you follow a bit of a formula in most of your videos, which is amazing and I think makes it so consumable. Can we talk through your process a little bit?

Heather Parady: Yeah. So again, I’ve made a million that were horrible. What changed the game for me was when I decided to add creative restriction to my videos, meaning I got mad one day, Rob, and I said, you know, all my videos aren’t working and I’m doing what Gary V told me to do. I’m being consistent. I put out hundreds of stuff. Why is this not working? And so I got mad. I said, I’m just going to sit in this chair and I’m not going to get up until one of these things work. I’m going to figure out my format. I’m going to sit in this chair. And so that creative restriction was so important because sometimes when we approach a white piece of paper or board or whatever. there’s so many opportunities, we just get kind of overwhelmed. So if you can say, hey, there’s a creative restriction, I’m going to do this in 15 seconds, or I’m going to only sit here or whatever that is, it actually makes you more creative. So right now, that’s kind of the origin of where that began. My brain kind of works and connections all the time. I’m always thinking like, oh, that reminds me of this. And this reminds me of that. And so that’s a natural tendency of mine. And so I would say, you know, paying attention to your natural tendency is really important because coming up with ideas a lot, um, it’s, I don’t want to say it’s hard, but it’s a disciplined process. And if it’s something that you’re going uphill with, you’re making it harder. My brain’s always making connections. Like I listened to a lot of podcasts, read a lot of books. It’s annoying how much I listened to. So I, document stuff daily. I have a spreadsheet that’s called Real Ideas, and it has hundreds of data points on it of, hey, I listened to this episode with Rob, and he was interviewing this copywriter, and they said this 10 minutes in, they made this comment, and I’ll just leave it. And that’s been really hard for me too, because I feel like I have to be doing something all the time and making all the time. But learning that sometimes you’ll get an idea, and that’s for three months from now, and it’s not for tomorrow. And letting things breathe has been challenging for me. But I’ll wrap this up. So I put everything in a spreadsheet. And then I have a pretty disciplined writing routine where usually all day Friday, I’m writing. And I’ve been trying to implement one hour every morning to writing too. where I go and I just script. So used to I would spend a lot more of my time on the back end of a video like editing and so forth. Now I try to spend way more time at the front end organizing and writing. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: What is the formula? Again, it feels like you’re usually mixing in a clip from somebody. Obviously, you’re tying the ideas together as you were just explaining. But when you sit down, you start out with the idea and think, OK, what are all of the things that I’ve seen, you know, or the things on my list that are related to, say, curiosity? Do I have a story about curiosity? Do I have a quote about curiosity? Do I fill in the blanks? Um, is it that formulaic or is it more, more organic?

Heather Parady: And it just kind of is a story you’re telling what I’m looking for bridges. So if I heard I was doing some research on Morgan Whelan yesterday, because I’m trying to do a reel on American or the voice, the voice has some ideas to do some things with that. So I’ll just listen to a lot of podcasts, whatever, I’ll put a whole bunch of clips down. And then I’ll just naturally instinctively, I’ll be like, that reminds me of when I read this in this book, or I’ll ask myself, is there a bridge here? And if there’s not, I leave it alone. So I’m not looking for topic first, I’m looking for bridges first. And so if I usually have two, then I kind of put it in a separate file where I’m like, okay, these two ideas, but it’s not until I have three, where these three things tie together, that they’re actually getting to me actually writing a script on it. One thing that I’ve been really conscious of lately is not just trying to tie things together, because Rob talked about anxiety and Matt talked about anxiety and Paul talked about anxiety. Let’s make a video about it. But what’s the twist that I learned something on or we’re taking them somewhere a little bit different? So maybe we had all these ideas, but is there something that I’m adding to the conversation here as opposed to regurgitating content that’s already out there? And that’s actually really hard to do because I don’t always have a conclusion. And I was just whining to my creator friends the other day, I’m really torn at times between keeping a consistent schedule and then also like maintaining the integrity of my work that I’m actually convicted about what I’m saying and I’m not just putting a reel together to get something out. And that’s really hard for me to gauge.

Rob Marsh: That was actually going to be my next question. And because if you’re letting that stuff happen naturally, but you have a video that’s got to drop on Friday, like in some there’s almost got to be like a forcing function that starts to make those connections for you. How do you make that happen?

Heather Parady: I’m really in the middle of a big, deep reflection right now about that because I don’t know the answer to it. And it’s weird because sometimes I’ve put out videos and I’m like, eh, and they work really well. And so you might think of that as a success, but not to get too airy fairy weird on you. Like, you know, I left my work as a therapist to make content and the heartbeat is still there where I really feel like I’ve been placed on this earth to work with people and to help people. And I have to really ask myself a lot, like just because something popped, does that mean it worked? Or is this something that I genuinely believe added to society? And I don’t know the answer to that, Rob. I’m really, I didn’t put out one reel this week. I had several films that I was editing them and I’m like, I don’t know if I feel this. Like, I don’t know if this is what I want to say. Um, And you can’t get too caught up in that sometimes. I would say if you’re at the beginning stages as a content creator, it’s important to just get stuff out because you’re finding your voice. I always tell people you find your voice.

Rob Marsh: Something’s better than nothing at that point.

Heather Parady: Exactly. But at some point, you know, when you know you’re going to do it, you’re not struggling with consistency. You’re kind of past those beginner blocks. At some point I’m like, what am I really wanting to say here? And I’m wrestling with it. I don’t have a better answer than that.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so let’s say that we have the edited video. We’re confident this is the thing we’re going to say this week. How do you come up with the hook then when you’re throwing it up on social media, you’re putting it on Instagram, wherever it goes, so that you actually get the initial attention on this idea that you want to share with the world?

Heather Parady: Yeah, I start backwards. I don’t start with the hook. I start with the takeaway. A lot of folks teach you to start with the hook, and I think that is clickbaity and the sexy, fun thing to do. What’s harder is starting with the takeaway. If you read Save the Cat, it’s a screenwriting book. I really love looking at these other disciplines, like the way that they approach things, even though I’m not a screenwriter, but you know, him talking about the log line at the beginning, like you figure out what is the thing that is interesting and kind of the main point. So I try to start there of like, okay, if I’m going to be talking about, I might, you know, say, oh, Lady Gaga says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what’s the point of the video? The point of the video may be, do you know that magic is, you know, hidden in space and we don’t give ourselves enough breathing room and space to really allow magic in our lives or whatever. That’s so wordy. And so the same way you would critique a hook, I would kind of go to the end, the log line and figure out or the takeaway and figure out How can I really distill this down into one simple sentence? Because also, you know, with morality and making content. you know, really work. It needs to be shareable. It needs to be recommendable. And so you’re not going to say to your friend, like, hey, go check out this video that started with Lady Gaga. But you might say, hey, there’s this video on the importance of taking breaks or whatever. Like, I’m helping you share what the video is about by understanding the end at the beginning. So if I understand the end, then I go to the front to the hook. And I think, A, am I setting up a promise that will be delivered? So if I say that I’m going to share this idea, am I really sharing this idea, if that makes sense? Is there a payoff? So yes or no on that. Then I think about the order of the words. I feel so weird talking to you about this because I know you’re a copywriter and y’all are like the boss at this kind of stuff. But really, I write out every single word and I think, is there any words I can take out? And then how can I move the most interesting, global, globally appealing thing at the very beginning? So if Lady Gaga is that thing, because people are interested in what Lady Gaga said, I’m not going to say Lady Gaga seven words in. I’m going to try to move Lady Gaga to one, two or three, the very beginning, because you know that scroll. So, you know, if people ask the question, have you ever thought of, you know, that’s terrible.

Rob Marsh: Right. Five seconds in. Yeah, you’ve moved on.

Heather Parady: Right. Lady Gaga tripped and fell. This is what happened. You know what I mean? Like I’m putting that at the very beginning. So that’s high level. And then from there, I’m also working on hooks in throughout the video. So you’re not just hooking them at the beginning, but you’re also like kind of opening and closing loops throughout. And I haven’t really nailed that yet. That’s what I’m working on now.

Rob Marsh: What’s your thinking around length of videos? Because, you know, the world is full of three-hour podcasts now, you know, the Chris Williamson’s of the world, Diary of CEO, you know, where you have these really in-depth conversations and there may be 10 or 12 really good takeaways from them. On the other hand, your videos are at least what I’ve seen are very short, but there’s always something that clicks, right? The, the way that you’ve thought it through, it always feels like I’m getting, it might just be a scoop of, of content as opposed to an entire feast, but it, it always hits. So yeah, thinking on, on length, you know, are you, are you always thinking I’m trying to keep this to six minutes or under 10 minutes, or does it just take what it takes?

Heather Parady: Yeah. Well, thanks for saying that, because that’s my goal. I am a very spiritual, deep thinker, like I want to have a cup of coffee and sit with you for three hours and talk about something. So it’s wild that I’ve really leaned heavy into short form content because the stigma behind it and the reality of it is that it’s really just playing to our dopamine and our short attention spans and not really, quote, helping humanity. But if we think about being, you know, healers and whatever in this world, we have to figure out how do we bring our message into the context of what’s going on. And right now, short form video is it. And so I’ve made it a personal challenge to make deep, short content. because it doesn’t seem like that would work, right? And so I want to be an entry drug for people where they may have not thought about this stuff. And then they go look up Stephen Barlett, they go and look up Lewis Howells, and they, you know, consume content that’s changed my life. So yeah, I want to make it as short as possible because that’s what I’m trying to serve. Just from a tactical standpoint, I have 90 seconds on Instagram. If I want to put it on YouTube, that’s 60 seconds. So the shorter, the better. One thing I am working on, though, is not jump cutting so much where I don’t allow something to breathe for a moment because I just refuse to believe that we can’t sit in a moment of silence with short form. Now, I don’t think We can abuse that, but I think there is space if we are good at our story and convicted that energetically, I believe people scrolling Instagram can pause for a minute and think, I do. I think we’re really don’t give ourselves enough credit.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I don’t disagree with that. Maybe the algorithm would, but I agree. In fact, I see you doing that on your unlisted videos, which I love. Talk about the thought process that’s there. And just so that anybody who’s listening might not know, the unlisted videos, you only share with people on your email list. You don’t post them anywhere. So the only way to get them is to be on your list. And they feel even more deeply personal. Yeah. So yeah. Tell me, you know, what’s, what’s the thought process there.

Heather Parady: I really, really love when creators can just shoot it to me straight and talk like a human. That’s the content I really love. Like, and I’ve, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from people and I was trying to think about what’s the best way to answer Obviously I want to help everybody, but I can’t just sit there in DMs with people and talk and stuff. So this would be a good way to answer one question from one person and everybody hear it. And then also to kind of show what I’m not, you know, failing at or sorting through. Like I have somebody this, this week, they were asking me about how do you, how do you approach sound design to hypnotize an audience? And I literally was like, I don’t do anything with sound design. Like what are you talking about? My hope is just to take the mystery out of it and to humanize it a little bit. It is a little vulnerable at times because you want to appear polished. You want to appear like you have everything together. You want people to respect your work. But if we think about our own human behavior, usually when someone can show you the stuff that they’re struggling with, you end up respecting them all the more. And so why don’t we apply that to our own work? And so Unlist is just a test with that. I’m so glad to hear that you’re enjoying it.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think the thing that I like most about it is I see the polished videos, and they’re amazing. They’re great. That’s the first thing that attracted me to watching what you do. But seeing the unlisted videos, like you said, they’re more vulnerable. But it feels like I’m getting a little bit of a peek inside your brain in how you’re actually piecing ideas together. rather than having gone through your three connection step, it’s like you’re taking a question and thinking through as you record. And I’m guessing it’s actually more thought out than that, but it feels, again, very natural.

Heather Parady: I don’t script them out. Sometimes I’ll put a couple of bullet points just because I’m ADD and don’t want to get off topic. But for the most part, those are just real honest responses.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Like I said, I think I’m going to steal that idea. I think it’s brilliant and a really good way to make a connection with an audience.

Heather Parady: I hope so.

Rob Marsh: Thank you. Yeah. You mentioned the way that you spend Friday’s writing and try to put an hour of writing in every day, but a lot of your time I think is thinking and strategy. Will you just talk about your approach there to creating that time in your day so that you have, you can actually create the content when you sit down and start to write?

Heather Parady: Man, it is, it’s, It’s imperfect. I think I’m reevaluating my strategy. I know I am on a weekly basis. I try every Sunday to put 30 minutes to an hour aside and just look at the week and figure out what worked, what didn’t. Because, you know, I’m running a business too. And I have kids and I have personal projects. I’m working on a short film. It’s like freaking endless, you know, which I’ll sit here and complain about it, but I sign myself up for everything. I love it. I’m geeky. I have ClickUp. I use ClickUp, even if I’m just the only one on the team. I use ClickUp to organize everything. It’s pulled up right now. I review the day in the morning and at the end. And again, that’s just my energetic makeup. Some people are not that way. I literally stress my husband out when he looks at what I have. He just does not operate in that way. He operates in a different way and that’s fine. I think what we have to be mindful of is being hyper aware of our gift, our disposition, and then being responsible to it. Because some people are like, oh man, I’ve got to get up at 4.30 and use ClickUp and blah, blah, blah. No, you don’t. What you need to do is be responsible with the way that you were created and be honest with yourself. Am I really being faithful with what has been given to me, you know, and it’s totally imperfect. I don’t know if I’m answering your question, but that’s my thought around that.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. And where are you, like, what are the big, uh, stores of information where you get your inspiration? I know you mentioned you’ve got a group of creators surrounding you. Obviously you’re a big time reader, you know, watching other videos, but, uh, you know, when you think about what people call, you know, Renaissance time or CEO time or, you know, thinking time, you know, what are your go-tos?

Heather Parady: for the videos or for like my life?

Rob Marsh: I think all of it because it feels like they’re kind of connected.

Heather Parady: Yeah. Lately I’ve been, um, it’s funny you’re bringing this up because I, I’ve actually been challenging myself in that way. I’ve spent, you know, the past 10 years reading hundreds of personal development books, hundreds of hours of podcasts. I mean, I, I’m just, it’s disgusting how much I’ve consumed. But lately, I’ve been kind of questioning myself. I’m like, I think you’re in a comfort zone, Heather, where you’re listening to the same types of content. Why don’t you start exploring other things that you don’t know as much about? I’m very comfortable with kind of the psychology, personal development space and so forth. I understand certain lingo and words and concepts and the way they link, which is a strength because it makes it easier to make these connections. But I also haven’t really been pushing myself where exploring things I’ve never heard of before or whatever and being a student again. And honestly, you know, this is an excuse, but it comes down to time because being a beginner again, you know, you’ve got to be messy out loud. I mean, I drive a lot. Yesterday I was on the road for five hours, so I listen to back-to-back podcasts. I read every morning. I usually have a YouTube video up playing. I’m talking about like, it is disgusting how much I listen to and consume. But I also, too, from my own mindset, I didn’t come from a family that was super positive and, you know, exposed to this stuff. So I’m still rewiring my own mindset. and battling my own demons and trying to figure out how to be a better person myself. So I listen to that stuff for content, but I also listen to it because I need it.

Rob Marsh: This morning, I was thinking about something similar, the way that I consume content, the things that I read, and the way that I’m thinking about it. And it feels like I read in shorter chunks now. I think in shorter chunks. And as I was, again, pondering it this morning, I was wondering, has that changed over time because I’m getting older? Or is it changing because the way media has evolved in the last decade and a half? has forced me to do that. Is my thinking literally changing because the media is changing as opposed to the way that I would consume it? I don’t know that it’s deep, but it sort of got me thinking because I’m like, okay, which one’s better? And do I need to force myself into longer reads or do I need to force myself, like you’re saying, into things that don’t feel familiar and challenging? I mean, this isn’t even really a question. I actually started a course in something that’s very, very different from anything I’ve ever studied before two days ago. And literally as I opened up the first lesson, the thought came to me is this is too hard. You should just quit now, right? And so anyway, maybe this is me throwing a lot of things at you as a therapist, a content therapist. What are your thoughts on?

Heather Parady: I love this. I love this thought. I love this idea. Contemplation. That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about. Richard Rohr talks a lot about this, just sitting with something and you know, it’s just kind of that meditative, that meditative state where you just kind of mull over something just for a while, like even a thought, even a sentence. And I feel you on this sense of, you know, I’d have done a lot of challenges and you know, I’m, I’m driven AF and type A where I’m like, I’m going to read 25 pages a day. And I’m going to, you know, I put metrics on stuff, which is cool and helpful at the beginning, I think. But at some point you’re just reading through pages to check a box as opposed to really sitting with something and consuming it. Um, but I’m also asking myself a lot, like, why are you in such a rush? Where’s the rush coming from? Because I’m in a rush all the time. And I don’t know why. I think it is a cultural thing. Like we, we’ve, we’re, we’re breeding that in our society. There’s something just, we collectively, it’s a collective weight, not just an individual one. And also it is an individual one, because there’s pressure that if Heather doesn’t produce a reel today and get that out and email her list and then have five discovery calls with the client and also make her family a homemade meal. And also, you know what I’m saying? Like it’s just this, this, this. Am I failing in these areas? Am I being all that I can be? And I don’t hate that message because it saved my life in a lot of ways. But I also feel like when am I ever going to evolve from that and think a little deeper? And that goes back to this idea that we were talking about earlier is as a creator, do I really have something to say? And it’s normal for us to not always have something to say. How can we have a revelation every day? And that’s what I feel like as creators, we’ve kind of I have felt the pressure of like, oh man, you’re going to have to sit in deep constantly to talk about, but I don’t give myself time to actually wrestle with anything. You know what I’m saying?

Rob Marsh: Yeah. And as you say that, that might be part of the reason that I am always reading and consuming and listening because I feel like I want that new idea. It’s almost like I get that there’s a dopamine hit for, you know, when you’re scrolling through the, the, the feed on Instagram or whatever, but there’s almost a deeper dopamine hit. If you can learn something new, if somebody can connect something for you to sort of have that, Oh, wow, wait a second. I hadn’t thought about that. And, and so maybe one of the reasons that we try to consume so much is that we’re, we’re actually looking for that deeper thing that we’re not getting from the scroll.

Heather Parady: Man, you’re just dropping some nuggets, man.

Rob Marsh: I don’t know.

Heather Parady: No, I’m going to be thinking about that. I haven’t thought about it in that way before, but I think you’re right.

Rob Marsh: We’ll have to have a part two or maybe once we figured this thing out. Let’s go back to the videos because one thing I noticed about your videos, not a lot of calls to action. Uh, so what, what is it all leading to? Like, what’s the purpose and, you know, is there a connection between what your, the content you’re putting out and how your business grows on the back end?

Heather Parady: Yeah, it’s wild. Um, I meant to say a bunch of stuff that. We can just probably upset a lot of people, but this is just my experience and my conviction. I believe with all of my heart that when we show up as creators, more full, more alive, more convicted, more lit up, then people are going to ask, how can I hire you? I don’t know what you do, but can I hire you? Because those are the emails that I get literally emails. I don’t know what you do, but can I work with you? Which is wild. And I’m not saying that is like a marketing strategy by any means, but I think we’re like somebody messaged me the other day. I was like, how do I get the conversion? And I’m like, you don’t get a conversion. You convert stuff because people are drawn to your work. So I’m not saying I’ll never have a CTA or whatever, but my intention right now is to add as much value to people and trust that when you are just constantly in a state of giving value, giving value, and that’s what you’re consumed by, people see you as a person of value and want to work with you. So I’m not worried about it. I’m not worried about it.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, it’s sort of scary to, to, to be putting stuff out there and not draw that line from point A to point B saying, this is how you work with me. This is because, again, like, especially when, when content is so time consuming, to not have that line to the dollar is, it’s an act of faith in a really big way.

Heather Parady: It is, but also too, when you try it out and you let go of that and you give yourself six months to stop making it a commercial. Hit me up and tell me what kind of results you got. It’s scary at first because we want to put the blame of our content and our stuff not working because we didn’t use the right technique or hack versus taking the responsibility that we’re not getting the conversions because people don’t believe us.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So what are you building then on your business? I know you recently had a program where you were walking people through the storytelling and the art of video creation, but what else are you building?

Heather Parady: Yeah. So for the last five years, I’ve been fractional COO, been working on kind of operational side to people’s digital businesses. So what my brain works is I’m very, very creative, but I’m also very organized and I kind of like a, kind of a sidekick for people who are all over the place and have a very unique skillset, by the way. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I’ve done a lot of like testing and human design and all a bunch of weird stuff. And it all points to the same thing. And I’m good at it. And we recently closed that recently as in this fall, I closed the agency side of that down because I decided to go all in on creation. And so I’m just now doing consulting and coaching with folks and I’ll have cohorts and programs and things like that coming out. But, um, I just kind of took a little leap. I took a little leap and it’s scary, but it’s working out so far.

Rob Marsh: One other thing I noticed that you do not shy away from at all is talking about spirituality and even touching on religion occasionally, which I think is very rare in the marketing world. Thoughts on that? Should we be doing more of that?

Heather Parady: It’s terrifying. It’s terrifying. I don’t want to talk about it because I am so annoyed with religious people and I’ve been so hurt. And I feel squeamish and sick to my stomach when people bring it up to me sometimes, because I just had a lot of abuse in the church. And when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a minister. That’s what I always wanted to do. that went south, that’s when I went into therapy because I was like, oh, well, therapy is another way to do ministry without the church. And then when I left all that, I’ve really found kind of media as quote, my ministry. And I’ve had to really learn that this has nothing to do with people’s crap. This has to do with something else working on your behalf and our creator, however you want to word that. And so just really restoring my own faith in that regard. And I’ve been kind of working with this policy that if you’re nervous to talk about it, it’s probably something you should look at because fear usually sits very strategically in your life. It’s not random that some people are afraid to talk about relationships. It’s not random that you’re afraid to show your arm that was twisted in a car accident or talk about infidelity or There’s a reason we’re terrified around certain topics. I’m not saying you should build a brand around everything, but why am I scared to talk about that? You know, where’s the growth opportunity in that? And so I’m not going to do it forever. I don’t think, who knows, but right now I’m scared to talk about spirituality because it’s so personal to me and I’ve been so hurt in it, but it’s also one of the most real and honest things I can do. So people have been nice so far. I’ve gotten a few not so nice things, but I can handle it.

Rob Marsh: How do you deal with the not so nice?

Heather Parady: I put it on the website. I put it on my website.

Rob Marsh: The untestimonials? Is that what you’re talking about? Yeah. So that’s something else. I love that. When I saw that page, I’m like, this is brilliant.

Heather Parady: Yeah. I’ve had a lot of, you know, I do, I work with creators, so I’m on these coaching, whatever the hell, I don’t even know what I am, a coach, a consultant, whatever. I might steal what you said earlier, a content therapist. That’s literally what I am. But you know, they’ll sit there and they’ll be like, oh my God, you know, they’re just so afraid to get that one comment. They will not post something, even though they say they want to, they won’t do it because they’re like, oh my God, what happens when somebody says something? So for years, I’ve been telling people not to worry about it. It’s not a big deal. We all do it, the whole speech. And after a while, I’m like, I really want to make an example of this and show you what people have said to me. And here’s the interesting twist to it. Most of them are right. Most of what people say to me, not the mean ones, like you’re going to go to hell. I’m going to go to hell. But if they’re like, Hey, you’re too hyper. Hey, you mispronounce words. Hey, you’re so, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Cause your accent, like they’re right. And actually, if you look at the light and the dark, they’re pointing to the shadow, the dark side to my personality and my skillset. But when you flip it to the light side, that is why people are attracted to me folks. Some folks love my energy. They love that I mispronounce words and I leave it in the video because it shows that I’m human. Other people are like, forget her. Other people are like, yes and amen. So what people point out in you as a negative can be why other people fall in love with you. So. I like that page. I need to update it. I got some more to add.

Rob Marsh: When I stumbled across that, again, I was like, oh, everybody should have an untestimonials page just because it is so revealing about not necessarily the things that you do, but the audience that you’re repelling and pushing away. And I think it just points an arrow and says, if you think like this, yeah, you’re not going to like what I am, but everybody who doesn’t think like that is going to love it.

Heather Parady: Yes, exactly.

Rob Marsh: So if you could go back in time, you know, Heather, just starting out, maybe on her content journey, she’s just, you know, stopped being a therapist and could give her some advice that might help her make more traction or do something differently or do something better. What would you say to her?

Heather Parady: A lot. A lot. Um, I think what’s coming for me right now is stop feeling guilt for what you really want. I had a lot of guilt to say that I wanted to be a creator because it sounded very immature in my head. It sounded irresponsible. It sounded, um, egotistical. There was a lot of like judgment around it where I’m like, are people going to think that I’m this, this, this, this, because I want to put out content online and start a podcast and do these things. So I would go to her and really encourage her to let go of the shame around what I really wanted from an emotional standpoint. Um, from a technical standpoint, I don’t, hmm. Hmm. If I can be honest, I would tell her to not interview people or discuss topics that you really weren’t passionate about. I know that sounds weird, but I put out a lot of content that I thought might work or that I felt obligated to do for a variety of reasons. And I’ve really come to terms with like the most powerful content is the content that is a hill you would die on and that moves me. Like I’ve asked myself that a lot, you know, like, am I moved by this personally? Like, is this, you know, you need that feeling that you get like, yeah, I’m not saying that every time I’m like, hallelujah, this is great. But like, does it stir something in you? Is it something that you really deeply believe? Or are you just throwing, I don’t know if I can cuss on your podcast, but just throwing poopoo on the fan. and seeing if it works. You know what I mean? And Colin and Samir talked about this on our show the other day. Phenomenal podcast. They were saying that the ideation process is really being eliminated from creators where it used to, we would go to a board and stir creativity and come up with new ideas and then put it into a formula. And now we kind of put a formula first and then try to put ideas into that. So we’re starting with, is this going to work versus pure ideation? And think about sucking the life out of your work by going formula first, then trying to come up with an idea.

Rob Marsh: I think it’s even worse than that. I think we look at what other people in our niche or our industry are doing, and we think we need to mimic that. So we don’t even start with the formula and go to our own ideas. We’re starting with the formula and going to their ideas.

Heather Parady: Yeah, man. Isn’t that wild? Isn’t it wild?

Rob Marsh: And that’s probably why so much content is so bad.

Heather Parady: Yeah. And that’s another reason why I try to separate content from business and stuff, because I don’t need my content to perform, you know, and I don’t know your experience. A lot of the people I’ve worked with, most of their business doesn’t come from content anyway. It comes from word of mouth. And so I think we put too much stock on stuff, but if I’m not putting pressure on my content to make something, I can be a little more free with it.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. You’ve got me thinking about the content that I create and how do I go deeper with it? How do I make sure that, like you said, it’s the stuff that resonates with me and I’m not wasting time with all of that other stuff. There’s a lot of things to contemplate when I sit down to think about all of this stuff.

Heather Parady: Yeah. Isn’t it fun now?

Rob Marsh: Yeah. I mean, it’s fun, but it can also be a little bit scary, right? Because I’m not thinking at that moment, like, how do I get the next client or, you know, how are we getting the next conversion? It’s, it’s like you said, it’s stuff that won’t pay off maybe for six months or a year.

Heather Parady: Yeah. And that’s why I’m spiritual, man. Cause I don’t think I can do this life or this work without having a spiritual bent. Because if I think about everything just logically black and white linear, then panic sets in because then I’m in control and I have to make everything work. Now I’m responsible and I have to be faithful with what I’ve been given. Can’t you tell I grew up in church to the language I’m using? But at some point, I don’t know how to move through this world without understanding that when I get to the very edge of the cliff and I’ve gone as far as I possibly can go, that that one extra inch, something’s going to catch me.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Final question for you. And we’ve, we’ve kind of talked about this for 47 minutes, but for that person who is thinking about, okay, I am going to get serious about creating content, the right kind of content that resonates with me as a creator. What initial advice do you have for them just to help them get started?

Heather Parady: This is super left turned from what we’ve been doing, but this came up for me so strong whenever you said that. So I’m going to trust it. intentional fun as much as you can with it and ask yourself, how can I make this fun? How can I breathe life into this? My energy in my videos, I’m fully convinced is really the key for them resonating with people or not. Yeah, the concepts are important. And I’m not talking about an extroversion, introversion type thing. I’m talking about, you can feel somebody’s presence if they’re happy, if they’re sad, if they’re just doing this. And so you can come to the whatever with a perfect script. But if your mind is not there and you’re thinking about something else, your energy is off. Mastering your energy and trying to figure out how to have fun is so important. And it sounds silly and cheesy. The girl who does the Excel spreadsheets, she has a million plus followers. You know, she does jumping jacks and stuff like that. Tony Robbins talks about that, and it sounds weird and crazy.

Rob Marsh: But if you look at her page is so nuts, it’s so nuts to me. It’s such a disconnect, but it works.

Heather Parady: It works. It works. And people, again, are drawn to the energy. So learning energy management, I think, is just as important as you learning any tactical video editing stuff.

Rob Marsh: I think that’s great advice. Just add something else to learn and do. Exactly. Exactly. Yet another thing on the checklist.

Heather Parady: Slip, right. Video edit. Have perfect energy. No problem.

Rob Marsh: Heather, if somebody wants to follow you, see the stuff that you’re doing, both publicly and also unlisted videos, all of the stuff, where should they go?

Heather Parady: Heather Paroady pretty much everywhere. I’m not on LinkedIn much just because I’m not corporate-y and those people make me nervous. But Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, heatherparody.com.

Rob Marsh: I’ll link to everything in the show notes. I think that you’re one of those people who honestly almost every creator should be following. I just love the way you think. I love the way that you put your content together. So thanks for your time today. I appreciate it.

Heather Parady: Well, this just freaking made my day. Thank you, Rob. I appreciate it.

Rob Marsh: Thanks to Heather Parody for sharing how she thinks about and sits with and creates her content. I love her idea of looking for bridges as opposed to content topics when she’s looking for content ideas and then combining those bridges with a twist that she adds that makes the whole thing different as opposed to more of the same. There are so many people on social media who should be doing this instead of adding to our collective content shock. 

Also, her suggestion for moving interesting ideas and recognizable names to the very first five words of your hook so that you immediately catch attention is a copywriting superpower. Far too many copywriters have a tendency to clear their throats and take a bit of time to get around to the point that they need to make instead of starting with big ideas and big promises. If you want to do more of that, the big promise, the getting attention early on, watch some of Heather’s work. it’s going to inspire you. And this is a lesson I’m going to have to take to heart myself. 

And I have to say, I really like Heather’s unpublished videos. Now we talked a little bit about this in the podcast. Those are the videos that aren’t available to everyone. They’re only available to her active email subscribers. This is a genius idea for a couple of reasons. First, if what gets shared in an unlisted video is valuable, it’s helpful to your listeners. And so they have a reason to want more, but more than that, The vulnerability that Heather brings to her unlisted videos forges a tighter connection between her and her audience. And if either of those two things are appealing to members of her audience, and clearly they are, they have yet another reason to stick around and get more. So it basically makes subscribers stickier. Of course, you can do that with publicly available videos too, but there’s something magic about having access to insider content, content that not everybody can see or even know about. If you’re not on the list, you just don’t get it. 

Okay. Be sure to check out Heather at heatherparady.com. Her last name is P-A-R-A-D-Y. You’ll find links to her just about everywhere that she is, but on her website, you’re going to find a link to the behind the scenes videos and to her podcast. And of course you can see her content on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, wherever video content is shown. She is worth following and learning from.